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soddersays2020-08-26 04:27 pm
sodder) wrote in soddersays2020-08-26 04:27 pm
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SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME
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!
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.
A
[holy crap, someone else who looks like an old man! Michael isn't one, technically, but he is old, and frankly it seems like there's just so many teenagers here sometimes. How do they even function at that age?]
I've got a knife, might be able to wedge it in there.
no subject
Besides, Micheal has something most kids wouldn't: a knife. Ford lights up at the information. ]
Perfect! I haven't been able to find anything slim enough to fit between the pane and the frame, so that should give us some leverage.
[ He'll step aside so that Micheal has room to work. He just hopes his knife hasn't turned to plastic like everything else in here seems to. ]
no subject
He steps up, drawing the knife from inside his suit jacket and peering at the window frame before he starts to work the knife in there. Seems like he's used to working with blades?]
Gotta say, "spooky dollhouse" is a new one for me. Haven't found Annabelle hanging around, though...
[Mmmm, okay, looks good? Michael starts to try and pry the windowframe out...and it doesn't budge an inch. He stops to frown at it - he's stronger than a human even in Deerington, so what the hey?]
This is really stuck in there.
no subject
I doubt we'll have any trouble from her. She's still sealed in a box on Connecticut.
[ He pauses. ]
Probably. I actually haven't checked recently...
[ Hm, that's a bit concerning - but he can worry about it when (not if, when) he gets back home. For now he's going to assist Michael in prying at the frame; he doesn't seem to surprised when that doesn't yield any results. ]
That it is. I'm worried it may not be simply glue holding it in place.
no subject
[He's self-aware enough to realize that, had he been in a more horror-movie-themed line of work, he might have been sated for a few thousand more years. Probably for the best, then.]
Well, I guess that would be pretty poor design. It is literally the first exit I've seen. They probably want us to work for it. [Gonna get started on prying his knife back outta there, then.]
no subject
[ Honestly, he'd rather deal with actual ghosts, not that he's had that many haunted doll encounters. Maybe it's a skill set he needs to polish some more.
Again, though, that's something for later. ]
Indeed. Assuming there is a way out, it's likely hidden. [ Hmm... ] Some sort of access panel to let whoever built this place to rearrange the props...?
no subject
[The limbs, the heads.]
You'd probably just wanna pop off the whole front wall. [But then, none of the walls have had any obvious hinges or mechanisms on them...] Or the roof.
no subject
[ Not that he's had that much experience with 'spider-dogs' either, and the creatures he's encountered that fit that description probably aren't what Michael's dealt with. ]
I think the back wall might be more likely. If you're going to have it on display, you don't want the moving parts, so to speak, to be visible.
[ That he can say from experience, though less from doll houses and more from nerdy scale models. ]
no subject
Display? These are for fun, aren't they? Just pop it open, play out soap operas with your dolls, or whatever kids do?
[Of course he's never been in that position, but he can imagine it well enough. Observing the humans in his first neighborhood wasn't...dissimilar.]
None of the walls that way looked off, though, we can try the back.
no subject
[ Ford has witnessed and assisted with the construction of enough Lego sets to know this for a fact. But it seems like they're both in agreement about checking the back first. ]
I've already given this level a thorough investigation. I say we start at the top and work our way down.
no subject
[So adults like to play with toys too. Michael's too old to get hung up on human ideas of what maturity means - but they do still play with them, right?
That's not. That's not really important, though.]
Sounds good to me. Oh - oh, I'm being rude. I'm Michael. [He offers a hand.]
no subject
Stanford Pines. I've only just arrived in town, so I'm afraid I haven't met many people yet.
[ And what a way to get introduced to this place. Though as he starts up the stairs, something else occurs to him. ]
Though of those I have met, no one seemed too alarmed to have ended up here.
[ More annoyed than anything, honestly. ]
no subject
Yeah, stuff like this just kinda happens around here. As things go, it's not that bad. At least the dolls aren't up and trying to kill us, right?
[ha]
The month I arrived was cult sacrifice month, so I'd say you're doing okay.
no subject
Cults are trouble no matter what, but that's especially concerning. Are they still active in town?
no subject
[Which is not the most comforting thing in the world, Michael's sure, but that's about all he's got.
Ah - here's a trapdoor in the ceiling! That must lead up into the attic; he reaches up to grab the little pullstring and tug it down with no apparent effort.]
They sewed some people into dead deer and tried to burn them alive. Some kids tried to flay me. So, you know, pretty classic evil cult stuff.
no subject
[ He actually sounds a little disturbed by the news, though he's still mostly just matter-of-fact. ]
You said the Townspeople did this? They seemed so... [ He wobbles a hand. ] Bland.
no subject
[So really, hope they stay bland?
Michael tugs the ladder down and starts to climb up. He likes to go first, in uncertain situations; better he gets jumped than a human.]
Not much up here... [He stands near the ladder at the top, waiting for Ford to come up.]
no subject
[ That's actually super handy to know! Ford finally starts up the ladder so the attic, though it's a little slower than he'd like with the porcelain creeping across his knees.
Right, he'd better hurry. Ford pulls himself into the attic as fast as he can manage, though after a quick glance around he has to agree with Michael's observation. ]
Then I say we tear the place apart. Whatever we're looking for is likely to be hidden in any case.
no subject
[Let's go dig around, then! Michael is gonna start removing books from a shelf like this is a Scooby-Doo episode.]
Great design on this dollhouse...