TEST DRIVE ∞ May 2025

[thediadem]

Test Drive ∞ May 2025

The First Collision

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Jump ⇅ :: Arrival — Panorama — Fringes — Invite Request

The Diadem is an invite-only panfandom game set in a retro-futuristic world where uprooted souls find themselves deep within an eerie wasteland of roads and highways frequently assailed by cosmic storms. Three united strongholds keep the population. Its capital is Panorama, a large metropolis at the planet's center.

Soon, you realize you aren't alone. Calling themselves fluxdrifts, the "locals" have similar stories to you, either for themselves or their ancestry. You speak to an old woman who claims she hailed from another star. You meet a young man who says his great-great-grandfather knew a strange language everybody spoke "back home." As you explore, you stumble across a coin you recognize or your sister's locket. How did it get here? What does this mean? That's for you to discover.

But first, you need to find a ride.

No invites needed to play on the TDM. Everyone's welcome! Use the Invite Request thread below to request an invite from another player.

∞ Summary ∞

IC-wise, arrivals are scattered throughout the month. Events described on the TDM are also ongoing throughout the month. If you'd rather jump right into the action, you're free to begin in media res with your character having already been on the planet for several days.

Post-impact, characters will wake up in a med tent by the Scrapyard. From there, they must accept a vehicle on loan and make the 2-hour drive to the nearest city, Panorama. If they refuse the car because they don't want the loan, they'll be in debt for medical bills instead...so just take the car. It'll come in handy.

Some things to keep in mind when bringing in your character:

• Pick an injury. At minimum, they got knocked out; at most, whatever they can recover from. Medicine is decently advanced so they'll heal faster if not painlessly.
• Decide items kept. Reasonable items on their person only: photos, keys, clothes, costumes. No pets or animal companions. Wildly out-of-place tech and personal cell phones will be damaged beyond repair.
• Select a weapon. Do this only if eligible. Guidelines about weapons and powers are on the FAQ.
• Choose a vehicle. Decide whether your character gets 2-3 options or if they're stuck with something they hate. Players can pick directly from our collection or source their own images. Anything under a similar aesthetic will work. If your character needs accommodations for driving, they can have them. Ask us for details.
• Get a phone. Characters have to obtain a phone (and a SIM card) themselves. If they've got one from home, it's damaged beyond repair. Phones are cheap. It'll only take a couple of weeks to afford one. You need to know the number before you text or call anyone. Read about phones and the Forum before you hop on it.

TDM threads can be canon if characters are accepted. Top-levels made to the TDM should be open to all.

TDM Questions? Here — Game Questions? FAQ

Setting — Taken — Reserves — Applications ::: ⇅ Top

Fluxdrift

Arrival & Introduction

Date: Throughout May

You've tumbled over a cliff. You were fighting for your life. You're on the cusp of death. You slipped in the shower. Whatever the catalyst, you struggle to cling to consciousness. As darkness overtakes you, a swirling vortex warps light and shadow in a way that defies all physics. A dark wail etches into your very bones. You couldn't describe it if you tried. You can barely comprehend what it is.

Then you open your eyes.

Through the figure's mask ©, you swear the face is grinning down at you. The tent you're in smells of antiseptic, and scratchy blankets line your cot. Injuries you've sustained have been bandaged. In the corner, you spot a MedBot that's fixed you up. Depending on the extent of your injuries, the doctor on duty might give you some painkillers before you go. Thankfully, your belongings are by the exit. Sorry if anything's damaged. Your landing was pretty rough.

You follow the figure outside. They are Yom Crook, here to lend a hand to fellow fluxdrifts like yourself. Their car's parked beside them. Actually, there are lots of cars around, but Yom Crook's stands out with its painted shark mouth. They explain they found you, unconscious, in a diffusion zone and brought you here. The nearest city is a 2-hour drive northeast. Forget about walking. You'll never make it. Also, you owe the doctor a lot of money for patching you up. But you're in luck: they've got some wheels for you and if you accept the vehicle on loan, Yom Crook will cover your medical bills. That's a good deal, right? It's not the shiniest car or motorcycle, but it'll do. If fortune favors, you'll get to choose between two or three options. Plus, if you need accommodations to drive—like adjustments to your seat height or modified controls—you'll receive all that for free.

Take the vehicle. (And the loan.) Yom Crook assures you that you'll have six months before collectors come around. Any time you're ready to pay a part of it down, return here to the Scrapyard. You'll get a receipt and everything. Paying off the loan in six months isn't impossible, but it will take a lot of work. Just don't get too lax. There's a good chance you'll be juggling multiple loans as you try to get by.

You either know how to drive, or you'll have a bare-bones manual to get you started. Road rules are more a suggestion than enforced, so just hit the pedal and go. The car has some basic features. The built-in compass will help you navigate.

OPTIONAL PROMPTS: a flat tire; a body on the road (is it a trap?); a fender bender

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Panorama

Explore & Settle In

Conditions: Warm spring temperatures, light showers

After 2 hours on the road, you find civilization. The largest of the strongholds, Panorama is where the economy thrives. Massive power plants glowing red make it visible from a distance. The city is divided into three districts. For now, you can access the Pavilion and the Blocks. Don't worry about the Sanctum; they're not letting you in.

You only need to know two things about Panorama: 1) it's big, the size of a modern metropolis, and you'll need your car to get around; 2) anything goes as long as you don't pick a fight with the wrong person. Street smarts will get you far. Despite its geographical size, the population isn't huge. With roughly a million people in a city designed for over twice that number, Panorama is far from deserted, but nor is it overcrowded. It's a good thing. Resources are limited as it is.

The Pavilion: Free Samples

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Like any large city, Panorama features a couple of supermarkets. The stock's not as consistent as a proper supermarket. On occasion, shelves can remain cleaned out for a week or two. Regardless, the long tradition of free samples remains. If you're not already shopping, you'll notice the crowded parking lot and clusters of lines inside.

Try samples, push through the crowds as you shop, or give yourself a five-finger discount. If you're cautious, you can pocket a few small items without consequences. The Pavillion doesn't have the infrastructure for surveillance; unless someone sees you, you won't be caught. Steal from the store or pilfer someone's wallet. Maybe you even make a new friend if you bump into another fluxdrift. Or, start a fight with somebody who cut you off in the cheese line. Don't make too much of a ruckus, or you'll be thrown out.

As you look around, you'll see posters advertising temporary positions for the cash register or graveyard shifts in the warehouse. Seems they might've lost several employees recently (how'd that happen?), which is good for you! It's just a 6-week position, but it'll get you on your feet. The city has temporary positions like this all over. Permanent ones are harder to come by when you're new.

Samples include: steamed cabbage dumplings, synthetic cherry juice, cheddar cheese, and chocolate-covered alien eggs (it's crunchy and weirdly tasty). They're served in the usual throwaway paper cups with little toothpicks.

The Blocks: Power Outage

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Power's finicky in Panorama, especially in the Blocks. Saint Margery's Hospital, located in the same area, has priority for power so the first to go are the motels. Maybe you've been in your room for a couple of weeks, maybe you just got here—and by the way, every motel desk is happy to put the fee on your tab if you don't have the money upfront—but all the motels on the east side are in a blackout, leaving only the west side motels up and running.

What do you do? You have three choices:

• Risk leaving your room and head to the other side where there's power. Knock on some doors and negotiate with another to share the room. They might shut the door in your face, ask for a favor in return, or be nice enough to help you with no strings attached. There's no guarantee your unattended room will be untouched, though, and you'll be on the hook for any damages an intruder causes.
• Sit in the dark and deal. It's not the worst idea, but the TV's down, the vending machines are powered down, and with the entire place plunged into darkness, you risk getting robbed. If you struggle with defending yourself, you might want to find some trustworthy company. You can also sneak out of there and let them take your leftover pizza. It's not like you've got a ton of valuables, right? Plus, clobbering someone in the face with a frying pan sounds great until you realize you've gotta do something with the body. And what if this person's got a friend waiting?
• Get in your car and drive (or grab a friend for a road trip). If you scroll the Forum, you might notice reports on diffusion zones southward. Besides, these motels are hardly your forever home. The city can only provide so much. Why not go for a ride and see what you can find out there?

OPTIONAL PROMPTS: clean up on aisle 3 (what is that goo?); a knock at your door but no one's there; you hear screaming or a commotion down the hall

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The Fringes

Quad 3: Lockdown

Conditions: Stormy, with flooding roads

Felix Bjurstrom
> Date: 125-05-17
> Time: 02:15:57

> Emergency road lights have been reported in Quadrant 3! Please, can someone go see what's there? When last we chasers investigated emergency lights, a whole truck filled with sour candy had tipped over. Our stores were stocked for weeks! Oh, be careful - reception looks bad in that zone.

Whether you end up here on your own or you were following a tip on the Forum, the outcome is the same: you come to a stop in front of a 2-story office building that's flooded several inches deep. Emergency lights from a roadblock flicker through the stormy night. Stepping out of your car, you're soaked within seconds. When you check your phone, you don't have any bars. No calls in or out.

Through the open windows, a computer awakens and displays a cheerful smile. The lights inside switch on.

Pick your scenario role below. Your thread partner doesn't need to take the opposite role! They can join you in the same scenario (i.e. trapped together). Players are also free to create a generic NPC for the other side to facilitate the thread.

After characters escape, they'll find one bottle of antibiotics in their pocket or car, whether they remember taking it or not.

A: Sealed In
As you peer through the windows, you see crates of medicine floating around. Antibiotics in the diadem are valuable. Hospitals and doctors are always buying. You can keep it for yourself or make a quick buck. Or maybe you're compelled to help somebody back in the city who's in need. Whatever the reason, you decide to take the risk and step inside.

Water splashes around your ankles. The lock buzzes behind you. If you try to break the windows, you discover they're unnaturally resistant to shattering. With the whole place locked tight, the water begins to churn. Then the computer lights up again.

Warning, it flashes in large, bold text. Quarantine in progress. Release code required for exit.

• To find the code, you'll have to search. Duck under the water, go through sopping envelopes and sticky notes or pick the locks on the filing cabinets and desk drawers. You can also try hacking the computers. Use your computer knowledge or fall back on the age-old trick of seeing who wrote down their password.
• The files, notepads, and emails start innocuous, but as you look through them, disturbing phrases jump out at you—a dark thought you've had or a cruel taunt from someone in your past. The longer you're fixed on the terrible words, the higher the water begins to rise. Only another can break you out of your trance.
• With the rising water comes fear. And the more you're afraid, the more the water also rises. You begin to see faces in the water, bobbing like balloon heads. Do you recognize them? If you move to take a closer look, they will sink back beneath the surface as if never there.
• If you manage to swallow your panic, you can eventually find a triple-laminated binder with the release code and instructions. Bad news: you need someone on the outside to punch in the 6 strange symbols in order. The instructions explain that the code panel is located at the back of the building.

Let's hope a friendly face comes along.

B: Set Free
As you peer through the windows, you see not just the crates of medicine but someone trapped inside. They look like they might be in trouble, and from your vantage point, you notice that the water is bubbling strangely. It's definitely not normal rainwater. As you watch, the water rises unnaturally, stopping and starting. It's as if the water level is responding to an external stimulus.

• The glass is soundproof. You can't hear what the person inside is saying, so you'll have to communicate with each other another way. Try charades, typing on your phone, or whatever you think of. Eventually, you determine that they're stuck and that you need to enter some sort of code onto a pad located—according to your trapped partner—at the back of the building.
• Around the back, shadows swallow your surroundings. The panel must be pried open, but a slippery substance makes it hard to get a good grip. Each time the substance touches you, you grow uneasy. You swear you see eyes watching you, though when you turn around, nothing's there.
• You can't seem to keep the instructions in your mind. And those symbols...they burn into your retinas. Through them, you glimpse an incomprehensibly massive figure unfurling in the darkness, pulsing as if in a deep sleep. When you snap back to reality, you realize you've injured yourself, slicing your hand on a sharp edge or a bruise you can't remember getting.
• Once you manage to release the doors, the water inside the office drains upward into the sky as though sucked out by a giant hose. The darkness spreads. Get out of there fast before the shadows drag you or your partner into the void.

Of course, you don't have to help anyone. You can leave the individual there, make a deal, or outright extort them. But remember, you're not the only person on these roads. You might want to play your cards carefully, even if altruism isn't your first instinct.

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Comments

[valle]

It really is a testament to how conditioned to violence and chaos Laura has become, that the blackout and the potential threats aren't really weighing on her the way they're weighing on Foggy. She's a little too unconcerned about it all, because it's still less insane than the things she regularly had to deal with in the Void, and because there are very few things on nearly any world that can actually hurt her in any remarkable fashion. Very few things she can't kill — and now, because of his kindness, very few things she can't protect him from, a recent but now-existent factor.

She appreciates generous people. She appreciates good people. He seems like one, so he deserves to be protected.

It's a struggle not to look amused at the way he's thumping his head on the door, a struggle not to seem distinctly entertained by the fact that he's locked himself out.

"I can help with that," she volunteers, but with an added disclaimer of, "It might break your lock, though."

If he's got a spare key or something, that might be option one, but if he really wants to get back into his place before the front desk opens to give him another copy... she could get him inside pretty easily.

[motiontocompel]

A spare key? He's lucky to have a key with how this place seems to be run. He's pretty sure rooms with physical keys have been out of style in his neck of the woods for decades, and while he's had an apartment long enough to know better, it hasn't been a smooth transition into life here in Panorama.

Foggy sighs and says, "Go for it," as he backs away. He can vaguely tell where this young woman stands, but still feels as if he's grappling with a void all his own. Back against the wall, now opposite his door and next to Laura's, he crosses his arms and lets his head dip. His toe taps gently and he decides to make conversation while his neighbor takes care of the issue he caused.

"I figured there was something wrong with the lock because the key only works about a third of the time. Pretty sure maintenance tickets in this place are so backed up, I'll be long gone before anyone comes along to fix it." A pause. He's uncharacteristically nervous, like asking this feels like a bad idea. They're all at risk out here, aren't they? "I'm from somewhere else. New York," he tells her, tentative in his approach in case she's one of the people around who are quick to sneer at the get-to-know-you attempts. "What about you?"

[valle]

When she said it might break the lock, what she meant was it is definitely going to break the lock, because that's the entire plan. She can see more clearly in the dark than humans can, even if things are rendered slightly desaturated by the lack of light, making out people and objects themselves isn't hard. She navigates around him gracefully, and presses her knuckle up against the place between the knob and the threshold trim.

"It's complicated," she answers levelly. "Mexico first, then Canada for a while, then... somewhere else. Kind of like here, but... different."

Suddenly, the sharp sound of a snikt and a click, metal on metal, slicing easily through wood. In less than a second she pulls her hand back, and pushes the door easily open. Later, when the power's back on and he flicks on the lights, he'll find the latch bolt cleanly severed somewhere in the carpet of his room.

"You should probably use the chain thing when you go to sleep later, if you weren't already. For the record."

For safety, you know. But also... she'll be listening. If she hears anyone fucking around outside his door, anyone that doesn't smell like him, she'll come looking. Just in case.

[motiontocompel]

The noise is enough that Foggy isn't sure what happened to his lock, but is fairly certain he won't be salvaging any of its parts. Still, there's a sense of something familiar tingling in the back of his head, a part of him that wonders how she seems so confident in the dark when all he can do with his still-decent twenty-twenty is fumble around.

"It sounds like this isn't your first set of weird circumstances," he says, and then frowns at himself. It's not something he'd usually say, but there's no denying that Laura's detachment from the obvious terror surrounding this blackout is worth noting.

Arms out, he seeks the opposite wall with his hands and then feels his way to the door frame, then open door. Inside, he's a little more certain, although he does kick right into the small box of cans a whole two feet before he expects to.

"Can you— see in all this? With the blackout?" Talk about freaky circumstances. He's reminded of Daredevil, how nothing about this situation would have fazed the vigilante because he never needed the light in order to understand his surroundings. "Do you... maybe want to look at what's here? Because it's not all beans," he explains. Foggy would rather someone who can tell what's on the labels choose their meal for the night, lest they open four cans of something neither of them want.

[valle]

She lets him through first; lets him navigate the space as best he can, kindly not voicing any amusement or judgment when his foot smacks into the solid box of canned goods. Once he's a few feet in she trails in after him, sweeping her eyes around the dim, desaturated room. Not much by way of clear and vivid detail in this lighting, but the layout seems to be similar to hers. Bed, television, bathroom. Practically a cut-and-paste, flipped on the vertical axis.

"I can see a little," the answer's deliberately vague; deliberately withholding. He's nice now, but in her limited experience before the void, lots of humans — assuming that's what he is — can be nice until they find out what you really are. Then, some of them seem to turn on a dime. They become suspicious, judgmental, afraid. Disgusted, even, at times, though that one's pretty rare. "Probably enough to make out the labels. Do you want me to find something specific."

Uno reverse, lobbing that tennis ball back into his court. He's offering her charity, she doesn't want to take his favorite can of ravioli or something. She'll eat absolutely anything put in front of her at this juncture, even if her heart's singing out a desperate song about double cheeseburgers and fries and milkshakes.

[motiontocompel]

Foggy manages to accept her explanation without too much extra thought, mostly assuming she's got the age advantage over him, if nothing else. Not that he can really tell, but having reached the ripe, old age of forty-five, it's a pretty easy leap. Is he old? Nah. Is he older than most people around here? Probably. Doesn't seem like people in this part of Panorama are particularly ancient by practical standards.

He makes a humming noise to prove he's thinking it over, and then while pawing around blindly in one of his kitchen drawers, he decides. "There's a couple cans of beans – black beans and chickpeas, I think? Definitely grab the young coconut. Comes highly recommended and I'm told it's decent dessert."

It's somewhat dangerous to be fishing around drawers that came pre-filled with the prior tenant's things, but Foggy finds at least one item of interest that he lifts. The lighter sparks but doesn't ignite; however, the cast it brings, even small and brief, does lead Foggy to identify a second item of interest.

"Oh, damn, I think we have a candle, too!" His excitement is outstrapping his concern, because Christ if he doesn't hate this dark. "We just need fire and we might actually be cooking here."

[valle]

"Young cooconut," she echoes quietly in a wondering, faintly confused murmur. What the fuck is young coconut, is it literally just... coconut that isn't old? Why would somebody put that in a can? Is it good? Not that the last question matters very much — calories are calories. She's heard someone say a phrase before along the lines of beggars can't be choosers, and she certainly isn't choosy right now. Not to mention the fact that a couple of years in the void can break pretty much anyone of the concept of being picky. You take what you can get, when you can get it.

She digs through the cans. Finds a couple of the ones he listed, gathering them in her arms and then... sort of hovering a little, waiting to follow his lead. She doesn't have a lot of experience navigating other people's spaces.

"Cooking figuratively or literally?" Are they heating up cans with candles? It wouldn't be the worst idea.

[motiontocompel]

On one hand, by the look of Foggy, you wouldn't expect he'd be all that picky; on the other hand, he comes from a family with a butcher shop and delicatessen in their name. He knows the difference between rabiola and incavolata, he understands coffee and espresso are two very different emotional concepts, and there are very few things he won't try at least once.

Young coconut is new to him, too, and while he's fairly certain it's not as simple as unripe coconut, he is expecting a vaguely green taste, like bananas that are a little too young.

"I don't know that the peas need heated, but the other beans might be better hot. If we can... make a little stove, I don't see why it can't be literal. Especially if we keep a handy dowsing bucket nearby."

Flicking the lighter, he squints and grabs, finding an arm full of bowls and utensils. Maybe useful, maybe a mishmash of chopsticks and forks and weird spoons.

"I'm Foggy, by the way. Foggy Nelson. I guess we're neighbors for a while," he adds, equally uncertain of what's next. "Since my lock's caput, did you want to maybe hang at your place for a bit? At least until we finish eating? Or would that be weird?"