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

[ Once Kurogane is in place Ford steps forward to add his own weight to the task, but even between the two of them... ]

Not even an inch.

[ Though maybe 'millimeter' would be a more relevant measurement on this scale. ]

I suspect whatever force may have brought us here in the first place has also prevented us from taking just any exit. There may be a special steps we need to take before we can escape.

[ He nods, getting his sword out from the place he wedged it in on the window and sheathing it. If they can't get the window out, trying to barrel through a wall probably won't work either. ]

Yeah, probably. Let's look around for clues for any of these steps.

[ He starts walking around the attic, looking around. ]

I don't know if you tried looking downstairs, but I couldn't find anything useful down there.

I've made a cursory sweep of each level, but more of my focus has been on the second floor.

[ Under the assumption that second floor windows were more likely to be less secure, logic that may have helped if they were in anything approaching a normal house. ]

I say we focus on the attic, first. [ Though it looks like Kurogane is already doing that. ] If that doesn't yield results, we can reinspect the rest of the house.

Sounds like a plan.

[ If they have no luck in the attic, maybe between the two of them they can find something on the other floors that was missed earlier.

Kurogane starts looking around more seriously, shifting around through some of the chairs and kicking up dust. ]

Looks like some of this stuff hasn't been moved around in years.

It may have actually been years. As I understand it, dollhouses are often meant to be displayed.

[ He can't speak from any actual experience - but saying it out loud has something suddenly occurred to him. Dust... ]

Look for anything that's less dusty than the rest of the room. It may have been recently moved in order to place us in here.

Right.

[ He'll go about doing just that, eventually coming to the wall with the bookshelf. There's dust on the bookshelf, but not the thick layer of it that's on everything else. ]

Hey. [ He'll look over at Ford, motioning to the bookshelf and noticing something on the ground. ] This isn't as dusty. Looks like there are marks on the floor too.

[ Ford drifts closer when Kurogane points out the suspicious bookshelf, and upon getting a closer look he perks up. ]

I think you're right. So there's probably...

[ He runs his hands over the edges of the bookshelf where they meet the wall. He doesn't find a switch or anything of the sort, so... ]

Here, let's try to pull it away from the wall.

Yeah. Let's see what's behind this thing.

[ He grips one side of the bookcase, pushing it aside. It's harder to push because of how stiff his joints are at this point, but he can still do it. But if Ford wants to help, he won't say no either. ]

[ Ford's not the sort of person to let someone else do all the work, so he's only too happy to lend his assistance. The bookcase is easy enough to move, and the door behind it doesn't require any tricks to open, but once it is... ]

... Hmm. That's quite the drop.

[ It's also not what Ford was expecting at all, even with his understanding that this was going to be a weird, unpredictable outing. ]

[ Kurogane stares at the ground far, far below. The distance combined with the fact that he's mostly porcelain makes this especially dangerous, and he frowns. ]

No kidding. [ This is the only way they've found out, though. It seems like they're out of options. ]

I'll go first. I should be able to handle it.

[ And if not... well, he'll figure it out. Kurogane waits before he takes the plunge, just in case Ford has any objection or alternative plan. ]

[ And people call Ford reckless. He really wants to protest this plan, but what other choice do they have? His magnet gun is already a hunk of plastic, and it's not like there's any rope here they can use. ]

Alright. Just...

[ Just what? Be careful? Ford shakes his head. ]

Good luck.

Right.

[ And with that, Kurogane jumps down, ready to lean forward into the fall to help control it but... his landing is soft. He frowns in confusion for a moment before also realizing he's back to normal, skin no longer porcelain and sword no longer made of plastic. Kurogane takes a second to look over his prosthetic arm, making sure it's back to normal too.

When he finds nothing amiss, he looks up at the door. ]

Seems fine. Go ahead.

[ Ford leans out of the door to watch Kurogane fall, expecting him to slam into the ground like a meteorite.

That's not what happens, though. It's hard to judge from this far up, but that landing seemed downright cushy. Ford blinks and lifts a hand to adjust his glasses... which is how he notices that the porcelain effect has started to creep over his fingers as well.

So he jumps. And while he also expects to painfully collide with the ground at top speed, he seems to slow at the last possible second and land as softly as if he were going down some stairs. And would you look at that? The porcelain is gone, too. ]

... That was certainly strange.

[ That's quite the statement, coming from Ford. ]

[ He watches Ford fall, making sure nothing changed in the time from when Kurogane jumped and Ford followed. Everything seems fine, though, and Kurogane crosses his arms. ]

No kidding. Good thing we got out of there when we did, otherwise our bodies would've completely changed.

[ At least Kurogane wouldn't have had much longer, he thinks. ]

That's true. We should count ourselves lucky the change was gradual.

[ He's been completely transformed into inorganic material all at once before and it's no fun at all. But for now, he gives Kurogane a nod. ]

Stanford Pines. I appreciate your assistance in there.

Kurogane. [ He nods. ] No problem. You were pretty helpful too.

[ Honestly, Kurogane doesn't think he would've gotten out without the help. But it's already a big compliment from him to say that Ford was helpful... he's not good at giving out any kind of praise. ]

You know how to get back to where you're staying?

[ Kurogane hasn't seen him around before, so he figures he might as well ask just in case. ]

I do. My residence isn't far from here.

[ Actually he could probably see it, if he really tried. But for now... ]

Is it alright if I contact you later? I'd like hear your thoughts on what just happened, once we've both had a chance to rest.

Edited 2020-09-12 02:23 (UTC)

Yeah, send me a message whenever. My username on deerFeed or whatever it's called is just "kurogane".

[ He's not creative when it comes to usernames.

Kurogane makes a move to walk away, back to his own place. ]

See you.