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

[For once, it's not just the reindeer thing! He gives a solemn nod.]

Yup. People come back from the dead. It's... a thing. [Technically it happened once back home, but he doesn't think that counts.] You come back with a really bad case of the flu- and you start losing memories if you die more than once. But...yeah.

[ Well that's something. It not only means things could kill people here but that they did and regularly enough for people to know what happened the more often it occurred.

Okay. Okayokayokay.

He's just gonna sit down on the curb. ]

... That's fine.

[ Totally fine. ]

Weird things happen in Arendelle, but I think this place might take the cake.

Take your time. It's a lot, I know.

[Sorry, Kristoff, this world is awful and there's nothing good about it. But hey, for the first time since he got here, that is a very familiar place name for him and he brightens up considerably. He knows you're having a bit of an emotional breakdown there, buddy, but he's been on his own for literal months and no one understands how batshit his world is.]

You're from Arendelle! [That's why the eternal winter thing sounded familiar. He remembers Eugene bitching about that.] I'm from Corona.

[ This is probably the happiest he's ever seen someone get about where he's from and having it right on the back of trying to process how much this place sucks definitely leaves him looking confused for a hot second. But there is an ounce of relief in hearing something familiar in a world where he hasn't seen anything familiar all day. So after a second, he gets why a guy who has been here six months might feel, like, ten times more excited about this. Aha, using that empathy, look at him go, he's got this human interaction thing DOWN. ]

Yeah? I've never been, but I've... heard stories.

[ Like how locking up magical princesses and not letting them ever interact with humans is apparently just a Thing in their world. ]

[Good job with the empathy, Kristoff. You're a winner!!!]

Yeah, I've heard stories about Arendelle too.

[It's not a way to deal with magical princesses, their world. You don't need to do that. It's rude. He manages to reign in some of his enthusiasm, at least.]

Sorry- I haven't seen anyone from home for... a long time.

Edited 2020-09-04 23:41 (UTC)

[ He manages a reassuring smile (though probably not as great as he wants to since he's still sitting on the curb and all) and waves it off. ]

I'm around overly excited people on the regular. That was pretty calm comparatively.

Me too. The Princess of Corona can be... a lot sometimes.

[She's a lot all of the time, but this is Varian's idea of diplomacy. Got to hold up the Coronan side, or something.]

At least you're used to... magical weirdness. That helped me acclimate myself here, honestly. Not so much with the future technology, but at least I had magical weirdness in the bag.

Glad to know continuously ending up in the middle of strange, complex curses got to come in handy in the end. Makes it almost feel worth it.

[ It does not. He likes Elsa's magic now at least, but he could do without inescapable magic for the rest of forever. ]

Does this place have magical creatures too or is it all atmospheric?

Only almost though, right?

[He's got your number, Kristoff. Still, let's hear it for Team Normal!]

Ohhhh yeah. Most of them are in the forest, and there's a sea creature in the lake. The general rule of thumb is to avoid them if you can. Oh! And don't anger the cats. They are not normal cats,

Didn't wanna oversell it.

[ Magic forest animals he's used to, sea creatures is familiars thanks to the legends of sea dragons Anna and Elsa sometimes filled him in on. But not normal cats is new. Real new. ]

Should I even ask at this point?

Seems wise.

I mean, you can, but you probably won't like the answer. The cats are the police around here. If you commit a crime, they come after you. And trust me, they're pretty relentless.

[Suggesting this small boy has committed crimes before. ]

Oh.

[ Of all things, this doesn't actually seem to make him uncomfortable at all???? With his ~~Disney Princess animal powers~~ connection to animals over people, it seems perfectly reasonable somehow. ]

Animals have a better sense of right and wrong than most people do, so that doesn't seem like it would be so bad.

Edited (remember when i used to be a website designer and now i can't do basic html) 2020-09-14 16:08 (UTC)

Oh, I know. There's a horse in my world who's the best guard the kingdom has ever known.

[How are Arendelle and Corona not invaded MORE? ]

But the Authority can be pretty relentless. So make sure you pay for stuff and try not to cause casual vandalism or anything.