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soddersays2021-02-25 12:33 am
sodder) wrote in soddersays2021-02-25 12:33 am
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MARCH 2021 TEST DRIVE MEME
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.
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.
no subject
In you, comes the answer. Round and round and round they go.
Sam ignores it, focused on his visitor. His very unwelcome visitor.
"I'm fine," comes the bitten, vitriol laced reply.
Now that he's here, Lucifer's presence is everywhere. All around. Unconsciously magnified by Sam, himself. He can't help what he is. What he was born to do. But he can sure as shit try.
Another flash of red abreast the black walls of his dream. Pressing in closer. Harder. It might be nice if he clawed a hole and let it in. The beast that speaks so softly. So sweetly. It illuminates the side of his face from shadow and suddenly it is as if they're meeting by candlelight. Something far too intimate for comfort.
"You know you had me going there for a couple days? Almost got me."
no subject
"Why so angry? You'd think I'd gone and killed the family dog."
The other Sam had mentioned a few things — mostly to get under Lucifer's skin. Talk of him being put back into hell, of being dragged back into the cage. Of people carrying on after the apocalypse, unaware the devil had done his damage and left. Oh, it stung, sure. But he's the winner of his own world, isn't he? He's the victor.
And boy, it's nice to know those things, meeting this Sam again.
"Can't you cut me a little slack, kiddo? I've gotta have my fun somehow. But you know, I'd never do anything you couldn't handle; such a tough little soul swimming in this fishbowl." He steps closer, casual-like, and glances toward the image of Dean Winchester. "... Such a hurtful thing for him to say. You sure proved him wrong this time, didn't you, Sam?"
no subject
He almost glances over his shoulder but doesn't trust the opening it might give his visitor in the split second Sam's eyes are elsewhere. Cut you a little slack, as if. As if! He bristles visibly, readjusting his posture as Lucifer moves. Head up, shoulders back, show no weakness.
"Yeah. So?"
He doesn't want to talk about Dean.
"Is this how it's gonna go? This game you've made up? Or was it Michael that came up with this whole place. Spooky town with an evil nun.. Pretty unoriginal."
no subject
... He wrinkles his nose, shrugs, and holds up his hands.
"... Yeah, you've got him; it's all Michael's work. I love my brother to death — but he's a little boring in his execution. Maybe that's why they had me fall; I'm just so much better at livening things up." He steps closer. One, two, three steps. Close enough that if Sam lunged, he might be able to reach him.
Well, he wouldn't. But Lucifer at least gives him the hope.
"What would you prefer, then? The game." He says it with all of the kindness and friendliness in the world, his eyes soft, his smile slight. Like speaking to a dear old friend. But the air is thicker, now, and the cold — it's enough to seep down into Sam's core. The Dean speaking to Sam in the dream, he's breathing heavy puffs of white fog, his skin turning a bluish pale hue. "How would you like me to improve it?"
no subject
He tries not to shiver, he really does, but the bone deep chill is so powerful, and penetrates so deeply- so quickly- that Sam never stood a chance. Now would be a fantastic time for him to shut his friggin mouth but hindsight is cruel like that, so he sidesteps the question entirely.
"Why come to me in a dream? I mean.. we're in the cage, it's done. It's over," he flaps his arms out a little to illustrate and steps back to keep his distance while he works a revelation around in his mind. The wards carved into his bones... did they come too? This is still his actual, physical body, isn't it?
".. you can't find me, can you."
no subject
He considers stepping closer, filling the small space that Sam had put between them once more (Sure is a small room to be dreaming about, isn't it, Sam?) But then — a consideration, before he turns and starts casually strolling toward Dean's figure on repeat. "You didn't answer my question, Sam. I want your honest opinion here; how would you like me to improve it?"
It should be easy, to make a few edits.
While he still has some of his returned power, anyway.
I just... I just don't believe.
Lucifer rolls his eyes, putting his hand over Dean's mouth. The memory is quieted immediately, and Dean says nothing — just stares at the false image of Sam, eyes deadened, full of defeat. Much better without the blabbering.
no subject
"I don't want you to do anyth-don't touch him!" He snaps, taking a few paces forward and wishing he had a weapon. Anything. Dream or no dream. Stupid or not.
(Stupid, very stupid)
He'd raised his hand as if to strike but his fingers are open and he holds it, frustrated, before letting it fall back to his side. What can he do. Nothing.
Words collect in his throat, fighting for the prize of his tongue while Sam's mind spins wildly, almost violently as he considers his options. None of them are good. He wants to wake up. He needs to warn Dean. He needs to keep moving. He needs to figure all this out before it's too late, not stand here taunting his cellmate.
"Get out of my dream," comes the over deliberated reply, growled out from behind grit teeth. The lights around them tremble again, whipping up in an unfelt wind and pulsating like a spiderweb of veins. The landscape is destabilizing with Sam's fury, a hundred thousand points of darkness in his heart all clawing to make manifest the things he wishes he could do to Lucifer. Pull him back, pin him down, and tear him to pieces the way they tore Azazel's gang. To feel the shred of skin under his nails. The static of death. Sam can't admit it but that would make him happier than anything.
no subject
"Do not tell me what to do, champ. You wanted this, didn't you? To be dragged down where I have control — my domain. How did you think this would go? You would tilt your chin at me, defy me? In this cage? Sam, you are locked in here with me. I have nothing to fear from you."
He scoffs.
"I cared a lot about you, Sammy. But all of this defiance lately... all of this trying to outrun me and the inevitable — after everything I've tried to do for you... It's repulsive behavior. I won't stand for it."
He walks closer, the biting, painful cold almost unbearable now. It takes the breath out of the lungs, and the figures that talk in the dream grow rigid and frozen over, like men left to their deaths on the highest mountain peak.
"So here's what's going to happen, kiddo. I'm going to find Dean. I'm going to find every single person in this little dream world of yours, and I'm going to skin them alive. I'm going to make them suffer. And I'm going to make sure Sam Winchester can see every stringy ligament, every blood drop, every wheezing, pleading sound for you to stop."
no subject
And yet he stays where he is, shoulders back, but shaking. Fists curled with purple knuckles. Defiant to the last, bitter fiber in his body.
"N-n-" fuck, it's so cold. He tries again.
"No you-hh're not. I w-won't let you."
Dream or Hell or not, he's already dead. What's Lucifer going to do, kill him? It's too late for that.
"Dean isn't really here." He has to speak in short bursts now, breath hot in the air. It's like watching the life drain out of somebody.
"You have done nothing for me." Nothing good, he means. Sam, this is your dream. Take control. He can almost hear Dean's voice, you fight him. Still shivering, he presses on, the walls around them beginning to close and burn. All that anger, all that hatred bubbling at the blackness between his ribs, forged sharp with determination. Refocused, entirely, on Lucifer.
"And you ca-hh can never stop me. Get. Out. Of my dream. Or I'll be the one to find you and there won't be a prayer, do you hear me?"
no subject
"Is all that bad stuff inside you still brewing? So much anger, so much darkness — it really is no wonder you were able to use all that hatred as a weapon. You're welcome for that, by the way."
His Sam, he didn't have all that outrage and hatred the same. Not by the time Lucifer was done with him. Well, more accurately — not until the world was done ripping Sam apart. Lucifer barely had to lift a finger, though he'll admit, he was a bit stalker-like in his approach to coming into Sam's dreams every night.
But c'mon. He was lonely. He needed his favorite snuggle buddy. His vessel. They were two peas in a pod, weren't they?
Lucifer turns, walks in a slow circle, like a vulture waiting for its meal to die.
"I suppose this particular game isn't much fun anymore, and I've never been big on lying to you. The big reveal, though... now that's a show-stopper." Leaning on Dean's frozen body, he folds his arms. "Here's the deal, Sammy: I care about you too much to let you carry on with this false comfort. I want you to have all the facts, because it's so much funner to tear everything down and teach you a lesson if you have the facts."
He stops clears his throat, looks at poor, half-frozen Sam with a pitying frown.
"We're not actually in the Cage."
no subject
But the words coming through the air hang there like cloying promise and Sam has to refocus.
No time to think about that, not really. No time to plan his next move. No space to hold him back and fight about the truth meaning nothing from Lucifer because it does. He's right.
He's never lied to Sam.
And if you can hurt someone with the truth that's the clear path to take. Sam's done it. Why wouldn't The Devil?
"Wh-" the idea of going through all that, through all that pain and sacrifice only to get yanked sideways somewhere else at the last possible second hits him like a bullseye. One point to Lucifer. They're 1-1 now.
The dream world? Sodder?"
no subject
"Afraid so, Sam. Sodder, the Dream World business... this is all real. We're really here. And — not to make this worse for you and all, but... I'm not the Lucifer from your world. In my timeline... I won. No pit to jump into, no Cage. I'm possessing you right now — another you."
Might as well tell him, huh? He'll figure it out sooner or later.
Or rather, his own sweet Sammy will find him.
"I've already killed Dean, wiped out most of humanity... taken the planet back. I'm the winner, I'm afraid."
no subject
the look on his face says as if I would believe that shit for a hot second but deep down he knows there's truth in his words.
If what Dean said is anything to go by. 2014. He said yes. Things got real bad, Sammy.
"You're here. In my body," Sam scoffs. Implying there's another him. Here. In Deerington. One that failed. One that couldn't hack it. A Sam who didn't...
Well, a Sam without his brother. Only If, say for a moment, it's true.. Then that Sam would be Dean's Sam. the Dean he knows. The Bad End Dean.
One can almost hear the gears whirring away in his head.
no subject
He sighs dramatically.
"Not the place I wanted for a vacationing spot, if I'm being honest. But once the place collapses under its own weight, I can at least leave back to my rightful victory as ruler of the planet Earth. Oh, that sounded a little gaudy, didn't it? Either way — you can kick and scream and shake your fist at me, but the truth of the matter is... I'm in first place. Gold medal and all."
A grin pulls across his face, as he morphs himself — into Sam.
"Now, I'd put more effort into tormenting you here... but I have a feeling the things I'm going to be doing with your face will be punishment enough, for all the mean things you've said and done to one of the few people that ever cared about your well-being."
no subject
"You only cared about me because you wanted me," Sam snarls, still struggling in the cold.
"I'm not going to let you do anything do you hear me? I will find you. And I will stop you."
no subject
The cold suddenly pulses, and draws back into Lucifer's body like a deep, filling breath.
"Sam... You are and always will be my favorite. It's thanks to you that I have the planet, now. That I'm fixing all of the nightmarish damage humanity's done to it... The plants will flourish, and nature will overrun. All of their bodies will feed the ground — one last good thing done by your kind. Dean and Castiel, they'll go back to the earth, and there will be so much... peace and quiet."
He looks up smiles.
"Isn't that something you've wanted since you were so little? Peace and quiet in that head of yours? That's what I was giving to you, in my timeline; I was letting you rest, Sam. After such a difficult, cruel life... After running for so long."
no subject
Lucifer's cold drawing away is met with a rush of hot air. All Sam's fury and fire taking it's place in whiplash.
"I don't wanna talk to you about rest."
Even though that's all he wants. Peace and quiet. Sleeping for a year straight. Maybe a dog? All the things he can't have and has given up on ever having. His brother might still carry the torch for that kind of life but Sam has long ago snubbed his out. Sam was kind of hoping that this final act might conclude in beautiful oblivion but he can't even have that.
Go figure.
"And I'm never gonna let you have it here. You get that, right. I'm not tired and I won't stop."
It's like a broken record at this point, but Sam knows he can't back down. Can't stop. Can't even have a real conversation. The second he gives an inch Lucifer will take ten miles and he can't afford it. Not now, not ever.
cw: explody gore
"Maybe you're not tired — but you're not the Sam I need to exhaust, are you?"
He shrugs, sighing through his nose.
"But... I wish you all the luck in the world, Sam. It's just too bad you've decided the path you have; regardless of what happens here... Well. Sounds like you've got a very miserable eternity to go back to."
Holding his fingers up, he says fondly:
"I'm sure the other me appreciates the long-lasting company of (1) Sam Winchester."
Snapping his thumb and forefinger, Dean's frozen figure bursts apart, splatters him wide and far across the panic room, coating the place in blood and viscera. He's at least merciful enough not to leave Sam in such a terrible spot, though; he snaps the other fingers, and Sam bursts apart, too — and his dream with it.
Wakey wakey; enjoy 4 in the morning, Sam.