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countryclub2021-11-19 02:06 am
reddosmod) wrote in countryclub2021-11-19 02:06 am
Entry tags:
November 2021 Test Drive Meme
NOVEMBER 2021 TDM
NOT SO STANDARD ARRIVAL
FROZEN RELICS
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
CODING
Another month, another test drive meme! Our test drive memes are open to anyone interested - regardless of whether or not you join our game!
All Test Drive Memes are game canon. Players can choose to keep their TDM threads canon or not. TDM threads can be used for AC and can be used as your writing sample for your application.
Our TDMs serve as a way to build into the actual lore and worldbuilding of Deer Country and we strongly encourage everyone to enjoy and participate! Current players are always welcome to pull prompts from the TDM to reference on the Network or bring into logs as well as tag out to new characters top-leveling on the TDM itself.
Characters will always be able to actively die during TDMs as this is an extremely dangerous world. You can still have this be game canon! Check out how character death in Deer Country works here.
If you have any questions about the TDM, please ask down below!
IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Prompt One
[Image One: Perfect dog curled up in falling snow, tilting head to side.]
[Image Two: Dead man floating in water with signs of hypothermia.]
Prompt Two
[Image One: Frozen ship wreck.]
[Image Two: Frozen staircase.]
Prompt Three
[Image One: Bloody tentacles attacking soldiers.]
[Image Two: Tentacles coming out of astronaut suit.]
All Test Drive Memes are game canon. Players can choose to keep their TDM threads canon or not. TDM threads can be used for AC and can be used as your writing sample for your application.
Our TDMs serve as a way to build into the actual lore and worldbuilding of Deer Country and we strongly encourage everyone to enjoy and participate! Current players are always welcome to pull prompts from the TDM to reference on the Network or bring into logs as well as tag out to new characters top-leveling on the TDM itself.
Characters will always be able to actively die during TDMs as this is an extremely dangerous world. You can still have this be game canon! Check out how character death in Deer Country works here.
If you have any questions about the TDM, please ask down below!
Prompt One
[Image One: Perfect dog curled up in falling snow, tilting head to side.]
[Image Two: Dead man floating in water with signs of hypothermia.]
Prompt Two
[Image One: Frozen ship wreck.]
[Image Two: Frozen staircase.]
Prompt Three
[Image One: Bloody tentacles attacking soldiers.]
[Image Two: Tentacles coming out of astronaut suit.]
WHEN: November - December
WHERE: The Farther Shores/The Boardwalk
CONTENT WARNINGS: Drowning, freezing to death, trapped under ice, hypothermia, frost bite.
WHERE: The Farther Shores/The Boardwalk
CONTENT WARNINGS: Drowning, freezing to death, trapped under ice, hypothermia, frost bite.
Washing up on the Farther Shores towards the end of November and the beginning of December isn't the best experience. Normally there are some Sleepers who can show up without a hitch, but as winter nears, the waters begin to freeze and it gets increasingly dangerous to arrive on the Farther Shores. Many Sleepers wind up trapped under ice. Wakers must especially be diligent this month to make sure they don't lose valuable Sleepers. Drowning and freezing to death is extremely probable. If you're lucky, you might be able to break through the ice to shriek for help. Let's just hope someone's around to hear you!
Most of the Boardwalk has been converted to save the Sleepers that do make it. Tents have been put up and inside are mattresses stuffed with hay and blankets made from wool and furs. Contained coal and wood fires keep the tents cozy, but it might take a while before you get feeling back into your toes. If you have warmblood or coldblood you will not have nearly as bad of a time with all of this. Some coldblood Sleepers might not even notice the cold! Might be good to put them on the frontlines for helping people out.
Another oddity this month is that most Sleepers seem to arrive at night rather than the typical daytime arrivals. Maybe it's because daytime hours are much shorter in December...But maybe it's something else too. This has led to Wakers making search parties to try and find Sleepers in the pitch-black night. It's a precarious situation and all hands on deck are strongly encouraged.
The Dog Keeper has come out to help the efforts. His dogs can be seen running frantically around the beach to help find people buried under ice and to help break through the ice to get them to safety. Dogs are available to help Sleepers swim to the Farther Shores, and they are also available to help Sleepers warm up by cuddling up afterward. There isn't much food to offer at this time, but you can still expect to be greeted with some hot soup. It might leave you hungry, but it definitely seems to help warm you up!
Most of the Boardwalk has been converted to save the Sleepers that do make it. Tents have been put up and inside are mattresses stuffed with hay and blankets made from wool and furs. Contained coal and wood fires keep the tents cozy, but it might take a while before you get feeling back into your toes. If you have warmblood or coldblood you will not have nearly as bad of a time with all of this. Some coldblood Sleepers might not even notice the cold! Might be good to put them on the frontlines for helping people out.
Another oddity this month is that most Sleepers seem to arrive at night rather than the typical daytime arrivals. Maybe it's because daytime hours are much shorter in December...But maybe it's something else too. This has led to Wakers making search parties to try and find Sleepers in the pitch-black night. It's a precarious situation and all hands on deck are strongly encouraged.
The Dog Keeper has come out to help the efforts. His dogs can be seen running frantically around the beach to help find people buried under ice and to help break through the ice to get them to safety. Dogs are available to help Sleepers swim to the Farther Shores, and they are also available to help Sleepers warm up by cuddling up afterward. There isn't much food to offer at this time, but you can still expect to be greeted with some hot soup. It might leave you hungry, but it definitely seems to help warm you up!
WHEN: End of November, early December
WHERE: Farther Shores/Pthumerian Ocean
CONTENT WARNINGS: Mutilated corpses, frozen bodies, possible frost bite/hypothermia, disaster-centric setting.
WHERE: Farther Shores/Pthumerian Ocean
CONTENT WARNINGS: Mutilated corpses, frozen bodies, possible frost bite/hypothermia, disaster-centric setting.
Sleepers aren't the only thing struggling in the Pthumerian Ocean this time of year. Boats come crushing in through the ice, frozen over completely by blistering winds. The ocean seems to be spitting up boats from times long past, leaving their skeletons strewn along the Farther Shores. Some are small boats, barely worth a second glance, but others are massive vessels, cutting intimidating shapes against the dark sky beyond.
Some Sleepers may even wake up in the water-submerged bowels of these boats, having to navigate a metallic graveyard. Other Sleepers might just have the sense to go and scavenge the boats for useful supplies and parts. Valuable metals can be extracted from the boats as well as other mechanical pieces - but not just that. Sleepers who explore thoroughly will discover small non-magical items from their home might be on the boats, floating in the water, or in random debris. Some boats are trader boats, having entire crates of sealed food goods like rare chocolates, fruits, and other food that is difficult to find this time of year.
You will want to thoroughly bundle up for this trip because it's much colder inside of the boats than it is outside. It's as if they have been transformed into giant freezers. Coldbloods may be able to provide their companions with steady warmth, even if their abilities are typically more ice-centric. It seems like coldbloods can manipulate the cold in these boats to be less intense. Some of the boats may have more grim discoveries: dead bodies, some skeletal, others still with the flesh intact and frozen over. It's never easy to discover the corpses of those who have tried to brave the ocean and failed.
It's easy to believe that what killed these people was the ocean or the cold...But the more bodies you discover, the more thoroughly you explore these shipwrecks, you begin to have a creeping feeling that these aren't ordinary crashes. These weren't natural causes. Some of the bodies look as if the chests had been ripped open while others, the faces have been completely distorted beyond recognition. There is an undeniable presence of something on these ships and you have a feeling whatever killed these people has now been brought to Trench...Great!
Some Sleepers may even wake up in the water-submerged bowels of these boats, having to navigate a metallic graveyard. Other Sleepers might just have the sense to go and scavenge the boats for useful supplies and parts. Valuable metals can be extracted from the boats as well as other mechanical pieces - but not just that. Sleepers who explore thoroughly will discover small non-magical items from their home might be on the boats, floating in the water, or in random debris. Some boats are trader boats, having entire crates of sealed food goods like rare chocolates, fruits, and other food that is difficult to find this time of year.
You will want to thoroughly bundle up for this trip because it's much colder inside of the boats than it is outside. It's as if they have been transformed into giant freezers. Coldbloods may be able to provide their companions with steady warmth, even if their abilities are typically more ice-centric. It seems like coldbloods can manipulate the cold in these boats to be less intense. Some of the boats may have more grim discoveries: dead bodies, some skeletal, others still with the flesh intact and frozen over. It's never easy to discover the corpses of those who have tried to brave the ocean and failed.
It's easy to believe that what killed these people was the ocean or the cold...But the more bodies you discover, the more thoroughly you explore these shipwrecks, you begin to have a creeping feeling that these aren't ordinary crashes. These weren't natural causes. Some of the bodies look as if the chests had been ripped open while others, the faces have been completely distorted beyond recognition. There is an undeniable presence of something on these ships and you have a feeling whatever killed these people has now been brought to Trench...Great!
WHEN: During Bone Season
WHERE: Throughout Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Parasitic monsters, tentacle horror, crushing/bursting styles of death, a form of beasthood, mild auto-cannibalism/self-harm.
WHERE: Throughout Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Parasitic monsters, tentacle horror, crushing/bursting styles of death, a form of beasthood, mild auto-cannibalism/self-harm.
You notice specks of blood that seem to appear from nowhere among the snowdrifts. When you pay closer attention, you may see more blood dripping...up. It doesn't look like any Sleeper Blood you're familiar with but instead appears to be black-blue colored, reflecting like glass, bubbling up out of the ground. It makes a small, glass-shattering noise when it appears before it bubbles back into the ground. It leaves a rotten odor in its wake.
The moment you get too close to the blood, even a foot away, it will expand rapidly. Bloodied tentacles will grow out of the blood and start violently lashing around at whatever living creatures are nearby. These tentacles are powerful, impervious to any weapons not reinforced with Sleeper Blood. They will grab up people and break their bodies, throwing them through the air or tearing them apart, seeming to nourish from the bloodshed.
However, some people are less lucky than a swift death. Some of these tentacles may snap right into your chest, opening up some blood portal into your soul, where this Thing will consume you. On the outside, this looks like a rush of this black-blue blood rushing into a Sleeper and then nothing. You'll feel disoriented and strange at first but will become increasingly agitated, violent with those around you. You will start to gnaw at your fingers to shed your new temporarily altered blood. Eventually, you will begin to attack other Sleepers, able to summon these bloodied tentacles and destroy anything in your path.
But this is a parasitic monster you carry. It eats away your sanity until nothing is left, and then the tentacles will burst out of you, your body left to ruin. Parasitic monsters can be removed by Blood Ministers or by forcing vileblood into the infected's body. The vileblood seems to purge the parasite without killing the host body...As long as you don't use too much. Once the parasite has consumed the body, there is no saving the Sleeper except through death. These parasites can be tracked back to the boats where people can find streaks of the unusual black-blue blood throughout the boats. This blood can be contained and isolated by darkbloods and/or Architects.
The moment you get too close to the blood, even a foot away, it will expand rapidly. Bloodied tentacles will grow out of the blood and start violently lashing around at whatever living creatures are nearby. These tentacles are powerful, impervious to any weapons not reinforced with Sleeper Blood. They will grab up people and break their bodies, throwing them through the air or tearing them apart, seeming to nourish from the bloodshed.
However, some people are less lucky than a swift death. Some of these tentacles may snap right into your chest, opening up some blood portal into your soul, where this Thing will consume you. On the outside, this looks like a rush of this black-blue blood rushing into a Sleeper and then nothing. You'll feel disoriented and strange at first but will become increasingly agitated, violent with those around you. You will start to gnaw at your fingers to shed your new temporarily altered blood. Eventually, you will begin to attack other Sleepers, able to summon these bloodied tentacles and destroy anything in your path.
But this is a parasitic monster you carry. It eats away your sanity until nothing is left, and then the tentacles will burst out of you, your body left to ruin. Parasitic monsters can be removed by Blood Ministers or by forcing vileblood into the infected's body. The vileblood seems to purge the parasite without killing the host body...As long as you don't use too much. Once the parasite has consumed the body, there is no saving the Sleeper except through death. These parasites can be tracked back to the boats where people can find streaks of the unusual black-blue blood throughout the boats. This blood can be contained and isolated by darkbloods and/or Architects.
no subject
[One of the arms makes a chittering sound, leaving no doubt that they see, and hear - and think. Which means that even as he turns away, one of them is always watching.]
And ah, the memory. There is the rub, isn't it.
Thank you so much for your patience while I was out of town and sick!
[The man thinks that he should feel more about all of this. Distress, anger, melancholy, grief... but even as all of that seems distant, left behind in another life. What's not left behind are his memories; he knows who he is, what he was, how he handled the beauty and tragedy of the world he knew.
Probably not as well as most, he realizes... but well enough to be at the top of his field, wealthy, famous. How much did all of that matter then, and now?]
Don't you trust what you know?
No worries! :)
Should I? Should you?
<3
[Breathless and soft, scarcely voice but all conviction. As the spindly man re-situates himself, in view of the tentacles and all their myriad tasks, he can only pant, nearly inaudibly.]
If not, what else is there to believe, and trust? How else could one reconcile what he knows?
no subject
[Words said with absolute certainty.]
no subject
But his mind is restless and unquiet, as always. It twitches. It will regret this for days if he just acquiesces, because oh, he does so hate to forfeit.
There's also, he senses, something over-distilled here. Were the good doctor's trials so pressing that they eroded the nuances of deductive reasoning?]
The truth is... it can't be made so. Should you declare an unseen cat in a closed box dead, and open it to find the cat alive... you could kill the cat to make your premise true. But your initial error would stand, if the events were faithfully and honestly recorded.
no subject
You think this place divorced from universal laws? Don't toss Schrodinger at me - superpositioning can be done.
[And he moves closer, looking none too happy. The arms looking angrier still.]
no subject
Not so, now.]
I do.
[Firmly.]
Many of the laws I accepted as fact have indeed been broken. It's a symptom of an obsolete mind to reject new information relayed via perception... or to forcibly twist it to fit a known truth.
If it feels impossible for the cat to be alive, I'd rather believe that it is when I witness it, than kill it to make myself feel better.
[Damn it. He may well be the cat.]
no subject
This place is not free of science! There will be laws, and I will master them.
no subject
His crouching negativa is swift, grounded and balanced and supple with his palms and the balls of his feet preventing the rest of his body from coming into contact with the floor. What he lacks in strength he may need to compensate for with reaction time and readiness for a swift evasive move, and even that may not be enough.]
Master them?
[He sounds more sarcastic and disbelieving than he means to, due to his breathlessness... but it isn't exactly a lie. Look at you; is your own body even mastered? Truly?]
no subject
[But...but...he's been through the worst of them before, the worst they can suggest to him. So, through gritted teeth.]
Do not test me, kid.
no subject
He also kind of loves remaining alive, though, so... choices.]
We're not dissimilar. I want this all to make sense, too... but I don't see a way to force that process, for any of us.
no subject
It can be done. If we are drawn into this place, then there is a way to find a way back.
[In his case, into the arms of eternity and...well. He's already dead, after all.]
I've created marvels before, I can do it again.
no subject
[Or is it just a plan to have a plan, he does not say. The uneasiness he feels around the doctor and his apparent advisors is not alleviated, is perhaps sharper and more apparent than ever before.]
And... you want to go back? Truly? What's waiting for you, "back?"
[He's dead, too, and the answer is a resounding "nothing".]
no subject
no subject
[Time, gravity. Death. An inconvenient truth for those who resist humbling. A real one, nevertheless.]
At what point would you accept powerlessness? Would you fight God if you met Him, here?
no subject
I'm unlikely to meet God here. Pretenders, though? Maybe.
no subject
[He asks because he's been in precisely such a situation. Unlikely though the scenario might feel... what happens when a nonbeliever is confronted with a god they cannot dismiss as unreal, right before their eyes?]