OCTOBER 2018 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to October’s Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: HALLOWEEN HORROR.

All Test Drive Memes contain at least one clue to the Deerington's upcoming in-game events for the month! Keep your eyes peeled! But...not literally.

Characters may die during TDMs, but you do not need to count it towards a game-canonical death unless you want to. Consider it a freebie. All TDMs can be considered game canon as TDMs introduce minor aspects about the world of Deerington that can be revisited by characters later on in the game. You may also use TDMs for your application writing sample as well as AC.

CW: Wet and rotting corpses/zombies, ghosts, violence, blood, knives, possessed dolls, options for underage drinking

Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

IT’S JUST A BUNCH OF HOCUS POCUS

It’s not Halloween if you don’t make a trip to a cheesy haunted house. At least, that’s what everyone in Deerington likes to say. The old Victorian stands at the top of a hill, rickety and in desperate need of a new paint job. The yard and porch have been decorated with what you’d expect for your typical haunted house; fake spider webs spread across the overhang, painted foam grave markers with cheesy names like “Here lies Richard Cranium” and “BEWARE!!” in creepy letter etchings. You can see the blinking of variously timed strobe lights in some windows and the shadow of what you’re pretty sure is a full-sized doll standing in the window, meant to look like someone staring out at you. The rocking chair on the porch near the door has a skeleton with a bowl of candy in his lap, and a sign is propped up against the wall next to him.

“ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. TOUCH NOTHING AND NOTHING WILL TOUCH YOU!”

Well that sounds promising.

The first few rooms you enter are appropriately cheesy. There’s the silly burst of air that you hear just before a plastic figuring pops out of a poorly constructed coffin, the clicking sound of the machinery inside echoing in the room when it starts to pull back and the lid closes once again. There’s fog machines trying to give the appropriately spooky air, stuffed sheets shaped to look like dead bodies wrapped up laying in piles on the floor with fake blood staining the white fabric, black lighting to show off words scribbled on doors like “TURN BACK NOW” and “SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES.” Nothing you haven’t seen before. It might be even worse than things you’ve seen before, over the top cheesy, boring enough to give a yawn. Each door seems to open on its own so you don’t even have to touch the handles.

As you make your way through the next automatic door, the room you walk into is different than those before it. It’s a regular children’s room. A bed against the wall near the window, a dresser in the corner, a small desk with a chair. Nothing out of the ordinary, save for the lights not being on, and the strange flickering light in the closet. You step towards it, figuring you’re in for another jump scare, but the door doesn’t open. Whether you’re naturally the curious sort or not, something in the back of your mind makes you want to open the door and see what’s on the inside.

If you fight it and walk towards the next automatic door, you’ll find you’ve walked out to the backyard of the house, those same foam decorations and a dozen or more jack o’ lanterns lighting your way on a path back to the town.

If you choose to pull the door open, however, it’ll take you into yet another room, with a flickering television playing nothing but static. Once you step past the doors of the closet, they slam shut behind you and whoever else dared to enter. The doors won’t lock no matter what you do, no matter how strong the person shaking the handles or pushing against the wood may be. You realize you broke the one rule; you’ve touched something. But can things now really touch you?

The only light source in the whole room is that television and it’s not lighting up much inside the room around it. If you squint when the TV is at its brightest setting, you can just make out another door. Your exit, you hope. But as you make your way towards the door, the flickering suddenly stops, the TV steadily bright, a low humming noise coming from the screen, and suddenly the door seems several more feet away from you than it was a second ago. Before you can reach the door, there’s the sound of trickling water from behind you. If you choose to look back, you’ll see something coming out from the screen - a girl with soaked clothing and pale, rotted skin. She emerges fully from the glass and starts to move towards you. You know it’s best to start running for that door. If you stay and try to fight, you’ll find that no regular weapons work on her, though special weapons and powers that are effective against spirits will definitely do the trick. For those who don’t have any of these at their disposal, however, there is one more hope besides just trying to run; two old school VHS tape sit on the table near by, a fancy machine between them that is meant to copy one to the other. Work as a team and have one distract her while the other records, and you’ll find that she disappears as quickly as she flickered on the screen and the TV will return to static.

Regardless of what you choose before carrying on, the next room you come to as the door slams and locks behind you is entirely different. Brightly lit and filled with what seems like hundreds of porcelain dolls, it’s almost hard to tell where there could possibly be another exit hidden among the massive shelves. You can start to wind your way through them, but before long, you start to hear the sound of running feet, the jingling of bells, the swish of satin, and most eerily the sounds of children giggling - but there’s nothing that sounds save about them. Some of the dolls you saw on the last shelf seem like they’ve moved and are sitting in the corner or laying in a new position on a new shelf. Sometimes you swear you can see their heads turn to watch you pass, but it has to be a trick of the light, doesn’t it?

That is until one of those dolls runs by you, brandishing something shiny in their hands - something sharp. A knife, you realize too late, as it tries to slice at your legs and knock you down. You can kick them away and they’ll go flying, and when the porcelain smashes, the doll will scream in agony. You notice there’s blood pouring from the hole that formed, spreading quickly across the ground. The dolls are easy to kill, but are they really just dolls? You can take your time to contemplate that later, as now you have to fight your way through the violent and armed toys to reach the door at the end of the maze of shelves. Hopefully you can get out without too many severe injuries.

When (or if) you do manage to get to the next room, you seem to have a chance to take a breath and tend to any wounds. It’s decorated like the room of a small cottage, a large pot over the fireplace that isn’t lit, and several jars full of (possibly rotting) food and herbs on the shelves. You see a book on the stand in the center, latched shut and covered in dust. You can open it, if you want, but remember the warning you ignored that got you in trouble in the first place. It’s probably better to carry on to the next room.

If you do choose to open the book, though, there will be eerily glowing text lining the pages, the light will seem to poor out and fill the room, and you’ll be transported back out in front of the house.

Those who continued through the door will find themselves out in the backyard. Just like for those who got out sooner, there are dozens of jack o lanterns, but the graves don’t look like they’re made of foam this time. They’re real stone, engraved with real names and real dates this time. And the ground underneath them seems to be moving, like someone’s trying to crawl out of there. Better not to wait around. Soon as you start to move down the path, you’ll start to hear the sounds of groans as the undead start to crawl from their own graves, pulling themselves up through the dirt, and determined to get to the only food source they see - you. The zombies seem like they’re never ending, coming from every inch of the yard, but at least they’re just like normal zombies - completely incapable of being killed unless you cut off the head. There are shovels lying next to a few graves if you need a quick weapon, but there’s also still always the option to run as fast as you can up the stone path to the front of the house and back towards the street.

When you do finally manage to get back to the front, there’s a momentary blinding flash of light, disorienting anyone near it for a few seconds. When it finally fades, any leftover zombies chasing you have disappeared and the house looks like the same, cheesy haunted house you walked up to in the first place. If for some reason you decide to go and explore the backyard again, the grass will be back to normal, and the graves will all be replaced by cheaply painted foam once more.

Was that all in your head? Who knows. But maybe it’s best to just get out of here.

WE DID THE MASH

Somehow the street lamps have all been converted to oil based flames, the Authority are in witch hats, and every where you go there is music that seems to be playing from faintly glowing bats hanging upside down from telephone wires. The bats will open their mouths in succession, seeming somehow capable of producing the sounds of instruments and singers alike of popular Halloween songs.

Yards are decorated as thoroughly as the front of stores. Maybe you haven't bothered to decorate, but your neighbor sure has! Fake gravestones are propped up in yards, giant fake spiders in trees, and no matter where you walk, the ground seems covered in thick, rolling fog from machines. Or at least you hope it's coming from machines. Hell, you can't even find it in yourself to be too worried! Everyone around you is having way too good of a time! And God, there is food everywhere! Might as well grab a bite while you're out, huh?

It's tempting to break loose and dance. Jack-O-Lanterns absolutely crowd the streets. There's more than you can even begin to count, and all of them are lit all throughout the night. Even if you accidentally trip over some, they don't seem to catch fire to anything or go out! Some neighbors have camp fires set up with marshmallows to roast, while others have...are those broomsticks? Well that's kinda cool, you guess. Correction: it's really cool since you can actually pick one up and take it for a fly! Make sure to attach a little lamp to the front though because God knows it's dangerous flying at night. The brooms only work if you wear the appropriately provided hats, of course, but you can keep both the broom and hat indefinitely and have a readily available means of flight in Deerington after! Be forewarned though: the brooms are as easily broken as regular brooms and the hats easily blown away in the wind.

TRICK OR TREATS

At any of the events, especially the nighttime partying, you can find any number of the following treats (and their potential side effects):

Donuts (Will make you deliriously happy. Everything is amazing to you. May cause a lot of affection. A lot of affection.)
Candy Apples (You will eagerly tell someone everything you like about them. Talk about a sweet tooth.)
Candy Corn (Will make you extremely sad. Like god, you'll be wondering why you hate yourself so much.)
Pumpkin Spice Lattes (Causes suspicious amounts of obedience and a desire to do what you're told.)
Hot Chocolate (Can provide some minor healing. Best stuff to drink with a common cold!)
Hot or Cold Apple Cider (Nothing will happen. It's just really good.)
Alcoholic Cider (This isn't your grandma's apple cider. This stuff will knock you on your ass. Anyone who drinks this will get wasted regardless of whether or not they are immune to alcohol or even ingest regular food. It only takes one or two before you start to get tipsy, but any more than that and you'll be well on your way to drunk. Please drink responsibly. We don't need any FUIs.)

Character Arrival

You can read how all characters arrive in Deerington here.

There is not a collective "all these characters showed up at the exact same moment" occurrence in Deerington. Since characters fall asleep, die, or pass out at various times throughout all their worlds, it wouldn't make too much sense if they arrived in game all at the exact same time. There should be some discrepancy between character arrival, whether by a couple minutes, hours, or even days up to a week.

The players are entirely in control of how/when they want to play their characters arriving in Deerington. For TDMs, you can play it like your character has just arrived and that can be maintained as your game canon, or you can wait until game events for that moment. Or you don't need to acknowledge it at all. The flexibility for character allows a bit more of an organic feel to the character arrival situation, so please play it to whatever feels right for you.

If you are interested in having an "arrival" introduction for one of your TDM prompts, you are more than welcome to explore that option.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

hocus pocus; worst movie ever

[She goes into the haunted house, because of course she does, because she's still not convinced this isn't one of Bulshar's tricks and if it is, Wynonna is going to get to the bottom of it. That also means going into the creepy door that showed up in the creepy house. The only light is the television and the darkness puts her on edge, enough that she draws peacemaker, though she leaves it at her side rather than pointing it at anything.

Until the girl starts crawling out of the screen. Then she definitely levels the gun at the figure.]

Alright, Samara, that's far enough. Unless you're after some hair care tips cause damn, girl, you need some work.

hocus pocus; zombie 2, electric boogaloo

Are you shitting me?

[It's always undead bullshit, although at least these zombies are a lot less chatty than Revenants, and less likely to shoot at her or have stupid crappy powers. The downside is that peacemaker keeps jamming, not to mention that when she does get off the occasional shot, these zombies don't get dragged back to hell the way Revenants do.

That leaves the shovel.

So that's great.

Anyone else who ends up in the backyard will find Wynonna, lightly covered in gore, going for zombie after zombie with no apparent plans for escape. She just wants them all gone.]

monster mash; some harry potter bullshit

This is so cool!

[Everything is kind of shit, but Wynonna is on a broom flying a few feet off the ground and it's amazing, she's never really known a feeling like freedom, but this is pretty close. At least until a gust of wind knocks the hat off her head and she goes tumbling back to the ground.]

Ow, come on, that's not fair.

[She's just gonna lie on the ground for a second, she'll be fine.]

[ baby's minding his own business, head down and hands tucked into his pocket when someone literally falls out of the sky and lands at his feet. he stops. stares, tilts his head and then looks up. ]

Rough landing.

[ stating the obvious there, baby. ]

You all right?

Peachy keen, thanks.

[Wynonna could do like a cool flip thing to get up, but that would require more effort than she wants to expend, so she just pushes herself to her feet instead, with a little groan as if she's an old lady. It's just like that sometimes, you know? ]

Who are you supposed to be?

[Kind of a weird question, but she's still wondering if this is another part of the weird Bulshar induced dream, and in those, she knew all the players. The people here are strangers, so she has to wonder if they're supposed to represent something or be someone significant.]

I'm Baby.

[ yes, that's his actual name. ]

And I'm just a guy. Were you expecting someone else?

[ how unfortunate for you, wynonna, that you'd gotten him instead. ]

Someone not called Baby, for starters. I thought my dad was a dick with names, damn.

[She likes her name, honestly, but the whole theme with W Earp is a little on the nose. Not at all subtle, Ward.]

Are you human at least? I'm kinda over dead shit right now, or demon shit, any of it really.

[ he's used to people making comments about his name so the most he reacts is one corner of his mouth ticking up a bit. ]

I'm human last I checked.

[ he reaches up and taps the pulse in his neck briefly. ]

Yeah, heart's still going. Why, you dead?

Oh, Baby, you have no idea.

[Actually she's decided she likes this dude's name, just because she can now make bad jokes. It's perfect, everyone wins.

And this saves her having to think about the cycle of endless deaths that she escaped from. No one likes to think about that kind of thing.]

I've got this whole thing where I kill undead demons, so it's your lucky day that you're human. The awesome flying broom has only made me slightly less pissed about all this shit.

[ oh, he's heard the play on his name more times than you can imagine. he still lets them happen though since it seems to make others happy and it doesn't hurt him at all. ]

Why were you on a flying broom?

[ once again, he checks the sky and then looks back at her. ]

Chasing down some broom using demons?

Uh, cause it's a flying broom, why wouldn't I be on it?

[This is clearly self-explanatory; Wynonna might be a certified badass but that doesn't mean she can't have a little fun sometimes. All the crazy shit she's used to is bad, most of the time, there's hardly ever something harmless and exciting.]

It's even worth putting on the stupid hat for.

Brooms don't fly.

[ but there were a lot of things about this town that shouldn't happen but did. so, baby amends, brooms shouldn't fly but they did. ]

Looks like you could use a lesson or two in how to handle the broom. Wouldn't want you to get hurt.

[ it's hard to tell if he's teasing or not because his expression doesn't change.

but, he is. teasing, that is. ]

[Rude, Baby.]

First of all, the last thing I need is a lesson on how to ride something.

[Wynnona Earp: queen of really bad sex jokes.]

Secondly, the wind blew the stupid hat off, it's like the on switch for the broom or something.

You fell, though. That tends to mean improvement is needed.

[ oh yes, he'd picked up on that sex joke and just let her think it had gone right over his head. one corner of his mouth curves up though it's quick and barely there. ]

Where's the hat now? I don't know if I saw it come down with you?

[ not that he'd been looking for a hat after a human being had ended up in front of him. ]

[She opens her mouth as if she's about to make a rebuttal, realizes that she has none, and closes her mouth again, making a face instead. How dare.]

It probably fell into the bushes somewhere, I was a little more focused on the ground rushing up to meet me.

Yeah, I was there for that part.

[ he's sorry, wynonna, he's just kind of like this sometimes. but, he does try to make up for it by offering: ]

You want some water or something? There's food and stuff everywhere. Might ease the bruises.

[ this time, he does smile crookedly. ]

[She's just gonna flip him the bird, but you know, in a chill and non-aggressive way because her ego isn't really that bruised over taking a tumble.

And there are more important things.]

There's food? Lead the way, Baby, the broom means nothing to me now, we're through, I'm all about this food. Is it free and is there also alcohol?

[She has her priorities in order.]

Didn't really look for alcohol but I know they at least have donuts.

[ because he'd seen them though he hadn't gotten around to having one. safe to say her rude gesture isn't really affecting him especially when he nods for her to follow along. ]

Bet there's cider though. There's always cider at Halloween things.