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

Jon Snow ✥ Game of Thrones

[northerndragon]

La Llegada

[Weeks, he was held on Dragonstone, kept from his sword and his ship and his home. Weeks he had not had to spare, weeks in which every day made the survival of his people seem like a narrower and narrower possibility. But he had gone there with a purpose; he had gone there seeking aid. In the end, he had achieved what he had set out to do -- and much more.

He has no purpose in this place. He cannot think of what good will come from him waiting here. He should not be a prisoner here, even if the imprisonment is soft enough.

The people who come and talk to him, who prod at him like maesters -- he doesn't understand that either, or what good will come from it. He is compliant because he's at their mercy, and maybe for other reasons, and because they claim it's only temporary, and because they are not unkind, but he isn't happy about it.

So after one walks away from him and he has struggled back into his shirt with a cloudy face, he turns his head and looks at a person nearby.]

What gives them the right -- [(his mouth is tight with irritation)] -- what do you think they want from us?

EL AREYTO

[This is better. Still strange, still not his home or any road to it, but better. He understands that it's meant to be like some sort of feast; as far as it has any resemblance to anything in his experience, it's a little like a harvest feast in the way it might be celebrated by the smallfolk or in a town... but not like a harvest feast at Winterfell. That's all he has to compare it to.]

a song about nuna

[He listens to the song and, watching the dancers, he slips reluctantly into a contentment he hasn't felt in a while. He's not the only one taking it in. So he turns his head, a look of interest on his face, and asks,]

They have stories like this where you come from? It reminds me of Nymeria, but she's a hero way down south, the hero of the Rhoynar down in Dorne. My little sister always loved her. Loved Visenya, too, but Visenya isn't much like this Nuna.

[He also remembers wishing someone would sing songs like this of him one day. That's a fool's dream. If someone is singing songs of you, how many people died in the making of the tale? How many couldn't you save? What was lost? There has turned out to be much less glory in glory than he thought there would be.]

eating casaba

[He is in love. Apart from thoughts on his situation -- the way he's washed up in this weird place -- his mind and heart have been filled with Daenerys; he cannot shift it and would not want to. It's a joy he never sought or thought to have. It's larger than both of them.

Yet now he finds himself thinking of a different woman, one long dead. He sees a flash of red hair and his head whips around so his gaze can follow it, but then he realizes it isn't her, and his face falls.]

I don't know if she would have danced with the dancers or made fun of them, but I know she would have loved this. She would have wanted one of those little clay dolls, to remember her people.

[He has such a sad face to begin with that, when real sadness shows on it, it's as if something terrible has happened.]

WOOF

[Jon pets the dog, telling him that he's a good boy, scratching behind his ears. This brings a smile to Jon's face. You probably aren't going to tag this prompt, but it was important to let you know.]

EL TRAVIESO

[He had retrieved the bottle -- one so large is unusual -- exactly because the water is otherwise so clear that he was drawn to it, but now that he's uncorked it and the creature is right there, he isn't sure what to do.]

I don't know how it came out of the bottle. Gods know how I'm meant to get it back in.

[He pauses, caught up by something, surprised and frowning. The bacoo would have been enough to do it, but it's not the cause.]

-- What in seven hells is a banana?

[Note: Canon point might depend on who else apps, but for now, the end of S7 sounds about right.]

eating casaba

[bananaclip]

[ She'd barely noticed him until he spoke up, watching the dancers. When he does speak, Dayna looks at him and nods along, as if she knows exactly what he means. When he finishes speaking she replies: ]

Who was she? Someone you cared about, I'm sure.

[northerndragon]

[He doesn’t know the woman who speaks to him, but he looks at her now with a sad smile. He also doesn’t know why he feels compelled to speak of Ygritte now, when he speaks of her as little as possible. The only person he really even knows nowadays who knew her at all is Tormund Giantsbane.

This lady is not Tormund Giantsbane, by any means. But he’s seen her about the place.]

Aye. She was a woman of the Free Folk — the ones people south of the Wall call wildlings. Her name was Ygritte. [When he says it, it sounds a lot like “egret.”] I can’t say she wasn’t wild, but she was free.

I’m sorry, my lady, we haven’t met. [He inclines his head into a near bow; it’s courteous.] I am Jon Snow.

[bananaclip]

[ Dayna smiles gently. He appears to be from a much different time and place than where she came from. And really, that's perfectly okay. ]

I'm Dayna Jurgens. And I think I understand what you mean. Being free is the best thing in life, I think.

[ She knows, after all, what it is to be a captive. But she doesn't say so. ]

She liked things like that, the dolls? As symbols?

[northerndragon]

No. She liked fighting, and she liked her bow, and her people. If they have little dolls like this, I never saw them. The Free Folk live in a far, hard, cold country, and they don’t kneel to any man. But they will fight for their friends and remember their dead. If you think freedom is the best thing in life, the two of you would have agreed on much and more.

[He moves back to her introduction.]

Dayna. [There is a southron family named Dayne, way down in Dorne, but he knows little of them except that his father had once killed one of the greatest of them, rescuing the sister he would never speak of. He doubts this woman has much to do with them. Even so, you can’t tell here.]

It’s a pretty name. Where do you come from, before this place?

[bananaclip]

I lived in America. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. We had a lot of technology there, and someone used that ability to create a superflu. The superflu killed almost everyone, but there were a few of us left. We had to band together. And even then, there were people who wanted to take advantage of it.

[ She pauses and chuckles humorlessly, looking down for a moment. ]

Can you imagine the flu killing almost everyone you know and you decide to take that as an opportunity to take advantage?

[northerndragon]

[He shakes his head vaguely, looking baffled. He doesn’t understand the majority of the words she’s using.]

Flu, superflu — is that some kind of weapon?

They say the Queen blew up the Great Sept down in King’s Landing with wildfire to take power from her son. I would believe it of her.

[bananaclip]

Yeah, the flu's only been around for about a hundred years, so.

[ She's assuming he's from some point in Earth's past now. And that means he's never even heard of a germ. ]

It's a sickness. You get a fever, your nose runs and you cough, and you ache all over. And sometimes it kills people. But this one was 100 times worse. I think this flu was meant to be a weapon, but it got released before the meant it to, and in the wrong place.

[northerndragon]

We’d call it a fever, or a sickness.

[He’s frowning, putting the pieces together.]

How would they have sent it out among the people, and why? Such things are done in sieges, when men are evil, but no one makes the sickness. It’s just a fever, it isn’t magic. And any lord who does such a thing risks killing his own men, not only his enemy’s.

[bananaclip]

[ Dayna pauses a moment. She was right, he has no idea about germs. ]

You know, there was a writer in my time who said that scientific achievements often look like magic to those who don't know how it works. I don't know if explaining it to you will make much sense to you.

However...well, a sickness is made by a tiny little living thing we call a germ. And these scientists figured out how to make the germ pretty much unkillable. Because that's what our bodies do, you know, they kill the germs, eventually. That's why we get better. But this one just...kept living, and making things worse.

[northerndragon]

[Germ theory: he’ll have to take her word for it, or humor her. But he knows that there are ways to end some infections: with a hot knife, or wine, or honey, or a few of those, and he knows that if you take a fever, you live or you die.

Still, his expression is full of judgment.]

I am no maester, but why would anyone do such a thing? It’s the same: if there’s no way to end the sickness, then you kill your own men just as sure as you kill your enemies, and it may kill you in the end. It’s what you’d deserve, but that doesn’t make it any less of a fool’s game.

And it isn’t an honorable way to fight to begin with. The people of a city or a town or a castle are not soldiers, even if soldiers and guards defend it. Some are cooks and stable boys and maids.

[bananaclip]

[ She nods; he gets it. ]

It's dishonorable, yeah. And stupid. I don't really know that a person who thinks a superflu germ is a good idea would even care about that, though. They obviously didn't think things through to their conclusion.

[northerndragon]

It’s only a thing you would do if you didn’t care who died, or if you wanted as many dead as possible.

[A pause. This next question is a little more awkward.]

What happens to the dead? Does someone raise them — control them? Make an army of them?

[He is used to people looking at him as if he’s mad when he speaks on this. It’s the reason for his slight hesitation.]

casaba

[zaldrizer]

She?

[ Even now, her voice does not lose its easy elegance, its regal quality as she repeats the pronoun for some nameless woman. Yet it is tinged with curiosity, with warmth, with relief. It pleases her to surprise him thus.

She smiles when he turns to look at her. It is she, of course: who else would he be caught speaking of another woman to, save for Daenerys Targaryen? ]

You are melancholy. [ Here they sit, a queen and her Northern warden. ] Has something happened?

[northerndragon]

Am I?

[He turns his sad half-smile to her. There’s something apologetic in it, and to go with it, he slips his calloused hand into her smaller, softer one. He had not meant to speak of Ygritte to Daenerys; he had not known whether or not it would be right, or if it was, when, or why. He is happy to see Daenerys, but sad for everything else.]

Nothing has gone wrong. Only... this place reminded me of a woman I knew once. She lived her whole life never once seeing a day this warm.

They have things like this in Essos?

[Like any of it, he means.]

[zaldrizer]

[ He struggles to find some of his words, but Dany can read what lies behind them well enough. She squeezes his hand, as he'd done with her own upon her ship, his flesh warm and moist here.

She does not mind it. ]

As I once knew a man who lived his whole life on the Dothraki Sea. [ She speaks him almost gently. They all have their ghosts -- but unlike Ygritte, Khal Drogo would have sacked this place the instant he was no longer quarantined. ]

It is very warm, [ she admitted, ] and wetter still, where the cities meet the sea. There are many colors in Essos, and silks, as well. Yet my days were oft spent in some desert.

[ Or grassy sea. She squeezes his hand again, remembers the saying of Dothraki weddings and three dead men, and admits, ] I like the feasts here better.

[northerndragon]

[Back at home — in the relative sense, given that Dragonstone is itself very far from anything he’d call home — her Dothraki guards had surrounded her almost all the time. He had realized one day that she’d started to trust him when she’d begun to dismiss them in his presence. It had given him hope, because he knew then that she understood that she did not need protection from him.]

Only one man? [More than that, he’d imagine.] Ygritte only ever went south of the Wall to raid. She climbed the Wall to do it. North of the Wall... well, you’ve seen what it’s like.

[zaldrizer]

One who learned to speak my tongue. One who took a wound for me. [ He'll get the point. ] He might have liked your Ygritte, though he would have liked the snow as well as any other Dothraki might. [ She smiles wryly. ] That is to say, not at all.

[ But they're here at a feast, joyful and intriguing, and he is maudlin. Dany peers at him for a moment, then at the casabe still before him. The words float over from the man making them, and she frowns as the possibility strikes her. ]

Were you happy, before you ate of this bread?

[northerndragon]

[The things she says about this other man make him look at her curiously for a moment, then frown and nod a little in understanding.

He knows that she was married to some khal when she was still a very young girl; he knows that she had no choice in the matter, no more than most highborn women do. He does not like to think of her being married to someone like one of her guards — in truth, he does not like to think of her being married to anyone who isn’t him — but it’s in the past. And despite what they’ve become, that wedding, one where he loses her to another man, may still come one day.]

I am happy.

[He says it quietly, with reassurance, holding her hand.]

Not happy to be here with no way out, but happy enough otherwise.

The Dothraki — they will have furs against the cold. Did you see the story in the dance? I thought of Nymeria, but maybe there’s a little of you in it too.

[zaldrizer]

[ Not happy to be here with no way out. Dany feels a flash of anger, and quells the feeling of righteous distaste -- for now. ]

We will speak on that some other time, [ she says, but it is not meant to silence him. It is meant to draw him away from this place, and toward brighter, cheerier things.

As to the dance, the praise makes her smile. ]

If I lead my people to freedom -- true freedom, after I've broken the wheel, [ she says, ] I should be honored to hear the bards write such stories. [ If they are ever to return from this place. ] Will you write a song for me?

[ It is said teasingly, but she leans in closer, slightly. ]

[northerndragon]

[That does make him brighten a little, but the look he gives her is as doubtful as it is amused.]

No. I’m no bard, no poet. Hope I never said anything to make you think I was.

I wanted them to sing songs of my deeds, when I was a boy first setting off for the Wall. They don’t sing songs for those men anymore, and even if they did... I was a fool to want it. It means someone died, someone who might have had as much courage and honor as anyone.

If you lead your people to freedom, I’ll find someone else to write a song for you.

[zaldrizer]

Ah. [ She takes his other hand in her free one, so they are linked twice over. ] My lord must forgive me. I have enchanted the wrong man.

[ More teasing. Dany feels no great attraction to bards or singers, much preferring warriors. ]

If -- when it is done, [ she corrects herself, ] then you needn't pay coin to anyone. I shall invite it myself, in a great feast with bards. I would better know my people, and they will have supped enough on war.

[ Speaking of which, she rises, his hands in hers. ]

Come, [ she invites. ] The sea is even bluer than the one I looked upon in Pentos.

[northerndragon]

[Her jest about the wrong man makes him give her a mock-reproachful look. Yet even as she holds his hands, tries to tug him away to look at the sea — he has had nearly enough of the sea these last few moons — he still feels the pull of sadness.

Maybe it’s better to let her distract him. Nothing he can do will bring Ygritte back. She is ash and air in a weirwood grove, and he has another love now.

So he rises with Daenerys. It’s strange, that his mind should fix on anyone else while she is there.]

It’s still strange to me, to have any kind of lord’s seat at a feast. When I was a boy, Lady Stark sat me with the squires, way down the hall from the rest of the family. When the king came, I wasn’t allowed a seat in the hall at all. I spent the night in the training yard.

uses all these winter icons when it's freaking hot in-game

[zaldrizer]

[ The Usurper, you mean, Dany thinks. The only glimpse she has ever had of him was on Stannis Baratheon's banner's in Dragonstone -- a stag, marred by a burning heart. She had pulled one down as easily as though it were a mere rag, as though it were scorned by the very castle itself, and perhaps it had been. Only a Targaryen was ever meant to hold Dragonstone. ]

If Lord Stark raised you as his own son, he ought to have granted you that courtesy. [ For the sake of their own peace, she had extended her apologies for the Mad King's actions and asked for his forgiveness -- but rarely had she spoken on the matter of Eddard Stark. ] Bastards are raised up and given the names of their fathers, I have learned. [ Eddard Stark ought to have done that. ] Why should they be punished for being born?

[ She draws him away from the festivities, slowly. It is difficult to press their way through the crowds, but Dany is slender and determined enough to do it. ]

It is as well that you were training, [ she tells him, when at last they are free and the vast blue stretches a small distance before them. ] A queen must entertain her guests. Would that they came to entertain me.

[ The conversation would have been boring, or wretched. ]

[northerndragon]

[He shakes his head. It’s strange, what she does and does not understand about the Seven Kingdoms, or about the North, for all that she is queen. She means well, but how many daughters or wives of high lords had she met in exile in Essos?]

A man who had an heir wouldn’t raise up his bastard son, whether or not he was the lord of a great house. A great lord with five heirs, even less. Most wouldn’t have their bastard in the same castle, unless it was as a servant. Lady Stark would not say my name; she did not like to look at me. It was a great insult for me to live among her children, no matter that I would never have stolen their birthright.

[He is grave and conversational as they walk along. He would never have stolen the birthright of any of his Stark siblings... yet it is him who came to her as King in the North, not Sansa as Queen.]