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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]

[Dorian wakes up with a start, heart racing and sweat on his brow. He's glad to be awake, that he can move and speak once more. There's nothing like being in a proper nightmare with paralysis. And that deer... was it trying to save him? It's all very strange but, wherever he is is even more peculiar. Everything feels off in ways he can't explain. Like that moment he went into the Fade with the Inquisitor. It doesn't feel quite real, and, being a fairly powerful mage who's in tune with the spiritual energy and elemental energies around him, or within him, he simply doesn't feel right at all. As he slips out of bed and finds his staff against a wall, he'll start to wander, looking at his surroundings. Even his staff doesn't seem to hold the same kind of energy it used to. Almost as if it is nothing more than a tall walking-stick.

Dorian follows the sound of music cautiously, eventually leading him outside to the festivities. All the decoration is unlike anything he's ever seen. Someone please help a poor lost soul...]

[The Mash | Trick or Treats]

[ Someones been partaking of Cider, enjoying it's flavor and not realizing when he began to pick up the alcoholic version of it. So Dorian is feeling rather good after his second cup, realizing then that his drink has been spiked. Not that he's complaining, in fact, he's rather impressed he never took notice of it. It's both tart and sweet at the same time, not unlike something he might drink at home. He'll go for a third, it's a party, after all, he's wanting to have a little bit of fun in this strange new world, it's better than the emptiness he feels within his magic. On his way to find more he'll bump into someone, stumbling slightly on his already tipsy feet, but not losing his balance.]

My apologies, I didn't realize you were there.

[Wildcard]

What it says on the tin! Feel free to make up your own shenanigans to meet Dorian. I am willing to write prose or use brackets and will follow your lead.

Edited 2018-10-01 11:11 (UTC)

[ This isn't Fereldan or Orlais. It doesn't seem to be any part of the Free Marches nor Tevinter that either of them have ever ventured to before. But they are not alone thank the Maker, and to Cullen's mind that means they have much better odds of getting home.]

Is it part of the Fade?

[ He's drawing a blank. He does not know how or why they are here, only that here is not Thedas. The fashion and oddly accented Common language proves that.]

[Dorian is certainly glad he's got Cullen by his side and he's not the only one experiencing this weird displacement or dream or whatever it honestly is. He's actually not sure where they are but it's strange. Certainly abnormal even compared to the Fade.]

I'm afraid not. At least... not that I'm aware of. It feels... different. Odd. And I think it's done something to my abilities.

[Something doesn't feel right at all. He supposes it's a good thing he doesn't need his magic at the moment.]

I'm not even entirely sure we're actually awake or that you're really here. For all I know you're a figment of my dream like everything else.

[ Cullen nods, conceding a,good point well made. None of this need be real. Dorian and in Inquisitor had been trapped in the Fade, pushed forward in time and there were plenty of demons powerful enough to bend and twist reality. As terrifying as the idea is, he must accept the possibility thatDorian is not really here with him and he is in fact trapped here alone.]

Yes, you're right. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't explore this... place. If we are to escape it we should try to understand it. Then we can formulate some strategy to get home.

[ He won't contemplate the idea that this is the Golden City. It can't be, it's nothing like the stories day, and he refuses to believe that he, that they, are dead. There must be some other solution.]

What about the Elves? Could this be some sort of Ancient Elven magic?

Yes, of course. I'm not about to just give up and remain asleep, live out the rest of my days here. We need to figure out a way to wake up and get out of this place.

[He remembers that Halla...or deer, he's not sure where he got that word from, just somewhere in his mind that's what he'd called it in his dream before this dream. Somehow he's aware he's asleep still even if this feels so real and yet not.]

Not that I know of? But... I'm not entirely sure. There's still so much about Elven magics that we do not know.

[A pause to consider the man beside him.]

I'm... a little surprised that of all people it is you and I sharing this dream. Not that I'm complaining of course.

[At first it's easy to let her gaze just pass right over Dorian. Given the festivities and all, she can ignore the staff and everything else, dismiss it as dressing up for the party.

But he's definitely not one of the Townspeople, and there's a different energy about him she can easily pick up on. The look on his face tells her that he has no idea what's going on anyhow.

At first she just looks around, hesitating a little in a vague hope that maybe someone else will pick up on it and approach and help him, but as the seconds tic by she feels herself getting anxious. She can't ignore someone who might need help no matter what and after a moment she sighs to herself and approaches, raising a hand in both greeting and a way to show that hey, she's harmless! please don't swing your staff at her!! Or whatever you do with it.]

Excuse me. This might sound strange, but... Are you... lost? [She almost says 'new' but changes it at the last second. It's possible he's just lost and someone who's been here a while and she's never seen. It's not as though Yuri's met everyone here, after all.]

[Dorian is admittedly a little distracted as he's looking around at all the strange things. He's about to even poke at a singing bat with his staff when the movement of someone in his peripheral catches his attention. He'll give a small smile and a little wave in return as she wanders over to him.]

Am I that obvious? [He has a little chuckle at himself.]

I am quite lost, do you know the name of this place?

[He's trying to sound as if he's not entirely out of his mind. Surely waking up some place odd and running into a local to admit you don't remember ever falling asleep here is a little strange. People don't just... WAKE UP in strange places, right? He doesn't remember drinking too much or being pulled through a rift or anything out of the ordinary. Last he knew he was in his own bed in Skyhold. But to admit that sort of things would sound crazy.]

A little bit. [She looks faintly amused, but his question at least seems to solidify with her that he's very new. She doesn't realize though that he thinks she's native to this place. Oops.]

It's a place called Deerington, in Maine. In the country of America. Does... Any of that mean anything to you?

[There were at least one or two people she's met so far that didn't seem to have those same names of places.]

[ All the names rattled off to him don't seem to register any kind of familiarity. He's taking all of them to heart, tucking them away for another time, or for more questions.]

No, I... I'm sorry, I've never heard of any of those places prior to now. But, thank you none the less. It's good to know names.

[He clears his throat.]

Speaking of which, I'm Dorian Pavus. [And a small nod, sort of a bow of his head in greeting.]

OCTOBER 2018 TEST DRIVE MEME

IT’S JUST A BUNCH OF HOCUS POCUS

WE DID THE MASH

TRICK OR TREATS

Character Arrival

Dorian Pavus | Dragon Age: Inquisition

Wildcard!!!

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Arrival

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trick or treats

Treats please!

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mash;

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arrival

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the mash

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