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

(Passage of time was a complicated subject for Nicky. He'd seen cathedrals rise and fall, but it sometimes felt like it might as well have happened in the blink of an eye.

He can honestly say that he has never felt like he's gone backward in time though. Which...Is exactly what's puzzling him now. It would be one thing if it was just the buildings, but after peering into a few stores it seemed like the whole culture of the town was set back a few decades.)

I was thinking the fifties as well. My friend and I thought this might be one of those nuclear test towns until we saw civilians walking about. (He gives the man an appraising look.) Are you from the eighties as well then?

Oh, no, I'm from Hell.

[Michael laughs, because that was a joke! The presentation, at least.]

Seriously, though. Time runs differently in the afterlife. Started off at the same time, but after that it's all just a mess.

[He waves a hand dismissively. There's probably some whole explanation there about how they're technically still part of the same universe, so obviously the beginning of time is the same no matter where it flowed after that, but - who cares!]

Went to Earth in like, 2018, though! That was fun!

Hell?

(It's so unexpected and then the man laughs. It catches up to Nicky that it was a joke, though he didn't entirely understand the punchline, and he winds up giving a breathy little chuckle. What an odd man.)

Are you suggesting that this is the afterlife? (Now that Nicky would actually buy. He was long overdue to wind up in an afterlife. But no, wait.

No, that wasn't what the man was saying at all.)

...Do you mean to say you're from the afterlife?

(He was catching up with how weird this place was, okay.)

That's about when I'm from. Or rather, what my most recent memory was from. (He was "from" way before that, but that's for another conversation.)

[Michael nods, humming in agreement. That's about the gist of it!]

This isn't any afterlife I'm familiar with. Can't speak to how yours operates, of course. From what I've seen, every world is different, and statistically we probably aren't from the same one.

I can't speak to how mine operates either, I'm afraid. The afterlife has been rather avoidant of me for a long time.

(It was the most casual he'd admit to his own circumstances. People had told him there was plenty of strange folk here, but he'd remain guarded until he could determine that in full for himself. This man seemed genuine, at least.)

Can you feel your own world? People say we are still tethered to home, but I can hardly tell.

[Huh. Odd couple of things to say, there.]

Not that I can tell. I'm not sure what that would feel like, exactly. My powers are all screwed up anyway, so even if it's something I could've detected before, I probably couldn't now.

(Nicky has a relatively strong poker face, but what's telling more than anything are his moments of silence. Like right now. People seemed so comfortable here with their apparent abilities so did that mean...?)

Is there no threat to people here with abilities? People talk about it so casually.

No, not really. [Michael studies Nicky for a moment.] I gotta say, people usually get more tripped up over the whole "I'm a demon from hell" thing.

Oh...

(Nicky rubs at the back of his neck, frowning.)

I suppose after being abducted into a strange town I've never heard of and some of the stuff already going on...(And his own life, really-.) I figure this either really is a dream or-.

(He doesn't know. He's going to have to reevaluate a lot of things if this turned out to be his new reality. One thing at a time though. He could compartmentalize his panic at an easier time.)

You don't exactly look like a demon from Hell. At least not how I would imagine one to look. You're very...ah...Professional looking.

Oh! Well, thank you! Everything in the afterlife is a little bit more...bureaucratic than humans like to imagine it, I think.

[Pretty much everybody in a human suit dresses it professionally!]

It might be a dream, but that doesn't make it not real. I've been here for months now, and I don't even really sleep.

So you really are- (Nicky holds his breath for just a moment, and then he can't help himself. He lets it back out, a small smile gracing his face.)

Ah. Our meeting is quite ironic then. (More than ironic. It was downright hilarious, but Nicky doesn't laugh. His smile gets a bit wider though.)

This is odd enough that it can only be real, I believe.

[Michael smiles, shaking his head a little.]

Yeah, it's a lot. I'd like to tell you it gets easier, but - well, you'll settle in, at least. There's usually a lot of chaos, but this month has been pretty chill.