soddersays | SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(ooc: Canon point is flexible right now, but mun hasn't finished CDtH yet.)

Arrival

Once Gansey realized that this wasn't some strange dream or Cabeswater hallucination, he decided that he needed to explore the town and see if anyone from home was here with him. Wandering the streets and shops, he gave everyone he met the polished, political smiles that he saved for his mother's parties. Charming, mildly interested, disarmingly harmless, whatever was needed for the situation and the person he met.

As he looked into the doorway of a store and the building's interior, his shoulder collided with someone. Backing away, his smile wavered to concern. "I apologize for my inattentiveness. Are you all right?"

Dollhouse - Waking

Over the years, Gansey had woken up in many strange places. This wasn't quite the strangest, at least no during his first impression, but it was one of the more unnerving ones. The bed was terrible, but not bad enough to cause suspicion. Even the chairs didn't seem too strange. It wasn't until he noticed the weird sheen to the windows that he began to wonder what was going on. Moving to the 'glass' he stared out at...

He pressed a hand against the wall, trying to ignore the sense of vertigo that left him dizzy as he tried to process what was going on. The room was huge and he felt absolutely tiny. Leaving the bedroom, he headed downstairs, pausing when he heard someone - something? - moving nearby. "Is there someone there?"

Dollhouse - Visiting too Long?

Pausing in his explorations of the strange house, Gansey paused, flexing his fingers that had suddenly started feeling achy, the joints strangely stiff. Like he'd been working on one of his models for hours or been writing for too long. Looking down at his hand, he startled when he realized his skin had a glossiness that was not normal. "Am I imagining this or does this look strange to you?"

Wildcard

(ooc: If you'd like the plot something, contact me at

starfleetgirlfriday)

Blue had begun to feel the dull ache in her joints a short time ago, but had simply written it off as nothing out of the ordinary — they were inside of a house that appeared to be inside of another house, so the measurement for what exactly was normal here was a little skewed. Every few minutes, she’d try twisting her wrist, rolling her shoulders, or tilting her head from one side to the other to try and relieve the feeling, but it seemed to be getting worse.

Nonetheless, she had Gansey with her, which Blue found to be a blessing in itself. He kept her grounded, made her feel safe, and she kept a close trail behind him as they explored more and more, her fingers laced between his. Each room was as perfectly decorated as the one before it, but a good half of those decorations were either painted on, or completely fake altogether (tiny outlets painted on the walls, light switches that don’t budge.) and the eeriness of it all was making Blue want to squirm uncomfortably.

Gansey’s question captures her attention — a welcomed distraction from the creepiness of the house they were trapped in — and her eyes focus on his hand outstretched in front of them.

It looks… Different. Not right.

“Maybe it’s the light?” Her head spun on a swivel, looking around at all the windows to try and find the light source that was to blame for the glossy effect. “Everything is a little strange in here."

During his search for Glendower, he'd explored many sites that were considered creepy or macabre. The reputation for some had only been superstition. Others were based on magic, the presence of ley lines causing people to shy away from those areas. None of those sites had spooked him, but this house was steadily eroding away his confidence, causing him to look over his shoulder, to worry that something might be stalking them through the strangely decorated rooms.

But Blue was with him, a blessing and a curse since her presence kept him from giving in to his imaginings, but it also meant that she might be in danger. At least her presence kept him from thinking of worst case scenarios until he saw the strangeness of his skin and he realized that something else was wrong with him.

"Perhaps," he admitted, not ready to alarm her just yet. "Little is correct, but I haven't figured out if we're like the Lilliputians, the Borrowers, or Jack in the fairy tale." He was hoping for one of the more benign options. Especially when he knew that he had to tell her that there was more wrong than the shininess of his skin.

Looking down at their joined hands, Gansey offered her a smile that was meant to reassure them both. "I know that we're holding hands, but I can't feel anything. Your fingers or mine. It's like my hand isn't there at all."

Blue was quite proud of herself for holding in her panic this entire time. They’d both experienced a lot together, but this definitely took the cake when it came to weird places, and she wanted nothing more than to get out and return to the slightly less strangeness that awaited them outside of the dollhouse. The only way to do that was to search — and thankfully Gansey was a seasoned explorer, Blue was surely in safe hands.

(And speaking of which, her hands ached more than ever. Why was that stiffness getting worse?)

“What about Alice in Wonderland?” Although, Blue doesn’t remember drinking or eating anything out of the ordinary. “Or Honey I Shrunk the Kids?” She offered up another suggestion and each one sounded more outrageous than the one before it. But also completely plausible. Luckily for Blue — and her sanity, she doesn't need to spiral further down that rabbit hole — Gansey’s mention of their hands had her looking down at them. She doesn't really feel her own either, and the more she tried to force her fingers to move, the less they seemed to give way.

Panic started to build again, her breathing a little heavier around her words as she poorly attempted to mask it. “My fingers don’t want to move. They can't. It’s like they’re stuck.” Her voice wavered, the panic was quickly turning to fear. “What’s happening?"

"I'm not certain that Alice in Wonderland would be a better option. I don't really want to chance eating or drinking anything in this place." Honey I shrunk the Kids didn't get an explanation since Blue had noticed their hands.

He couldn't feel his hand that she held, but he could use his free one to gently pry their fingers apart. Then he placed his good hand on her shoulder, trying to focus her attention onto him. "We're going to be all right." He wasn't quite using his Voice, but it was similar. It was more the type of reassurance that he used to charm the school administration into letting Ronan's absences slide than using full magic on her. He wouldn't do that to his friends, not unless they were in true danger. "We're going to find a way out."

Find... Jesus, he was being stupid. "Maybe I can Find a way out." He'd rarely tried to find specific things. Usually the object called to him, not the other way around, but it wouldn't hurt to try. Not when it was obvious that they needed to get out soon. "I don't know if it'll work." He had to be honest with Blue. He couldn't give her false hope. "But we could try."

Instead of allowing him to shift away, long, scarred fingers clamp on Gansey's shoulder, and a familiar face leans around him into view. Ronan's brows are arched, surprised in spite of himself-- which makes sense, given that the last he'd spoken to Gansey, he was like a million fucking miles away, and--to Ronan's best knowledge--Gansey's never been able to step into a dream space that wasn't expressly made manifest by Ronan's abilities.

"What the fuck," he greets him, and his other hand lifts, cupping the side of Gansey's neck as if one hand on him isn't enough to be certain he's not part of this dream. If it even is a dream; Ronan can't tell, which isn't as surprising as it probably should be. Sometimes Ronan struggles with finding the line between dream and waking world.

But Gansey is warm and solid beneath his hands, and he isn't changing, isn't warping. He feels like him and smells like him and everything is fucking perfect, and even in Ronan's best dreams of the people he loves, they're never quite perfect. "Jesus Mary, how are you here?"

Gansey begins to shake off the hand on his shoulder, and then he realizes that the weight of it, the curl of the fingers, are incredibly familiar.
Ronan. Those details can only belong to one person. No dreamscape that Gansey could create would give him a Ronan so true to the one in Henrietta.

Blinking at Ronan, he tries to understand how he could have been so inattentive that he hadn't realized that his best friend was close by. For months, Ronan had been one of his main focuses during his waking hours - hours that went beyond the normal count for most individuals - making him especially aware of his presence.

The idea that Ronan had slipped his notice proves how out of sorts he truly was.

Laughing at the greeting, he leans into the contact at shoulder and neck, surprised by how tactile Ronan's being but unwilling to do anything that might cause his mood to darken. "Hello to you too, Lynch." He's so used to the profanity that he'd worry if Ronan hadn't cursed in the middle of that greeting. "I have no idea how I got here. I fell asleep in Monmouth and woke here. I'm still not certain of where 'here' really is."

He might hear a knocking sound nearby, maybe the hallway outside the room, but it sounds more like someone tapping on the side of a large cardboard box than someone knocking on wood.

"Okay, I'll bite. But this is giving me flashbacks to that one Christmas when Alice wanted the dollhouse and I spent the entire night before setting it up. This some kind of payback for not seeing her as often as I should?" a cocky male voice says, somewhat irritated but also amused, or at the least making a show of amusement to cover the irritation.

Cautiously, Gansey moved toward the sound, unsure of what he'd find. For a moment, he couldn't help thinking of Whelk, wishing he had something to defend himself with even if any attempt he made would be laughable. He'd probably end up injuring himself instead of defending himself.

When he realized that he didn't know the person who was knocking, he relaxed slightly, his usual attempt at seeing the positive in situations shadowed by a sense of caution that Adam would have approved of. "Alice?" The name made him think of Wonderland. The strangeness of the situation could seem like something from Carroll. "Do we need to find a catapiller?"

He'll find a tall, dark, somewhat rugged-looking gent in a grey military greatcoat, feeling along the wall, still testing it out. Spotting Gansey, he grins broadly, clearly relieved for some company. "Ahh, confusion's got company! I was thinkin' out loud about my daughter, but in this place? We could very well need to find a catapillar," he replies. Extending his hand, he adds, "Captain Jack Harkness. And who am I stuck in a giant dollhouse with?"

If he's entering the bookstore, he might shoulder-check a tall gent in black, dark glasses hiding his eyes, carrying an armload of books with titles such as "The Golden Bough", "The Coming of the Faeries" by Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James, "The Book of Dreams and Ghosts" by Andrew Lang. One book, Arthur Waite's "Guide to the Tarot" drops from the top of the stack in the process, hitting the floor at their feet.

"Apology accepted," the other replies, with a polite mix of patience and mild irritation, as he starts to reach for the fallen volume. "I've had far worse days: at least this time, it's a fleeting nuisance from a quantifiable source." He'll tip head toward the stack of books as if to indicate there's a good reason for his rifling the occult section.

Apologizing again, Gansey kneels to pick up the book. The title causes him to pause, studying it thoughtfully before he offers it to the person he'd accidentally run into. "Quantifiable source?" he echoes, looking at the book on Tarot and the other titles.

Each was considered a classic in their specific area. Although he knew Waite's discussion of the Tarot sometimes was met with criticism. "Which type of nuisance do you think you're dealing with: the Fae, gods, ghosts, or something else supernatural?"

"The accidental collision, to parse the quantifiable source," the other replies, holding out one black-gloved hand to accept the book, replacing it atop the stack before stepping aside to one side of the doorway. His irritation has faded to a stoical calm; the smallest smirk may have crossed his face.

"But the nuisance that had me rifling the occult section? It appears that a ghost has manifested near the lantern which I set outside the door to my lodgings," he continues, with another glance to the book stack in the crook of his arm. "The supernatural is... somewhat out of my range of experience, outside of fiction. But it appears that in this place, wherever and whatever it is, the supernatural is the norm and the natural. I'm a scientist, not an occultist, and that leaves me woefully unarmed against a spectral intruder.

A pause and a somewhat curious head tilt. "With that list of beings you named, you sound as though you possess some expertise in the matter."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

SEPTEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

THE EVIL DOLLHOUSE

THOSE PESKY KIDS

Character Arrival

Richard Gansey III - The Raven Cycle

visiting too long

no subject

no subject

no subject

arrival

Re: arrival

Dollhouse - Waking

no subject

no subject

Arrival

Re: Arrival

Re: Arrival