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

jean grey | x-men movieverse

[redheat]

sweet dreams aren't made of these ( arrival )

[ She wonders if she's dead.

The sound of her boots squish against the ground as she makes her way through the streets, water dripping behind her as she goes. Dressed in her black X-Men uniform, hair plastered to her face, cheeks flushed and skin cold, she's entirely soaked, Alkali Lake being what she last remembers before waking here. A gloved hand smoothing over her arm, a chill runs through her, steps slow... uncertain... until she stops completely then. She stands there, looking distraught, before she lets her eyes close and attempts to reach out with her mind, searching for familiar pings.

Scott, Professor, Ororo, Logan...

Names of those she searches for with her mind, completely unaware of how she's started to slowly begun to walk again... entirely unaware of just who or what she might be walking into. That of course? Includes the possibility of a car. ]

spinning wheels ( a )

[ Something doesn't feel right as she moves about the streets. Something she can't quite place her finger on, but when she catches sight of someone else meaning to place their finger on something sharp and pointy, she finds her chest tightening - is this the bad feling? - and hurries her way over.

Anyone looking to prick themselves on the spindle of a spinning wheel might find their wrist reached for suddenly then and a distraught Jean Grey being the one on the other end of that hand. ]

Wait!

spinning wheels ( b )

cw: blood
[ Jean shoulders the door open of whatever shop is closest to her, fingers of one hand wrapped around the finger of another, blood dripping down her wrist with her glove having been removed. She's in disbelief with herself that she actually did such a thing as prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel. But she'll chide herself later because she can't seem to stop the bleeding despite the pressure she places on it and so she quickly makes her way thorugh the aisles of the shop she's pushed herself into, eyes scanning for any sort of antibiotic oitnment and bandages for her finger.

When she's unable to find any, either from the panic she tries to ignore creeping up on her, or the fact that this place really doesn't have the things she's looking for, she mutters a quiet word of displeasure under her breath and presses her head against the shelf she had been searching.

Deep breaths. Just... deep breaths. The last thing she needs is for her emotions to get the better of her.... even if the shelves might have started shaking by now. ]

wildcard

(( wildcard option! feel free to shoot me a PM for something more personally tailored if you'd like! ))

sweet dreams aren't made of these ( arrival )

[howlett]

He avoids the town when he can. Save for trips from the cabin to check on Kurt or Wes at work. Jean-Paul at his apartment. Mostly his avoidance is that mistrust of the townsfolk. They're weird on the best of days and plainly dangerous on the worst. So he's gotten in the habit of keeping his eye out in town. You never know when you'll find a Sleeper in distress.

Then his headlights flicker past a familiar face, and his heart skips a beat. Shit. Maybe he's the one living a nightmare right now.

He stomps the brakes with a little more than necessary vigour hops out into the street, looking back at the sidewalk barely illuminated by the street lights.

"Jeannie?"

[redheat]

That voice.

Despite whatever hope she had gently held within her chest to perhaps find one of the others here, she'd also hoped that maybe she wouldn't. That... wherever she is here, this place that now holds her within a certain dream, that they wouldn't have to be lost here. Like her.

But to hear that familiar voice and to call her by that name... there's really no one else who's ever called her that and so it has to be him. Doesn't it?

Her eyes flutter open and her chest tightens as she stands there, dripping wet still. It's a little difficult to see and everything still feels so strange and yet, she knows who it is. Who it has to be.

"Logan..?"

[howlett]

No small part of him wanted to be wrong. Maybe he still is. Staggering closer he stops only to look around. Take stock of this place and this moment in case this is just another one of Deerington's jokes.

Little by little he gets closer. She sounds right. Smells right. Looks right. Save the uniform. His head cocks thoughtfully. He doesn't recognize that leather suit of armour. At least not her. It reminds him of something else. Hounds. Without the spikes perhaps. But almost equally foreboding.

Nodding at his name, he reaches for her cautiously. His open hand as uncertain of her reaction as what he'll find if he does touch her. "It's me. I'm here. What are you... what happened, Jeannie? Do you know where you are?"

[redheat]

The closer Logan comes to her, the more easy it is for her to see him and when she does, she finds herself looking to him with... uncertainty. It's Logan. She knows it's him, she can feel that it is and yet, there's something unmistakably different about him that she can't quite put her finger on... and then a thought touches the depths of her mind: what if he's not real and this is simply a part of this entire sort of dream she's found herself within? The mind is so incredibly powerful, she knows that better than anyone and so she has to wonder if she's making him up within her mind, this dream, having seen him along with the others before...

She doesn't step back, doesn't regard with him caution, but she does tilt her head some, eyes looking him over with a touch of confusion before she allows for her gaze to fall onto his hand.

"I'm in a dream..." Even as she says that, she knows how unbelievable it might sound and looks around briefly before letting her gaze fall back onto him. "...but I'm not entirely sure that's what it really is. Everything feels... strange."

For a telepath.

[howlett]

He can feel her there too, just around the edges of his mind. It's not invasive, but it's not entirely familiar either. The impression of her mental presence so similar to the one he knows and expects and yet... it reminds him of so many versions of the woman he's met, either inhabited by something else or displaced by time.

"We all are, Jeannie," he says. It may not even be entirely true, but it seems to be the best guess of some of Deerington's brightest. "This place... no one knows what is it is. How it's made. Where it exists. But I'm here. And so's Kurt. And Jean-Paul. There's more and more of us gettin' stuck here everyday." He steps a little closer, tentatively still but growing in comfort just to know she does seem as real as any of the Sleepers here do. Not merely some figment of their keeper's imagination, designed to torment him some more. Or maybe he's being naive to believe that.

"How long has it been? How long have you been here?" he asks, holding his hand out more purposefully now. Waiting to see if she'll take it.

spinning wheels ( b )

[knewaguy]

[Blood has such a distinct smell. It's metallic, tasting like a copper penny sitting right at the front of his mouth. It invades his nose and once he smells it, it's all he can scent on the air. Logan's seen his fair share of bloodshed, so it's familiar however he still has mixed emotions about it. It's never once been a great thing to come across.

He was looking at a standing display of reading glasses, trying them on and squinting at his reflection but now he's folding them up and turning around. He leaves his carry-basket on the ground and inadvertently steals the glasses by putting them in his jacket's inner lapel pocket on instinct while his nostrils flare and he walks toward the source. One aisle over, two... and on the third, right before he rounds the corner, he freezes.

Moments like this were once in a life time. You change the course of history and you get a second chance, but even that's beyond rational expectation. Once dead, stays dead, and he'd come to really grasp that - until arriving here, alive, now realizing only a few feet away is someone else he thought he lost. One time, two times too many? It doesn't matter.

He breathes in deep, hand holding on to the aisle shelf next to him - pushing tins of tuna askew before he lurches around to stare down the aisle with a surprisingly stricken look on his face. Ashen and cold, his voice cracks immediately.]

Jean.

[redheat]

[ It's not a voice she had thought that she would hear nor a presence she thought she would feel. She had hoped, some... small part of her had, of course. She loves and misses those she considers her friends, her family, and after what she had done back at Alkali Lake as a means to keep them safe... of course she didn't expect to actually see or feel any of them here.

So when she hears her name wrapped within a voice that, while perhaps different in how she last heard it, is one which is so familiar to her, she feels her chest tigthen and the shaking around her suddenly stops. ]

Logan...

[ His name is but a whisper as she lifts her head from the shelf and she looks to him... and stares with confusion. He looks... so different. So much older and she shakes her head, trying to understand what she's seeing here. How long has she been gone? ]

You're...

[ Different. ]

[knewaguy]

You're... the same.

[Sort of. She's young and full of life, looking at him making him feel like he's so far in the past he can't even think straight. She's the woman who appears in his dreams time and time again, scarlet hair smelling sweet and familiar before she ghosts away, out of his grasp. Always there to remind him she can be and always - always beyond his reach. Makes looking her in the face right now feel beyond surreal.

The only thing that snaps him out of his reverie is that she's still bleeding. The scent is thick and his gaze drops down to her hand and he instinctively steps toward her, holding his out. He reaches for her wrist and this feels like one of those moments where she's about to disappear on him before he can even get his handkerchief out of his pocket.]

You're bleeding.

[redheat]

[ When he takes her hand, she lets him, despite her mind trying to quickly make sense of what she's seeing before her. It's Logan, she knows that and yet... he's different. So much in the physical sense if easy enough to see. But in the emotional? How much, she has to wonder.

But her bleeding finger which she holds to, blood still dripping down her wrist, pulls her out of those thoughts and she glances off for a moment. The spinning wheel she felt so compelled to touch... ]

Yeah. Just a bit.

[ She tries to shrug it off. ]

Or, I guess a lot more than you'd expect from... pricking your finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel.

[ And it's here that she looks up to him. Really looks to him. Though doesn't attempt to slip into his mind. ]

I'm fine. I just... need some bandages and possibly some antibiotic ointment in case of infection.

[knewaguy]

[Her explanation warrants a raising of his brows as he takes her hand, cradling it gently - gentler than he's ever held anything before - and slowly wraps the handkerchief around her fingertips to try and stop the bleeding. He doesn't let go of her hand after that, almost feeling like doing so would banish her back out of existence.]

Don't go falling into any magical fucking coma, alright?

[Ha ha. Sleeping Beauty. He swallows hard, meeting her gaze. Bandages and ointment sounds like a plan but he's the one enchanted right now - he lowers his hand and hers, reluctant still to pull away. He doesn't have the time to wonder what she thinks of him, he just knows there are things he doesn't want her to know.]

You just arrive?

arrival

[shoplifter]

[Logan's here, a very young girl's voice reaches back, at some point. But not Charles.

Laura's sitting on her bed in the farmhouse, hands in her lap and eyes attentive, despite the way they bore holes into the wall; she had felt this feeling before — a little different, but very similar. Charles had found her, and she had reached out to him in return, and they'd spoken at length like this. Very much like this.

She wonders just who this could be, and has her guesses; there's quite a number of X-Men comics sitting on her dresser, after all.

You are a telepath, yes? A mutant?]

[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. ]

[shoplifter]

[I'm not... I think I am just sensitive to it. A pause. But I am a mutant, too. There aren't a lot of us here, but I ask new people anyway.

She has... an idea of who it is. It makes her wonder what Logan will think... After all, she's pretty sure that most all of the X-Men in her world have long since passed away. Sitting with her feet swung over the side of the bed, she fidgets with a small wooden horse in her hand and continues:

Are you Jean Gray?]

[redheat]

[ To hear her name said back to her in a place- in a dream she hadn't thought anyone would ever know... it gives the telepath pause, has her take a single step forward as she looks around still, fingers curling into her arm. Whoever she's speaking to... knows her. Or at least of her.

Do we know each other?

She gives pause again as she finds herself needing to sit; she suddenly feels a bit lightheaded.

I'm sorry, just... I'm a little confused at the moment.

She sounds so young... a student perhaps? ]

[shoplifter]

[I'm... a fan. Of the X-Men. I've read stories.

Maybe she should be honest and tell her that she's Logan's daughter.

But she's also a little worried it would be too much; she sounds confused, unsure of anything, and Laura can understand that. She was not very happy waking up here herself... and beside that... she'd have to explain to Jean that everyone was dead. That there were no more X-Men. Almost no more mutants left at all, really. A child mutant was unheard of for many years, until their escape.

It's a lot.

So she bites her lip, considers what to do.

My name is Laura.

... It's okay to be confused. We all were confused, when we came here.

Do you need help? I can come find you.]

spinning wheels ( a )

[magija]

[ she's grown quite accustomed to temptation in this place, the subtle urges that slip up beneath her skin that she can't be found able to take much control over, but she'd like to believe that after a year in this town, she'd have hardened her resistances a bit more than how she'd started.

so why is it that she feels so drawn to that sharpened point, flickering with a shine in the sun, her own hand lighting with physical curiosity, tempted to feel the sharp press at her skin —

until she's shaken out of that momentary trance by the sudden shout near her, body shuddering as awareness looms over her once more and she feels the gripping hold around her wrist before her hand meets that dangerous point. ]

I was — [ she turns her head, eyes finding that of the red-haired woman beside her as she blinks, almost as if she's only now gaining consciousness. ] I wasn't myself. I — you sensed something about it, didn't you?

[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?

[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? ]

[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.

[magija]

Only a few days? [ a newcomer, then. she doesn't know why it still always surprises her when new faces slip into the town. perhaps because it just makes her all the more aware just how long she's been here. ] As a year-long ... resident of sorts, I can guarantee it's not always the friendliest.

[ there's been more than sufficient time for her to learn, for her to know the difference between genuine good will and manipulative intent. still, there was always a way for them to catch her off guard if this spinning wheel had been any proof of that. ]

They play with your mind here. [ she speaks bluntly in response to the woman's uncertainty, knowing precisely where the discomfort comes from. ] You have to be careful in learning how to separate your own thoughts from the ones they try to place in you.

[ which is the sort of trick she's capable of doing, with her own abilities. ]

[imarealistnotacynic]

[He attributes weird feelings - rightfully - to the nerves that every single person here seems to be suffering from. But the woman who yells at him to stop gets a weird look.]

This has to be moved, it can't stay here.

[Because. You know. It can't.]

[redheat]

[ She's not about to argue that but she just continues to get a bad feeling about it and its presence. ]

Just- don't touch it. You don't even know what it might do.

[imarealistnotacynic]

How do you know?

[He is stubborn as hell, but he withdraws his hands.] Did you see someone leave them?

[redheat]

No, I didn't.

[ A hand smooths down her arm as she stands there, suddenly realizing how difficult of a sell this might be without getting into it all. ]

Call it a gut feeling.