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

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.

"Yeaah, I mean sure. That works for a sphinx, but you never know what kind you'll deal with. Still, if you're going to try and escape, it's your funeral. I've already seen what happens after all." And while she was more helpful than usual with her memories from home muddled, she wasn't that helpful. "You'll be back soon enough, one way or another. They always come back here eventually."

She shrugged and grinned. "So, Sorry. What's your name, really? I don't mind calling you that, but might as well give you another chance to tell me your real name."

Ariadne wasn't one to resign herself to hopelessness. But she would need to learn more. It was hard to predict a perfect, possible future when you didn't know all of the facts.

For the moment, though, the rude girl seemed to have developed some manners. It seemed only fair to reciprocate in kind.

She curtsied. Although the curtsy was more of a bounce, really. Everything Ariadne did gave the impression that gravity was just barely holding her down. Like, at any second, she would sprout wings and fly.

...if only...

"Ariadne," she said. "But you can call me 'Airy' if you like. Everyone does. And you, mistress?"

Hah, he closest to polite this girl ever got was introductions. 'Rude Girl' was a pretty good descriptor of her on her better days. She snickered and made a mental note of the name. "Airy works well enough," she said, grinning away as if at some private joke.

... it probably involved calling Ariadne an Airhead if she ever did something Larxene thought was stupid. Yeah, she really was a rude creature.

"Like I said, you can call me Larxene. No point really shortening it. Well Airy, I think that brings us full circle. What're you in a hurry to find? You're obviously pretty new off the boat." She had that green smell after all.

Ariadne frowned, glancing from side to side, taking in the panorama. "Well, I don't recall being on a boat," she muttered. "Just something about being in the woods. There was a deer and..."

She trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. It didn't make any sense. Not even by her very lenient policy on sense-making.

Dreams were just that. Dreams.

So why did her back still feel so raw?

"I don't know what I'm looking for," she admitted. "I guess I figured I'd know it when I saw it."

"Hahaha, it's a saying, silly. It means you just arrived. We haven't been on a boat for months!" Funny story. They'd spent a month on the Titanic, so that was kind of an in-joke. "We all had the same dream when we showed up, getting dragged through the woods and whatever."

A shake of her head and she gestured around her. "But I get it. Yeah, that sounds like you'll be wandering for a while. Ya know, until you find it. you might try the library. People go there a lot. Not much of a reader myself."

Ya don't say, Larxene.

A saying. Well, that explained a lot. Ariadne was terrible with sayings.

She wanted to know its origins, but now wasn't the time. Too many other things to figure out.

"Everyone has that dream?" she asked. "How is that possible? Some kind of telepathy?" Yes, Ariadne was fresh off the boat. But she wasn't without at least a moderate understanding of the magical.

Enough to make some guesses.

"Who would do that?"

"Well, probably because it's involved with how we got here? I mean we're supposed to be in a dream or a nightmare of some sort, so it'd make sense for us all to end up in the same dream the same way if there's only one way in." Which would make it also the only way out, but nobody'd even tried retracing... huh, that was a thought. But for another day. She didn't care much.

"Think we got dragged here by some brat named Sodder? Not sure if she did it on purpose or not. Not inclined to care that much."

"All in a dream?"

Her moment of triumph at understanding telepathy was dashed on the rocks. Being trapped in a dream was something else. Something she'd never actually heard of, before.

Assuming, of course, that the rude girl--sorry, Larxene--was telling the truth.

And Ariadne had no reason to doubt it.

"Who says?"

One thing that might not yet be obvious about this woman was that, for all that she was normally a very villainous creature? She was usually not the sort to deceive. She might withhold details, but she didn't lie very often. It was boring and she preferred to sneer at people while she told them how dumb they were.

"That's the running theory, and that's pretty much what the letter said. I know you got one. Everyone gets one. There's a dream in the dream too," she grunted. "But I don't go in there. 'The Great Sleep' they call it, but that just seems like a stupid waste of my time and everyone else's."

Well, that and she couldn't remember her past, so... "But yeah, if you ask a lot of the sleepers, they know the story. Some believe it. Some don't."

A widely-held theory, then. With the possibility of other theories, maybe? Too soon to tell. People could be very funny with their beliefs, sometimes. Ariadne would have to learn as much as she could, before making any kind of decision on her own.

Good thing she was a spy.

"Letter? No, I..." She looked back over her shoulder.

Well. She'd jumped out a window.

Perhaps a bit too hasty. But no one could blame her for being a little spooked.

"I suppose I should go back..."

And here's where Larxene got to have a little dark chuckle, because if she didn't read the letter...

"Let me guess. Ya hopped out of your window without even picking up the stupid antler keychain in the basket you got when you showed up, didn't you?" And a thought occurred to her right afterwards. "You did eat something in the jar, right?"

Oh man, this would be worth ten thousand laughs if she hadn't.

Ariadne shrugged. "What would you do if you woke up in a strange room?" Hold on a second. "What did you do?" Assuming, of course, that if they all had the same dream, they all arrived in about the same graceless manner.

Maybe that was too far.

"Did you...wake up in a strange room too?"

Hmmmm... memories... "Read the letter, had a laugh. Burned it. Sniffed the jar, ate what was inside. Took the keys and went out looking for so... huh. Not sure what I was looking for actually." Because she didn't remember Marluxia and Xemnas right now. She only remembered Roxas... and it made some thoughts fuzzy.

"But yep. Anyone with one of those fancy wrist phones woke up in a strange room. You're going to want to eat what was in the jar."

She looked down at the device on her wrist, her face twisting into a scowl that was unnatural on her face. She was one to smile, one to laugh. This whole situation was just so far outside of her experience that she didn't know how to look or feel. "I'm not very hungry right now," she admitted.

Actually, she sort of felt like she was going to be sick.

But she looked up again, a flicker of brightness coming into her eyes. "But you were looking for something too? I guess we have that in common." She smiled. "Even if we don't know what it is."

A snort. "Well, if you start feeling whispy, remember what I said and go eat something. It's... a thing." She still didn't get it. Even the damned toys had to do it.

"Huh, yeah. A little... but... it's more like I can't remember." She scratched at her head and shrugged. "Still, trust me. You're going to have plenty in common with plenty of the Sleepers."

Whispy?

Maybe that was another figure of speech. A saying. She'd figure it out later.

She set that thought aside for the moment. "A lot in common with them? Do you really think so?" It was entirely possible Ariadne sounded a little too excited with that idea. She enver really had much in common with anyone. Just Aunt Lysia, most of the time. And Uncle Tahafra. The only Alastrians left that she knew.

Everyone else just thought she was strange.

She didn't have a better word for describing the symptoms of not eating what was in the jar. Ariadne would figure it out, or she wouldn't. In the end, it wasn't any skin off of her hide since she'd given the warning.

"Trust me. They sing Kumbayyah a lot around here," her voice sounded bemused distantly, though her smiles never quite reached her eyes. They always had a sort of plasticity and fakeness to them. "They look for that common ground since they're all trapped together. Stand together against the problems and whatever." She snorted.

"It's got its appeal, don't get me wrong. Just don't see the point usually. The problems come and go every month."

Everyone wanted to belong. Ariadne had never once questioned that fact. That the strange girl didn't want to was...troubling. Not that she was one to judge but...well. It made her a little wary.

"What's Kumbayyah?" she asked, though, keeping her thoughts to herself.

Music. Music was another universal constant. Maybe that would help her understand.

APRIL 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

YOU UNCULTURED SWINE

GOOD ENDURES

Character Arrival

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