AUGUST 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

[sodder]

AUGUST 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to August's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: CRYPTID 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: Violent animals, ghosts, hallucinations
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?

Everyone loves s'mores, right? Of course you do. If you've never had them, you're gonna love them, and if for some reason you hate them, well, as it usually goes in Deerington, something inside of you will nag at you about how maybe you ought to give them another chance. There's a variety of different kinds of s'more flavors to try and plenty of perfect campfires to roast your marshmallows over. There's promise of wholesome and innocent fun to be had! Surely that won't be a lie this time.

Everyone who gathers around the fire for some tasty treats will find themselves in the mood to share creepy stories from their home worlds. Maybe they make one up on the spot or maybe it's an ancient legend that was passed down through the ages. Regardless, there's gonna be a whole variety of spooky stories, and the flavor s'more you're eating seems to dictate the theme that you'll end up leaning towards.

🔥 Traditional S'Mores will have people wanting to tell classic ghost stories. Maybe it's a haunted house you ended up in or a spirit who possessed the friend of the brother of this guy from your town once. The main theme here will be ghosts of all varieties.

🔥 Peanut Butter & Chocolate S'Mores will have people wanting to tell slasher stories. A famous serial killer from home, maybe, or the story about a group of kids who went up into a cabin in the mountains where there was once said to be a creepy caretaker and they were never heard from again...

🔥 Chocolate Chip Cookie S'Mores will have people wanting to tell monster stories. Local legends, maybe, or the classic stories about werewolves, vampires, and Bigfoot. Any kind of monsters will do.

🔥 Salted Caramel S'Mores will inspire people to tell revenge stories. These could be legendary warnings that exemplify why vengeance always leads to digging two graves. Or maybe it's your own story of revenge from home— or the fantasy revenge you'd like to get someday.

🔥 Nutella S'Mores will have people wanting to tell personal horror stories. These stories are ones that hit extremely close to home. The scariest, most bone-chilling memory you have, no matter how silly or serious it may be in comparison to those around you. Hopefully most people aren't fans of chocolate hazelnut?

Regardless of which story you hear, anyone gathered around the campfire will listen intently to all words spoken, and they will find themselves believing every word. On your walk home, you'll be filled with a sense of paranoia and dread, seeing things move out of the corner of your eye that may or may not be there. Is that a man with a hook for a hand or is your imagination just playing tricks on you? It's certainly hard to tell.

These can stay as harmless hallucinations, but for those who end up stuck in the paranoia for too long without being talked down, they will slowly start to become real. Eventually, they can become solid enough for other people to start seeing them, and the creatures from your mind may even start to attack. They can be defeated with normal weaponry or by the power of positive thinking! Wish your attacker away with enough conviction, and poof! They'll be gone.

Let's hope you can do it before you end up the victim for the next slasher story someone tells.

AHHH! REAL MONSTERS

It seems that the monsters from these stories aren't the only ones popping up in Deerington, though. There's talk from locals of multiple sightings of classic Maine legends all over town. They're easy to ignore as the townsfolk just being easily spooked for a while. But when enough stories start to line up, you might start to think maybe there's some truth to them. Or maybe you'll even end up seeing one of the monsters for yourself.

Down in Lake Tomoei, the legendary Cassie can sometimes be spotted peaking up from the water, or trying to attack anyone who even tries to go near the lakes shores. She's a nasty beast with one hell of a temper and she's quite possessive of the lake she's found herself in. 100 feet long with a skinny neck and a fish like tale, she definitely seems like a force to be reckoned with. Cassie is easily injured by ordinary weapons, but her skin is thick, so it will take a while to draw blood. Most likely, she'll disappear into the depths of the lake before she can be killed.

Up in the mountains, there's talk of the ancient evil Pamola. Penobscot legend describes him as half-man, half-eagle, with the head of a moose and a temper to match one. Pamola can't stand people visiting his mountain, even for a casual hike, and will often try to deter people away with random and unpredictable storms; thunder, snow, and powerful winds will beat down on whoever goes looking for Pamola. If you manage to find him, he will show no mercy when he attacks. Most who have tried to find him have been killed and eaten by the evil spirit. Because he's an ancient spirit, he will be particularly hard to defeat if you manage to find him; he can not be killed, but you can offer a sacrifice to quell his anger. If you have magical powers that can hurt deities, these will still be effective in weakening him until he retreats.

The final creature that seems to be wandering about is the Specter Moose (pictured above). This moose is thirteen feet tall, with thirteen foot wide antlers, and is a blinding white color. The moose can be found wandering in the park, usually, but sometimes it comes out to look around town. He may seem harmless, even cute, but don't get to close; moose are dangerous and locals fear them for a reason. They can charge at the drop of a hat and not even large vehicles tend to survive an encounter with a creature that big. The Specter Moose also seems to be incapable of being injured by normal weapons; solid objects mostly go right through it, unless it's purposefully aiming for them. You'll either have to get a shot in while he's slamming into something (or someone) or just run. Anyone who has magic or weapons that can hurt spiritual beings will be able to fight the Specter Moose as they normally would.

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.

Comments

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil's not sure why the automated voice surprises him. It shouldn't. He doesn't jump, exactly, so much as he jerks toward it, thumb in his mouth to get sticky melted marshmallow off the edge of his nail. Well, was he even expecting questions? No, probably not. Maybe he should have been.

He tries to remember. He remembers the moment, but not the details, and it's been years now.

After a moment, hesitant and stumbling a little, he says, "It was a boy. We were all boys, so that made sense, that it would be another boy. I thought it was just another one of the students, but he was so...still. And almost too dark? Like a shadow, just standing there. And there was plenty of stories, like I said. Boys that got sick during the Spanish Flu, or who fell down the stairs, or dropped into the pond while they were skating. It could have been anyone."

But that second question. He's quiet a moment. He looks deep into the fire, heart skipping. His father was in the room when he got up, and everything was a mess after that. "I think he was warning me, but I didn't know that until it was a too late. But what was I supposed to do, even if I had?"

[wwrench]

The boy's shock registers in a way that feels satisfying. It seems to Wrench that it's been a long time since his mere presence has caused the kind of trepidation he'd grown used to before this place. He wants to think he's a changed man. In many ways, he supposes that he is. But it still sends a jolt of pure contentment through him that he might have some tricks up his sleeve.

Or it could just be the Fluid. It's hard to judge at first glance where this stranger is coming from. Wrench is pretty sure now that he's new, but if that's the case he seems to be taking it all in stride. Certainly better than he could say for himself when he was in this position just a year ago. Now he's genuinely curious, and he doesn't mind letting the others branch off to fill their bellies or mutter their own stories for a moment just to volley his questions.

He still thinks Deerington is the best place for him, but there's a strange allure to the people who have so recently been somewhere else.

WARNING YOU ABOUT THE DEER?

[shadows_have_offended]

"What? No."

The question seems silly, in the moment, but only because Neil has years of space from Welton and this new strange moment. There is a part of him, like sleeping for three days and being in England, that just expects to wake up. Maybe he will. Maybe he won't. He's trying not to think about won't.

He runs a thumb nail under that of his opposite middle finger, a bit of a fidget that turns into contemplative silence. Well, this already isn't just the ghost story any more, isn't it. As soon as he made it the warning, it stopped being just a ghost story.

"No, a day or two later, I killed myself," he says with a sort of distant matter-of-factness that comes with the distance of time--and with recently coming to learn a couple of things about himself, sort of. "Except, when I did, I went somewhere else. And I've been...living there, I guess. I've been there for the last few years. And then, now, there's the Deer. But I didn't see the ghost this time."

He looks at the man, with his questions and his quiet and his furrowed brows. "So I think the ghost was just warning me that I was about to make a choice that I couldn't take back."

[wwrench]

Wrench doesn't have it in him to look surprised by the news. Both the matter of his transition from one reality to the next and the fact there are others besides this one are things that have been confirmed by others. More and more, he finds there is mounting evidence to support the fact that he might not be alive either. That whatever it is that's sucked them up might have done so at the instant of his death, as with so many others he's met since his arrival.

He's not quite sure what to make of it. There's no reality that Wrench is wanting to return to. But if this is the afterlife after all, it's sure not as it was billed. He considers the young man and the matter-of-fact way he approaches his own death. After years of adjustment, it just makes sense. But why here, and why now? Other people will surely have a better grasp of what it means. For his part, it's something else entirely that sparks his interest.

Do you regret it? he types. This time, there's no automated voice. The words stay on the screen, and Wrench shifts enough to let the young man read them silently. It may seem foolish, but it's a question that's been on his mind a lot lately. Was where you ended up better than life before it?

[shadows_have_offended]

It takes Neil a second to look down, since there's no voice, but when he does, he just stares at it. Even though he's just voiced the confession, it's still strange to be asked about it. Nobody's ever really asked him about it. The wherefores and what abouts and all that sort of thing.

After a moment of thought, he shakes his head. Nobody else is paying attention to them, it seems, which Neil is grateful for. They have their own fireside stories to tell, and this quiet, verbally one sided conversation doesn't bother them.

"It was different," Neil says, watching the words appear on the screen. "From what I've seen, this place is a lot more like what I'm used to. To look at, at least. But Darrow was--didn't really--nobody expected me to be anything. That was good."

He looks at the stutter of words in the middle there and hates it. He's normally pretty good with words. But it's hard to explain, on the spot. "I miss my friends, but I made new ones. I guess I will again."

[wwrench]

A year ago, Wrench couldn't have imagined the strange gifts that Deerington would impart. Even a few months prior, he would have been loathe to admit too publicly that there are many things about his current predicament that he's grateful for. Things he knows he'll never find in his life again if this place is taken from him. Now that secret is written all over the walls of his shop and the brick facade outside the grocery store. Everyone knows that this is where he wants to be, and that he'll fight like hell to make sure he gets to stay.

It doesn't surprise him that someone else might feel that way too, even at first blush of the weird little town. He considers the words, nodding along as they shape and hesitate and transform on the screen of the phone. He understands -- a lot better than this guy can want to know.

When I first got here, someone told me this place is like a second chance. Third for you, I guess?

There are worse things out there than Deerington.

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil smiles, just a little. Maybe a third time was a charm, in a way? Though all he could think of right now was the quiet loneliness of loss each time, how long it takes to meet new people and get used to new places.

So he sinks into it a little, the quiet commiseration, the knowledge; yes, of course, there are worse things out there than Deerington, than Darrow, than any place that they might end up. They could be nowhere at all, just in complete nothingness. They could be in whatever misery they came out of in the first place.

He's sure not everyone came from a miserable place.

"I'm Neil," he says, fingerspelling his name at least as he speaks the words aloud, proud that he's picked up that much sign language from Regan at least.

[wwrench]

He can tell the reassurance is no easy fix. Though he isn't considering it, he wouldn't be surprised to realize there are people left behind who this stranger might still miss. After a lifetime of knowing and being known by hardly anyone, it's the people who he's found in this place that Wrench would fight like hell to keep. It's strange that Deerington has allowed him the kind of connection that his own life never did, but it certainly gives even strangers something to bond over.

Wrench's shock is apparent the moment Neil raises his hand to craft his reply. He's not expecting even the fingerspelling, and it immediately softens the lines of the man's face. The impact is tremendous. For a moment it actually looks like he might smile, but instead, he responds in kind. W-E-S.

He doesn't even properly realize until he's already made the introduction, but it's the first time he's willingly presented himself as Wes rather than as Wrench. The moniker he's hidden himself behind and wrapped around him like a blanket of protection is shed without a second thought, and it doesn't feel entirely wrong.

Where are you from, originally? And what year?

[shadows_have_offended]

The startle is clear enough that Neil almost laughs. His skills with the language are, admittedly, limited--he speaks more Latin than he does anything else, and that's far less useful--but it's enough that there's a moment of genuineness passes between them.

Neil likes that, rather a lot. Even if all of this started as a silly story around a campfire.

"Vermont," he says, watching the words come on the screen again. He's exhausted most of his skills when it comes to non-verbal communication, and feels he ought to apologize for that. Maybe later. "It was 1959."