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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.
no subject
She's about to leave him to it and try opening a drawer again when he asks her to read something. "I can," she answers as she walks over and takes the picture from him. She turns it over and silently reads the message to herself first. A chill runs down her spine. "It says, 'You can't leave without me.'" Good gods, what are they trapped with in here? "If there was any doubt we weren't alone in here, there isn't now."
no subject
He sighs, going to take the picture back from her. At least it had a reminder of Anna on it. Something to push him forward.
“Why is it spirits have to be so aggressive about asking for help?” He doesn’t sound at all serious in his complaint, because if there is one way to cope with a clearly terrifying situation, it’s obviously making jokes. About the thing trying to possibly kill you. “They really need to learn better communication skills.”
no subject
"This isn't your first time dealing with one?" she asks conversationally as she looks around the hallway, trying to find the source of the creaking. Nothing immediately jumps out, so she leaves it go for now.
She opens one of the drawers, hoping to find some more answers. Instead, she finds a picture of Steve. Just seeing him is enough to startle her and make her slam the door shut. She sighs. "Whatever one you dealt with before, I hope it was friendlier than this one."
no subject
Instead, he clears his throat a little awkward. Friendlier. "Well, yeah. I mean, eventually." He wrinkles his nose some as he goes to turn over another picture, just in case it might have another clue. Nada. "After they set a forest on fire, tried to drown one of my friends, almost crushed my fiancée, and trapped us all in a really weird tornado ball."
This probably isn't comforting.
"... But they were great after they calmed down and just told us how to help them."
no subject
"...so elemental spirits." There's a smile that tugs on her lips as she listens, all the while flipping over photo frames to see if any had clues. But she comes up with nothing as well. "At least they calmed down eventually? I fear this one might not be so reasonable. Let's hope it doesn't start a fire. This place would go up like a tinderbox."
She huffs out a frustrated sigh. As she turns around, she realizes there's a phone in this hallway. It's a long shot, but, "Do you think that phone works?"
no subject
He was trying to jiggle another door handle on what he figured was a bathroom door, but stops when he hears her suggestion, looking over to her. He pauses, looking up and down the hall, and then figures he may as well admit he has no idea what he's looking for.
"Maybe." A beat. "What's a phone?"
no subject
"I'll just check it in a moment." Given her start on Earth decades ago, Diana's usually fine with taking time to explain things to people. But now isn't exactly the best time or place for that.
Diana picks up the receiver and holds it to her ear. There's a dial tone, but just when she was about to put it down, a voice comes through over the static. "You've been chosen." Aaaand she immediately slams it down.
"...nothing helpful."
no subject
"Right."
That seems to be the theme in this hall. He goes to walk away from the door he'd been looking at, peering at some writing on the wall which is thankfully in a handwriting he can read—The gap in the door...—and there's a creaking sound behind him, different than the last one. He turns his head to see the door he'd been jiggling partially opened, his forehead wrinkling as he takes a step forward. He's about to reach out to touch the handle when it quickly slams shut again with a loud bang that makes him jump.
He's gonna pretend that didn't happen, though his voice is a fraction more nervous than it had been before when he speaks. "... Maybe if we uh. If we go through the door again, there'll be more helpful clues in the next loop. Since everything seems to change when we try to leave."