☆MUSICIAN TEST DRIVE: OHHH YEAH

[interdimanagers]

☆WELCOME MUSICIANS

And welcome to our fourth 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 March 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: The season of Spring Break has begun, and like most things in Vista City, it's carried out to total excess. This is only one of the first, preliminary shindigs of what is assured to be many - much like the Solstice, celebrations for Spring Break also go on forever. This time, it takes place around a pool, and it's not just with industry people - it's also with a smattering of particularly rich or attractive fans. It's a chance 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 area, as do performers of all the tops labels and bands, and their VIP fans and investors. 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. Yet...is it just you, or do most of the other fledging musicians look awfully grim lately?

►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 March, 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. It's sort of tense.

☆HELPFUL INFO

► Follow the mod plurk for updates: interstellar5555
► Check out the game NAVIGATION
► Check out the RESCUER TDM
► Ask the mods some QUESTIONS
► Reserves open on February 27th at 12:01AM EDT
► Applications open on March 4th at 12:01AM EDT

Comments

B2

[twoscompany]

Well, Ace sure did pick one tall drink to ask. She turned to look at Ace, and...frowned. Ace may or may not have heard of this woman, who, for some reason, had no significant other. Probably because she was a lesbian or frigid or something, who knew from what tabloids said.

"I'm a member of Pride. You?"

[ace_of_hearts]

"Ah yeah?" he looked vaguely impressed, and glanced around, before rubbing the back of his neck. "Actually, I'm still trying to figure that out." He gave an easy going laugh. "I'm new," he added, possibly unnecessarily, and bowed before offering a handshake as well.

"I'm Ace, Portgas D. Ace. Nice to meet you, Gorgeous." It'd be better if she gave him a real name to go with.

[twoscompany]

"Garnet." She'll accept the handshake, at least. "Garnet Gneiss, Cosmic Indulgence. Keytar. You?"

[ace_of_hearts]

"Yeah? Nice name," a grin. It fit her. The hands went to his pockets, and he rocked back on his heels slightly. "Everything." It was too nondescript, and too much of a cop-out, so he gave her an apologetic grin to go with it. "Vocals, dramatics, we'll see." That was the other problem he had. Wanting to do literally everything. It made narrowing down even a genre difficult. "What kind of music are you into most?"

[twoscompany]

"I'm indie. Usually I prefer instrumentals, but I do sing." Shrug. "Do you sing? Depending on what band you end up in, you'll only be able to do one thing for your bread."

[ace_of_hearts]

"Yeah?" Another grin. He's impressed about the indie thing, even if she was just saying her record label. "Yup! I can sing just about anything, but I mean, the classics; rock, punk, country," a gesture to the bright orange cowboy hat on his head, "Folk, metal, emo, any of that is good. But I can put my hand to most things." He tips the hat up slightly and glances out at the crowd.

"I'm not sure I'd get along with a lot of bands, to be honest," he gave a half-grin, half-grimace at himself and pulled the hands out of his pockets to make airquotes. "Too reckless, too independent," he stopped quoting and shrugged helplessly, "Probably too selfish too." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, that's why I had to pick up instruments before at least. What got you started?"

[twoscompany]

"Might want to work on your people skills, then," Garnet shrugged, a hint of warning in her tone. "Neither of the execs like people who try to be rogues, either in their band, or in their labels. And even if Pride Records looks reckless, they don't tolerate that when it comes to the musical cohesion of their product."

Its really the best way she can say, 'you will need allies if you have any hope of just surviving even without whatever made you you before you were forced to sign up, because the label heads are totally ok with screwing you over for any deviation. Especially Santiago. Especially Santiago.'

"Me, I studied music in college." She knows by now its a lie, it has to be, but the story is nevertheless ingrained in her and she could easily recite it by heart upon questioning. "A PhD from Cambridge, to be exact. I graduated, worked the circuits for a while, and landed a contact with Pride a few months ago."

[ace_of_hearts]

"That so?" Ace arched an eyebrow and hummed thoughtfully, looping his thumbs through the beltloops of his shorts in thought.

He gave a dark smirk. "Then I hope they don't mind that I plan to go all the way to the top. I'll be the best, and nothing can hold me down, no matter what gets thrown at me."

[twoscompany]

"Heh." Garnet looked him up and down. Ah, in a way, she almost envied him. All the new ones, really. So much in lockstep with what the labels wanted them to do, making music and accepting the life of a rock star without question. "Good luck, then. There'll be plenty of competition and higher-tier acts looking to stop you. Maybe you'll get lucky, but we'll see if you're really cut out for this."

[ace_of_hearts]

"Great!" A giant beam. "It won't really mean anything without everyone else along to prove just exactly what kind of competition had to be defeated on the way to the top, right?"

He tosses her another light-hearted grin, "But don't worry, I never forget my friends on the way to that top."

Absolutely fearless, you have to give him that.

[twoscompany]

"Are you asking I be a friend to you, hmm?"

Well, she couldn't deny that, he had spirit. Possibly brainwashed spirit, but some of it had to be genuine, right?

[ace_of_hearts]

Oh yes, all spirit and heart this one.

And confidence out the shirt he's not even wearing. "Actually I was offering to be a friend to you, Sweetheart!" He offers a handshake. You have to admit, he's hella arrogant if nothing else.

[twoscompany]

"Don't call me sweetheart and we have a deal." She shakes the proffered hand, nevertheless. "I'm taken, after all, and my other half is very protective of me."

Indeed, the part of her that is that other half wants to punch poor Ace right now.

[ace_of_hearts]

Ace laughed happily at that, genuinely quite cheerfully. He could almost swear he knew what that was like... to have protective people... but no, surely not. Either way, it delights him in a way he can't even explain to himself. He holds up both hands innocently, "I promise to be on my best behavior. Err, actually, better than that. Hands off. You're both very lucky."