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

Sam might have more information if you weren't making me show my own ass about how far his conversation with Evelyn has gotten but sure.

"Uh, she said a lot of the stuff that was in the letter. People here are all in the same boat. All pulled in from their own world one way or another.. That this little girl is some kind of all powerful being and we're in her dream but that it's starting to break down. I guess up until now it's been pretty consistent. Horrible, but consistent."

He takes a bite.

"You know what it reminds me of.. that antichrist kid. Jesse? Do you remember him?"

Yeah, yeah. Cry moar.

"Huh." It's similar stuff that he's hearing, same stuff that the Other Sam told him, though that doesn't make it all any easier to really process.

It's not...all that out there, though. It's not the first time Dean's been dumped into another time or 'reality'.

"Antichrist kid?" Dean makes a face, somewhere between startled and curious. "Mm, no, not ringing any bells." Must have been an adventure after his past self went home. "What about him?"

Huh. Interesting. It's going to take a while for Sam to pinpoint where Dean's story diverged from his own. This seems like as good a place to start as any but he hasn't got the focus for a deep dive right now. He's all jacked up with nowhere to put his energy and this download isn't helping much.

There's not much that will, to be honest. Nothing dean can do, anyway.

"Okay, well," he thinks, remembering that particular little adventure. It seems so long ago, now, with everything that's happened.

"A demon possessed a woman and used her to give birth to a child. In a sort of.. immaculate conception kind of way. After the baby was born the woman put the baby up for adoption. Turns out he.. being what he was? He had all these crazy powerful abilities. Things he believed started coming true. Like itching powder making people scratch their brains our or those joke hand buzzers electrocuting people to death. We got him to put everything back to normal but he had no choice but to explain to him what he was and then he just.. disappeared. Left a note saying he had to go to keep his family safe and we never heard from him again... still bugs me."

He would have been a helluva'n asset. Then again Jesse was just a little kid. Sam hopes he's still safe and happy out there somewhere.

"So you're telling me we had to deal with an immaculate conception Jesus demon baby. And he just...disappeared after causing a big ol stink."

He wipes his hands on his napkin and reaches for the bottle to pour himself a refill, shaking his head a little.

"Man, that's messed up."

In so...so many ways. What the hell.

"Yeah," snort. He takes another sip of his drink and pushes it back across the table for a refill.

"Tell me about it. Though part of me thinks it's kind of a shame. He could have been useful."

He'll give it, both simultaneously pleased and worried that his brother is actually drinking with him.

Come to think of it, Sammy looks pretty...

Well.

Junkied out.

"Sounds like it. Are you alright?" Because subtlety isn't one of Dean's traits, and he wants to know what's going on with his little brother. "You look like you're back on that..." He gestures. "You know."

Sam's kneejerk is to lie.

He opens his mouth to do exactly that before exhaling through his nose and giving a soft huh.

"I am."

He can't lie. Not this time. Not now. Sam gives a quick but, but wait gesture.

"Hear me out, it was just this once. World was ending... Had to go toe to toe with Lucifer... I had no other choice."

This time, he gets it. He doesn't give Sam shit about it, he doesn't snarl and scream about Ruby, about the things Sam did, about how he killed Lilith and started all this shit because he wouldn't listen to Dean.

That's not...conducive to the conversation.

And, at any rate, - at this point in Dean's timeline, it makes sense. Of course Sam did that to battle Lucifer. What else do you do? Dean doesn't like it, of course, and the look on his face says precisely what he feels about it, but he doesn't go off on some self righteous rant about it - not this time.

"So we gotta detox you."

Exxxxxxale.

There's a look of gratitude before he nods, losing interest in his salad in favor of the alcohol. He's had a very hard, very long day and it's haunting every fiber of his being.

For a moment he looks ancient and war torn and ragged. Beaten down on and yanked around his whole damn life by evil, invisible forces. This is what happens to a man. My god, he's not even thirty.

"Yeah. That'll be fun."

He plays with his glass for a moment, watching the amber lull around in his glass before drinking.

He knows, Sammy. Dean knows the feeling. Dean's thirty-five and he feels ancient, like he's been rode hard and put up wet, wrung dry, every last emotion and feeling bled out of him after years of constant bullshit - dealing with a virus laden, war torn land, with shortages and rations and people fighting amongst themselves--

Dean gets it. He does 0 in different ways, sure, but he gets it. And he's fucking sorry.

It's weird to have Sam actually drink with him, but he doesn't complain, and when he sets the glass back down Dean just refills it for him without being asked.

"It always is, isn't it."

Edited 2021-03-14 04:23 (UTC)

A small grunt.

He'd been doing a lot of drinking up there towards the end. Can't blame him though, can you.

"Don't suppose your place has a bunker downstairs, does it?"

Just wait til you see how much of a functioning alcoholic your brother has really become.

"Just that basement you broke your way out of." He chews his lower lip, thinking. "It'll be rough, without Bobby's panic room. But a devils trap...holy fire...a lotta rope. Supervised bathroom breaks...We can do it."

Bathroom breaks, God, Sam already wants to die.

You're a treasure Dean, you really are. He scoffs and shakes his head. Goody.

"What would I ever do without you?"

He looks up from where he'd been studying his glass, an unreadable expression on his face. He knows what you do without him - you say yes, and he's not there to help you stop it, or to be with you when it all goes to hell in a handbasket. They're better together. He knows that, now.

"I dunno, man," he finally says, taking a sip. "Let's not find out."

Truer words, in hindsight.

So they drink. They sit. They let the familiar silence wash over them.

Shock of the day fading slightly under crushing weariness. Sam is wired but it's artificial.

He doesn't like this. At all. One bit. The town, the dream, being so powerless.. the whole situation. It fills him with absolute dread.