OCTOBER 2019 TEST DRIVE ME

[sodder]

OCTOBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to October's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: HALLOWEEN/MONSTER 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: Blood, organs, stalking, food poisoning, rotten food, bugs, worms, evil scarecrows, body horror, skinning, murder via throat slicing, torture
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

pumpkins scream in the dead of night

Everyone loves fall, right? Pumpkin spice, the leaves changing, Halloween. The costumes alone are always worth it. And what's a more classic way to ring it all in than some good old fashioned pumpkin carving.

There's a wave of nostalgia that hits anyone who comes near the carving station set up in town. It doesn't matter if you've never carved a pumpkin in your life or if you've even heard of jack-o-lanterns or Halloween before. You just feel like you know this, feel a longing to reconnect with an act that maybe wasn't even part of your childhood. Some people might be strong enough to ignore it and keep walking. But others will find themselves sitting down at one of the empty chairs and a pumpkin being placed in front of them with all the necessary tools for a good time.

You'll stab your knife into the pumpkin and pull off the stem once you've carved it out. Grab your spoon, get ready to scoop, and then...! You see what's inside.

The pumpkin is filled with blood the moment you stick your spoon inside. Maybe it was like that from the start and you just didn't notice. The knife is covered in blood, so it must have been there all along. Even if you feel sick to your stomach and go to pull the spoon out, it will come up with something stuck to it. Pieces of brain, eyes that look like they've been ripped from their sockets, a still beating heart... Looks like someone was playing a trick on you this month.

When you back away from it, the blood might still be covering your hands, but the moment you try to warn someone else? All the pumpkins innards go back to being exactly what they should be. The only thing stuck to your hands are stringy pumpkin guts and some seeds. Was it all in your head? Maybe you'll stab into another pumpkin to find out. Or maybe you should just get out of there.

everybody scream

TRICK OR TREAT!!!

So you had some rough luck with the pumpkins, but candy can't be all that bad, right? Some of it comes with a money back guarantee if there's any tricks inside instead of just your favorite sweets. Buying these seems to go okay! You get your candy corn, your caramel apples, chocolate bars galore, and all of them are totally normal! It's a real treat for anyone with a sweet tooth. Stuff your face and enjoy.

Getting some from one of the buyers who isn't guaranteed, though — well that's a different story.

Any candy bought anywhere else in town will have some definite tricks attached to them. The candy corn might make you overly flirtatious and downright corny with your pick up lines. The caramel apples will make you clingy and needy to anyone who gets too close. Chocolates will make you bitter and unfriendly. Taffy will keep your mouth stuck shut for at least a full day.

And that's all if you're lucky.

Some places are even giving out bad candies. They look fine from the outside - the apples are shiny and perfectly candied, the Hershey's bars are giant sized and look so good! But when you bite inside a piece of fruit, it will be rotted and filled with worms, the candies will taste like earwax and have maggots stuck inside in place of filling, the chewy candies taste an awful lot like actual rotting flesh — you can only hope it's bad meat and not human.

People who eat these candies will get horrifically sick almost instantly. They'll need to be helped home and probably kept an eye on until it passes. It might only be a few hours or it could be for a several days. It really depends on how quickly it works through each individuals systems.

the "who" when you call "who's there?"

Walking to and from locations isn't always a breeze when Deerington starts to get up to its new tricks. It's unnerving even during quiet times with all the strange things that go on in the shops, or in the cornfields, or even in some of the houses of your neighbors... Sometimes it's best to just keep your head down and walk as fast as you can to your door.

But there's a different sort of unease that follows you as you make your way around Deerington now. A sense of being watched. Of being followed. You can't tell from where and every time you try to look around, the streets seem empty. The fields are still. The only thing you might see here and there are scarecrow decorations in people's yards or even the legit thing in the middle of some crops. Everything seems totally harmless.

Except that feeling gets stronger. Eventually you start to hear rustling. It sounds like it might be jeans rubbing against each other or maybe... straw?? When you go to look around again, you notice that one of those scarecrows has moved — in fact, it seems to be missing entirely. But where could he have gone...?

Turning back around, you'll find yourself face to face with your sneaky friend. The grin feels empty and cold, the eyes bright like fire, and there's a large sickle in his hands that's poised and ready to come down right on your throat if you aren't quick to dodge out of the way. The scarecrow doesn't respond to most weapons the way one hopes — blades just go right through it without even so much as a flinch, bullets will fly out of the straw and hit whatever solid objects are behind it. None of it seems to stop the scarecrow from advancing, so maybe your best bet is to just run.

If the scarecrow manages to catch you, you're in for one hell of time. The lucky individual might just get their throat cut and bleed out quickly. Others might end up getting skinned alive. And still some might find their bones twisting and breaking, their body shrinking, their skin turning to deep, dark and rich black feathers. An evil scarecrow would be nothing without a loyal flock of birds, after all.

But if you remember your lessons from The Wizard of Oz or are just a genuinely reasonable person, you might think to fight the thing with fire. It's the only weakness the scarecrow has and it will do anything it can to fight through it. Crows will swarm around, using their wings to beat out the flames as quickly as they can. So if you really want to do the sucker in, you're gonna have to make sure he gets fully torched and fast.

If you manage to kill him, the crows will lunge at you, disappearing in a thick burst of dark smoke before they can do any damage. The scarecrow will remain a pile of ashes and you should have enough time to get you (or whoever you were saving) home. The ashes will blow away in a gust of wind, though, and the scarecrow? Well, it'll go right back into the yard or field it came from, waiting for the next person to come along.

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

A

[laminae]

[This is definitely a good way to make an impression on a person. Fern instinctively raises his hands, though he looks a lot more annoyed at almost being called weird than scared of getting attacked. He is, however, on the verge of forming a grass sword from one of the grass blades in his palm.

What? She has her weapons out. It's only fair.]

Dude, any answer you get is gonna be weird. Even the honest ones.

[bearattack]

[Fern doesn't exactly get a double-take - she's seen some weird things in Hell - but he does get more of a once-over than the average human would. His mere presence is just more proof that there's something supernatural at play here.]

Your answer can be weird, as long as you don't get all jittery, refuse to look me in the eye, insist that everything is completely normal, and then run away. See the difference?

[laminae]

[Right, right, telltale signs someone is lying.]

Yeah, okay, you've got a point.

[He won't do any of those things, because he doesn't see any point in being dishonest about the situation.]

It's a multiversal shared dream situation. We're stuck in a human kinda town.

[bearattack]

[Multiverse. Okay. Not something she has direct experience with, or even something she's really thought much about before, but whatever; she's not going to waste time insisting that this couldn't possibly be real.]

And I'm gonna guess that you're not from a human kinda place originally. How do the people in town look at you and keep on thinking that everything is business as usual?

[laminae]

[Ouch, that hits a nerve. He knows he's a messed up plant monster, but it still stings to hear someone say it out loud. He scowls, and his response is a lot more aggravated.]

They don't, duh.

[bearattack]

Pretty sure they do.

[Says Maze, completely unfazed by his offense.]

It's kind of the townspeople's thing, isn't it?

[laminae]

I'm talking about all the people who got dragged here.

[He huffs.]

But the natives give me looks, too. Pretty sure they know something is up, even if they don't act like it.

[bearattack]

Are we sure they're not, I don't know, robots?

[laminae]

They might be. Dunno if anyone's tried cutting any of them up yet.

[bearattack]

[Now there's an idea...]

It wouldn't take much. Even a tiny papercut will draw blood on a normal human.

[laminae]

I... guess you could.

[From his tone he finds it a little boring, though.]

How're you gonna pull that off?

[bearattack]

[She twirls one of her blades, considering her options.]

Grab one that's on its own, tackle it to the ground, and cut its palm. The palm would be the simplest, and if they are real, at least it'll heal quickly.

[laminae]

[He opens his mouth to tell her that might attract the ire of those creepy police cats, but she did insult him....

So he just looks thoughtful.]

Sounds easy enough. Go for it.

[bearattack]

You coming? It was your idea.

[S...ort of.]

[laminae]

Yeah. Yeah, I guess.

[He'll just stand back far enough so he doesn't look like an accomplice.]

[bearattack]

[Anyone would be forgiven for assuming that Maze is just kidding, but... well. She's not. The nearest townsperson happens to be a rather large, muscular-looking man, but despite his size, Maze seems to have no trouble getting one arm firmly around his middle, pinning his arms, and pricking his palm with her blade. It's a small, shallow cut - the kind of thing that a band-aid will fix right up - but it's enough to get results.]

... Huh. Look at that, he is bleeding.

[laminae]

[Wow, since this actually involves hurting another person he was half-expecting her to chicken out, but nope. She's just going for it without a second thought. Fern eases back a couple of steps when she grabs a townsperson, glancing around a little nervously for any signs of those cats, but he doesn't catch sight of any.

The townsperson, of course, is not thrilled with getting manhandled. He yells and struggles and has some very choice words for her, though Fern doesn't make any moves to help him.]

That rules out a lot more than just robots.

[bearattack]

Relax, you'll be fine.

[She says to the guy, letting him go and turning back to Fern as he high-tails it away from the crazy lady.]

What do you mean?

[laminae]

[The townsperson stumbles away, glaring daggers at her. But unsurprisingly, he thinks better of causing a scene and stalks off.

Fern just shrugs.]

I mean that discounts non-robot stuff that doesn't bleed.

[bearattack]

You got a lot of those where you're from?

[laminae]

Uh... yeah. [This is one of those 'Ooo is different' times, isn't it.] Lots of stuff doesn't have blood. I don't have blood.

[bearattack]

Bet you're glad I'm not feeling the need to check, huh.

[She says, wiggling one of her blades.]

[laminae]

[That's a threat. That's a definite threat.

At least, Fern is construing that as a definite threat.]

Like you'd even get a cut in before I sliced your face off, lady.

[bearattack]

[She laughs.]

No you wouldn't. But relax; I'm joking.

[Everybody jokes about bodily harm!]

[laminae]

[Fern puffs out his cheeks, looking very unsure about this lady.]

Sorry. When someone around here says something like that they're usually serious.

[What he means is when he says it he's serious.]

... And I totally could.