DECEMBER 2020 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to DECEMBER's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: SURREAL WINTER 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: psychological horror that deals with memory displacement, unnatural paranoia and madness, ghosts and hauntings, gore that includes limbs and organs, unknowingly eating rotted food and cannibalism

Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

YOU WIN OR YOU DIE

Perhaps you just stepped outside or you were on your way to the store, wherever you are out and about in Deerington, a blizzard so strong and thick with snow picks up around you and within seconds you can't see more than a foot in front of you. Choose a direction to search for shelter and you'll eventually come upon the mouth of a cave that you've never seen before and that's alarming in and of itself. But it's either going in the mysterious cave or getting lost in a blizzard and freezing to death.

Entering the cave takes you down a short narrow tunnel before it opens up into a large frozen over cavern with a narrow stone path that leads to an icy looking castle at the center. The air in the cavern is below freezing and while the castle has a foreboding look, the warm light that shines from all the windows promises warmth and safety. And when you step through the massive doors it's like stepping into another world. There's fires burning in every hearth and seasonal decorations of all sorts cover the walls and hang from the ceiling. No matter what you celebrate at this time of year in your world you are likely to spot several familiar cultural or religious ornaments.

And mingling around are countless ghostly but harmless and even friendly looking servants and lords and ladies, as well as other sleepers who have found themselves here just as you have. Make your way to the throne room and you'll find a medieval style court filled with more specters of finely dressed men and women standing to observe their liege dispense judgement and law. But no person sits upon that throne, just a lone crown that looks like it's made of ice that seems to call you forth. Nobody stops you when you reach out to touch the crown, in fact their faces seem to twist in an unnatural sinister delight the moment you do.

Once it has been touched by you, the full curse of the crown and throne settles in and you are compelled to place it on your head. Suddenly, the castle feels colder, you can swear there are greedy eyes on your crown and as you return to mingling and partaking in food and drink, the ghosts of court one by one start sidling up to you and whispering in your ear:

"I caught your most trusted friend in an affair with one who seeks to dethrone you, my liege." "Your advisor was plotting with the servant boy to poison your wine!" "I swear I witnessed your betrothed passing coin to an infamous assassin."

Your mind starts to place people in your life in the roles the ghosts claim plan to betray you, perhaps you now believe your best friend is your royal advisor plotting to poison you or that your significant other is your fiancé planning an assassination after you are wed. Or maybe it's someone you just met today that's suddenly your spouse. Your life as a sleeper in Deerington and everything before feels fuzzy, and all that matters is domination of power and being the only one seated on that throne. Paranoia slowly seeps into your bones as you continue to mingle with the court's holiday celebrations and all you can see are enemies until you're the one plotting or trying to end them before they can end you.

The more your irrational paranoia and suspicion grows, the colder the castle becomes, or perhaps that's just you. Ice follows you where you go, your skin is turning blue and everything you touch seems to frost. Maybe you have someone thrown in the dungeon to rot or you try poison or a knife in the dark, but no matter the more subtle paths you try to take out all your enemies, you eventually become so mad with power and paranoia it becomes a physical confrontation and somehow there's weapons all over the walls of this castle to grab and fight with or chase people through the maze-like halls with.

Only when the crowns are removed from the heads of those affected and not touched again does the curse lift, the affected sleepers slowly go back to normal and you look around to find that the ghosts have faded away and all the decorations are there, but they are made from pieces of people's limbs and organs. The food you have been eating may also have been rotted and covered in maggots or comprised of human body parts. And in horror you run for the nearest door to escape and then find yourself right back in Deerington. When the massive ornate doors close behind you and you look back, there's nothing there.

WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES

You know what they say. You can never truly know someone until you walk a mile in their shoes.

You wake up one morning, like any other. Nothing seems unusual about the day, nothing at all really. In fact, if you ignored the heavy snowfall lately, it would be an otherwise perfectly average day in a town in Maine. A glance out the window will show that there's been some paths carved in the snow, so maybe you can get out of the damned house a little. It won't last, so you might as well enjoy the freedom, right?

When you go to get dressed, however, there is something odd. There's another set of shoes there. Maybe you recognize them as a friend's, or maybe you've never seen them before in your life, but they're definitely not yours. On a whim, you feel an almost inexorable compulsion to try them on, and they fit perfectly! It does not matter how biologically impossible this might be because of different species, foot sizes, the fact that you've never worn high heels in your life, they fit, and fit perhaps better than any other shoes you've ever worn.

That's when the rubber meets the road, however. The moment you put them on, your memories feel fuzzy for a moment and then everything is just wrong. Your memories of life become those of the person whose shoes you are now wearing. Inconsistencies are papered over for a moment. Flagrant inaccuracies just don't seem important at first, and you go about your business, being them. There's always a strangeness to your day, a sort of surreal oddity to it. It feels 'off,' and every time you look in the mirror you swear that you see the words somewhere in the reflection "Cogito Ergo Sum. At qui ego sum?"

Eventually, the nagging feeling gets worse and worse until you're compelled to find the person wearing your shoes. Only then can the curse be lifted by talking about the pieces of each other's false lives, sharing bits about oneself and realizing in the haze, confusion and fear that they are sharing your memories, not theirs. When enough have been shared, the urge to trade shoes comes, and once the right ones are on your feet it's all back to normal. The false memories bleed away like the morning fog. At most, only vague recollections linger unless the two of you choose to continue talking about them. But the next time you look in the mirror, backwards, written in blood are the words:

"?I ma ohw tub ,ma I erofereht kniht I"

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

[That wasn't exactly a comforting thought given the way that things were going back home. Robyn wasn't exactly fond of being locked up in a place that was getting ready to be lifted beyond the reach of the world. But this kid seemed to be taking it well, so maybe it would be alright here.]

I'm used to being the odd one, but it's always the ones that stand out that are able to get the most done. They are usually willing to do what's needed for change to occur.

So you're right, we're just a bit more prepared for trouble and ready to show our teeth.