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soddersays2020-04-24 09:40 pm
sodder) wrote in soddersays2020-04-24 09:40 pm
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MAY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME
MAY 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to May's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: DARK FANTASY 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: Heightened mental health issues (anxiety & paranoia), auditory hallucinations, option for visions of canon death and violence, child death, corpses, possession.
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!
DEATH'S EYE
Desperation and anxiety are things that come easily in a place like Deerington, but lately it seems like it's being felt in waves. Maybe you're feeling more desperate to get home, maybe you're afraid of what will happen when you do leave here, or maybe you're dreading what the month to come has in store for you. Some people might just start to feel anxious and terrified with no real reason behind it. The worries are plaguing your thoughts, leaving you unable to trust those around you. You keep seeing visions in your dreams of violent wars, senseless murders, and all of it seems to end with a stand in the middle of the woods with a single glass orb.There's no rationality for it, but eventually, you'll feel compelled to find the orb. You'll find that when you leave the house to go somewhere, you'll forget where you were headed, only to end up at the edge of the forest. Sometimes you might sleepwalk and wake up in the dirt by the trees. If you decide to fight it and keep leaving, you will grow more and more paranoid, isolated, and violently aggressive to those around you. If you can wait out a full week, you might find the anxiety starts to ease, and slowly over the course of five days, you will begin to return to normal.
If you don't fight it and head into the woods, you will feel pulled to follow a long and winding path through the woods. There are multiple branches off of the path, but you won't feel compelled to go down them. Keep heading straight. Another personal will eventually stumble down the path you're on as well and the two of you will walk together through the woods.
Eventually you'll find a clearing. It's the same clearing from your dream with the same orb displayed in front of you. One or both characters will hear whispering throughout the clearing that grows more intense the closer you get to the orb. They're urging you to touch it, to free yourself from the pain you've been feeling for days on end. The strong can fight it, but most characters will be too weak from the lack of sleep and the constant fear to refuse to give in.
If you do fight it, you can leave the clearing, but the same anxiety and paranoia cycles will follow you for another full week before it begins to ease. If you don't fight it and you touch the orb, you will be filled with a blinding pain that runs through your entire body. There will be a quick and heavy sequence of images that runs through your mind; they will be images of the most traumatic experiences that your companion has ever faced and you will feel as though you were experiencing every moment first hand.
When you break free, the anxiety and paranoia will be gone and you'll be back to yourself. It seems you two will have a lot to talk about on the walk home.
Note: It does not have to be just one character who touches the orb. Both characters are welcome to.
NOW YOU SEE ME
The first few signs you're being haunted are easy to miss. Maybe you think you just misplaced your keys or put that book you were reading down on a different counter than where you find it. Things get a little harder to ignore when random objects start to fall off shelves or glasses shatter without any warning. Eventually there's no denying you've got a full fledged poltergeist on your hands; the walls will shake and screams will echo in your head that you can't block out no matter how tightly you cover your ears. Lights will flicker and bulbs will eventually blow from the power surges. Objects that fly across the room will barely miss your head— some might not even miss at all.If you know any tricks for getting rid of angry spirits, none of them will work. Trying them seems to only make the spirit angrier. If you try too many times to get rid of the spirit, it will eventually possess you, filling you with a blind and violent rage that can make you attack even your closest of friends. The possession will last for one full hour and once the spirit leaves you, you'll feel completely drained for the rest of the day.
But there's hope! In your blessing's basket, your character will find one-half of an antler wreath. The trick is to find the person with the other half. Each wreath will have a unique set of flowers on them and you will have to find the person who has the flowers that match your own. Both of you will have been being haunted by the same ghost, it seems; they were a busy little poltergeist.
Once the two halves of the wreath are connected, it will begin to glow, before a faint wisp of light starts to travel a path in front of you both. If you follow the path of light, it will take you through the town, down the roads, through the playground at the elementary school, and eventually stopping near the edges of Koji Pond. Continuing to search will eventually lead to both character's stumbling on the body of a young child. Rest the wreath against them and the light will encompass the body, becoming blindingly bright, before disappearing altogether.
Both characters will be filled with a sense of peace afterward and will be safe from harm for a full twenty-four hours after the ceremony is complete.
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.
Arrival
"Zwei, get back here! Where are you even going? We just passed the last fire hydrant and that's your favorite one!" Ruby called out from around the block before turning a corner only to find a familiar face standing before her. She looked a touch different than Jaune might remember. Her hair was still styled like it was when they were going across Anima.
"...Jaune?" She looked absolutely dumbfounded for a moment. Eyes focused on his hair.
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Jaune kneels down, holding out one hand for the dog to sniff as he reaches out to grab the other end of the leash. Just as it starts to click that, yes, he DOES recognize this dog, he hears the familiar voice of a plucky team leader.
"Ruby!" He stands back up, though not before giving Zwei a quick scratch at his ears. His relief is short lived as he gets a better look at her. She looks different and is also looking at him funny. "Uh...this is yours...right?" He holds up the leash attached to the dog.
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"Yeah, that would be mine. Thanks." Gosh. She wanted to smile harder because it had been months since she had seen him or the rest of RNJR. It was refreshing to have another familiar face around. It meant she had someone new to tease. Which she promptly gets to by pointing up at his hair.
"You cut your hair. It looks different. Not a bad different just different different. Really dorky different." She had gotten a bit of a run down from the others on what had been happening since they apparently arrived in Atlas. Jaune's makeover looked the most extreme of the bunch.
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He hasn't quite put together what's going on here and now that he thinks about it -- why is Ruby just casually walking her dog in a place like this. Where did Zwei even come from? Hadn't she left him back home with her dad? There's definitely a bigger and bigger look of confusion on Jaune's face as he just sort of stands there. "Ruby...where are we exactly? What's going on?"
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"A few days? Okay. This is going to be weird and not make much sense. But I'm like... A few days to a couple weeks behind the curve? I'm guessing you've made it to Atlas and done some stuff. But this place is weird and timey wimey and I woke up here back when we were still flying over to Atlas. Yang has kind of filled me in on what's going on back at home, but she never mentioned your hair." That is probably the worst explanation she could give but it's the best way she could think to describe it.
Her descriptions of the rest of this probably weren't going to be much better, but she could point him in the right direction to get information at least.
"We're in a town called Deerington. It's strange, confusing and a little terrifying. So maybe we should find a place to sit down before I get into this."
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Or at least, it's a little easier to accept when it's Ruby telling him. Ruby has never lied to him in the past and he doesn't see her starting now. Still, there's a lot she's not saying and he can appreciate her discretion -- something else they've learned to be since this all started.
"Sounds good to me...did you have a place in mind? I mean...the house I woke up in was pretty empty, but I don't know if it's still that way."
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"The house could work. There's a spooky park just down the road though. If we go there. Zwei can run around and do dog stuff while we get through this. I'll explain a bit more as we go." And with that she took hold of Zwei's leash in one hand and Jaune's in the other and started to lead him along.
"So I guess I'll start with what's happened with me. So on our way to Atlas I must have dozed or something and when I woke up I was here. I'm guessing you did the same thing?" She glances up at the sky in thought. It was starting to feel like a long time had passed.
"...And that was four-almost five months ago now. Yang is here too. Weiss and Blake were too for a bit but they've gone back now."
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Having Ruby take his hand was also reassuring -- something that didn't feel like a dream. He knew this was more than that, but still. There was just something nice about having a friend within literal reach. He squeezed her hand in response and fell in step alongside her, just like he'd done for their entire journey across Anima.
"Yeah...we've been in Atlas a little while now, doing missions and stuff, and I went to bed in our dorm." Even if they weren't students, that was currently where they were staying...granted the military and the academy WERE interlinked so it made sense. It wasn't like they'd ever stopped sharing rooms along their journey anyway -- in some cases it was nice to actually HAVE a room for a change.
Jaune blinks, because Ruby hadn't acted any differently upon waking up from her nap on the airship. But, maybe when you did wake up this place was like a bad dream. "Months? You weren't kidding about the weird time stuff -- I think we would have noticed if you were actually asleep that long."
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Ruby felt her smile warm up as she felt Jaune's hand squeeze hers. It felt so much longer than just a few months since she had last seen him. This place could be awful and time seemed to drag on when things got really bad. His touch was familiar and a helped put a spring back in her step.
"That's basically what happened with Yang. She's here too and from about the same time as you are." Honestly she was excited to hear a bit more about Atlas from Jaune's point of view.
"So we're officially Huntsmen and Huntresses now. How's that feel? Must be pretty cool, right?" Might as well mix in a bit of cheery conversation with what she's going to have to drop.
She can't but smile awkwardly at his reaction to that. Her shoulders coming up in a bit of a shrug.
"Yeah. It's been totally weird. I'd really hope you guys would have at least carried me off the ship and hooked me up with an iv full of cookie dough."
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As for his reaction to being "official."
"Yeah. It was...a bit anticlimactic after everything we've been through, but I think your Uncle had a point: we definitely earned it." They'd been through more than a lot of Huntsmen and Huntresses twice their age as far as Jaune could tell, what with the whole Salem thing, and along the way Jaune had stopped thinking about the license thing all together. They were out saving the world regardless -- so what did having an official capacity to do it matter.
Still, it had given then a purpose in Atlas for awhile and plenty of tasks to do. Jaune was excited for what it could mean in terms of the future.
He smiles, "It feels good to be helping people on the ground. Like, I know we've been doing this whole world saving stuff, but it's nice to be looking out for the little guy around Mantle...seeing more immediate results, you know?" They hadn't been able to do a lot of that recently -- not since the time they'd been trekking across Anima. He may have gotten to Beacon for all the wrong reasons, but helping people along the way had definitely opened his eyes to what Huntsman could do beyond just fighting grimm.
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She thinks on his words briefly. That seemed to match up with what Yang had said about it. It was kind of nice to know it was a mutual group feeling.
"I guess it's hard to think of it as a big deal right after we took down a Leviathan with a little help, huh?" They had been doing some pretty big Huntsmen acts on their way to Atlas. Not to mention the task at hand. She could understand how actually obtaining their licences might seem underwhelming.
Her eyes light up hearing him talk about their work in Mantle. She knew their main mission was important. But the part of her that had grown up wanting to be a Huntress just adored hearing that about them going out and making everyone's days a little brighter.
"Yeah. Of course, Jaune. It's our job to go out there and make each day a little easier for the people around us. So I think it's really important we don't lose sight of that. I can't wait to have the chance to go out and do some of that back home myself." She brushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes.
"Not that I haven't been doing that here too, but it's not the same as doing it at home." At least at home she wasn't finding herself with quite as many scars building up from the attempts to help out.
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This time thing was going to get confusing, Jaune just shakes his head, "You're always helping people Ruby...but why is it different here exactly?"
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"I mean I did the turn it into stone part and Cordovin did the drilling, yeah." Her other hand moves to poke him in the chest. "But you, Ren, Nora, Yang, Weiss and Maria are the ones who got me up there so I could do what I did. I can't take all the credit for it." What she did was cool and amazing, she couldn't deny that. But she wouldn't have been able to do it without her team.
"Yeah. I guess I just have to be a little patient and wait to take the reigns on the me that you remember. ...I think?" Look she was already confused by the time thing but she tried not let it bother her most of the time.
"It's... It's weird. I mean sometimes it's monster fighting and I get that. I'm good at that. The monsters are weirder than Grimm most of the time. Harder to kill but I've only ran into one that just couldn't be."
She pauses briefly than thinks a little harder on her answer.
"And this place. It's not much better. It just feels like it's trying to bring out the worst in people. ...And it's just hard because you can't really predict how it's going to try and do that. Each month is so much different from the last."
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He brings his attention back to the present, though if he was honest he didn't like the sound of any of it, "What do you mean?"
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"Nothing to be sorry about. We all play a part on this team and I want to recognize that."
Her eyes drift down to the ground briefly. Thinking on the best way to answer it.
"It's hard to explain because it can be a lot. I guess the best example would be when I got out of the underwater city and into town for the first time. The townspeople were holding a festival. I had heard they were normally jerks to everyone but they were acting super kind and accepting. I kind of went with the flow because why not? I'm alright with giving anyone a chance. It turned out they were luring people in to either to either join in with some crazy sacrificial rituals or use people as sacrifices." March was not a fun time to be around here. Not at all.
"I didn't end up falling in with them but I had friends who did. Friends I had to try and stop or save before something terrible happened." She waves a hand vaguely.
"I had a close call or two but managed to make it out okay." She was nearly burned alive. No big deal.
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He's quiet for a moment, trying to process all of that and decide where he wants to start.
"Okay...well, first off, I'm glad you're okay now...but sacrificing people, sacrificing you? Does that mean they successfully killed some of the others lured into it?" That was awful and others had been convinced to help? Jaune shuddered to think about it.
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She gives him the time he needs to process things. She can't help but smile a little at his first comment.
"Thanks. I lucked out and had a helping hand. I've made some good friends while I've been here." Her smile warmed up a little there. She hadn't really expected to get quite as close with the person who had helped her out of that spot, but that's what had happened.
"I tried to do what I could to help out and stop them... But everything was so chaotic and it was hard to be everywhere at once." Something made only harder by the fact that her semblance drained her way faster than it did back at home.
"Death kind of works differently here than it does back at home. It's not any less awful or terrifying but people do come back from it after a few days. As hard as that is to believe."
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But's it's hard to focus on the little bit of good, when there is so much more to worry about. He's learned the hard way that you can't save everyone -- but that hits home a little different when it's your friends on the line. Not to mention the fact that just because he knew not everyone could be saved didn't mean they shouldn't TRY. What was even the point otherwise?
She doesn't straight up answer his question, but then again what she does say is answer enough. He sighs, but his resignation quickly turns into confusion, "People...come back?"
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She gives her hand a wave when he gives her that confused look.
"Yeah. I guess it's one of the perks to this being a weird dream world? When you die you kind of show up a few days later back in bed. Most people wake up feeling sick but that passes after a few days. I think the more you do it the worse it gets, but I haven't really done it yet to know for sure."
"It's weird and not really natural... But I guess we've been getting used to that back at home anyways. So it's not unheard of."
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He blinks, shaking his head from that line of thinking. Now wasn't exactly the time to be thinking about his trouble with sleep. It had been getting better since they'd visited his sister, having an actual bed helped, but still.
"Good, no, even if we do come back let's try to keep avoiding dying, okay?"
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"Well I've managed to go on about five months now without it happening, even if there have been a couple close calls." She tried to smile and brighten up the mood.
"So if I can manage than I'm counting on you and Yang to do the same. Alright?"
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Besides, it wasn't like the threat of death was anything new to them. He nods, "All right. I'll do my best. Just like back home...we can keep each other safe."