TDM #004

[bequiet]

TEST DRIVE MEME
You wake, standing. A thick, muddy red dust coats your skin and clothes - it sticks to your tongue and blocks your vision. Inhale and it chokes you, exhale and your breath puffs out in front of your face in a transparent maroon cloud. It tastes of copper, tangy and harsh. Movement is difficult, every limb tingles and aches. Look to your left, your right. Evenly spaced in each direction stands another person indistinguishable in every way from the next. You're disoriented and lethargic, unable to grasp onto a single thought. A pinprick of light blooms ahead and grows steadily larger; a door has opened.

Hands grip your wrists, push at the small of your back and guide you out of the darkness into a room with four walls and a thin, sagging ceiling. The plaster is peeling, the air is musty, and the floor is slick. White plastic piping juts up from the center and curves into multiple spouts, clean water flowing in uneven streams. Those hands pull your clothes off and clear the dust from your body, redress you in handsewn jumpsuits.

A finger is pressed to your lips. Kind eyes meet your own and a single word is whispered - hush.

Led out of the room in a line, you’re taken down a short hallway and into another, much larger room. There’s a woman waiting for you there, a child hugging her leg, and a cloth bag in her hands. She reaches in and pulls out a device, passes one to each of you. Once finished, she begins to move both hands in graceful gestures, a language. One of the people who helped you lifts their device and the screen lights up, tracks the woman’s hands. Letters appear on the screen and you understand the device’s purpose. She tells you what she knows and it’s not much.

This world is haunted. Noise attracts them, so it is not allowed. Communication is through body language, soundless writing, and the device. She tells you that your feet must be light and your mouth never used. There is a community outside these doors, where you can survive together, but only if you agree to one thing: complete and total silence. You'll have time to talk it over. Acceptance allows you to journey outside. The ground is marked in pathways of sand, lining the paths to each building and everywhere in between. You notice that the locals hold their devices always, aloft and glance to it often. It will not vibrate or make a sound to signal a message.

Notices appear. The bulletin board feed lights up so you can read about the history. Rules. Guidelines. Feet on the sand and never anywhere else. To open a door you brush your fingers along the hinges - oiled and you may enter. If not, take the brush from the can sitting nearby and coat the metal with the dark liquid. You're to settle into your new home.

Take a peep
Content Warnings: Possible animal-thing death
Themes: Slice of life, it's like gremlins... kinda

On the first of April, small piles of dust with brightly colored eggs at the center will spring up over night. After a few hours the eggs will begin to hatch and out will come the smallest and brightest bunny-like creatures (the only notable differences from regular bunnies are the colors, size, and that they make no noise). They're friendly and immediately attach themselves (bond) to the first person to pick them up. One of the natives calls them "peeps" because they don't make a sound. All with unique personalities, the creatures can be found nibbling on the dust and needing no other form of food, and will shy away from any and all water sources.

If, however, any of them get wet - there will be a sudden and brief rain shower at noon - the creatures fur will turn black and they will begin attacking the others that didn't get wet. Stopping them is key, and the black creatures will either dash away from the community if given the chance or will need to be stopped.

OOC: All characters can keep a Peep! Any color! They are palm-sized and never grow larger than an adult hand.

OOC
From your mods:

Please remember to mark your content in your starters or subject lines as material comes up. The threads on this meme can be used as game canon. Feel free to thread out arrival style meetings as well! If you have questions, pp the mod account, use the faq or comment below. Have fun!

NAVIGATION

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Comments

i'd be disappointed if you were tbh

[eachother]

[ thomas stands idly as simon works it out that he's not talking to anybody else. there isn't anyone else around, anyway, and he's definitely not trying to communicate with the rabbits via text message. if anything, he's pretty content with keeping his distance from them until something happens, and he's almost sure that something will. and when it does, he'll go from there.

for now, though, he's left wondering if this guy is just optimistic, careless, or... new. if thomas was a betting man (and he's not, because who has money or time for betting), he'd put money on the last option, maybe a couple dollars on the first. it's not as if the rabbits aren't strangely cute in their own way, so he could see how someone with less experience here might not know better than to trust something so apparently harmless.

simon's grin is a clear sell that he isn't taking thomas seriously, which honestly just makes him want to stick around, if only to drag him out of harms way when shit inevitably hits the fan. thomas simply shrugs in response and replies to the last question first. ]

Yeah. Is yours Jacques?

[ he pauses for a moment to glance at the rabbits again, then squints and casts his eyes upwards as a small breeze blows through. the sky's starting to look kind of dark, a telltale sign of a storm rolling in.

thoams looks back down, taps out the rest of his response, and looks at simon over the edge of his device. ]

Anything that comes out of the dust typically isn't a good thing. Not since I've been here, anyway.

[ sure, they all may have arrived surrounded by the same dust, but thomas isn't exactly sure he'd count that as a good thing, either. not when it dumps you out in a place where a sneeze could get you killed.

anyway, like he said: be careful. ]

[oreophiliac]

(This was mostly the result of being new, but more than that, being dangerously inexperienced in a world of authentic danger. It didn't help that Simon was a little careless by nature. Or rather, not so much careless as much as thoughtless from time to time. He definitely wasn't the smartest out of his friends, that's for sure. As for optimism? Simon was more of a realist and that was biting him in the ass right now. That was the biggest part of him right now telling him that there was just no way a bunny could hurt him. Especially not one that could sit in his palm.

In other words, he was in a perfect storm of a situation to be completely unprepared for this world and all the things it would hurl his way.)

Nah. Just a stupid nickname. My name's Simon.

(Simon does follow Thomas's gaze to the skies, and he notices that they were starting to darken as well. The air kind of had that smell on it too, the kind just before rain.)

What, even rabbits? How long have you been here for?

(That was something Simon really didn't want to think about either. His family would flip if he wasn't home by seven at the latest. It wasn't even the weekend.

At least Simon seems willing to change his mind on the danger of the rabbits. Doubtful, maybe, but he wasn't immediately brushing this off again.)

Are there really monsters here? Or is this just one of those weird cult situations where they're trying to convince us not to go out of town in case "monsters" eat us in the woods?

[eachother]

[ all right. simon, not jaques. noted. why anyone wouldn't just put their actual name in the username field, thomas doesn't know — unless, of course, they're trying to hide from someone or something, which could have easily been the case here, except for the fact that simon didn't hesitate to give thomas his actual name —, but it's really not that important anyway.

even rabbits, he thinks to himself as he glances at the handful of them still in simon's lap, their little noses wiggling, but he doesn't say as much. it's not as if he can say for sure that yes, these rabbits aren't what they seem, but he can infer based on past experiences with the same red dust.

instead, he responds with: ]

About a month, give or take a couple days.

[ honestly, he hasn't really been keeping track. before he'd arrived and they'd shoved a device into his hands, thomas hadn't even really known what day of the week it was, let alone the date. little details like that meant next to nothing before now, and honestly, they still don't mean much, but someone had mentioned that there was a pattern of new people showing up every month or so, and since he's still under the assumption that simon must be new, well...

well, time to catch him up to speed, then.

thomas doesn't say anything else at first, his attention focused on his device as he thumbs through a couple things, looking for something he's pulled up dozens of times before to the point that he could probably find the videos with his eyes closed.

the next message he sends comes with an attachment. ]

I don't know how much of it is real. I've never seen one in person and the footage could be altered, but that's apparently what we're dealing with. I've seen some things I can't really explain, but most of it traces back to the red dust.

ATTACHMENT: soundeaters.mp4