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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He nods, a dark look settling upon his face. He hadn't personally seen any monsters himself, but judging on what others told him, and the general environment, they were there. It was just a matter of time before he'd run into one of them eventually.]

The robots do, yeah. To anyone or anything without any sort of warning. They even got into people's houses a few times, too. There's been less of them over the past few days, but...

[But still enough of a threat to stay on guard about. And if Kurogane was concerned by just that, it probably was a good thing Syaoran didn't tell him about passing out due to overworking his magic in the midst of all those things. Warps sure were great!!]

I'm not entirely sure about the monsters, though, but it's probably safe to assume the same about them, too.

[ It's definitely a good thing, because Kurogane would get actually worried, which he hates. Even what he's just heard is enough to annoy him, that feeling of concern even greater now. ]

Sounds annoying. What did people here even do about it? Could they be fended off?

[ That's the important part to him—if something can be defended against or defeated, things would be more or less fine. ]

[And Syaoran certainly hates people worrying about him, so it's a win-win situation for the both of them! (Except it's not, please stop being like this, you two)]

They did what they could, which is mostly just fight them off or hide when they couldn't. Since they're robots, though, certain weapons weren't all that useful [namely: swords], but anyone with a good amount of magic or firepower could take them down if they wanted to. I ran into someone who managed to hack into one of them, too, but she said they tended to self-destruct if she tried it on too many at once.

It didn't help that some people were getting affected by all the mayhem, either...

[Or falling into Despair, as it were. It didn't make for a very good first meeting between him and a certain blond they both knew, anyway.]

[ Kurogane's glad he just now got here... he would hate dealing with this, especially if magic was the only effective thing against them. Seems like his lack of magic is going to be a big problem here. ]

What happened to those people?

[ He's curious. ]

[If it was any conciliation, at least Kurogane didn't have to worry about his own abilities back-firing against him. Magic was useful here, but only when it actually worked, and it seemed like the forces in this town were aware of that. Syaoran can't help but frown at the question, though, recalling what he saw... compared to the robots, he was fortunate enough to steer clear of those people.]

... I'm not sure, to be honest. They just seemed to be enjoying all the misery, and trying to drag other people into it with them. I don't know if it was stress or something else, but it definitely wasn't normal. I didn't try to get near any of them if I could help it.

[ When he sees magic used here, he's going to be very thankful he can't use it. ]

Yeah, that was probably for the best. There's nothing worse than dealing with people who wanna drag you into their own misery.

[ Good thing he doesn't know anyone like that. He just hates people who drag others into things in general, though. ]

Especially when that misery involves getting put into the path of a killer robot.

[Again......... thanks Fai, for trying that. THAT WAS A REAL FUN TIME]

If there was any upside, though, it seemed like they could be reasoned with, if you pushed through enough. The one person I met who was under that influence snapped out of it when I talked to him, at least.

[Or...... yelled at him, rather. Sorry, Fai]

[ Fai no... ]

Really? It's that easy to snap them out of it?

[ It's good to know in case it happens again in the future... ]

Well... I can't really say for sure. Like I said, I only dealt with the one person, so he might have had a milder case compared to a lot of the others. But it seemed to help, anyway.

[A beat, and then--]

Of course, if it escalated any further, I probably would have fought him. But I'm glad it didn't get to that point.

[Because, unlike Sakura, who will always try to find a peaceful solution to problems when she can, Syaoran's not above fighting others if they present themselves as a decent threat. He knows well enough that trying to talk through dangerous situations like these can be a death sentence.]

[ As much as Kurogane likes fighting, it really is better to just talk it out when possible, although he hates to admit it. ]

Yeah. Sometimes you've got not choice but to knock some sense into someone else.

[ He sighs. ] Maybe things won't be so bad from here on out.

[ Truthfully, Kurogane doesn't have hope for that but he's not going to put his own negative outlook onto Syaoran. ]

[Unfortunately, Syaoran's not the same sort of optimist that Sakura is, so even he knows that's wishful thinking on Kurogane's part. His nose wrinkles slightly, his expression not wholly convinced, but he nods regardless.]

... I hope so. I've heard the months before this were... tamer, compared to whatever happened over the past few weeks, but they were still pretty bad. I guess only time will tell on that end.

[ Kurogane doesn't miss Syaoran's expression, noticing that he doesn't seem convinced. ]

I guess so.

[ Hearing that they weren't so bad at least means there's a possibility for that coming back in the future but... that's something Kurogane will have to see for himself. He isn't going to hope it'll happen, in any case. ]

If things don't get better, make sure you don't waste time on a battle you're gonna lose.

[ If Kurogane were any better at communicating these things, he'd add that Syaoran should come find him in those cases, but... he doesn't know this kid as well as the other. The advice is enough for now, he feels, even if Syaoran is more than likely already aware of it.

He gets up, dusting off whatever crumbs might've landed on him from the s'mores. ]

I'll see you around.