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

I pay plenty of attention!

[He huffs and crosses his arms before heading to the door while considering her question.]

... Man, I'm really hoping it's neither. The attic and the basement are the top two places to die in every horror movie I've ever seen.

[She considered for a moment and frowned. Yeaaaah, those were the most likely options. A little laugh at his huff and a wink before she motioned up the stairs.]

Let's try the attic first. I think I'd rather die with a window nearby than underground if it comes down to it.

...Yeah, a breath of fresh air while plummeting to your death is way better than being buried alive or something.

[He says it with a casual sigh and gestures to her to lead the way.]

Ladies first.

I missed that delightfully upbeat sense of humor of yours, Lance.

[She was laughing as they started to go up the steps, working her way with a hand at the railing and trying to ignore the feeling of patches of her skin stiffening.]

At the worst, we can fling ourselves out the window and hope my float spell works.

Y'know, it used to be cheerier.

[He replies conversationally with his hands in his pockets as they walk. His humor has always had a blackness to it, though it has legitimately gotten blacker since being in Deerington.]

But hey, that's an idea. I always wondered what it feels like to be Mary Poppins.

Mmmm, we should really work on giving you a good enough time so you're smiling one day out of the week at least.

[she grabbed for the chord above their heads, causing the stairwell leading into the attic to slid down and barely miss both their faces. Now was not the time for a comedic christmas vacation moment.]

Ngh... Lovely place, really. You realize I have no idea who that is, right?

Hey, I smile all the time!

[It's totally true. He's mastered how to smile through the pain. And he also genuinely smiles. Sometimes. He steps aside for the ladder and then looks up in the hole.]

Yeah, real inviting. And you have your floating, I have my pop culture.

[Meaning he's not going to explain it and he's gonna continue to reference stuff she probably doesn't know.]

Pfft, yes, but I want to make your smile meet your eyes.

[She reached out for his face and made a grab for his cheeks to push the grin up all the way towards his eyes, grinning at him. Smile! A wink followed and she led the way up slowly.]

I have my floaty and you have your pop culture. You're as bad as Gwen sometimes. But I forgive you. Let's find a way out of this...

...

There are a lot of doll parts up here.

[He doesn't say anything to that, not sure what to say. It's not like eh looks in the mirror every time he smiles, so he didn't know that's how it looks. He supposes he'll have to get better at faking it.]

Gwen? The girl with the land shark?

[He asks it as he follows her up and then shudders at the dolls.]

Sure, why wouldn't there be doll parts? Don't you keep doll parts in your attic? Totally standard attic stuff.

Yes, Gwen, the one with the adorable land shark that talks now.

[She grunted as she turned her body around the top floor, starting to scan. This was ... beyond creepy. They were all in pieces so even if they were actual people she wouldn't want to turn the back right now. She was about to suggest this was a bad idea when her eyes lit up on the scuff marks.

Racing over, she pointed and started to push on the shelf.]

Scuff marks. Hurry! I don't know what's going on here, but I'm not interested in finding out. Let's just hope this is a way out.