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NOVEMBER TEST DRIVE MEME

NOVEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to November's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: DEATH/ZOMBIE 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: Possible mild cannibalism, organs (including pictures of fake food that looks like organs), mutant insect in linked picture, blood, sensations of starvation, possible binge eating, possible binge drinking.
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

NOT BEAST NOR KIN

The blood and organs that have been festering in the ground and walls of Deerington seem to not only be attracting rats at this point, but something far more dangerous and... just plain gross. These deadly looking maggots are roughly the size of an average human. They’re slithering in an out of the ground, filling up holes where some organs seem to have burst open, or writhing around in the wake of the red waves that have left bloody puddles in the street. If you keep your distance, they’re mostly just disgusting to watch, adding to the feeling of utter decay that the town has gone into.

But those who wander too close or who are unfortunate enough to go by a nest of these maggots without noticing could end up swarmed. They can leap farther than something that large should physically be capable of and the sharp teeth on the end of their bodies will pierce through even the toughest of skin and bone. Once they latch on, they won’t let go; not until they’ve finished their meal. If you aren’t quick, the blood loss will be, and you could end up an evening snack for a whole group of these creatures.

They are fairly easy to kill, luckily. Average weapons seem to take them down or you can smash their heads (if you can call it that) with a few good stomps from a boot. The only trouble is how quick they move and how strong they are; you might need to call for help to get away from them when you get cornered by too many of these monsters.

ALL YOU CAN EAT

Maggots aren’t the only things that want to eat, though! And it seems that the community center is aware of that as well. Advertisements are strewn all over town for an all you can eat buffet that will be set up, not even an entrance fee required (though donations are welcome at the door if you’re feeling generous). No one in their right mind would want to go and get food from a party into Deerington at this point though, right? Of course not. You’re way too clever for that.

Except that as the party draws closer, anyone who saw the advertisements will find themselves slowly feeling like they’re starving. There’s a hallow belly feeling that no amount of food you consume will ever be able to fill. It feels like you might go crazy from how bad the hunger gets, craving something to fill your stomach, anything... And in the back of your mind, you might remember the buffet. You might start to feel a strange realization that the food they’re offering will actually help get rid of your cravings and you’ll be drawn to the party no matter how adamant you’ve been that it’s not a good idea.

The spread they offer isn’t something that should be appetizing to most on a regular basis; raw, very clearly human organs are laid out across the table on fairly decorative plates. A fountain of what looks like blood is put up in place of chocolate for you to dip your food into. No matter how disgusted you might normally feel, you find yourself practically drooling at the mouth and you’re quick to grab a plate and dive in.

At least the drinks look like they’re normal; sodas, beer, wine, champagne, and liquors ready to create your favorite cocktails. A menu will give you an idea of what pairs best with each organ, so make sure you select something that goes perfectly with your plate of intestines.

What would a Deerington party be without something tricky attached to all this. Even the smallest bites of any of the organs will offer sudden changes to the consumer, each power growing stronger the more that you eat.

Eating BRAINS will make it so that you are able to hear another person’s thoughts. Anyone standing near by, really. They’ll trickle in slowly at first, but the more that you eat, the more you’ll hear, and eventually it could become overwhelming. Sometimes you can focus in on just one person if you stare at them intently, but that could make you look like a creep. Maybe you should just go somewhere quiet until it passes.

Eating a HEART will make you feel compelled to confess your emotions to someone. Maybe a specific person or maybe it’s towards a complete stranger, but you just want to get everything out onto the table. You’re overcome with feelings so strong you don’t know how to contain them anymore and you’ve just got to get them out somehow.

Eating LIVER will cause you to want to drink. A lot. You might find that you’re not able to get enough, even. It doesn’t make you immune to the alcohol though, so it’s got the potential to lead some pretty nasty alcohol poisoning if you aren’t careful. Characters who usually can’t get drunk will find that consuming liver makes them a total lightweight. Woops. Better have someone help you walk home.

Eating the STOMACH will make you want to eat everything. You’ll no longer feel starving, but you just want to taste any food that’s near you, and you won’t stop no matter how full you feel. It’s not just organs, but any food consumed outside of the buffet. It might be a bad time to go to Peter’s Pizza for a late night meal.

Eating INTESTINES will give you an abundance of courage. You’ll find that you’ve got guts you never knew you had and it might make you willing to go tell your crush how you feel about them, or tell off that one guy who’s been pissing you off for weeks, or maybe you might start to think it’s cool to go scale a building or fight a monster when you don’t have any skill sets to actually take one down. Hopefully you don’t do anything you’ll regret in the morning— assuming you don’t get yourself killed doing something stupid, of course.

Eating EYEBALLS will allow you to obtain the memory of the first person that you touch. Depending on how much you’ve eaten, you may just see a small snippet or you could get sucked in to a full and heavy flashback. The memory will feel like it takes place in real time, but by the time that it’s over, you’ll find that whoever you touched is only just starting to ask you what’s wrong — or tell you to watch where you’re going, buster.

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.

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Of course I have. [ She makes a face - what, you think she's so sheltered? ] But I've never seen a buffet of internal organs laid out like this. They look real. They look human. Seems thematically appropriate, but also just gross.

[ She's just. Trying so hard to both convince herself it's all fake and to get herself out of there so she doesn't have to do anymore convincing. ]

Is this normal here? You'd think you'd see this at a butcher shop.

Physicality is a language all its own, and one that Wrench has learned to wield as fluently as ASL. More fluently, arguably, than English. When no others are shared, or when the message risks muddling on uncertain hands or lips, it's by far the quickest route to understanding. Sometimes that understanding is a negotiation, and sometimes it is a demand. Grady has been the recipient of both more times than most. Insisting touches, the clatter of stomps and pounded fists, and at times a full-body capture to act upon and on his own behalf. Wrench's hands know his partner at least as well as his heart, but five years is a long time.

He holds Grady past his protestations, the hand in his hair trembling against its own desire to soothe as his other palm brutally covers nose and mouth. It threatens his air and insists his cooperation until finally Wrench sees his adam's apple bob, and allows himself to be uprooted by the shove. Grady is more powerful than some might take him for, with his slicked hair, his scarves, and the well-tailored garments he tends toward. He has the look of a man built for conversation above action, but those who discount him rarely live to regret it. Still, Wrench doesn't anticipate so much power in the shove. Maybe he's gotten weaker. A half-decade forgetting how to care about anything has taken its toll.

Wrench lets himself be gathered up before he's pitched backward again. He's too interested in the state of his partner's skin to care about much else. I told you I'd explain if you ate! You were already starting to disappear. With no further preamble, Wrench grabs the letter off the countertop and shoves it toward Grady.

We've established I'm good with long stories.

[In general, Dustin was the one taking on the hefty research and putting things together in his free time. Not always vocal about it, but now seemed as good a time as any to reestablish the fact.

No, he wasn't just gonna out and out accept that his friend is in mid-air. That's not how this works.]

We were all at the dance. Why?

No way. To boldly go, it's like the USS Enterprise for you, right?!

[Okay, forget the network, this was so much better. Dustin fully faces her now, questions all sorts of questions milling around in his brain.]

What year is it there? You guys figure out quantum dynamics and string theory or just holograms and lightsabers?

[Now that she mentions it, this may be the harvest. For more than a month something has been growing underfoot, replacing soft earth with beating organs. Some Sleepers have noted that the bits of heart and kidney and lung they've dug up share genetic patterns with others in town, but to Wrench's knowledge they're all still whole. An after-effect of the doppelgangers? He looks at the buffet and wills himself to feel queasy at the thought, but his stomach is a pit and he feels every meal he's ever passed over in his life. He just can't bring himself to care.

And then his attention returns to the woman, and he spares enough thought to find himself curious at the most fluent signing he's seen thus far around Deerington. Maybe that leaves Wrench a little suspicious, but:]

You get used to it. I guess you just arrived? Best thing you can do is put the idea of "impossible" out of your mind.

Yeah, and I'm starting to get that I might be in the minority.

[The last person he got into it with about the tech literally had a spaceship in terms of where they were from and even though space shuttles aren't new, planets with intelligent life definitely a big new addition so he went back to being thrilled about the fluid like the reasonable guy he was.]

( that doesn't sound good at all. alec has to wonder if his runes would work. he doesn't have any real need to activate them right now but he wants to just to see if they do work. )

Are you all right?

( alec can only guess how the lack of magic might be affecting him. he knows if he didn't have his shadowhunter abilities, he'd be very out of sorts so he can only imagine how it is for Magnus, someone who's had magic for so long. )

With everything, I guess?

[To see a day where Alec was the one providing comfort, and concern through the rose-colored glasses of their still very rocky relationship is an unsettling tilt to their relationship. Typically it was the reverse, and so with a simple nod he finishes what's left his wine before meeting Alec's sincere gaze.]

I'm making do. One doesn't become as established as I am without being able to handle the occasional backslide.

[The smile he uses to punctuate the words is strained, false, but it's as sincere as he can muster given how tense he truly feels.

So much of him wants to reach out, renew the kiss they'd shared what feels like so recently, but it wouldn't be fair- he knows it.]

Grady lets go of those handfuls of cloth and leather long enough to talk, ignoring the piece of paper his partner insists in his direction for the moment as he looks up at him.

I swear I'm already fed up of this fairy tale bullshit. Next you'll have me leaving breadcrumbs behind. He flings the words in Wrench's direction, adding a snarled "for fuck's sake!" to really drive the point home. The point that he's pissed off, and confused, and a little scared, because none of this makes sense. Or maybe it makes too much sense. The details in the strange house, in the small changes to the man he knows as well as he knows himself, are too good, too real, to be a product of what he well knows to be a limited imagination. He's never been the poet in their partnership.

He snatches the bit of paper from Wrench, to appease him if nothing else, absently smoothing down his hair and his clothing with his other hand as he turns his attention to the words scattered across the page. Reading the letter itself requires further commentary; Grady mutters as he pours over it, casting narrow glances at Wrench while he does so, as if holding him personally responsible for each word.

"Deer..? Of all the fucking.. dreaming? Yeah, I mean, I guessed that part.. this is all just goddamn.. Maine?!" He looks at his partner, incredulous, and shakes the letter at him. We're in fucking M-A-I-N-E? What the fuck did we do to deserve M-A-I-N-E?

The rest of the letter gets a cursory glance after that, Grady's sour expression darkening as Wrench's earlier comments regarding the food are confirmed. The town laws get an eyeroll, then he tosses the thing back onto the counter, not particularly carefully. Ink smears his fingertips; he rubs them with his thumb, frowning. He can still taste blueberries on his tongue and his scalp hurts where Wrench pulled his hair. He glances around the kitchen, noting the basket sitting on the counter with what appears to be his gun in it, along with his wallet and a set of keys attached to a bit of bone.

"What the fuck did I do to deserve Maine?" The question is quiet and rhetorical, spoken to the shards of fear still lodged in his chest. He rubs his face with the heels of his palms, before turning his attention to the man patiently awaiting.. whatever is supposed to happen next.

So what now?

Er... [ geez, he's so formal! ] Just 'Yang' is fine. And nah, it's not off-putting at all, just an observation. Should I call you Prince Lotor?

[ which is fine with her, she supposes. yang's generally very informal but royalty? yeah, that's different. ]

As a Huntress, I'm dedicated to protecting the people on Remnant from creatures known as Grimm. They're these...animal-like monsters that prey on human beings.

You too?

[ she sounds pleasantly surprised by that. it's not everyday you really meet someone who understands what that's like. ]

Nice to meet you. I'm Yang.

[ she makes sure his hand isn't burning, and when it gets the all-clear, she extends her prosthetic for a firm handshake. ]

[ she doesn't like this. she doesn't like this at all. yang's heart sinks to her stomach with every word, every revelation, and her hands clench into fists on her lap. ]

No. No, don't say things like that -- there has to be a way to get out of here!

[ yang sounds desperate to prove vira-lorr wrong. there's no way... ]

We'll find it, okay? No more dying.

Grady watches her with the patient interest of a man used to studying other people, in much the same way as a lion is used to studying small antelope. The gloves earn her raised eyebrows.

"So you're.. here too." The word he's looking for in the middle of that sentence is 'new', but he's still not quite up to acknowledging that he's anywhere, even by inference. "I like your.." He mimes the golf swing, adding a click of his tongue in place of the thwack of the ball. Or the sound of the maggot's head exploding, as it had been in this case. "Do you, uh, do you practice?"

That was very cool. [ He means it, and looks thoughtfully at her hands as he does as he's told and moves to follow her. ]

Can everyone here do that? Can I do that? [ He attempts an imitation of her movements, years of speaking with his hands making him a quick study, and frowns when nothing happens. ] Aw, come on. [ He tries again, this time more forcefully. ]

( this feels...strained. even someone occasionally as oblivious as alec can see that. he doesn't know what else he should to do try and bridge that gap because it's there and it hurts a bit. )

Can I do anything?

( he's always been the honest type. the one who doesn't beat around the bush and if he can somehow help magnus, he wants to. he's hurt him so much already. )

Alas. She'd just have to make do without Makoto, and without the others. If nothing else, she was able to breathe just a little easier with the knowledge that her dear friend wasn't here to see this.

It was only as she drew nearer that Minako was able to get a good look at her- and she couldn't stop herself from staring just a little. Oops.

But there was no time to dwell on silly things like third eyes when they had bigger things to worry about! Minako was, unfortunately, unarmed, though now she was frantically looking around for anything she could potentially weaponize.

"I don't want them anywhere near me." That pretty much went without saying. Hearing how easily they died was enough to drive her to action. For now, it was retreat, but if she could find a weapon, she might be convinced to stay and fight.

After leaping back a little to get out of the way of the maggot innards -- more or less successfully, though the movement only serves to remind him that there's already some inside his actual shoes for fuck's sake -- Grady turns his attention to his saviour with a little disbelief.

"Do you.. always offer strange men knives when you meet them for the first time?"

Oh, you sweet, sweet child. Don't you go worrying about me like that. I already have enough people on my case to be more careful.

[She reached over to give Yang's hair a tussle as she grinned at her with the most pleased of grins. It didn't show very well considering that she really wasn't feeling well, but she was definitely a little pleased to see that the girl had a big heart.]

I don't mean to sound defeatist. [She finally let out a few coughs into her other hand. After a second, she put the smile back on.] It's just what happens if you die enough. Before we got here, there were others, some time ago. We think that they're the deer in town.

But no. There is a way out, and I mean to find the path for everyone, to save Sodder in the process. You're a courageous one, aren't you?

Vira-Lorr slashed with her blade, slicing at the air gracefully as the two of them began to withdraw. The maggots were following, though only three of them now, and when she stabbed one of them through, it was pretty obvious that the others were thinking better. She could keep them at bay, but a little help would not go amiss.

As for weapons? The best that was available was a big tree branch in the park next to them that had fallen. It looked sturdy enough, at least. "On this, we agree. They're filthy vermin. I'd kill them all, but there probably won't be an end until this world turns normal again."

I'm not a child.

[ said flatly. she's a little bristly, if only because of all this talk of dying and the consequences that come with it. turning into a deer doesn't sound promising at all, and she'd rather that not happen to her or anyone else around here. ]

And...I have to be. [ a pause as she looks down at her hands on her lap. ] There are people who need me out there, and I can't let them down. I guess you can say I've learned to be brave in the process.

[Another giggle.]

I'm over 300, dear. Most people are children to me.

[She did, however, stop ruffling her hair. It could come off as condescending, and that wasn't the intent. Just to get her to not worry too much, even if Vira's record in this place was anything but good.]

Ah... I know plenty about that. If you'd asked me what I wanted to do a hundred years ago, it would involve telling people's fortunes and drinking the night away at my ease... ah, but life had a way of forcing me into fight after fight.

I take it you've seen more than your share?

[Yes, she was looking at that metal arm. Gauntlet?]

I haven't seen a user of knuckle guards since I came here. Almost refreshing, really.

Oh, come on. I'm still technically an adult.

[ she's salty about this, whoops. but more importantly, she sees vira glance at her prosthetic. it doesn't bother her, even though she looks away. she's mostly trying to keep herself from reliving traumatic memories. ]

Yeah, you could say that.

[ ... ] Hasn't been easy, that's for sure.

You remind me a little of Duran.

[Everyone who's salty about anything did that. Duran was salty about everything, after all. It was kind of what made the surly little brat tick. Any discomfort slipped past her as the two talked, and she wasn't going to be too pushy for details.]

What? The use of a cestus or the like? It keeps you up close and personal, yes, but it's especially good if you have the power to go with it. A good friend of mine relied on them. Of course, he was twice our height and built like a gargoyle... But you seem to have more than enough to take care of yourself.

Where did you learn to fight?

What, this?

[ she holds up her arm and shakes her head. ]

Nah, I think I've gotten used to it by now. And you're right, I can handle myself just fine. [ she pauses. ] I'm talking about just...y'know. Doing the right thing. I don't regret it, but like I said...the road hasn't been easy.

[ if her arm is any indication of that. ]

I learned from my dad. He taught me a lot of moves while I was growing up.

[When she held up her arm, Vira-Lorr gave it a closer inspection, particularly where the elbow joint hooked up to the arm. Her eyebrow raised for a second before the words 'I've gotten used to it by now' really started to sink in, and then both of them climbed up.]

Wait, this is your arm? that's... impressive. I've only ever seen a robot with working limbs of metal like this. It's amazing to look at, even if ... well, doing the right thing can have a price yes.

[She was going to assume that this was part of the price.]

You will find this place no different there. But you aren't alone, at least.

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NOVEMBER TEST DRIVE MEME

NOVEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

NOT BEAST NOR KIN

ALL YOU CAN EAT

Character Arrival

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