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Interdimensional Managers ([personal profile] interdimanagers) wrote2015-08-22 11:15 pm

THE HIGH LIFE

☆THE TALENT HUNT
The whole thing starts, of course, with your character in their home dimension, doing their thing. They won’t remember any of this at the start of gameplay, but it’s good to know for future use - and it’s also the part of the journey that the test drive will cover. Suddenly, their surroundings will warp into something resembling a rainbow wormhole filled with too many lens flares. They will sort of be able to see their normal world through it, or at least some surrealist interpretation of it, but will not be able to actually physically interact with anything, like they are caught between dimensions.

If that isn’t alarming enough, this is also about the time they will start getting chased by Space Men wearing gas masks and black containment suits. Also, that they will probably realize that any powers they have are suddenly far weaker and more erratic than before.



If they don’t run, they will probably be gassed in the face immediately and knocked unconscious. If they do run, things start to get a little crazy.

As they flee through this strange landscape, they will seem to phase further away from their own dimension, and scattered ghost features of other worlds will start showing up instead - that is, the worlds of other characters being assaulted at the same time. At this point, they will also start encountering other people, similarly on the run.

This tends to end only one way: with your character unconscious and in a floating scifi stasis pod, because that's the kind of game this is.

☆HARDER, BETTER, FASTER, ETC
Once your character is captured they will be spirited away to a planet in another dimension called Tera, where they will be taken to one of two villain's headquarters and subjected to a whirlwind of handwavy pseudoscience wizardry that is really best explained by this music video from Interstella 5555, set to the hot beats of Daft Punk.



Of course, some character's transformations may be significantly more complicated than making blue people wear different clothes and be a color other than blue. How your character is humanized is ultimately up to you, but in all cases it's going to sort of weird, automated, and most likely, strangely rhythmic. If they are very large, they will probably be shrunk before arriving. Anything they are carrying will be confiscated, but will serve as a pool of items they can regain as AC rewards. Things not on them while being captured won't be available.

It's during this process that they'll have their memories wiped and recorded onto some kind of backup drive, whilst simultaneously being brainwashed into believing that they have a different history. Their new life is not going to be especially well thought out, or exceptionally complete. No matter how hard your character buys into it, it will probably be full of holes. They may also have new character traits, fit to the life of a rockstar, implanted into their personality. However it goes down, they are going to believe that they grew up on Tera and came to be a musician in a totally consensual manner.

They'll get a new look that fits with their musical genre, and that matches the rest of their persona. This may end up very similar or very different to their usual style. This is also when they get some kind of brain chip implant that will force them to be compliant, as is the standard for this kind of thing. Sunglasses are encouraged, but not mandatory.

☆I WANNA BE A ROCKSTAR
You wake up and somehow don’t remember ever having been different. The storyline is less than cohesive - you are pretty sure you’ve always lived on Tera, but not matter your implanted backstory, the details seem...lacking. Like a history without real colour or poignancy. Yet, no amount of thought into the subject will make it feel suspect to you, like something is blocking your ability to think critically about your own identity.

The beginnings of your musical career are blurry around the edges. Presumably you and the others in your band got together at some point, but how much you actually know about each of them varies wildly. You do know, however, that they act just like you - none of you talk about the things you can’t remember, and none of you question how lucky you are to be here, at the top.

You also don’t question why you aren’t allowed to go outside without being watched, or why you’re not supposed to talk about your life to anyone without a label contract. Something about it being beneath you, right? A waste of your time? Sure.

So you act on your impulses. You be the person you feel like you’re supposed to be, and you perform when you’re told to perform. You should be glad to. Those times when you play music are actually the only times you feel actually alive, when it comes down to it. Like a real person.

Nobody ever said that being a rockstar was going to be easy. So when you or any of the others are punished like slaves for stepping out of line, how can you call it anything but normal? Even if you find yourself nearly incapable of discussing the subject due to the deep feelings of unease in your gut.

The show must go on.