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soddersays2019-07-27 01:49 pm
sodder) wrote in soddersays2019-07-27 01:49 pm
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AUGUST 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME
AUGUST 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to August's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: DYSTOPIAN 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: Physical violence, monster violence, creepy ogre-like monster in link, being hunted by a monster.
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!
BLOOD IN MY VEINS
With supplies low and food getting even more scarce, things in Deerington, Maine seem to be getting that much more tense. For those who pay attention to the habits of the townspeople, there’s something that might add to that feeling of stress; all of them seem to be involved in some kind of physical training, whether it’s archery, hand-to-hand combat, or fighting with firearms, they all seem like they’re getting ready for something and it definitely feels like it might be something big.But no one wants to train against a townsperson - it’s highly likely they’re not going to fight fair with the way they’re all glaring at the Sleepers, as though they’re to blame for everything that’s been going on. Unless you’re sparring with people in your own backyard though, it seems like there isn’t any space to get your own training in.
The Betties are starting to pop up around town pretty regularly, waiting until they find Sleepers on their own, and quietly waving for them to come closer. “You need to prepare,” they’ll whisper to you in hushed urgency, before grabbing your hand to try and get you to follow them. If you fight, they’ll insist only once more, before leaving you alone. But there’s something inside of you urging you to comply and follow.
They’ll lead you down an alley, pushing aside a large dumpster, and revealing a trap door in the middle of the concrete. You’ve never noticed it before, even if you’ve been down this alley a hundred times. The Betty leading you leans down, pulling it open, and the ladder that goes into the tunnel is long and dimly lit. You could leave now, but the Betty will insist this is for the best.
“Knock twice. No more or less. Show them what you’re made of.”
Once you get to the bottom of the ladder, there’s an equally long hallway that leads towards a closed metal door. You knock twice and the door shakes before sliding open. The light that comes through is almost blinding with how bright it is compared to the dim tunnel, but as your eyes adjust, you can finally step in to a fully stocked training room.
There are instructors in basics for beginners, areas for intermediate, and most abundantly there are one-on-one sparring areas. The moment you come close enough, you’ll be immediately paired with another Sleeper, and the two of you will be locked in the room together to be observed. You could choose to not fight, of course, but you’ll be stuck there for a good long while if you do. It might be best to just get it over and done with.
So feel free to help others who seem to be struggling or show off your strength for everyone to see. It looks like everyone is going to need to be ready for some kind of fight.
I AM THE GREAT UNKNOWN
Maybe you got knocked out during a fight or maybe you fell asleep in your own bed - or maybe you don’t even remember closing your eyes at all, especially if you don’t usually have the ability to go unconscious for one reason or another. No matter the cause, everyone will wake up in the same place, surrounded by tall, thick hedges in the middle of a... maze?It doesn’t take you long to realize you aren’t the only one waking up, too. Someone is next to you and it seems like you’re stuck finding your way out of here together. Literally. On each of your wrists is a metal cuff with a long chain connecting them. It can’t be broken, no matter how strong a person is or how powerful a weapon or spell they try to use against it. You’re in this together whether you want to be or not.
Once you can pick a direction to head in, it seems like this might almost be boring - that is until you start to hear the sounds of rustling leaves and breaking twigs. At first it seems like it might just be a trick to spook you, but the more you ignore it, the louder it gets, until finally you see it, charging down the row at you, scythe raised and ready to strike.
You can try to fight, of course, but it’s hard when you’re chained to one another. Learn to work together quickly and maybe you can make it work. It seems to go down with normal attacks, though it takes a long time to get the creature to fall unless you cut off the head. Ultimately your best interest might be set in running as fast as you can to get away. You can lose it in the maze if you’re quick about it. But then you might also be lost yourself.
If you do manage to lose the monster rather than killing it, stay quiet and you might not attract its attention again. It may take a while to find the end of the maze. The hedges feel like they stretch on forever and the sun is blaring down. You’d think there would be shade with all the height of the bushes, but there’s no relief from the heat. Hopefully you don’t burn easy.
When you get to the end of the maze, the two of you will come up on three doors. One door will lead out of the maze and back into the center of Deerington, cuff free. Another door will lead you right back to the beginning, forcing you to start again. And what’s behind door number three...?
The monster, of course.
Choose wisely.
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.
no subject
He can't cry harder. He can't feel harder. He sees the images playing out over and over in his mind: his father, his mother, god, his mother--- but he can't do anything but sit up like that and stare at the man. ]
Earlier tonight, I think.
[ That at least elaborates a bit further on his status here, but it's robotically soft, as though on autopilot. He has no idea just how long it's been since he woke in a foreign bed and stumbled his way upon foreign streets, but the twilight sky... hasn't changed. Peter draws in a careful breath; the storm cloud in his ribcage rattles, but he breathes slowly enough not to disturb it further than that. The tears keep slipping quietly down, and he no longer registers that they're there at all, apart from swallowing them every so often when they gather against the corners of his lips, salty and cool, and his voice sounds strangely wet. ]
Before. [ He answers the next bit. At least this is giving some sort of time line of events, though it all still feels like some fever dream. What he asks next should sound crazy, but it doesn't somehow, and Peter looks directly into the stranger's grey pair (like rain) when he asks him. His own eyes are probably brown, but they look like black holes now. ]
Is this Hell?
no subject
Ben might still feel something tangle uncomfortably in his gut, but it's too small of an ember to register over the more brightly burning worry he has for a teenager bleeding from his face.
his chest sinks at the question — is this Hell? Ben's expression breaks open, surprised and caught, because...he has to fight an inappropriate laugh. even still, his features ripple with the suppression. is this Hell? )
I haven't quite decided that, myself. ( it sounds like an apology, looks like one too, with how his brows lean up with the leverage of sympathy. he slowly shifts his hands to pull his blazer open, reaching into an interior breast pocket. honest to God, he pulls out a cloth, a handkerchief, which will probably make for some honest mistakes in whatever impression Peter eventually carves out of him. the fact that he actually wears suspenders doesn't help keep him from looking like a depression-era school teacher. )
Did you— get a basket? Was there a basket? Antler handle, that sort of thing. ( Ben holds the cloth out, but visibly unsure if Peter will take it to clean his own face, or if...he's about to just clean him up himself. ) You would've gotten a letter, it explains everything, and— the food, a jar of— you have to eat it, or else... ( or else, what? Ben...isn't quite sure. he remembers what the letter says will happen, but...he hasn't dared to conceptualize what dematerializing and disappearing will look like, in reality. )
no subject
Perhaps, recently, the thought has been pushed forwards in him (Murderer). It was an accident, but all accidents stem from a decision, and there were several made. All of the "what ifs" nestled in his gut, squirming, growing.
Why did he tell her to eat the fucking cake
Why didn't he check it first
Why didn't he keep her with him?
Oh god
Why didn't he keep her with him?
Whatever this is, however lost and alone and frightened he is now, he deserves to be here, his mind unwrapping that thought now as he slowly begins to entertain it. Hell.
The answer of the stranger (Peter hasn't retained the name he was given literally minutes ago) is vague and uncertain but doesn't affect the boy much on the surface. He just sits there staring, whether accepting it or not understanding; his own expression impossible to decipher. He's still tottering on the edge of slipping back into whatever the fuck state of mind he keeps going into, his eyes lulling a bit, lids half-opened. His lips move slightly, almost as though saying 'Oh.'
The handkerchief also gets no reaction, apologies Ben, but you'll have to literally wipe the tears and drool and grime from his face by your own hand, or guide his own to do so. At least Peter remains capable of verbally responding. That's something he can do. ]
I did. I ate it. There were instructions, and I followed them. [ His head falls forwards once in a nod-gesture, like a child playfully assuring (or a robot who hasn't quite mastered comfortable human behaviour). Even as he obediently replies, he's simultaneously continuing to quietly come apart at the seams, tears forcing a wet sniffle from him. It seems he did understand after all, because an admission leaks from him as quietly as the tears. ]
If this is Hell, I did something--- I'm bad.
no subject
he watches the boy keenly, as if waiting for some event to unveil itself across that bloodied, bruised face. Peter is...falling out of lucidity, it feels like, his focus dilating out. he doesn't react to Ben's motions, wordless offers.
so he tests, gently, where the boundaries lie. Ben lifts his hand up the last stretch of distance to brush the cloth over Peter's cheek, tears urging blood along as he swipes at the skin. gently as possible, slow and careful as to not irritate his injured nose. Ben's taken injuries to the face before; he can vividly imagine the low heat of pain that must be resting in the center of his face.
Ben is startled into a brief pause, as the boy makes a remark he doesn't anticipate. if this is Hell... he watches Peter's eyes, glassy and swelling with tears that rinse his own face for him. it wouldn't necessitate a psychic to say — something happened with this boy, just about a young man, some length of trial and pain that culminates in this wracking response out of him. Ben stares as if one looks into an old mirror, coated in something opaque: the fascination of seeing something similar one can identify toward themself.
he continues wiping at Peter's face, working down to the streams of blood at his chin. ) Acknowledgement is a light in the dark. Everyone has just enough self-awareness to beat themselves up over any little thing. If you've done something bad, well... ( brows bounce up, head tilts with consideration, all of Ben's motions casual with familiarity on this heavy topic. ) That simply makes you human. We're dichotomies. We're as capable for bad as good, and we're capable of these acts simultaneously, at times.
( his words are calm, low, matter-of-fact yet gentle with preemptive forgiveness — not that forgiveness is something Ben owns as an entire concept, not his to be laying over shoulders like a prize. he has his own, but has a neutrality to share it unto others.
with a steady conviction: ) I doubt this is Hell. I've seen...goodness here, and that means it can't possibly be Hell. ( coming from a man that's been here for months, now, it's a miracle that Ben can say it.
it's about now that Ben's gaze ticks down, giving something more demure away as he considers his next words, as he folds the cloth over to a clean side. ) But a person can make any place they're in Hell for themselves. Perception shapes reality. People tend to damn themselves before anyone else would.
( Ben looks back up at Peter, half his face clearer, albeit ruddy-stained; the other half, garish and darkly gruesome. two wholly different scenes. )
...Where are you staying? Do you recall?
gnashes my teeth and weeps about being over a month late to replying to this /beautiful tag/
...But he didn't die, or didn't stay dead. He's some odd creature who was buried and then resurfaced here, each ragged breath damp and thick as though with grave-soil in his chest. The initial fright and jerking and pleading when he woke to see Ben leaned in concern over him have very quickly faded away as he gives in completely to his exhaustion.
Therefore, he doesn't move when the man brushes the soft cloth against his cheek — just stares at him. Peter's wet eyes are strangely alive though, and they follow Ben's wherever they shift, even when in the most subtle manner. If the grey pair dip downwards, Peter’s dark brown follow them. He stays locked on like that, the connection between them both precarious in its instability but somehow, paradoxically, unyielding.
There are moments the sting of pain still jolts the nerves of his sensitive nose despite the man's careful ministrations, but Peter doesn't jerk back, sits there numbly. He can't recall anyone ever wiping his face in this particularly tender way, and on some level perhaps doesn't know how to react to this level of care and attention.
...In the moment, though, something in him immediately thinks to his father. The closest thing to this act of physical care that Peter does know, although his father has always had some layer surrounding him, keeping him apart. Perhaps it's his psychiatrist's mind and way of processing the world — Steve knew how to detach himself, how to assess a situation from an objective focus. Perhaps it's years of knowing that things weren't going to change, that the cracks in his own family would only split deeper and longer. Over time, people give up; they have to, they must, in order to cope. To keep the days going.
But he'd tried in his way, and especially for Peter, after the accident. Focused sympathy towards his son — the unwanted child, an unfortunate villain by default — whose mere presence in a room could stifle his wife's breath. He'd pitied them both, but towards the end it was Steve trying to protect Peter when no one else could.
From this man's soft touch, Peter remembers his father now, and the dull ache of what he'd seen before he'd woken here (on the dark wooden floor: a man's charred body, flaking black bits of what was once skin) is an alien presence in his throat, a sob stuck there unmoving. It's there but he can't process it; if his father is dead, Peter is incapable of understanding it now. It remains trapped within him.
His eyes still don't leave Ben's. The boy's a lost child, at once both scary yet docile in his unnatural intensity — locked on and listening to the words, lips slightly parted as though he'll swallow them when the man finishes speaking.
‘If you’ve done something bad, well… that simply makes you human.’
This, too, sounds like something his father would say — or would have said, back when he talked about things. Perhaps the younger boy still inside Peter, the one who had locked himself carefully away to survive, remembers a time when his dad would talk to him like this: serious, sobering talks from a serious, sobering man. Small chitchat was never his dad’s forté. Weighty things: philosophy, life, death, topics to make sure a person would stay tethered to reality.
Peter’s eyes grow a little wider, serious. Then, too, what this man has to say about Hell… he’s tilting forwards slightly, even dangerously; Peter could topple over any moment, but he’s subconsciously placed validity in whatever this man is saying, and by that association there is some degree of trust forged. He needs someone to listen to, to absorb, and Ben has become entirely that for him in this moment.
Such that when he says he doubts this is Hell, Peter on some subconscious level immediately believes him, without questioning. An adult’s reassurance is what he's needed. His expression doesn’t necessarily relax, but his wide almond eyes seem to glimmer with a flash of something else. ]
I don’t know.
[ He understands what the man’s asking, at least, but his answer is unfortunately bleak. Truthfully, he probably isn’t far from the house he’d woken up in, but he might as well be miles away for how oblivious he is to its location. ]
I don’t know anything. I don't even know how I got— out here. [ He, or rather the small boy he’s regressed to, admits. There’s a thick sniffle, wet and shaky, but he’s stopped crying. The gentle motions of a cloth stroking a face by a pair of careful hands does wonders. The next question Peter asks is the result of that, of this man who isn’t his father but has taken his place for just a few moments. It’s enough to prompt Peter to ask, and to believe whatever answer will be given to him. ]
If this isn’t Hell, am I still alive?