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soddersays2018-09-30 12:01 am
sodder) wrote in soddersays2018-09-30 12:01 am
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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!
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.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.)
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.
kara / ax400 • detroit: become human
i.
When she addresses him he stops and turns, observes her with a split second of skeptical disbelief and a slight tilt of his head. He recognizes her immediately of course but for the past two months North has been the only person he's been able to actually read. Now he's presented with a barrage of information that pings a probably-morbid nostalgia, given the nature — AX400. Serial #579 102 694. Murder suspect. Kara.
It's a good thing he'd apologized to her in Jericho, despite what he may have mentioned in previous threads a few weeks ago. Memory events can be weird, shh. Anyway, it means he can presumably approach her without inciting any kind of fear, at least not fear to the extent of, like, causing her to run away in terror or anything. ]
Kara? It's me, Connor.
[ In case, you know, she doesn't recognize his stupid face. ]
no subject
kara.
lifting her eyes, she finds his and, a bit startled, pulls the jar back towards her, wrapping both hands around its middle now and feeling the weighty sloshing inside the jar against her sensors. she remembers jericho - it's hard to forget that sort of place, despite the rush of events leading up to it. she's not filled with fear, no, but she's still uncertain. an apology is an apology, true, but she's still grasping for footholds in this place.
everything so far has just felt like what maybe a fever dream would be for a human, bursting with too much information, as if she could run too hot from all the inundation of information (and it's funny - a dream. do androids dream? maybe now they do.) ]
What are you doing here? [ not accusatory, thankfully, but curiously tight. she's been wound up since she "awoke." ] What are we doing here?
no subject
[ He hates that most about this place. He's used to having answers. Here, he rarely does. ]
But I'm going to find out.
[ And he's sure of that.
The way her body language seems to harden just a bit doesn't slip by him — her probability of self-destruction is low, stress levels appropriately high considering the circumstances — and he recognizes that perhaps one apology isn't enough to erase, like, literally trying to capture and potentially kill someone, especially when combined with the sudden, unwelcome mysteries of Deerington. He sets his bags on the ground and crouches to her level in an attempt to appear less threatening, much like he had when he'd apologized.
She'd arrived on her own; the absence of the little girl by her side is enough to make that clear. Connor and North had been the lucky ones, waking up in the same house on the same day. He doesn't know why Deerington seems to pick and choose in its cruelty -- or perhaps it's a kindness, leaving Alice untouched.
Either way, he decides he should try to comfort her. Whether or not it will work remains a statistical mystery -- there are too many factors at work here to calculate a probability of success.
But still, he tries. ]
Markus and North are here too. You're not alone.
no subject
the words aren't quite comfort enough, in fact, connor isn't exactly... comforting. forgiveness is a funny thing, something kara comes to almost too easily. but it doesn't keep her from sitting up a little straighter even as connor brings himself down to her height where she's seated. ]
What about back home? [ she says softly, terse and concerned. ] If we're... somehow unconscious what about the people who aren't here? [ she'd like to hope they've at least sussed that out. ]
no subject
We don't know.
[ Off to a fantastic start on the being helpful thing. ]
North and I have been here for eight weeks. Markus arrived yesterday, and the last thing he remembers is the night of the revolution. Those eight weeks haven't passed for him.
[ Forget going deviant, breaking through written programming, etc. The biggest challenge for Connor in his entire baby life is saying the ridiculous crap he's about to say: ]
Time works differently here. I think it might stop entirely for those we leave behind.
i.
So uh, regardless of whether or not there are currently rivers of blood coursing through the streets - la la la idly pretending there aren't, her reaction would be the same. Not quite running to Kara the way she did to Markus (though considering she's also not going to hit her in the chest that's probably a positive), but straight lined, focused determination. If Kara is alone, well--she's alone. While North would go to her anyway, everything in her posture says she needs a friendly face right now.
One not, you know, Connor.
(Selfishly, North is glad to see her. Having both Connor and Markus here means more than she can say, but something in her she can't quite identify yet longs for another woman android. Someone who could understand her on a level neither of these special prototypes, through no fault of their own, are capable of reaching. ]
Kara!
[ Watch out, if your body language doesn't indicate you want a very wide personal periphery, you ...may be hugged. Fortunately North is also an expert in body language. ]
Are you okay? I'm--it's North. You might not remember, Jericho was ...kind of crazy when you were there.
[ And then exploded, but never mind. ]
ii. a!
he didn't realize he was capable of happiness then, but looking back, he's sure he'd felt it. or a shade of it, at least, not just for the successful completion of his task but for the warm atmosphere of those cold nights. the memory is bittersweet in the moment, but nostalgia nudges him inside the building.
it's not long before he realizes he has new context for dead bodies and blood, fog and smoke, but he presses on anyway, searching for a little of that life that feels so far behind him now.
when he steps into the child's room, he finds a face that belongs instead in his new life. ]
Sorry, I— [ i didn't mean to startle you is what he intends to say, but that gets lost. there's a pause, then— ] I know you. Kara.
[ she'd wanted to cross the border, but he'd asked her to stay, trapped her in the carnage with everyone else. he still feels a sharp tug of guilt over it, never mind that he's apologized already. ]
Are you alone?
[ a delicate question. he remembers the little girl that had clung to kara's side in the pew. ]
no subject
(it's easier... easier to not think about alice if she's holding her own hands. easier to imagine that it's the little one's palm in hers... instead of nothing.)
but she steps up to him regardless, away from the bed, away from anything she could touch, her head tilting a little towards him now.
while perhaps the signs are there for some... effect... she'd rather not try. ]
I... yes. I am.
[ the question is hard to answer, and she's pulling the words with force out of her mouth. the thought alone that alice is somewhere else, somewhere beyond her reach is enough to pull at her insides, a tangle of wires and plastic and metal. ]
I woke up alone. And I can't find Alice... not anywhere.
arrival | HI
[Up on the rooftops. Out of sight.]
[At least until she stops to offer the berries to someone else. He drops into a nearby tree. All six feet of turquoise armor and glowing green eye.]
If you don't try to eat them, you vanish.
That's what the others say.
HI DARLING!
and then someone calls out.
immediately she gets to her feet, fingers still tight around the jar, but this time brows knit a bit in concern. she's a little on edge still, she can't help it. ]
Who's there?
no subject
[She could be one, if his scanners weren't informing him otherwise.]
Kagerou. I am Kagerou. [Another head tilt. The motion birdlike.]
You have the same readings as Connor and North.