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

[ Oz cannot blame him, truly. He has lived this before. He has seen so many ways for it to play out, his people recoiling from him once they know the true weight of the thing. He has heard the accusation that he does not care.

There have been times he tried not to care. Whole centuries of trying. He's never been much good at it.

Qrow's voice goes tired, and he feels it in his bones. That dark, empty resignation of seeing your purpose broken, of realizing you are abandoned— he knew it the moment Jinn gave him his answer. ]

Then... perhaps you can believe I never wanted to cause you this pain.

I'm sorry.

[ For letting it turn out this way. For the whole sorry state of the world, for not having a way to solve it. He still thinks ignorance had been kinder. Or maybe he only hopes it— maybe he lost track of what is right a very long time ago. ]

[Again, there's an apology, but not the one he wants. He realizes it's probably not coming. Which...hurts, because he wants Oz to understand, not to lose this man who meant so much to him all over again, but--he already lost him, that day in the snow, hadn't he? Or maybe it's more accurate to say he never had him in the first place. Ozpin was too...old, too paranoid, too burdened with the weight of too many lives to really let anyone into his heart.

It's a cruel irony, in a way; Ozpin was the first one to ever show Qrow what it felt like to be accepted for everything he was, the first to take to the iron shackles around his heart and hand him the keys to the world.]

But you'd do it again, wouldn't you? If you had the chance to do it over, you wouldn't be honest with me.

[Qrow doesn't have to wait for an answer. He knows it already.

He's not sure how he imagined this conversation would go; after Ozpin locked himself up in Oscar's mind, he was so angry, so devastated, so filled with despair his negligence almost got the kids killed. But things are different, now. He's stopped drinking. He's working on the Amity Project in Remnant, and building ... something with Clover here, that he dares not think too hard about.

He's not okay, but he's doing better. He's been standing on his own two feet without Oz for months, now. He owes it to Ruby and Yang to keep moving forward.]

I guess that means we have nothing more to say to each other, Oz.

[It's the first time he's said that nickname this entire conversation. The way he says it sounds like goodbye.

Finally, he turns halfway on his heel, looking at the wizard over his shoulder. His gaze is steady this time, drained of the desperation of before.]

...If you ever feel like apologizing for lying to me half my life, look me up.

[ If he had the chance to do it over— well. It's best not to dwell on hypotheticals; Oz learned that a very long time ago. There are too many moments he fervently wishes to change. No good comes of it.

Qrow turns away from him. Nothing more to say to each other. He thinks there is a great deal that could be said, but perhaps it's best to put some space between recent revelations and where they stand now. A careful distance between them, not the panicked escape of before. Whatever he may think of the secrecy, Oz is aware that his total retreat was... unkind. He intends to do better, here.

If Qrow ever allows him the chance.

He hangs his head, and finds that teardrops have left dark spots on the pavement. They stare up at him as Qrow walks away. ]