atonementooc | Test Drive 001

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Test Drive 001

Test Drive #001

Welcome to Atonement's first test drive, and thank you very much for stopping by! Please refer to the prompts below for ideas, or simply make up your own, whichever is easiest for you.

Prompts

Arrival: You don't quite remember how you arrived here. It appears that you're suddenly in a dead land with eerily red skies. The grass is dead, the trees are dying, and there's absolutely no sounds of life beyond your own footsteps, even if it feels like you're being watched somehow. Eventually along the narrow path you follow, you walk through gates that seem to guard a quiet, abandoned town and a sinking feeling starts to settle in that you are far from home and there may not be an easy way back.

The sign hanging above the gates simply says "Welcome to Penance: Home Between Homes" and nothing more.

Within the gates, there are the leftovers of what may have once been a lively, welcoming little town, if it didn't look as if people either fled or somehow vanished in the blink of an eye. There are dusty shops that are still stocked with supplies, many with their doors busted out or left open. There are homes that haven't been touched in what feels like an eternity but they still have furniture and the remnants of the people who lived there previously. Cars and bikes are littering the streets that are in varying shapes of usability. The more you look, the more unsettling everything becomes...

First Punishment: As a show of good will, your hosts will give you a very easy, albeit potentially embarrassing, task to carry out for your punishment this month.

First: There will as few secrets in Penance as possible. Transparency is key to atonement. You will reveal at least one sin in a way that will be permanent, which means via tattoo, scarring, branding, or other permanent means somewhere on your person. For those who are unable to be injured or scarred, there will be enchanted items that will be able to pierce even the toughest skin, cut deeper than even increased healing can recover from. All necessary items will be available at the tattoo parlor in town. If desired, characters may also make an announcement on the network listing their sin(s) for judgement from their peers.

Please note that if the character insists they are free of sin, they will be provided a list of what they're guilty of by their hosts.

Settling: It's time to settle into a home in Penance, either alone or with roommates. There is comfort and safety in numbers after all...

Do try not to fight over housing if you've both accidentally chosen the same home... Your hosts will be very unhappy if you start a fight this early on over such a silly thing.

If settling down isn't something you feel like doing, you may go and explore anywhere that you'd like, including outside the gates. Please be aware that there may be demonic forms of all types of common animals living outside them that move swiftly and silently. They will vary in aggressiveness and tamability, so please keep this in mind.

As a note, all threads may be considered game canon if all parties agree. Hope you have fun and thank you! Game is set to officially open February 1st or when we reach a minimum of 10 players.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i. new to town

[ Penance, the town is called.

As far as Vasquez believes, this looks like a joke -- some lingering dream born from a conversation he's had in a church with Faraday about sins and forgiveness and atonement. He hadn't felt guilt of them, then, but then, he's learned how to live his life without remorse. Easiest way to get on with your life is to accept the shitty part of it, where something you did has made it miserable.

Standing near the sign that calls this home, he lights up a cigarette and considers the sky, the trees, the surroundings. If he didn't know better, he'd say that he's in hell, and as Vasquez crosses himself before wandering into town, he knows that the balance of his sins probably took him here, but penance means a chance for forgiveness.

Reaching for his matches, Vasquez frowns and tries to remember where they are before he recalls that they'd fallen out of his saddlebag in his ride from town. Then again, if he's dead, do the dead even have a way to smoke? Trying to find the nearest person, he whistles to get their attention, shifting the cigarette to his fingers. ]

You have a light? Or some way to get me to be allowed to smoke?

ii. bounty on my skin

[ Somehow, he thinks that he's not exactly doing this right.

He's meant to ink his sin on his skin, but as soon as Vasquez has put ink to the line of his collarbone, where it can be seen where anyone might see if the bandanna doesn't cover it. He has, too, not because he likes to follow instructions, but because he's proud of this singular act and without remorse and regret, unlike the rest. It reads there with a steady hand, having visited someone to have it professional done.

MY HEAD IS WORTH $500 FOR MURDER.

The only downside, of course, that makes him panic wildly is that as soon as it's there, he wonders if the whole point of this place is to finally put him somewhere that he can be arrested, shot, hung. It's why he's fiddling with his bandanna when he leaves the tattoo parlor, more regret in this than for the actual murder itself. He stops to do the work outside of the parlor, in the middle of tying it back when someone bumps into him.

Probably not clever for him to be standing in the middle of the sidewalk doing this, but it's not like he's going to act like it's his fault. Hissing when the bump causes a mild sting in the tattoo that wraps around his shoulder, he glowers at the person. ]

Careful where you walk.

[ He doesn't recognize the man, not at first. Doesn't expect him here. Horne, Faraday, Goody- those, he knew, had died with him. Vasquez, however...

He doesn't respond at first, merely squares his shoulders and fixes him with a look. If you didn't want to be bumped into, maybe you shouldn't be taking up the whole of the sidewalk, idiot.]

Vasquez.

[ He hadn't been expecting a ghost, though maybe from the looks of the death of this place, he should have. Still, even now, seeing Billy walking and speaking his name is strange when the last he'd seen of him had been on his way out of town, a sheet descending heavily over his body.

He seems very sprightly for a ghost, especially since he'd knocked him good. Adjusting his bandanna and pushing the wince away, he looks him up and down like he's looking for bullet holes or scuffs. ]

Billy Rocks. It's been a while. What do you last remember?

[ Maybe too blunt, but better to ask if he remembers dying before Vasquez goes and talks about it. It seems polite? Maybe at least not as rude as it could be. ]

[ There's a soft cock of his brow, hands sliding onto his belt. An easy stance, no threat- even if his hands are dangerously close to his knives. ]

Belltower. Goody going over the side.

[ There was more. A joke, a smile. Goodnight's flask against his fingertips. Pain. Searing pain against his chest, bullets passing through his body quick as lightning. ]

... Bullet holes aren't there, Vasquez.

[ He already checked. ]

Ghosts don't have bullet holes, do they?

[ He feels weirdly triumphant and knowing when he says it, like he actually knows something about the afterlife instead of just shooting his mouth off like an idiot, but then, should ghosts have holes? Is he one, now? Fumbling a little, he pries his shirt away enough to look for his scar, which is there, but faded greatly.

Then again, his didn't kill him. ]

I saw you both when I left town, sheets draped over you. After I saw Faraday in the fields.

[ And Horne, already in a wheelbarrow, another sheet over him. ]

So now, if you're here and I'm here, I think maybe I'm the dead one, too. Got any tips, ghost to ghost?

[ There's a wisp of a smile, a soft shake of his shoulders as he watches Vasquez look himself over for holes or scars. Must be something, to see the ghost of someone you buried. ]

Don't have much advice to give. New to this myself.

[ And new to this idea of penance. Of wearing his crimes upon his sleeves. There's a mark on his arm, a fresh brand, still swollen and red. M, Murderer. ]

[ He's so busy trying to understand how he can be here with a dead man that it takes him a little to catch up and see what Billy's got on his arm. Snorting, he reaches for his bandanna and moves it aside to show the mark that he'd gone to ask someone else to put on. It's in English, only because he thinks that this is what their commanders wanted. ]

You have one too, then? Why do you think they care so much about it being public?

[ After all, he had a wanted poster that did the same, he's not sure why it needs to be on skin. ]

Do you still feel? Was there pain when you got that?

Something about Penance and self sacrifice. Pound of flesh.

[ He gives a vague roll of his shoulders like a shrug. Don't ask him the specifics of Purgatory. Goody's practically got Dante's Inferno memorized. ]

... Hurt less than dying.

[ And there's a wry little grin at that, as he looks over his bounty. $500 huh? ]

Who'd you kill to get that on your head?

[ It's probably the most Catholic thing he's seen in a long time. At least it's not a hair shirt (yet). Glancing to where his mark is, he shrugs, but there's a proud smirk on his lips that belies how pleased he is about it.

Maybe he's not exactly the right person for penance, when he's not sorry for what he did. ]

Ranger dead by my hand. He deserved it. Didn't very much like the bounty that came on my head, but no one seems to be hunting me down for it here. Maybe because they want to wait until I'm sorry for it?

If wanted posters go up, we'll both be in trouble.

[ He doubts the railroad's forgotten about him. Not often a worker raises his hands and kills the slave drivers known as labor bosses before escaping into the night. And there was more on his hands, not that he'd ever been issued a warrant for it. ]

Well. Goody will be fine, I'm sure.

You can't just tempt me with this and not tell me what they would ask for your head.

[ It's not that he wants to compare, it's just that he's being curious. Maybe he also feels a little bit of kinship, because they can talk about bonding for hours, but there's nothing like someone else who understands not having the same colour of skin before becoming an outlaw. ]

Why? Is he sorry for his sins?

No, he doesn't have a bounty.

[ There's a lopsided little smirk at that, a joke if you will. Rarely does he show anything but a stoic demeanor to anyone who isn't Goody. But there's a kind of kinship with Vasquez, both of them outlaws and outsiders. ]

I used to work for the railroads. Killed two men when I wanted to leave and they tried to keep me there in irons.

[ He doesn't need to know that one went with a pickaxe through the skull and the other had his throat slit with a razor. ]

Maybe he needs to pick one up if he wants to belong.

[ Obviously a joke and Vasquez isn't even sure if he could do that in a place like this, but it still makes him smirk to think of three posters side by side, like they're all keeping each other company.

When Billy tells his story, there's nothing but a hint of pride and approval in Vasquez's reaction. ]

They shouldn't treat you like you're less than a person. They shouldn't treat anyone like that.

[ The 'they deserved it' is clear in his tone. ]

Vasquez | Magnificent Seven

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