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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.
laura moon . american gods .
a) [ we've made it. we've made it through the ring girl room (fuck you), the homicidal doll room (fuck you), we didn't open the book because fuck you and now? now we're outside. we're outside amongst the gravestones and the dark, the freshly bulging earth. and as one rotten hand pushes up through the dirt of a grave, Laura lets out the most indignant noise she's made throughout this whole, wretched ordeal. ]
Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.
[ the dim, campy turned dismal light of the haunted house may not have shown it, but the skin of her otherwise perfect face is wretched and yellowing. her eyes partially filmed with the frozen onset of death's rot.
as jokes go? this one's pretty bad. ]
b) [ you've made it. you've made it through the ring girl room, the homicidal doll room, you didn't open the book and now? now you're outside. you're outside amongst the gravestones and the dark, and the freshly devastated corpses of the previously undead.
there's a small swarm of bodyparts and strewn entrails, torn and decomposed skin tossed everywhere. heads decorating the yard here and there. the smell is fucking atrocious. and whether the sight of a tiny woman stood amongst it all, clinging to her right arm as it hangs loosely in her bomber jacket, is more or less alarming than the rest is up to you to say.
at the sound of someone else present, her head lifts sharply up from frowning down at that damaged arm. she looks - scared? sort of. but just-got-attacked-by-a-swarm-of-hungry-zombies-scared? eh. ]
𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚑!!!!
[ the good thing about this stupid fucking place? she's more or less over not eating, not drinking, etc. everything's stupid, her rot seems to be suspended, and although she can't taste it, taking a bite or two to eat isn't going to send her any closer to the grave. might make her feel a little less human, but only after it's allowed her to blend in. be where the people are, etc. you know.
so throughout the evening she's going to try more or less whatever's offered to her, or whatever happens to be closest to hand while she's lingering at a drinks table and finds herself close to someone who might talk to her for 10 minutes without noticing she's a rotting slab of long-enough-dead meat and running for the hills. it's a party. it's dark and the night feels warm in ways that have nothing to do with the flesh.
she's going to make the most of it. ]
— Hey.
[ it's an awkward opening, out of absolutely nowhere while you're busy choosing a drink or trying to mind your business doing something else altogether, but it's a party. and it's a start. ]
[ (PICK YOUR POISON shove a food/drinkstuff in the subject or tag and I'll run with it OR I'll rng one for her for the thread if you don't have a pref). ]
𝚆𝙸𝙻𝙳𝙲𝙰𝚁𝙳,
( any and every other thing is a+ okay by me. she's definitely a zombie we can absolutely play with this if you faNCY or hmu @
fuck a
Never, that's when. His jeans are ripped below the knees now, but at least they match the shirt he has on, which was already ripped off the end to begin with.
He's gone this long without using his claws, he decides he's not about to start now. Stomping one boot flat into a rising hand, Logan walks over the graves in determined, heavy footsteps before grabbing one shovel and holding the other out to the girl with him. ]
Hey. [ He's not going to comment on her skin, even if seeing it under natural light is a little unsettling. ] You gonna run, or stay?
[ There's a definitive crunch when he digs the shovel sharp end first into one of the mounds of dirt. He's very sure he's just stabbed whatever's inside it. ]
no subject
[ whether or not this is hyperbole remains to be seen, but she does look pissed, and absolutely doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast. the outstretched shovel goes accepted - chances are she'll break it before she breaks many other things, but it's a weapon. never hurts to have something to hit things with.
besides, maybe if she plays pretend with the shovel for a while she might get out of this without having the conversation. and he's proved himself capable company so far. so. ]
You?
[ out comes the bulk of a shoulder and the attached neck from one grave and she stabs the shovel out towards it, severing decayed tissue with barely a flinch of the face to show any sign of effort. that heap goes still. ]
cw: gore
[ His boots trail dark, coagulated blood with every step he takes, but Logan flips the shovel in his hand so it's curved outward if he takes a swing.
And he takes a swing, mashing into the first head he sees and hearing the brittle bones inside cracking nicely.
It seems easy at first, swinging a shovel about and nabbing some of these rancid fucks with stabs to the head or blunt force trauma. But Logan starts to notice that not everyone stays down.
He and Laura have more or less hit everything that's risen from graves, but only a small percentage of them are dead. The rest, well, they move despite their injuries (or whatever limbs they've lost), and Logan doesn't understand why.
One of them (legless) grabs at his ankle, and Logan brings his foot up to smash the sole of his boot into its face. He hears the bone crack, feels how soft the brains inside are, and even sees them on the end of his boot when he pulls it out (that it's shining with blood isn't lost on him).
But the thing is still holding onto him, and he snarls as he brings the shovel down to cut it through the neck, watching as the zombie goes limp on the ground before him. ]
Re: cw: gore
it's the goddamned heads.
jesus christ (no, somebody else, something not divine), as if she's playing the protagonist in a fucking zombie movie. as if.
Logan severs a head and Laura takes that final proof as the time to discard the shovel. there's a fury in her that's been brewing for a while - she can take so much, but this crosses a line.
it's fists from there on in. feet. an elbow, once, when one of the lumbering fucks with only half a leg and a bashed in face rises up from its shuffling crawl and gets her at the wrong angle. the strength this tiny woman exhibits is undoubtedly inhuman. one time she throws a punch and it smashes clean through a rancid chest cavity. she grabs the back of its head and pulls it right off, tearing up through its chest as she goes. another, she throws a kick at the groin of a shambling mess and the force of it tears the rest of the thing roughly in half up the middle - the part of the body still connected to the head goes to get up again until she stamps her foot down hard into its jaw and scuffs skull and brains easily out over the disrupted dirt.
teeth sink into the flesh of her leg and it barely goes noticed when a chunk almost falls away, hanging on by skin and a few sinews of bloodless muscle. she reaches down and rips the head off the shoulders of the offending corpse, tosses it aside.
by the time they're done, the mess is horrific, the smell worse. covered in scraps of dead flesh and bone and the murky brown mixtures of dead blood, decay and dirt, she probably ought to feel right at home.
it's nice, at least, to have something to spit out that isn't maggots. she does, a little mouthful of whatever's made it into her face throughout this messy fight, down onto the broken body of an ex-undead. ]
Zombie fucks.
[ maybe she should have a little more sympathy for her kin - but last she looked, she wasn't out for brains to keep her failing corpse afloat. ]
Re: cw: gore
Flipping the shovel to use the side of its metal end as a blade, Logan swings with just enough force to decapitate, and does.
She's angry. He feels it just as much as he sees it, but doesn't think to comment on it. She's unleashing fury and anger and Logan's almost clinical in his own hits: he aims for the neck, cuts it off, and clinches it every time. The only time he doesn't is when he feels teeth jam into his shoulder and he snarls at the same time he slams his head back, the adamantium skeleton taking care of the rest as its weight shatters the skull behind him. Reaching back with his free hand, ignoring the mess of rotted, black globs of blood and the brains that're threaded in the hair at the back of his head, Logan pulls the zombie's head off.
He realises a little belatedly that he's gotten a chunk of flesh ripped out, too. His nerves are exposed. That's not good.
But it's not enough to distract him, and he keeps going regardless, using shovel and boot to smash and slice.
The rot is everywhere when it's over. He's left standing in a mess of decapitated bodies, the solid-not-solid chunks of zombie blood spattered across his face and over his (ripped) shirt and (ripped) jeans. His boots look like they're going to be unsalvageable, but Logan hopes for the best.
The shovel falls from his hand and its handle dips into a puddle of black, the end of it knocking gently atop a ripped-out spine.
Logan realises he's still bleeding. ]
...ah. [ He almost moves to touch it, then thinks better of that. His shirt's been bitten out of, and the fabric surrounding it is soaked, the grey darker now that it's been dyed with crimson. Logan hisses, and he wishes his healing factor worked--
But the last time it did, it hurt someone else instead. Taking in the fact that Laura's quite literally missing a chunk of leg on her, he decides maybe that's not the best course of action.
His knees feel weak. There's nothing he wants to do more than just buckle down and sleep.
But they've got to find a way out of here, and he turns around and stares at the space between the side of the house and the fence that surrounds it.
Turning to Laura, he shrugs his good shoulder up. ] No other way. [ It's more self-reassurance than anything, and he lets out a grunt as he moves, ignoring the way the blood spills down his body and starts to soak into the hem of his jeans, too.
God, he's fucking tired.
And he smells like a god damn sewer had sex with a rubbish dump. ]
Re: cw: gore
Hey. You look like shit.
[ they ripped off all of these damn things' heads to avoid dying in this shitty haunted house gone wrong, and that's not the way he's going if he keeps bleeding like this while trying to drag himself down the hill for help. and if they bump into anything else around the corner? no. ]
I don't need you to tell me I don't look any better, I know, but I'm not the one bleeding out. So.
[ Laura reaches down and rips off the small chunk of leg that's starting to frustrate her with its flapping about (doesn't seem to contain too many important walking muscles, thankfully - there's a bit of a limp, but she's fine, and she'd rather get him lifted now than have to haul up dead weight once he's passed out... which looks likely). that done, she steps in front of him, turns around to show him her back, holds the leg chunk up and says over her shoulder - ]
Hold this and hop on.
[ there's a foot and a bit height difference to contend with, but aside from the awkwardness of that she figures it'll probably be okay. ]
no subject
And he says so. ] What?
[ It's less the fact that he thinks she's too injured to carry him and more the fact that... well. She's tiny. ]
I weigh 300 pounds at least, lady. [ He steps to the side a bit, but stays behind her, a heavy hand falling onto her shoulder. ] Just this'll be fine.
no subject
turning to squint at him over her shoulder, Laura's lip curls up in mild disgust tinged with a hint of something that's maybe a little impressed. ]
You're going to hold my leg and still walk? [ holding a chunk of leg is disgusting. she recognises this, at least on some small level that still remembers what normal might have been once upon a time. clearly, he's about the same level of removed from normality. whatever. they're both covered in zombie pieces. normal's relative.]
I'm not a doctor. I don't know how many minutes of bleeding like that it's going to take a man who's just killed half a fucking yard full of zombies to pass out. But if that happens before we make it back to someone who can make sure you're not going to die or lose and arm or whatever and I have to pick you up without any help from you, I'm going to be pissed.
[ through all this, there's nothing in her expression to say she's anything other than completely serious. and with that, and a pointed raise of her brows, she turns to lead on. ]
no subject
But he sucks it up. (He's been sucking a lot of things up, lately.) He decides if climbing her back ends up getting the poor girl hunched over and falling, then he's going to get off without telling her he told her so.
He works his jaw slightly, then settles for the ever-elegant: ] ...fine.
[ So wrap one arm around her shoulders he does, climbing her back soon after with some measure of awkwardness. The last person who'd ever carried him like this had been his brother, and at the time Logan hadn't had any adamantium to make it difficult.
He doesn't know how she's going to pull it off, but. Better this than getting another god damn earful.
(He makes sure to hold the leg chunk firmly.) ]
no subject
she waits. stands as tall as she can to give him a fighting chance of not looking like a guy climbing into one of those tiny clown cars. and then she hooks an arm around first one thigh... and then the other.
the hardest part is getting the balance right. she's used to being a little over 5 ft - with a whole extra body to account for in height, weight and width, it surprises her that the first couple of steps very nearly have her falling first forward, then back. and yeah, in the end, she does end up a little hunched. but only because gravity bends for no man, woman or corpse, and strong or not she's still got to obey the laws of physics.
after those first few faltering steps spent figuring the angle, Laura huffs Logan a little higher up onto her slight hips and sets off at a steady pace around the corner of the building. it doesn't seem to be too much of a struggle. ]
You okay up there?
[ better keep him talking. having a man die on her back isn't the dream. ]
no subject
[ But also more than a little incredulous. She's really... carrying him, and it's bizarre watching it happen and feeling her body shift slightly from side to side with every step. It's a gentle rocking motion, the sort that Logan would have fallen asleep with if she smelled more familiar, but as it is they reek of rotted guts and assorted kinds of blood, and Logan's never been able to sleep through that. ]
You, uh... [ He's still bleeding, but he's sure he'd have bled more if he had to move his arm as he walked. As it is, it's a steady trickle, but at least it's a trickle.
The fact she's hunched over keeps it from spilling out too much, too. ]
You're strong as shit.
[ He realises he's stating the obvious, but cut him some slack-- he's a full foot taller and then some, and the girl doesn't exactly look like a pro wrestler. ]