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

Really, Oz? Really?

There's a girl standing in the doorway of the dollhouse room just kind of glaring at him with a look of 'is this really the time' plastered all over her face. Unbeknownst to him, he hadn't disappeared so long ago that she was even aware of the disappearance, so she was assuming he remembered that they'd met.

Tapping one foot in irritation, she raised an eyebrow and shook her head. No, she hadn't seen it before. Oh look, his hand was turning into a mannequin's. Great, which meant hers would be soon too. That was fascinating. Maybe they should figure out how to get out of here before marveling at the wonder of the magic?

Not easy to convey that impatience with a face but she was trying.

The silence, and that impatient foot tap, certainly made him look up from whatever was becoming of his hands. The moment his gaze settled on Neo, his expression shifted minutely: his eyes narrowed and his posture drew straighter, assessing.

He remembered. Everything had been so very distant, from the place he'd shut himself away inside Oscar's head, but adrenaline had a way of dragging him further forward than he would like. He'd been aware of the fight, to a degree.

He'd been aware of losing the Relic. He regretted that he'd not managed to rouse himself sooner, to prevent it.

"Ah."

She did not seem to have it now, or at least, he could not see it. And disconcerting though it was, he was aware that, for their purposes here, the matter irrelevant. This was a dream. Of course, coming to terms with what that meant— that the war had been halted for those trapped here, however briefly— was something altogether new.

"Miss Neopolitan, I believe."

His tone was mild, but his attention on her was sharp.

"I don't imagine you know the way out from here?"

There was recognition in those eyes. So, her reputation preceded her in some way. The exact relationship of Ozpin and Oscar wasn't entirely clear to her, so he had her at a slight disadvantage. She knew 'of' him rather than knowing him personally. Why should it have been different, given how well known her employer was? Roman hadn't been famous, but he'd been a thorn in Beacon's side before the headmaster died.

A quick nod and a small smirk were followed by a little two fingered salute. He had her there. Afterwards, however, she glanced over her shoulder and back to him with a shake of her head. Taking one hand, she pointed at him, then her, and then a simple, circular motion with an eyebrow raised. Search together?

Assuming he could trust her on that one, heh!

She did not seem surprised to be recognized, and that was convenient. Of course he would know her; she was directly involved in the fall of his Academy. He was a dead man because of her employers.

As for searching together, well, he saw no other sensible approach to the place. He'd certainly made no tangible progress thus far, and with his hands beginning to turn... yes, it did seem best to begin moving quickly. Difficult to say what a more thorough transformation would do to him, in this place. It was unnerving not to see the magic behind it all, to have it creep upon him without spectacle.

He nodded, expression mild, but his attention still not wavering from her.

"Yes, I suppose our purposes do align, here. Which areas have you searched?"

Yeah, admittedly she'd begun to have serious regrets about that particular engagement. Not in the sense that she'd fought where Roman had told her, but that they'd ever gotten involved in any of that shit. There was criminal enterprise, and there was Salem... But that wasn't here or now.

His question got a curt nod before she gestured to the other side of the first floor hallway, indicating the rooms there and turned back to him, raising an eyebrow. The querry was there as she sort of made a sweeping gesture to these rooms. Had he covered this side?

"Yes, I've already gone looking for anything of use in this area. I'm afraid I've had no luck."

This is not who he would have expected, nor chosen, for an adventuring companion. Yet here they are, evidently trapped together. He will make due.

"Shall we progress upstairs?"

She nodded when he made that suggesting, turning on her heel and walking towards the stairs. She paused there, quietly resting one heel up a step while she waited to see him approach. She wasn't about to go up until she could see where Ozpin was standing. There was, naturally, a bit of suspicion there.

While she waited, though, she had to reflect. No, this was not who she'd planned to work with next. He was competent, but ... she was really not sure how far she could trust him all things considered.