APRIL 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

[sodder]

APRIL 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to April's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: ENCHANTMENT 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: Enchanted food, possible body horror, mild finger injuries, magic based mind control, rapid aging, possible death
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

YOU UNCULTURED SWINE

Pork is on sale!! Time to buy it up for all your family meals. It also means anything with pork in it in all of the restaurants is on special and super affordable for just about anyone. New arrivals can even get a free meal of bacon, sausage and eggs at the diner! Seeing all the low prices, you find yourself craving pork more than ever. But who doesn't love bacon, right? Maybe you had ham and pineapple pizza at Peter's or those delicious and mouthwatering pork dumplings at the Hot Pot. You could have cooked a nice pork loin with your friends and family for a large get together. Candied bacon is a real treat to munch on in the park!

You're cooking it yourself or getting it from the local restaurants, so nothing bad could happen with a little self-indulgence, right? Just about everyone has learned not to trust the food at a giant feast in Deerington, but short of the lunch and dinner menus at the diner, the restaurants and the grocery store have never done a Sleeper harm! At least, that's the way it's always been before. Two years is long enough to start taking things for granted.

Anyone who has any of the specials from the restaurants or who cooks any kind of pork related product at home will find that once they have finished their meal, they will slowly turn into... pigs. It seems to vary on how fast a single person turns, some moving slowly over the course of days while they eat more and more food, and others will turn into a full blown pig in a manner of minutes. At first you can still talk to others and display your usual personality in pig form, but the longer you stay a pig, the more boarish you'll become.

So how do you break the curse? Locals say there's a magic stream up on the mountain that will stop these kinds of enchantments, but you can't go alone. Someone will have to carry you up and sing to you while you drink. It might be a friend or a lover or a complete stranger, but whoever you can nudge into it will have to physically carry you in their arms up the side of the mountain looking for this stream. It can take a while— the walk is fairly long, a few hours at best, but you'll know it when you find it. The stream sparkles unnaturally in the sunlight and it seems like none of the animals are willing to drink from it's unnaturally cold waters. The moment you take a long sip while your companion sings whatever song pops into their head, you'll turn back into a human. Hopefully your clothes turn back with you.

If your character does not eat meat/pork, then they'll be safe from this event!

GOOD ENDURES

Mirror mirror on the wall...

The pork doesn't seem to be the only enchanted object around Deerington this month. There are several of them cropping up all over the place and each one has a different outcome for those unfortunate enough to run into them.

Spinning wheels seem to be in the most random of places. Some of them will even just appear in your house. Sometimes multiple spinning wheels show up. Anyone who gets to close will have the strong urge to prick their finger on the spindle, the needle very easily cutting the tip and making you bleed more than you might have expected. Hopefully you have a first aid kit around.

Anyone who pricks their finger will find that they are forced to follow the next person they see around everywhere. They'll follow them to work, to school, to the bathroom, to the kitchen, even to bed. It doesn't matter if it's someone you've never spoken to in your life, you will follow them like a lost duckling every hour of every day. It's enough to drive anyone bonkers.

Mirrors will also suddenly be being displayed in every home and every shop, even if you never had them before. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a reflection, any person who looks into the mirror will find that they are forced to imitate the next person they make eye contact with. This can be their personality, their posture, the way they speak, their basic movements— you'll start to become a total mirror image. If it goes on too long, you might even start to find the two of you start to look more and more alike...

Apples start to pop up in all the stores as well as in your fridges. They're bright red and look so delicious, you can't resist taking a bite. Even if you don't like apples or are normally allergic to them, you'll want to eat these, and you'll find they taste delicious and don't bring harm to anyone. At least... not at first.

A few hours after eating the apple, you'll start to notice differences in your appearance. Your hair has start to thin and become gray and limp, your skin is wrinkled and covered in spots, your hands become frail and shaky. You're aging, and rapidly at that. Before you know it, you've turned into a hideous hag, one that would frighten children in any fairy tale book. But how do you reverse it?

The cure for all three enchantments is to tell three facts about yourself. Even just introducing yourself will show improvement if it's to someone who never knew your name before. Those who ate the apples will have to seek someone out, but anyone who pricked their finger or looked in a mirror will specifically have to confess these three facts to the person they're enchanted to follow/imitate. Once three facts have been shared, you'll be able to leave, return to normal, and age back to your regular self.

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.

Comments

[thighzits]

[And you're looking at a girl who just murdered the quarterback, Syd would reply, if 1) that wasn't highly confidential information, and 2) Robin's words hadn't taken her for a bit of a loop already.

For the first time, she really looks (up, and up some more, jeez) at the girl. Sailor suit, name tag, all kinds of haggard. Talking even more nonsense than Syd.]

You... what?

[Maybe she's going crazy for real. Maybe this is her brain just spitting out random signals as it goes down the drain. A hot girl in a doofy uniform, breaking into a military base. Sounds a lot like what her dreams might be, if they weren't mostly nightmares these days.]

[littlelesshelpless]

[Awwww, small and cute! Bella happily strokes the (oddly fuzzy???) back of the friendly pig, reaching out with her other hand to scritch behind the floppy ears.]

You're making me really regret every BLT I've ever had...

[trancheuse]

Yup. She was failing miserably at not looking vulnerable and confused. It was making Larxene laugh a little, though at least she wasn't out to abuse it other than jokes at her expense.

Ah, but that question. "Boring. You know you could find that by going to the town square right? Not too tricky. Some dumb place called Deerington, in an even dumber place called Maine, part of something even more stupid I didn't bother to remember." No, seriously, modern American politics? definitely not a Larxene thing.

"All you need to know is Deerington, and you're not getting out of here. None of us are. The forest's as far as you'll get. So might as well get comfy, eh?"

wakey wakey;

[zwhack]

[ she can't exactly judge the new arrivals for taking advantage of the free food. after all, she'd done the exact same thing when she'd first shown up last summer, right at the perfect timing of a lobster festival that actually had a pretty unlimited offering of pancakes. fresh from the zombie apocalypse, she'd gorged on all the fluffy goodness her poor little stomach could handle.

but after a while in deerington, you learn to build up your suspicions, and that typically includes beware of the free food.

which is why she's settling on some toast and jelly this morning that she's more than fine with paying some cash for. only problem is the girl on the stool beside her hadn't taken the same precautions. ]

Oh, no — [ turning to her with a grit of her teeth, she squints with suspicion. ] Define your "not good" because there's a range of things that could mean right now.

[redheat]

[ It's not just the fact that someone actually responds to her reaching out through telepathy like this so much as it's someone - a young girl from the sounds of it - confirms two of the names she had been trying to reach... and refers to The Professor as Charles at that.

Jean finds herself coming to stop, eyes slowly opening while her hand still holds at her arm.

Yes, I am... to both. Are you one yourself?

And even as she asks, she finds herself coming to look around curiously. She doesn't see anyone nearby who might be communicating with her but, then again, a telepath never really has to be around to communicate. ]

[redheat]

[ Whether or not her gut feeling had been right in the possibility of something happening to this woman, Jean hadn't mean to simply stand back and see if she was right. To pretend to not feel what others feel or somehow just know that something is either happening or about to happen, it's something she's struggled with in her youth and still something she finds difficult to make sense of at times. But this, with this woman, she had felt a very sharp sense of something not right with this. ]

I did, yes. I don't know what but...

[ The last time she had felt something terrible would happen... she simply didn't want anything to happen to anyone here. Gently, fingers slip away from the woman's wrist. ]

Are you ok?

[demonicbeauty]

Maine.

Ariadne didn't know any kingdom by that name. There were only fourteen kingdoms in the realm to begin with. It was a small place. The idea of a wider world was quite foreign to her. Not in an unappealing way. But at the moment, it was a little inconvenient.

The Deerington part felt ominous, in light of her dream. The scars on her back ached at the memory. And Ariadne knew better than to believe in coincidences.

"What do you mean, 'as far as you'll get?'" she asked the rude girl.

[trancheuse]

"Well, if you try to leave town, at a certain point you just won't get any farther. Monster'll pop up to scare you or try to eat you. You'll get lost and end up wandering back here. If you fly, you'll drop out of the sky. Could be just about any way, but the point is, you'll find yourself back here eventually. Stuck."

She snorted. More or less, that was a matter of fact tone. It was a reality she could sugar coat, but she wasn't the sugar coating type. "Saw a deer walk a girl back into town one time when they got lost. One came for me too since I was following her." Yeah, that sounded real great Larxene. "Just wanted to see what happened."

Lorelei Owens | Original

[mosthexcellent]

[ SPINNING WHEELS ]

The thing about growing up in a place where most families are older than dirt and have the accumulated money to go with it, is that you tend to collect some weird hobbies. So Lorelei is confused by all the spinning wheels, sure: but she also knows what they are, so the curiosity is more 'why is that out here on the sidewalk' rather than 'ooh fairytale object'. (Not to say she isn't still horribly confused about where exactly she is, and how she got here, but that's another worry.)

"There a craft fair going on around here or what?"


[ MIRRORS ]

Lorelei is...no stranger to curses. This might be a detriment or a benefit, depending on how you feel about them, but the longer she feels compelled to follow and mimic somebody she doesn't know, the more she feels like this might be a problem that requires a solution. "Look, uh, hold up. This is weird."

[demonicbeauty]

Her shoulderblade twitched a little at the mention of flying, but other than that, Ariadne kept herself composed as the rude girl explained. It sounded like magic and, sadly, magic wasn't something Ariadne understood well. Alastrians weren't born with it. Neither were Humans, which she pretended to be. As a child, attending missionary school with Elves, she'd often been made fun of for not knowing even the most basic of spells.

An inconvenience that was coming back to haunt her.

Monsters, though...

"What kind of monsters?" she asked.

[zunesareawesome]

[He stops, dead cold. Did he just?

He so just. Nice!]

Dude! Good one!

[You get the hoof-versions of finger-guns, bro.]

[zunesareawesome]

[Peter turns around, still frowning, when someone comes to help him.]

...aw man, I'm a sir now, too? You just sir'd me.

[Somehow this is just as upsetting as how he looks.]

[zunesareawesome]

[He would be disappointed if he knew the planetary powers he got did not also include turning cats into people. Turning cats into people sounds so cool.]

Sounds like a plan to me! Maybe it was just the bacon? I had some eggs and stuff and I didn't become a chicken. [A pause.]

Unless that's next...man, I hope that's not next.

[zunesareawesome]

It's gotta be the pork then. We've just stumbled onto a conspiracy! Or a mystery. Or a mystery-conspiracy.

[He nods and follows her.]

You got a cool sword there.

[redheat]

You're not trying to get me to do your laundry, are you?

[ But rather than hold an accusatory tone, it's light and a touch playful and Jean just smiles a bit as she brings her bag over with her. ]

It's a little older than what I'm used to but it should run about the same.

[ She stands there, bag held against her chest with one arm, the other letting her hand fall to rest atop the door of the washer. ]

You don't seem to be in too bad a shape though.

[ He isn't covered in dirt, blood, or anything else that some others have come in being drenched in. ]

[redheat]

[ Jean's careful in the way she holds Bella's arm, a gentle guide to a spot where they can sit and she can tend to the cut on Bella's finger. She's slow, gentle, never moving too fast or rushing the girl along with her steps. ]

Jean.

[ She smiles as she gives her name and, upon finding a spot to sit, she guides Bella there slowly, careful in the way she helps her down. ]

How about you?

[magija]

[ it's ... familiar. the internal sense of something feeling off is something that's always come to her for as long as she's had her powers, and she finds herself surprised that she hadn't been the one to catch it first on her own. really, just the idea of pricking her finger in the first place would be completely nonsensical.

but there's something even further in what these wheels carry, something that makes her chest tighten uncomfortably now that she's broken out of that accidental trance. ]

Yes, I'm fine. I'm — [ she shakes her head, raising her own fingers once her hand is free to peer upon her palm, as if she might see something that isn't there. ] I usually have a better instinct about these things. I don't know what happened there. [ she raises her eyes to look at the woman again, attempting a soft smile. ] You probably saved my life. Even with a small prick like that —

[ who knows what this place might have done to her? ]

[trancheuse]

"Oh man, so many monsters. This place is the stuff of nightmares, I tell you. They try really hard to scare the crap out of us every month, but it's never quite the same." A shake of her head. She looked almost a little too gleeful about it really. "It never quite gets to me, though. I give them points for trying, but it never does quite work. But when you think of the word "Monster" what do you think of? Because one of those could probably show up at some point."

At the very least, that was a pretty honest explanation. There was no way to really predict what kinds of monsters could show up in Deerington, mostly because any monster could do that, from any world or from none at all.

[redheat]

[ All she can offer the woman is a gentle smile of her own in regards to her thanks. ]

Who knows what might have happened.

[ Hands come to clutch at her arms then and they gently smooth themselves down, falling into a folded position against her chest then. ]

I can't really say I've been here anywhere close to even a few days, but I get the feeling this place isn't entirely friendly a lot of the time.

[ She purses her lips in thoughts, a glance around them to be sure that there's nothing else that might give her the creeps. At least for now. The things she had seen when she first found herself here and even before she first woke within that bed with the soft music playing... she still can't get those images out of her head nor the feeling of being watched in some way. ]

It's strange... [ words trail off for a moment, her gaze drifting past the woman ] ...I feel like normally I could make better sense of a lot of this but it's... difficult to.

video

[yourule]

[ oh hey, look, it's one of steve's children! robin vaguely recognizes him both as a scoops customer and as one of the kids involved in taking down that massive, tentacled thing in the mall. robin does a little wave. ]

Mmm, but broccoli is good for you, young one. [ her brow furrows for a moment. why would steve care what this kid is eating? unless -- ]

Is Steve, like, taking care of you?

[laruetheday]

Supposedly.

[ Clarisse frowns, looking strangely helpless. A big part of her wishes she had better news for this girl—something hopeful to say. ]

I've been looking for a way out. No luck so far. People warned me it'd be like that, but I thought they were full of shit.

[yourule]

A giant what? Steve, what are you talking about?

[ that's not part of robin's hallucination. did steve make that one up? probably, which probably means that this steve is real, and hallucinating with her. small comforts. ]

But I wouldn't eat the bacon if I were you.

cw child murder aka hunger games

[pineneedles]

(Where Johanna grew up, the rich sort lived in the Capitol. They were given healthcare and copious amounts of food-- and most importantly, their children were excluded from the Hunger Games.

So when Johanna sees this motherfucker, her face twists in anger.)

I don't need your charity. Get lost. Shoo! (She waved a piece of bacon at him before putting it in her mouth.)

[yourule]

i'm glad you know about russians at least, no one in this country ever stops talking about them.

you know farrah fawcett? with the waves and the hairspray that makes her hair look like 6 times as big as her head? think that but maybe a little smaller and on a dude

smarter people than me have been debating what evil means for years but right now i'm going with forcibly drugging a group of plucky teens against their will

[pineneedles]

I was wearing it. (She puts her hands in her hair and shakes out all the curls. They go crazy like a lion's mane.) To keep my hair back. Anyway, ya little weirdo, I have people to do and places to see.

(And with that, she started to walk away. Figuring she'd never see the handkerchief again and the kid would get herself a bandage eventually.)