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

Being new to this town, still uncertain of what it all means or how to leave, Hanzo is understandably somewhat on edge. He expects whoever brought him here to make an appearance at some point, to make their demands so he can rightly refuse them.

He isn't expecting Chloe. She looks like she could be one of the locals, perhaps making an effort at being friendly to the newcomer. She would be the first, however. Most have been willing to keep their distance thus far.

So she doesn't get the friendliest welcome. He stares her down, gaze flicking once up and down to make certain she isn't armed or otherwise a threat. No. Just a girl.

"...thank you."

Threats he can deal with. People trying to be pleasant to him? He's less prepared for, and his hesitant, wary tone says as much. Alright. What's her angle?

She's far more used to being the giver of that sort of tone rather than on the receiving end. Chloe's trying her damnedest to make this less weird by figuring out how to get her feet to move in the opposite direction, to make herself walk away rather than hover around. It doesn't seem to be working though and she's slowly resigning herself to being awkwardly stuck here.

"You don't see a lot of them around here. Small town Maine is super against high quality body art, I guess. They think it's all like criminals and sailors or something. Talk about backwards thinking." Says the girl who is very much a criminal with a full sleeve tattoo, but that's beside the point. She's just rambling to fill silent space here.

"Are you new?" A beat. "I'm not some weird welcome wagon. Promise."

"Good. If you were, I would have words," he replies sternly.

But, as she has stated, she's not with whoever brought him here, that much is obvious. Perhaps another captive? She's too congenial to be a local, from what he's gathered of them so far.

Once more he gives her a searching look, as if deciding what to do from here. Being on his own for so long means social situations are somewhat novel, anymore.

"...it is the same, where I come from. For the most part." Since this is the topic she's decided to broach, he can indulge her. His quest to escape this place is not going to change over the next few minutes.

She snorts, either finding something amusing in his sternness or his word choice, it's really up in the air.

"Good luck with that." She sounds almost sincere, maybe, though the look on her face is every bit as sarcastic as you might expect from that kind of comment. She rocks back on her heels a bit, the only movement she seems to be able to spare herself. "Not that I, uh, doubt your words would be super effective and probably wanna accompany like a major ass kicking if you're anything like the other strong, stoic types that pass through here. I've just been here since day one and and, like, no one has gotten very far with their word havings."

Maybe they just had the wrong words. Who knows. Either way, Chloe notices a small loosening in whatever invisible thing was tying her to him. It's curious, really, and she's not sure what in all that ramble managed to get it, so she's left with a mystery on her hands.

"Sucks though. About the art." A beat. "So which are you?" A sailor or a criminal she means, but she doesn't clarify even after coming in from a major topic swerve. It's meant as a joke. Probably.

Edited 2020-04-10 01:22 (UTC)

Hanzo hmphs softly in response. "Do people often admit that they are criminals when asked, where you come from?"

The question could be more scathing than it is. It could appear so to an outsider. But there's a quiet upturn to the corner of his mouth, blink and you'd miss it, that says he's more amused than aggravated by her continued questions.

Maybe it's the idea that it could be true. 'Why yes, random stranger, I participate in a number of illegal activities for fun and profit! How kind of you to ask.'

Probably not the case, but quietly amusing as a mental image all the same.

Growing up in a town where reading the subtlest change in emotion meant the difference between a good day and a real bad one, Chloe doesn't miss the slight shift for a moment. She does wonder if she imagined it, but she goes with her gut, smirking a little in response and giving a gentle shrug of her shoulders.

"The shitty ones do." The unspoken edition of there being a lot of shitty ones might get carried out by the look in her face. "But Failed Tourist Town, Oregon isn't exactly known for its highly proficient illegal rings or anything."

"No. I suppose not." Are they known for anything? He's not terribly familiar with American culture, beyond the broader stereotypes.

"And you?" He nods towards her own tattoos, flowering down the length of her arm. Never mind that he hasn't really answered her question at all, but in fairness to him a criminal background is not the sort of thing you go blurting out to anyone who will listen. Unburdening the story of his life is not a pleasant thing, nor one he wishes to recount with any degree of frequency.

If he did? He'd certainly need to know who was listening. She doesn't look like one of the assassins his family might have sent after him, but you never know.

Chloe's lip twitches with her own amusement at the follow up question, well aware he skirted the answer and relatively sure she can understand why. Even in Deerington where the police are cats, she's never been the sort to brag about her own heavy disrespect of the law to just about anyone, let alone someone she just met.

"I'm an artist."

That doesn't answer the question at all, given that it's not like artists aren't also criminals, but it's also not a lie. She'd designed her own artwork, why not wear it. That makes it a safe answer, right?

"So, worse off than either."

It doesn't take a lot of detective work, by cats or otherwise, to determine that Chloe is someone who is often up to mischief. At best. She has that same canny look about her, the same fearless look in her eyes as--

Ah. That's why.

For a moment, the amusement lingering on his face fades. Odd. The things you find yourself missing, over the years.