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

Luke knows that look.

There are actually two variants he's encountered so far, and while it usually quickly becomes obvious which it's going to be, they tend to start exactly the same. One group wants to stare at him open-mouthed and maybe touch his sleeve or, sometimes, suggest completely inappropriate things to mention on first meeting. The other group wants to take him in dead or alive. What's more surprising is it happening here, which doesn't feel like anyplace in the galaxy he's ever heard of, but had begun to seem almost like a dream where his own world never existed.

"Uh," he says smoothly, like a hero, "yeah?"

Jonathan realises he's staring, and being super weird. He neither wants to touch Luke or take him anywhere, he's just having a hard time with this idea that some dude walked out of a film and is real and here in front of him. He swallows any dumb idea he has about asking about the Force or whatever.

"Sorry, uh. I...read about you somewhere," he says. He's not about to try to explain the actual truth. This seems less messy. "I wouldn't expect you to be in this stupid nightmare town."

He has to tell Will about this. He has to! His brother will absolutely flip about it. He shivers and remembers that, right, they're both going to freeze if they don't do something.

"My name is Jonathan. What...what did you say happened when you lit that match?"

Luke isn't trying to be rude. It's just that he's still trying to deal with what it means to be Luke Skywalker, let alone dealing with other people caring who that is. When Jonathan makes no move to grab him for either reason, Luke shakes himself and reminds himself that, yeah ok, he's like a known Rebellion fighter, his picture is probably in a lot of places. But the fact it connects this place to where he came from is both a comfort and confusing.

"Sorry, I just--I'm not used to..." He waves a hand, and that reminds him how kriffing cold he is. "Right. Um. I was warmer for a bit, longer than you'd expect really, but before it went out..." He frowns. "Like I said. I saw, or thought I saw, my lightsaber. Like it was real. But it couldn't possibly have been here, not with... and when I went to pick it up, it turned out to be just a stick. I wouldn't've connected it to the match, only it seemed to, you know, suddenly vanish the same time the flame went out."

Jonathan isn't offended. He's an awkward person by nature, and meeting someone from a film is so incredibly strange. And maybe it's kind of cool, because Luke Skywalker is pretty cool, but...it's just a lot to take in.

Jonathan, too, remembers how cold he is, shivering under all his layers. He's never been this cold.

"So it makes you warm but you...saw something from home?" he confirms. "That doesn't sound so bad." He pulls his box of matches out of his coat pocket and looks at them with interest for the first time since picking them up.

"Maybe it's worth it if it makes us warm?"

Luke's just grateful the guy doesn't automatically think he's crazy; he's seen a lot that doesn't make sense since coming here, but then again, if someone had told him about anything that had happened to him after leaving Tatooine he wouldn't have believed them. He doesn't really have room to doubt anyone, at this point. Maybe Jonathan doesn't, either.

He nods at the suggestion. "That's my thought," he hazards. So far, no vision he'd ever had had hurt him. I mean, sure, he still sometimes wakes up to repeat visits of the cave on Dagobah, but a nightmare doesn't count as actual harm. Right? "I mean, as long as you keep in mind it's not real, it can't hurt you."

It's more wishful thinking than real conviction that colors his voice.

Jonathan has been through way too much shit, both back home and already in Deerington, to think that Luke is either making up what he says or that he's wrong about it. This place is a literal nightmare. And anyway, maybe he's thinking about it wrong, but he doesn't think Luke freaking Skywalker would just make up something about a vision. He doesn't seem like the type, based on the films. Jonathan tries to remind himself not to judge on that, because this is a real person and they're not in a movie, but it's...difficult!

"I wouldn't be so sure it can't hurt you," Jonathan says, "Not here. All kinds of things can hurt you here." Still, Luke's vision, of his lightsaber or whatever, hadn't hurt him. So maybe it will be the same for Jonathan's matches. Either way, he's fucking freezing.

"Cross your fingers," he says, glancing back at Luke one more time before he strikes the match.

The warmth is immediate (and should spread to Luke, too). It's a rush of relief, because he's been pretty cold for hours now, unable to completely get warm no matter how he tried. Somehow the little match really does make a difference.

At the end of its burn, just before the match goes out, the scene shifts for Jonathan. They're no longer outside, but inside, in a dark room - a literal darkroom. There are pictures drying on a line. He recognises them, because he took them. A couple of them are Nancy Wheeler - not the original pictures of her from a couple years ago that he shouldn't have taken, but pictures of her face, smiling at him. He misses her, which he tries to pretend isn't the case, but it very much is.

He reaches for one of the pictures with the hand that isn't holding the match, unable to stop himself. Just as he touches the edge of it, it fades, taking the vision and the warmth with it. The warmth lingers just a bit, but it can't possibly last. It's been awhile, the passage of time hard to notice in the weirdness of the vision.

"Fuck," he says, gloved hand closing into a fist before he drops it, forgetting for a minute that someone else is even there with him.