soddersays | JULY 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( she was only here tracking him down, seeing what her child had discovered. there was light amusement at his reaction to krueger, more in a roll of her eyes before lilith stepped out of the shadow.

it was just before she spoke that the ground shook and he spoke and whilst lilith would love to believe that that reaction was due to her presence she also didn't like coincidences )

Who can't?

( finding out what he was afraid of would be interesting )

[Oh, hi mother. Don't mind him, stumbling about like he's grown legs for the first time. This baby snake has walked before, he swears it.]

Lilith?

[Yes, this night was just getting better. That's just what he needed. Satan and his not!mother picking at him. A particularly violent tug at his chest brought Crowley to his knees, the coffee cup shattering to pieces beside him.]

Satan himself. And I've not been a very good demon as of late. Helping his son turn against him and all that, tends to make for an angry devil.

( the fact that she's managing to stay upright is amazing, though it's certainly not in a steady way, not with how harshly the ground shakes.

she doesn't go to him, doesn't try to help him up-- lilith has no allegiance to him or a need to help. she is incredibly curious about this lucifer, even if she's not certain that it's going to be a good thing )

It would.

( she knows exactly the wrath of an angry satan, having done a similar thing herself just recently. not that this is her satan but-- she can't help but feel a little instinctive fear as if it were. though she'll hide that from crowley )

Though his power may be diminished like yours.

[Honestly, he would be shocked if she helped him up. When the ground finally starts to buckle and give, allowing Satan's crown to pierce up through the street, Crowley could feel that very real feeling of dread. This wasn't just a nightmare, this was happening. It was happening and there was no Adam here to will the angry devil away.]

Right. Diminished.

[The demon wasn't even bothered that she'd brought attention to his inability to preform properly, if Lucifer was diminished, maybe that meant they stood some kind of chance.]

CRAWLY!

[The name boomed as the Devil burst forth from the ground, or half way anyway, and loomed over them both. Just the name itself kept Crowley on the ground, even after it had stopped shaking. There was power in a name. Or so they say. Really, there was just power in Lucifer's will, but that was another thing entirely.]

He doesn't feel very diminished to me. In fact, he feels rather powerful and angry.

( oh shit. though she'd been focused on him the bellow of the name makes her turn, the larger form of the devil looming over them and--

yeah, she's afraid. and she looks it. this might not be her lucifer, looking and sounding different in every way but that display of power, that force of dominance-- she knows it well.

and she can fight it, had fought it when lucifer had tried to exert his power over sabrina. she doesn't try to hold him in place, not certain she could with something of his size, not yet having a follow up but lilith does act. a wave of her arms, raising in front of her before being held out raises a barrier between them and satan. invisible, seen only by the ripples in the air )

Don't move.

( she's speaking at lucifer, force in her own voice, trying to take the attention. even affected by this place she's far more powerful than crowley and she'll take the risk. take control back )

[This time, Crowley is astonished to see her move. He could feel the power of the barrier she put between them and Satan. A ring of fire burst around them, but Crowley hardly flinched at it. He could handle fire, that was a non-issue.

Her stunt had taken Lucifer's attention off the serpent and without his will bearing down on him, Crowley was able to move. And move he did. He'd never reached for the ethereal realm so quickly before. His black wings unfurled and he fanned at the flames, putting them out before they were able to reach the two of them. There was Hellfire and then there was whatever nastiness the Devil was throwing at them right now. He doubted even his own innate resistance to it would've sufficed.]

Mum's a badass. [Crowley breathed teasingly in her direction.] If you've got an actual plan, I'm all ears. And for once, I'll do just as I'm told. Don't get used to it.

( she appreciates him listening though lilith was acting instinctively, no plan to be had. she could get them out of there, her teleportation might be harder to track than his wings but running was never the answer. defeating him was.

there's a little more force behind her spell and lilith knows, having experience in this place that whatever she's going to do will be big and will take its toll. the nightmares had left her feeling weaker for a few days whilst the amount of magic she'd expelled with the ghosts draining her even more significantly. this-- she doesn't even know if she can stop him but she'll try.

so words fall from her, language older than latin as she casts her spell. given that she can't get out of this place lilith doubts that she can send him back to hell but maybe she could bind him temporarily. they had no acheron, no human to contain him but for the moment keeping him held in place might work.

though her words start quiet her volume raises, not a shout but with strength and power behind them. the ground around him starts moving, telekineticly shifting to create the binding circle as her spell starts to take hold.

and for a time he does seem frozen in place )

Go.

( she doesn't look behind her but the word is directed to crowley. it's him that lucifer wants, she'll keep him contained while the demon gets out )

[He said he'd do what she told him. And he really does want to do what she told him. Really, he does. But there was that nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach. Something sour and unsavoury to say the least. Even though they didn't exactly get on well, and she did threaten him more than he thought he deserved, he wouldn't just abandon her here. Especially not when Lucifer was irate with him.]

Oh, I am going to regret this.

[Crowley picked up the pieces of his mug and juggled their weight in his palm. One toss, two, three, but on the fourth toss, what landed in his hands wasn't a mess of ceramic shards. It was the fully reformed cup. He kept his wings beating back the fire that Lucifer kept trying to engulf them in, took aim, and chucked the mug straight at the almighty Adversary. It sprayed liquid in an arc, more than should have been in the cup, and extinguished the flames. The cup itself smashing rather harmlessly against the Devil's face. As soon as Lucifer was free of Lilith's spell, he was pretty sure he'd die for that insolence.]

Whatever you're doing, I think you'd best do it before he breaks that spell.

( it won't work. it shouldn't work but it's all that they have.

she takes a breath, summoning her power from deeper within her. her spell comes, latin words that would banish a demon, mixed with something else because he's not a demon, or at least not only a demon. he's the strongest thing that she's ever faced and lilith only has hope that her spell does something.

she chants and somehow it does work, whipping up a wind that spins around him, large and blasting due to his size. and when it disappears he's gone, the large form of satan back to hell, ground healed over.

she doesn't know it but it only worked because he wasn't really there, lilith truly banishing a nightmare form from crowley's mind.

her arms lower, spell of her barrier gone. and she takes an unsteady step, turning to him, feeling weaker from her magic. she starts to speak but doesn't manage it, falling to the ground in her exhaustion )

[Crowley gapes. Where Lucifer was, he wasn't any longer and the signs that he'd been there were gone. Nothing but a shattered mug and spilt coffee and some extra singed feathers about his wings. She had done it and that was terrifying. More than than terrifying, it left him wondering if he shouldn't be more wary around her.

The demon had turned to face her, about to express just how terrifyingly amazing that had been when he sees her stagger. She was falling and his instincts drove him to catch her. An arm looped behind her shoulders, the other wrapped around her front to pull her against his chest.]

Okay, okay. I got you. [In a rush of black feathers and power, he brought them to his flat, lying her down on his couch gingerly. He snapped his fingers and the lights came on--as a drawback of his wonky powers, a few of the bulbs popped and shattered, but they were still mostly in a lighted environment. He waved a hand over her, trying to reverse any strain the spells had had on her body, only to find himself feeling as if he'd been hit by a lorry. A capillary burst and the awkward feeling of a mild nosebleed set reality in quite effectively. If he'd returned any of her strength, it wouldn't be more than a fraction.] You still with me?

( she'd expected to hit the ground rather than feel his arms around her, hearing a strong flapping of wings before feeling the softer comfort of his couch. and then, even more unexpectedly, some of her strength returning.

it isn't much, lilith still incredibly drained, manifesting in sleepy exhaustion, wishing just to curl up, to rest before finding something (someone) to eat. but her instincts are still strong, refusing to wish to show such a weakness around him even if he had just done a kindness to her.

she pushes herself up as much as she can, legs stretching along the couch, still more laid out but raised a little more than she had been )

What did you do?

( because he had to have done something, the blood on his face says as much even if he wouldn't admit it. but she is glad he brought her somewhere rather than leaving her in the street. her voice as she speaks even sounds tired, words clear if quiet, lost of that power she'd just commanded against satan )

[Crowley watched her warily, moving back just slightly as she tried to sit up. He thought to help her, but right now, he feared she might actually fight him if he did such a thing while she had the strength to. He didn't miracle away some of her exhaustion onto himself just to have her waste that energy fighting him.]

Gave you some of your strength back.

[He answered truthfully and brushed the back of his knuckles under his nose, wiping the blood away. He looked down at it on the back of his hand. That was an odd thing. Very odd.]

I apparently can't take much of the strain from your body without it killing-- inconveniently discorporating me. No, I suppose killing is accurate here. No Hell for me to return to if this body dies.

You'll return.

( it's said with a confidence despite the quiet of her voice, lilith just about managing to toe off her shoes, heels by her feet at the end of the couch )

Everyone does.

( and she'd end up having to banish his ghost. eventually.

she sighs, resting her head against the couch )

This is my price. I may have my full power but this place weakens me for it.

( just so he knows that mom isn't normally like this. usually it's not noticeable, spells smaller and not requiring much but lucifer had taken a lot of magic in sheer effort and size of her spell, having to battle something with even greater powers )

[A wave of his hand to the side and he aided Lilith in her shoe issue. They dropped neatly in a pair, soles down, beside eachother at the end of the couch, still not certain getting near her was a good idea. She was weakened, but she was also terrifying and Crowley had a decent amount of self-preservation instinct embedded in him when it didn't come to matters concerning Aziraphale. The angel made him throw all reason out the window.]

Spoken like you've had experience in this field. [He rolled his eyes, thinking that sentence over after it left his lips. Yeah, she was a demon and she probably didn't have the qualms with killing that he did.] Yeah, nevermind. Stupid thought.

Your price and my price are vastly different. [He considered, it may have to do with the origin of his powers verses hers, but that was enough headache for today.]

Just rest. You'll recover that way, yeah?

Yes.

( lilith curls her legs closer to her, giving him space to sit should he choose so, not that she really needed to move for him to do that.

it's also probably a good thing that she's not suggesting how she can recover faster. it's private to her and not something all demons did. she'd sleep some first before doing that herself )

Perhaps it's because our powers are different. Yours isn't magic.

[The movement didn't go unnoticed. She hadn't once struck him as an insecure woman, so the motion of tucking her legs towards her was not one of seeking security. In fact, she was quite a powerful woman and he knew that before he watched her put Satan back in his place. So, the gesture had been something else, and Crowley took it as the invitation it was.

Hesitantly, he sat in the cleared space, still giving her plenty of room to stretch back out considerably. He wasn't but a twig of a demon, after all.]

I was entertaining the same thought. At least, not magic in the same sense. 'Miracles' we've always called it. Might as well be magic, but doesn't follow the same rules. Doesn't follow any rules, really. There's 'policy' rules, but those are enforced by our respective bosses and our own morals.

Magic has rules.

( at least it did for most people. lucifer was an angel and not limited by the same things, sabrina had lost her magical limitations when she'd found her satanic powers. lilith-- she was just powerful. perhaps those limits were there or perhaps she also used a different power )

Nature demands a balance. Resurrecting someone would require a sacrifice.

( as an example. though recently she'd also resurrected someone without requiring that sacrifice )

Witches know that everything has a consequence.

( this place amplified that in a different way )

Guess that's why I'm so limited in what I can do here. Nothing balanced about my power. Do as I want when I want. Only one who says otherwise are the guys Down Stairs. Like saving angels.

That kind of give and take sounds exhausting. But none of us can really argue with His will.

[Except when they do. And that can earn you a short trip to extinction.]

Equivalent exchange. They've added a bit of that to me. Healing, for one. I take on the wounds I heal from others. It apparently includes inflicting physical ailments when I try recovering your power.

[He gestured to the nosebleed.]

You didn't have to stop Him, you know. [Why yes, that's a Thank You.]

Have you done it before? Resurrected someone?

Not here.

( lilith isn't certain that she'd want to discover what this place would do to her if she tried, particularly when it had its own methods of resurrecting people.

she brings a hand up to brush her hair back from her face, a quiet contemplation for a moment before speaking again )

I've fought him before. The one from my world.

( it's more than she's admitted to anyone before. she'd told lucifer that she'd essentially dethroned her version of him but she'd been sparse on the details )

It went a little differently.

Didn't go as well, or went better?

[He wasn't a fan of the idea that the there was a possibility of her Lucifer showing up here. His own was bad enough. Then again, hers may not be out to melt him for stopping the apocalypse. So, that might be less terrifying.]

Banishing him to Hell wouldn't have stopped him.

( not when that was where lilith wanted to return and preside over )

We had to bind him to something -- prison. The human body is the strongest acheron created and we found someone willing.

( the warlock that had enacted thr binding spell. she'd carried his sleeping form into hell, with lucifer within him but that was all she knew. down with the king )

You bound him to a human body?

[That was something that seemed unfathomable to him. Not from a moral standpoint, no, he was a demon after all, but that sort of power? That was incredible to him.]

What happens if the human were to perish?

[Because, honestly, if he were her and had just trapped the Devil in a human, he would be Hell's most wanted if the Devil woke up. There would be no where for her to hide from that wrath.]

He's a warlock. It won't be a quick process.

( but that was also why lilith had taken him to hell, to watch over them, to find another solution. there was one thing that she knew of that could kill the devil she just needed to locate it.

she's also most definitely ignoring his other meaning to the question of what would happen to her. she'd die -- there would be no mercy for her )

There's no stronger prison.

I hope you're right about that.

[Just because there was no stronger prison, didn't mean the prison was strong enough. She had to know that too. If he were in her position, he would be doing everything he could to find a better way. Which meant that's probably what she was doing, as well.]

Do you need anything? Don't often have company.

Nothing you would have.

( unless he stocked men in his pantry. even if he did lilith wasn't planning on having her meal around him. demon or not that was something a little more private )

You didn't leave. ( now that they've mostly settled ) So much for following orders.

( though she doesn't sound like she's really chastising him )

JULY 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

WHEN THE BOAT COMES IN

BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL

NINE, TEN, NEVER SLEEP AGAIN

Character Arrival

nine, ten, demons come again

You would. XD

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