☆MUSICIAN TEST DRIVE: ONCE MORE WITH FEELING

[interdimanagers]

☆WELCOME MUSICIANS

And welcome to our third TDM! We've got two types of prompts to use this time around: the first takes place while your character is in the process of being captured, and the second is during their first brainwashed rockstar networking gig. The former is designed to be considered 100% game canon if you make it in officially, while the later is more speculative and will only work if you get lucky during label and band selection.

☆THE TALENT SEARCH

These prompts are design to be kept as game canon after acceptance, and can be used as the official story of how your character was captured. Importantly, the kidnappers entering your timeline causes massive time distortions, which means that the outcome of this scenario will stagger and replay itself multiple times before settling on an outcome. This means that after the fact, you character may remember being captured multiple ways, or going in more than one direction, before the timeline settled on a final path. Or at least, they'll remember this until their memories are wiped shortly afterwards, but that's okay! That's what memory regains are for. Read this page for more specifics on this situation. Any powers the characters have will be weakened and prone to malfunction to the point of uselessness.



►A1) THE SEARCH: It always starts out this way, doesn't it? At some point in your life, you were just doing your thing, wherever you call home. Then, all at once, it's like you've been torn from your dimension by the roots. Time and space displace, and it's like you've been shifted one layer of reality to the left - like some kind of subspace where you can see your reality through it, like a rainbow surrealist image of your home. Even if you can see this ghost image of where you were, you can't interact with it meaningfully. Any friends or family are somewhere else. As you begin to wander, without any other options, you'll find that the scenery gradually shifts to ghost images of other places, other worlds. If you wander long enough, you'll even find other people, lost just like you are. But you probably won't have much time - you've been brought here for a reason, after all.

►A2) THE HUNT: It could happen almost immediately, or it could happen hours later - but, at some point, your dimensional kidnappers start to do their sweep. Space Men in black body suits and gas masks pursue you on foot and in small spaceships, trying to sweep you and the other displaced up like fish in a net. Their guns contain a weird pink gas that will knock out most with only a single breath - and for those more enduring, they have the heavy artillery, like electrical nets and guns. The fallen will be sealed up into stasis pods for transport and loaded onto the ships, which seem like the only way to get out of this place by choice. This is where it ends, but are you going to put up a fight?

NOTE: Characters already in game can't really tag into these sections, so try to tag around to other first time character tests if you can!

☆WELCOME HOME

By default, these prompts aren't considered canon, but if after you are accepted and sorted they can be tweaked into working for you, it'll be totally okay to keep them as a part of your rockstar's personal history. This occurrence is something that will be happening in early January game time, but of course, what remains canon and what doesn't will be subject to who is accepted and where they are placed. This takes place after being kidnapped and brainwashed, as your character is first joining their new label. As usual, this is celebrated with a party.



►B1) PLAY IT STRAIGHT: This is perhaps your second or third "New Years" party, and several days after the fact - just the industry's standard for starting the New Year with a bang and giving a change to mingle with all your exciting new business connections. Something typical to the high music society of Vista City - but maybe it's not yet typical to you. For a number of the freshly signed on newbies, this is their first real taste of what their new label has to offer - either Virgo or Pride - and the sheer glamour of it may be intoxicating. Industry big wigs scatter the floor, as do performers of all the tops labels and bands. Maybe you feel intimidated. Maybe you want to make your mark. Or maybe you're not quite as new as some, and are just trying to get through the evening. Either way, they is plenty of booze available if you need some liquid courage. Just how alcoholic is this egg nog? Probably very.

►B2) TOTALLY NORMAL: The signs of it are small, at first. Glasses you set down seeming out of place, stuff that almost looks like words written in the condensation on your glass. These little hauntings only get more and more persistent as the night continues, almost like some otherworldly presence is following you. You can feel them lurking nearby at times, like an unusual spot of cold or warmth in the air. None of the higher ups seem to notice but...to some of your new peers, this feels like old news. Eventually the signs become bolder, and at some point in the evening you'll hear it whispered in your ear or written on the bathroom mirror: "Remember."

►B3) REMEMBER: And you do. It strikes you suddenly, a feeling like a foreign presence straying through your mind. You remember something of your past, pertaining to the emotional affinity Love, Duty, Passion, or Hope - whichever feeling describes the person you used to be best. Except you know nothing of that life now, nothing except this single, strange thought in a room full strangers.

NOTE: Current characters definitely go to this party in earlier January, but it isn't required play. Besides the usual hauntings and meeting new characters, it is considered business as usual. Pride Records and Virgo Entertainment's employees are uneasily coexisting, pretty much because they have to in order to keep up appearances. Body guards are out in full force.

☆HELPFUL INFO

► Follow the mod plurk for updates: interstellar5555
► Check out the game NAVIGATION
► Check out the RESCUER TDM
► For more deets about Americana's holiday traditions check out THIS POST
► Reserves open on January 2nd at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on January 11th at 12:01AM EDT

Comments

B1

[sailorgenerous]

He'll find a perfectly manicured hand gently but firmly pushing his hand away from the bottle. "Please." Rarity has her best oh you sweet summer child expression leveled at him: kind, but still somewhat pitying. "There's much better quality to be had here, especially for us."

[off_the_edge]

"For us?" Cloud responds, letting his tablet fall limp in his lap and looking her up and down. All right - since she's including him, he can work with it, and even though she seems like she's pitying him he's grateful for the attention. He awkwardly adjusts himself in his chair, trying to turn his charisma back on.

"You've heard of me, right?" He adjusts his hair and strikes something that looks a bit like a pose. "I'm Cloud, former member of S★O★L★D★I★E★R, right now a solo artist. I'm afraid I don't recognise you. Nice nails, so I take it you're not a guitarist." He shrugs, downplaying the neg. "So, what should I be having?"

[sailorgenerous]

"Well, yes. We are the stars of the party, you know." For never having been surrounded by such opulence before, Rarity has certainly adjusted to it well.

Her eyes widen slightly, and the smile grows a pointed, dangerous quality; she recognizes the negging, and she will not stand for it. "Thank you! I love your hair," she says in reply. It all sounds so sincere. "With a style like that, you must be signing with Flashstep." Not that there was anything wrong with being in a boy band, but she has the feeling that it'll drive Cloud crazy to be associated with them.

She'll answer his question when he stops being rude.

[off_the_edge]

Cloud wouldn't have bothered having hair like that if he wasn't expecting it to get insulted, and he's got nothing against hit-factory pop or the people who perform it, so long as they don't go around calling themselves innovators. But, still.

"Hey," he says, affronted. Then he hesitates, his cocky act replaced with genuine puzzlement. "Hang on a sec. Were you negging me just then?"

[sailorgenerous]

Rarity is fully expecting him to reply in kind, and she's a bit thrown off when he doesn't. Who knows - maybe there is some potential in this Cloud character after all. "Well, yes. I'm a firm believer in responding in kind." She pauses, giving him a very pointed look. "Now, either I can show you how to navigate a party, or we can talk about your..." She glances at the bottle he had been reaching for, then at him. "...decisions. Your choice." There's obviously only one right answer here.

[off_the_edge]

"Huh?" Cloud says, far too confused to reach for some line about not really being interested or not caring. Then, all of a sudden, his eyes spark, like he's trying not to laugh:

"All right. You're in charge of this one."

It's a lot easier than resisting, and he'll get to see what she's going to do next.

[sailorgenerous]

Which is exactly what she should be. Congratulations, Cloud, you've realized the rightful order of things. Prepare to be schooled.

"Alright, then." Rarity gives him a smile; it's just this side of a smirk, true, but it is genuine. "Lesson one: never stay at a table for longer than you have to. Tables are for two things: food and giving up, and we are doing neither. Now put your tablet away and let's get moving."

[off_the_edge]

"Are you like this with everyone?" Cloud asks, pretending to be annoyed. He rolls his shoulders and stretches theatrically as he pulls himself out of his chair and puts his tablet in his bag, before displaying his empty hands, with the expression of a teenage boy told to put his phone away at the dinner table, hoping she'll grab one.

"You didn't even give me your name."