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

It's a lot to take in. Especially when you come in right when there's a party going on.

[Honestly, the party's a little much, even when you're not newly arrived. He pauses, looking around. There's a fairly quiet little corner by some hay bales. Maybe that would be a good place to start.]

[He gestures toward the other man.]

Come on. Less people this way. [Easier to talk, too. Without a whole bunch of party noise drowning them out.]

[Jack follows unflinchingly and easily. Come on, he hears, and there's no question to it. It comes as naturally and simply as breathing, and he doesn't consider the strangeness in how simply he obeys. The number of people doesn't necessarily bother him, but the strangeness of not being locked in perpetual combat has begun to get beneath his skin in a way he can't fully enumerate to himself.]

[He boils it down to the simplest possible directive: listen to what he's been told. Follow.]

[He nods, and obeys.]

[Shiro thinks nothing of it. All he saw was someone who looked as out of place at a party as he felt. So, therefore, it was natural to offer a more quiet place. Somewhere to duck out to.]

[Once they're away from the main crowd, he hitches a hip onto one of the hay bales, and extends a hand forward. His left hand. His real hand.]

I'm Shiro. Did you just get here?

[People are usually in a hurry to introduce themselves - but none of them ever extend the same courtesy to Jack. No one asks: what's your name, son? Not even Atlas, whose lilting Irish speech had felt like a lifeline, like a tangible cable Jack could use to lash himself to reality and assure himself that this was real, that this was happening, that he could make it through.]

[He does not offer his name because it does not occur to him that he should. In fact, the thought hardly crosses his mind. His instinct is to nod, soundlessly, but a more recent impulse overrides that, one born from too many discussions held over radio channels.]

[His voice rasps in the back of his throat, barbed wire scraped over stone:]

...yes.

[Left hand out. Jack flexes his own, an unconscious pull of muscle and sinew. There's a soft insect-buzz beneath the cuff of his sweater as he tunes the plasmid out of his system.]

[How long has it been since he's shaken anyone's hand? Atlas said he was looking forward to it, mere minutes before they watched the sub turn into shrapnel, blossoming into charred metal scrap and belching smoke.]

[He holds out his hand, obedient, riding off the muscle memory that tells him surely you must have done this before, but nonetheless visibly uncertain - as though he's only seen people shake hands in pictures, and is not entirely sure that this is how one is meant to do it in real life.]

[He halfway expected the other man to offer up his own name when he introduced himself. Wasn't that how it worked? How you were supposed to do things? He grips the hand, shaking it briefly, before he speaks up again.]

Have a name? If you're not comfortable giving it, it's all right.

[He won't pry too much. He wasn't kidding when he said this was a lot to take in. A lot to absorb. The whole "you're dreaming", the sudden mass of people in a strange place, partying. Like nothing weird was going on.]

[For all he knew, this guy could be from a similar position. Where the press of people was new. Was wildly new. Going from four other human beings to this had been a shock, at the very least.]

If you have questions... I'll do my best to answer them.

[It's not startling that he'd have a name, just...that someone would want to know it. Not even Atlas needed to know it. It must have been some kind of charitable fondness, some kind of adrenaline high, that had him taking this stranger under his wing. He'd gotten so attached, surely. And Jack...]

[No one asks. No one ever asks.]

[The word emerges a faint, straining whisper, a soft hiss:]

Jack.

[Does he have questions? He always has questions. But he never asks them, never poses them, just...does what he's told, because that's the only way out. Listen, and act. Convert everything you're feeling, every pulse of panic, every nervous jitter, every terrified jolt, into pushing forward and not stopping for anything.]

...do...you?

[The smile the man's raspy, whispering voice gets in return is as genuine as anything. A brief nod of acknowledgement.]

Nice to meet you, Jack. Sorry it's here.

[Sorry it's in this place. In this occasional dream-turned nightmare. It's pretty pleasant now, but who knows when it's going to change? Who know how much time this poor guy is going to have before he's suddenly thrust into a nightmare?]

[Probably better to warn him before anything like that happens to him.]

Do I? [Of course he has questions, but they're not anything anyone newly arrived could answer.] Nah, it's all right. But if I can help you clear up anything, I'll try.

[Sorry it's here. As if there's anything to apologize for. This place is, as far as Jack can tell, a significant upgrade from an underwater city. Here, at least, only some things want to kill you, instead of everything. That, he thinks, is a very generous improvement.]

[He hasn't had to set anyone on fire in at least half an hour, which might be a new record for him.]

I can help.

[He just...he really wants to help, maybe. Which is weird. Usually he ends up helping by rote necessity, because that's what's required of him, but this time, without prompting, here he is. Offering.]

[Shiro doesn't answer him for a moment, opting instead to look at him, quietly. The tension in him. The way Jack's built. Anything he might be able to notice, just at a glance.]

[And then nods.]

Okay -- how do you want to help?

[He looks like a man who's seen some fights. Maybe that's what he wants to help with. But looks can fool you. Just ask him about meeting North. Or any of the Blade, specifically.]

[Jack blinks, as if...as if it hasn't occurred to him that it wouldn't be obvious, just by looking at him, how he would help. He doesn't say anything, for a long moment, because he's simply gotten to be in the habit of not saying much of anything at all. What good would that do?]

[He simply opens one hand, and the plasmid churns up to the surface: sparking his fingers in a hum of blue electricity that sizzles at his fingertips, pulsing a charged glow through his veins.]

[He seems to think this is answer enough.]