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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[She looks up - and up, and up - at him, and at his tone of voice, her gaze changes. It's not so much that it hardens as it is that the light falls out of her eyes, the expression from her face, almost like a puppet gone slack or a mask.

Ray smooths out her skirt unnecessarily over her right thigh and says flatly,] I got one. It would just be inappropriate for a man to touch where it's been put. Besides, I don't deserve help with mine after what I did.

But you're probably not like me. So, if you'd like, I think I know which of these stores has bandages. It would be fair penance for me to have to look after someone else, all things considered, and this place has a wicked sense of 'humor'.

[ He raises a brow, because it's very interesting that she would get a tattoo somewhere so personal, especially if it's supposed to be a penance. ]

What happens if the next rule is that you're supposed to go and let people see it?

[ Maybe he's being outwardly an asshole about this, poking where he shouldn't, but he can't help it. He's trapped in a purgatory that wants him to repent, but he doesn't feel the least bit guilty about his biggest sin. ]

I know one. Come on, I can show you. [ He says this with a gesture of his chin towards one. ]

I wasn't thinking about that at the time. I just wanted it to hurt. [That's more honest than she meant to be. Usually, she lies in increments, bit by bit, and hides in the false narratives they build. Right now, she's too tired to do so. Really, them knowing what she did would lay her bare in a way no mild nudity ever could.] If that happens then I'm sorry it couldn't have happened to a more attractive woman, for the sake of the men here.

[What surprises her is how toneless her own voice has become. She's exhausted, on a lot of levels. Her brand had left her shaking in a cold sweat, dizzy, afterwards. Ray can't tell if there's any feeling left in her sometimes except for physical ones. After the guilt was somewhat quelled by her actions, there was little left over.]

Thank you. For showing me the way. [Her manners are real enough, even if they don't reach her eyes at all.

[ He raises a brow about her admission that she'd wanted it to hurt, because he's met people like that over his lifetime, but they don't usually come out so bluntly and say these things. It's an interesting thing for him to hear and one he scoffs at. ]

Why should you owe anything to the men here with what you look like?

[ Maybe it's something he feels himself, sometime. After all, it's not like he wants to be anything other than Mexican, but some of the people he's run up against don't exactly agree that he doesn't owe them. ]

[She's surprised she's turned into one of those people who want to hurt. Most of her life, she was the one who wanted to feel nothing, to ignore the world and hide in her books. But nothing here is the way it used to be, and she's too tired to try to keep up an air of being alright when she isn't.

At his last remark, her lips quirk upwards despite herself.] That's surprisingly kind of you. You know, my betrothed said something similar, when I decided to cut my hair short?

[Her smile slips away for a moment as she touches her white jade deer pendant, as if remembering better times. It's strange, being in this strange place and having such a normal exchange for a moment, and it reminds her that she's ultimately out of place here. She was out of place in Taiwan, too.

Maybe that's part of her 'penance'. In this place, that's not too much of a stretch.]

I just don't think anyone should get a say in what people are supposed to look like. Skin, hair, looks, anything.

[ He's run into that problem far too much to be okay with it happening to anyone, even if it's a problem that's developed and he's been dealing with on a selfish basis, because he's always annoyed at the idea that it should be the same. ]

What happened to this betrothed of yours?

[ He watches the way she touches the necklace, curious if that means something specific. ]

I wish more of the world thought that way. It's not as if you can tell what a person is truly like by their skin or hair, anyway.

[She'd seen the way her classmates giggled over how Hakka boys wore their hair long and Amis girls had darker skin. Even within just Taiwan internally, there were far too many ways for someone to look 'wrong'. Ray had grown to genuine despise the excuses people found to be cruel to each other and she wasn't even on the receiving end of it. She pitied those that were.

Ray shut her eyes and exhaled, slowly. She wasn't one to cry - some days she felt too poorly to do so, in a strange way - but she couldn't deny how much she missed Ming Hui.]

Due to the ongoing war with mainland China, reading books from the mainland is considered treason. It would have been only fifteen years of prison, initially, but when they found out he'd shared the books with others, he was executed.

[Her voice is quiet, resigned, and above all else, exhausted. There's a kind of tiredness that's settled over her since his death that has never left, might never recede, and in moments like this all she can do is fiddle with her pendant and remember the better times, when they would go to the night market together and eat and listen to music. There had been so much joy and love in those moments. Now, nothing remained.]

I guess this place doesn't consider that to be a sin, though. After all, he's not here.

[ He shifts uneasily when she looks teary. He might be all about people getting a fair shot, but when it comes to emotions like this, he's not so good with comforting and being there for them, so he's glad when she speaks without needing much encouragement. ]

War? What war?

[ He doesn't exactly keep up on foreign affairs, so he's not entirely sure what's going on. Maybe Billy would know more about it, but he's not exactly here to offer his help. ]

Or he's already been here and gone? Who knows how many people have already repented?

[When Ray cries, which is rare, it's more akin to hysteria than normal tears. For the most part, thankfully, a lifetime of having people she knew arrested, executed or disappeared has allowed her to build up walls between her and what she felt, between herself and the world. It was almost armor enough to keep her sane, in the end.

Almost.]

Taiwan has broken apart from China to become our own country. So now, we're at war with China. Any actions, jokes, or possessions that allude to sympathizing with the Chinese are grounds for arrest or execution. It's complicated, but... I think the best way to put it is that at some point it stopped being about China and started being about absolute control and scaring everyone into submission. And making a country where saying that in the wrong company can get you killed.

I hope he's moved on. He was a good person; he didn't deserve any of this, or any of what happened back in Taiwan.

[ It's more than he really knows how to process, especially seeing as he'd mainly paid attention to what might keep him alive and had sort of just moved on from there. Still, he tries to listen? After all, it impacts him a little now here, if there are people from other lands. ]

I can understand, a little.

[ Maybe? It's not exactly the same, but there had definitely been plenty of blood shed over the two countries separating. ]

Only, for me, it's Mexico and the US. Not so complicated, just people trying to steal what's not theirs.

[Harder to process for her is the lack of government control here. No military police on patrol, no government officials putting speeches on the radio, no fliers encouraging people to turn each other in. It's nothing like anything she's ever known.]

I don't know much about Mexico or the United States. We weren't really allowed to read about it, and the newspapers didn't report on a lot of foreign news anyway, no matter how bad it was. But - there's some truth, to that being part of Taiwan and China splitting. I wouldn't know what's really whose though, not for my country or yours. Mostly, I just tried to find ways to keep going. I'm really not an expert on these things.

[ For him, the lack of government may not be new, but it's definitely appreciated. He enjoys the fact that no one is chasing him down here, but then, it seems like by the letters, they have intentions for him to follow. ]

What happened was not fair for my people, that's what happened.

[ He may sound biased, but it's the bitterness that's been allowed to grow since he was a child. ] What we had, it was taken from us, and then we had no option but to work for people who didn't appreciate us or respect us.

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Test Drive 001

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