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

be glad of that.

you sure he wasn't just pulling your leg, old son? right, okay. say we do this. the hiking, the pig drinking and all---

i am not singing it lady gaga.

I'll ask Barry for clarification. Maybe he was being colorful. Singing in general, I believe more over -- Lady Gaga.

To be honest, Constantine, I wouldn't be surprised by anything.

[ y'all asked for this. ]

Mum mum mum mah
Mum mum mum mah
Mum mum mum mah
Mum mum mum mah
Mum mum mum mah
I wanna hold em like they do in Texas Plays
Fold em let em hit me raise it baby stay with me (I love it)
Luck and intuition play the cards with Spades to start
And after he's been hooked I'll play the one that's on his heart

ORRRRR
We could sing Crazy in Love?
Single Ladies? God, I really want to do that dance. It's fresh af, man.

[ what does oliver expect barry to do when he's texting while barry's eating all of his lunch? eat his lunch in peace? pfft. ]

[ Bollocks. ]

there he is. i was wondering how long it'd take. you know what, you can handle the singing. i'll even put out an offer for my old punk rock days so long as it'll actually do something about the situation at hand.

but i draw the bloody line at dancing.

so it's the hiking and the drinking and the actual singing. i'd be interested to know just what kind of magic tied it to those things in particular.

[ hello, stranger danger!!!!! ]

You need to dance. If you're serious about turning this pig into a human again, you have to dance. How quick of a learner are you? I can teach you the entire choreography to Single Ladies. How good are your "Oh, oh, oh, Oh, oh, oh"s?

[ please, let him. ]

Fairytale magic!

[ he's not even joking. he's literally vibrating with excitement. ]

[ He had his misgivings about this being a shared dream for a while there. Now, this is proof. Proper proof that this is all bollocksed up. He's in some kind of nightmare. ]

i know rituals and spells in all kinds of cultures and languagues and not a one requires that i dance to beyonce. so, if this is some barmy fairytale magic.

i've got a fairy godmother to send to hell.

again.

Again????

[ it's a good thing he's sitting down. he wants to hear all of this, sis. ]

Tell me more, tell me more
Was it Angelina Jolie in her Maleficent costume?
Because daaaaaamn.

[ he does send the gif because 1) he's barry allen and 2) he's barry allen, of course he knows how to input gifs. he's a fucking unrecognised and unappreciated genius.

also, don't tell iris. ]

yeah you read that right, speedy.

[ Lucky he'll humor you. He does like to peacock around sometimes. ]

course it wasn't angelina jolie. it was a mean old bat trying to cause trouble way back during the salem witch trials. which is hilarious, really.

only magical being i ever met crazy enough to stir things up in that crazy town. most magical types know to avoid it.

Edited (words what are those) 2020-03-30 16:41 (UTC)

[ barry's eyes kind of glazed over that since he has food in front of him and he's so hungry. god, doesn't constantine know what it's like to be so hungry that eating just makes him hungrier?

an uncharacteristic muggle minute later: ]

The only wizard I know is Weather Wizard. He had a pretty good sense of style. He always popped his collar, but I can't make that look work.

[ because that's important to note. 8(

what he types out next comes out slow. barry allen may tell everyone he's the flash, but he is smart!!! he knows this is a public network. ]

How do you know I like speed?

[ John doesn't doubt the man could eat everyone out of business if he had half a mind to. He doesn't know that particular feeling but he understands the upset of people taking his food when he's going to eat and making him do work first. He hates it. Bloody Chas. ]

Not the bloody Weather Wizard. I've got nothing against a popped collar but don't throw my name in with his.

[ Damn. ]

Because we've met. Briefly.

[ And that's all he's going to say about that. ]

Oh, really?

[ considering he's met a number of people over the years, some that are actually people he knows but different iterations of them, he simply accepts this. his flash senses aren't going off with an alarm telling him that this man is dangerous. if oliver knows him, there's a chance he is, but...

no one is eobard thawne, and no one is that guy who took the last cinnamon donut back in 2018. ]

Cool. So are you Oliver's friend? I didn't realize he had friends outside of Dig, Felicity, and like... some other people. Some questionable, some... well, patient.

really.

[ Dimension hopping is dodgy business. He's been to so many parallel earths he just stops asking who has what and when and who. It's why he'd just barged in as he had with Lucifer. Never mind the time pressures. ]

i suppose once you've saved each other a time or two and helped retrieve a person's soul from purgatory it's gone a little past the work colleague stage, so sure.

friend.

That sounds legit.

[ for real, this is not barry being gullible. people don't tend to meet and befriend oliver queen under normal circumstances... except maybe for him? who knows. ]

Wait until he tries to shoot you in the back and ruin one of your best shirts and blazers.
I'm still waiting for him to replace it with something Gucci. It's been 84 years, man.

it's a pain but it's honest enough considering my usual.

[ He gives hell for it but he'd do a lot for the other man. The rest of them by proxy too, he supposes. It takes a bit to earn that kind of loyalty from John. He doesn't just cast his lot in with anyone. ]

if it's all right with you i'll skip that part.
good luck on that. you should try the hurt eyes. works better than frustration on you, squire.