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

[She tapped down easily and lightly, nodding over at Sakura, both in thanks and acknowledgment. It was sensible to keep one's cards close to one's chest, as it were. She had a small suspicion it wasn't the only one she had. It felt like the kind of focus you could hold multiple versions thereof, especially since she mentioned 'one of my favorites.'

It made this girl far more like a Maiden back home, though not with the kind of raw power that Cinder would display, though Cinder was as subtle as a freight train. Neo took out her phone and tapped onto it.]

Be careful with them, though I'm sure you are.
Having more than one trick like that is powerful.
I've learned to specialize.

[Sakura has no idea about Maidens. She just knows about her own situation and abilities as a Cardcaptor. If kind of tricked into it by Kero given she had to help deal with getting the cards back after they scattered like that. She tilts her head then in wondering on that, when she glances to the message on the phone.]

I will! I always keep them on me or in the book. Specialize? Like what you just showed me before, you mean?

[She nodded. that was her one primary trick, though she could at least use her aura for some self protection in a pinch, and she had ample skills from a lengthy criminal career, so she wasn't just an illusionist. Still, specializing had its merits. You got really good at what you did.]

Yep.
Only have one big trick, so I got good at it.
Sounds like you have more than one, though.

I have a few different cards.

[Sakura nods in agreement. In confirmation at that. So her abilities were more versatile in that sense at least. Assuming said cards worked as usual here - which. They don't. Not that she might necessarily be aware of that of course, yet. But still, she hasn't had a reason to figure they wouldn't.]

[Yeah, her abilities were much closer to the concept of magic as Neopolitan understood it. It was less raw power, but magic was versatile, varied, could be used in a variety of ways to many purposes. Aura was everywhere and everyone, tricks that could be learned by any person with time and dedication. Magic, something else entirely.

She gestured to the card and nodded again.]

Very lucky to have them.
Keep them safe.
We probably shouldn't show off too much.
Never know who's looking.

I will! But ah, right.

[She gives a nod, pocketing the cards again when the other mentions about being seen. Sakura might be more comfortable showing people if they already have powers and such, but even so. It's still not something she's as used to, outside of the very few that already know, back home.]

[And, while Neo was pretty bold with the use of her own powers, she was still by nature a somewhat private and paranoid soul, so it was a good, safe default. She looked over at the girl, nodded once and offered her a little smile before typing again.]

This was fun.
You need help finding anywhere to go?

Oh, um. I was looking for the library. It's.....over that direction, right?

[Sakura shifts in pointing, gesturing in the direction she had been following the map to get to the library building. Or at least. She hopes it's the right direction from where they are now in having shifted a little to get to the little alley to seclude themselves a bit more with revealing their abilities like that.]

[She walked back out into the street from the alley and looked the way that Sakura pointed before turning back and nodding. It was a couple blocks that way. She motioned for her to follow and started out that way. Might as well escort her, even if she was going elsewhere afterwards.]

(OOC: Feel like a good handwave point?)

[Sakura doesn't question or protest at the escort. May as well make the most of the other being willing to help out in ensuring she doesn't somehow get lost and turned around along the way or something. So she follows, relieved that she had at least seemed to be on the right track before.

ooc: sounds good to me! Can always start up something newer next month.]