soddersays | MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME

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MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to MARCH's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: PSYCHOLOGICAL 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 that deals with gaslighting, losing one's grip on reality, being trapped and restrained, threat of drowning, threat of being eaten, sensory deprivation, bleach, blood, violence, haunting apparition of a child, injury by rusty implements

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

IMPORTANT INFO FOR PROSPECTIVE PLAYERS: This past month we were excited to announce that Deerington will be entering a new chapter in a few short months. This new chapter will involve a permanent setting shift that you can read about in more detail on this post. All prospective players are welcome to ask any questions they have on the linked post.

Prompt One
Prompt Two Prompt Three
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

THE WALLS HAVE EARS. AND EYES.

With all of the shifting in Deerington, it's not shocking when you start to feel like something in your home or workplace has begun to shift. You can't put your finger on what it is. Your furniture is exactly where it should be. Nothing seems moved. Maybe it's just Deerington paranoia acting up. God knows Sleepers have plenty to be paranoid about.

Then you start to notice little oddities. Scratch marks on the baseboards of your bedroom. If you have a bedframe with posts you might notice what looks like human bite marks have taken out chunks of the material. Only surely no one's gone around biting your bed? When you walk by windows, you start to think you see a trick of the eye and you could swear you see bars on the other side of your window. What? No. You don't have bars on your bedroom windows...

You're just seeing things. You're just seeing things. But maybe you're hearing things too. You can hear scuttling in the walls - maybe the rats from February? No, no...This is different. It sounded too big. More of a sliding shuffle than a scuttle. Maybe you look into your vents just to make sure but there's nothing to find. Nothing at all.

Then you start to look at your walls. Was that stain always there? Was it just part of the wallpaper or paint? Hmm...You don't remember there being a stain there.

You keep looking at the stain. Maybe it only takes a few days or a few hours but eventually, you start to see a face in the stain. If the stain's big enough you could swear it looks like...a person crawling. No. No! That's ...Just your imagination. Get a grip. But that stain may start to look like it has eyes, eyes looking right at you. Or the design in your wallpaper might start to look like a face is tucked among the floral patterns, eyes staring right at you.

You start to notice creeping figures out and around Deerington. While you're shopping for groceries you swear you can see a woman crawling from one aisle to the next, quick and scurrying. Were you the only one who saw that? Surely not? Maybe others have too. Then you see more women crawling across yards and you feel paralyzed with fear because they all look like that stain on your wall.

When you come back the stain has moved.

This drives many mad. You start to obsess over the stain. Maybe you even break apart your walls to see if there's really a person behind them. Maybe you start to peel the wallpaper off your walls or try to repaint everything to hide it. But the more you do, the more you sink down into paranoia. Eventually you start crawling around, trying to see if you can conjure up these creeping figures. You find yourself scratching at the baseboards and gnawing on furniture, becoming the very creeping fiend you feared.

Maybe you even eventually start to creep into people's homes, into their walls, to start the cycle of madness all over again. The only way to break free of this cycle is to catch one of the people in the walls, take their hand and pull. If you win this tug of war, you and the figure you chased in your madness into the walls will fall back into the three dimensional space of regular Deerington and you'll find the person you were chasing was just another sleeper trapped in the cycle like you. If you lose... you find yourself falling into an endless void and when you slow to a stop--

WASH AWAY THE MADNESS. PURGE THE SIN.

--You find yourself floating in midair in the middle of a sterile white room. You lost the tug of war with the other sleeper in the walls, or perhaps you were just walking down the street and got distracted by your reflection moving strangely in the storefront window and touching it pulled you through the glass and landed you here. Regardless of how you got here, now you are in what looks like a room that belongs in a hospital. Somehow you are also dressed in white pants and a t-shirt and there's a hospital bracelet on your wrist that has your name and blood type printed on it as well as a patient number. Beside you is another sleeper, either the one who you lost the tug of war to or a completely new one. You are able to speak to each other in this space and there is a slight echo as you do, enjoy it while it lasts.

After a moment of weightlessness, your bare feet touch the ground, which feels cold like concrete but is as white as the white subway tiled walls. There also appears to not be any light source, it just comes from everywhere and you may notice you're not casting a shadow. And neither is the albino german shepard that's appeared in the room with you. It looks friendly enough and you get the sense that it wants to guide you somewhere as it turns to walk through an open door that has suddenly appeared in the room.

Follow the dog and you'll find yourselves in an all white hallway, only there's a mirrored ceiling and the yellow stains of age on the peeling white wallpaper move in ways that make you uneasy. Almost immediately, you'll notice that there is no sound, not even from the dog or your own steps, not even your own heartbeat can be heard. But oddly, you can hear your own breathing, so loud in the otherwise utterly silent space that you speak to your companion just to have a different sound, but your voice is muted as well. Charades might be the only choice of communication between you two for some time. And as you continue on in this odd liminal space, out of your peripheral vision you'll notice your reflections on the ceiling above acting oddly, walking backwards or twirling in a childlike fashion while you are walking a straight line.

Spend long enough in this never ending silent white and bright hall with nothing but your breath to remind you that you're physically occupying this space and you start to feel on the edge of your sanity. After pulling your gaze from the disorienting reflections and stains on the wall, you look for the dog, but the dog is gone and in its place far down the hall is a small child dressed in white from head to toe with very little skin showing. It feels like it's been so long since you heard a voice that when the child speaks your ears hurt, blood trickles out. Wait, that can't be right... is it because of the silence from before or is the voice just supernaturally immense?

"GET OUT."

Is all the child says before water starts slowly rising up from the floor, but take a whiff and you catch the strong chemical scent of bleach. You and your companion must rush to find an exit or another creative solution to the problem at hand before you are drowned, and there will be no holding one's breath and swimming with your eyes open if you are submerged in bleach so you must act quickly. At the end of the long hall where the child stood there is a red light, but if you run towards it, it seems to only get further away.

If you can't go forward or back, then through the walls is the only solution. It is difficult though, at all the spots on the walls that are white, they are indestructible. It's the aged, yellow stains that are perpetually moving and shifting that are the weak points. Together, you must try to corner the shifting stains to stay still long enough for you to kick and punch your way through very thick walls. The stains seem to move away from anyone experiencing strong emotions and towards those who are calm and collected, and the key is to get them to stop moving entirely.

Once you burst through the thick wall and escape drowning by bleach, you'll either find yourself back in Deerington, or...

BREAK MY CHAINS AND I'LL BREAK YOURS.

You stumble into a mostly empty and dimly lit surgical room with blood on the floor and old dinge and rust on tiles and sinks. If you came here from the white hallway slowly filling with bleach, the pungent liquid will spill into the space as you enter, but turn around to look at the hole you and your companion made and you'll see it magically stitch itself up, like a wound in flesh speed healing rather than tile and drywall reorienting itself. However, it's possible to arrive here from Deerington without going through the white hall and that's by passing an empty lot in town. You could have sworn that lot had a house or a store the other day, but instead there's a dingy storage shed that draws you in with an intoxicating scent that wafts from a jagged hole in the side. No matter where you came here from, when you walk through, one or more other sleepers can walk through holes in the other walls at the same time and each hole will stitch up behind you.

It's too late to turn back once you're in and you barely have time to realize the danger you're clearly in when you are struck from behind and knocked unconscious. No matter what your body is made of or what abilities you have, you are knocked out cold... and when you awaken you are chained in the center of the room to a rusy old cair. The other sleeper or sleepers you found yourself with in this place are in the same situation facing you and on the floor in between you is a pile of old rusted keys of varying shapes and made of all different kinds of metals. The only thing these keys seem to have in common is the look of sharpness on every edge, like if you picked them up too hastily you could slice open your hand and get a tetanus infection from the rust.

The next thing you might notice is the heavy breathing of another person nearby, and when you look you see a large man in a soiled button down, jacket and khakis. He looks like a pro wrestler that went to a court hearing that then got blown up and he was the only survivor. But more striking than his size and attire is the fact that in place of a human head is just a black smoky blur with what looks like hundreds of eyes poking through the darkness, and when he turns, his face is nothing but a gaping circular maw with rows and rows of jagged teeth that spin like a food processor. The man doesn't speak, the only sound that seems to come from that horrifying void that is his head is haunting and hard to describe. It gazes at its prisoners with its infinite eyes for a moment, washes blood from its hands in one of the sinks along the wall and then lumbers over to the only exit while sharpening a butcher's knife.

It is rather clear what his intentions are. But why leave a pile of keys and not kill and eat you now? Who cares what game he's playing, what test you're undergoing? Time to figure out how to get free and obviously the keys are important. The chairs can be moved, tilted over and pushed, but they are heavy and you'll have to work together to get the right leverage to start picking up keys and testing them on each other's locks which are placed by your hands bound behind your backs. Your hands are so tightly bound that you have to use the keys blindly on the other person's lock, and don't forget that those keys are sharp and hard to hold too. One of you will get free first, but then the haunting sound and the thump of his feet can be heard in the next room. Do you leave your companion to the monster or risk it and try the other keys?

Whatever your choice, the door to get out is locked and unbreakable, but there's a vent high above it that you can get through alone with great difficulty, but will be much easier and faster with the help of your fellow sleeper. The moment you are inside and moving through the vents, the hulking man with the void head will let out an ear shattering screech and chase you from below, the butcher knife and other stabbing objects will slice through the bottom of the vent and you'll have to dodge and weave until you see the light at the end. Kick the exit vent open and you'll crawl out onto grass outside any building in town.

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

The lack of recognition was...well, it hurt a little. Even after all of her time in Deerington, Ariadne still couldn't quite reconcile herself with the notion that a person could vanish and a whole new one could take their place. Just like that. In a blink. And not remember anything.

She paused in her steps, curling her hands up against her chest, trying not to look too completely crestfallen.

It didn't work so well.

"Sam?" There was no point in asking, was there? He clearly didn't know who she was. After what they'd recently gone through, there was no forgetting. Not unless it was another one of Deerington's tricks. "I...no. No, I don't need...anything."

Riiiiiiiight. His expression says as much.

Sam crosses his arms over his chest, brittle, hackles raised as he scans over her again.

This wouldn't be the first time Lucifer has come to him as a beautiful woman but it's the first time he hasn't recognized her.

"So, this is your game then? This town? Did you just make it up to screw with me?"

Both of Ariadne's eyebrows lofted slightly. She'd met and re-met Sam Winchester several times over, but this was certainly a unique experience. Being accused of making Deerington?

She didn't know whether to be offended or flattered.

"No, sir," she said politely. "I didn't make the town or anything in it. Well, except for the plants growing in the nursery at Ring around the Roses. I planted those. But I don't think that really counts."

Rambling. Right. Back on topic.

"You don't remember me, do you? Or this place? It...it's all right." She held out her hands in a gesture of vague surrender. "It happens sometimes. Nothing to feel bad about." Even if it made her feel kind of...bad.

Racking his brain for a moment yields no results and he shakes his head no with an apologetic look before reminding himself that this is all a trap and no kindness or interaction of any sort can be trusted.

He's too damaged to let his guard down. Too new off the boat to understand Deerington and too wrapped up in his personal Hell to realize that this is far bigger than him.

"No... Should I?" Remember her.. or feel bad. Because he doesn't on either account.

Ariadne raised her hands a little higher, for a second. Then she lowered them, reaching into her messenger bag to retrieve her Fluid. She stared at the screen a moment. "I'm not sure if this will help or just confuse you more. But I feel like...like if it were me, I would want to see it."

She punched in a few commands. Ariadne was not a digital native, so instead of using her thumbs, she used her pointer finger. It was a little awkward. But the whole encounter was proving to be awkward, so there was that.

After a few moments, she pulled up a conversation, holding the phone out for Sam. "It's from a few months ago."

Sam takes the phone and pays back the video conversation. It doesn't make sense but there he is, pain as day. Older.. way older.. but that's definitely him.

So what's the catch. A changeling? Another trick to confuse him and set him into the world? Like he's been here before? It's weird and it's cruel but he can't look away. He watches the whole thing, occasionally glancing up at the woman who's shown him.

It's a lot to unpack.

He doesn't feel safe enough to even think about it. In fact he tries not to react at all, thinking his every movement is being judged. Tested. Filed away to be used against him later.

"Is there a way I could get a copy of this?"

She stood beside him, her hands folded behind her back in a gesture of vulnerability and surrender. She knew that Dean wasn't too fond of non-Humans, but Sam had always been patient with her and her other form, taking it in stride, really.

Every. Single. Version.

The multiverse created some fascinating patterns. And in another lifetime, she could have spent a lot more time observing them.

But she had to fight for her life right now. And the lives of her friends in Deerington.

"I don't know," she said, when he finally spoke again. She could tell he was trying to school his features. She wished he wouldn't. "I suppose you could record it with your own Fluid..."

Sure picked a great time to show up here, huh. Just when everything is starting to get really interesting.

Her idea is sound and he takes out his own Fluid, clearing some space on the bookshelf to lay hers down and replay the video so he can tape it. He's still getting the hang of these things. Cool as they are he's from eleven years ago and phones just weren't like this then.

Sam is very quiet while the video plays, using the time to observe the woman. His surface read is positive. She seems nice. Normal, even. Helpful, knowledgeable, friendly. Lucifer probability is feeling low, now. Michael? Nah. He doesn't have the patience for games. Still, there's something about her that doesn't feel entirely, what's the word, human. If he weren't full of demon blood with his abilities at peak he'd probably miss it. Just a passing thread of a hunch.

Once the conversation has finished for the second time he stops recording and returns her phone with a nod of gratitude. Best course of action now is to play cool, he decides. No one needs to know he's unraveling at the seams.

"Thanks... What did you say your name was?"

She was silent throughout the process, listening to the conversation, picking out subtle differences between the Sam in front of her and the ones that came before. She liked all of them, of course. But this one was a bit more...on edge somehow. And she couldn't figure out why.

Too soon. Not enough information.

And he was very good at keeping himself...unavailable.

At his question, she dipped her head slightly, her long braid falling over her left shoulder. "Ariadne." She gave him a curtsy. Really, it was more of a bounce. Everything Ariadne did had a bouncy quality to it. As if gravity were just barely holding her down. As if, any moment now, she would spread wings and take flight. "But everyone here calls me 'Airy.'"

A nickname that suited her well.

It does, can't argue that. What he wouldn't give for an ounce of her weightlessness.

Sam offers a friendly albeit tired smile (slightly tight? Just a hair) while he slips his Fluid back into his pocket. So.

This isn't weird and awkward or anything.

"Airy. I'm Sam." It's a knee jerk and he catches it immediately with a laugh.

"Sorry.. been a long couple days. Have you been here long?"

"Almost a year," she replied. And she gave him a quiet nod of understanding about the rest. The first few days in Deerington were rough. They had been for her. And for all of the previous Sams. But she decided she wasn't going to bring them up. Not unless asked, anyway. It would be...like comparing him to someone else. Even if it was himself. No one liked that. No one ever asked for it.

She shrugged. "Believe it or not, it does get easier being here. Or at least less confusing. It just takes some time to understand the multiverse. But there are patterns. They're not hard to track. They make things...well, not predictable. But at least understandable, in a way."

Very slowly, she held out her hand. She moved at a snail's pace, reaching out to put her palm, reassuringly, on his elbow.

And that movement is tracked every single inch of the way but he allows it to land, tense as he is.

"See that..." C'mon Sam. She's got information if you'd only give a little ground. Just a step or two. Help yourself.

He pushes on.

"That's where it gets really confusing for me. Did, um. Did this guy.. Me. The other Sam.. Did he ever tell you what happened to him?"

As far as he's aware he never gets out of his prison. Which makes sense because as far as he's aware that's where he is now. So an older him.. a phantom older him..

There are too many possibilities to factor in, here. Either this is all literally a hallucination in his head, or Dean is right and they all shifted sideways during the final jump and this really is some.. interdimensional nexus point. But who would do that? God? He thought God didn't give a shit anymore.

He doesn't know who the trust but Sam can put a safer bet on anyone beyond himself. That being said, if his theory is correct, it doesn't matter because everyone here is, by extension, also him. Interesting mysteries to be solved as he plays Scooby Doo inside his own mind. A game to be played, charted out by The Devil. An Easter egg hunt for eternity. Great.

Doesn't make him want to be particularly forthcoming. Not that he ever has been.

She tilted her head to one side. A bit birdlike, which didn't do much to discourage her nickname. "Well," she said, "that Sam mostly talked about hunting and Dean and Jack. But the one I met before him told me some different things. Still a lot about hunting and Dean. And also a very, very rude angel named Lucifer."

Ariadne glanced down at her Fluid. Frowning. Disappointed. It had failed her.

Then she looked up at Sam again.

"I would show you, but all of our conversations were in person, not using this...thing." It was clear she was a little skeptical about the Fluid in general. "The first time we met, actually, we'd been kidnapped. He didn't judge me for the things I did or what I was, so I knew that he was a good man. Which means I know you are too. No matter what you've been through."

Talking about Dean is standard but he raises an eyebrow at Jack- no idea who that is. Lucifer, though. That has his attention.

In fact the more she talks the weirder the information gets.

"Right.. And um. No judgment but," holding up a hand, though he separates them a little. Sam doesn't particularly like being touched by, well, anyone he doesn't know.

"What do you mean what you are?"

"Oh, um..." She frowned, making a gesture to where the Fluid had been on the table. "Was that not..."

It didn't matter.

Well, it did, but she was trying to change the story. Deerington was safe. Free of the prejudice and cruelty of back home. No one knew of Alastrians. She could be anything she wanted to be.

And she chose to be...well. She was working on normalizing it. It was just hard. And went against years and years of warnings, piled up in the back of her memory. About how unkind Humans were. About how they couldn't be trusted.

"Well, I'm an Alastrian."

There. Simple. Straightforward. Matter-of-fact. Like it wasn't a big deal, her admitting that out loud.

A blink. Again, no recognition.

"Right.." as if to ask and that is?

He's honestly having a hard time believing anything he's seen on your Fluid or you right now. Nothing personal, he's going Through Something right now.

"Doesn't matter," A thin smile. Forget it.

"What did he- I.. What did I say about Lucifer?"

Well, she thought it mattered. She'd gone through plenty of mental gymnastics to force herself to speak.

But fine. He was going through the same haze of confusion as all new arrivals. She could understand that.

"He's an angel. A...very rude angel, judging from the one time I spoke with him. He...well, the other you said that he wanted to take over your body? Which also seems kind of rude, if you ask me. A person's body is their own."

Which she thought ought to go without saying.

Sorry Airy, they can circle back around to that at a later date. You live in the same building, after all.

"Wait wait, spoke to me or spoke to Lucifer?"

"Uh, well, both of you. Kind of."

Explaining Deerington was iffy under the best of circumstances. But trying to explain it to someone who hadn't yet experienced it was...complicated. Ariadne knew over thirty languages, but sometimes, there just weren't enough words.

She ran a hand over the loops of her braid, trying to figure out the best way to explain...

"Sometimes, the city does things to us. Turns us into animals. Or tricks us into seeing things that aren't there. Or...pulls us out of our bodies. And a little while back, it pulled you--the other you--out of your body along with Lucifer. It was a very strange conversation, but I was the only one who could see either of you."

A pause.

"I know how odd that sounds..."

Uh, yeah. That is very, very odd. But Sam is also used to Very Odd.

It's more like a normal day in his life, to be honest, but who's keeping track anymore. Plus this is all vital information.. assuming Airy is a real person and not a hallucination. Could go either way at this point.

She doesn't feel like a demon, that's for sure. So two points in the pros column already.

"No, I'm pretty used to odd, believe me. But just to clarify you're saying the previous me had Lucifer.. inside of him."

She nodded, trying to give him a reassuring smile. Actually, Ariadne had a warm smile, one that always reached her eyes, making them gleam like silver coins.

But she was still uneasy.

It was hard for her to just blow past her earlier confession about what she was.

Sam, however, seemed very hung up on his past behavior, even if it wasn't really his. She supposed she could understand. "That's right."

He can't express the gravity of her words. It's way too dangerous.

"Do..hm. Has anything happened lately that makes you think he might still be around?"

Ariadne frowned a little. "No," she said, wishing desperately she were a Feeler and could pick up on more to his words than confusion and some kind of latent dread. "I only saw him the one time. And you--the other you--said that you had him under control."

Although 'control' was a very relative term, where Deerington was concerned.

"I'm sorry, but I have to ask...is something wrong? Are you afraid of being inhabited by a rude angel here?"

That hits a little close for comfort and Sam presses his lips thin for a moment.

He glances around to make sure they're alone before nodding.

"Most angels? They aren't what you think. Rude doesn't begin to explain it but they only come to you if they want something. If you fit into getting what they want. Lucifer wants my body.. as a. As a vessel. And I'm not gonna give it to him. I think he's here somewhere. I'm pretty sure he is. And it's my job to stop him from doing anything horrible."

Angels weren't exactly a foreign concept for Ariadne. They were woven into the belief system of Mudorism, which she'd converted to some years ago. But they also weren't exactly...common. They didn't--as a rule--interact with most mortals. Not on a casual basis.

The idea of angels needing bodies from mortals?

That was just bizarre.

She folded her hands behind her back, squeezing her palms together. "It's strange...the last Sam was the same way. He wanted to keep Lucifer from doing anything horrible. But his solution was to share a body. As if to keep him prisoner."

MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME

MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME

THE WALLS HAVE EARS. AND EYES.

WASH AWAY THE MADNESS. PURGE THE SIN.

BREAK MY CHAINS AND I'LL BREAK YOURS.

Character Arrival

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I'm so sorry, he's in a bad place

Airy hearts grumpy people

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