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!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Gwen's on her way home from her job at the comic book store. She had to close much later than usual because this freaking poltergeist thing was making her life a living hell, making a total mess of the shop and being a constant annoyance. Now Gwen knew how people felt when she was around, maybe...

Anyway, if Mystique was looking for someone who doesn't know who she is or what she's done, she's found the wrong -pool for that. ]

Uh. Why? What do you want with it?

[ Gwen has been busy all day, and hasn't heard that the wreaths are the key to solving the poltergeist problem. So she's just on instant alert that whatever Mystique of all people wants to do with her wreath, it's probably bad news. ]

[She knows of Gwen, but isn't going to recognize her outside of the usual pink and white suit she's memorable for. The comic book clerk outfit doesn't do anything for her figure, but Raven keeps that to herself in favor of trying to accomplish her goal.]

Apparently if I find the match to this one, I'll get to sleep through the night and be a smidge less murderous.
So be a doll and show me yours while I show you mine.

[Raven holds her half up, trying not to seem too irritated at having to go through this process for the dozenth time in hopes of finding the one that matches hers.]

[ Probably best to keep it that way. The longer she can stay off Mystique's (s)hit list, the better. ]

Oh, yeah. Sure. That's a good enough cause.

[ Gwen unzips her shark backpack and withdraws her wreath half. It's dotted with small purple and white flowers. ]

Is this a match?

[Raven doesn't have any concrete plans to stir the pot at the moment, so either way Gwen wouldn't be on her shitlist just yet. In any case she'd be more likely to try to recruit her for morally questionable ventures, but that isn't much better. It's probably for the best she doesn't try to negatively influence teenage mutants.]

It could be.

[She squints at her half. They look similar from far away, but upon closer inspection it's dotted with indigo and white flowers and barely discernible as different without her changing the cellular structure of her eyes to be be able to differentiate those colors a little better.]

For fuck sake, are you kidding me? [Raven sighs, resting her fingers on her temple as she closes her eyes in irritation.] There has to be some other way around this.

[ In the dim light of the streetlamp, they look similar enough to Gwen. But when she tries holding hers up to Mystique's, they don't fit together like puzzle pieces. ]

Ah, that whomps. Better luck next time, I guess.

[ Anyway, time to address the shapeshifting elephant in the room. ]

So... Did you just get here? I haven't seen you around. But then, I suppose you could have been here the whole time and I wouldn't have known.

[She was hoping that by some miracle they'd be close enough to get by, but apparently whatever was causing the poltergeist is a real stickler for accuracy.]

I'm going to get salt, holy water, and a bottle of wine and see if this wreath ghost wants to come out and talk.

[Raven considers tossing the damn thing into the trash, but she gets the feeling it might make things worse.]

A few days ago. [A brow raises at that last remark and her arms fold over her chest, a little defensive now. This person obviously knows her secret. She doubts there'd be any other blue-skinned people that look like her walking around.] Do I know you, little girl?

Solid plan. Let me know how that works out.

[ Oh right. They haven't technically met. ]

No. Not really. But I know who you are. My name's Gwen. I'm a mutant... sort of.

Seems more practical than touching wreaths with every idiot I come across.

[A mutant? She looks her over again, still not recognizing her in the civilian clothes at all.]

Do you live on Krakoa? It doesn't ring a bell.
Are there more of us around here?

[ Gwen makes a face. Does she live on Krakoa? The only time she's ever been there, it was during a fever dream/coma type thing, while her body was wrapped in a cocoon in an underwater city still very much in Sodder's dream. ]

Eh. Sort of? I've been there. And yeah, there are a few.

[ She's not dumb enough to lost them by name, though. She is dumb, but not that dumb. ]

[Sort of was such a non-answer that Raven is quickly losing interest in it. She's not sure how much she cares. There were mutants who didn't live on the island, so it was nothing to lose sleep over or write home about.]

Who?

[The million dollar question. The one she desperately needs answered. Her shitlist is long, but there are only a couple people she would never want to share breathing space with.]

[ Gwen backs up sharply, looking uneasy. Sure, it's not exactly a threatening one word question, but with Mystique, it's only a matter of time before the danger comes out. ]

I... think I'll leave that up to them to tell you.

[That's not the answer Raven wanted, and she doesn't need to say as much as her expression changes to something of having contemplated maiming the girl but deciding it wasn't worth the effort.]

The fact that you don't want to be the barer of bad news is telling enough. Dazzler isn't here, is she?

[The one person she knows would have her head on a pike in the blink of an eye.]