SEPTEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to September's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: CHAOS.

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: Torture (emotional and possibly physical), claustrophobia, potential weapon violence (guns, knives, spears, flamethrowers, etc.), possible body horror, emotional manipulation, emojis
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

DICE BLOCK

In case everyone hasn't had enough fun and games to last a life time in the good old town of Deerington, apparently this month brings you one more. Maybe you were just walking through the door to get into your own house, or maybe you were leaving from work — the moment you walk through any door, you'll find that it doesn't open up to the place you were looking for. Instead, you find yourself standing on a giant game board and you seem to be right on the start space. The doors already disappeared behind you, don't bother trying to run back. The only exit is at the end and you'll have to hope you make it there.

But you aren't alone! With you are other unfortunate souls who hopefully weren't just looking for a quick bathroom break. Some of them might look a little worse for wear. What happened? Well, looks like you may have to ask later, because you'll only really have time to exchange names if you don't already know one another before a large screen you didn't notice was hanging from the ceiling will light up. There's a giant image of a typical six-sided game die that's completely stationary. For the moment. Shortly after, a voice will come on over the speakers, echoing in the otherwise fairly empty room. It's overly cheerful, grating, and giggles at the end of every sentence.

Welcome, players! Is this your first time? Yes? Great!
Would you like to hear the rules?
Okay!
Each player will take a turn rolling their die.
You can then move the number of spaces shown — but only those spaces!
You can move forward, backward, right, and left, but not diagonally!
Each space will have a symbol.
The spaces with a clover are lucky spaces! Congratulations! You'll gain some fortune, whether it's an extra turn, moving ahead more spaces, or gaining an important item you can take with you on your journey!
The spaces with the skull are unlucky spaces! Boooooo, that's too bad! You'll befall some grave misfortune here. Hopefully it won't set you back too badly! Make sure to avoid these at all costs!
The spaces with a chest are item spaces! Here you'll be able to win prizes, like medical supplies or weapons! Maybe even a small something from home! Wouldn't that be nice?
Your goal is to make it to the end alive! Good luck! And remember to have lots of fun!

The first player's name will pop up on the screen, before the die will begin to randomly blink between numbers. Eventually it will land on a number. Once the player moves forward and lands on their space, it will repeat for the second player. This will go on until one (or both players) reach the end!

When they said to make sure to not land on an unlucky space, they certainly weren't kidding. Each one seems to come with some sort of random punishment or horror; it can be as light as having to move back a few spaces or go back to the start, or as heavy as breaking a random bone or feeling a blade slice open your skin. Maybe you'll start to slowly turn into a monster or become filled with the desire to kill your opponent. Anything can happen, but it's always going to be bad.

Players who reach the end will be able to go through the door and end up back wherever it was they were intending to go in the first place. Players who lose? Well... It's back to the beginning for you. Time to wait for the next player. Better luck next time.

DANCE DANCE

But what's behind door number two! People are going to start to get tired of walking around in their own houses at this rate. Even if you managed to escape the board game horrors, this new room you've found yourself in doesn't seem much better. In the center is a large TV screen and on the floor in front of it are two pads with arrows pointing in four directions; up, down, left, and right. Anyone who is familiar with Dance Dance Revolution might feel right at home! But fear not, there are instructions on the screen for you to follow if you need them.

Two players only, and you'll have to work together! It's a team dance and you'll want to encourage each other to stay perfectly in sync. The doors won't open until you finish, and should you mess up? Well, look up, friend!

The ceiling is covered in sharp, painful looking spikes and every time someone misses a beat or steps on the wrong arrow, the ceiling will drop down a foot. It's pretty high up there, but miss more than three arrows and you're gonna start to really feel the pressure. The spikes are looking a lot bigger and more ominous than they did when they were all the way at the top. Hopefully you've got some good rhythm.

But this is a good lesson in teamwork! Even the worst dancers might be able to get out of here okay if they've got someone who they can work together with. Maybe their perfect scores will make up for your two left feet. You can only hope you're both so lucky.

THAT'S NOT A "MEH" FACE!

Everyone loves to get a text, don't they? Of course they do! Which is why someone has been kind enough to send out a little special something to everyone's Fluid's this month! There's no name you recognize — in fact, it doesn't even look like a name is attached at all. The sender's identification only looks like this: 🥳

The message you've gotten is pretty simple though! Each person has received a text message with one emoji inside. No rhyme or reason applied! That's... random, isn't it? You can try to text back, but no one will answer, and so you might as well just close your device and forget about it.

Every person who received a text will find that their personality starts to shift. They begin to take on some aspect that's tied to the emoji they received. Did you get a simple smiley face? You're happy and relaxed for the time being! Or maybe a silly face will lead you to become more of a prankster. An eggplant could have someone feeling like sexting a Special Someone. An angry face might get you really riled up, even towards people you love. Did you get a knife? Time to start stabbing. A gun? Those people around you look like really good target practice...

The options are endless. Each emojis effects will last for twenty-four hours or until another emoji is sent from the same user.

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

Yeah.

[ And she's not going to lie to him, because why would she? Though it's strange to think that not too long ago, she was in this same boat with Waverly, going through the whole spiel of this place. Finding out that there are months of difference between the two of them, weeks of time that she's lived and her sister hasn't yet.

That's another question to ask, if they manage to get around to it, but instead, she only says — ]

Going on seven months now. [ She figures his mind is starting to whirl a little, but maybe having a fresh glass of whiskey in front of him will help with that. ] Last thing I remember is, uh, it was Christmas. Mama was home, for once.

[ He can't say that this surprises him, given the nature of their lives back home. Although he does want to question whether this place isn't just some kind of vision or revenant trick. Because seven months seems damn impossible. He studies her face for a moment and there's something different about her...

He's distracted by what she says. Cursing under his breath, he takes a long sip of his newly poured drink.] Is this some kind of revenant trick?

No. [ Maybe she answers it too quickly, but she's been here long enough that she's pretty sure if the rev-heads did have something to do with this place, she would've figured it out, or Peacemaker would've started vibrating like a — well, you know.

But the gun's carefully (and quietly) holstered at her side, and Wynonna braces her hands against the bartop, watching him take it all in. ] No, nothing like that. But there's plenty enough shit to deal with here even without them around.

The last thing I remember is following Waverly into the Garden of Eden to save her... After you had killed Bulshar and the Earp curse was broken.[ The order of events isn't dead on but it's the most important things she needs to know. That she's free of the curse, that she can go find Alice.]

I'm sorry, I think I just minorly lost consciousness for a second.

[ That, or had a small brain aneurysm, because she's pretty sure she just heard him tell her that she'd killed Bulshar and broken the Earp curse — the very thing she'd been set on finding a way to make happen even from here, never lost hope that she'd find a way back to accomplish, and here he is saying everything she's wanted to hear.

She shakes her head, figuring she'll get around to the rest of it in a second, but he's dropping a pretty big info-bomb on her right now. ]

Would you be kind and rewind that last little part for me again?

Bulshar broke the Earp curse so you could not continue to rally the revenants against him and yet, you manage to kill him all the same. [ He holds up his glass to her before taking a sip of it.]

— holy shit.

[ Because guess who hasn't lived through that yet, any of it? Guess who's been spending the last seven months here partly kicking herself for not being able to go back and take the fight to Bulshar, to take him down for everyone he's taken from them — everything he took from the Earps the day he laid down that damn curse?

She shifts forward, shoves a disbelieving hand through her hair, and it takes a second for the words to finally come. ]

I — I don't — wait, something happens to Waves? [ Her head is still spinning, and she picks one thing to latch on to in the moment itself. ]

[ Doc's never been one for dropping bombs. He'd rather give it to her piece by little piece but what happened to all of them...

He hasn't even touched on the fact of what he is now. And he's dreading a repeat of that confrontation.

So he feels slightly uncomfortable with all the information he's so clearly laid at her unprepared feet. He hadn't meant to "break her brain" as the kids say these days. And for a moment, he watches her struggle to process before she latches onto the thing he knew she would.]

You and Waverly have different fathers. [ He can't remember when she found that out.] And it turns out that Waverly's father is a bonafide angel. Not metaphorically speaking.

[ It's not like Wynonna is any stranger to infodumps — usually, she's the one in the group who's slowest on the uptake, about anything, but this is on another level altogether. For one, Bulshar's dead, at least in the time that Doc says he last remembers of home. For two, the curse is broken — the one thing, the only thing she's been driven to break ever since Alice, because she's not going to let her daughter (their daughter) grow up in a world where she has to worry about inheriting it.

So yeah, she's gonna veer towards Waverly because that's safer territory than trying to think about what comes next, what that means moving forward, what it means for her here as well as back home.

Maybe she can, at least partially, rest safe in the knowledge that whatever happens, Alice has been spared from a terrible future as the heir.

But she's diverging to something else altogether, responding to Doc's admission with a soft press of her lips. ] Well, yeah. Sorta figured that was the case when she told me the results of that damn DNA test she took — hold up. He's a bona-what? A whattafide what?