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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
[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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.
no subject
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.]
no subject
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?
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
[Iskierka trundles around L as he settles down near her collection, avoiding him more as a robot would than with the scrutiny a living creature might give him. She returns to the pile of glass, pecking and poking at it.]
My sons, praise Saints and stars, were born well before the war and had time to be children. [Inasmuch as shrikes got that time.] This is, besides, a curious thing to say--is the only point of stories to escape a life without adventure?
[It is a sentiment he's familiar with, among a particular class of citizen found everywhere in civilization's upper crust. Orcish thorns who served the servants of the Senate; human burghers; dwarves who had no reason to stir from their caves. Even younger sparrows, leashed to their homes by meager poverty and prejudice, thought of fiction as escape to adventure and not from it.
Or as pure escape at all.
It's evocative, interesting--another edge resolved in the picture of this young man crouched at his feet, driven there by curiosity.]
no subject
Maybe not the only point...
[He reconsiders out loud as he reaches out to turn the bottles' labels to face the same direction, only because Illarion seems surprised by the answer. It's perhaps the surest indicator that he truly believes that curious thing he said.]
It's just that boredom often brings with it idle time... which is not quite so plentiful, if one's days are filled with the excitement of other matters. Adventure, survival... pressing priorities that can't afford leisure.
no subject
The writing seems to crawl a little beneath the eye, defying strict translation through blood magic.]
Are stories only a matter of leisure? [He was not long out of the egg when the Queen of Lights passed from the world, but he remembers the touch of her Throne-gift. Art and stories were not a matter of leisure then; they were the fabric of the very world.
A little of that has remained with him all his life and into death.] Only to be indulged when one is bored? It would be a very poor world, I am thinking, if that were so.
no subject
They can inform, as well...
[Stories with a point, versus stories without one. It may well be that black and white to the young man.]
What is it that makes a rich world, then, do you think?
[He looks up at Illarion again without straightening; he's giving his eyes a rest from looking at the tiny bottles, before they start to cross.]
i unintentionally wrote a rhyming couplet in here and i'm leaving it
Stories--the whole tapestry of them that weave our lives together. The company of family, friends, and flock. The beauties of nature, and the beauties men create to emulate and exceed them. Service to the gods, and to those they would have us serve. Knowledge, and its pursuit, and the pursuits that flow from it.
[A pause of a few seconds follows, then more softly,]
Peace, that all of these may blossom.
[It was a shrike's dearest wish; he speaks the words like a prayer.]
<3
He's no thief; he doesn't want to take. Why does he feel like he needs to say so, again and again? You can want something like dying, without taking actions to reach out and take it, after all.
It's possible. Painful, surely; requiring willpower, yes, but it's a thing, done by some people who are larger than their appetites.]
You love beauty, then. As well as service and knowledge.
A useful thing to know, for this patchwork creature who fails in some regards and excels in others, to lackluster or illustrious degrees.]
You sound like you've spoken a sermon before. Is that simply my ignorance?