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December 2020 Test Drive Meme

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.

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Hah. I mean, you can't exactly take the lack of running and screaming for granted around here, either. But we're not fighting an unwinnable shadow war anymore, which has to count for something.

[Admittedly, he's not sure how much Robyn knows. Ironwood learning the truth had supposedly been what made him lose his damn mind, from what he's heard, so maybe she knows now, too. But even if she doesn't, keeping it a secret just doesn't feel like it matters anymore. Certainly not in Deerington, where there is no Salem, no relics, no Brother Gods to summon and wreak destruction upon the planet.]

Either way, not so sure there's much we can do about it. Far as we know, Sodder and Mother Superior aren't even in this...layer of reality? However that works.

[Pleasant as always she saw. But when he said that it wasn't certain what they could do she raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms.]

Then just what kind of war are we fighting? I keep hearing about Sodder, Mother Superior, and fighting. The pamphlet went on about them, in detail.

But what about the others, the other people who are trapped? You can't just call a group of people Wastes, it's even worse than what's happening to the people of Mantle.

There's plenty that can be done. You just have to realize what it is.

[Ah....there she went getting fired up again. It reminds him a bit of when Ruby gets herself going--you either got on board or out of her way. Her mother was the same, too. It's a trait he certainly admires, even if he finds himself too worn out for such drive, these days.

She crosses her arms at him, and he puts up his hands in semi-mock surrender. You know, that kind when you're both teasing but also legitimately don't want to set off some kind of fight? That one.]

Pretty sure we're not the ones who came up with the name, but I mean, if you can convince the Townspeople, go for it? I uh, don't think they're...exactly all here, though. It's like we don't even really exist to them.

[He shrugs. Honestly, he doesn't pay a lot of attention to the pastel-haired people, because they're unsettling at best and downright unpleasant at worse and there's always so many bigger problems to worry about.]

Anyway. If we had to call it a kind of war here, it'd be one for survival, I guess. There's always something weird or dangerous going on, and it's either the town messing with us or that fake nun, Mother Superior pulling the strings.

Doesn't mean we have to use it.

[As for trying to convince the townspeople, they might not be fans of the sleepers, but Robyn was sure that there was bound to be a way to work with them. There had to be a common ground between the two groups, something that they would be able to use to extend an olive branch and work together to get out of all this. And if they weren't, well that didn't mean she was going to let one group be marginalized and displaced because another thought they might be inconvenient or useless. But she was getting herself worked up, she couldn't help it.]

Doesn't sound all that different to me then. Some people were already fighting to survive just where they were, and not getting very much help with that fight either.

Just a nun in a mask rather than a snake with a mustache and tin soldier.

Fair enough. What would you go with instead?

[As for the matter of the war...he sighs. Whatever she'd learned by the time Ironwood had lost it, it wasn't the full picture, certainly.]

Anyway, it's more complicated than that. Ironwood losing his mind is just one small piece of what's going on in Remnant.

[He shakes his head.]

But let's find somewhere out of the cold to talk about it, huh?

How about people? Seems to work for everyone else. But there has to be something better than waste. It makes it sound like they're less than that.

[Getting out the cold though, that was an idea she could agree with him on.]

Know anywhere to get something warm?

Mm, yeah.

[Qrow is...not entirely "people" does apply to everyone in town, honestly. Specifically the pastel-haired residents--there's something not right about them, like they're another trick of the town. The "Wastes" feel more real, actually, so....the point stands. He rolls a shoulder in a shrug and moves on.]

There's a place that sells coffee and pancakes not far from here.

[Things were slightly disastrous the first time he went, what with Semblance-fueled syrup accidents, but he's kind of fond of it now. Too bad they won't actually be getting a chance to go anywhere, because all at once .... they're in a car on a snowy road, unaware of where they were moments before.... and with every moment, the air is getting heavier between them. He needs to tell her. She should know what she's unwittingly walked into, just trying to protect her city.]

...The war against Salem is unwinnable. She can't be killed.

Does everything stick to the table when you set it down?

[She was familiar with that kind of place, pretty good food for the price, and generally open when a lot of places wouldn't be. In a blink, though Robyn finds herself behind the wheel of a car, staring out into the snow that drifted down as they drove . . . somewhere, she couldn't recall really just where they were heading. The crater, the base of Atlas, somehow the destination seemed less important. As for the mood of the car, it reminded her of the airship ride to prison, after Clover. Robyn might have sways a lot of people, but when it really came down to moments like these, she wasn't great with words. She'd thought about launching into another story about May, just to break the silence, but then Qrow spoke first.

Her eyes just focused ahead as she listened. She'd only just learned about it, about Salem, amenity tower, all of it. Up until a day or two before she arrived here, the only war Robyn knew about was the one for Mantle's future. Robyn didn't like the idea of killing anyone, but there was never a hard-fast rule, and she'd pushed boundaries before. But to hear that the person responsible for all of it, the one controlling the Grimm, who was behind that man that tore them all apart, was invincible it really took the wind out from under your wings.]

What are we going to do then?

[If that isn't the multimillion lien question. Qrow squirms in his seat, staring out the window instead of at Robyn, looking tired. The gray streaks in his hair catch the light from outside, throwing the shadows of his face into starker relief.]

I don't know. The kids and I only found out a few months ago. The best idea we had before James lost his gods-damned mind was launching the tower and hoping that after we brought global comms back, a plan would come out of that.

[He lets out a sharp exhale.]

But all that's gone to shit, so hey. Welcome to the apocalypse!

[Robyn had been familiar with a bit of that, having learned about Amnity tower, though it seemed like he'd changed his mind to launch all of Atlas instead of just the tower somehow. Her hands tightened a little around the wheel, how had things gone so wrong so quickly?]

You know I thought things were bad enough with that mustached snake stealing the election and letting that man into the system to throw mantle into chaos, but you really had to one-up with an evil witch and everything else. What matters is the people know now, they can act accordingly.

But if it's the apocalypse, then I guess it's just time to show our teeth and bite back. Mantle won't go down quietly, even if that Tin Can general has given up on it, the Happy Huntresses will still be there for them.

[Just without her. Because somehow she'd become the damsel trapped in his tower, locked away in a cage, forced to watch each horrible decision as his lies continued to spread and unravel.]

Edited (I'm not good at this typing thing. Somehow submitted it before I was done.) 2020-12-20 15:23 (UTC)

No. People don't know the half of it. Mantle is just the tip of the iceberg.

[He shakes his head. The chill from outside feels like it's seeping into his bones, even though the heat is on in the car.]

The staff you would've heard about in Ruby's message, that's one of four items called Relics, and if Salem ever gets all four of them, the planet's done for. And I don't just mean in the "she'll have unimaginable power" sense. We're literally all going to die.

She already has more than anyone seems prepared for.

[At least from the way that everyone talked. She'd yet to see more up close than the Grimm and the idea that someone was controlling them was something she was still settling with. The rest was still a bit hard to believe though she'd confirmed it with her own semblance.]

Why don't you start back at the beginning, just what are these relics, and why are they bad news? Who made them, what happens when they come together?

[He sighs tiredly.]

It's a long story.

[....Somehow, though, he has the sense that there's a long drive ahead. He's not sure where they're going, but it's still far away. He might as well.]

You know the legends of the Brother Gods, right? It was them. They're real. They actually did create Remnant, and humans used to worship them directly. They thought Salem disrespected them for wanting to bring her lover back from the dead, and so they punished her with immortality. She used it to lead humanity in a war against the gods, and defeat the entire concept of death. She lost, and the gods crushed humanity and abandoned the planet.

[Another tired exhale. He rubs at his neck. This is all a lot, and he's not sure he would've believed any of it if it hadn't come directly from the Relic of Knowledge itself. He starts drawing patterns on the condensation on the window, just for something to do with his hands as he speaks.]

Except...then the God of Light came back. He went to Salem's lost love and offered him a deal, to live again and become the savior of the new humanity, and made the Relics. They're some kind of...cosmic test, I guess. If the Brothers are satisfied with the state of humanity when the Relics come together, supposedly they'll return to Remnant and live among us again. But if not...they'll obliterate the planet completely this time.

Salem's not exactly going for the peace and harmony option, if you catch my drift.

Edited 2020-12-31 12:30 (UTC)

[Robyn continued driving, not really sure if it was that they were heading somewhere in particular or if it was that they were going anywhere but where they had been. For now, she just focused on the road ahead and the story that Qrow told. She had heard the fairy tales. The Tale of Two Brothers, well apparently now that was just the start of the story.]

Given how we treat each other, and the current state of things, I know I'm not satisfied so chances are they wouldn't be either. But why wait so long, why is she trying to get them now?

[If what he was saying was true, then why all the secrecy about them? If people knew about it then maybe they would actually care, or maybe they could actually work together rather than fighting one another.]

Funny how those who have a bit of power or authority always want to test the people under them rather than themselves. Guess it shouldn't be any different for gods.

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