soddersays | JANUARY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

Entry tags:

JANUARY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to January's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: OCEAN 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.

PLEASE NOTE FOR CHARACTER ARRIVALS: This month, all players can choose to have their characters wake up in the town of Deerington or on the Titanic.

CW: Ghost of a child, rotting corpses, drowning, hallucinations, paranoia
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

WHERE FEET MAY FAIL

For those who were left behind in Deerington while everyone else was whisked away in the flood during the New Years Eve party, they will find that the town is a little more wet than usual. The streets are still flooded, houses are damp, and the chill of winter isn't making it easy to deal with. Your hands can feel like ice any day of the week and it's hard to focus with how badly you may find yourself trembling from the cold.

But it's almost preferable to the visions. They start off while you're sleeping; large sea monsters roaming the ocean, waiting to pull you down into the darkened depths; or maybe it's a strange, ghost looking girl with glowing eyes and tattered clothing, her skin blue and rotting the way a body does when it's been submerged in water for too long. She's calling out to you, beckoning you down, and all around her are the strung up, floating corpses of the people who were foolish enough to listen.

It's just a dream though, right? Slowly you start to see the girl around town. She's still calling to you, watching you, waiting for you. If you get too close, she'll even be able to grab onto you, pulling you down into the waterlogged streets, and into what you thought was only a puddle of water. It's as deep as an ocean, and just as dark and cold too. Someone near by can grab onto you before she can drag you under and the vision will disappear. If no one does, maybe if you're a strong swimmer, you'll be able to struggle free, but when you resurface, there will be a bruise forming on your arm in the shape of a hand – something to remind you that maybe these visions are a little more real than you gave them credit for.

The only way to stay safe is to travel in pairs. The girl seems to keep her distance when there's more than one person around, but it doesn't mean she won't try to find the means to separate you. Whether it's increasing the flooding in certain areas of the street or trying to distract one of you long enough to put some distance between you and your comrade, she'll do whatever it takes to try and grab onto whoever she can.

GHOST SHIP

Those who are on the boat might find that life is a little easier, depending on what class you've found yourself in. The struggles between first, second, and third are certainly rough on everyone, but many seem to find themselves thinking this is just the way of things. Maybe your mind has been altered to just accept the class differences or your memories completely rewritten and you think you've led a completely different life so far; either way, only a handful of passengers seem to fully understand that this isn't the way things are supposed to be.

There's nothing anyone can do to change things, though, and so many find themselves getting lost in day to day activities. Whether it's working on the ship, enjoying the finer foods in the first class dining halls, or enjoying the rowdy parties in third class storage after hours, everyone seems to be finding something to keep themselves occupied. As the days pass, even those who know full well what's coming seem to forget the looming doom, and you might even find yourself feeling lost in the monotony of day to day life.

But those who stare into the water too long, who look at the strange, large shapes swimming just under the surface might find a sense of dread filling them. The paranoia will shake you to your very core, leaving you with a sense that all is not right with this journey. You can try to tell people, but most will look at you as though you're insane. Eventually, your fear will become so heavy that you start to see destruction all around you. Whole sections of the ship will look flooded, rotting wood and rusted steel taking over every inch of the once proud ship, and every section is covered in algae. You might start to realize it looks uncannily like an old shipwreck.

The ship is still floating, though, and the coarse steady. So it's all in your head, right? Staying away from the water will make the visions and paranoia eventually ebb, but any glance at the floating shapes will cause it to come back tenfold. Maybe just stay inside and away from the ship's edge. It seems a lot safer that way.

Character Arrival

You can read how all characters arrive in Deerington here.

NOTE: Character's this month can wake up in Deerington or on the Titanic.

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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

The careful miming is watched with a solemnity that layers years over Abraham's features, his eyes narrow and dark. He nods slightly, to show he's understood, and absently raises his own hand to his cheek, rubbing his fingertips over the area that's beginning to ache. The skin along his cheekbone stings a little beneath his beard, courtesy, he realises, of the edge of that ring on the goy's hand.

Though the context of the question is beyond him, he manages to infer the meaning with that repeated word, and raises his eyebrows as he seems to remember the cigarettes and sticks one between his teeth, unaware of how it might confuse someone trying to discern his own speech.

« Of course I'm hungry, did you forget this? Is it not obvious that I didn't get to finish my soup? » He points at his fouled clothes. « I hope you've got more coins on you, my friend, because I'm not paying. »

He gestures for the man to precede him down the deck, then strikes a match against his thumbnail and lights his cigarette, still speaking as he does so. « You've spilled soup on me and coughed into my Krupnik. I should knock you over the side, but my mother told me not to throw away pretty things. I hope you're worth the trouble. »

Edited 2020-01-05 23:37 (UTC)

[back pain? Really? Had he legs, they might go to sleep. And his back was modified, so maybe that was why he didn't have the pains. Not that he thought about it like that. After all, the thought of his body being cybernetic was barley a thought]

Dishonored the clan, to which my brother tried to fight me. I left. [Wait, that didn't fit quite right, did it? He frowned, a hand coming up to rub at his jaw. Why was that wrong. Oh well.]

So you are a world traveler? That is what I would like to do. See the sights. No strings attached to any one place.

Who's the bad man?

[There's always a bad man, there's been more than one from the get-go but to hear one of them was in Deerington? Not good.]

Uh, yeah, Mike's here. Steve. Nancy. [Dustin sighs, nobody ever takes the next name on the list very well. He's among the numbers too.] Billy.

[ He’s an old man Genji, leave him alone. And don’t you dare ever mention that Hanzo could probably do the same thing at a similar age, because he dislikes your brother enough already. ]

Your brother picks a fight with you, and you’re the one who has to leave? Hm.

[ He’s got no room to judge anyone’s decision-making skills, but that still sounds like a shit deal to him. Also, it sounds… incomplete, somehow. Not that he could say why. ]

Somethin’ like that. Plenty of places I haven’t been yet, but I’m always on the move. I like it well enough, but not everybody does. [ He leans forward, arms resting on his knees. ] What’s your plan when you get stateside?

( Ben can't tell what part of this fact, of the stranger's recent arrival, is good, or not. the newness means this is only his first horror to be subjected to by this ridiculous place, and that's something Ben can draw some envy for. unfortunately...Welcome Baskets really do nothing to help prepare a newcomer to handling the sorts of things they will undoubtedly be subjected to here on the every-other-day basis.

'—had come to be before, in dreams,' and that's when Ben perks up with a force that is nearly a whole new presence amongst them. recognition lights his face like a fire that sharpens down his expression as he focuses on the other man's explanation, detailing his narrowly-survived encounter. she's calling to Sleepers in their — well, sleep. can she hypnotize, or lure them? both synonymous with water, in fact.

pardon Ben while he pulls away to dip his hands into his coat, into his blazer pocket for a small notebook and a pen. girl, dreams/visions, attacks, water.

the water. Ben looks him over once more with a renewed keenness for the details: he's sopping wet, but it isn't raining or snowing outside. he racks with the man's leverage where he pins him with his hands, his energy urgent, but Ben just stares at him as if calculating some math formula in his head. )

—Pulled you down where? Was it Lake Tomie, or Koji Pond? ( posed in a tone that suggests those two locations are just as well the only two options available for answer. )

[Old his metal ass. And Hanzo could, but he's conditioned for it. You just have to do more Yoga, McCree]

Something like that. He is the older of us two.

[It didn't sound right to Genji either, but he had no reason to doubt himself either.]

Mmm, I'm not sure what I want to do first. Wander, I assume. Do small jobs to keep money in my pockets and wander. Make my way out west, I think. You?

[His voice strikes Clara like lightning - (the horse stamping, the foul air of the street, the endless months of black that followed) - and she freezes solid. Surely the calm water is an illusion, because she feels all at once as though she's been washed into the sea by a wave, drowned in the icy undertow. That's the only explanation for what she's hearing, for who she knows is standing behind her.

Slowly - almost nervously - she turns.]

... Danny? [The word comes out a puff of white in the cold air, full of fond, impossible recognition.]

Walter follows the man's gesturing down the front of his garments, lips quirking at the sight of the stained clothes whose scent rises with the salt in the sea air. "Yes I know. It's a terrible pity," he agrees, though something in the man's expression says otherwise. An amused defiance that rests on the knowledge that his words are hidden from the other man's understanding. That the cruelty of pointing out that the soup has not done that much damage, all-told, to the cheaply-constructed garments is only funny because it's a joke that only Walter knows he's told.

He nods his understanding and turns down the deck, expecting that the other man will follow at his side. It's two steps before he realizes that he's not. The wafting scent of the struck match gives way to the stale smell of cheap tobacco, and Walter hitches his shoulders. With no warning, he stops in his tracks, as though destined for a repeat of the clumsy circumstance of their encounter back in the dining hall. This time when they're bound for collision he reaches behind him and takes the other man at his elbow, hauling him to his side.

"I'd rather you walk up here with me," he insists. Walter can't stand to have anyone at his back, but this strange and angry man has intentions he simply can't trust.

That smile is fantastic, and for the first time Jean-Paul is genuinely sad he can't understand the man. Not his words, anyway. The miming is perfectly clear.

Jean-Paul throws his head back and laughs. "Ah, oui," he says, chuckling. "I understand. You're too pretty to be free." Smiling, he nods and repeats the gesture of rubbing a coin. What the hell, he has plenty of cash.

"I do wish you spoke English or French," he sighs. "Still. I suppose conversation is overrated." He taps a finger on his own chest. "Jean-Paul."

[ those ears flick up at the sound of yang's voice, even before she registers who she's hearing. blake looks up to see her, and fumbles her book as she tries to figure out the situation. does yang remember or not? did whatever's happening here mess with her head even more than RWB's? she feels a wave of protective anger at the thought that doesn't show on her face--then exhales, smiling. all questions aside, it's so good to see her. ]

No, Yang. It's all yours.

[ This man has never done yoga in his life, and he’s not about to start now. ]

Ah, seniority.

[ He says it like the implications of that word are very familiar to him. And they are. He’s always had trouble with authority. ]

Well hey, good on you for gettin’ out into the world. You’re better off without havin’ to answer to anyone. As for me, I’m plannin’ on staying east. I hail from out west though, and the deserts out there… [ He looks almost wistful as he remembers. ]

… there’s nothin’ like ‘em anywhere else.

The cigarette smoke competes with the taste of blood in Abraham's mouth, neither particularly complementing the other. It catches in his throat and makes him cough as if he's not used to it, so when the tall man stops he's distracted enough to almost repeat their earlier trouble, except this time he gets a strong hand gripping his elbow and pulling him forward as if he has become a troublesome boy or a stray dog about to be cuffed for his mischief. He objects, loudly, almost losing both footing and cigarette as he knocks the man's hand away.

« Hey, are you crazy as well as deaf? I should have kicked you in the balls when I had the chance. »

With a growl and a thought to the amount of compensation he's owed for putting up with this nonsense, he resumes walking, resettling his clothing as he does so. The goy's wrenching has pulled it askew and made him only more aware of both the state of his jacket and the growing heat of the day. Muttering and glaring at the clear source of the problem, he shoulders out of his jacket and slings it over one arm instead, leaving him in waistcoat and dark cotton shirt, which he opens at the collar and begins rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing the shapes and signs of tattoos winding up his arms.

Edited 2020-01-06 01:09 (UTC)

[ooc; don't worry about it. i'm slow also and i never mind backtags. are you okay? i hope all is well.]

She's stalking you because she's a monster that wants bloodshed.

[His bloodshed specifically, or anyone stupid enough to allow themselves to be swept under. She has a collection, that much he's heard. Vengeful spirits didn't trivialize themselves with things as simple as belief. It didn't matter whether or not this man believed in what she could do or not.]

We're supposed to be in Maine. I'd ask if you needed a glass of water but I think that might be insulting given what you've been through.

Edited 2020-01-06 01:32 (UTC)

[John meanwhile, in light blue suit coat and pants, along with proper shoes and combed and is on the deck reading, The Time Machine which the cover looks like a first edition copy. Smith makes a scoffing face when being interrupted with his reading more so at the question. After all, how can one be on this ship and not know? Still the other looks proper, so]

The Titanic, good sir and she's sailing to New York in America.

Might I inquire about how you're aboard her and don't know?

[Never a bad time to start. Join him.]

Ah, you get it.

[Seniority indeed. Genji was never very fond of it himself either.]

I have heard a great many things about the deserts and the painted rocks out west. But what is keeping you East?

[ her ears fold at that, and she looks away. damn. hey you know what's cool, weiss? a NEW TOPIC ]

... There's something in the water, I think. It went out of sight before I could get a good look. Didn't look like anything normal. Maybe a Grimm, but that would've attacked by now...

[Weiss blinks at that and leans further over the railings.]

Really? When did this happen?

A few minutes ago, before you walked up. I thought I must've been seeing things, but... [ her fingers twitch, and she reaches for gambol shroud's grip again. ] Watch the water for a minute. There's something down there.

Okay? [She's watching, she's watching.] How far out from the boat? Past the churning water?

[The caution causes Alec to wonder if the Mundane knew that he had the Sight. This could be the first time that the being had seen something that was part of the Downworld. Thinking of how Clary had panicked, he keeps his tone steady, the way he would if his parabatai was having a nightmare.]

It might be a monster, or something that others think of as a monster. Sometimes the things in legends aren't as terrible as people believe.

[Leaning over the rail, Alec tries to compare the shape in the water with all the creatures he's studied over the years. Despite his efforts, he can't see enough of it to determine what it is.]

I don't know which this thing might be.

Frustration and apprehension lingered in his thoughts as he tried to understand why they both remembered something different. The comment about living the truth reminded him of the spiteful comments that had been directed toward him by members of the Clave and the hurtful condolences that Maryse had dealt with whenever her friends discussed Alec's future.

He barely managed to bite back a comment that was directed more at those individuals than at Magnus, but his expression still showed signs of the stubbornness that had kept him going whenever he'd faced that bigotry. "I know all about that, Magnus. I accepted the truth when I agreed to be Jace's parabatai."

A truth that hadn't been as accurate as Alec had expected. He'd somehow found the courage to ask Magnus out and the strength to continue on with a relationship despite knowing the possible consequences. "The last thing I remember was leaving the Loft to go on patrol. We've been dating for five months." That wasn't quite true and he felt a pang of guilt for not mentioning the break up, but he really didn't want to deal with Camille right now. "And we'd been dating for weeks before I kissed you in front of the Clave. We might have been sneaking around, but we were still together."

Something about this wasn't right. The spell must be altering memories, but which one of them was remembering things correctly? Glancing down at his hand, he noticed the scar of the Alliance rune and let out a sigh of relief. That was proof that his memories were real.

When Magnus mentioned the graveyard and old relatives, he had knew it had to be only one person. Moving to the bed, he took his boyfriend's hand, lifting it to his lips to kiss Magnus' knuckles. "I'm sorry that I was here with you to..." He wasn't sure what. What could he do to help Magnus through the grief that had to be part of such a terrible experience? Then he stiffened at the mention of hunters, making a protective sound before he realized what he'd done. "Or that I wasn't here to deal with those Hunters. I might have forgotten about the Downworld, but I know that my memories are true, Magnus."

The eagerness with which she began clearing the items away and offering to become involved in helping seemed to encourage him, giving him a small surge of not-quite-happiness. Pride, reassurance perhaps, at how wonderful humans tended to be when they were faced with a problem and given something to do to resolve it. It was sometimes during the worst moments when their goodness shone the brightest, and it was one of the reasons he loved them so much.

"Yes, exactly! Even a single life saved when they would have perished otherwise is a win, and if there are enough of us who try, hopefully it will be a great deal more then one life saved! And any help you would be willing to offer would be splendid. I may be an-...a very determined individual, but there's only so much I can do on my own. I've been keeping everything confined to the cabin me and my - er..." Beau? Friend? Paramour? Well, perhaps not that one. They didn't have to be secretive, anymore. He was still trying to find a word to describe Crowley that seemed to fit. "Partner," There, ambiguous enough for now. "Crowley, were given. It's beginning to be a little cramped, unfortunately."

And then the question of dates came up, and he paused, a sort of disgruntled confusion crossing his face. This was obviously something that had vexed him a bit.

"To be quite honest, I'm not sure, entirely. One would assume it was sometime in April, given the circumstances, but our moment of arrival here coincided with the stroke of midnight no New Years. We're more then four months and a century off-schedule. Not that silly things such as time ever seemed to matter to our captors before."

He stepped away from the door of her cabin and gestured for her to proceed him into the corridor as he prattled on in irritation. He shook his head and cast a reassuring though still rather somber look back her way at her concern for those residing in steerage.

"Oh, no, not exactly. At first, that had been a concern - something to do with isolating those in need of quarantine from those in first class, for immigration purposes when we reached New York - but once they realized what was really happening, they opened the gates and let them onto the deck, as well. Little good it did. By then, they'd already launched a great many of the lifeboats, and hardly many of them were filled more then half full."

The more he spoke, the more distant his tone was, the voice of someone who was remembering things he had seen firsthand and not simply imagining the situation based on third-hand accounts retold through movies and historical documentaries on the telly. There were moments, when he was almost able to discuss it with the emotional distance one achieved after a century of being able to come to terms with what had happened. But then their current situation would remind him all too quickly that it was happening again, and an angel's memory was much stronger then that of a human, besides. What was more then a lifetime for them was a drop in the bucket for him, and the memories reigniting themselves vividly in his mind had only served to make his anxiety worse.

"That, my dear, is one of the greatest hurdles we will face, once the events start. E.J will try to call the lifeboats back for more passengers, yes, but none of them will listen. We will need to find some way of ensuring that they are filled to capacity before they launch. And honestly, I'm not exactly sure what chance we have in that regard."

His hands had been tied in 1912. Heaven would never have allowed for him to exert such a massive use of miraculous force over the sinking, so he had been as useless as any of the humans in changing the way things would go. He had spent every possible second of the sinking trying to help people onto the boats when he could, the way a human would, trying to keep them calm, trying to get people to the dryer parts of the ship once it began flooding, up until the moment the human he was supposed to have been would have drowned in the freezing water. In the end, a small miracle to render himself invisible before leaping off of the bow of the ship and gliding over the aftermath on white wings had been all he could do. He'd circled above for hours, until the last life boat had been loaded onto the ships who had come to their aid, and had finally allowed himself to land on the deck of the Carpathia for the trip to New York.

No longer hindered by worries about what Heaven would think of his intervention, Aziraphale was left without his powers no thanks to Deerington's incomprehensible control over the Sleepers. Where now he would have gladly used a great miracle to ensure not a single soul on the ship perished, he was still forced to act as a human would, short of having the foresight to know what was coming. The irony of the situation did not help his mood in the least.

If he'd been able to understand them, Abraham might have been, in turn, flattered, confused and suspicious of the compliments being paid to him. As it is, he edges a little closer along the rail, sharp eyes going to the shadows beyond them, assessing the likelihood of their being interrupted. Earning a little money, and perhaps relieving this pretty Frenchman of the weight of his pocketbook, is a fine idea, but he doesn't relish the idea of being arrested for lewd behaviour and spending the rest of the voyage in confinement or, more likely, beaten and tossed over the side, a victim of his own anonymity.

That problem is large in his mind when the man offers his name, so his first instinct is to lie. He raises his eyebrows and puts a hand to his heart, thinking of a man he knew in Southampton, a little Irish pisher who had already altered his name from lilting Gaelic vowels to sound more American.

"Grady," he offers, looking the other man thoughtfully up and down. "Where?" He raises his eyebrows and gives a wave of his hand, indicating the deck, the corridors, the rooms beyond.

Okay, counterpoint, I love getting hammered and dancing.

[So. Darlene shrugs her other shoulder, the one that no big beautiful hand was recently resting on. This movement shifts a fall of recently-freed hair off of that shoulder, and when she leans back, tipping back from the edge, onto her heels, her hair drifts back too, hanging loose. She leans back far enough that she has to use her hands to anchor herself to the rail, no longer able to rely on the pressure of her forearms to keep herself in place. Just like a ballet barre, except, not.]

If you weren't cautioning me of yourself, then what were you cautioning me of? Seen any icebergs out there that the rest of us haven't?

[The lean back puts a kind of strain on Darlene's voice. She grins up at the Amazon, pleased with the effect.]

A white-hot rage rips through Walter's chest when his hand is knocked away, and immediately burns itself out. The fire in his belly can't sustain amid the hardening fear of this stranger's violence, but it comes upon him at first like instinct. "You think I'm going to let you walk at my back, where I can't see you and have no idea what you're planning?" Walter knows by now the words are a useless matter of habit, but it satisfies something in him to growl them across the rough landscape of his own throat. To eject them from his lungs and hurl them in the air to someone he considers the source of the problem. The man who speaks so many languages, but none accessible to the one he's painstakingly studied for all his life. The one he's faced so much just to shape into something useful.

Walter makes a sweeping gesture at the man's back when he turns, as if insisting him on his way. Hidden, unseen. The thought occurs to him of what he could do from back here, if he were a different sort of man. But that too fades when his uneasy companion begins to strip layers of his clothes away, and his thoughts immediately turn curious. Walter watches like he knows he's going unseen, eyes taking in the slope of the shoulders and the strength of the forearms before focusing on the map of ink. The dark and colorful lines set to his skin in pictures both discernible and impossible to understand the full weight of. His breath catches in his throat and Walter holds his head higher as they reach the café and he breezes forward, knowing that they are only here on his good fortune. That without him this man would not be invited.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 25 of 36

JANUARY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

JANUARY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

WHERE FEET MAY FAIL

GHOST SHIP

Character Arrival

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

arrival.

no subject

cw: nsfw talk

no subject

no subject

cw: ableism

no subject

Arrival

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

I am so sorry for this teal deer

cw: period-typical homophobia

UuU

no subject