Entry tags:

October 2018 Test Drive Meme

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

ARRIVAL / HOCUS POCUS

The boy sits up, breathing hard, eyes wide. He was screaming, the echo of it seems to hang in the air, and he has to fight to untangle himself from the sheets, but in a blind panic that seems almost impossible: the more he moves, the more tangled he becomes, the harder his heart hammers in his chest.

And then suddenly, he's free.

There's no trees, no deer, no forest. There's no water either, no willow tree, no bubbling watermeadow. He's in a bed that isn't his, in a room that isn't his. Somewhere, there's electronic static, like someone left the TV on too long. But beyond, there's the sound of music- Halloween music. It's not Halloween. He knows it's not Halloween. It's May, he's sure of that.

But he's not going to linger here, in this weird, dimly lit bedroom. He jumps out of the bed, but the movement is unnaturally slow, or so it feels, as is his rush to the door.

It doesn't open. His hand passes straight through the handle, straight through the peeling wood of the door. His heart hasn't stopped, hasn't slowed, and it feels like it's about to burst against his ribs when laughter behind him makes him turn. There's a party of laughing people passing through, dressed up as witches and werewolves, and for a moment he's sure they'll see him.

They walk straight through him, and straight through the door that swings open on their approach.

WE DID THE MASH

His heart has almost slowed to normal.

He's no closer to working any of this out, but he's out of that house and what seems, at first glance, to be a normal Halloween celebration. These people can see him, he's had people shout Cool costume! across the street, although he's not wearing a costume. They're probably drunk, or think he's dressed as a nerd.

What they can see, and Noah can not, is that he no longer has legs. Below his waist, where legs and jeans and all the normal bits should be, there is only a knotted skirt of various types of pondweed. It drips, but no water ever touches the pavement.

He drifts, rather than walks, amongst the party-goers, avoiding them as best he can as he tries to find something familiar, someone familiar.

Logan isn't familiar, but he looks at the kid like he is. But it's not so much the way the kid looks that triggers some note of familiarity-- instead, it's the way that he disappears into... into something, below the waist. Though Logan recognises the plants from one of the times he's drowned at the bottom of something or other, the boy reminds him of something he'd seen just after arriving to Deerington in the first place.

A lit house, lonely in the dark.

Dark creatures like purgatorial spirits wandering around it.

You don't forget what it looked like being surrounded by people drifting around you instead of walking with you. You don't forget the non-corporeal bodies of people you once knew.

"Hey." He tries to catch the kid's attention, pushing past solid bodies to get to him. "Hey--"

And as soon as he's in front of him, he stops. The animal in him whimpers in the back of his head and tells him not to touch under any circumstances. "...you okay?"

There's such a crowd out that the shouted Hey! could be for anyone, but Noah can feel eyes on him and turning only confirmed that. The man was broad, and the determined look on his face didn't do much to calm Noah's already frayed nerves.

He tries to run away, but any movement seems impossible. He only seems able to drift, like a ship becalmed relying on the tides. It's all too easy for the man to slip through the people and get in front of him, and Noah can't do anything to stop it. Panic makes his form grow indistinct, fading out and then back into focus, but not completely disappearing.

"I-" He begins, and flickering in an out again. "No?"

It's an honest answer, but not one that Noah intended to give. Still, with all the cockiness of a teenager, he tries to shrug this off. "But I don't think that's anything you can help with."

"Honestly, it probably isn't." There's no use beating around the bush. That he'd seen the boy's torso also doesn't make him feel any less inclined to spare it another glance-- good God, he definitely isn't alive then, is he?

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you."

Is he the same as those spirits he'd seen before? The ones before hadn't had a personality or an appearance quite as specific as this one does. But the concept of Deerington as Purgatory is a little more likely than a dream, even with Logan's drift from Catholicism ages ago.

"...have you eaten something?"

Noah doesn't like this, doesn't like the way the man seems to look pointedly at his face. It makes him fidget, one hand raising to rub his opposite shoulder.

"I'm not a kid, I'm not scared." Although that's a lie. He's not so much scared of the WWF look-alike in front of him but the whole situation. It would be bad enough to suddenly be in some weird ass town that he doesn't know but... everything else as well. This isn't right. He should be dead. There shouldn't be all this.

The notion of eating something seems completely out of the blue and is utterly unwelcome. Whatever he has instead of a stomach, and isn't just the memory of a stomach, churns and then he moves, ready to hurl. It's sudden and he can't help that the rush forwards happens to take him partially through the man suggesting food.

What pours out of him is stagnant pond water, slightly green, mostly grey, and foul smelling. But it doesn't hit the floor, disappearing before it gets past where his knees should be. When it ends, Noah is shaking like a leaf, wiping pond slime and mud from his mouth. "No. And I really don't want to."

Edited 2018-10-02 12:00 (UTC)

Sometimes Logan really has to question why he does the thing she does.

It's strange... no, actually, it's really fucking disturbing having half a kid in him, and then hearing the kid wretch, and then smelling the results as if what's leaving him is completely solid. He can feel the water like he's standing in a shower, and most disgustingly he can feel it's lukewarm instead of freezing, and Logan presses his mouth shut tight as he resists the urge to gag.

He thinks he's going to puke, too. He thinks he might very well be on the way there.

And yeah-- he gags a little bit. One hand lifts to cover his mouth just in case. The smell's faded, but it's been burned into his senses: rotten water, dead water, water that's been infected by a corpse lying in it. God. God, and it'd been on him... in him?

"I--" He still feels like puking. But he tries to talk, anyway, even as his stomach roils, and takes a step back to be sure they aren't connected any more. "...I can see why.

There's some slight relief when he realises he isn't spattered with vomit. "But there was a letter from someone named Sodder. If you don't want to disappear" -- which he presumes is the case with this half-corporeal state, the fading midsection -- "you have to eat something."

Whatever Logan feels... is probably much worse than what Noah does. Everything he feels seems to be faded, a memory of feeling that he's not quite holding onto anymore. Even with the man moved out of his personal space, Noah feels overwhelmed, his body flickering like a bad wifi signal, and all he wants to do is double over and hold onto his knees and retch again...

His knees aren't there anymore. Instead, the curtain of pondweed drifts gently in an invisible current. He straightens up immediately and disappears all over again.

The world is dark. The Halloween music coming from the over-head speakers seems tinny and distant, the pumpkins blink and leer at him, but they too seem to be far away, shrouded in thick fog. He spins around, arms out in front of him trying to fight the haze clouding his vision, but it does no good. Stumbling forward toward shapeless, featureless figures does no good, they are just as far away as they were before he started walking.

"What is this?"

The words clog in his mouth, and he tastes blood and old water again, musty and slimy. It stays lodged in his throat, no matter how he coughs, no matter how his body convulses. He chokes, eyes watering. He folds, pain filling him, pouring into him through his lungs, an ice-cold fire. The darkness crowds in, shapeless figures and jack-o-lanterns and singing cats and nameless things, and out of the corner of his eye he sees something more. Something huge with antlers, something indistinct in the grey-

The stag is gone, just as Noah finds himself back in the world. The real world, or as real as anything else seems to be. He doesn't know anything much about the afterlife: just heaven and hell. Mostly about hell, because that's what the Baptist minister was so keen on, but this doesn't seem to be it. He never imagined Season of the Witch would feature much on Satan's playlist.

"Is... is everyone here dead?"

He has to eat something, the man says. There's a table laden with seasonal candy, he might... manage something.

As worrisome as Noah's condition looks to be, there's nothing Logan can do to help him. The worry in his chest is worthless, but he'd rather worry than not feel anything at all.

At the question, however, he shrugs his shoulders up. "Honestly? I have no fucking idea."

Being at Deerington for a month hasn't taught him anything about the circumstances of his coming here or the circumstances of his existence. He remembers being irritated about having nothing to go on but theories, but finds himself now in that exact same position, realising that there's nothing he can really say he knows for sure.

"But I've seen dead that I knew for sure were dead, and they looked a little like you." He doesn't bother sugarcoating it. "You fade and you flicker. So did they.

"People say we're dreaming. You can choose what you want to believe."

As the boy drifts past him-- sans legs, leaving a dripping trail that fades almost as soon as it hits the ground-- the Mage nearly spits out his cider. He's seen spirits before, it's not uncommon, but usually they are ...whole. Even despite whatever happened to them at the point of their death, they usually appear from the fade how they want to be seen by the living. Dorian pushes away from where he'd been leaning, tilting his head as if to try and see if there were anything from the torso down other than the dank weeds.

"Venhedis" He curses softly, "Your legs are off..."

He's not nearly as quiet as he should be and the cider has made him tipsy enough that he doesn't have a filter to not say certain things out loud.

"Excuse me?" He raises his voice, which gets a few in the crowd looking at him. "Do you know your legs are gone?"

The mage is drunk. Please excuse how dense he seems to be at the moment. He's usually more refined than this.

Edited 2018-10-01 20:21 (UTC)

Being shouted at in the street by adults is not something Noah has ever experienced. He's become used to being whispered about in recent days. Recent days at home.

The slurring words from the man don't register immidiately, if only because they seem total nonsense. Of course he has legs! They're right... right...

"Oh. My. God."

Noah flickers, too startled by the sight of the reeds and weeds to keep his form corporal. When he does seem to literally pull himself together, he looks paler and greyer than before.

"I..." The boy begins but doesn't seem to know how to finish the sentence, wide eyed and horrified.

Well, he's not sure what he was expecting as far as a response to his insensitive desire to point out the obvious. His drunken mind didn't quite think things through his mouth just opened and he spoke his thoughts out loud. Perhaps he expected the other to already know his legs weren't there, how do you NOT know, which makes his question kind of pointless and silly. However when the boy discovers his lack of legs and flickers or looks absolutely horrified, Dorian can't help but regret what he's done. He feels absolutely horrible now. He does still have a heart even if his brain can't differentiate between what's said aloud and what's kept in his mind.

"Easy now, y-you, uhm... you seem to be alright all things considered, I mean you didn't realize it till I pointed it out so... that's something?" Alright so he's trying and filing miserably to back-peddle and make the most of this somehow...

"Just... I'm sorry. That was rude of me."

Edited 2018-10-02 02:32 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only