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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Just woke up this morning. Er, do you... wake up to a dream?

[ He's gonna get a headache if he thinks on that one too much. ]

I guess it's good to know at least one thing in this place isn't gonna try to kill us.

Yet, anyway. [ Watch out. Those carrots could still grow tiny fangs. Or explode. Honestly, Mako doesn't trust anything here, but he does need to eat. ] I'm Mako. Got here a couple days ago. [ Now that Sven's out of the way, Mako holds out that same hand to Kristoff, his face serious. ]

[ Someone as cynical as he can be. What a relief. He reaches out to take the hand, giving it a shake. ] Kristoff. And you probably already guessed that's Sven. [ He gives a small jerk of his head to his friend who is still happily munching.

And because it's still bugging him, he has to ask; ] You've really never heard of reindeer before?

He looks... kind of like a snow leopard caribou, I guess. Or a catdeer. [ He squints at Sven. Really wants to get this right. ] Dragon moose?

Caribou! [ He shouldn't get that excited by a single word. Woops. He clears his throat to pull it back a notch. ] That's another word for reindeer. I dunno about the uh— the snow leopard part, but he's definitely a caribou.

[ Mako peers suspiciously at Sven a little longer, his eyes narrowed. ] Guess everything in this place is weird. I saw a chicken in someone's yard earlier. Not even a possum-chicken. Just a... chicken. Chicken.

[ OOC: you don't know how long I've wanted someone from the ATLA world to have this conversation, I am so happy rn. ]

Edited 2020-08-29 22:07 (UTC)

[ He's trying to picture a possum-chicken, but it's hard when you have no idea what a possum is. ] No offense, but I definitely think more people have seen chicken chickens than possum-chickens.

[[ I am so happy to oblige, I've been laughing for like ten minutes. ]]

Maybe where you come from. We don't have any of these animals where I'm from. [ So far, Wu's the only other person here who thinks that being greeted by just a deer was one of the weirdest parts of all this. ]

Where do you come from? [ Mako's already getting used to asking this question as part of the litany of vaguely-interrogative questions he asks people. ]

[ Well that's fair and Kristoff nods to acknowledge the point. ]

Arendelle. [ He's clearly used to everyone just knowing where the kingdom is. ] What about you?

Republic City. Uh, kind of. I wasn't there when I... fell asleep, but it is where I grew up. [ Same kind of energy: Mako is clearly used to people just knowing what Republic City is. ] It's pretty different. From here. But this place is different from most places. People keep saying I'll get used to it, but.

I find it hard to believe anyone could get used to all this stuff. [ From the strange looking locals to the weird technology to the whole getting attacked by literally anything part... ] But my fiancée would just say I'm being pessimistic probably.

My brother would say the same thing. [ Mako snorts with a sort of affection reserved only for the people closest to him who drive him up a wall i.e. everyone close to him, except maybe Asami, who is the most rational member of their group. ] But I agree. I don't want to get used to it. I'm not looking to think that all this [ Mako waves a hand around at... everything ] is normal.