JULY 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

[sodder]

JULY 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to July's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: DREAM 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: Violence, Freddie Kreuger references, fire, forced sleep with some drug-like references, stabbing, nightmares, monsters, possibility for extreme alcohol consumption, and lobster festivals
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

WHEN THE BOAT COMES IN

It’s July and July in Maine means lobster! The Lobster Festival springs up seemingly overnight down near Koji Pond. In the morning, there’s a large parade that makes its way through town, starting from the top of East Main Street and all the way down through West Main St until they hit the festival. There are tents, a few rides, games, arts and crafts, and most importantly, food pretty much everywhere behind the hotel and you can help yourself to free ice cream at the ice cream shop! Lobster ice cream and Blueberry ice cream are pushed to the forefront, but you can get just about any flavor you could possibly dream of in the long run.

You can hear live music playing and a stage has been set up on the roof of the arcade. Live bands play everything from folk music to jazz to classic rock that you may or may not have heard in your lifetime. There’s a tent where local artists (including sleepers) are selling art, a craft tent where people are selling goods they’ve made such as pottery and homemade fudge, and a Do It Yourself tent where people are teaching you how to make your own buoy decoration for your front yard or how to weave your own baskets!

A seafood cooking contest is held for anyone who may want to show off their culinary skills. Any kind of seafood dishes are allowed, but they highly encourage showing your abilities to cook with lobster! Think you can beat the longstanding champions from Deerington? It’s pretty unlikely, especially since it looks like the townspeople keep trying to sabotage your meal as you’re making it. Did you mean to put in an entire half cup of salt to your stew? Oops. Guess you better figure out how to work with it anyway.

Across Koji Pond, there are floating crates set up for the great crate race! See if you can make it across the lake fastest – challenge a friend! These lobster crates wobble pretty heavily, but each runner is given a life vest for when they might inevitably fall in. Be careful if you do! Some of those strange looking fish in there definitely bite.

Each morning at the festival there will be an all you can eat blueberry pancake breakfast. Surprisingly, nothing drastic seems to happen, so have as many pancakes as your body can hold! They’re delicious, after all. Through the rest of the day, it’s easy to get your hands on lobster rolls of varying sizes, full steamed lobster meals (with corn on the cob and a buttered dinner roll), lobster salad, steamed mussels, scallops, haddock (baked or fried), fried clams, lobster stuffed risotto balls, blueberry cobbler, and strawberry shortcake are all available at any of the food stands. All the food seems perfectly safe. But you’re gonna need something to wash it down with…

The drink stand has a great deal to offer, but every drink seems to come with a particularly strange side effect to it. People who enjoy the hand crafted beers will find that it gets them drunk twice as fast and can even make people who would normally never drink completely wasted after just a glass or two. Every glass you have makes you thirstier than the last and it can be easy to want to reach for another beer to try and get yourself together. In fact, it’s particularly hard to reach for anything else. Urges to drink the beer will last for at least one full hour or can be cut short by being responsible and going to drink some water instead.

So maybe beer isn’t your thing; that’s okay! There’s also blueberry lemonade which will turn you the color of blueberries from head to toe! Fresh iced tea will make you feel particularly sarcastic, prone to mocking even your closest friends and gossiping with complete strangers about the things you may or may not have heard about the town. Got a juicy secret you were trying to keep for someone? Well, it’s out in the open now. Cream sodas will make you extremely cuddly, wanting to cozy up next to the closest person to you for a little while. The more you drink, the more touchy-feely you may get, so maybe try and stick to just one or two unless you’re looking for some afternoon delight. Hot tea will make you feel calm and relaxed to an extent you never have before. To the point where you might even want to just go lay down on one of the docks and take a quick catnap in the middle of the afternoon sun. Hopefully you wore sunscreen.

Effects from any drink will last for one to three hours or until you have some strawberry shortcake from one of the food vendors.

BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL

So maybe the lobster festival isn’t your thing or you got tired of all the crowds and wanted to go and do something else fun. Strangely enough, some of the fields out near the farmhouses apparently have a bunch of blueberry bushes that no one’s ever noticed before! They’re in full bloom and the berries look ripe for the picking. Perfectly round, juicy, warm from the sun – you could eat a whole handful of these and maybe never feel more satisfied. They’re deliciously sweet, perfect for pies and cobblers. And a whole basket seems to be reasonably priced, so why not go out and pick as many as you can!

The longer you’re out in the fields, the more you’ll start to feel a little groggy. It’s easy to shake off as just being from the sun at first and you might think about heading back, but something in you wants to keep picking. So you trudge in deeper into the fields, and that sleepy feeling becomes more and more difficult to ignore. Eventually, you might find that you’re ready to just lay down and take a nap in the shade of a particularly large blueberry bush. It seems like a good a spot as any – the ground is nice and soft. Just curl up for a little while and close your eyes. Even people who are normally not prone to sleeping will find that they are compelled and even capable of taking a quick nap in these fields.

Any dreams you may have while sleeping will feel more vivid than normal – to the point where it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. Did you actually manage to find your way out of Deerington and back home? You can pinch yourself, but you won’t wake up, and it’ll hurt like a bitch, so it’s hard to be sure. Dreams seem to mostly be pleasant ones, but the occasional nightmare might find its way in to your otherwise restful sleep. Anyone who stumbles on you asleep in the fields might even hear you talking in your sleep, rambling out conversations and feelings you might normally have kept quiet. Got feelings for someone you were trying to bury? They might just hear you mutter them out loud if they’ve found you there in the dirt. Wanted to make sure no one in Deerington found out you had no home to go back to? That sucks, it sounds like you might have just spilled the beans without even knowing.

The real question is if the person who finds you will wake you up or just keep listening to find out more of your secrets without having to pry for them.

NINE, TEN, NEVER SLEEP AGAIN

It’s not just in the blueberry fields that sleepiness seems to be catching. Throughout Deerington, people seem to be having a harder and harder time staying awake for long stretches. The desire for a quick nap or even a long snooze becomes harder to fight as each day passes and you might find yourself nodding off in places you normally wouldn’t – behind the wheel of a car, in the middle of a store, at work… Hopefully no one gets too hurt or loses a job during these strange episodes.

Only unlike in the fields, when you do give in to sleep, the dreams you have are now far from pleasant. Nightmares are running amok in your mind, but that vivid realism? That inability to tell when you’re awake or asleep? That has definitely not changed. You might not have even realized you’ve fallen asleep at all – most of the scenery around you seems to be Deerington itself, but something just seems off. You don’t have time to think about it though because it’s then that things start to get scary. Whether it’s reliving your most traumatic experiences, running in to your worst enemies, or seeing monster of your own creation popping up and chasing you, danger and fear are permeating every corner of these dreams. Horror movie fans might find they’re being chased by Freddie Kreuger, hunted down by Jason, cornered by the aliens from Alien. Or maybe there are terrifying monsters from your own world that have started to come for you and are trying to tear you limb from limb. It feels impossible to outrun, and maybe in the end, you don’t. But if you die in your dreams, you don’t really die in real life, right? So you might just snap awake with a particularly frightening jolt.

You think when you wake up that everything is fine. That sense of fear is gone and you’re able to just breathe. But as you go about your day, you start to see images from your nightmares out of the corner of your eyes. Was that Freddie’s claws scratching against the blackboard? Did you just hear the strange clicking of alien feet against the tiles? You hope it’s in your imagination, but this is Deerington. When does anything ever stay normal?

The danger from your nightmares is definitely invading your personal space and it will try to kill you. Anyone else can see these images just as plain as day as you can and they are welcome to either sit and watch or help you fight. Whatever is trying to kill you will go down in the same manner it would have back home – that means that it could be as easy as a bullet between the eyes or it could be as complex as an intense ritual. Guess you’ll have to figure it out for yourself before it really does kill you.

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.

Comments

[unvirgin]

M'pretty sure I'll wake up tomorrow and question everything about my life's choices leading up to this moment, but right now, eating lobster ice cream is definitely not one of them.

[ Even in the height of her intoxication, there's a chance she's going to remember this interaction, fragments of conversation rather than anything linear — but she might actually recall the name of a country she's never heard of, and a kind stranger with a comforting lilt to her voice. ]

You bake? [ She asks the question around another spoonful of ice cream, hardly the height of manners at this juncture. ] That's great. I basically burned every batch of cupcakes I've ever tried to make, but by that point I usually get distracted eating all the icing straight outta the bowl.

[unvirgin]

Yeah. The newest of the new. [ Later, she might realize that it isn't just the effects of the drink that had lured her, but for now she's just studying him with a spark of fascination in her gaze, trying to ignore the sudden prickling she's feeling along the length of her spine. ]

What's your name?

[unvirgin]

Who knows? Maybe there's a fruit punch festival in our future.

[ She takes another sip and then another, and maybe at this point she's coming closer to chugging it in a way that is definitely far from her norm; briefly, she pauses to swipe the back of her hand over her chin to collect a drop that's slowly trailed out of the corner of her mouth, exhaling softly. ]

Uh, Dana. Is me. Hi. [ She's not the best with introductions even when she is sober. ] Kai? That short for something?

[ethicalproblems]

[ Between her positioning and his passable upper body strength, it’s not too difficult to get them both out of harm’s immediate way. As soon as she’s up, he lets go, looking back towards the shambling horde still mostly assembled within the alley, minus a few stragglers branching out after losing their easy lunch. ]

Seems like a lack of foresight.

[ Home security has never needed to be on the top of his priority list, but Topher’s still fairly sure people generally lock their accessible entrances, even when the worst threats are usually a little less... dead. ]

Which I appreciate since it’s given us a snazzy little safe house.

[ It’s actually a pretty nice apartment; organized, clean, and overall not the worst place to hide out in for the near future. He starts to push back down the window, the sights and smells below not really adding to any feeling of security. ]

We are safe, right? They’re not gonna come piling in here the second my heart rate goes back below one fifty?

[howlett]

“S’not the point.” [There’s no doubt in his mind she can handle it. For Logan, it’s a question of why should she have to? But his words are grumbled quietly. Offhandedly even. He’s not looking for an argument.]

[It’s probably a good she’s standoffish. Better than naive. Hell, maybe he’s being too trusting himself after what he’s seen of this place so far. Maybe whatever this is, isn’t what it seems either. But it’s not everyday he gets an opportunity to start again with someone. If it comes back to bite him, well, so be it.]

[Tightening the strap around her knuckles just enough to stay in place, he turns up his palms when he finishes and he gives her an apologetic smile.] “Sorry to disappoint.”

“She’s …older. Older than you anyway. And just as stubborn as the both of us.”

[He when he rises to his feel again he rolls up the tattered cuff of his sleeve again until it looks as tidy as the one he didn’t ruin and looks down at her like she makes him think of a lot of things he’s not saying.] “How long you been here, Laura? Long enough to show me around? If my money’s any good here, maybe I can get us something to eat that ain’t candy.”

[fumitory]

( ...wait a minute...

...how likely is it that they both possess...'feathered friends'...

is Ben seriously questioning, if not judging the situation given that he himself possesses a friend of the aviary sort, therefore proving to him that it can be as plausible as anything? yes. yes, Ben is still going to label that as curious, suspicious even, because what are the odds of Mister Crowley speaking of a 'friend' that is also...

but all Ben finally does is provide a thoughtful and unsubtle 'huh' aloud, clearly confused.

it's a good enough distraction to keep him from noticing the berries suddenly appearing back into the basket; he's fighting a yawn and hasn't a single hand free, and his limbs already do feel oddly heavy. how long will it take for Ben to notice? place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.

instead, Ben is captured by the queries. guess it worked! ) It's, well— scenic, to some degree. Save for the stalker clowns, and...sewer monsters. ( Ben's sighing, weary, and not from this dreamy haze this time. Ben doesn't enjoy looking back on the whole carnival fiasco. ) I don't know from experience, but after arriving I was fortunate to discover I had just missed town-wide uproar about us 'Sleepers.' Prior to that...allergies from hell, apparently. ( there is a traceable part of Ben that clearly wants to be flippant about all of the impossible things he's just said, and as one can imagine, that part of him is nearly indignant that all of those particulars are apparently irrefutable. )

[redrighthanded]

Hellboy nods along with Fern's list. It all sounds pretty normal, at least -- he assumes -- for a kid who was part plant and part blade.

Orgalorg, though, makes him frown. It deepens at the mention of the Lich. Those sound more like his speed, though he doesn't recognise the names.

"Sounds like a pretty tough roster you've got there. You did all that on your own?" He's impressed.

All you can scarf!

[onerthes]

Oh darling, the food will be there in a moment, I promise.

[The laughter came almost gayly from a three-eyed woman who settled down without much of a howdy do and smiled over at her brightly. Still suffering from a bad case of 'I died' amnesia that hadn't gone away, she had no way of knowing if she'd ever met this girl, but it was hard not to come up and smile at someone wolfing food down faster than a hungry Waste.]

I don't think we've met, are you new here?

[laminae]

Fern blinks at the question, not expecting it. Usually people have been looking at him like he was crazy, so this is a nice change. "No! I mean - sometimes? Usually my brother or friends were there too, but -"

He pauses, giving this some more thought. "For some of that big stuff, it was just me. Or me and Finn."

Does that count as on his own? Sort of? Glob, who even knows, he isn't sure and he doesn't want to think about that too hard, so he turns that question around. "What about you? You must have fought all kinds of crazy stuff, right?"

[variantcover]

Yeah, I never really traveled growing up. But in the past three years or so I've been traveling a bunch.

[ Mostly to another universe, but... semantics. ]

[vajratna]

Really? Any place special?

[ aru has traveled when it comes to other magical dimensions but she's not sure you can count those. "hey, I went to the realm of the dead". ]

[firbolg]

(Well count Caducues out of a big floppy sunhat then, because it looks very cute on her. It's a good thing the action of laying the hat across her head wakes her almost immediately because otherwise he would have turned to start picking berries for himself; at the sound of her rousing, Caduceus turns back, leaving the bush he had been inspecting alone for a moment.

He patiently allows her a moment to whine, because she has just woken up from what must have been a really good nap in a lovely smelling field, so that one is on him, but the moment she focuses on him he smiles. He's pretty pleased to see her.)

Hey, Jester. Woah there- (She staggers, and he reaches out automatically to help steady her, catching her hands.)

Take it easy, you were pretty fast asleep. How long have you been here?

[bigbadrose]

Welllllll... the whisks shoot gamma rays, so... and the plunger sucks your face out.

Do the billiard balls explode?

[timeriffs]

No.

But his mouth does. Big explodey ray of explosive death blow up.

[He's making it extra clear here.]

[timeriffs]

Dave.

[Nice and simple here. No BS. Because it's his name and his name is cool.]

[timeriffs]

What, Dave: the Ass-blast Conte isn't grand enough? It's a promise and a threat, an honest chef's name.

[timeriffs]

[It is nice, a stroll through some magic sleep blueberry bushes at night, a good pal in your arm. What a swell time.]

Yeah, figured. At least if you start arguing with yourself again, maybe I can be your fight referee.

[One day he might say a quadrant name correctly. One day.]

[bigbadrose]

Huh. I wonder if they're related....

How'd you defeat them? [Gesture...] With a sword?

[crawfordstone]

[ He plants both hands on the bar, leaning toward her. ]

Vodka.

[ He drummed his fingers on the bar, wanting to leave it like that. But damn it, he couldn't have her running off and trying something stupid. ]

Cause getting blind drunk's your only "exit" from this place. You wanna try dying? They just put you back together. One moment your dead, the next you're back here. Bit worse off than you started, or so they say.

[timeriffs]

I mean, possibly. What you described isn't the most balls to head stupid shit I've ever seen, so who even knows anymore.

[He holds up his sword, staring at it, and looks visibly grim for a moment.]

Yeah.

[He had to cut off his brother's head, too, when he did, but hey, nbd, right?? Right. Dirk was brought back to life, so it was all cool. Soooo cool.]

It also exploded. The head.

[bigbadrose]

One would expect.

I'm surprised it didn't take you with it.

Err, don't try to cut off dalek's tops, they're made of a metal harder than diamond. So unless your sword is like -- super duper concentrated black hole magic, it'd probably just get you shot, yeah?

But again... hopefully there's no way they're here. And if even one was... it'd be taking over the whole place, so it's not.

Nameless/The Monster | The Magicians | OTA

[monstrousmistake]

Food for Blood.

[The monster has eaten the little candies in the jar given to him by the being called Sodder in that strange little basket, he had no reason not to. There's nothing that can really do him harm, and he thinks nothing of how he got here. This body has craved fun pills and liquids and sometimes when he ate or drank too much, his memory got funny. He must have come to this place in the black spot. He considers going back to the last place he saw Quentin, but the festival catches his attention.

It's new, and interesting and he's been so bored.

The sweets and different foods of course catch his attention, and when he grabs a bunch of pancakes and pies and sweet cream soda to indulge in without paying, he casually swipes a gash into the chest of the local who starts to bother him about it. But nerfing of his abilities makes it so that the man doesn't die, it's too shallow, so he falls down yelling in pain. Still not thinking much of it, the Monster just glances at the man and keeps strolling around, stuffing some blueberry pie in his face and getting it on his cheek next to the blood spatter.]

Drowned Monstel

[The crate race looks fun... for humans. It seems to him that it would be more fun to sink the little crates these intelligence challenged humans are using for boats. After licking his fingers clean of the pie and swiping his cheek clean with his sleeve, he smiles faintly and goes to teleport onto one of the crates in the middle of the lake. But again, warping messes up his aim, and he misses completely, splashing into the water.

A nearby crate boater yelps in surprise and in his annoyance, the monster sends a telekinetic blast to the crate, making it sink and injuring the local in it. Somewhat satisfied, he teleports again, aiming for the shore... and misses again, ending up on the wrong side, right as another crate racer is docking. The Monster's eyes glow red-orange and he slices the belly of the man open, before stalking off to the sounds of his wails of pain.]

I do not- do not Mmiss. What is happening.

Tuckered Out

[All his use of his limited power has left him drained, and he's not used to that feeling. The word for it escapes him, and it makes the skin on the body he's taken prickle and sweat, that thing in its chest pump faster. He ends up wandering his way to the blueberry fields and entertains and distracts himself with picking the blueberries at random and eating them or throwing them at random humans in the field to provoke them.

When one gets particularly agitated and comes closer, he grins mischievously and lifts a hand to swipe her aside or open her up, he hasn't decided which. But it doesn't matter, because when he goes for it, he hits his limit and barely anything happens. The woman stumbles back, and immediately after, so does he in a wave of dizziness and nausea.]

What is- [He tumbles into the dirt under one of the bushes, totally disoriented and on the verge of passing out. Or throwing up. Or both.] No... this shouldn't... I don't...

[tagartist]

[ Oh. Wait. Shit. He actually looks… Is he having an anxiety attack or something? She’s pretty sure that’s exactly what he looks like he’s doing. Whatever buzz she was getting from the beer she stole feels a little more sobered up, enough that she’s even overlooking being called sweetheart no matter how much she hates the name.

Was she supposed to touch him or stand back? She can’t remember. Uh. ]

Look, I wish I had a better answer, but – People are trying to find a way out, okay? And most people aren’t stuck here more than a few months before they go home, so you – you might be one of the lucky ones, right? You seem like you could annoy someone into letting you go pretty easy.

[ That was supposed to be a compliment. Did it fall short? She can’t tell. Ugh.

She finally goes to reach out, putting a firm grip on his shoulder. ]

You’re gonna be okay, dude. This won’t last forever.

drowning, drowning

[endlessflask]

[ Eliot's drinking. Of course he is. He's not really a beer guy but the crafted beers are better than the commercial shit, and it is what it is, and he doesn't scoff at a chance to drink. Ever. The problem is that he can't stop drinking - well. He feels more compelled than usual to keep drinking, because by the time he's done a glass, he's so thirsty, and the beer is right there.

It gets him drunk as shit, is really the main problem, and by the time he filters through the haze of his mind to decide he needs water, he's stumbling. He stumbles his way right into someone and when he goes to say sorry, he just sort of pauses.

And sways a bit.

What the fuck. ]

I really - Really fucking need some water.

[ He's never been so drunk he's just seeing himself. ]

[monstrousmistake]

[The monster is wet and very unhappy over missing, so when a body stumbles into his own he is quite literally on the verge of cutting a bitch. But Eliot's face gives him pause, and he tilts his head in that odd way he does, staring intently, like he's trying to figure out a great puzzle. It should not be possible, but he also does. Not. Miss. So today is full of surprises. Ones he does not like.]

Water. [He repeats slowly, and his eyes narrow as he leans in like he's trying to smell Eliot or get a closer look at a cockroach.] Youuu are... Eliot. How?

[He says Eliot's name like it's a disgusting slur.]