Entry tags:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[For other people, the hakama and haori might've been very strange, but Yuri couldn't help but feel something like relief at seeing something familiar like that. She doesn't think Rei is really as 'ancient' as her attire might say--though the other girl certainly has a strange feeling that seems both young and old at the same time, but Yuri can't figure it out and ignores it.

She approaches before she can think to tell herself to back off, just relieved that there might be someone else from her country, at the very least, here. But she pulls up short at hearing the exclamation, hesitating a little.

It's definitely strange and concerning.] American...? [Good introduction, just replying out of nowhere like that. GJ Yuri]

Edited 2018-07-30 22:56 (UTC)

[Upon hearing a stranger speak, Rei's head jerks back with something akin to a glower, but softens immediately when she recognizes that the other girl is in the same situation. Straightening up, she breathes out and visibly relaxes. Folding her hands in front of her, she studies the stranger for a heartbeat or two before meeting her eyes.]

I think so.

[Rei's head jerks towards the rest of the town...]

By all outward appearances it is, anyway. Are you not local either?

[Yuri doesn't look away, but there's no challenge in her gaze or anything like that. She just meets Rei's eyes for a few seconds before looking away, shifting her weight. The scrutiny has her a tad uncomfortable.]

No. I just woke up here not too long ago.. I don't really have any idea what's going on. Or why it's going on.

[She purses her lips and looks around slowly, as if some kind of hint will show itself] But whatever it is seems to have gotten a lot of people. I don't think I've met anyone who's local here or anything like that. At least not so far.

[Which is even more Suspicious]

[Rei's expression softens into a smile as she absorbs this information. She's not alone, another Japanese woman pulled here in their sleep, which means this isn't likely a targeted attack on the senshi unless innocents were pulled in. There's no malice in the other, not that she can see, which means she's likely not the culprit.]

I don't know, either. But I know that we're not being caged or controlled in any way, which means it probably wasn't a kidnapping.

[That seems like a logical conclusion, but she feels better spelling it out. Stepping closer, moving to the other's side rather than obstructing the newspaper box Rei points at it.]

I'm going to guess this is Deerington, and that wasn't just the haze from waking up. I saw that strange letter, when I woke up? A basket. Did you see that...?

I'm not sure about 'caged,' but...I doubt it's easy to leave this place. Otherwise it wouldn't really make sense to dump us in one place and still allow us to leave. But it's a pretty decent-sized town, I think...

[She hasn't really been around to explore it all yet though. ANd while she doesn't move away exactly when Rei comes to stand next to her, Yuri does shift a little to ensure they don't accidentally touch. She eyes the newspaper, chewing on her bottom lip as she thinks.]

I... [That's right. Her hand reaches down to press against her outer left thigh, partially obscuring the antlers tattoo that had appeared there.] Yes. It was the same for me. A basket, with a map and things...and a letter. Saying we're dreaming, that we're just... stuck here, somehow.

And...a jar of food. Berries... [Since Rei hasn't vanished or anything, Yuri feels it's safe to assume, but she still asks:] Did you eat from the jar too...?

[Rei's right hand reaches up to rub the meat of her left shoulder, a little self-conscious about the hidden tattoo. She doesn't call attention to it yet, though the prickling, itching sensation does return more now that she's thinking about it and not ignoring the feeling.]

Yes. Though, mine was a jar of walnuts.

[Turning, looking the girl in the face, she purses her lips for a moment more. If the letter was true, if that hadn't just been sleep-riddled haze, then that was a clue. An important one.]

You...believe the letter then, Miss? [A pause and she reaches into the fold of her haori, pulling out a map.]

...I'm an idiot. [She unfolds half of it and holds it up for Yuri, tapping the label on the ocean.] Gulf of Maine. Maine, the American state. So, we're in America, most likely.

Well... [Yuri hesitates, trailing off.] I think... It's better to accept it as real and figure out what to do from there, rather than assuming it's fake and end up getting hurt or in worse trouble before you find out anything.

[She watches Rei curiously as she digs out the map, and then pauses, staring blankly at it. Her gaze lifts skyward with realization and--] Oh.

[She hadn't even thought about using the map either. Her expression grows sheepish] There's a lot going on, so.. [SO forgetting about it is totally understandable!!]

I mean, between the stuff the letter says, and something about the deer, and... [An 'etc.' hand motion. There's a lot of shit okay!]

[It is a lot. It is a whole lot, but Rei can deal so long as she has straws to grasp and holes in her memory to fill. Some progress, even baby steps, is good.]

It said trust the deer. [Which isn't hard.

Rei's smile warms again, an expectant look in her eye. She assumes Yuri is Japanese, like her, and so will at least understand the basics of what she's about to say.]

Deer are the messengers of the kami, after all. It's only right, you know?

[She hopes she's not making a false assumption here]

[She looks a bit surprised at the deer comment, and then relaxes with a hint of a smile.]

...Mm. That's true. You believe in that sort of thing...? [But the tone of the question is more like asking, 'you believe in it too?' as opposed to being skeptical about the belief itself.

She looks over Rei's outfit again, her smile turning a tad sheepish.] That might be a stupid question.

[If Yuri expected a sarcastic comment or a rebuke, she's going to be disappointed. Rei's not like that with strangers, especially not those that are clearly like-minded. Her eyes flash with genuine appreciation, and even delight, though it is brief.]

There's no such thing as a stupid question. Yes, I do. Absolutely. [And as if realizing she's not done this yet, she bobs in a quick, practiced greeting.]

My name is Hino Rei. Who might you be?

[Possible new friend? Rei's actually somewhat excited, despite the strangeness of the meeting place and situation.]

Kozukata Yuri. [She feels her shoulders relax since Rei doesn't seem keen on making fun of her for the question or anything.

As an afterthought she dips into a quick, polite bow as well, looking a tad embarrassed that it had slipped her mind to even do so. Hisoka would probably laugh at her (kindly, at least) for her rudeness.]

So, trust the deer. I suppose so... And I guess it's safe enough to trust each other--and the others who've been dragged in here--to an extent. We're all in the same situation, so...It's likely we've all got a similar goal too, right?

[To find answers and get out of here.] And we're obviously not the first ones...

[Unable to keep herself from smiling, Rei nods brightly. Yuri. Well, she certainly seems to have a sharp head on her shoulders, and there is something about her that Rei thinks she can relate to. ~~It's almost like we've played this CR before~~. She reaches slowly for Yuri's hand, and if the touch isn't batted away, she'll give her a reassuring squeeze. A kind of 'we're in this together' gesture.]

Yes, I think so. The deer, the other...I guess dreamers? I don't know if there is a better word. But we're definitely not alone, if that letter is true.

You're familiar with our folklore, clearly. Have you ever heard of something like this? Being...I don't know...this isn't like being spirited away.

[The touch isn't batted away, but Yuri does tense a bit in surprise and something akin to concern. But she's got enough of a handle on her abilities to not immediately go accidentally mind-diving or anything, so after a moment she relaxes as Rei squeezes her hand.]

It'd be too easy to fall into thinking "we can't trust anyone," but... [But as she said, it should be okay to trust the others like them. Yuri takes her hand back and crosses her arms over her chest, looking down at the ground as she thinks]

I've heard of people being spirited away in their sleep before, almost sleep-walking to their destination. Slipping into 'the other side'--the spirit world, but... Nothing to this extent. And I've never heard of the spirit world being a town in America. [She chews on her bottom lip] I don't know. We don't even know what year it is, if we've been brought forward or back...

But there should be someone in charge, right? One of the, uh... Native people here should be able to tell us that much, I think. Right...? [She looks uncertainly to Rei, not having much confidence in her decisions here]

[Rei folds her hands back in front of her, fingers opening and closing as she considers all the implications. Yes, Yuri seems right. Absolutely on the money, there, that there's no way this is anything familiar, but the thought about time. That's not something she'd really considered, though maybe she should. It wouldn't be the first time that she's been tossed around the timestream.]

That...is a good point. We may be in another time.

[And unfortunately she's not familiar enough with American culture to pinpoint anything based on it's outward appearance.]

As for that, the letter mentioned the natives. [She bites her lip and reaches into her haori again, pulling it out of an interior pocket. Unfolding it, she tilts it so Yuri can see, tracing a finger along one line. They do not want you here..]

Maybe they'll tell us who the mayor is but I don't know if he or she will be willing to give us more information. I don't think there's any reason for open hostility but this all feels so secretive. But it doesn't hurt to ask. Maybe they'll make a slip, and give us a lead.

[She meets Yuri's look with a level one of her own. She may be limited in what she can do, here, but confidence is something she can fake. It's something she thinks Yuri needs, given that uncertain quality to her question.]

Don't worry. If we stay together, keep our eyes open, and pool information and resources I'm sure we'll be fine.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only