test drive meme #1

[historiadores]

TDM #1

LA LLEGADA

The Museum of Art and History is the largest and oldest in Llave, and contains a grand collection spanning from the time the first humans landed on its shores to the modern day. The building encircles an open courtyard where an art installation sits amidst many of the plants important to the settlers of Llave. Behind the museum is a wide, shallow field of hard-packed dirt lined by large stones, the petroglyphs on their surface worn by time—the earliest known playing field in all of the Caribbean. And further out are the areas where excavations are ongoing, uncovering the pottery, jewelry and artifacts of the ancestors.

After awakening, things move quickly. The museum is closed, and the characters ushered into the courtyard to wait. Any needing emergency medical attention are kept in one of the air conditioned galleries until the paramedics arrive. A group of women with a military bearing take charge of the situation; identified as the Bajari Bara, they question the healthy and able. They cede authority only to the Prime Minister when she arrives. Two more of their group flank the nation's leader, though they step aside when she begins to walk among the new arrivals to speak with them.

Each side has many questions and few answers. Characters are informed they are in Llave. It's October 2020. And efforts will be made to return them to their homes. But how they came to be here and why remain mysteries…as does how they’ll find their way back.

A hurricane shelter nearby is activated for use by the recent arrivals. There, characters are provided with food and clothing, a cot and other basic supplies. No one is allowed out, but through the windows they can see the lush green of the their surroundings. At night, coquí sing them to sleep. Those taken to a hospital will remain there until they are discharged. Each patient is allowed one visitor to stay with them overnight.

Over the next several days, all characters undergo physical and mental evaluations; are provided with their first immunizations; have the next legal steps explained to them; and are taught about Llave. Every character, regardless of age, has a caseworker who checks in with them daily. None have been arrested, they are assured. But they must also complete the quarantine process. To enforce quarantine, at both the hospital and the shelter, the Bajari Bara guard every entrance and exit.

Welcome to Llave.

EL AREYTO

As luck would have it, around the time quarantine ends, all of Llave is in the midst of celebration. Today is the Day of Heroes, celebrated every last weekend in October, which this year happens to fall on the eve of All Saints’ Day. So when the new arrivals venture out for the first time, Nona, the capital, welcomes them with color and music.

The people of Llave have a special love for music and dance, and it shows. All day, groups gather to play, and many more to dance. The songs center around heroes of Llave with the chief of these being Nuna, a beloved figure who is said to have led her people here to freedom. Those performing wear traditional clothes: guayaberas, long circle skirts, palm hats and headwraps, all brightly colored.

From early morning, artisans have set up under tents tables laden with goods. Clothing, jewelry, musical instruments, paintings, and more made from leather and wood, seashells and fish scales, aluminum and copper. Many create right at the table. Most popular are those working on cemís: sculptural objects, said to house the spirits of ancestors. Many carry them as amulets especially on this the eve to the days of the dead.

The food is equally rich and one of the cooks takes an interest in the new arrivals. Those who eat his food find their mood changing depending on what they ate. The tostones he prepared while speaking of his childhood home in Santa Cecilia bring on feelings of joy and contentment. The alcapurrias fried while arguing with a customer about last night’s wrestling match cause those who eat them to feel irritated. And the casabe, a flatbread made of cassava, that he explains he learned to make from his wife who passed, induces a profound nostalgia for lost loves. His wife, recognizable from the photo he keeps on the wall, sits beside those most affected and comforts them until the melancholy passes.

More dead can be found. An old man in a fine guayabera recalls composing the lyrics to a particular song. He points out the man playing the congas and proudly says his great-grandson will soon outplay him. When characters look back to the old man, he’s gone. Those with a sense for it will recognize many dead walking among the living. These next few days honor and celebrate the departed, and the dead have seized the rare opportunity to join the festivities once more.

For those who prefer the sea, the impossibly blue waters of the Caribbean are just a short walk away. Cobblestone and concrete paths line La Bahía de Nona. On one of the larger rock outcroppings jutting into the bay sits a silver-white dog. If called, he will trot over. Up close, one can see his color is due to the sand and salt that has collected on its coat. Though he allows himself to be petted, he does not step off the rocks. A passerby comments that the dog has been waiting for his master to return. How long? The man shrugs. When he was a boy, the dog was keeping watch; now he’s forty-three, and the dog is still there.

EL TRAVIESO

Or perhaps the characters were more distracted by how clean the water was, how clear. Enough so that the sight of a bottle bobbing in the waves seems offensively out of place. Anyone who chooses to snag it out of the water will find it’s a corked bottle of rum, apparently empty.

From a nearby restaurant, someone yells and waves their hands—too late. By uncorking it, they have freed the bacoo. Immediately, everyone backs away. Two cross themselves.

Only one stays long enough to warn, “You have to trick it back into the bottle. It likes milk and bananas. Don’t ask it for anything.”

Turn around, and the bacoo is there.

Short and rugged with large eyes, long arms and legs, covered in unkempt hair and its fingers and toes ending in claws, the bacoo is a strange little creature. Stranger still, it can grant any wish—so long as it is kept appeased with a steady diet of milk and bananas.

A hungry bacoo will pelt walls with stones, move objects, keep its owner up at night, and otherwise wreak havoc until it is fed. A shapeshifter, they can be difficult to locate, much less trap. And a starving bacoo will turn vicious and its pranks malicious.

Best find a way to trick it into the bottle. Fast.

---

OOC NOTES

This TDM covers from mid-to-end of October. The first prompt lasts approximately two weeks; the second, a day. For now, all characters are restricted to Nona. Any attempting to leave will be gently, but firmly escorted back.

The TDM will also double as the first IC post of the game. Threads between any two or more characters who were all apped and approved will be considered game canon. As such, actions characters take in this TDM will impact the game once it opens. How characters behave will shape the inhabitants’ first impressions of them. Make it count.

Questions regarding this TDM can be asked below, while questions regarding the game at large should be directed to the FAQ.

Thank you for your interest and we hope to have you join!

NAVIGATION • IC COMM • OOC COMM • MEME COMM

Comments

[zaldrizer]

I heard a wolf howl once, [ Dany admits. ] Upon a grassy sea. I would have made a poor meal, yet it made me feel sad and lonely all the same.

[ She would rather have seen a lone wolf than the pack of Dothraki that had swarmed her mere heartbeats later. Yet if she had not been dragged back to Vaes Dothrak, she would never have reached Westeros.

There's a queer familiarity in how the girl speaks of wolves, so Dany ventures: ]

She is yours, this wolf?

[ Who better to understand the bond between child and mother? Or creature and girl? ]

[wolfchild]

I told her to run. She'd have been caged.

[ grey eyes do not flit away from the darkness beyond and the creature she knows is prowling in the long grass. her fingers curl over the edge of one of the window's slats. it was right what she did. she has been treated kindly. but there is no promise nymeria would have been. she knows how to be a mouse, a cat, a shadow. nymeria knows only how to be a wolf.

(nymeria would have fought, and nymeria would have been killed.) ]

[zaldrizer]

I have come with another, as well, [ Dany admits. ] He is not of my flesh, but he is as much my child as if I'd given him birth.

[ And he would not have been caged. He would have been killed. ]

In this place or another, it makes no matter. All who look upon him see power -- and a dragon is no slave.

[ The last sentence is whispered, fierce. She would sooner take the scorpion bolt herself. ]

[wolfchild]

[ long ago, her teacher taught her of the true seeing. here, now, she sees a delicate woman of tremendous beauty. she sees the silver-gold hair and purple eyes of old valyria. she remembers the rumor of dragons in slaver’s bay brought by sailors from half the world away, and she sees teeth as long as swords, hidden skulls beneath the earth, in the muted light behind the woman.

a targaryen.

immediately, she hears the kindly man’s voice. ever patient, he asks, do you know? she must be that, but the girl is not certain and so she cannot say she knows. but her heart quickens anyway.

silly, of course. the name means nothing to a little girl who only knows of dragons from sailor’s tales. but jory, like every child, has imagined a dragon flying overhead. ]

A dragon? For true?

[zaldrizer]

[ What has she or Drogon to fear from a young girl? Little, Dany thinks, and less. She is not frightened. Even the queen had been frightened, when first she'd dreamed of a black dragon with blood glistening on its scales. ]

For true, [ she confirms, turning to look at Arya properly. Her eyes are kind, though there is something queer in her smile -- mischief and pride alike. ] I mean to find him when this thing is done. He must choose a lair far away from this place.

[ A pause, then an invitation: ]

Tell me of dragons. What do you know of them?

[wolfchild]

They're all dead. [ there had once been more and many. valyria had grown on the wings of dragons.

then the doom came to valyria. and another doom visited the targaryens.

she looks back out the window again, searching the skies this time, as if she might spot darkness moving against the stars. ]

They were all dead. [ her eyes, when she turns them upon daenerys, are dark and solemn, the weight of an untold history behind them. ] How did you find a dragon?

[zaldrizer]

[ A dragon, the girl says. Three, Dany thinks, turning her head as though to watch the sky herself. What she sees is not her three children, but one, falling, unable to scream. I had three, yet I failed one of them. ]

When I was a young girl, I was wedded to a horse lord. A merchant of Pentos gave me three stone eggs. Procured from Asshai, perhaps. [ She sounds wry. Illyrio Mopatis had liked his expensive gifts. ] They were all that gave me comfort, until I learned to be as Dothraki as my lord husband. I hatched them over a great fire, when all that was left me was faith.

[ She speaks as easily as she might to anyone of her world -- for this girl bears the speech and speaks the history of a Westerosi. With the simplest of cues, she suspects. She must be of Dany's world, too. She must. ]