SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

[sodder]

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.

Comments

[arendelicious]

[ He had stiffened slightly when he heard someone coming, but at least he seems friendly enough. Kristoff watches him sit down, before going to successfully prop the doll he was picking up back in its chair. She's a little crooked, but he's clearly not gonna care. ]

Kristoff. I checked the doors and tried to see if there was a place in the walls that would budge, but nothing's moving. Guess this place is pretty thorough in its traps.

[royalfling]

Nice to meetcha, buddy.

So... we're trapped here? [ Wu looks a little less confident this time ] I mean, I tried the front door, but I thought that wouldn't be it. [ He squints at Kristoff ] Have your eyes always been so glassy?

[arendelicious]

Seems to be the theme of the day. Week? [ He can't tell how much time has passed since he woke up here anymore, honestly, and he's not sure he wants to check.

He's distracted from that whole train of thought with such a very specific question, his forehead wrinkled. ]

What? No. My eyes are completely normal.

[royalfling]

You sure? [ Wu's out of the chair and he almost falls over. His legs feel too stiff. He looks down at them, then squeezes his own thigh ] My leg is hard! Like, like [ He pulls up the ankle of his pants and his legs it pale and glossy, much paler and glossier than the rest of his skin ] Oh no.

[arendelicious]

[ Kristoff reaches out almost instinctively to help when he sees him stumble, about to ask if he was okay when he sees his leg. Instead he scrambles back a little. ]

... That's a joke, right?

[ It's gotta be a joke. He reaches up to touch his face, considering the remark on his eyes earlier, and he can't help but notice that it's cold to the touch and smooth, the way Elsa's usually is. ]

Ohhh no. No, no, no, this isn't happening. [ Deep breath, Kristoff.] We just— We just gotta find a clue to get out of here and that's gotta put a stop to all of this. Can you, uh... walk on that?

[royalfling]

I better! [ Wu tries to walk and it would be funny if the situation we're so dire. He teeters around on one stiff leg, and one normal one. ] Okay. Okay. There has to be a way out, right? They wouldn't just lock us in here to become dolls. Right?!

[arendelicious]

Uhh... [ He honestly thinks that's exactly what they'd do, based on what he's heard about this town, and his limited experience with evil magic. But that probably won't help anything. He should probably be more reassuring. ] Sure.

[ Perfect. ]

It's not down here if there is, though. So we're gonna have to check the upper floors. You can lean on me if you need, I don't think I wanna find out what happens if you break that thing.

[royalfling]

I didn't even think of that as a possibility. [ He says it in a rush, and grabs onto Kristoff's shoulder like his life depends on it ] Oh no, we're going to turn into dolls and get smashed into the ground into tiny pieces! I don't want to be a doll! And especially not pieces of doll!

[arendelicious]

[ Crap. Maybe he should've kept his mouth shut. Where's Anna when you need her?? ]

Hey, no one is gonna fully turn into a doll, okay? If there's a way in, there's a way out. We just have to find it.

[ He starts to help him towards the stairs. ]

[royalfling]

I don't want to be a partial doll! [ He's freaking out. He's freaking out and he knows it.

Deep breathes. Pay attention to the nice, strong man who's half carrying you toward the stairs. ]

Do you think getting out of here will stop the doll-ification?

[ Okay, or keep fixating on the whole doll-thing ]

[arendelicious]

[ Clearly he's nailing this reassurance thing. This is not his forte in the slightest. ]

Uhhh... [ Say yes. Say yes. ] Probably? [ Very convincing. ] I mean, from what I know about magic, if it's the house that's cursed and turning us, then getting out of it would break us from the spell, and we'd go back to normal.

[royalfling]

[ Wu looks at him with narrowed eyes, appraising him.

He seems trustworthy and honest. Wu's getting that much, at least. He hums, then nods ]

Okay. Let's get outta here. I tried the doors. And the windows. They don't open.

[arendelicious]

I haven't seen any seams that hint to secret doors, either.

[ It's all pretty disheartening. ]

But there's gotta be an answer somewhere up here. Grand Pabbie always told me that every curse can be broken, you just gotta figure out the clues on how.

[royalfling]

Clues... so a curse is like a mystery? [ He likes that. He likes that a lot.

Wu looks around the house with new vigor as they shuffle through the second floor ]

Hm... just doors and walls here. What kinda clues are there to curses?

[arendelicious]

[ He nods, because a mystery was a great way to describe it. Describing how curses work is something he's never had to really do, though, and his mouth scrunches a little in thought as they reach the second floor. ]

I guess... they can be anything, really. The trolls could never fully explain it to me, but I know that when my friends and I had to save our kingdom from an evil being, we had to look at things from the past. Mythology, mostly, but only because it was a legendary thing attacking us.

[ That... probably doesn't help, now that he says it out loud. ]

Do you know anything about dollhouses? Or the other curses this place has done?

[royalfling]

Legendary things sure like attacking kingdoms. [ Wu mutters this, scrunching up his face as much as he can. His cheeks feel stiff and cold. ] Dollhouses... are for kids to play with. To imagine what being an adult in a house is like. I guess. Other curses? I got nothing.

[arendelicious]

[ Well, it sounded like they had about the same knowledge. While not the greatest thing, he's not about to let it stop him from figuring this out. ]

Mmm.

[ He pulls away from him carefully, going to glance in the bedroom that he didn't wake up in to see if there are any sign of hinges or doors that might be hidden in the walls. ]

It's clearly taken other people before. So there's gotta be some sign of how others got out around.

[ He refuses to believe that they all just ended up like the dolls around the table. Even if he notices his neck is getting as stiff as his face had started to feel. Great. ]

[royalfling]

Sign. Signs! We're looking for signs, for clues. [ Wu keeps muttering to himself, repeating 'signs' and 'clues' like that will help as he walks awkwardly around the second floor. ] It all looks pretty normal to me! Well, normal for a dollhouse.

[arendelicious]

[ There's nothing in the bedroom and the hall, and he sighs in frustration, running a hand through his hair. A hand that's starting to get just as shiny as Wu's leg. Crap.

He goes to use his good hand to pull open another door, finding a set of stairs, at least. ]

Looks like there's a third floor. Let's see if there's anything up here.

[royalfling]

More stairs. [ Sighing, Wu follows after him, his legs making climbing the stairs very difficult ] This had better be the last floor!

[arendelicious]

[ Kristoff pauses climbing so he can go back to helping him up. When they're up far enough for him to see it's an attic, he huffs a short chuckle. ] Guess you're in luck.

[royalfling]

No more stairs? [ Wu peers into the attic hopefully. ] Oh, good. I'm exhausted. [ He lets go of Kristoff's arm to slump down against the wall. ] Go look for clues. I'll be there in a minute.

[arendelicious]

[ Three years ago, Kristoff would've just shrugged this all off, but thanks to Anna, he's started caring about even random strangers more than he used to. Ugh, this sucks.

He starts to move the broken pieces of furniture around, trying to find anything that looks like it could help them. Hinges for doors, seams that show where one may have been sealed up, some kind of out of place old souvenir that might be a cursed object, or whatever else he can think of. ]

... How're you holding up?

[ He doesn't glance over as he asks because he really doesn't wanna see if this guy has gone full doll on him while he's been looking. ]

[royalfling]

A little stiff. [ Wu tries to make it a joke, but it falls flat. He should be helping, he knows that, but it's just so hard to get himself to move.

With all of his willpower, he pushes himself up and hobbles over to the side of the attic that Kristoff hasn't checked yet. ]

How about you? Got creepy little doll hands yet?

[arendelicious]

So far, so good.

[ Though he can feel the joints in his elbows getting harder to move, which is something he's trying desperately hard to not think about. ]

Seems to mostly be broken junk up here, though. [ He rightfully sounds a little frustrated by it. ] There's gotta me something we're missing.