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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ To his credit, Majima almost didn't make a face as he shook Eames's hand. Allllmost. Oh, well. If nothing else, he could check all the boxes on his shady-ass foreigner checklist. ]

You'd guess right. C'mon, then, and we can both get our lush on before the sun goes down.

[ He started off down the street, paying little attention to the pastel-haired Townspeople. Not the biggest fan of those guys right now, nope.

Eames was right about out thing, though -- he did look completely out of place with his tux and silver-tipped dark leather boots. Even if they weren't in Deerington, the way passersby sort of did a double-take and avoided him would be... well, understandable. ]

So where ya from?

The best time to get one's lush on.

(Eames didn't pay any mind to the Townspeople either. They weren't worth the attention.

Eames himself was in a suit, though much more colorful (some might even argue gaudy, but not Eames, oh no) and with a bit more casualness in the fact that there was no tie. The buttons weren't even done up to his neck. All the same, it was an expensive suit, gaudy or not.

Majima's suit was much more tasteful. The boots Eames quite liked. They'd be easy to replicate, he thinks to himself.)

England. (Easy enough answer given his accent.)

And you? (He figured Japan, but one made an ass out of themselves when making assumptions. As they walked, Eames got out a pack of cigarettes and shuffled one out. He offered the carton to Majima a second later. He seemed like a smoker. Most yakuza were, Eames had found.)

[ And if anyone could tell a cheap suit from the genuine article, it was someone who got his measurements taken to order. Eames's dress was flashy, but not in the manner of a host, yakuza, or even a TV personality. Different country, different standards, he supposed. ]

Japan.

[ he confirmed. If Eames was familiar with dialects, he might have recognized Majima's speech as one marked by the tonal changes of a speaker from western Japan.

There was a beat after Eames made his offer in which Majima met his gaze -- one brief moment before he took the proffered cigarette, using the first fingers of his right hand to bring it to his lips.

He had his own lighter, of course; he never left home without it. But he did not reach for it at once. He wanted to see what sort of professional courtesy Eames called his own. ]

(That was just fine with Eames. Just fine indeed. He gets out his own zippo, flicking it open to light his own cigarette, staring at Majima for just a tick to see if the man would bother fetching his own lighter. It was evident by the time his cigarette was lit that that wasn't the case.

He turns then, slowing on the sidewalk so that he could raise his hand with the lighter, cupping his other hand so that wind wouldn't catch. He lights Majima's cigarette with ease, staring at the man.

Then he's gone, snapping his lighter shut and sliding it back into his pocket. The cigarettes get stashed away as well and he blows out a small smoke ring.)

Japan, huh? One of my favorite countries to visit. (He meant it too. And he did have an ear for dialects. An almost perfect one, really. It was in his job description though. If he couldn't talk like the person he was forging then how good of a forger was he really?)

I'm out there on business quite a bit.

That right?

[ Eames, your manners were abominable. Which was to say they were about what Majima expected for a foreigner.

He really ought to to turn around, go home, and curl up with a good book or something; there was no reason he ought to be hanging around with Mr. Call Me Eames when he could be getting terrorized by some spooky shit or getting to know the local cat police.

But instead, Majima took a brief drag of his cigarette before pulling open the door to the bar. He motioned for Eames to enter ahead of him. ]

Got a favorite spot? Or is it all business?

Mm.

(They certainly left much to be desired. He hadn't been lying earlier when he said people weren't lining up to invite him to their social affairs. Ah well. Can't win them all.

He gives Majima a toothy grin upon entering the bar, a brief nod of thanks, before slipping right on inside. He takes an immediate seat at the bar, somewhere in the middle.

Eames gets his cigarette between the v of his middle and index finger, gesturing briefly to the bartender.)

I'll take a whiskey on the rocks, love. And my friend will have whatever suits his fancy.

(Might as well offer to pay. Using the erm. Unique card he had been gifted upon waking up. Looking at Majima once the bartender's gone off to get their drinks, he takes a slow drag of his cigarette.)

I'm not an all-business kind of man, if I can be so frank. (No use in lying about his nature.) Tokyo's an all right place, but I usually wind up in Osaka. I like the horse races. Though I've done quite a bit of business in Ikebukuro too.

(Eames doesn't pronounce the Japanese words with butchered English. He doesn't pronounce them like an American stressing the words either. No. His pronunciation was dead-on, like he was a native of Japan itself. Something that could possibly be overlooked, of course.)

[ It would have been hard for Majima to not notice the incongruity. Go whole hog on the pronunciation, halfass the etiquette? What was that about... ]

I'll take a highball, thanks.

[ He was apparently enough of a regular that the bartender correctly parsed this as a request for a whiskey and soda with a citrus twist -- not scotch, not a goddamn gin and tonic.

Majima took a swallow of his drink and sighed almost inaudibly before setting his glass back down. Nothing like a crisp drink to bite into the summer heat. ]

Osaka, huh? Used to have a place with a view over the Sotenbori.