soddersays | JANUARY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

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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.

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He sees it all too late, when it's already happening, and doesn't find the time to brace himself for the impact against the table. It takes the breath from his lungs, but Walter's fingers are still twisted in the folds of the other man's jacket. When the stranger comes crashing down atop him, their combined weight is too much for the replicated construction of the piece of furniture. Wood splinters underneath them, and he howls a choked expression of pain and rage when the next thing his back finds is the floor of the dining hall.

Walter has been in a scrap or two in his lifetime. Boyhood spats that left him and his compatriots with a few bloody noses and far more stories to tell. Offenses easily forgotten as the sun set and the next day brought new dreams and ideas. He's never been in a legitimate fight before, but that flame in his belly wants it just the same. Like a rising darkness within him, Walter finds himself overtaken by the urge to see this through. To pound every amount of bile and grit and self-loathing into the face of the man with the stern eyes and heavy scowl. He shapes his fingers into a fist and drives it towards the jaw of the stranger, the other hand still holding him close. Refusing to let him get away even as he seeks to beat him back.

He doesn't hear the boots of the officers as they converge upon the chaos. Walter can barely see past the red in his eyes, but he feels himself split apart from the man, and then a heavy arm bracing around his chest and hauling him backward. He's ushered to his feet and nearly before he can find them under him, dragged toward the doors of the hall.

Muscle memories of other fights give Abraham enough of an edge to endure the sudden starts and stops of the grapple he finds himself in, his hands tangled and confused in the layers of clothing, the man's legs beneath him finding purchase in his gut and driving the breath out of him. The broken wood of the table and the floor of the dining hall are no match to the cobbles and mud of the city streets he's left behind, but the hot singing blood in his ears is the same, the narrowing of the world down to what he can grasp and grip against.

The stranger somehow finds his freedom first, using it to swing one big paw on an arc that Abraham can't twist away from, pain exploding across his face and inside his mouth as his teeth cut into his cheek. He yowls like a cat, trying to bring his hands up to find a way around the rich goy's throat, satisfying himself instead with pummelling his ribs, his belly, anything within reach, blood and spit drooling out of his mouth as he leans over him.

There's shouting in English as the expected authorities arrive. Abraham is indiscriminate with his anger, flailing as hands take him under the arms and around his neck and haul him back, shouting curses in Yiddish, Polish and finally Russian as he struggles to get free and reach the smug goyim at the molten center of his ire. A glimpse of staring faces is all he gets of the rest of the dining hall, then the doors passing and a wash of cool fresh air that smells like salt and iodine, and the hands on his back push him out in a stumble until he hits the railing and slides down again, panting and staring uselessly at the loud objections of a man in a White Star Lines uniform.

Walter finds only slightly better treatment in his own station. The uniformed officer leads at his back, smartly pinning Walter's arms to his sides as he's walked unceremoniously from the dining hall. Finding himself removed from his senses it's not the pain that inhibits him so much as the adrenaline still in his veins and the disruptive thumping of his heart against his ribcage. The tall man can't find his words. As has happened so many times in his life, emotion strangles at his throat and mutes the air in his lungs and he finds himself tumbling away from his sense of self. He rips away from the officer as soon as he can find the space, whirling around to find a red-faced man barking words he can't untangle.

With a dismissive wave of his hand Walter turns his back to the angry officer. He tugs at the front of his coat, meaning to set himself straight before retreating to his suite, but the pain in his belly is enough to double him at the waist. The tall man groans and clutches an arm around himself as a wave of ache sends shudders of nausea throughout him. Hissing greedy breaths of the salty sea air, he sounds more feral animal than human, unconscious of the noise he makes. Unconscious, too, of the warnings still being shouted in his direction, or the small crowd that have gathered to peer just beyond the doors of the dining hall at the commotion the two men have caused.

Edited 2020-01-05 02:34 (UTC)

The heaving breaths Abraham drags in as he sits hunched on the deck taste like copper and the sea and are just about the only things that make sense as he splits his attention between the shouting Englishman and the tall goyishe man clutching his belly like he's been stabbed. The cold breeze off the water douses the back of his neck, cooling, quite literally, the anger that had so gripped him before.

Unsteadily, he reaches out to grip the rail and climbs to his feet, then turns and hawks a mouthful of blood over the side, wiping his lips on a damp sleeve that smells heavily of soup. That done, he returns his gaze to the man in the uniform, to him just another man in another uniform, as easily dismissed as dogshit on his shoe. More interesting is the rich man and the way that man's pain seems to echo in his own chest, the way he doesn't seem to hear the rough bestial noises he's producing or the arguments of the official now waving his hands in a shooing motion, and he realises that he is not the only outsider here.

He crosses over to Walter in a couple of lurching steps and sets a hand on the man's back between his shoulders, patting him as he looks back at the officer and makes a vague gesture to the effect of, all right, we're going, you can quit shouting so much, before tugging a little more insistently on the rich goy's arm, encouraging him to get moving before more of them arrive.

The pain that Walter has known in his lifetime has been infrequent and manufactured, but it has also been purposeful. Each time he's subjected himself to the ache of some new procedure or examination, it has been with the hope that something good will come as a result. To be rendered to this sharp ache for no discernible purpose should feel useless, but the tall man finds some gritty relief in his body's memory of what it's like to experience a feeling in all its brilliant wash of color. It's a reminder of life with gloves removed. Of what he's envied but seen very little of in his lifetime. If he should be angry, it's a difficult feeling to get to when even the salt in the air smells more brisk under his nostrils.

He's only just begun to explore the reaches of the space outside his own body when the hand at his back makes him flinch with surprise. Walter steps away from the grasp, not enough to stop it coming, but enough to prove that he's startled by the man who has not been particularly sneaky in his approach. His bright green eyes cast over the expression on the bloodied face. He expects to see rage. Expects vengeance to be as swift as the stranger's pouncing. What he gets instead is something almost companionable. Paternalistic, almost, like the shorter man senses something in him that needs cared for.

Walter follows him along the deck without argument, but towards the promenade he shakes loose and holds up a hand. "I won't pay the damages, you know? You attacked me for no good reason." A pause, and then he narrows his eyes suspiciously. "Do you speak any English at all?"

Having been granted a small space and significant interruption to its release, Abraham finds that the hot core of his anger is rapidly melting away. He lets it go, knowing that he has, after all, gotten his licks in, and been set upon in turn, and it's easier for him to consider the matter settled given that the tall goyishe man is, for all his fancy clothing, clearly a formidable opponent. Better to avoid sticking one's head in the wolf's mouth, after all. As they walk he pauses a couple of times to spit again over the edge of the boat and explores the inside of his cheek and teeth with his tongue, cataloguing the new pains with a fighter's philosophical calm.

He fishes in his jacket pocket and brings out a small and slightly dented flask, unscrews the cap, toasts briefly the sky, and swallows a mouthful of honeyed vodka that stings and burns, making him wince. The man at his side is, by then, talking, and he watches his mouth and hands with absent curiosity and a little appreciation. The question he asks has the sound of something familiar, Abraham having been asked it with increasing frequency as he broached England's shores.

After a moment's thought he decides not to lie, and gives the sort of eloquent shrug that his people have been busy perfecting for decades, a see-saw motion of his hand expanding on his answer.

« A little, a little, » he suggests, trying out some Russian on the rich man. He pauses, chews thoughtfully at his lower lip, and adds, with a faint smile almost childishly amused by his mischief: "You fucking cheat."

Then he shrugs again as if to ask what more can I do, and offers the flask out to the taller man, pointing at his belly. « It will help with the pain. »

"Excuse me?" The mild and hopeful mask of curiosity slips from Walter's face, and for a time the man looks as though he might forget his injuries and set himself to go another round. He's prepared now, knowing what his adversary is willing to do. The behavior such a man will allow himself on a vessel that renders each of them stuck with their present company. Walter regards the calm smile, the open posture, and the size of the man. He's known similar in his lifetime, mostly through the residential schools his family has employed for their lessons, though the man himself has never spent any significant time within. Still, he understands the type. The smaller ones who think themselves fierce, and will set their sights on larger targets and goad and goad until the latter snaps.

Walter is still looking over the man as if to determine the shape and intent of the insult, when the flask is shoved in his direction instead. Baffled, he accepts without much thought and goes right on staring for several seconds. When it seems the man only means to insist, he gives a sniff at the liquid and puts it to his lips. The taste is sweeter and rougher than expected, and it coats his throat and makes him turn his head to cough. Walter holds up a finger as if to keep the man in his silence, coughs again, clears his tongue, and then takes another swallow. He makes a silent gesture of salute with the flask, then hands it back to its rightful owner.

"What... what language is it that you speak?"

The slightly reserved smile parting Abraham's beard widens as he watches the rich goy try the Krupnik, choking, as he had expected, on its heat, but willing to go back for more. He takes back the flask with the solemn seriousness of a man completing a ritual, taking another swig for himself before tucking it back within his jacket and beginning a search for his cigarettes and matches instead. That his coat is still stained with the remnants of his lunch doesn't seem to trouble him, nor does the enquiry from the other man. He picks out the word 'language' and weighs up what might naturally come next in a conversation, hoping that he's guessed correctly when he answers, slightly distracted.

"Yiddish, die mamma loshen," he explains, then shrugs. "Russkiy, Polskie."

He finds his cigarettes eventually, but doesn't offer them, instead using the battered and slightly soup-dampened box to gesture at his companion, then at his own ears, holding his hands up against them and then waving them away, describing a sort of airy scattering, an unidentifiable loss, before pointing again at the goyishe man.

« You're deaf? Can't hear? »

"I'm... no, I'm sorry. I don't know." Walter puts his fingers to his lips, giving the man the full intensity of his gaze as he watches his lips as though they're a puzzle. If he can only just fit the individual pieces into place -- the lips and the tongue and the teeth and jaw -- he might reveal the picture that lurks beneath the thick beard and a mustache that obscures half the image. "Russian? It's Russian you're speaking?" He might not be so bold as to venture a guess if Walter thought the man understood a word he was saying. The overwhelm of misunderstanding is a frustration that clearly shakes his self-image, but where Walter might typically try to mask that he doesn't feel the same necessary pull.

At least until the inquiries are volleyed back his way. He watches the simple pantomime, the gesture of a finger that sizes him up just that quickly. Walter purses his lips into a thin line and nods his head. Hesitantly, he lifts both hands to the sides of his ears and covers them briefly. It's just a gesture, a mime's act between men who share no common language, but it still manages to feel illicit. His knuckles buzz with the distant memory of lashings that have shaped and patterned the golden skin. He folds them together behind his back and grips roughly at his own fingers.

"There's another cafe just up the promenade, if you're still hungry? Are you..." his fingers twitch in the palms of his hands, and Walter grips them more tightly. "...still hungry?"

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)

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.

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)

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.

If Abraham has been the picture of confidence walking along the deck, it's taken from him now, as they enter the world of gently tapping cutlery and soft conversation. Eyes fix upon him, skating over the peacock strutting of his companion to land on the dark and scowling presence behind him. Abraham feels suddenly as if they know, somehow, the diners and the crew, where he's come from, every sin and misdeed he's committed. As if they can smell the river mud and rotten ice caked to the bottom of his shoes, or stood behind his shoulder as he slid his knife into vulnerable places that leaked hot blood onto his hands, leaving men dead and dying in alleys, on doorsteps, kicked into the dark rushing water of the Jasień. Under their scrutiny he is stripped bare, judged and sentenced, his false papers a suddenly flimsy defense against a cruel universe.

The feeling is strong enough to stall him in his tracks, hovering almost hesitantly in the doorway, his hands caught in his frayed and soup-stained jacket, his cigarette drooping with comic sadness from the corner of his mouth. He clears his throat, his gaze going to the rich goy whose realm this is, strangely and just as suddenly comforted by the fleeting thought that perhaps he will be rescued by this tall stranger with the green eyes.

Edited 2020-01-06 16:45 (UTC)

Walter feels it and relishes it now -- the knowledge that they have entered a space that unequivocally "belongs" to him. Despite the aching in his belly from the man's unforgiving fists, he straightens his posture and assumes his role with nearly four decades' worth of experience in the management of such spaces. It is largely a facade; he exists here as strong and certain and worthy only in as long as he keeps his mouth shut. Something of the illusion will fade when he's made to speak, but for the time he looks happy to lead them as he directs them to a table amid far fewer passengers enjoying their meal on a covered but open air section of the promenade.

They catch a few eyes as they settle, but Walter is happily defiant in his own space. He gestures to Abraham as though he understands the tipping of the scales and the mercy of his own repayment. "See? Isn't this better anyway?" When the waiter comes he orders himself another vermouth before signaling at Abraham. "I think it's soup he wanted? Nothing too complex."

There's a strange familiarity in letting the taller man lead, an almost instinctive suggestion that has Abraham trailing in his wake like a dog on a rope before he even knows he's moving. He doesn't try to avoid the narrow glances that follow them across the room, but meets them instead, chewing on his papirosa, and wonders what dark secrets they're hiding. Every man has at least one, in his experience.

The rich goy seems to be in his element now, the tense lines of his body language relaxed. Abraham drapes his jacket across the back of the chair and sits down across from him, watching his face but not entirely convinced of his own safety yet. The fresh air off the water is welcome, though the place still manages to feel a little confining, and he touches the heavy silver cutlery already laid out with reverent fingertips.

He glances between the waiter and his companion as an order is put in on his behalf, recognising the request if not the qualifier. Before the waiter can turn away, he dredges up a little more English and catches at his sleeve, tugging him back to add a footnote of his own.

"Chicken." He motions to his glass. "Vodka."

That done, he settles back, eyeing the other man thoughtfully. Then he shifts in his chair and sticks out one hand decisively across the table.

"Abraham," he offers. "Es freyt mir dikh tsu kenen."

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JANUARY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

JANUARY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

WHERE FEET MAY FAIL

GHOST SHIP

Character Arrival

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cw: blood

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cw: child abuse reference

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cw: ableism

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