NOVEMBER TEST DRIVE MEME

[sodder]

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.


All affects from the food will wear off within about an hour if you’ve only had a bite — or they could last up to twelve if you really stuffed yourself. Please be sure to obtain OOC permission from any players for the brain and eyeball prompts!

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

[hitactor]

Oh good. Just past the spleens.

[Yeah, Barry's gonna skirt on over and pick the least disgusting looking glass. No trace amounts of blood, it's passable, and maybe he drinks it a little bit too fast but his nerves were shot.]

I'm sure Vacha would be right at home. This whole place is an excuse to wear that apron.

[Hey Hank, remember that time you and Goron tried to kill them? He does. He remembers having to choke out a fat Bolivian guy just to make sure Fuches didn't bite the bullet for it.]

swan dives into this. B.

[clussy]

(For Eddie it has been a little over two years since he has seen some of the Losers except for in the occasional dream or horrorville-concocted memory whammy. It means that for Eddie some of the Losers have faded to nearly nonrecognition, faces blurry, names blurrier, and at first he genuinely doesn't know who Ben is. Just some kid bumping into Eddie.

Eddie who definitely doesn't really look like the Eddie Ben probably was used to. For starters he was like a whole ass inch taller, so jot that down, thank you. His right arm was also wrecked in at least five different levels of scarred carnage. But probably most evidently of all was the fact that Eddie was just...a vampire now. Somehow. Eyes yellow, skin pale, fanged teeth- the works. Can't really hide that sort of thing. He's got a hood up and an umbrella over head and when he's bumped into, he mostly just looks irritated.)

Watch it, would you? If I drop this umbrella I might literally combust into flames, thanks.

(He hugs his umbrella a tiny bit closer, scowling at this guy- this guy who was suddenly striking as Eddie as extremely familiar now that he was getting a good look at him. He gives his umbrella a slow, contemplative twirl.)

Uh, yeah, dude, who's not in love. Join the rest of us in suffering in permanent silence about it, okay. (Eddie doesn't really even think about his response, just kind of spits it out because he's far more distracted by...Wait.)

...Ben? (It's coming back.)

[driving]

boring
cold
the beaches all suck compared to california

B

[ace_of_hearts]

[Ace is generally unfazed by the questionably sourced meat, but he looks the kid up and down and deadpans:]

It's not the food, is it? Because I gotta tell you, I think you can do better!

lol no its perfect

[gentrify]

young hairless skinny queer boy

[ it takes only half a second for mickey to realize that describes him too, and he adds onto it, basically just describing ian gallagher rather than giving a real definition. ]

vanilla af but stupid horny
probably not legal
has table danced at least once
extreme lightweight
maybe owns a pair of shiny booty shorts
direct correlation between bitchiness and amount of guyliner applied
every little prettyboy dancer you see when you walk into a gay club, ok?
does that paint a clear enough picture?

b (eyeballs)

[kissingbridge]

[ richie knows better than to trust the food in this town by now, his own forray into the stuff during his arrival had been more than enough to settle that idea firmly in his mind. on top of that, there's the actual food itself in question, which, richie would hesitate to even call food under most normal circumstances.

but he hadn't been able to resist the pull of the advertisement for the buffet when he saw it, and he hadn't been able to resist the pull to eat something once he was actually there. even under the effect of whatever was responsible for this whole miserable event, richie steers far away and clear of the eyeballs laid out on platters like round glistening appetizers, and eventually settles on a bit of brain.

maybe, he thinks humorously to himself as he does, to help distract himself from the act itself, his own might benefit some from the ingestion. or maybe he just gets mad cow disease instead. probably still preferable to remembering this lunch, if he's honest.

his mind is set on the theme of remembering when he bumps into ben by accident, and upon collision ben winds up getting a flash of a memory of richie back in derry, standing on the kissing bridge alone with his pocket knife out. he leans in to the wood on the side of the bridge, carves out a large, careful 'R'... and then the memory fades.

and richie's left looking down at ben in mild surprise as he recognizes him. he can't manage much more of an emotional response than that because a) ben makes 5 losers in deerington now, and that's not really so much a surprise as it is a pattern and b) he's starting to hear low level murmurs of half formed thoughts rising in the back of his mind like static, and they're definitely not his thoughts which is... troubling. ]

Man Ben, you really should have gotten here last month instead. Sure, the candy they were handing out still fucked with you, but at least it wasn't actual human organs they were expecting you to eat.

[fuzzbeat]

[ "Not hearing" — she likes how that's phrased. Harriet shakes her head. ]

I'm Deaf, [ she signs. It's probably clear enough. The woman in the torn, bloody dress seems like she'll understand that.

"Work of devils" isn't something Harriet comes across often. Reading about earth, her mother's home before the Library, introduced her to the deep ignorance of the extremely religious. It had shown her just how much power information had. The irony behind the Christian teaching that the truth shall set you free was that they held fast to error and twisted doctrine. They punished women for being women and blamed illness on the ill. They would have told Harriet her deafness was a trial, for the glory of their god, or that it was her mother's fault she was defective.

Ignorance is the greatest ill in the universe. They would probably look at this blonde woman and say she's also some sign of their god's love, or justice, or whatever the fuck. But she's intelligent. Harriet can see that. Maybe she just has trouble communicating it. So of course, that means the key is finding that common medium, a way to understand each other. ]

Maybe. [ Back to using her voice. ] No one knows who's in charge here. The organs are decaying. I just got here, so I can't answer any questions.

What's your name?

[deflectere]

I'll survive.

( and feel better once he smacks you with a board or something. )

And be happy to part with whatever weapon I have to use. That is, if you don't run and hide.

[effinphd]

Sweet, sounds amazing. Got time to lead me there?

[That gets a short, humorless laugh.] October's garbage everywhere. It's October where I'm from too, and it blows.

[effinphd]

Ahhhhh, gotcha.

No, I get it. I've been there. Didn't go all the way to marriage, but Aunt Janet was real concerned when I didn't bring any guys home.

[effinphd]

Jesus. [Theo rakes her fingers backwards through her hair, uncomfortable. Her gloved hands twitch, wanting to reach out, wanting to -- make sure. But that's not polite, not when someone's covered in blood.]

I'm sorry. That -- that sounds awful.

[bulletgram]

beaches everywhere suck compared to California

[gentrify]

'whatever weapon i have to use' the fuck, im not a gd vampire dude chill
but dont chill that much cause im holding you to that
ill give you my exact location right now if you make good on that threat

[ over eager? definitely. because he's losing his shit and mickey doesn't really know how to handle things he can't punch in the face. punching alec isn't going to help the situation, but it'll probably make him feel good for a while. ]

[effinphd]

Pop-tarts? Jeez, you shoulda opened with that one, buddy.

[Still, someone willing to share food is someone to be trusted, in Theo's experience, so she follows along, crowbar over her shoulder.]

It's that obvious? ...yeah, just got here. Just left a nightmare realm too, so this is like...two for the price of one.

[effinphd]

[Theo offers her best reassuring smile, tugging up her gloves a little more.] I have an ability too. I've never met anyone else outside of my family who does. It used to freak me out really bad when I was your age.

[She exhales, trying to keep her voice even, professional, not belie how mind-blowing it is to find someone else who can do strange things, even if it is a kid.] I think you being proud of what you can do is almost as cool as being the deadliest girl. I wish I'd been proud of what I could do when I was a kid.

[blackmothwings]

Thank you.

[She answers, actually managing to sound grateful. There's a part of her that sincerely believes that her brother's death is Edith's fault, after all. If it weren't for that awful child, Thomas would still be alive.]

I apologise for burdening you with something so dreadful. But your concern is appreciated.

[driving]

ok yeah i haven't seen anyone like that

[ Though some of those things apply to Steve. ]

there's a specific word for that?? huh

[acidwashjeans]

It's not-- [ He shakes his head. ] There's stuff going on here, with this girl named Sodder who's behind all this. She might be kind of psychic? I'm... kind of not the best person to ask about all this.

[ steve has not been paying attention ]

[fayzedandconfused]

[ She figures whatever Theo is about to do involves her hands somehow—which tracks with how abilities in the FAYZ work, too. Even Brianna's powers center around her hands, as weird as it sounds. So... that's okay, although it still begs the question what the hell that power is, if she was so freaked out by it. ]

Well, some powers just suck. [ Which is her lame attempt at cracking a joke, though she's clearly still a bit uncertain about what's about to happen. ]

[onerthes]

[Her eyes widened and she very nearly freaked out as Jester suggested that, shaking her head and reaching out with a hand to forestall any such thing.]

No, no, no! Don't try to heal anyone yet! Healing magic is very dangerous in this place! Especially powerful magic!

[Oh gods... she needed to warn this girl.]

[onerthes]

There's quite the colorful collection here. I'm sure you will see the good in many of them as you get to know them. [She smiled and nodded as they spoke, though the last questions made her sigh a little.]

A year... sadly, though it varies on how bad it is, from month to month. You may call me Vira-Lorr, by the by.

[trancheuse]

Is that so... mister law man? A super big deal are we? Haha, well fair enough. You're a long way away from your power base there, Johnny Law, let me tell you.

Me? [Chomp, chew the bare minimum, gulp right past that gag reflex. Take a second, down some ... blood. Laugh like a vampire... were there fangs there? yeah, those were fangs.]

I'm just a Nobody, but that means something where I come from. Name's Larxene.

[vivifying]

[ Ben's rushing to find any other person that looks like, well, how he'd expect a person to look. Anyone or anything with even an edge of sinister notion will cause him to promptly change course. He knows it's weird to be running around in his pajamas, but it's all he has...and it really doesn't feel like he's dreaming anymore.

That is until his curious face turns and looks to find who called out for him to stop. He doesn't feel darkness radiate from her, but he doesn't feel entirely easy, either. His inquisitive brows, raised high upon hearing a voice, falter as he stands frozen in place as she draws closer. ]

I, uh... [ can anyone fault him, no more than a boy about to trudge through his teenage years, if he's a bit uncomfortable with this whole predicament? He swallows loudly, and more color rises up on his cheeks and face. He's already a bit out of breath, face flushed, but if she's a potential ally rather than foe, welp. It's embarrassing to be embarrassed. ]

Where'd you get that? [ A nod and wave to her sword. She's the first person he's seen, and while a moment of trust may get him into trouble, he has to risk at least talking with her. His head gives a little shake. ] Sorry, you're the first person I've seen here, and this is starting to feel more like I'm in...Middle Earth, or something. [ A nervous chuckle. It really didn't seem like a high concept fantasy land, but she looks like she could be plucked from some other world, that's for sure. Please don't slice him in two, lady. And please let this be a dream, especially if she's out for blood.

She doesn't seem entirely dangerous? Then again, he's just now realizing that her eyes are silver. He squints at her, taking that characteristic in. ]

[gentrify]

yeah there's a word for that
for most of that
like the first line anyway

how the fuck do you not know what a twink is?
i know this wasnt gays-only vocabulary yesterday

Hi!! \o/

[vivifying]

[ Try as he may, Ben just isn't spotting anyone. The path his trek from the window had taken him on seems to paint the place as a ghost town. He can't still the nerves that gnaw at his stomach, dread tumbling within him as he takes each stride.

Then there's a voice. A familiar one! He abruptly stops, turns, and with wide eyes and the start of a smile, he runs straight over in Bill's direction. ] Bill! Oh my god, I -- [ A heavy breath. ] You don't know how happy I am to see you. [ It's clear on his face. The nerves dissipate, though they threaten to worm back in at any moment. With Bill at his side, there's nothing they can't conquer. He knows it's idealistic to think so and Ben doesn't care: Bill's their leader, and he's the best leader they could ever ask for.

Plus, the brightness on Bill's face is warm and comforting. It shouldn't be allowed to be so, not when Ben's just woken up in a weird town, where strange music had been playing, where he's certain that the menace that'd been threatening Derry was still after them. But, he's comforted. His brow furrows. ] Where are we? This isn't a dream, is it? [ When you have vivid dreams all the time, you know the difference between one and reality. ] I thought the clown finally got me...then I woke up...in a weird house. [ He glances back in the direction he'd come from. He points. ] Back that way. [ Sharing details is important, especially with Bill at the other end. ] What's going on, Bill?