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SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to September's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: CHILDREN/YOUNG ADULT 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: Evil dollhouses, potential body horror (turning into a doll), heights, pranks with the potential to cause harm, some stalking vibes
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

THE EVIL DOLLHOUSE

When you wake up, you find you're not in your own bed, your own room, or even your own house. The room is well decorated, almost Victorian in fashion. The bed is pretty uncomfortable and you're not even sure the mattress is a real mattress. The chairs look like they might be made of plastic and the doors are flimsy. But it might not be what catches your eye, especially if you look out the window.

Through the clear panes (which also seem to be plastic), you will notice you do not see the town of Deerington, or even the outdoors at all. You see a living room that feels larger than life. There aren't any people in it, but as you look around at the fake looking furnishings and the strange view, you might be hit with a realization: you're inside a dollhouse.

The dollhouse has three floors for those who explore; the second floor you woke up on has two bedrooms and a fake little bathroom, all decorated in the same Victorian dollhouse style as the room you originally found yourself in. The bottom floor has a cute little kitchen with small porcelain dolls sitting around the table, a living room with all the basic furniture one would expect to find (in fact, it looks a great deal like the living room outside the windows), and an office filled with books that can't actually be pulled out of the shelves. On the very top floor is an attic. It's dusty and filled with broken toy beds and chairs, a few shattered doll pieces, and on the far wall you'll see another bookshelf. All seems... fairly standard, really, if you're used to seeing dollhouses.

But what there doesn't appear to be is an exit.

While searching, you may run into another Sleeper. A friend or a stranger, it's clear you're both stuck here together. And the longer the time ticks by, the more concerning things get. You might not notice at first, but anyone inside the dollhouse starts slowly... changing. It seems to go at a different pace for everyone, but the results are always the same. Your skin will start to become porcelain, your cheeks more rosy, your clothes made of cheaper cloth material, your joints become stiffer, and your eyes will start to become more and more glass like. If you don't get out of the dollhouse soon, it's clear that you may become the next doll at the kitchen table.

Searching the house again may feel fruitless, but keen observers may find light scratches on the floor in front of the bookshelf in the attic. Maybe they were like that because of someone moving things around or maybe there's a reason. If you decide to eventually pull the bookshelf aside, there will be a large door in the wall. It may seem strange, given that the wall only leads to the outside, but it's the only door to the outside that actually opens. You expect it to open up into the living room, but instead you'll see the grass of the park below. Far below. It's likely you could get hurt jumping, especially if you've started to turn to porcelain, but what other choice do you have?

Once characters take the plunge, they will find that they land rather softly in the grass, despite how high the jump may have seemed. As soon as you are out of the dollhouse, your body will have returned to complete normal.

And the house with the dollhouse in the living room will be nowhere in sight.

THOSE PESKY KIDS

You start off thinking maybe you're just forgetful and moved minor pieces around in your house without paying attention. You might think you're just seeing strange things out of the corner of your eye, because why wouldn't you? It's Deerington. Things are always strange. But each day, there's something weirder going on. Small objects might turn into entire rooms being rearranged, strange sightings out of the corner of your eye might turn into you swearing you saw a lake monster running through the street, and you swear you can hear the rattling of chains or the sounds of someone telling you to leave echoing in your house at night or following you down the street.

A haunting seems plausible. It wouldn't be the first time in Deerington. But no amount of herbs burned, or exorcisms performed, or chants and spell cast will make these things go away. In fact, they seem to just becoming more and more frequent, and more and more intense. Eventually, the strange creatures you see running around may start to try and attack you. They may start to try and kill you. But they always run off before you can attack back or show yourself to be stronger than them. It's probably the first time the monsters have ever been so easily scared.

Anyone who looks into it further may start to find weird clues lying around after a monster has been chased off. Footprints that don't look quite monster-like, tapes or records that when played will make strange rattling sounds like the chains you've been hearing, a piece of rubber that looks a lot like the monsters skin... Huh. The more you follow the clues, the more they'll lead you towards the answer to your dilemmas; these aren't hauntings.

They're pranks.

People can work together to catch a monster or ghost (or killing it, if you decide to); catching them will lead to them getting quite flustered and angry, struggling to get away. Pull off the mask or the sheet and underneath you'll find... a very disgruntled townsperson. Maybe your business was taking too much money away from theirs and they were hoping you'd close down with enough scares, maybe you talked back to them one time and they were looking for revenge, maybe you ruined their house or garden when you were fighting the things in Deerington that actually try to kill you, or maybe they were just having some "harmless" fun; they all have a different excuse, but they're clearly angry about getting caught.

They woulda gotten away with it if it weren't for you pesky Sleepers, after all.

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.

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Dollhouse — Meet Cute

You've got to be shitting me... [ There might've been more bite to those words twelve hours ago, but Reaper is too mentally exhausted for passion. Deadpan will have to suffice for now as he stares out the window of a three-storey house, where broken concrete and budding weeds should be. Instead he finds carpet and furniture the size of aircraft carriers. If this is an anxiety dream, he doesn't appreciate the metaphors.

In the distance something creaks, and Reaper goes from befuddled to frosty in a heartbeat. Sam. It's an easy sound to isolate with his newfound capabilities. He can hear the world as never before, see it, and smell it, and taste it like he's been reborn.

His assault rifle is poised to fire as he quickly assesses the hallway, then the next bedroom. No one around. Reaper follows the cutesy dollhouse hallway down and hears the same creak again to the left. With a calming breath, he turns the corner and aims at what he finds—a person. ]

Who are you?

Dollhouse — Escaped (cw: body mutilation)

[ Reaper didn't expect to make it out of the dollhouse after he had shattered his arm from a fall down the second-floor staircase. Now his open socket of a shoulder had begun shedding chips of porcelain behind him, like a trail of breadcrumbs, as he and his newfound comrade scaled a bookshelf to reach the attic and beyond.

He didn't think things could get much worse now that they were out of the frying pan— that is, until they jumped into the fire.

As a porcelain doll he had felt hardly any pain. His busted shoulder was a dull inconvenience. But tumbling down to a shifting world and into grass (he fucking knew there had to be grass down here!), he finds himself once again fleshy—and in a world of hurt. ]

Fuck! Ohh, fuck me— [ Shock sets in quickly; a blessed relief as he squirms like a fish in the grass. ]

Around Deerington

[ A bar seemed like a good idea. It's dark, no one hassles you, and there's liquor. But after three glasses of top-shelf scotch, he's feeling a whole lot of nothing. Now sits a fourth in front of him on the bar counter. Reaper stares at it long and hard, considering if it's even worth the effort of drinking it at this point. ]

Edited 2020-08-28 02:32 (UTC)

[ Neal is on a search of his own, only vaguely aware of the sound of another person moving around. He doesn't expect trouble — this is a dollhouse for God's sake — so when he comes around the corner to try to meet his companion and he's faced with a gun... ]

Whoa, whoa!

[ His hands immediately fly up into a prone surrender, eyes widening into large, round, very blue points of obvious concern. He detests guns and especially hates having them pointed at him. ]

I'm just a guy. No threat, I swear!

[ In fact, he's practically the opposite of a threat, all things considered. Sure he's a really great shot, but when push comes to shove, Neal would sooner hide than push, shove, or shoot. ]

[ Reaper would like to believe him, but the last six hours have proven that no one is as they appear. It really gets to a guy, you know? So, bear with him during this interrogation at gunpoint. ]

Who do you work for?

[ He can smell the spike of adrenaline running through the man's veins, the shock a peculiar stench on the air that only Reaper can smell. ]

[ Neal can instantly feel the sweat gathering on his brow, in his dark crop of perfectly maintained hair. Guns turn him cold, make him feel like his life's in immediate danger, and he doesn't ever feel bad about this fact considering what he's seen in his life. He wants nothing to do with that kind of violence. ]

I don't work for anyone. I'm unemployed!

[ He huffs and entreats again with his hands up, pressing at the air like he's trying to calm an angry animal. ]

Let's just put the gun down, okay? We can talk about this...

[ He lets the pressure of his silence and the muzzle of his gun sink in for a few moments while he breathes in the smell of this stranger. Behind the stench of apprehension there seems to be a fresh reprieve of truth. That's good enough for him.

Reaper takes his rifle out of the man's face, muzzle safely trained on the ground instead. ]

Do you have any idea how we got here? Have you met anyone lse in this house?

[ The sigh of relief is practically palpable as Neal feels less in danger. He lowers his hands slowly, running his hand across his brow and then shaking out the tension from his hands. ]

You're the first I've met. I'm pretty new myself.

[ Pressing a hand over his heart, Neal leans over himself, the other hand in his knee as he breathes to calm himself. ]

Woo. That was— Were you expecting trouble or something?

[ The short answer is: ] Yes.

[ The long answer isn't something he will be sharing with the class. And now that this man is no longer a threat, his keen alien eyes are busy surveying the hallway around them. It all seems so normal, except for the fact that it's a doll's house. ]

Look, I'm going to find a way out. I would recommend coming with me. [ And if that isn't incentive enough, he tries to sweeten the pot. But, you know, without smiling. ] I'm a first responder.

[ Kind of. ]

And I'm good with mysteries.

[ Not to boast. (Okay, specifically to boast, but who's counting?) Neal does qualify in any regard, and he immediately starts his way out of the area their in to look for clues. Follow someone else? As if. He'll gladly take the lead since the only one here appearing to be ready to incite violence is his first responder friend. ]

What's your name?

[ Neal looks over his shoulder as he passes into another room and takes in the fake decor. ]

[ That's... not how he expects the man to react, or say. Yes, he had a gun to his head, but prior experience holding a gun to scared civilians (that he now regrets) would have the stranger following the man with the bigger stick. Guess he's not that kind of guy. ]

You don't watch enough horror movies, then.

[ Because mysteries like these aren't going to end well, not for everyone. People are whittled down to the handful that will kill their own mothers to survive. But, no, there he goes without a weapon to get eaten or bashed or kidnapped. And Reaper has to follow because he is not going to be responsible for his fiftieth casualty within six hours. ]

John Grimm.

[ When nothing grabs the man as he enters an unsurveyed room, Reaper calmly brings up the rear with his rifle ready to be raised. ]

[ Hey, now, the danger has passed, which means that Neal is feeling much better about things. He knows they need to get out of this strange situation regardless, and since they're both in the same boat, better to just get along, right? ]

Nice to meet you, John. I'm Neal. And you're probably right about the horror movies. Not really my thing.

Right, well, [ His hazel eyes flick to each and every corner of this brightly lit prison. It's only a matter of time before the other shoe falls and this poor guy gets his face clawed off. It's going to happen. ] I've been living one for the last twelve hours. So, you're gonna have to humor me.

[ And by that Reaper means you might get pushed to the ground, Neal, if he feels your life is in danger. ]

What's the last thing you remember?

[ He may be walking off in a completely different direction, but he's listening. Tell him your story. ]

[ Neal looks on dubiously, uncertain as to whether he really wants to get into it. There's a lot going on in his head — too many things for his liking — but he does have to admit that he wants to know what's up with this guy and it might take a little give and take to make it happen. ]

Well, I was sleeping. And it's a bit complicated, but it wasn't here, I can say that...

[ Immediately turning to follow Grimm, he's going to stick with the guy with the gun, even if he doesn't like it pointed at him. ]

What about you?

Sleep is complicated for you?

[ It's not a real question, exactly. But Reaper can't keep his backsass to himself. Where would the fun be in that? But now the real question is how much can he afford to tell Neal and still keep them both safe? ]

I was being mauled by someone's failed science experiment.

You were— What?

[ Sorry, buddy, but that sounds entirely too off the wall for Neal to bypass. He's stopped dead in his tracks trying to understand how a person who was mauled could possibly be perfectly fine right now. ]

What do you mean "someone's failed science experiment"?

[ The figure John encounters when he turns the corner looks human at first glance. Covered from head to toe in advanced combat armor and holding a handgun leveled back at him, they look like a soldier, to be precise. And yet, the voice that issues from the figure is likely not what he expected. ]

I am the A.R.I.D aboard a mark-7 combat suit, [ the figure says, voice unmistakeably digital, as if generated by a computer. Compared to the armor, it is incongruously feminine. ] If you initiate hostilities, I will respond in kind.

[ Not a technology he's ever heard of. It could be government work, but they hardly have a budget big enough to supply their soldiers with working firearms, let alone combat suits. So, the obvious answer then is one he's dreading. ]

Who supplies these combat suits?

[ Please don't say UAC. ]

A.R.I.D-equipped combat suits are supplied through the Federation military, [ she answers, head tilting just slightly to the side. Her voice is so placidly monotone, it is almost soothing to listen to. ] If you were to attempt to fire on me, my anti-matter shielding would render the first several bullets ineffective. I would depurpose you before you were able to inflict any real damage.

[ Even that threat is delivered with perfect calm. She nods towards his raised gun. ] You should lower your weapon.

[ While the threat is likely moot for a freak of nature like himself, Reaper has no interest in being mutilated again. Even if he regenerates it still fucking hurts. So he relents and drops his rifle, taking a few steps back to get a better look at this combat suit. It's pretty slick. ]

So you're, what, a robot? An android?

[ She watches him steadily as he lowers his weapon. It takes her several seconds to do the same. ]

I am an armored robotic interface device, [ she answers, then adds. ] An AI.

[ After several seconds in which hostilities are not reinitiated, she turns back to the room she had presumably been surveying before she had detected the human. Behind her is a dining table, attended by a family of four ceramic mannequins. Three sit peacefully at the table, while the one representing the patriarch of the family lies sprawled next to his chair, apparently having been pushed over. She does not comment on this. ]

Were you provided with any objectives for this simulated environment? [ she asks instead. ]

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SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

THE EVIL DOLLHOUSE

THOSE PESKY KIDS

Character Arrival

Reaper (John Grimm) | DOOM

Dollhouse — Meet Cute

Dollhouse — Escaped (cw: body mutilation)

Around Deerington

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