November 2021 Test Drive Meme

[reddosmod]

NOVEMBER 2021 TDM

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.]

[NAVIGATION]

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NOT SO STANDARD ARRIVAL

WHEN: November - December
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!

FROZEN RELICS

WHEN: End of November, early December
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!

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

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.

---

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.

CODING

Comments

[hearthebell]

Of course not...

[Would have been nice, though.]

I was hoping that if I gauged your reaction I'd be able to think of an ideal and memorable title for you. You can always tell something important about a person when they've received something they would never just give away, themselves.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[That wins a chuckle out of the shrike. (A noise made more uncanny by the enclosed corridor, for it doesn't echo like it should--like he's laughing in a room far more spacious, or an open field.)]

Ahh. This is not so bad a thing to observe--but assumes I withhold my name because it is precious, yes? And that I think all names must be equally so, regardless of who it is that holds them?

[Questions first; explanations to come, if they're asked for. He expects they will be.]

[hearthebell]

It neither assumes or implies. Your reasons for not revealing your name are another matter entirely; the end result is simply that it is not something you'd give away, though you may receive it.

[The answer does imply that the undead elf does not consider other names precious. A chamber on the left looks promising. He has a feeling about it that he can't explain; it seems to go beyond intuition alone.

He nudges the door open to a room that is free of bodies or holes, but the fumes are nearly overwhelming. He withdraws almost immediately, and the stench of mingled different types of alcohol drifts into the corridor.]

Valuable to trade, maybe, if anything survived intact...

[The floor glitters with broken glass. Entire shelves of liquor are smashed on the wooden boards.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

[He gives a thoughtful hum to this explanation.] There is wisdom in this, too, but even if you are not intending it to--it assumes a matching value, yes? Or a false belief on the receiver's part, that there should be one.

What important thing have you learned?

[The smell from the room Lazarus has discovered is a certain kind of exceptional, enough to affect even one of the undead briefly. Illarion wrinkles his lips back from his teeth in an grimace, before forging into the wall of noseblinding scent with a crunch of glass beneath his boots.]

Very valuable, if. [A drift of shards near one end of the room ((feels)) promising with something inside that might be intact. He draws his knife as he approaches it, using the blade to probe for the shape he ((felt)) rather than risk a cut and blood pollution.]

[hearthebell]

[L laughs, softly but suddenly.]

I've learned that you're a quibbler. How's that, for a name?

[He's not serious, but it amuses him, the way it might a child, to give someone a joke name because he can.

His own shoes are not quite as sturdy, beaten canvas worn through unevenly. He steps as carefully as he can around the broken glass, at least having the advantage of good eyesight.]

What have you found?

[He draws nearer, observing Illarion's process.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

Neither the worst nor the best I've been given, [Illarion replies, with an echoing (echoing) laugh.] Do you so choose to name me?

[More of the shrike's poking gradually reveals the unbroken curve of a heavy bottle. Try as he might--and he's not really trying--it's clear he had a notion of where to search for it before he started.] Perhaps nothing, if it has cracked.

[He still can't tell, but he judges he's excavated enough he can reach out and pick it up by the neck without spearing himself. He does so, holding up his prize--squarish, smoked glass, neither cracked nor leaking--for Lazarus' inspection. The alien label's turned roughly in the other Sleeper's direction.]

[hearthebell]

In truth, I want to know what you've been called that's worse... and, no, I think it doesn't fit you.

[It's too small, too soft. A name for a box turtle, maybe, and that thought actually has L biting the inside of his cheek.

He takes the bottle, examines it.]

There's some water damage to the label, but it says "Honeyed Magmasm." Does that mean anything to you?

[unsheathedfromreality]

Traitor, wretch. Stupid bastard. "Oh fuck, not you again." [Which only begins to scratch the surface of his awful nicknames.] So, this is really not so bad.

[Though really he's not supposed to help pick one of his own names.

He cocks his head to one side at the name.] A mead, perhaps? Not one sold or drunk anywhere I have been. What is its look?

[In better light, the bottle's contents seem to swirl golds and violets, thick and sparkling.]

[hearthebell]

[His overlarge eyes widen, as if waiting for the punchline to a joke that never comes.]

How long did it take to earn those? If it was upon meeting... you must have since improved your first impressions significantly.

[He takes the bottle with both hands, holding it up to the bit of sunlight coming through a porthole.]

Aesthetically pleasing, I'd judge, though such matters are subjective at best. Could I ask...

[He's found this a bit distracting for some time.]

...you seem to navigate most matters successfully, and I'd assume that in a combat role it would be even more important. Are you truly sightless, and if so, what senses compensate for it?

[He uncorks the bottle, sniffs. He's no connoisseur but it's definitely alcohol.]

cw on the images for eldritch moth anatomy

[unsheathedfromreality]

[And Illarion laughs in his turn, finding this a very fine joke indeed.] One or two on first meeting, though one was a hate-name for a reputation years in making. The others, mm, months before they bothered to call me anything.

[In this moment, it is a boon to really, truly feel nothing whatsoever for how he'd been treated among the Unearthed. It could all be anecdote invested with little more than morbid humor.]

Ah? Well-observed. [Not a surprising question except in its delay, though Illarion suspects it comes on the back of an observation made far prior to this convenient conversational turn.] Yes. I am seeing nothing of the world, myself. Though, I have gained help in this thing since coming to Trench.

[So-invoked, his Omen wisps into being--a strange and pleasing cross of bird and moth that perches on his shoulder with six little clawed feet and turns faceted red eyes on the bottle Lazarus is holding.] Before this? Scent and sound, and currents of the air. My people--we long ago lost our wings, but not all sense that came with flying.

[A partial answer, and not all out of old habits of secrecy; he's still not sure how to correctly name that sense that isn't ((touch)) or ((smell)) or ((taste)).]

[hearthebell]

[He blinks, stiffening and refocusing his gaze to take in the details of the insect.]

I've heard of these... omens, no?

[Too new, to have one himself, and he'll take longer to manifest one than most even once he's something like settled.]

Supposedly, they say something deep and innate about a person.

[He turns the bottle in his hands, watching the omen from a different angle. Pretty, as bugs go.]

I know what to call you now. Moths navigate through celestial orientation, typically by using the moon to maintain a straight line in flight. The angle guides them.

[He opens the bottle again, tips it up carefully, just to taste it. It is honeyed, smooth, with a bite that makes him cough. He offers it to Illarion, if only to see if he has any desire to imbibe as one undead.]

I like Moonsight.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Supposedly, [Illarion echoes, turning his head a little as if he could regard Iskierka where she's pressed close against his cheek. She looks toward him in turn, ruffling her plumage and warbling a comment.

Leshonki were creatures of song and story and symbolism among shrikes, but what this particular shadow of one meant in reference to her Sleeper as yet eludes him.

Or he's yet to ask the right question about that meaning, for fear of the answer.] Though what it is they are saying may be varied and distant as our homes.

[Both Sleeper and Omen return their attention completely to Lazarus as he announces he's hit on a name, elaborates his reasoning. It is a bit of showmanship Illarion appreciates, even as part of him wonders whether it's intended or a fortunate consequence of how the man reasons aloud.

He shakes his head at the offered bottle; the scent is enough, and better he not taint a potential trade good. His reward for all of this is information, and the name.

I like Moonsight.]

Ahhh. [A breath of an appreciative noise.] This is a good name, and well-reasoned. I will carry it with me gladly.

[hearthebell]

[Though L's posture is horribly hunched forward by a bent spine, the way he stands seems to take on a jaunty and cocksure angle. His thought process, after all, is lovely; his reasoning is better than any other attribute he has to offer or develop, as far as he knows or believes. He knows when it's hit home.]

More gladly than some others, I'd hope. Does it get difficult to remember all of them? Or do you just assume that whatever each person shouts at you is the name they carry for you?

[unsheathedfromreality]

[It's very useful to learn, in so short a span of meeting someone, what they valued well enough to take compliments on. It makes many things easier--including, simply, bolstering someone against the gnawing ravages of corruption that stalked them all.

(It is good to know he can still do more than destroy indiscriminately.)]

Than many others. [There's a certain intellectual pleasure in having a name that well-suited. It rests easy on the spirit.

He chuckles, low and quiet, at the questions.] Not as such. Even among ourselves, my people have many names for each other, for we are each many different people bound up in one. You learn when you are young not to forget what you are called. Too, we have our common use-names among outsiders, and many who are not burdened by our names may use these by custom.

[So, fewer to memorize.] But to also take a new name in passing--shouted at, as you might say--is not so unusual. This is the right of an outsider toward us.

[hearthebell]

[Someone calling L stupid is lying or ignorant. Someone calling him intelligent is speaking a plain neutral truth. For him to take it as a compliment takes something extra, and going on magical mystery hunts for tradable goods on a shipwreck just might make the cut.

He sifts through the shelves, looking for other bounty. An unopened bottle of table wine catches his eye; uncracked, as well.]

What about a reference to an unknown or unseen individual? If there was a dangerous criminal, for example, and others needed to be warned about them. What name would be used then?

[unsheathedfromreality]

What would your people use, if they did not know this criminal's name? [It's such an interestingly specific scenario for an unknown, unseen individual, he's got to turn it around. Call instinct, or mere habit.

He turns to once more consider the drift of glass, shifting Iskierka from shoulder to fist. She likewise regards the puzzle of all those broken edges, then lets out a rising rusty-hinge whistle as she spots something.]

[hearthebell]

A variety of identifiers, beginning with that person's legal name that's printed on the documentation they're required to carry with them. The photograph would be distributed... a description or concept sketch, if a photo wasn't available. Because there are so many people in the world and they're all unique, but share many similarities and even occasionally names, it's the combination of details that is more valuable than any one or two factors alone.

[He thinks that, given the demands of such a situation, it's a decently practical situation.]

If an individual becomes particularly famous or sensational... a celebrity, or a very notorious criminal, so much that people discuss them when they're not present... one particular name they're widely known by saves a lot of time and confusion.

[He supposes he really wonders how people gossip, where Illarion is from.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

[A sensible way to go about it. Illarion's interactions with the mechanisms of justice in other jurisdictions had always been--fraught--since assuming the title of Warlord, but it is still a little taste of familiarity to hear they are the much the same on other worlds.

Yet there's also a strangeness about it. Required identity documents? Certainly one needed one's papers in order when transiting the Imperium, but there was little guarantee the identity given on those was one's true or only identity.]

And if none of these things existed? [Iskierka flutters down from his hand to poke among the glass with her beak.] If your criminal was never seen, only known by her handiwork? What then?

[Gossip among shrikes was a many-dimensional thing, nuanced as their names. Gossip about shrikes...

There's a reason they had hate-name among their litany of names one might collect.]

[hearthebell]

[L has an immediate answer.]

If the criminal was never seen, and is known only by their deeds, locating and identifying them becomes a priority. The name is an endpoint in that part of the process, and a starting point in the next, which consists of sentencing.

While cold cases certainly exist, and some individuals get away with their crimes... the goal is for every injustice to be addressed and corrected. Humanity has its anomalies and abominations, so... of course there will be individuals and organizations charged with finding the name attached to the criminal, or the criminal attached to the name, whichever they can obtain first.

It isn't like that, where you're from?

[He says so with the bewildered amusement of someone who is picturing absurd anarchy, a world where maybe being undead is better.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

[He observes his Omen--watches through her eyes, really--as she roots among the glass and comes up with a dropper-capped whiskey bottle no more than two inches tall. Lazarus' swift answer gets a smile out of him, nearly a laugh, but he stifles it, lest it be misunderstood. The avidity of response is delightful but in no wise worth mockery.]

We hold such an ideal of justice, yes, though it is not so easily executed. Where jurisdictions and laws conflict, even punishing a known murderer must sometimes be left to the black gods.

[How bitterly he knows that.

Iskierka retrieves a second tiny bottle, this one of wine.]

But, I am thinking, we have overflown the mark here--yes? Think before all this is done. There may be a time, between determining that there is someone who has committed a crime, and attaching her true name to her, that you must speak of her, yes? Then, she is Jane Doe or Tizia or for whom no name is given.

Is this not to name her again in reference to what she has done? That all may speak of her, and know of whom they speak, even if they do not know what name she carries in her heart, nor what her parents first called her?

So it is if one of my people is to be spoken of by many outsiders. If she is truly infamous, or a criminal, there are of course those of other peoples who believe it their right and role to discover her name and publish it widely. We are preferring, [the emphasis is delicate, but has fangs behind it,] that they work with us instead to bring her to justice, but--as I say--the world is far from being perfect.

[hearthebell]

[The very tiny liquor bottles are distracting, even comical. L has to pause a full several seconds just to appreciate their absurdity.

No amount of absurdity, however well-timed, can truly derail the detective when he's on one of his relentless neural routes.]

If justice was easy to execute in any world, there wouldn't be associated professions. If everyone just knew or understood it, crime rates would be nonexistent... I'm convinced that no one commits a crime who believes that it is fully wrong to do so. It's been committed wholly because even if only 1% can be rationalized- a desperate motive, systemic unfairness, mental illness or past trauma- a person will use it to call their actions a personal brand of justice.

[He sounds both very sure of this, and very disdainful.]

When the deeds are the reasons a person is known, before the name... a placeholder is given, it's true.

[Kira was one such placeholder, a sorry cover for what should have been Light Yagami, all over the news, for every friend and classmate and family member to see.]

When the criminal is unmasked, every name they carry should be held accountable. The sensationalized placeholder, the name they carry in their hearts, the name their parents chose and called them.

[No stone, at all, left unturned. No title or nickname permitted innocence... and one true name that's deadly, in the hands of one with a murder notebook, of course.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Just wait--there's more where those came from. Iskierka pulls forth two more minuscule bottles: A confection of cut crystal with striking sapphire-blue contents, and something that looks like it's meant for syrup, not liquor.]

And which of those professions do you hold?

[Lazarus could be a very passionate amateur; it wasn't unheard of, even among shrikes, to develop a fascination with the law. (Following the twists and turns of criminal justice among the mortal races was a hallowed elven pastime. So was stepping in to solve centuries-old cold cases, sometimes merely for the challenge of it.)

The young man's entire manner, though, bespeaks someone who gave himself so utterly to his passions that they could not be but a career, however his interest developed. And given he's a knack for finding things and has such notions about what's to be done with a criminal's aliases...]

A detective, perhaps?

[hearthebell]

[They're not even a shot apiece. L can't for the life of him imagine why they were made, whether for someone very small or for contents that are fearsomely concentrated.

He glances down, realizing that his long, bony fingers are fiddling with the straps on his backpack rather compulsively. While he hadn't constructed a sustainable backstory yet that he feels he's content with, he hadn't expected that it would be so very easy for someone to suss out what he did, nearly exclusively.]

Do those exist where you're from?

[Stalling, probably obvious, but it's useful at least to gauge what exactly that word might mean to Illarion.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

[The Omen carries her tiny prizes one at a time over to set beside her Sleeper's foot. The shrike seems to glance down at her in her industry. Those would bear more inspection; they are delightfully odd.]

Those who seek what is lost or hidden through injustice, to put that injustice to right?

[He lifts his head again, noting the way that fidgeting rasps against the edges of his perception.]

These have been, for as long as thinking beings scheme to hurt each other. Detectives, as a special officer of the law, these have appeared in the last, hm, century? Though the dwarfs, they have had something very close but by another name for much longer.

[He grins suddenly, without fangs.] They are very popular in serials, lately. One of my sons collected them, before the war.

[Pray Misha still did, somewhere.]

[hearthebell]

[As odd and alien as an undead elf with strange naming conventions seems to L, their worlds aren't without similarities. He nods, slightly wary, confirming that their definitions of the word are congruent.

A profession, then. Even a subject rich for entertainment, if it's in serials.]

Yes, that's exactly it. Though putting the injustice to right typically falls to others... it's only in the serials that the detectives are the agent of closure, catharsis, and revenge, himself.

[L, pale and slender-fingered, absolutely looks like someone whose involvement stops short, right around the part where the puzzle is solved and some other force swoops in to finish the dirty work.

He draws closer, very carefully over this swathe of broken glass, to get a closer look at the ever-growing collection of tiny bottles, crouching near Illarion's feet. They're just too strange.]

Your sons are lovers of fiction? Is there not enough adventure in a world with undead soldiers to otherwise occupy them?

[A question just unassuming enough, he thinks, to perhaps reveal other answers he wants to know more.]