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

[clussy]

(That response actually warrants a slight smile from Eddie. It was tiresome to explain these things, but at least the guy understood what he was saying when it came to the random experiments. That meant Barry would probably adjust better to this place than a lot of people have over the past year or so.

He takes the scalpel from Barry and takes out some alcohol wipes to carefully clean it. He's meticulous in his work and eventually seals the scalpel and puts it away. The gloves are peeled off and deposited with Barry's in a similar fashion.)

Over a year now. I turned thirteen here and in about two weeks I'll be fourteen. Before that I was in other weird places. (Eddie gives a thin shrug, and it's true. He carries a whole lot of weariness. A lot of scars, a lot of weight that he hadn't carried back when he was eleven.)

I've been gone from Derry and in other worlds since I was eleven though. So. I honestly don't remember much from my home sometimes anymore.

(Sometimes he even forgot the faces of his own friends. But that's something he doesn't feel like talking about even on a good day. Eddie gets to his feet and although he's much smaller than this man, he offers both of his hands anyway. They're both scarred heavily on the palms, but the right far more than the left.)

Upsie-daisy. Don't wanna sit near organs for that long. God only knows if they have anything wrong with them in the long run.

[hitactor]

Would've pegged you for fifteen but it's not like I spend much time around anyone under thirty.

[It's true, but he takes the things that Eddie's saying with some sincerity on his end because there were all different types of hell. Sometimes hell was something you lived in, and sometimes it was what you took with you. This kid was clearly older than his age, in ways that spoke multitudes for not only his maturity level but also the insight that he has over the same age bracket.

The offer of hands surprises him, but it's not like he wants to be rude so he gives him at least one palm and uses his own legs to pull himself up. He dwarfs Eddie, both in sheer height and body mass. The last thing he wants to do is topple them both over.

Well, thanks for the dose of realism, Doogie. And happy early birthday.

[Barry does notice the scars but it's not like him to ever ask about another man's wounds, there were things you didn't do. An unspoken rule and he had enough of his own to know better.]

[clussy]

Wha- (Eddie's taken aback by the man thinking he'd be older. Literally every adult he's ever met had pegged him for twelve or younger. Some had done so earnestly- and could he fault them? He was undersized with a baby face. Some adults had demeaned him by throwing out obviously ludicrous ages like six or something. Never older though.

He felt oddly flattered, and looked down at himself, wondering silently if maybe he had gotten taller without realizing it. A pleased flush was working its way into his face. Eddie was at the odd age where he still didn't want to abandon his childhood, but part of him was getting older and liked the idea of people respecting the maturity that came with that. It was a funky middle area to be stuck in.

Eddie sure knows he can't do shit physically to help this guy up, but he's glad to be humored anyway. Dude's hands were definitely as big as they looked.)

Doogie? (He curls his lips around the nickname and stares up at the guy, brow raised.)

Thanks. Sorry I can't really offer you much of happy-anythings. Since I doubt you're that happy to be stuck in Horrorville 2.0.

[hitactor]

[Barry mostly gets himself to his feet, but he gives the kid a look when he returns the comment with some clear misunderstanding on his side. Was it really so weird? His whole business was tracking down adults, and everything else coincided with that. The last time he'd spent any time at all with a kid was at the fair with a former brother in the Marines.

Even that was fleeting, uncomfortable for him in a myriad of ways he wasn't ready to own up to just yet.]

Yeah? Am I off? Sure, you're kind of small - thought that was normal. I wasn't much to look at around your age either.

[Which is true.] Yeah, Dr. Doogie Howser, he was a savant, medical genius, doctor type. It's a TV show, a young kid doing medicine.

[Horrorville 2.0 was a good way of putting it but it begged the question.] What was 1.0?

[clussy]

Fourteen in like two weeks so you're not that off. It's other people who are usually pretty wildly off.

(He's blushing again, mostly at being told he was kind of small. It didn't sound so negative coming from Barry somehow. He didn't really...mind being small around the guy, and it reminded him of how he never really minded being small around Bill or Richie.)

Are you saying I'm ugly? (He puts a hand over his chest in mock offense, looking up at Barry with big eyes. He's honestly just fucking with the guy since he knew that I wasn't much to look at wasn't meant that way- but hey. Eddie was, if anything, kind of a brat sometimes.)

Oh. Yeah. I'm from the uh- 1950s so I pretty much don't...know any sort of references most people make. That sounds kinda cool though. Dunno if I'd go far enough to call myself a genius type, but still.

(Cool idea.

He looks at Barry for a few seconds and then looks away.)

Derry. My hometown. It's a pretty miserable place, generally speaking.

[hitactor]

I guess I'm not other people.

[The guess was more of a reality, he'd learned the hard way that he didn't even come close to most normal well-adjusted individuals.]

No? I don't think so. Am I?

[Not being much to look at didn't automatically equate to ugly, Barry sort of just figured anybody under the age of twenty-eight was still growing into who they were supposed to be and anyone between 11 and 16 were faced with the homely reality that their bodies were stacked against them.]

The 1950s.... [Okay, Barry will buy a lot. Organs in the floor, monsters, hellscapes and all the rest but a time crux wasn't on his list of shit to just blindly accept.] Bullshit.

So is Cleveland. Most places are terrible places in the north-west.

cw: child abuse, IT in general.

[clussy]

(Eddie winds up laughing at Barry's reaction to the ugly comment. Wow, all right. He gives the guy a funny sort of smile afterwards, an easy brightness in his eyes. He clearly didn't think Barry really was calling him any sort of ugly, and it was funny in a way because normally Eddie did figure that's what people were getting at.

It's not unsurprising that the 1950s thing is unbelievable and Eddie just sighs hopelessly.)

Yeah, okay, sure dude, but trust me, you talk to me for long enough and you'll realize very quickly that I'm definitely from the 50s. Most people say it's pretty obvious after a while.

(There were too many mannerisms and lack of media-understanding for him to be fibbing about it. But that wasn't something so easily proven in a brand new conversation.)

Yeah...No, I mean like literal evil. We had the literal manifestation of fear that like slept under our town and rotted it all the way through and made everyone like- fucking horrible people. And not like 'Doug's a real jackass' terrible but like 'What, another dad beat his kid to death? What's new' terrible. We have like this astronomically high homicide rate and most of its for kids or hate crimes, so. I'm not being metaphorical, by the way. There was like- literally a god of fear that fed off that shit.

(He's not really even trying to play a who-suffers-more game. It was just one of those things he always tried to emphasize a bit because a lot of people from the future seemed to mistake the whole 'my hometown sucks' thing for a kid whining about some lousy town when in actuality, no. Derry really was just the worst.

And it didn't really feel like oversharing considering most people didn't believe Eddie and after a while, you got really numb to sharing these sort of things when people just gave you a doubtful look. What was the point in trying that hard to convince someone?)

[hitactor]

Either way. You should be the same age as my dad. He was in Nam. You guys are just now pushing the Korean situation. Depending on the exactness of the year.

[Whatever Eddie might deem as literal evil is worth paying attention to for Barry, considering his own skewed view of the word and the reality within it. He nods his head while listening, and despite being already very unnerved by this new location the corners of his mouth crease even further down at the notion that this kid lived in a world that had been so toxic and impossible to survive.

He'd seen some shit, sure, even been the cause for some of it but he still had a moral code.]

So- one fucked up situation to another. You're a seasoned professional.