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Deer Country Mod ([personal profile] reddosmod) wrote in [community profile] countryclub2021-12-20 07:51 pm
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December 2021 Test Drive Meme

DECEMBER 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: A cat skidding across a frozen lake.]
[Image Two: A man carving ice sculptures]

Prompt Two
[Image One: A woman laughing as she plays with many tentacles.]
[Image Two: A naked girl in a fetal position under water.]

Prompt Three
[Image One: A cold limp hand in bloodied snow.]
[Image Two: Jack Nicholson slamming an axe into a door in The Shining.]

SEMI-STANDARD ARRIVAL
WHEN: End of December, early January
WHERE: The Farther Shores/The Boardwalk
CONTENT WARNINGS: Similar warnings from November's TDM. Drowning, freezing to death, trapped under ice, hypothermia, frost bite.


Arriving in December has most of the same from the November Arrival. One difference is that the beach itself has completely frozen over, making it a slick black ice skating range. And that's exactly how Wakers treat it. You can rent skates and sleds. People have taken to the beach to have fun as well as help Sleepers out. Learn how to ice skate and help your fellow Sleepers! Win-Win!

Tents are filled with furs and warmth. Someone is giving out hot soup and hot chocolate to those just arriving. You can find plenty of hot bread rolls. Local seamstresses have gathered and are giving out thick wool cloaks with unique designs. You can find thick fur ushankas, gloves, and scarves. There are coldblood stone snaps as they call them where two small coldblood stones are hooked together so you can make a snapping noise that generates a small spark of flame that's hard to blow out.

Along the Boardwalk are magnificent ice sculptures of various intricate creatures: humans, animals, monsters, Pthumerians and other things. Some Watchers are in the process of working on new mounds of ice and are willing to teach anyone interested in the art of ice sculptures.

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES
WHEN: End of December to mid January
WHERE: The Pthumerian Ocean and the Farther Shores
CONTENT WARNINGS: possible drowning, injury, hypothermia, giant friendly tentacles, confinement in a goo egg, nudity/exhibition, body horror of varying degrees


A new year is upon us and the winds of change can drive rough and tumultuous waters, now filled with big chunks of ice. Some incoming sleepers will be facing more obstacles of ice, cold and wayward currents that can take them off course and delay their arrival on the shores. But many are in luck as the massive tentacles of a benevolent beast from the deep can be seen rising from the waves on the horizon as it collects as many sleepers as it can who have begun to shift from their squid form before they are safely out of the choppy waters and onto the ice covered beach.

The tentacled behemoth will wrap new sleepers up in a protective, transluscent and spherical fish or squid egg filled with a gooey liquid to help further suspend and cushion them on their journey to shore. However, this protective egg is a toss of the coin in how helpful it can be. Merely by chance, a sleeper may find themselves in either a red or blue tinted egg that they wil likely need help getting out of, and quickly, seeing as the warm goo that is cushioning them doesn't exactly provide air for those who require it.

A Red egg will provide extended magical warmth even when a sleeper exits it into the cold, they will feel as though they are stepping into a heated room and wearing comfortable warm clothes, even if they are naked. Wakers who assist someone getting out of a red egg and who are splashed with the gooey contents will also feel this effect, and if they are clothed they may feel... overheated and overcome with the strong compulsion to get their clothes off.

A Blue egg is not so helpful, if a sleeper finds themselves in this egg, they will start to transform back into their squid form, even if their mind is continuing to reform and remember themselves. They can regress all the way back into a squid or be unfortunate enough to get trapped in a grotesque halfway fusion of squid and their regular form, but either way their mind will still be normal and somehow some will be able to speak. Just like a red egg, this can happen to Wakers who come in contact with the blue egg's goo. This effect can last for an hour or longer depending on player preference.

Characters who attempt to make their way out to sea to make contact with the tentacled monster will never seem to be able to reach it to see what it looks like. The waters will become darker and colder, and more tumultuous the farther they go either by boat or swimming (why you're swimming is beyond literally everyone else, but you do you). Chances of ending up in the freezing water and dying by drowning or freezing to death are extremely high if this attempt is made, and locals will advise against it if asked.

BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE
WHEN: Late December to mid January.
WHERE: All over Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Surreal/existential horror, out of body experience, temporary memory loss and fugue, imprisonment, frozen death, blood, possible insanity and violence, monster/creature leech


All throughout Trench there's a phenomena of bloody snow piling high in whole districts within minutes and snowing people into their homes or whatever building they happened to be in at the time, even a tent on the boardwalk can be covered. Most of the blood is a stark red, but other blood type colors can be found in large or small swaths here and there. At first it seems like an inconvenience that you can either wait out with whomever you've found yourself snowed in with or dig your way out of, but the blood in the snow is thick and heavy and pressing in against the walls and windows and if you choose to try and dig, the influence of blood in the air will hit you hard and the ill effects will come on fast and halt you in your efforts...

Soon, the rooms appear to warp, minds become foggy as what appears to be an illusion or a reality warping takes hold, no longer does the room look like your home or the store you were browsing, and you can't quite remember what it was before or why you were there. The roof over your head is different, and the slow motion of the fan causes the cracks in the plaster to show shadows in ways that just don't match your memories. It is strange, but as you walk through the new space, you do not feel in danger. Something is just not quite right.

You recognize the furnishings but you can't place when you bought them. It looks like a hotel room and this is a suite for two. How long have you lived in this place? The door of the kitchen or perhaps the pantry opens, and someone else emerges with the same look of vague confusion there. You recognize them, but not quite. Their name is on the tip of your tongue until they speak. Do you know each other? Yes, you do. This is your house, right? Weren't you just standing there together not long ago...?

It must be your home: Some Sleepers, for one reason or another, might accept the surreal experience as the new reality even as they grow weaker and ...thinner? Their life feels impermanent, almost like you could peel the wallpaper away to find something entirely different underneath. But it isn't a bad life. It's simple, comfortable, food is always magically available somewhere when they need it and the people they are with are family, are they not? You're pretty sure that's what you remember. The scope of the vision grows, somehow you find yourself in the bar of this hotel where a bartender stands waiting. He doesn't feel quite real, but he'll happily chat over a cocktail 'on the house' with guests, who he assures have always been there.

But some Sleepers find themselves rejecting this vision, as comfortable as it is, it's still wrong. This isn't their home. This feeling everything should be fine is a lie. Everything is wrong, and at a certain point, they snap. The idea of sleeping a night in this place is just too much and the moment that their mind refuses this reality completely, it is replaced by a singular urge: to destroy this lie entirely. Paranoia and a frantic instability overtakes them and they find whatever weapon they can to start breaking everything in sight, even attacking their fellow Sleepers and hunting them through the shifting little hotel spaces that seem to move around them rather then them moving within it.

Violent Sleepers can be subdued and reasoned with, but it may be difficult. Powers are also dampened, though not gone, if Sleepers can remember that they have them at all. All sleepers, docile and violent will start to weaken to the point where they collapse and they will eventually die, but if they are lucky enough to pull themselves and/or each other out of it, they'll be able to see clearly that it's the bartender that they should attack. Once they do, there will be a screech and the illusion/reality alteration will falter and the bartender's true form is glimpsed.

Once the creature is wounded sufficiently, Sleepers will find that there is a fleshy pulsating rope attached to the base of their skull as the creature was feeding on their hopes and dreams of the future, keeping them in a state of complacency, confusion and conflict. The only way out of this is by attacking the bartender or death.

CODING
survivalthroughhate: ([TPM 82] Thoughtful)

[personal profile] survivalthroughhate 2022-01-04 08:24 am (UTC)(link)
That definitely gives Maul a good frame of reference and he nods. "Ah. I was brought here from that exact day myself." He pauses. "Or perhaps the day before, it was unclear how much time passed aboard the ship before I brought it down." Y'know, just typical Maul things.

"Is the Emperor dead yet?" He asks. That would narrow it down further. Luke seems to have come from furthest along the timeline given how he'd watched the Emperor's demise himself. Oh, what a happy day that had been for Maul to hear that the old bastard had finally been killed, even if it wasn't by his own hand.
ezra_of_lothal: (Ezra determined)

[personal profile] ezra_of_lothal 2022-01-05 12:18 am (UTC)(link)
Huh. That does make Ezra wonder exactly how older Maul ended up on Malachor and when he stopped using Sith titles.

"Nope," Ezra says, scrunching his face. He's heard a story about the death of the Emperor, but he very much thinks of it as a future, slthough a hopeful one. But not necessarily the future he'll experience.

"Palpatine took the time to talk to me the day I was taken out of the galaxy, actually," he says, lightly. "He tried to play 'kind old man' but, wow, his temper when he doesn't get what he wants."
survivalthroughhate: ([Other 8] Black heart)

[personal profile] survivalthroughhate 2022-01-06 02:15 am (UTC)(link)
"Alright. Now I have a general feeling of when you're from," Maul says. A few years behind Luke in the timeline it seemed, judging by how young Ezra was....although he wasn't quite sure his age to begin with. The boy did seem to be rather on the short side.

"Ah. Someone else who's had firsthand experience with him and knows he's a monster. Good." Not good in the sense that ever spending any amount of time with Palpatine was good but Maul is glad there is someone else here to back him up when he mentions to people that Sidious is absolutely The Worst and not think that he's just exaggerating or something.

His mouth almost twitches into a grim smile when Ezra mentions what Sidious is like but doesn't quite make it. Maul still can't find anything funny in dealing with his former master. "Oh, I've no doubt about that. The kindly façade only lasts until he's lost his patience and starts thinking about murder." And people still wonder where Maul gets it from...
ezra_of_lothal: (Ezra thoughtful by recadreuse)

[personal profile] ezra_of_lothal 2022-01-06 02:48 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh, if he'd been physically there, I'd probably be dead," Ezra agrees.

"Instead, he just ordered his soldiers to kill me."
survivalthroughhate: ([TPM 3] Talking far)

[personal profile] survivalthroughhate 2022-01-06 05:21 am (UTC)(link)
"You must not have been worthy of his attention," Maul observes. When Sidious feels a threat is actually important, he goes out to take care of it himself. That's how Maul had known he actually had grown powerful enough to be considered one. If he hadn't, Sidious would have just sent an assassin to Mandalore to take care of him instead of showing up in person.

"Well, young Jedi, let us see how long you survive here before you end up perishing," Maul says. He'd made it four months in Deerington before he'd died the first time but not for lack of trying.
ezra_of_lothal: (Ezra thoughtful by recadreuse)

[personal profile] ezra_of_lothal 2022-01-06 04:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Ezra's young enough to reflexively bristle at what feels like dismissal or contempt. But then a half a second later he decides - you know what, let Maul think he's weak. At this point in his life, he'd rather be underestimated than be the focus of Maul's attention.

He shoots the older man a brittle smile, and admits, "I'm no Skywalker." He doesn't have as much raw power. But he knows where his strengths lie, and the Emperor considering him not worthy of attention had lost the Empire the entire 7th fleet and one of its best strategists.

So what if he's not destined to bring down the Emperor himself. He's pretty confident he'll have helped the Rebels get in position to do that.

Then he shrugs. "We'll see."
survivalthroughhate: ([TPM 68] From the back)

[personal profile] survivalthroughhate 2022-01-07 01:32 am (UTC)(link)
Maul grins at the mention of Skywalker. There's two of them in the city right now but he'll let Ezra discover that for himself. Maul gets up from where he's been sitting on the opposite edge of the fire, the movement fluid and graceful thanks to his prosthetics.

"I suppose we will. If you have need of me, contact me by the Omni or come to my home. It is the Prufrock district close by where the Gate is located." He'll just leave out the fact he's got two very nasty beasts patrolling his property at all times plus Savage to occasionally deal with. Let the young Jedi figure that part out for himself should he take Maul up on his invitation.

Then Maul walks on and back toward where the boardwalk is located, the first location that resembled civilization once the Sleepers leave the beach. This Ezra Bridger is a bit intriguing. He'll have to see just what the young Jedi is made of later.