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July 2018 Test Drive Meme

JULY 2018 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to July's Test Drive Meme! This is our first Test Drive ever so let's make it a good one. This month's Test Drive's theme is: JAPANESE BASED 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, supernatural horror, body horror with stitches, potential gore, potential burning.

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

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

THE SISTERS OF KOJI POND

The streets of Deerington are hazy this fine summer evening in July. Buzzing drunkenly through the tall wild grass on the sides of streets are the speckled dots of fireflies as they fly about. It's a bit muggy, the kind that makes your clothes hang from your body and cling against the slopes of your shoulders and arms. It's easy to feel lost in the tranquility of that perfect summer night. The stars are bright overhead, and there's a full moon in the sky that looks as big as a quarter from where you're standing. Distantly, it smells like somewhere someone is having a late night bonfire. If you listen hard enough, you could almost hear the crackling of the wood as it splinters and burns.

That's when you can hear the soft laughter of a woman. It's the appealing kind of laughter that maybe reminds you of a distant lover, a sister, a friend, or maybe even your own mother. Turning towards the laughter, you might see the shining glow of the moon tucking itself behind a nearby building. But no, the moon was still up in the sky where it belonged. Wasn't it? The moon has halved itself. That's all right. That's how it had been when you last looked. Wasn't it?

The laughter distracts you from the halved moon, sounding closer now. The exhale of a sigh and you feel that prickling sensation that you are not alone. That's when you see a white cat. The creature is sitting neatly in front of a street lamp, and it's positively otherworldly with its luminescent glow. So that's where the moon had gone. The cat appears perfectly normal except it has twin tails winding slowly back and forth behind it.

When the cat finally looks your way, it opens its mouth and a woman's laugh comes out of it, bright and cheerful.

The cat stands up and pads down the sidewalk, its tails twirling about in an almost mesmerizing motion. Behind you, the moon has gone from a half down to a thin crescent, the stars blacking out one after the other.

If you follow the cat, it takes you down winding streets. The cat takes you to Koji Pond. Above the sky has gone completely black, and there are no fireflies to see. The street lamps have gone completely out. It's just you and the woman-.

The woman? What had happened to the cat? No, it had always been a woman you were following, right? You can't mistaken a cat for a woman.

But there's not just one woman. There's two, you realize. Two at opposite ends of the pond. Each are wearing an identical moon-white kimono. One is laughing softly, but the other is staring blankly across the water. The grave woman wears her long black hair up in a tight bun, whereas the laughing woman's hair is flowing free and filled with soft flowers. The grim woman turns her flat, black eyes and gestures to you.

"Come here. Now."

The laughing woman tucks some hair behind her ear, looking your way. She radiates warmth and that summer sweetness you remembered feeling before the world went dark. "My sister is so cruel. Ignore her. Sit beside me."

Which woman will you go to? Neither of the women will pressure you, but you'll find that if you try to leave, your sight will grow darker and darker, though you won't be blind exactly. It's more like the light from all the worlds in existence have been stolen away and put into these two women. Everything beyond them is cast in darkness.

If you go to the stern woman, her tight expression will smooth out and she will bow her head, cupping her hands against her chest. From her sleeves, she will remove a silk bag of roasted soybeans. She hands them to you, not smiling, but not looking quite as severe as she had moments ago. "Scatter them."

Once you do, you'll notice the more you scatter, the more stars you bring back into the night sky. By the time you're done with the bag, the women will have both disappeared, and the white cat from before will be sitting where the stern woman once sat. Only this time, the cat has one tail.

However, if you decide to go to the laughing woman....

As you come closer, you'll notice that her hair is parted to hang evenly over her shoulders, and at the back of her neck is ...a mouth. A snarling mouth with sharp teeth. The closer you walk to her, the hotter and more stifling the air around you becomes. All you can hear is the woman laughing. Her face is reflected a million times in the water's surface in Koji Pond, all laughing, an entire auditorium's worth of laughter hurled at you.

You must overcome the laughter. The woman's hair will grow, wrapping itself around you wherever it can to drag you towards her. The moment you assault the woman, her laughter will turn to screams and the world all around you will feel as if you've been placed into an oven. Small fires will spark live in nearby bushes and across the grass.

It doesn't seem like regular objects can truly kill her though.

The other sister can't reach you, but she is throwing raw soybeans to you. They scatter all over the place. If you're quick on your feet, you'd think to pick them up. If you're even quicker, you'd think to throw the soybeans into the nearby fires to roast them. This seems to be the only way to really hurt the woman- and the only way to eventually banish her. But it'll take some time.

The worst part? The longer you stay near the woman, the sicker you'll feel. Maybe you'll come down with the cold, or maybe you'll grow blisters on your tongue. It doesn't matter: you'll grow terribly sick with some illness in the world and nothing will cure it until the woman has been abolished. And when she finally is? You will be left terribly weakened, but the stars will slowly come back as will the full moon.

I LOVE YOU: PLEASE LOVE ME BACK

It begins as a regular day in Deerington. The only problem is that there's really no such thing as a regular day in Deerington. When you come to, you'll find yourself feeling particularly emotional. Whether that's overly sad or happy, it doesn't seem to matter, because you're feeling everything so intensely. Maybe you just didn't sleep right, or maybe it's this weird dream you're having. Hopefully if you ignore it, it'll go away.

Except it doesn't go away. It's beginning to feel isolating being alone with your thoughts, even if they're happy, because it feels like you're near bursting to express yourself to someone.

When you finally cave, it's to the nearest person. The urge grows even louder inside of you until finally you're exclaiming loudly to the other person how you're feeling. Then you think to ask something that seems perfectly natural to you: you ask for a hug. Or maybe you ask for a handshake. Any contact.

Maybe the other person is sympathetic, or maybe they're feeling this emotional onslaught as much as you are. Either way, the moment your skin makes contact with another person's body, you'll feel a sudden swoop of sensation slide through your skin. It doesn't hurt, necessarily, but you've never felt anything quite like it before. And you don't want to stop touching this person wherever you may be touching them. As a matter of fact, you want to get closer. This urge does not need to be felt on both ends.

But the closer you get, the more yourself you begin to feel. Until at last you decide to look to where you have touched the other person.

Securing the two of you together are thick, coarse black stitches. Try and tug yourself away will result in atrocious pain on both ends. Anywhere your skin has touched the other person's will have been stitched to it. Careful getting hysterical though- the more emotional you become, the more likely you'll be to crowd closer to the person you're sewn into, and the more you'll fuse together. Better try and calm each other down first.

The solution is simple: you need to cut your way out of the bond. The tricky part is finding something to cut it with...and, well, the fact that the moment someone tries to cut the stitches, you'll both feel a hysterical urge to stay together forever.

It's possible to overcome that urge- but boy, do you need to have an iron will. Cutting the stitches is a miserable ordeal that hurts every snip of the way- but each time you cut a stitching, it fades away entirely as if it had never been there to begin with.

There is another option, of course. You could always jump into some water and get the stitches wet. Once you do, they'll melt right off you, not even leaving holes or dots behind. Surely you hadn't just imagined that, right?

THIS IS MY HOLE, IT WAS MADE FOR ME!

It is certainly a nice day for a refreshing hike into the woods! Or perhaps you have decided that a little exploration is in order for this new, strange town you have woken up to. At some point along the way, perhaps you find someone else on the trails of the National Park. No such thing as bad company, right? As you traverse towards Mount Rheum, the wind begins to pick up and you hear a low moaning. You could swear that you recognize that voice. Before you can place any names, the moaning stops and it's easy to think that maybe it was just the wind. Winds pulling through the trees always did make the strangest noises.

Except when the wind picks back up, you're more certain that you know this voice. Maybe it's the voice of your companion, or a loved one, a hated one from back home...Maybe it's even your own voice that you recognize. Each time the wind blows, the voice seems to change. It can't be the wind? It all seems to be coming from one direction: Mount Rheum.

You never quite reach the base of the mountain.

Even if you head straight on towards the mountain, when you pass through the line of trees that should technically open up to the base, you'll find no such thing. Instead, you'll find an enormous looming wall of gray slate. You can't even see the mountain behind it, it's so immense. How did you not see that from the forest? The wall seems to be tipped towards the mountain, and you think, just maybe, you could climb it. It crosses your mind for just a second before you notice something odd about the wall. From far away, it looks like a bunch of black smudges. But as you grow closer, you realize they aren't smudges at all. They are holes.

Holes the shape of human beings. And every single hole looks completely different from the next. There's hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, and they climb all the way up the slate wall. And there is one hole made specifically for you.

You may even find the hole that belongs to someone you know, or your companion, and every time the wind blows, you can hear the groaning voice of that person coming from within their hole.

It is impossible to get over the wall of gray slate. No matter how hard you may try. But it seems possible to find your own hole. You'd swear that the holes are moving. Examine the inside, and they seem to go on indefinitely. Put your hand inside any of them, and they will feel oddly warm. As warm as a human body. If you put your hand into the hole that belongs to the person you're with, they will feel a terrible coldness overcome them. Keep your hand in long enough, and you'll begin to see them die right in front of you. Better keep your hands to yourself....Or that'd be easier said than done if you didn't feel yourself grow in power, in intelligence just from stealing their life force.

Climbing into your own hole? You'll feel exhilarated! Alive! Like you have truly found the proof of your own soul. You don't want to leave your hole. It was made for you!

It is almost impossible to get out of your own hole. Chances are good you'll be slowly pulled into it, your body steadily crushed and stretched out, but you'll be conscious the entire time, and at some point you'll begin to moan horribly from the pain of it all.

Of course, you can always be saved. If someone climbs into your hole after you, it'll break apart the rock structure clenching down around you and they might be able to pull you out in time. You'll be left terribly weak, pale, and incapable of proper speech for a couple of hours...But at least you're not dead.

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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"Niall," he pleasantly corrects. The boy was right the first time. Niall or Lynch, but never Mr. Lynch. Not if he could help it.

The instant recognition and subsequent deference tells him quite a lot in very few words. "Did Ronan send you?" Certainly it wouldn't be Declan who'd think to search in a dream. "Or is he with you?"

"Neither." Depending on your definition of with. He squinted a little, because Niall's questions were unexpected. He thought Adam was here looking for him?

"I saw the car and thought Ronan would have come with it." He hadn't calculated for any other option. "Gansey's here."

He expects that Niall knows Gansey, and also offers it as proof of his own alliances. Gansey will vouch for me.

"Suppose we'll both be waiting a while longer, so," Niall sighs, and looks off down the road as if he expects Ronan to appear on cue. He doesn't. Niall's eyes slide back to Adam. "I take it you're a friend of theirs?"

"Best friends." Adam doesn't mention the others, and doesn't mention that he and Ronan are more than friends. He has no idea if Ronan came out to his father. That's not Adam's secret to tell.

"We think there's a good chance Ronan will come, since Gansey and I are here. You know how magic and dreams like things in threes." Which is Adam's way of saying by the way, I'm a magician.

"Hope I haven't thrown off the count." Since Niall would be the third, in this case. No, but his story's a different one. He nods, more to himself than to Adam, though he does understand Adam's meaning. "Has Gansey found his king yet?" Niall wonders, because though he only saw Gansey a few days ago, he suspects from this boy's age that a number of years have passed on the other side.

"In a manner of speaking." Adam shrugs and tucks his hands into his pockets. Hopefully Niall didn't expect that strange magic teenagers encountered in dreams would give him straight answers about things.

He understands the implication in the question, and Niall's understanding that some time has passed since he last returned. That part, at least, Adam will expand upon.

"Time's strange here, and we've all been drawn into the dream from different points. Gansey's nineteen here and knows a year into my future. I'm just nineteen." As of today, and only if the calendar here counts for anything. "Ronan's eighteen, as of when I saw him last."

"You're all men now," Niall muses, and says nothing more for a moment. He thinks of the two or three years that will follow his death, and his relief that Ronan has survived at least to adulthood. Then he clears his mind, because this is a dream after all, and lingering on death will invite it to manifest.

His attention refocuses on Adam. "And you, magician? What do you make of all this?"

Adam's glad to be recognized for what he is. "Complicated. It's a dream, but it's something else, too. From what I've seen so far, I think there are at least three layers. There's at least one controlling force, maybe two or three. If only one, then it's controlling multiple factions and setting them against each other as it pleases. There are dreamers, which I mean in the sense that you and I are both dreaming this. You can tell the dreamers by these, among other signs." Adam holds up his wrist to show his fluid, a high-tech flat phone that curves into a sort of wide bracelet.

"I can control the dream to an extent, if I try, but it's about as good at controlling me as I am at controlling it, so I recommend that you use your judgement about trusting me on a case by case basis. I am not always Adam Parrish."

Nice to meet you, by the way.

Niall smiles in approval without a hint of condescension, as if recognizing Adam as a peer. The report is more or less in line with his own observations. "Grand," he says, with a single clap of his hands. It doesn't seem to bother him that Adam has admitted he might become possessed by the dream and betray Niall at any moment. In truth, it makes him no different from any other creature Niall has ever encountered in a dream - besides Aurora.

Abruptly shifting both the topic and his demeanor, he nods in the direction of his house and asks, "Fix you a bite to eat? I don't think Ronan will be dropping in today, so there's no sense in standing around here like a pair of idiots."

Adam nods agreement. He's not much better at accepting hospitality than he ever has been, but conversations such as theirs are better conducted while not standing in the middle of the street, so he follows Niall in the direction of the house.

"You haven't asked me about your own future." The fact stands out to Adam. It's clear that the two of them are very different men, but it still seems strange that any man presented with the information Adam has offered would not ask. Adam's given away that he has never met Niall, and explained that years have passed since whatever time Niall remembers. He finds it strange how easily Niall accepts that. Time in dreams might flow differently, but not like this.

Niall barks out a laugh, as if Adam's told a joke, and replies, "What future?" in a way that makes clear he already knows he doesn't have one. He leads the way into the house without faltering in his buoyant step. "We're a hardy lot, us Lynches, but we don't come back from getting our skull cracked like an egg. And speaking for myself, I wouldn't want to. No, lad, I know I'm gone. All that's left for me is the dream now."

Strange, that he knows. Interesting.

"You're not the only one I've met who's here after death." And that other story is more plausible now, since Niall knows how he dies. Unsurprising, Adam supposes, that dreamers live on in dream worlds. Comforting to think that Ronan might live forever. "Gansey and I have reason to believe that we are alive and sleeping. We can both feel the ley line on the other side of the dream."

Adam looks around the house as they enter. It feels so familiar, and yet not. The Barns was home for the Lynches. This place is no one's home yet.

The house is a dull one, yes. One that Niall has yet to improve, though he intends to make a project of it in order to test the limits of his influence on the dream later. For now, he makes his way to the kitchen.

"The fairy road," Niall agrees, preferring a more romantic name for the ley line. He opens the refrigerator to rummage through it. "Aye, I feel it, as well. Lord, I don't suppose you know whether Declan remembered to bury me on it?" He doesn't expect Adam to answer that. "I don't doubt that you and Gansey are alive. For the time being."

Adam follows after him, attentive to every detail. He didn't expect to like Niall. Or, more accurately, he'd expected to be disliked by him. With everything that everyone--mostly Ronan--said about Niall, Adam had expected that Niall would have disdained him the way Gwenillan had. Seeing him for the ordinary, joyless mongrel that he was. Someone unsuited to the gift of magic that he held.

"Ronan and I handled Greenmantle," he says. It's not the kind of information he would normally offer to anyone, and has worked hard to keep it a secret, but he feels that it's the sort of thing that murdered men are due. "He sent your killer after your sons, looking for the Greywaren. Gansey handled the Gray Man. When Greenmantle came to see to things himself, Ronan and I... resolved the situation."

He doesn't need details. But he has a right to know that his family is safe from the mess he created. Adam folds his arms over his chest, defensive and prepared to argue his decisions.

"Reckless!" Niall declares, not in admonishment, but with admiration. Considering it was he who started that foolish rumor about the Greywaren in the first place, he's hardly in any position to be scolding someone for cleaning up his mess. Especially a mess like Greenmantle. Though he had not disliked Adam in the first place, the boy is certainly endearing himself to Niall. This news doesn't surprise him, because he would never have expected his son to forego vengeance, but Niall's nevertheless pleased to hear it.

There's no need for deeper emotion than that. He picks up his head and glances back to Adam. "Do you like omelets?"

Adam's need to be polite to authoritative adults wars with his need to argue the point, but in the end he hates being called reckless on an action for which he took pride in his attention to detail.

He does like omelets. He wants that omelet. But the indignation bubbles up despite his best intentions, because Niall is wrong, and he's wrong about Adam. "It wasn't reckless. It was self-defense."

"Are the two mutually exclusive now?" Niall doesn't care to point out how very dangerous Greenmantle could be, how far his influence could reach, and so on, and so on. These things hadn't mattered to himself, either. It might have cost him his life, but he'd so loved every second of flagrant disrespect he'd shown that desperate little prick. He could never regret his insubordination, even with his skull caved in.

But when it comes to this boy, Niall doesn't care to quarrel at all. Adam can take offense if he so chooses. In the meantime, Niall begins preparing their omelets. He always prefers to take a lack of refusal as approval.

"It was carefully planned and necessary," Adam insists, though without heat as Niall continues cooking and doesn't fight him on it. "That's the opposite of reckless."

He moves to hover a little closer, watching this process with interest. Cooking has always interested Adam, and it's been something he's never had the luxury of time or ingredients to explore. He recently enjoyed a week stuck in a cabin on the mountain here with plenty of ingredients and a cookbook, which has now whetted his appetite for the topic. "Why did you never teach Ronan to cook?"

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