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soddersays2020-12-27 12:14 pm
sodder) wrote in soddersays2020-12-27 12:14 pm
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JANUARY 2021 TDM
JANUARY 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to January’s Test Drive Meme!
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: Claustrophobia, panic attacks, ghosts, demons, hallucinations, blood, violence
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!
THE ONLY ME IS ME
The room is unfamiliar. You're not even sure how you ended up in here. Had you fallen asleep? That has to be it. Even if you're not a being who ever sleeps (which must make being in a dream world feel that much more surreal), it feels like the answer. There’s no door, no windows, and the only source of light in the whole place is two tiny, extremely dim side table lamps that give a soft, orange glow to your surroundings. It’s hard to see and easy to bump into the sparse amount of hotel room furniture that seems to be scattered around the small space. Hopefully you don’t have bad knees.While there is no exit, if you look along the walls, you will eventually find a peep hole. The small hole in the wall makes you feel instantly uneasy, even if you’re someone who isn’t prone to fear in the first place. You’ll feel fidgety and tense, but there’s a part of you that still desperately wants to look through it. Avoiding the peep hole will make the tension disappear eventually, but it creeps back up every time you look at it.
If you woke up here alone, another person will appear in the bed you woke up in the moment you turn your back. It’s good to not be alone, right? But with the room so small, the air might start to feel a little thin. Is it getting hot in here? Is the ceiling feeling a little lower than it did last time? Are the walls closing in? It’s hard to tell if it’s all in your head or if the room really is getting smaller. Having to share it with another person, to share the limited air with someone else, is enough to make anyone panic a little.
Whenever one of you decides to look through the peep hole, you will see a man standing on the other side in a typical hotel hallway. He’s just waiting. Watching. Or at least you think he’s watching; it’s hard to tell when he doesn’t have a face at all. His presence makes that fear in you spike, your worst memories flashing before your eyes, and you won’t be able to look for long without going into a full panic attack. Getting as much distance between you and the peep hole is the fastest way to get a chance to calm down. If you can get yourself to calm down at all.
The key to getting out is the person beside you. If you choose to let them close, eventually the panic will start to ebb, and you’ll find yourself feeling more at ease the longer you sit beside them. Touching, whether it’s a hug, a hand on the shoulder, or more, will eventually make the room stop feeling so tight and the air won’t feel as thin. Eventually, you might start to feel some semblance of trust— trust that they can keep you safe. Approach the peep hole with your roommate and look through it together; while you’ll still see the painful memory from before, one of your happier memories will play soon after to soften the blow. Seeing both your dark and Your light is the best way for someone to truly get to know you, after all.
Once the memory fades, you’ll both be on the other side of the wall, and the man outside the door will be nowhere in sight, with no sign that he was ever really there at all.
DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL NOW
Walk through a door, any door and you're not where you thought you'd be. Instead, what lies before you as well as to your right are what looks like perfectly normal hallways you'd find in an apartment building or a very large, fancy house. There's doors spread out along either side at varying intervals and one of them opens to let another person in, someone just like you who probably meant to go to the restroom and ended up here. If you try opening the doors, none of them budge no matter what you do and so it seems the only choice you have is to pick a direction and walk.There's a tingling sense of dread that creeps up your spine as you go. You pass what looks to be doors to restrooms, bedrooms, living rooms and recreational rooms, but none of them seem to be an exit. On the walls are pictures and paintings, it looks like there's a familial theme to them, there's group portraits and moments captured in time such as when someone's Dad spilled punch all over himself at the family barbecue. All wholesome and loving looking pictures but oddly not of just one family, in fact you might see some familiar faces in there. Along with pictures, there's narrow hall tables with vases and more photos in frames and all the drawers seem to be locked, though you get the sense there's something in there...
Eventually, you turn a couple corners and it almost feels like you've come full circle, but at the end of the hallway there's a clear exit. Three steps down to a cracked open door. It sort of looks like a garage from what you can see, but when you open it... you're right back where you started. Only now, the halls are colder, the lights overhead that were once warm and steady are flickering and the pictures on the walls are tilted, some even cracked. There's a creaking sound somewhere far off, like something heavy swinging from a rope. You feel as though something is watching you, following close behind as you hurry your way through the halls again to find another exit.
Again, the only exit is the garage door and with no other option, you step through. And you're back where you started only now other doors in the halls are cracked. In one you see the light of a television playing static in a dark room and someone sobbing and muttering to themselves, in another there's bright red light spilling out of the crack and you see movement, something swaying, the creaking is louder. Heart pounding, you make your way around the corner and the drawers of the tables in the hall all open at once to let damaged photos fly out, all of you and your friends and family in horrifying circumstances or dead.
Run to the exit again and you are back at the start and there's now spatters of blood over the walls like a grisly murder occurred in several locations along the halls. The creaking is louder and so are the wails of the person in the room with the television. More doors are open a crack here and there and each promises something horrifying should you open them. Maybe they're abstract manifestations of your greatest fears, painful memories coming through the static T.V. set, or a stereotypical ghostly spectre with unfinished business. There is a supernatural force in this place and it feeds on your deepest traumas and fears whatever they may be, or it'll be content to sip on the fear brought on by a jump scare or a ghostly shadow watching you from afar wherever your turn, waiting for the moment to suddenly appear beside you.
To escape this haunted loop of rising torment, you must bring the demonic spirit with you as you pass through the exit door. This can be any way you wish, though the easiest is to allow it somehow to possess your body while your companion wrestles it, and you, through. You can discover this solution through clues behind the pictures and scratched into the wood on the bottom of the drawers in the form of riddles, or you can stumble upon it by accident. Once the spirit is pulled through the door, it will break the loop and you will be back in Deerington, though perhaps not quite where you were when you opened the door the first time.
NOW'S THE TIME FOR ACTION
There's something watching you. You don't know what, but you can feel it in your bones. Sometimes you think you see it (them?) out of the corner of your eye, but you can't quite make out the who or the what that might be following your every move. Sometimes it looks supernatural, a mythical creature from your own world maybe, and other times... It looks like someone from home you never wanted to see again. People show up here all the time, it's not impossible...It doesn't stay just one being, though. Eventually you start to see small groups of people or things you can't quite make out before they disappear. It's hard to tell if they're really there at all or if it's all in your head. But the danger feels real. The inexplicable feeling of pure terror, the solid idea that they're going to kill you and you aren't going to be able to fight them off, the absolute assurance that they're evil. The longer this goes on, the more drawn to a crowd you'll begin to feel. There's safety in numbers, after all. But just being surrounded by people doesn't feel like enough, not when the other Sleepers you find feel just as on edge as you are.
In the center of the crowd are scattered tables. Each table has a bowl or jar filled with various party supplies. Bluetooth speakers that can connect to your Fluid to play music, noise makers, snap poppers, even pots, pans, and their lids. It's enough to make a real ruckus. And you're realizing that that might be the answer. You start encouraging the people around you to make as much noise as possible. Grab the things on the table and just start shouting whatever comes to mind. The more noise you make, the more the fear ebbs, and the shadows following you start to disappear. They almost seem like they're actually running from the noise. You keep shouting just to drive them as far away as possible.
You might notice that you're shouting out things you never expected— and so are the people around you. Emotions you wanted to keep buried, confessions you never planned on giving to someone, secrets you've been trying to keep to yourself. They come pouring out faster than you expect them to and they're there for anyone to hear before you can even stop yourself. Hopefully this doesn't have too big of a fall out for you.
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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"He....is dead?" There was a long pause where a look of astonishment crossed his face. Then, rarest of all rare expressions on Maul's face, a genuine smile crossed it. Impulsively, celebrating the news, he reached over and hugged Luke, the bearer of the best news he's heard in the entire year he's been stranded here in Deerington. Don't mind him if he nearly cracked your ribs, Luke. Sometimes he doesn't know his own strength. "Good."
Then he pulled back, suddenly aware of the display of emotion he'd just undergone. "I thought nothing would ever kill the old bastard. Much as I wanted it to be me, I knew that I would never be powerful enough to defeat him."
Suddenly, it all clicked in his head. The Force visions he'd been experiencing that he'd found out when he'd been thrust into the future, how Anakin Skywalker had somehow been the key to it all, a puzzle piece Maul couldn't fit into everything else he knew about the man. How someone here had told him of how he had a third apprentice after Dooku was killed. The disturbance in the Force when he'd been kept in the Mandalorian sarcophagus, hearing his master and another man, his voice full of pain as his master committed the last step of his plan to eliminate the Jedi. It all finally made sense to Maul.
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And then the hug came in, so sudden and strong. Luke stiffened, surprised to be hugged by not only a stranger but the exact Sith Obi-wan had warned him to stay clear of. The hug was strong and intense, and Luke had just enough time to let a hand pat the other's shoulder lightly in return. Good. The man was GLAD for this news. And in this strange hug, the room seemed to lighten around him too. The trust was fully there now, and he felt like he could breath clearly once more. Like something about the contact helped.
He... he let out a faint chuckle, a huff of a laugh in surprise as the other pulled back. Luke smiled a great smile, looking at the tattooed being, glad they weren't going to go head to head over some master/apprentice bantha shit. "It turns out all it took was a bit of love to over come the dark side. If my father hadn't of stepped in to save me, I'd be dead and the Emperor would still be in control. He never saw it coming. In that moment Vader died as well and Anakin returned to the light." And then Anakin died as well, and for a moment there was a pain of sadness that crossed Luke's face. He drew back, a sad smile on his face, head down.
"I never got to know my father, but I couldn't be prouder of him."
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Maul, were he any less dignified, would have rolled his eyes at the mention of love being able to redeem a Sith Lord. "You sound like half of my foolish friends in this town. They all believe in redemption through love as well." Something Maul kept being told but staunchly refused to believe himself, even when something like a simple hug from Usagi had been enough to stop him right in his tracks when his vendetta against Obi-Wan had blinded him with rage.
They would be proven right, of course. No one on the Dark Side was immune to the power of love save for Sidious himself. It could redeem even the most twisted souls, including Maul himself.
In a generous mood after being told Sidious would eventually die, and feeling a pang of sympathy for someone who had also lost their family after having such a short time with them, Maul told Luke something he would have otherwise kept to himself. He placed a friendly, gloved hand on Luke's shoulder. "Ask Obi-Wan about him. He is in this town as well and trained your father as his padawan from the time he was a small boy."
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"Maybe, just maybe, there is something to it. Love." He said with a shrug and a smile. There was also that Jedi code thing, about not falling in love? But hey, none of his masters had really brought that up, and had his father not loved someone, he and Leia wouldn't be around anyhow, so honestly, maybe there WAS something to it.
When the other mentioned asking Obi-wan, Luke smiled almost sheepishly. "Ah, yes. I've spoken to Obi-wan. I've asked a bit about my father, but I feel like I need to be careful of what I mention to him about what I know of his future." he winced, side glancing to Maul. "I really should have been more careful of what I said to you as well, but at least that was good news." Not much about Anakin's future, or Obi-wan's, was good news. At least not in HIS time.
"Still, I intend to ask him what I can." He said, moving to stand again, letting out a long deep breath of a sigh. "That is, if we can get out of here. Do you think cutting through this wall will help any?" Not that he wants to DO that though. That faceless man and the memories are on the other side after all. But they can't stay here forever, can they?
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"I know how to use discretion. I won't tell him of what we've spoken of here." Granted, the delicious suffering Obi-Wan would have undergone had Maul told him was tempting, but Maul at least knew enough to know someone telling him about his own future would have been a terrible and awful thing to do.
"I must ask you one question. Your home planet. Was it Tatooine?" He had to know if what he'd asked Obi-Wan while he lay dying in his arms was about Luke. Was he the one who had brought balance to the Force? Granted, what he'd already told Maul made it seem very possible, given he'd redeemed a Sith Lord and destroyed the last two of them for good, but he had to know for certain.
Maul, savvy to the ways of Deerington, shook his head. "I don't think that's the way this room works. I believe that hole in the wall is the key to it all." He gestured back towards the peephole. While the last thing he wanted to do was look through it once more, having the Jedi beside him gave Maul strength he didn't normally possess. This town always had a key to get out of situations, even if they didn't seem obvious at first glance.
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He was standing now, moving to the walls once more and searching them by hand again, but avoiding the peephole, for a bit longer. His head turned though, brow raised as he asked about his home planet. "It is. How did you know?" He'd been away long enough to not smell of sand and dust, but maybe it lingered still. Or maybe he just... knew. Because of Obi-wan? "I was raised there until a few years ago."
His hand came over to the peephole, feeling uneasy again, but his fingers covered it, allowing him to glance there but not look through. He frowned at it. "I've never felt so... uncomfortable before. About a hole in the wall."
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"I die there." It was an weird and disconcerting turn of phrase to use but Maul had no better way to put it. "I was thrust into the future here at one point and saw my ending. I tracked down Obi-Wan there." Because he wanted to die, though Maul wasn't brave enough to face the facts that was the reason why. "I deduced his purpose there wasn't to hide but to protect. As I lay dying, I asked him if it was the Chosen One, and he assured me it was. That had to be you."
Looked like the Jedi had misread that prophecy after all. It had been one generation early they thought it had come, but what was balance if not equality? To whittle down the Jedi and Sith both until there was none left and the Force was allowed to begin anew was one way of looking at it that neither side had ever dared to consider.
"You'll experience much worse than only this while in this town. But I think I understand now." The closeness, the physical contact, the sense of trust between them. "It will take both of us to be able to escape this room."
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The guy died there? Luke frowned, hearing him talk of the future and dying on his home planet. Tracking Obi-wan down, and... Chosen one? He frowned, shaking his head. "I'm not the chosen one. I'm just... the last, I suppose." he said modestly. Though there was Leia as well, and Yoda said to tech others what he had learned, which really wasn't a lot, but he would do his best.
He moved his hand at the hole, frowning, but not peeking through yet. He felt so uncomfortable standing here alone, by this hole, wondering if the faceless man was still there. He had to be the key out, right?
"If you've learned something to find us a door out, you might speak up a bit more than that. Teamwork I can do, but WHAT is it we have to do?"
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Maul gestures for Luke to come with him back over to the door. "I think we both must look through the hole in the wall together. Only then will we be able to escape this room." Team-building exercise, yay!