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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.

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it came from delaware ► arrival (network)

[Hopefully you're having a good morning, because it's about to be ruined. The cause behind this — public enemy number one, you might say — is a short, middle-aged man dressed all in black, which might actually seem kind of goth were it not for the fact that one of his pieces of clothing includes a sweater vest.]

There we— no— [There's a sharp exhale of air paired with a clicking tongue around his annoyed mumbling as he tries to center the camera properly. Guess who didn't read the instructions that came with the Fluid carefully?] This is so— oh! There we go. Am I recording?

[He takes a step back, properly coming into frame.]

Yes. Hello. [Good evening, you might expect him to say even though it is a) not evening, and b) not a late night horror movie block, because those haven't been around since the late 90s.] My name is R.L. Stine, from Madison, Delaware. I don't know if anyone from there can hear or see this, but— [An exhale.] —Hannah, sweetheart, if you're out there, talk to me, please. Or Cooper. I'll even take Champion. I am THAT desperate.

For everyone else, it's important that you listen to me CAREFULLY. You're all being held against your will and tortured by a master manipulator. I know who's behind this.

[He takes a deep breath.]

His name is Stephen King.

there are copyright laws for this ► hocus pocus

[Our man R.L. Stine has been having quite a day so far.

It's not like he isn't used to insane, homicidal monsters the size of his leg coming after him; it's one of the cornerstones of his writing career, after all. But when he's gone from roasting a gang of killer lawn gnomes alive in his oven to grappling with an evil ventriloquist dummy that may or may not be the personification of his darkness to trying to outrun a group of porcelain dolls with knives, all in the rough span of forty-eight hours, he has to wonder: is the universe trying to tell him something?

He's escaped from the last room with one long tear in the bottom leg of his pants from where a doll tried to cut his leg open, which is a pretty good victory all considered. That doesn't mean he's happy when he makes it to the next room — a witch's cottage with a bunch of rotten food in jars and drippy candles and a book made of blah blah blah blah.]

Be...honest with me. [He's still trying to catch his breath from the mad dash it took to make it this far. He stoops over, hands on his knees, looking up at the person he's with.] Why did we come in here again?

Edited 2018-10-02 06:41 (UTC)

Okay. Seriously? Why do so many people bring up this King douchebag?

(Wasn't he just some mediocre author from Maine who liked to write about kids being tormented in a colorful variety of ways.....

...Oh okay you know what, Eddie kinda sees the point being made here.)

THANK YOU! [Loud.] Sorry! Sorry, you just don't know how... ahh, satisfying it is to hear that. Especially from his own demographic.

[That put him in a good mood, at least momentarily.]

But you've just answered your own question. Why would they bring him up if he wasn't responsible for this?

(It's okay, bud, no one can get louder than Eddie when he's shrieking on one of his tangents. He does look a bit startled to be thanked so genuinely by an adult though? What's with that.)

What's his demographic? (Dumbass little kids who get nervous over just about anything and everything?

His mouth opens, hangs there for a second, and then slowly shuts.)

I have kinda heard that this stuff is apparently like his books. I can't really blame the guy for writing about Maine, though. Have you been to Maine? It's arguably the worst place on earth.

[ The saddest thing is that Logan had a spark of hope, there. ]

You and King in some kinda pissing contest or something?

A contest would imply that both sides have an equal chance of winning. [Translation: yes.] And also, that I haven't already won.

If there was one.

Uhuh.

I get the world's pretty King-y, but you really think that guy's got the power to make an entire whatever the hell this is?

Why wouldn't he? World-building isn't that difficult if you have a comfy writing space and a good word processor. [He coughs, and a mumbled up cluster of words spills out of his mouth that sounds suspiciously like "If you're a hack."] Besides, have you seen how big some of his books are? I don't even want to think about how big the hell-space he's got in The Stand is. No thank you.

Edited 2018-10-02 07:18 (UTC)

Books are books. Text on paper.

[ Or screens? Fuck those, though. ]

This isn't a god damn book.

And text is words and words are power. [He speaks in the hurried, eye-rolling pace of a teacher stuck explaining why two plus two equals four.] Written and spoken word is some of the most powerful magic there is, you know.

I'm fairly certain, like ninety-eight percent, that enchanted brooms and cats made of smoke aren't a thing in the real world. Can you tell me they are?

Edited 2018-10-02 07:39 (UTC)

[ Man, if this were any other scenario, he'd be calling Eye-Boy over to check out this fantastic line.

As it is Logan's staring at R.L. Stine's face and he's realising now why he never became an author despite his love of literature. ]

Not my real world, but others.

So what's your theory? Stephen King's writing all this and his writings came to life?

But not yours. [Because that's the most important part of this argument, and also, even he recognizes how bad of an idea it would be to start posing the theory that those other worlds may not be real — same with the people from them.

Then again, if they can talk, think and feel, would that really make them fake? He knows firsthand how much of a slippery slope that is.]

That's the main one. Or it's someone who's a VERY big fan of his. That would make him responsible by proxy, so either way, it's his fault.

[This is so iron-clad, you have no idea.]

It's not just my world that matters any more. [ Though he'll admit he doesn't quite grasp the idea of multiple worlds as well as he could just yet. It's fun in science fiction, but again-- books are books, and this is whatever the fuck it is. ]

If King or some fan did do it, it doesn't change anything. Doesn't make you any less trapped unless someone can get them to write in an exit door.

Did you get your letter from Sodder?

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How certain are you about this?

[ ruler is listening!! in liu of her battle dress and armor, all she has are her regular clothes. just a normal girl for now. ]

It sounds like you know him well.

One-hundred percent. This place... It has his stink all over it. I've seen the face of true evil before, many times.

...I mean, he's not it, not evil-evil, but he's still pretty close.

[ first it's playwrights who loves tragedies, and now it's an author of horror. this is just great. ]

I've never had the chance to read his books [ or films, partially looking through laeticia's memories. ] but I've heard of them before. I didn’t realize that he [ or at least a version of him in this world, right? ] would ever go this far.

[ has ruler or laeticia heard of stine before? maybe in a distant memory, but the memory is, again, distant. ]

You also make him sound like your enemy, Mr. Stine.

[ there are more important things to focus on then stephen king theories right now, because she just heard the coolest statement sonce she arrived here. ]

Back the fuck up. Like the R.L. Stine?

Edited 2018-10-02 14:35 (UTC)

[One word: finally. After all flak he's been getting from this, you'd think that would be enough to sour his mood beyond salvage. That isn't the case anymore.]

I can't think of... anyone else with that particular name, no. [Look at him trying to be modest; modesty in this case amounting to trying to look nonchalant as he picks at something underneath his nails.]

[ Her eyes are so wide and it looks like she's trying really hard to not squeal like some stupid fangirl. Be cool, Chloe. ]

Holy shit!! [ That's not cool. That is the opposite of cool. ] Holy shit, your books gave me so many nightmares when I was kid. Stay Out of the Basement, Say Cheese and Die -- Fuckin' Night of the Living Dummy! I can't believe you're really here.

... I can't believe you live somewhere as boring as Delaware.

[R.L. Stine does not ring a bell for Rei, unfortunately. Goosebumps didn't really make it to Japan until after Rei's timeline, but Stephen King? She's aware of him...primarily as an American horror writer that writes popular fiction that she has no time for. Go figure.]

I don't think Stephen King is creative enough to come up with something as insidious as this place. But that's an amusing theory all the same.

You "don't think" but you're still telling me I'm wrong? Which is it?

You're wrong, but I don't think he's a very creative writer.

[That's a good response though, and Rei hums a laugh.]

Unless Mr. King has somehow developed the ability to spin worlds into reality and not merely reader's imagination, that is.

This place is something else.

Like... the author?

[ Uh. ]

This seems a little out of his skill set.

Stephen King? Well, bravo - bravo to him!

[clapclapclapclap.]

Truly a master of terror - why, I can't think of the last time where I've had so much fun!

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