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

"There was once a town called Deerington, in a place called Maine, in a nation called America, on a world called Earth. One Earth, among many. And a creature crossed the ocean with an aide and a group of humans to settle that town. That creature bore a half-breed child with great magical power, and her child by a mortal man was Sodder. Empowered with the power of creation and imagination, her dreams and nightmares could become reality, and give life to others' dreams." It sounded like she was telling an old story, even if this was a string of things she'd been piecing together over the last two years. Before this was done, she kind of wanted to write it as an actual story.

"Her nightmare terrified the creature's aide and her father, along with the townspeople. People from other worlds were drawn here, like us, and it began to destroy the town. Desperate, they put her to sleep to seek a solution, but in doing that, the dream has become unending, as has the nightmare, and Deerington, and we, are swallowed in an eternally sleeping god's nightmares, trying to find a way to save her, and ourselves."

It was outside of Vira-Lorr's wheelhouse as well. She was a soldier once, a general. Fighting monsters was easy. The metaphysics of a dream was madness. This place was terrifying as it was fascinating.

"Mmmm. You helped save me too, you know. I have quite a bit to be grateful for." She tilted her body to face Makoto. "May I ask you something? To be sure? You may refuse to answer if you wish."

It really did sound the start of a story, or one of those b-list horror movies that you'd watch late at night. It was enough to where Makoto wondered if there'd be popcorn or something.

"I didn't really do anything, you found the way out, and you had been there before so you were bound to know what to do."

She rubbed the back of her head looking away for a moment, she didn't really do praise or thanks very well.

"What's on your mind?"

She smiled. "You saved the waste. I think that's worthy of praise. We are some of their only protection at times." Much to her chagrin. Still, she wasn't going to press more. She was used to a few who weren't accustomed to praise, after all.

"Are you like Minako and Setsuna?" She didn't specify the 'how' of it that she meant, but she figured that choosing those two in particular would make it clear. Usagi was, as far as she was concerned, their ditzy and beloved cheerleader and until the day she saw otherwise, likely always to remain so in her mind, but she'd felt the shock. There'd been just enough slips. She wanted to be sure with this one.

"Huh? What do you mean? I'm nowhere near as pretty or popular as Minako. In fact, most guys are scared of me. And Setsuna is a genius, I have a study like crazy for all of my exams. We're all nothing alike really."

She might have been a little too fast with that denial. And the fact that her voice rose several octaves in surprise was probably a dead give away. Makoto didn't like lying, but she still didn't know enough about Vira-Lorr to tell her everything yet.

The fact that Makoto wasn't here, meant though that she wasn't really sure who talk to about this. It's not like she could ask Luna, or even Ami about what the best course of action would be. Maybe Setsuna though, she would probably know what to do.

"So what happens now?"

She couldn't know it for certain, not without witnessing the transformation the way she had with Minako, or being told by Setsuna. However, she definitely had a suspicion right there. However, she didn't pry more. It was a refusal, and she had reason to suspect that the girls were cautious for reasons of their own. She'd only seen Minako because of a few life or death fights after all.

She smiled at her warmly and winked once. "You're quite attractive yourself, my dear, I assure you. Minako is a lovely girl, yes, but red-heads have their charm." She'd play along if Makoto wasn't ready to talk, and maybe she'd see the truth of it one day. "And I think you're more than clever enough. You've followed everything so far, and there's others who struggle more."

A sigh and she curled a leg up before shrugging. "As for what happens now? The dollhouse is gone. For now, we rest and prepare for the next challenges. You can go see your friends, chat with them, make new ones while you're trapped here with us. And I will give you my phone message. You can call me anytime. For help? Or if you just want to relax. Relaxing will be important this month."

There was a moment's pause and then she looked at her closely. "something that I want you to remember though. Have faith in yourself, and belief in yourself. There is no power in a dream greater than to believe a thing to be true. No spell I can cast, no whip of golden hearts is greater. We're going to need that faith soon."

Blushing at the compliments, Makoto still felt a little conflicted. Still, it wasn't just her secret, it was Rei and Usagi as well, they could be put in danger if she were to reveal the secret. For now, she was glad to be out of that dollhouse, and if it did turn out to be anything she could just tell the other the next time they met.

"Rest sounds good, though I'm not sure I want to go to sleep just to wake up inside of something like that again. Maybe a trip to the arcade to play some games and unwind a bit."

It was a little unnerving how Vira-Lorr fixed her gaze on her, and the comment was a little ominous.

"I'll keep that in mind. Though if you need any help you can call too you know."

"Mmmm. That sounds nice. And don't worry too much about falling asleep. Most days you will wake up just fine." Most days. She stood slowly and offered her hand to help Makoto to her feet. "It was interesting to meet you Makoto. Perhaps our next meeting will be slightly less eventful."

She waved, not wanting to overwhelm the young woman with more. It was already a lot she'd dropped in her lap, after all.