DECEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to December's Test Drive Meme!

This month's Test Drive's theme is: PROPHETIC 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 death via exposure (freezing), Krampus imagery, possible vore, visual and auditory hallucinations, monster violence, stalking, decapitation

Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One Prompt Two Character Arrival Master Navigation

VANISH LIKE THE WARM STOVE

Winter has set in in Deerington and it’s as harsh as one would expect for the frigid mountains of inland Maine. There’s snow on the ground, icicles hanging off of most buildings, and black ice all over the roads. Better be careful where you step or you might just slip and hurt yourself while you’re walking around town!

But there’s something unusual about the cold. It feels bone-deep and no amount of layers or staying inside seems to make it shake. Your teeth are always chattering, you feel the need to hunch in on yourself to keep any heat from escaping, and if you look at your hands, you might see them go from bright red, to white, to even the slightest tint of blue throughout the day. You’re getting colder by the minute and it feels like there’s no way to stop it. Maybe you’re just doomed to freeze.

The box is waiting on a bench. You didn’t see who placed it, but there’s a small tag with your name on it, so clearly it was meant for you. If you ignore the box, it will start to show up on random surfaces around town wherever you might be; the kitchen counter, a desk or display case at your work, the floor of your bedroom… No matter where you are, the box is there too. Eventually, you might as well just give in and open it.

Inside every box are three matches. They’re relatively long, like the sort you’d use to light a fire in a fireplace, and they appear to be completely normal. People who can sense magic won’t get a reading off of the match and no amount of testing the wood or the tip will show anything other than the exact chemical make up one would expect. So maybe they’re safe! There’s a small note tucked inside the box with only two words written in childishly messy scroll; Keep Warm.

If you light the match, you’ll find that you’re instantly starting to feel a little less cold. It’s the first bit of heat you’ve managed to snag in so long that you’ll probably find yourself a little desperate to hold onto it. The matches burn at a relatively steady rate, not too fast or too slow, and the wind can easily blow them out, so be careful! You’ll have to protect the flame from the elements if you want to keep yourself toasty. The only strange thing that you might notice is that whenever you’re near another person who has a lit match, both the matches seem to burn a little stronger and stay lit a little longer. So maybe you’ll have to pair up and learn to share. If you’re smart, you’ll light just one of each of your matches at a time, giving you a total of six chances to keep yourself from freezing to death.

There’s always a catch though, isn’t there? Each match will come with a unique vision as the flame dies out. A vision that can be seen by both of you. The vision will belong to whoever’s match as burning and it will be as vibrant and detailed as if you were really in the middle of it.

The end of the first match will show you something you want. It can be anything; a warm meal, a new bed, an object from home you’ve longed for. You’ll be able to pick it up, taste it, smell it, do whatever you would normally do; but at the end of the day, it isn’t real, and ultimately you might find that you’re just chewing on your own (or your companion’s) hand.

The end of the second match will show a vision of someone that you miss. Whether it’s from home, a previous world, or someone who’s come and gone from Deerington, you’ll see them clear as day, calling for you and beckoning you to come with them. It’s probably best to not. After all, you’d have to leave your matches behind, and it’s cold out there.

The end of the third match will show you a vision of somewhere you miss. It’ll be like you’re standing in the middle of the very place you’ve been longing for ever since you arrived in Deerington — maybe even longer. It’ll look, sound, smell, and feel like the place you’ve missed most. It’s almost easy to want to stay and forget to come back to reality and light your next match.

If you both can make the six matches stretch until the sun sets, you’ll find that the cold has finally broken, and you’re able to keep yourself warm again. If you don’t? Well, it’s time to find someone else with a bundle of matches, and hope they’re okay with some basic invasion of privacy to stop you both from getting hypothermia.

BETTER WATCH OUT

Have you been a good person this year? Probably not! This is Deerington after all and everyone’s got a sin or two they’ve committed that they’ve been carrying around some deep shame about. Whether it’s something you’ve done here or something you did back home, the things your character feels guilt over will start to plague them more and more frequently as of late. Maybe you’ll start to see small little snippets of the memory flash before your eyes, or hear the voices of the people you’ve hurt calling out to you for mercy. No matter how it manifests, it’ll be gnawing at your insides, growing more and more impossible to ignore.

It might just be the paranoia from having to flashback to your worst memories at all hours of the day, but eventually you start to feel like someone (or something) is following you. You hear the scrape of nails against cement, the thud of heavy footsteps, or the sound of a heavy sigh by your ear accompanied with the smell of rancid breath. But every time you go to look, it seems like there isn’t anything there. No matter how logical a person you might be, you still end up feeling a little on edge, and you know you’re right about being… well, stalked. You may not be the sort who usually goes for comfort from others, but something inside of you tells you that maybe you’ll be a little safer if you aren’t alone. You seek out a friend, a colleague, or even a complete stranger— just someone who might make this creeping suspicion of being watched go away for a little while.

Except the moment that the two of you are together, Krampus finally arrives. He seems to fall from the sky, landing in front of you with a ground shaking thud, his long tongue hanging out of a mouth filled with razor sharp teeth. He’s ever bit the demon you’d expect him to be and he looks hungry. You can try to run or you can try to fight, but he’s quick and strong, certainly hard for any normal human to take down. And if you look into his eyes, then things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Whoever locks eyes with him will have the very thing you have been feeling guilt over put on display for both you and your companion to see. It’ll be like you’ve been transported directly into the memory, Krampus’ clawed hand gripping your shoulders and forcing you to watch whatever your shame is play out in front of you all over again. The detail is striking and there’s nothing left out, no matter how hard you or your companion try to stop it.

When the memory stops playing, Krampus will start to move his tongue around you, wrapping you in the long, blood red muscle like it’s a snake. You can try to break free and it’s possible to cut the demon’s tongue with a sharp blade if you or your companion happens to have one; whatever you do, it’s best to do it quickly before you end up a snack.

Krampus can be taken down in one of two ways; either the person who is experiencing the guilt must confess their sin out loud and profusely apologize, begging for forgiveness for their misdeeds or he can be taken down in a somewhat simple ceremony. The chains dangling from the Krampus wrists must be grabbed and somehow secured into the ground; this will weaken Krampus greatly and leave him more vulnerable to attack. Once he is secured, you must take off his head. It doesn’t matter if it’s cut off, ripped off or blown off, the moment the neck is severed from the rest of the body, the Krampus will turn a deep black, like coal, before crumbling into dust, leaving only the head behind.

A little messy, but definitely efficient.

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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[It was a good thing Dean wasn't driving because he would've just abruptly slammed on the breaks. His expression souring immediately should've been enough to cue Sam in on just how he felt about that unspecific namedrop. Assuming Sam stole a glance to read his brother's features in that moment.]

Archangels are even bigger douchebags than regular angels, Sam. I've met four of them and they're all varying degrees of suck. Ranked from Gabriel as the not worst and the freaking Devil as the-- [He gestures widely with one hand.] Well, as the freaking Devil.

[Sam's argument only barely placated the elder Winchester. The "before you say anything" request only made him more irritable because that meant Sam knew how he would take the news. And if he were a more reasonable person, he would've positively reflected on the fact that Sam knew how he'd take it and yet was choosing to tell him rather than try to hide it.]

Dammit, Sam. We're not family with-- [All the bluster left his argument when he realised, probably the same time Sam did just where that sentence was going and he had repeatedly called Castiel, an angel, family. Family don't end in blood.] Why would future us adopt an archangel's son? [He wasn't saying he accepted this or that he was happy with it, but he'd hear Sam out.]

I know, I know.

[ He doesn't have to convince Sam to get on the 'most angels are complete assholes.' He's been on board ever since Uriel came down to correct any misconceptions about angels being the good guys. Of course it came along with Cas, who proved that they could be good, though a lot of what he has to go on there has come from this place. Back home Castiel has been - well, reluctant to do anything to hurt them or manipulate them, but he's been going along with it. It was kind of a shock to learn just how integral he becomes to them. To their family, as weird and broken as it may be.

Dean gets it too. He's come a long way from the stance of believing that anyone who isn't human can't be trusted, a lot longer in that stretch of time he's lived beyond Sam at this point. It's an easier point to get him to accept Jack, at least.

He doesn't have to consider Jack family like Sam does. It would be nice, and hopefully he'll come around to it, but what he needs right now is less of a jump. ]

Because he's not his father, Dean. He's just a kid. A kid with more power than he knows what to do with, who was practically orphaned the moment he was born, and he deserves the chance to live without being taken away to be anybody's pawn. He doesn't have anywhere else to go.

[ It's not hard to see how Sam identifies so strongly with the kid. ]

Look, you don't have to like it. I'm just asking you to give him a chance.

[ And, well, Jack's not going anywhere. He's not going to rub that in Dean's face, but that's not even going to be a discussion. ]

Do you? Do you really?

[Maybe that was a bit harsher than it should've been, but Sam wasn't always the best judge of just how bad something really was, in his experience. That didn't make him love or trust Sam any less, it just made him feel like he needed to work a little harder to protect him than he should. He was more of a bleeding heart and that was dangerous in their line of work.

Sam's argument seemed to strike something of a cord in Dean. The kid wasn't his father. Sam seemed somewhat keen on not directly saying which archangel spawned the kid, but that could just be out of lack of knowing, himself. However, the stronger point was letting the kid live without being someone's pawn. Sam and Dean were, countless times, pawns and it frustrated and infuriated him.]

One chance, Sam. One. The very second he looks like he might be going Darkside, so help me, I will find the nearest angel blade and put him down. [Don't tell him Jack's immune, Sam. That will just make him more paranoid.

The conviction in Dean's voice probably wasn't nearly as definitive as he would've liked it to sound, but that was mostly due to the fact that he wasn't sure he could do it. Dean was good with kids. A born protector, and though his family was priority, first and foremost, he was still in favour of protecting kids.]

[ It was harsh, but Sam takes it without a flinch. He's trying to be as diplomatic as he possibly can be with all of this, but there are certain things that he's not going to budge on. Treating Jack like the kid he is happens to be one of them. And he knows Dean, knows that he always gets like this when he's expected to play nice with someone dangerous who he doesn't trust. Sam doesn't really blame him. Dean doesn't need to remind him that this very same streak of sympathy was the one that got him stabbed in the back a year ago, and Dean sacrificed everything to bring him back from that. Of course he wouldn't want that to happen again. But Jack isn't like that. This isn't some stranger he barely knows that just happened to end up thrown together with him, especially not now.

Obviously killing Jack wouldn't be that easy, but Sam is not going to have a conversation about Jack's weaknesses right now. It's not that he doesn't trust Dean, he does, but telling him now would feel too much like admitting that he thinks that Jack's some kind of land mine bound to go off sooner or later.

There's always a risk, it's inevitable with that much power floating around, but Jack's been trying so hard to keep it under control. Sam knows that Jack would rather kill himself before he hurt anyone else. Especially family.

He's shaking his head as he pulls into the driveway, turning back to Dean before he moves to get out of the car. ]

If anything happens, we deal with it together, okay? You know how great it turns out when we try to go off on our own.

[ It's hard to imagine that changing, even years into the future. ]

[Dean pauses, glaring at the dash as if it had dared argue with him on the matter too, before following suit and getting out of the car. He might've slammed the car door a bit harder than necessary, but that didn't mean he was having a tiny bit of a temper tantrum. Dean? Never.

He met up with Sam and walked alongside of him, antsy to get inside but not too eager to run into this half angel kid.]

Right. Sure. Yeah. Together. You sure you're okay with that? I trust you to have my back, Sammy, but you sound pretty attached to the kid already. If it comes down to skewering him, could you really do it? I'll take that responsibility.

[Dean scratched absently at the mark on his inner forearm, just under the crease of his elbow through his jacket.]

And what's the story on the ink, anyway? Did you wake up with this weird-ass mark, too? [He rolled up his sleeve to show Sam his tattoo.]

Edited 2020-01-04 08:11 (UTC)

[ Sam's huffing out a breath that plumes into vapor in the cold air at that insistence. Dean wouldn't know that they've had this conversation before, or at least one very much like it, and it... pretty much went exactly like this. Except it came a little later when Dean knew Jack better, and even if he didn't have the same kind of connection, he understood it better. They'll get there. It's not hard to see all the reasons that Sam was prone to taking Jack in, and to feeling so protective of him from the very start.

The truth is that Sam knows he couldn't do it. He's not even sure he could let it happen, no matter how bad it gets. Would he fight Jack if he has to? Absolutely. But when it comes to family, there are very, very few things he cares about in this town enough to make that kind of sacrifice for.

And the main one is right in front of him.

But he'll just avoid that issue for now in favor of Dean's other question. ]

The antler tattoo. [ He reaches up to tap his right shoulder, his own is a few inches down from there, usually completely hidden. Dean's is a lot more obvious. ] Yeah, everyone's got one of those. I don't know why except for the deer thing going on around here. As far as I know they don't actually do anything.

[Dean rolled his sleeve back down after the question was addressed. His biggest issue with the thing is that he didn't know what it was for or what it did. They were pretty familiar with what certain symbols and designs could do when drawn or tattooed on the skin. Even if he wasn't likening it to symbols like a Devil's Trap or the Enochian banishing symbol, there were anti-possession tattoos and symbols to keep a demon securely inside the person they were possessing. He just didn't like the idea of wearing an unknown tattoo that may or may not have a purpose.]

Great. So not only did we get dream-napped by a freaky deer, but we're stuck wearing its tramp-stamp? That's just friggen awesome. Branded like cattle. Consent, man. Hasn't this rabid Bambi ever heard of it?

[The elder Winchester squinted suspiciously at the front door, half expecting some little half-angel pre-teen to burst through the door at any minute.]

Casa de Sammy, huh? Not gonna lie, I almost expected the whole white picket fence thing.

[ Sam can't blame him for being uncomfortable with it. He's not a fan either, obviously, but all he's got at this point is wild conjectures that may or may not be true, and honestly it's been pretty far down on his list of things to worry about. Most days he's way more concerned about just getting everyone he cares about through the day without getting eaten by xenomorphs or killer clowns (ugh) or swarms of bloodthirsty rats. It's never boring, he'll give it that, and it's keeping him sharp, to say the least.

He'll bump his shoulder into Dean's on the way toward the stairs, not so subtly reminding him that he's not actually walking into a trap. As he might expect, the house is warded and shielded with as many protective elements as Sam can feasibly work into it, some of which he had help with, and while it would be hard to call any place perfectly safe here, this is about as close as it gets. ]

This is just kind of what I ended up with and it stuck.

[ The white picket fence would be a bit much. Even though it's occurred to him that he could have a house like the one he's always wanted. In a town that's half dream and half nightmare. There's probably something ironic about that. ]

So, uh, there's something else I should tell you about this place. [ Before Dean gets as far as the room that's his, but also not his. Sam's already unlocking and pushing the door open as he's talking. ] You know how you just woke up here? Sometimes that happens to people more than once. And they don't always remember being here.

[ Do you see where he's going with this? ]

[The shoulder bump was quick to defuse some of his tension. He did note the various inscriptions and wards. Some looked familiar, others didn't. Now this felt more like their aesthetic.]

Yeah, I've gotten a bit of the rundown from Claire. Not in detail, but I've been here before, apparently. Still not sure how that works, but I guess it's inevitable in a dream world. Just how many times have I been here and forgotten?

[He reads you loud and clear, Sammy. He's expecting to stumble over a room filled with nudey mags and AC/DC posters or something.]

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