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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't think it cares about playing fair.

[Raphael slows and looks frontwards again as Rocket gives a sweep behind them, keeping his eyes moving, his senses on edge. Shifting to glance over around them again, he frowns. There's no sound, but he can't dismiss that sense of something behind him..

He catches a gleam of silver out of the corner of his eye and doesn't get more than a brief gasp out as the scythe comes arcing around-

and whistles right over his shoulders, leaving him headless. ..? Except there's strangely no gout of blood, and no head rolling on the floor.]

SHIT.

[Rocket's heart thuds in his chest as he flinches, preparing to be splattered by so much arterial spray... and nothing comes. He opens one eye- the situation is as it was, headless turtle and scarecrow and all. Okay. That's... something.

The scarecrow may be just as confused as he is, which gives Rocket time to rip his gloves off with his teeth.] Okay, jerkass. You wanna dance? Let's dance.

[He kicks off his boots as he jumps into a run and latches onto the scarecrow with all four sets of claws and his teeth. Try getting anywhere when you're being rended by razor sharp claws, loser!

...It's very undignified for Rocket. But effective... as a distraction, anyway.]

[The headless turtle staggers to the side as Rocket goes on the offensive, before *Pop* - Raphael's head emerges from his shell, wide-eyed and still a little startled for how close that had been.]

Hoboy.

[He's not long in contemplating the could-haves as his new fuzzy acquaintance is literally trying to rip the scarecrow a new one. Dropping down, he kicks a foot out at the strawman's spindly legs to throw it off balance, hoping it works better than weapons.]

What I wouldn't give for a flamethrower right now!

You're tellin' me. [Rocket tries to sink his teeth in the scarecrow's... general throat area as it flails and tries to keep itself from falling over, and only gets a mouthful of straw for his efforts. It's not that he likes tearing out the throats of jerks that try to kill him, but it might have made this a little more dignified if he'd gotten some blood and gore out of it.

Seeing the silvery blade out of the corner of his eyes as he's jerked around, gets an idea.]

Get the scythe, dude! [Because maybe without its weapon, it'll be a little more amenable to its own demise.]

[Head snapping up at that, Raphael quickly maneuvers around the flailing straw-creature.]

On it!

[At least with Rocket being all up close and personal with the thing it can't make the best use of its weapon. The turtle lunges once he sees an opening as the scarecrow's arm is thrown wide, and he grabs at the handle of the sickle, bringing a padded elbow down forcefully on its forearm as he tries to wrench it away.]

[Rocket gives it a good two-legged kick in the general solar plexus area at the same time, leaving the evil scarecrow wide open to being disarmed. This time it really does topple over with Rocket still on top of it.

And that's when the crows came.

Unable to celebrate a victory with cawing, pecking little fuckers trying to go for his eyes, Rocket can only yank his goggles down to protect himself and start running.] Okay, screw this. We're outta here.

[He's calling stealing the scythe a victory and no one can judge him.]

[YEaaaaah teamwork! Raphael makes a three-point landing, his grin freezing on his face as he glances over his shoulder towards Rocket and the fallen scarecrow. Looks like their troubles aren't over yet! Go figure.]

Oh come on!

[He swings around with a kick at a dive-bombing crow, yelping as more start coming at them. Rocket's announcement is sound, and Raphael's quick in dashing after him.

...and taking the thing's weapon? Totally a victory.]