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

[One of X'rhun's ears twitch, as if trying to listen for anything coming, like one of the dolls again. But they seem to be safe... for now.

Though his companion's words make him raise an eyebrow, despite not being able to see well in this dim lighting.]

Oh? What constitutes as witchy for you? [He tilts his head as he leans over those aforementioned jars, a curious bent to his tail.] For all we know, the owners of this house prefers to have some strange... meals.

[And he's glad he hasn't had one of his own in a while, or he would have lost it. Oh, that looks utterly foul, even if it's just a mass of grey gloop to his eyes. But he thinks he can see an eyeball...]

[ Sam watches hesitantly as X'hrun listens with twitching ears. It was definitely a weird experience seeing someone walking around with cats ears and a tail, let alone someone like that who was apparently friendly and helping him, but... Well, they definitely had bigger problems. Still, it took a little getting used to. ]

Witchy, ah... [ He wrinkles his nose. ] "Spewing bodily fluids everywhere." [ He sounds a bit like he's quoting someone else, with that part. ] Seems like witches use regular ingredients, sure; flowers, normal animal parts, herbs... But they tend towards the more, ah, disgusting side, too. Plus, [ He gestures around the room. ] Weird jars? Big creepy book? This whole place has a bunch of cliche horror scenarios- I just figured that was our next stop. What do you think?

[ He makes a face. ] But I mean, if it's just their food choices, that's a whole other problem we might be facing.

[Ah, how strongly this place seems to demonize magic and its users. And for entertainment too-- as a mage himself, X'rhun does not know what to feel about this. On the one hand, this is simply so far from the magic he knows, and is an obvious parody besides, so he could simply just ignore all the implications of this. On the other... demonizing what is meant to be a wonderful art.

Though he's fairly sure some mages from home would have a long, disparaging commentary about this entire house.]

When in doubt, consult a book! [And there's one already there, how convenient.]

I shall leave the perusal of its contents to you, my friend. With my senses, I might be able to notice any danger coming, and react accordingly.

[Not to mention he can barely see in this dim light. Reading would be an impossibility.]

[ At that, Sam turns away from the disgusting jars and towards the book in the center of the room. He can't help but shoot X'rhun a smile at the suggestion- he's got to respect someone suggesting consulting a book, after all. ]

Sounds like a great idea to me. Thanks for pulling watch duty. [ However, as he approaches the dusty book a sense of caution surfaces. He pauses, hand hovering over the book. ]

You think... you think it matters if we touch it? I mean, we touched doors and those dolls- [ "Touch" obviously a mild way to put the violence they'd been force to enact, but. Details. ] but...

My friend, I think we've done more than enough to be beyond worrying about the consequences. [They've done a lot after all, got their grubby hands on various things about the house. X'rhun more than his companion-- after all, he is always ever so curious.

Tell a Seeker of the Sun to not do something, and they'll do it-- and more, just out of spite.] Whatever they may be, we shall handle it with aplomb, ey?

[The Miqo'te is confident. So, so confident.

[ He had a point, there. ] Sure, yeah, we'll be fine. We made it this far. [ What could really be worse than a TV ghost and living, bleeding dolls? The answer, of course, is about a million things, but Sam's going to remain positive.

However, when he does open the book it's pretty much impossible to actually read it, considering the writing is glowing. ] Woah- [ Before Sam gets a chance to slam it shut, the light is pouring out of the pages and encompassing the entire room. He barely has a chance to cover his eyes with his arm...

...When suddenly they find themselves back out in front of the haunted house, everything looking as it had before they entered. It takes Sam a second to process. ]

Wait, no no no- [ And he actually heads back towards the house, actually looking upset. ]

[When you're intent on catching something creeping up on you and your companion, concentrating so hard on your senses and what they may be able to pick up, being so suddenly displaced is mind-blowing. The burst of light from the book doesn't bother X'rhun the way it has Sam, not with his low sensitivity to light, but suddenly being in an entirely different location with its own sights, scents and sounds makes the Miqo'te's reel back, his head spinning from near overload. He needs a moment to recover...

A moment in which Sam is already marching back towards the house.]

Wh--

What in the seven hells just happened?!

[X'rhun nearly stumbles over his own two feet in his haste to catch up with Sam, his headache still not abating. The only reason he has not met the ground is the presence of his tail, a comforting weight keeping him balanced.]

I have no idea! [ Sam's no stranger to being teleported somewhere else in a flash, but it's usually thanks to an angel or something, not a book. He sounds annoyed, but certainly not at X'rhun. ]

It just- shot us out, but- [ He stops at the window, peering in and around it like he'll be able to gleam some sort of explanation from the cheesy decorations and blinking strobe lights. ] We don't even know how or why any of that was happening. [ He turns back to X'rhun, confusion written all over his face. ] Did you hear or see anything else? Other than the light?

[The Miqo'te shakes his head. Despite keeping his eyes open the entire time, he still missed how they arrived. He thinks he may have been blinded for just a second... But still he does not know they could have been moved like that without yanking them around. Usually teleportation like that does something. But all X'rhun has is his disorientation.

Which is more of his sickness than the sudden change in location, now.]

'Twas nothing but light.

[X'rhun presses himself against the windows of the house, attempting to see if there's anything different inside... But really now.]

Did you not feel anything? [Surely a man in better health than an old idiot like X'rhun would notice something, right?]