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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Drown Me In Bullshit
[ Willy was supposed to be going east. Road trip, broadened horizons, the whole nine, except the bright sunshine and open road gave way to fog and drizzle, and then his car stalled and he couldn't get it running again. So he started walking, in the rain, and the fucking cold, and everything else, but it didn't get any better. He just got soaked, which made him increasingly annoyed.

And then there was a little girl. Well, dreams about a little girl, and then she started following him around. He wasn't necessarily a paranoid type of person, but it started unnerving him, putting him on edge. ]

I've seen Poltergeist. Don't come any closer, you creepy fucking kid.

[ Yes. Yes he will start running if she moves closer, extremely undignified and ridiculous; THIS WHOLE THING IS SUPER MESSED UP OKAY. ]

I'm on a Boat
[ William is just lucky he made it onto the ship, honestly. Yes, he's supposed to be there, it's kind of obligatory for staff, but considering he's drunk more than he's not, and not especially great at actually working, far more likely to be found sleeping off the previous night's revelry than making sure the guests are taken care of, it's not necessarily altogether helpful.

One night, he finds himself staring off over the railing, and there's...something out there. Something ominous, and slithering, something that saddles him with lingering unease and paranoia, which really only makes him drink more. Helpful. But he tries to be; he tries to tell the rest of the staff, and the passengers, mumbles about it whether or not it seems important or relevant. ]

Stay away from the ledge, there's somethin'...there's somethin' out there.

Edited 2019-12-30 22:54 (UTC)

Hey. Sasquatch.

[Did he just? Oh, he definitely did. One Dustin Henderson is perched on the roof of a nearby building in the rain and he slips the ladder he used to get up there off the eaves to this new unsuspecting victim.]

Yeah, that's right. Over here. For the record, this has nothing to do with Poltergeist.

Edited 2019-12-31 00:12 (UTC)

[ He glances around for the source of the shout, eventually looking up to find the kid perched there. Great. More fucking kids. But it's a promise of something that's not sloshing around in puddles or running from a ghost, so after some grumbling he stalks over to start climbing. ]

You tip it over you're dead meat, got it?

Why would I do that?

[Dustin likes a good prank as much as the next guy but not when someone's life is at stake, and definitely not when it revolves around creepy bottom-feeding little girls. No instead of tipping the ladder, he supports the weight, it's gotta be hard enough climbing up soaked anyway.]

You must be new. I'm Dustin, and this was my solution to Linda Blair underwater. It's half-cocked but it's kept me off the radar.

Fuck if I know.

[ He climbs onto the roof, giving a skeptical look to the ghost girl below before looking at the kid better. ]

As long as it doesn't flood this far, anyway. I'm Willy.

Not about to feed you to the wolves, dude. This place is messed up but the best part about it is that we have each other's backs.

[Most of the time, anyway. Sleepers just looked out for each other. When Wally gets up Dustin pulls his ladder back up. No use in leaving it down there for ghostly endeavors.]

If it floods this far we're all doomed. When'd you show up here, Willy?

Oh, are we? Are we all screwed if it makes it up this far?

[ No shit they're screwed. Willy's pretty sure he'll fucking drown if it gets that bad, tentative swimming skills or not. ]

Just got here like. A few hours ago maybe?

Calm down. There's no use wasting your energy on being pissed. We're parked for a while.

[Thanks to having no collar bone Dustin's not the strongest swimmer either, but he's a quick thinker and a problem solver so he makes it work.]

I've been here for two months now. It doesn't get any better. Sorry.

I'm not pissed. I'm fucking annoyed because this is bullshit. Don't tell me what to waste my energy on, if I want to vent I'm allowed to fucking vent, unless there are like. Pterodactyls that are gonna eat us if I get too loud or something.

[ He pauses, like he's considering whether he's supposed to swear in front of kids or not, but fuck it. He knows how foulmouthed kids can be, it's fine. ]

Great. Any way out of this shit-show?

For all I know, there could be. The good thing about Pterodactyls is that they're much more likely to go fishing, right?

[Like any carnivorous bird of prey. It's not like Dustin had ever encountered one but this place could churn up anything and his blatant comment about biological imperative makes that much clear.]

Not one anybody's found yet.

There's a lot of something out there, dude, it's the ocean.

[ richie clearly doesn't take the warning all that seriously, clears the rest of the distance over to the railing, in fact and leans out over it as he fishes for something in his pockets, squinting out in the distance behind the thick lens of his glasses.

after a moment richie seems to find what he was searching for, and his hands emerge from his pockets with a large, sparkling gemstone at the end of a delicate, tangled gold chain. he holds it up in front of him with a discerning glare, like it's done something to offend him. ]

Hope whatever's out there likes shiny things.

[ this is the only real warning richie gives before chucking the clearly expensive necklace over the side of the ship. ]

[ It's not exactly his problem, and it's not like he could do much about it if the kid went overboard, so he holds his spot and watches instead; the scene doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, a stone dropped into the ocean like there's a point to it, but it's also not really his problem so he doesn't feel particularly compelled to intervene past a fleeting concern for whether or not the kid's going to drop into the water like a stone too. But he doesn't, so there's that. ]

Got a thing against rocks?

I've got a thing against rich dickheads with more jewels than braincells.

[ richie tells the guy with a level of bland hostility for the rich assholes in question that's almost remarkable in the contradiction of the tones that still somehow manage to come through equally regardless.

with his goal for the evening clearly accomplished, richie turns his back to the ocean and leans back against the railing to look at his company more directly with a stare that's distinctly challenging. ]