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soddersays2019-11-23 01:49 am
sodder) wrote in soddersays2019-11-23 01:49 am
Entry tags:
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!
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!
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.
herbert west 🗲 re-animator
[ there's a goddamn reason herbert west applied for a transfer to miskatonic medical school in massachusetts and not UNE in maine. granted, that reason was primarily academic rigor, but mr. west isn't particularly fond of maine's climate, either. deerington has over the past twelve hours shown itself to be far worse than biddeford and presumably also much further north, but there seems to be more to it than that: this is obviously some kind of an afterlife, a universe governed by different laws than the one he'd so violently exited the previous day.
his body heat is leaving him more than it should be, even when he's indoors and insulated by multiple layers. his fingertips are even beginning to show early stage 2 frostbite — and being that he lacks the regenerative abilities of many salamanders, this is a tremendous concern.
herbert's a naturally suspicious person, but he's also a realist, and as such, he's able to recognize that he's in no position to turn down the matches someone seems to have left out for him. when the first burns down and shows him a vision of—what else?—himself speaking into a microphone as he revives a deceased patient onstage, looking out at a sea of faces in a dimly lit auditorium like something from a hans christian andersen tale, he saves the tiny nub that's left in the hopes of later testing it for psychotropic properties but lights the second anyway. he'd like to keep his extremities.
he uses the temporary blessing of warmth to get a better sense for his surroundings; while he notices that the presence of others seems to amplify the warmth it gives off, that's not enough of a draw to entice herbert west to seek out the company of others. he has things to accomplish and a limited window of time to do them in, so he continues around the perimeter of the town, weaving in and out of buildings, asking what he can when it suits him.
when he realizes that the second match is burning down, herbert deliberately makes his way to the edge of this little civilization and sits down on a snow-sheeted birch log to wait for its death. it he's going to hallucinate again, he would prefer for that to happen without an audience. but it doesn't.
the match burns out and his surroundings remain the same, quiet, indifferent to his presence as the warmth fades from his body. he's reaching for the third when he hears the dull crunch of fresh snow under nearing footsteps, followed by a voice he'd come to know well.
"West?"
herbert sets the match down and looks over his shoulder. he doesn't recall getting up or leaving the box on the log, but he's standing when he grasps dan cain's bare arms—bare, given that he's wearing his green surgical scrubs in the 12 degree weather—and greets him. ]
Dan—I thought you lived! Now, listen, this is a setback, but this place seems developed enough for it to be possible for us to continue our—
[ "Herbert, you're not dead. Neither am I. You're drugged up from surgery and you're cold because they didn't bring you enough blankets."
well, that's a tremendous relief. he supposes it makes sense. dan squeezes his shoulder through the weight of the parka he's presently cocooned in; herbert smiles at him.
"Take that ridiculous thing off, will you? It's time to go wake up. We have work to do."
maybe all those stories about patients being told to get up weren't just spun to make themselves feel better about nearly encountering death. it occurs to him, dimly, that on the off chance this isn't a dream, fumbling with the icy zipper of his parka and shucking it off into the snow would be a terrible idea, probably close to paradoxical undressing in victims of hypothermia, but he does so regardless. the cold is terrible, bone-chewing, enough for his teeth to ache when he inhales.
the second set of tangible, very much real footsteps behind him go entirely unnoticed. ]
2 / RASKOLNIKOV FELT SICK. | warnings for body horror/gore/eye trauma.
[ herbert isn't fool enough to do anything but dive behind the trunk of a massive elm the instant he sees the beast — it looks like something out of a low-budget slasher film, dripping and panting and full of jagged teeth, and west, having very recently died himself, has no interest in tangling with any more creatures than he already has over the past thirty-two.
he's got nothing to fight it off with, and despite the horns at the top of its head, the thing's dentition and front-facing eyes both suggest it's a predator, not anything within a million light years of the nearest artiodactyl (phylogenetically speaking, at least). not good. he scans the blanket of snow in his periphery for something, anything—a fallen branch, a chunk of granite, a rusted animal trap—nothing.
the thing takes a loud step in his direction, compacting fresh snow under the weight of its feet. it seems much more interested in him— maybe it can still smell carrion on his clothes; the flare of its massive nostrils would support that theory.
it's approaching. herbert west isn't idiot enough to run; he's under no delusion that he's faster than whatever this thing is, and fleeing will undoubtedly only cement him as a prey animal in its primitive brain. so he stays completely frozen even as it approaches, deliberately slowing his respirations to keep his chest as still as possible. as for his pulse, well, there's nothing to be done about the frantic speed of his heartbeat, nor the perspiration gathering between his spine and dress shirt. ]
[ to this scene's sole witness, he grits out: ] Kill. It. The base...of the skull.
[ that thought, along with every other thought racing through his head, is wiped away the second the animal turns its heavy skull in his direction and meets herbert west's own front-facing eyes. he's there again, in switzerland, breathing in air thick with formaldehyde and ethanol and old paper, and somehow, he's aware that he's not alone as the memory seizes his consciousness.
« stopping CPR. the inert surface of his PI's jugular vein against his index and middle fingers. pulling his own tie loose with one hand and fumbling for the shatterproof plastic bottle of reagent he'd snatched up and brought with him when the man collapsed with the other. filling the syringe, the gentle resistance of the plunger as he pushed the reagent into dr. gruber's cerebrospinal fluid. and then nothing.
eight seconds. nine seconds. ten seconds. nothing. twelve. thirteen. nothing. now the sweat glistening on his skin isn't just from the exertion of two minutes of chest compressions. get up. doctor gruber, get up.
he fills the syringe with another five ccs. injects them.
hans gruber's fingers begin to twitch. he starts screaming like an infant that's just entered the world, or re-entered, as it were. herbert fumbles for a pen and starts writing notes he can translate into german later with the wrong hand. it's working. he stabilizes the man's body with the hand that's free—and then there are voices on the other side of the door: doktor gruber? herr doktor? herr west! herr west!
no, no, no, no, no, not now!
glass shatters. polizei and dr. fleischer from across the hall and the laboratory coordinator who presumably called them here rush him, start pulling him away, as though they're in any place to guide dr. gruber through his re-entry into the world of the living, as though they've completed three years of medical school and two years of graduate research on this very procedure.
gruber stands up. frantic hope surges through herbert's chest at the same time the officer's grasp weakens and he seizes the opportunity to run across the room and stand before his adviser, squeezing both forearms to keep him stable.
Doctor Gruber!
[ there's no response. there's no indication of name recognition or higher brain function. he grasps his head and screams louder, bearing his blood-flecked teeth in a snarl of agony as his eyes begin to bleed and bulge. blood geysers. herbert hears himself scream right along with the rest of them as his adviser dies a second time, this time barely resisting as the polizei rush him and haul him back to the edge of the room.
dr. fleischer steps forward and checks his pulse as though what he'll find is any mystery to any of them.
'er ist tot.' as though they don't all already know this. as though herbert's fatal mistake hasn't already been laid abundantly clear. ]
Of course he's dead, the dosage was too large.
[ i didn't wait long enough. i wasn't confident enough in our work. ] »
[ the memory ends as abruptly as it began, leaving herbert stunned just long enough for the beast in front of him to wrap its tongue around his arm with crushing pressure, then his trunk. he thrashes, tries to turn his head in such a way that he might be able to bite it, all to no avail. ]
A rock! Give me a rock, something to slice it with!
3 / NETWORK.
UN: HERBERTWEST
I am looking for a suitable laboratory space to continue the research I was performing before my death. Nonporous floors, running water, electricity, and ample counter space are a necessity. I am quiet and considerate. Send me a message if you are interested in negotiating a lease agreement or know of a space which might fit my needs.
4 / GOING TO MAINE.
[ wildcard! also i may end up dumping some other minor prompts here eventually. if you wanna plot something feel free to shoot me a pp @
1.....lord forgive me
He's just walking, minding his own goddamn business, and it's freezing cold. Cold to the point of his fingers stinging, his cheeks red; he's walking with his head bent down, teeth gritted, ignoring everything as best as he can, imagining himself back in his shitty apartment. Shitty, but at least it's warm.
Usually, this route is a shortcut, but it only occurred to him halfway that stomping through the cold and snow is anything but short. He's tantalising himself with the idea of being able to take off his coat when he hears someone talking, and then a second later he looks up in time to see what is transparently the village idiot taking off his goddamn parka in the middle of a snowstorm. Jesus, he's going to have to do something, isn't he? ]
The hell are you doin'? [ He snatches up the parka and wraps it tight around this dumbass's shoulders, standing right in front of him and blocking whatever view he thinks he has. ] You tryin' to get yourself killed?
this tag wiped every coherent thought out of my brain. thank you king
I—no.
[ it only takes him a few seconds to realize what's really going on here. he's still dead and dan's alive. this was the hallucination. herbert can't help but to feel the burn of humiliation rising to his face—well, humiliation or windburn, one of the two. the sensations are difficult to distinguish from each other in this weather. ]
I thought I saw something I didn't. [ shortly: ] Thank you.
[ if your friends told you to jump off a bridge... ]
god bless.
The 'thank you' goes a long way, though. Raylan's expression shifts a little, and he nods. He knows better than to ask for specifics – whatever he saw, it was probably personal, and it'd be rude to nose. ] What're you doin' all the way out here?
no subject
I wanted a moment alone with my thoughts. And you? [ Herbert lifts his brows, making a point of surveying the stranger's much taller form as though that will give some indication as to why he's here. ] This is a rather far way away from the town.
no subject
un: avesatanas
no subject