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

[Sasha is quiet for a long time. She stands there, still as stone, just processing Jon's words. The details of Amy Patel's statement are clarifying in her mind: the thing that climbed into the fourth window of Graham Folger's flat, cleared out his things, how it supposedly took over his life.

She remembered tracking down one of his notebooks, the repeated ramblings on every page of just "Keep Watching". How Amy Patel was the only one who remembered the real Graham.

Which one of them had remembered her?]

...Knew I should've quit when I had the chance. [There's a sad sort of smile tugging at the corners of her mouth though there's no actual mirth in it.] Could have avoided this whole mess if I'd just done that when I was thinking about it, y'know?

[ Her smile hurts. Even more so because some part of him is glad to see it, drinking in every piece of her that he'd forgotten. He is so glad to know what she looked like— looks like?— now. ]

It's not as easy as that. The Institute... [ He's the one with a slanted, bitter sort of smile, now. ] The Institute is not good, Sasha.

[ I am not good, he wants to say. He doesn't, yet. She may be bright, but he's giving her enough to deal with. ]

[Sasha takes a breath, pulls her hands to her face to shove the heels of her hands under her glasses and rub out the tears that are welling up and threatening to fall down her cheeks. Don't break down now, James. You don't need your boss seeing you cry.]

I always had a feeling, with everything we had shoved into artifact storage and the statements we took. I know a bunch of them were utter bollocks but the one you had to record on tape and then everything that happened with Michael and Prentiss- [She has to stop and take another shuddering breath. She should have left after Michael. But she was so damn curious.

And in the end that curiosity had gotten her, presumably, killed...or worse.] ...So that thing replaced me. [How long did it take you to notice? Who knew it was a trick? These questions burn in her mind and on her tongue but instead she asks:] What happened with Prentiss?

[ Jon has not thought of himself as anyone's boss in... a long while. And he hasn't had anyone cry in front of him— without threatening him, or wanting to run from him— in possibly longer.

Maybe that's why he reaches, awkward, to touch a hand to her shoulder. He realizes at the last moment that it's the burned one, an ugly mess of scar tissue, and drops it in a hurry. ]

She's dead. Cremated. All the worms, too. She, uh... there were no casualties.

[ He reaches up, abruptly self-conscious, and brushes his fingertips over the little round scars along his face and neck. Indicating them with an uncomfortable little quirk of his mouth. ]

A few, uh... souvenirs. But they were gassed before they got far.

Good. [Sasha doesn't flinch when he touches her, even when she briefly realizes it's his burned hand and a momentary concern flashes across her face. She hopes it doesn't still hurt him with how nasty it looks.] That no one died, I mean, not that you got- [She sighs and drags her hands up to her hair to rake her nails over her scalp. She's going to ruin her braid at this point but that's low on her list of concerns at the moment.]

But you, Tim and Martin got out in one piece. Good. That's-that's good.

[ He flinches when she says Tim. He can only hope she's too busy handling other revelations to notice. ]

Martin is here. He's, um, he's doing... [ Traumatized? Depressed? Infinitely better than before, but worse than she'd remember him? ] He's doing well.

[Don't think she doesn't catch that, Jonathan. She was Gertrude's pick for a reason. She doesn't mention it though, not yet. Put a pin in that.]

Martin's here? [That perks her up a little and she wipes her eyes one final time. Just compartmentalize, it's fine.] I hope you haven't been at his throat too much.

[ JON TAKES THIS OPPORTUNITY TO BLUSH FLAGRANTLY RED.

AND THEN REDDER, WHEN HE REALIZES HE'S DOING IT.

FUCK. ]

He— uh— that is— [ This should be the easiest update, shouldn't it? No blood and death— well, none that has to be admitted to. But somehow it's the one he finds himself most at a loss to address.

They definitely weren't making out this morning he knows nothing about Martin's throat everything's fine. ]

[Oh oh, she doesn't need Beholding powers to understand what that is all about.]

No- you and Martin?

[ EVERYTHING IS FINE ]

I, I, uh— I know what you may be thinking, but I'm not, um, actually his direct superior anymore—

[ As if job roles have held any meaning for the past... year?

He's still distinctly red. Damn it. ]

That wasn't my big concern but good to know? [Wow. Of course she knew Martin had been pining from day one (who in the office hadn't known though?) but seeing Jon of all people blushing and flustered isn't something she ever expected.]

Do I get to know how this came about?

... it is ... incredibly complicated.

[ Said fervently. ]

You could say I have had a very difficult year. [ He glances awkwardly to the scarred hand, then holds it up in explanation. ] And so has he, of course. It really... makes you realize who you trust.