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DECEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

🎈 █ VANISH LIKE A WARM STOVE

OPTION A:
[What the fuck was happening? Going from a warm bath to whatever frozen landscape was in front of him was too jarring to be considered with anything but shock. Stanley is quite literally wrapped up in the blanket from the bed he'd woken up in sitting on a bench in the center of town trying to make sense of it all. He looks like the typical vagrant in any given town that might scream at the wind but instead of screaming, he just shakes. Maybe he should be grateful he wasn't still dripping, but the scars on the inside of his arm make it all too real. He'd succeeded and he can't help but wonder if the other losers were successful or if they were lying somewhere under Neibolt a feast of fears for that fucking monster.]

OPTION B:
[Later on, through the guidance of some bizarrely helpful strangers, Stan has found himself in the diner with a warm cup of coffee and a migraine that made him feel like his head was about to collapse inward. The cold hadn't done him any favors, and he'd been purposeful when he made the move to the south to be away from that weather and the state of Maine with its too many trees and not enough actual citizens.

Say what you'd like about southern hospitality at least people weren't constantly killing each other. He's scrolling through the fluid, not interested so much as for something to do. He doesn't have any money and he keeps pushing his palms into the mug not to take a drink but just to bask in the warmth.]

OPTION C:
[As naturally skeptical as he is, at first Stan doesn't really care to use the matches but he's halfway to the bar when the chill sets so deeply into his bones that he can't help it. He strikes a match, expecting something to jump out at him or the flame to be immediately doused. Instead, he's greeted with a familiar scene. The losers, standing in a circle in the barrens making the oath, and it feels so real that he can smell the summer sun, the water on their clothes long since dried from the quarry and it's weird to be standing so close to the people he hasn't seen in decades. Maybe, he hoped that his sacrifice wasn't in vain that it had all worked out. When the flame gets blown out, Stan's left against the brick wall behind him rattling out a tired breath. The cold had almost overtaken him while he'd been in the throes of that vision.]

[ richie feels like this is the very particular shitty way that this town likes to operate that he warned a guy about the cold in maine last month only for this ice pick to the veins chill to settle in now.

this shouldn't be as much of a problem for him as it is, he's used to winter in maine, but there's a quality to it today especially that he can't shake off for long no matter what he does. not even changing into a wolf has done much more than delay the cold, and while he'd managed to find his own box of matches awhile ago he's... wary of it. after everything that's happened in this town so far, he knows all too well that no gift here comes completely free.

so he grits his teeth against the cold to avoid them chattering, stomps through the snow like it's done something to offend him personally, and stubbornly tramps aimlessly around town instead of what he really wants to do: find eddie and drag him into bed to nap through the worst of the freeze, of course.

and that's when he passes by some old guy hanging around outside a storefront with his own box of matches and something... something in the way he exhales stops richie cold (HA). it's a small enough sound that maybe, if he hadn't just been confronted with some terrible undead version of his friend barely a week ago, he might not have recognized. or at least not immediately.

turning slowly on his heel to look at this guy straight on, even making the extra effort to lower his glasses so he can get the full effect without the terrible blur of his prescription, richie starts to see pieces of stan in this man. stan's eyes had always been so old and now they finally fit the rest of him, richie thinks, and lets out his own shaky sound as he takes a step closer. ]

... Stan?

[Okay, no. Hallucinations definitely weren't supposed to register him at least not on the intellectual level. When he'd seen his friends, as kids, he'd just taken the place of himself but this - this was distinctly not that so he stares at Richie with his eyes a little wider, his expression turning from fear into something a lot like skepticism.]

You're not real.

Y-you have a lot of nerve s-s-saying that to me after und-dead you tried to s-suffocate me last week.

[ richie crosses his arms over his chest to try and trap the heat in his body, and also to maybe show this old stan how unamused he is about this whole situation. what gave him the right to grow up hot, anyway? ]

Undead me? You sure that was real? The only reason anybody would ever try to suffocate you is because you never shut up.

[God, no, Richie looks painfully similar to the kid he left behind in Derry so long ago. The teeth-chattering triggers something more sympathetic in him, and Stan reaches out to gesture in the direction of the bar.]

You're starting to sound like Bill. It'll be warmer in there.

[It's true, but Stan's still not remotely violent his shoulders are shaking, his arms thankfully covered by a sweater he'd plucked from a storefront. He holds the door open for him, sure it might be frowned upon to take some delinquent into a pub but it's also Stan's way to see if Richie was more than just another hallucination.]

Edited 2019-11-23 22:59 (UTC)

P-pretty fucking sure. Eds saw you t-t-too. Und-dead you was kinda a d-dick.

[ he bares his teeth at stan in the facsimile of a smile. it would probably be more honest if he couldn't literally feel his blood freezing in his veins as he stood here talking to the man stan.

and if his memories of that other stan weren't still so raw. ]

F-f-fuck you man. Old you is obviously a d-dick too.

[ he still darts into the bar through the open door though, ducking slightly to make it under stan's arm and stamping his feet just inside to clear the snow from his shoes and chill from under his skin.

the bartender looks up from the bar at his entrance but clearly recognizes him from the last time he'd been in to help claire with her moth problem, because he doesn't make any move to oust richie just yet. ]

I'm sorry about undead me, then, I guess? I don't really have any recollection.

[It takes Stan a minute, the door swings shut behind him and he palms his hands together, uncurls his fingers, he aches from his hands to his elbows and he assumes it's the chill getting into the keloid scars on the inside of his arms. Like the town itself is trying to remind him of his poor choices. It's not like he can ask Richie if they made it out okay. He clearly hasn't lived it yet.]

I haven't seen you in thirty years, Rich. Whatever that was, it wasn't me. Eddie's here too? Makes sense that you guys would be attached at the hip.

[For a minute he wonders if anything ever changed between them if Richie ever owned up to who he was. He folds himself into a table near one side of the room.]

[ richie pushes deeper into the bar without looking back at stan, slides himself into a booth near the back and immediately starts tapping out a quick, anxious staccato on the tabletop as he watches stan approach.

he wants to be happy about seeing his best friend here, but between that rough first go around with undead dick stan and the fact that this one is an old man... it's hard. he doesn't really know how to feel. except maybe slightly frustrated that deerington seems determined to remind him at every turn that he knows less about everything than any of his friends.

one of his hands twitches up instinctively towards the bite mark on his neck when stan mentions him and eddie being close before he catches himself and presses the hand flat on the table in front of him, glaring at it.

and then jerks his head up again to give stan a sharp, probing look that only just manages to mask the underlying heartache in his expression when he asks: ] Thirty years?

Edited 2019-11-24 00:02 (UTC)

Thirty years.

[Stan repeats it, absently nodding before his eyes flicker from Richie's hand to his neck, and then back to his face. Jesus, it's like staring into the past. It reminds him of simpler times, even though things back then had been anything but.]

We all went separate ways. I guess you become a successful comedian and Bill's a writer. I don't know.

[Of course, because he never made it to the Jade of the Orient. It was all Chess to him, he knew he'd be more of a hindrance than a help. There's a sadness creasing at the edges of his eyes when he offers him a sad smile.]

Sorry. Wish I could give you more. That's all I have. That's everything.

DECEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

VANISH LIKE THE WARM STOVE

BETTER WATCH OUT

Character Arrival

Stan Uris / IT / ota, will match format

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