JANUARY 2021 TDM

[sodder]

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!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

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.

Comments

Two!!

[obitus]

Nico's brain goes extremely slow, when he just wakes up. Slow enough that someone essentially tells him to scram, he just rolls over away from the source of the voice and jams the pillow over his exposed ear. That seems like something he does not want to deal with right now.

"Five more minutes," he grumbles loud enough to be heard, after a second struggling to make language work in his head again. Lazy.

Re: Two!!

[glumchum]

Immediately, Thanatos gets this feeling like he is talking to Hypnos again. He'd love to ignore a strange boy, but 1. he smells so strongly of death, and 2. his presence is making Thanatos really anxious for some reason.

"No more minutes", he finally responds in some annoyance, deciding that touching a strange person in bed wasn't a good idea, so he uses the blunt top of his scythe to poke him. "Up. Out. I don't know how you got here, but get moving."

[obitus]

Nico protests and squirms away from the scythe enough that he ends up falling out of the other side of the bed in a heap of blankets, which at least does the job to wake him up.

He picks his way out of the pile quickly enough after that, but boy he comes up for air looking rumpled and frazzled and probably just as confused as Thanatos feels.

Speaking of Thanatos, that's... definitely a god. And the creeping familiarity of chthonic god presence narrows it down pretty far on which god it might be. Especially when the scythe is involved. He looks down at his own hands, taking stock of himself for what is probably a second too long but give him a minute to finish waking up, and asserts: "I'm not dead." He means hello, probably!

[glumchum]

He almost feels bad about him falling out of bed, but that anxiety is still bothering him, so he has a harder time feeling sorry. Also he hardly poked him that hard! That's not on him.

"I have not come to collect you." The situation is read correctly for once. It was a little hard dealing with the first person he'd met, who didn't seem to understand how strange it was that he was conversing with a mortal. Awkward. "And if I had, looking yourself over probably wouldn't have helped. I do not tend to violent deaths. But enough about that, you have to go."

Or they have to touch, but he doesn't know that and CERTAINLY doesn't want to.

[obitus]

Well. That's good. Not being dead is good. Nico doesn't say that his father might make Thanatos come fetch him anyway no matter what kind of death he has, but he's still pretty sure it's true: that's nepotism, baby!

But regardless: "What? I don't have to go anywhere, this is my—" This... is not Nico's house.

He looks around, baffled again by the surroundings he's just noticed, before deciding that if death himself is actively warning him to get out of somewhere he should probably listen, and he promptly walks towards the darkest shadow that's sitting in the corner of the room. For a moment he seems to melt into it... and then he immediately walks right back out. That's, uh, new. There's a beat of silence. "I'm trapped."

[glumchum]

His stoic front isn't really keeping together at this point as he grits his teeth and hopes that the kid can't see him sweat. It's fine. Whatever is making him anxious can't be that bad, right? He turns around for a moment, as if he could just leave himself, but he just spots that peep hole again and it just makes him more uneasy.

He just puts his hood up then. It's fine. "I was afraid of that..." Not that he's afraid! Logically, he shouldn't be. Except the 'trapped' thing, which is, in fact, his biggest fear actually. But it isn't as if he is going to die, right? Though maybe dying would free him. He's not interested in finding out.

Wait a second... "Who are you that you travel in the darkness?"

[obitus]

Nico looks around at the walls. Are they closing in? He crosses one arm over his chest, fingers digging into the bicep of his other arm, nervous now for the first time.

Okay. Thanatos is a god, surely he'll find a way out of this. As to whether or not he'll leave Nico behind when he does... that's hard to predict with gods.

Maybe his being one of the few people actually aligned with his dad will work out in Nico's favor. Hopefully it will. "I'm a son of Hades," he explains, is the air getting thinner too? Oh, this is not good. "How do we leave?"

[glumchum]

"Another one...???" He didn't think Hades had another son, but he is too busy to be bothered with watching his boss 24/7. "I suppose that makes some sense, with you smelling of the underworld so." A mystery to puzzle out some other time! Also, he doesn't want to think about Zagreus right now, except that he ends up doing it anyway and immediately is exasperated thinking about what he would be doing to get out of here.

Thanatos' attempt takes a similar approach to Nico's when he attempts to just teleport away. A green light foretells both his disappearance, and the return when he simply reappears where he left.

That makes him grumble a little in frustration. "It may need a more physical solution", he says, wrinkling his nose before pointing his scythe at the peep hole. "Perhaps that is a weak point."

[obitus]

Another one—— Nico is still indignantly staring at Thanatos when he simply disappears, mouth open like he actually had some retort ready (he did not), and for that split second where it's just him in the empty, shrinking room, he's convinced that he's been left alone.

But then Thanatos is back in a burst of green light, and, oh.

That means he's trapped, too, doesn't it?

Nico's mouth snaps shut and he turns to where the god is pointing, torn between relief and fear and all the while making a concerted effort not to breath too much, too quick. The air is so thin... This is not the jar, but it's only barely not the jar, and having Death as a companion is not a particular comfort. "Okay," he remembers to reply, shakily, after a moment staring: he's not talkative on a good day, and this is definitely not a good day.

Either way, it's awfully strange how the peep hole feels like it's almost pulling at him now that he's looking. Nico takes a step closer to it, spares half a glance back at Thanatos, and then bends to peer through the hole into the hallway beyond. "There's someone out there," he says, confused, then visibly freezes up. After a few seconds too long looking, he scrambles back away from the wall like it burned him, too panicked to say anything else.

[glumchum]

The both of them are not talkative. This won't be something they puzzle out with some good discussion, probably. He watches as Nico passes him, trying to look calmly indifferent as his jaw clenches in a mixture of contained anxiety and frustration.

When the boy seems frightened away by what he sees, Thanatos lifts a hand, hesitating a little, but eventually goes to pat Nico on the shoulder, which surprisingly alleviates some of the apprehension he's been having.

"Do not fear, Little Prince", he offers, not really certain how to be supportive, but wishing to be on some level. "Whoever is out there will pose no danger to you here." Not while Thanatos is trapped here too, he means. It isn't out of sympathy that he's offering help though, it is only because he's a son of his boss.

"Perhaps you should take a seat while I try to puzzle this out." He's never solved a puzzle like this but here he goes! Also going to peer through the peephole and seeing that, which causes Thanatos to also reel back, standing up straight, his fingers obviously tightening on his scythe as he grumbles to himself something about an unpleasant feeling.

[obitus]

Despite himself, Nico relaxes fractionally at the touch to his shoulder. A god freely offering aid is not exactly an everyday occurrence, and it's making him cautiously optimistic.

Except, then Thanatos doesn't react much better than he did. Nico, having been too stock full of nervous energy to wrangle himself into a seat, finds his shoulders hunching up again as the god pulls away from the wall.

That can't be good. Hesitantly: "You saw it too?" He saw Tartarus, and even the gods he knows won't go there. It doesn't seem far-fetched to him that it's just visions of Tartarus and not his memories specifically.

[glumchum]

Thanatos growls to himself as he turns away from the peephole, closing his eyes to shut out the memory both of the thing standing out there and The memory of the moment in which he was chained up by his own chains, unsure if he were ever going to be saved. Terrible.

"Yes. It seems there is something creating artificial anxiety in this general area, so..." He's going to just step away from it because how DARE they make him feel something, especially something as undignified as fear. He's uncomfortable with the situation ANYWAY, but he shouldn't be afraid, certainly not of some deformed creature and his own memory. Even if the memory is of a time where he was trapped, which he seems to be again.

He is reluctant also to join Nico, but he decides he will think better over there, and finally sits on the bed. It makes himself relaxed enough to at least let his shoulders slump a little.

"I suppose I could attempt to carve through the wall, but my scythe is hardly made for such a task."