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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.

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[Barry's own lack of trust... bothers her. Sally hasn't been here long, but long enough that she's almost desperate for anything at all familiar. Barry would be her first choice for that, because it's not like her career along with her whole agency and everything could've followed her to this weird dream-but-not-a-dream town in the middle of nowhere.

She breathes out a quiet sigh, glancing down at his shoes, still carefully holding her match's flame near. Part of her is still coming to terms with the fact that the last time they saw each other, they were having dinner with Sam. And after that whole argument on stage...

Sally apologized about that, though. She frowns and takes a few steps closer, still standing a little awkwardly in front of him.]

Hey, um... How long have you been here? 'Cause I was kinda freaking out at first, too. It's a lot to take in, I mean... it's actually almost impossible to take in, but we're here, so.

[She shrugs almost like she's trying to tell a joke, but it completely falls flat.]

This weather's not helping, I bet. It's fucking freezing out here.

[Trust is hard to have in a landscape where around every corner there's some kind of illusion or something to slip you up. He's even more dubious than usual, his face doesn't light up when he sees her his eyebrows just pull up high into his hairline the closer she comes.

It looks like her, but her nose is red from the cold and he can't imagine he looks much better. Well, probably worse. He presses his lips into a thin line as she talks and well, that much is really on point. The last hallucination he'd had was quiet, reflective, the cadence of her voice is pretty much the same. So, he lets himself have hope for a minute.]

Yeah, uh. Yeah. There were like flesh-eating parasites the size of small cars when I showed up it's... a lot.

[Not to mention the organs in the wall, which somehow is worse and he really doesn't want to tell her about that. He'd rather she think he was crazy for seeing the Sarlacc or the creature from tremors. Either way.]

Um, do you need a ride back to- [Well, her place. If she has a place.] well, anywhere's better than out here.

[Lucky for them both, he's equipped his car to be at least somewhat capable of driving over these roads. At least until the snow gets too high to move through.]

[There he is. He might've still been shaken up, but at least Barry's back to being his regular, awkward self. She lets herself smile a little, although her teeth are gritted from trying not to start chattering.

Sally's eyebrows raise now, glancing up at the car.]

Wait. They let you keep your car? What the hell? That's so unfair.

[Maybe she should be more worried about the huge flesh-eating things????? Listen, Sally can only take so much at once.]

The giant parasite thing sounds crazy, by the way, but yeah, at least your car has a working heater. I moved out of Missouri to avoid weather like this, thanks. Well, that, and you know, there's only one Hollywood.

[Barry has probably heard that story about a billion times by now. It's basically how she says hello.]

I guess so? The keys were in the bag I showed up with and then I found it parked on the side of the road.

[It's not the car she's used to him driving, not the four-door black beamer but it's a green station wagon that looks like it's seen the wrong side of the late nineties. It works fine, and Barry's got it rigged with chains on the tires and supplies in the back.]

It's not new to me either but it hasn't stopped in more than an hour. We should probably get somewhere safe.

[Not that he can't listen to her talk about Hollywood for hours, but it's getting colder by the minute and there's only so much a car heater can do for them. Barry opens up the passenger's side door for her and goes across to get in the driver's seat. It's less than glamorous, but it beats freezing to death downtown.]

[Oh, yeah, that's not the same car.]

Still! I barely got anything. Not even any real coats, I had to get all this here.

[The car does look like a downgrade in comparison to the one he drove back home, but it's better than nothing. It's also definitely ready for the weather, though Barry probably did that himself.]

Yeah, okay, yeah, let's go. Indoors is good. This match is almost—

[It's a good thing Sally's wearing gloves, because she finally glances back down at her match now to find its flame has just about reached her fingers. She reflexively waves it out before it can burn her.

Sally's eyes widen almost instantly, her jaw practically dropping. She suddenly looks far, far away from here and now, but she's definitely looking at something. Her eyes aren't glazed over or anything, they're very intent, but she shouldn't be able to see anything over Barry's shoulder in the snow.

She looks at her hand, which appears to be gripping onto the remnants of the burnt out match, but Sally's seeing something completely different.]

...Tell me you also see that Mercedes.

I... don't know how it works.

[Or what power decided what got to come and what had to stay back in the "waking world," as people kept so plainly stating. It doesn't feel like a dream to Barry, but he's been pretty disillusioned since showing up.

The matches, he knew better than to trust them now. It doesn't even occur to him that it's what she's got in her hand until she openly references it. He's got too much rattling around in his head, and the minute detail slips right on by.

When her face drastically changes, for a second he thinks it's something terrible, maybe as bad as he'd had to witness but - the gentle nudge to what he definitely couldn't see brings out a tired sort of exhale, his lips fall into a thin line.]

No, and it's not real.

[That's uncomfortable for him to admit out loud because moments ago Chris sounded and looked very real. So real, in fact, Barry had it imprinted at the front of his mind. It kept coming back to him in moments of silence. He's grateful for the distraction Sally provides, but he doesn't want to lose time on the streets, or traction to get someplace better- it's only a matter of time before the storm becomes impossible to navigate.]

Listen, we should probably get going.

[Barry doesn't sound sure himself, it's not like he can just take her back to the place he's squatting at, even if he wanted to. His equipment is out and he hasn't had time to shift things around and keep the place looking quasi-decent. He needed a different plan of action, maybe the diner or they could find a house she liked.]

Edited 2019-11-24 18:45 (UTC)

[Sally's face falls.]

Are you serious? I— [She mimes pressing a button on the last bit of match, but in a way that acting lessons can't really justify, because she absolutely believes it's a set of car keys.] Look, did you hear that? It beeped.

[It's unclear why Sally bothered to ask Barry if the car was real if she wasn't going to take his word for it anyway. She runs over to the... empty air behind his car, opens an invisible door, and attempts to sit in this very fancy and expensive invisible car. For the record, it's the 2019 AMG GT, because of course it is.

That goes about as well as you'd expect. Her butt collides with black ice, only slightly cushioned by her layers of clothing and some slush left on the street. ]

...Okay. Let's take your car.

[She's just gonna go back to shivering profusely, now without the warmth of the match, and shamefully pick herself up and walk over to the real car's passenger side door. Don't talk to her about it.]

[Barry's not really sure what to do about the delusion, he follows her out and reaches for the imaginary keys sort of awkwardly but there's really nothing there and his hand drops despite his desire to point it all out to her. He's never been very good at talking Sally into things, she was headstrong and dedicated. Arguing with her never played out to his benefit.

So, when her ass plants into the ground he can only offer a grimace but he gets into the driver's side of the station wagon and use his very real keys to turn on the engine. Steam rises from the hood, he flips the heat on immediately after. It will be cold at first, but it shouldn't take long for things to warm up.]

Maybe don't use the rest of those matches.

[Barry waits while Sally gets inside, and things are uncomfortably silent for a few minutes, he adjusts his visor so he doesn't have to look at the car seat in the back.]

Bar or diner?

[Sally is far too embarrassed about having basically just done a one-woman slapstick performance, so she just sits in the passenger seat with her arms crossed tightly over her seatbelt, staring through the windshield rather than looking at her unfortunate boyfriend.]

Mm-hmm.

[She's not convinced entirely not to use the matches at all just yet, even so. Now that she's embarrassed herself once, she at least knows what to expect next time, and it's the only thing she could find so far that's been able to actually feel warm.

At the question, though, she actually stops pouting long enough to consider the options.]

Diner, right? We can get hot coffee there.

[In terms of warmth, the diner's got more to offer, even if the bar's got a food menu. Not that drinking doesn't sound a little tempting. Maybe later.]

[At least it was a good slapstick performance, Barry's never questioned her acting ability or range. She's always been one of the most talented members of their class. Pulling out onto the road is easy, but only because the experience was on his side when it came to driving in the snow.

He has to be careful, of course, because he doesn't want to slip off the road or take on too much snow but even with the age of the car it warms up in record time, casting some fog across the windows, killing the frost along the outer edges of them as it goes.]

So, how long have you ... been here?

[Time was funny here, and it didn't really move in a straight line. The trip to the diner would be a short one, but he still needed to know how much she'd been around for. Obviously enough to get some winter wear, but that could've all gone down in the same day.]

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