soddersays | APRIL 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Arrival

Ariadne had scars on her back. Two long, jagged lines running vertical across her shoulderblades. Most of the time, she didn't really notice them. They were just a part of her, as much as her eyes, her chi, her breasts, her fingertips, or any other part. Not worth thinking about, especially.

Except for this particular moment in time. At this particular moment in time, they felt like they were on fire.

Nightmares were nothing new. Ariadne had been having them since the day she was born, but this was so different. She woke up with her eyes closed and let out a yowl of pain and surprise. Then a second, when she opened those eyes and found herself somewhere that...wasn't? Not her bed. Not her bedroom. And yet it existed. Of all the possible futures she'd predicted for herself going to sleep the night before, this was...not one of them.

She rolled over onto her face, pulling her knees up and under her chest, rounding off her back to relieve what felt like she'd been ripped open. "Scout the terrain," she muttered to herself. "Find the language of the land. Get help." The same three rules for any time she found herself stranded away from Valeria.

Somehow, this wasn't how she imagined it.

Groaning, she rolled off of the strange bed, pulling herself to her feet and taking one staggering step after another to the nearest window. Her traveling leathers creaked softly as she planted her hands on the sill and threw herself out, to the grass below. If nothing else, she successfully managed to land on her feet.

Spinning Wheel

Ariadne had seen spinning wheels before. The ladies maids in countless palaces sat at them, performing a sort of magic that she scarcely understood.

She'd never seen one in the middle of the woods before.

Really, seeing something like that could hardly compare to the way she'd woken up in this new village. But it was just strange enough that she stopped to stare from the tree branch, where she'd been doing a bit of scout work. At first, she sat on the branch, just watching it, waiting to see if someone would come to claim it or use it. But the more she watched, the more it seemed to call out to her. Silly, of course. She couldn't sew to save her life. The one time Aunt Lysia had tried to teach her, she'd managed to sew her embroidery into the hem of her skirt. But it was just so...pretty.

No harm in getting a little closer.

She hopped down from the branch and walked over.

And closer.

And closer still.

Her gray eyes fixed on the needle. She couldn't look away. She needed to...she needed to touch it. But why?

Wildcard

[ooc: I'm so painfully new to this game, I'm open to anything. Feel free to hit me up with any prompt you'd like, or PM me with ideas. Seriously. Go to town!

Note: Natalie Portman face-twin confusion more than welcome!]

Edited 2020-03-25 23:24 (UTC)

That? That was a thing. Larxene had seen and done plenty of acrobatics, but rarely while leaving her house. Then again, her house was a wretched den she barely kept up that the kids all said was haunted, so what did she know?

She caught sight of this strange woman landing like a cat and raised an eyebrow. Her memories from home were currently kind of blown, so she was a bit out of it right now, but there wasn't any glimmer of familiarity there, so since she might not have known her, that left the obvious question of the day.

"What the heck you doing over there, ya overgrown grasshopper?" Not her best insult, but she was seriously off her game and a little pale at the gills, so cut her some slack.

Ariadne's first response wasn't to face the speaker. Her very first instinct was to look at her hands. Grasshopper? No. She still looked pretty pink, as far as she could tell.

It was only then that she looked up.

Not a familiar face, but that was probably too much to expect, considering the circumstances. "I'm sorry?" she said. She looked up at the window, then back at the stranger again.

Maybe there was a rule against jumping out of windows.

"I'm...sorry?"

It was a rough morning, so far.

"Well well, good to meet you Sorry. I'm Larxene. Now, since we've got the introductions out of the way..." No, seriously, she couldn't resist that one. After all, the girl'd said it twice, so it was just opening up for a stupid joke like that, at least in Larxene's mind. She was barking a laugh out as she said it, like it was the funniest thing in the world, though she really didn't feel much more than a distant intellectual amusement.

That was weird, that feeling of ... well, nothing, really. She didn't feel much, certainly not as much as the folks around her. Idly, she wondered why before focusing on Ariadne again. Right. She as chatting with the stranger jumping out of the window.

"You in a hurry to get somewhere that the doors're too good for ya?" It was more of a tease than anything. "Trust me. Nothing's ever going to get done fast in this town. No reason to be in a hurry."

The joke eluded Ariadne, but that was nothing new. She was constantly in the position of listening to someone laugh, without being clear on what was funny. And under better circumstances, she could have schooled her face into something a little more neutral and unbothered. But the circumstances weren't exactly normal. So she could hardly scold herself for letting her confusion come through.

But the stranger didn't seem in a hurry to explain the joke.

Best to let it go.

"It..." She didn't want to appear vulnerable, but she was already flailing enough as it was. "It might help if I knew the name of the town. Or the kingdom." Clearly, not one she'd visited before, which left more questions than answers.

There was a perfect possible future where this all made sense, but the odds felt a bit staggering. Three million seventeen thousand one hundred and four to one. More or less.

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?"

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.

"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."

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.

"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.

That...wasn't really an answer to her question. And Ariadne was starting to suspect the rude girl just wanted to scare her. But for her appearance, Ariadne didn't frighten easily. Possibly because when she thought of the word 'monster,' she mostly just thought of people. Some people would call her one.

And she didn't really feel like a monster.

Not most days, anyway.

Better to try a different approach.

"Boarblins?" she asked. "Is that a kind of monster you mean? Because it's easy to trick them."

"Boarwhats?!?" She looked for a moment honestly confused. "I guess that might be one. But I have no idea what that is, lady. I mean like lamia, half snake half person. Big roaring birds of thunder trying to swoop down eat you. Sphinxes, which are lions with people's faces that tell riddles and if you guess them wrong they attack. Ya know. Monsters. Creatures of legend, right? Really weird, spooky stuff. You never know what you could run into in the forest."

In truth? She'd just named a feww of the monsters that had been around in the last month there. She couldn't be bothered to remember most of their names if she tried.

Her head canted slightly to one side, giving her an almost-birdlike appearance. "How can a monster be creatures of legend if it's real?" she asked. That seemed somewhat counterproductive. Then again, she was an endangered species herself. And there were plenty out there who had never met an Alastrian before.

Waving off her own question, she continued. "But you said Sphinxes. I know those. If you answer their riddle right, they have to let you pass, don't they?"

The solution seemed clear enough. Just answer right.

APRIL 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

YOU UNCULTURED SWINE

GOOD ENDURES

Character Arrival

Ariadne | Original Character | OTA (Player is Fresh Meat!)

Arrival

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Spinning Wheel

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