February 2022 Test Drive Meme

[reddosmod]

FEBRUARY 2022 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: Carnival booths at dusk]
[Image Two: Gif of a scantily clad woman walking near a large blinking automatron clown head.]

Prompt Two
[Image One: A giant spider impales small boy in a black silhouette platform game.]
[Image Two: Laughing woman with nothing but a mouth on her face.]

Prompt Three
[Image One: Dice being tossed in slow motion.]
[Image Two: Overgrown mansion in the woods.]

[NAVIGATION]

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A Less Than Typical Arrival

WHEN: Last few days of February into mid-March
WHERE: The Farther Shores/The Boardwalk
CONTENT WARNINGS: Clowns, creepy dolls, extortion?

---

When you arrive, the process is as easy and comfortable as turning from a squid into a Sleeper can ever be. The weather is almost balmy and blossoms bud on the trees. Pink blooms float out like cherry blossoms across the coastline. It is comfortable enough out that you might be tempted to strip down to your shirt. However, you would be the outlier: the people of Trench cover every inch of their skin and wear their gloves. Despite the pleasant weather, there's an ominous feeling and dark clouds over the ocean in the distance.

Oh, don't pay any mind to that! There's a festival going on on the boardwalk. Trenchies beckon Sleepers forward, and they'll find that along with food stalls that offer typical carnival treats (fried dough, corn dogs, etc.) are carnival games of chance. Ring tosses, dart throws, claw grabs. All of the games seem to rely more on luck than skill, and there are gambling tables set aside for people to play against each other.

Among the prizes, Sleepers see familiar items from home, as well as their welcome bag items, such as their Omni. Their welcome bag can also be won, but inside they'll find only their Lamp Friend. All the items usually in the welcome bag can, and by the end of the arrival will, be won by them, but not always for free.

While most games are free to play, some Trenchies may ask for a small vial of blood, or a song, or a joke. Less common are Trenchies who may ask you to work at their business to pay for playing their game. If you're lucky, a kind Waker and/or veteran Sleeper may come by and play for you. However you play (or don't), it feels like an unseen hand is guiding the fortune to ensure that the right items end up in the right hands. The longer you play, the more you regain, the more you feel like someone is watching you.

If you find yourself at the carnival at night, you'll find an edgier crowd, and an energy in the air that inspires a risky kind of fun. You may meet more corrupted and unusual people who greet new arrivals with their idea of a welcome. Nobody is violent, but you may want to be more on guard with your possessions after you regain them. The food and games are the same, but Trenchies are more likely to take advantage of new Sleepers. Costumes that some wear are more risqué and counter-culture. You may find yourself dragged to play a drinking game by a joyful but slightly uncouth looking Trenchie in clown make-up. The prizes to win at the booths that sit next to your own items are unsettling looking but… harmless. Probably.

F.A.Q.

1. Sleepers can identify which Trench item, such as Omni, Lunar Orb etc., is theirs by either a label with their name on it or that presence watching them from behind urging the knowledge into their mind. Suddenly they will just know it is theirs and that someone watching them somehow gave them that knowledge.
   
2. It may be assumed that, regardless of 'how,' the Sleeper's welcome bag items are acquired by the end of their time at the carnival. The Moss King ensures that nobody ends up walking away with the wrong items, ensuring a loss or a gain here and there to manipulate fortune just right. But any number of awkward and fearful possibilities exist in the meantime while you roll the dice!
   
3. There are carnival rides at all hours, but they are limited to: carousel, ferris wheel and House of Mirrors. At night, the House of Mirrors becomes a House of Horrors.

Luck Be a Lady

WHEN: Last few days of February into mid-March
WHERE: All over Trench.
CONTENT WARNINGS: Giant spider, forced combat, creepy mouth face ghost lady

---

[From A SURVIVOR'S GUIDE TO THE UNKOWNS OF TRENCH, written by and added onto by many Arcane Scholars through the centuries and found in the Archives.]

"There are a number of phenomena, plant-life, creatures and entities big, small, incorporeal, corporeal, so on and so forth that have yet to be defined. Are they more Pthumerians, half-Pthumerians, a creation of one, a product of blood pollution? We simply do not know, but that only increases the need for understanding how to survive them when they appear. Yes, many appear benevolent, for now. But many more have their dangers and caveats...
THE LADY OF LUCK
An ironic name to be sure and what is theorized to be a being or phenomena with some sort of connection with the Moss King as it only ever occurs in the beginnings of his designated month, after all. Anyone who experiences a moment of good luck or chooses to take a gamble that pays off will soon find themselves tested by the Lady of Luck. A card will suddenly appear in the hand of the lucky person seemingly out of thin air.

The moment the card is turned around to view its face, the holder's fortunes and fate will shift depending on which letter or symbol on the wheel they look at first, and not all will have an effect. Every year the effects change without repetition, records of each have been lost to time and have no value for the purposes of this guide. The only common advice recorded over the years amounts to one word: win. If you do not, misfortune awaits."

This year's tests by Lady Luck are as follows:

T: Reality distorts around you and anyone within a twenty foot radius is pulled into a cylinder of bright colors. The afflicted are made to dodge giant falling candy and work together to push them into sets of three matching candies until they crush together and eventually there is only one row of piled giant candies. If successful, the cone keeping them in that colorful nightmare will drop and characters will find the candies they crushed were objects in the area at the time. A bag of hard candies replace the card in their hand as a reward. When the candies are sucked on, you will feel energized and gain the ability to float.

A: This time the world shifts to appear two dimensional and black and white, you and everything around you are reduced to a black silhouette. You have to leap from moving platforms, solve puzzles and climb ladders. To get to levels above or below you, you must break through with a leap to punch up or stomp down. The goal is to reach a clear finish line and what drives you forward is a massive black spider. Many of the puzzles and obstacles require two people to solve and get over. When you reach the end, your card will be replaced with a white feather. It's a single use item that can revitalize anyone you place it on. Also, you have indeed been jumping through the roofs and floors of businesses and houses etc.

O: A clear force field forms up around you and the nearest sleeper, anyone else in the area or who is walking by will be able to see you inside this cage. Suddenly music begins to play, dance music to be precise. And a hologram of what you're expected to do appears between you in the large area: dance battle. Literally. You are expected to fight Mortal Kombat style, but most of your moves must be some form of dance move. Lights and holographic dancing figures will appear in the area with you to cheer on your match. You can fight till one person is K.O.ed or killed. Yes, there will be a 'finish him' announcement upon your victory. If you refuse to participate you both lose. The winner's card becomes a gold coin that allows you to charm anyone to do what you wish once a year.

"After each phenomena, some sufferers report seeing a woman in the distance laughing so wide it appears she has nothing but a mouth. She makes no sound and appears only briefly, but she has earned this phenomena the nickname 'Lady Luck'. Many attribute it to her direct influence, but thus far it is not clear whether she is the cause or a symptom. Many theorize that the point of these occurrences is to test whether the individuals affected are worthy of the gift of luck."

F.A.Q.

1. Yes, the first scenario is Candy Crush meets Tetris. I am not sorry. And the feather in the second is in fact a phoenix down.
2. The consequence for losing each of these is exceptionally bad luck for a day or several days depending on player preference. Bad luck can be lethal.

The Moss King's Summer Home

WHEN: Until the Second Week of March
WHERE: Unknown Location outside Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Perceived Death by Spontaneous Combustion, Acrophobia, Possible violent death, temporary insanity, cursed items

---

The morning after your first day in Trench, or the morning after new Sleepers arrive, there is a small envelope marked with your name within easy reach. Without realizing it you feel compelled to open it. Three things drop out of the envelope: a six-sided die crafted of what looks deceptively like bone, a small white pill, and a hand-written note.

“Dear friend,

I have had the good fortune of acquiring a new summer home outside of Trench and thought to share my good fortune with the Sleepers of the city. Take the pill, then roll the die to come to me. One visit per Sleeper.

-The Moss King.”

What could go wrong? Then again, given the Moss King's love for life and death gambles, what could go right? The moment you roll the die, before you can see the side it lands on, you explode in a shower of self-immolation and gore, only to be recombined painfully at the Moss King's summer house. The house is shaped like a giant die, and you're in front of the face you rolled. Hope it wasn't a one!

• Rolled a 1: Congratulations, you're crushed under the giant die and wake up in a coffin in the cellar. How much air do you have left and how do you get out? Scream loud!
• Rolled a 2: You're in front of a conservatory. When you walk through the glass door, it's impossible to avoid the itching ivy. You're going to be uncomfortable and scratching for hours...
• Rolled a 3: You're in luck, you're at the front door! When you ring the doorbell, the sound outside is positively deafening and your ears will ring for hours.
• Rolled a 4: Crawling in the master bedroom window like a burglar from the private porch. How uncouth. Even worse is the security measure, which dumps a can of paint on your head, leaving your hair and skin some unholy and nauseating color for the next hour.
• Rolled a 5: The backdoor seems almost harmless, and in fact? It is. Nobody expected you to come in the back door, you barbarian. Better wipe your feet on the floor mat or you may never get the mud out of your shoes. No, seriously, wipe your feet or you'll be slipping and tripping every couple minutes for the next few hours.
• Rolled a 6: Hope you're not afraid of heights, because you're falling from pretty far in the sky and through the roof below. Thankfully the shingles and mattress beneath somehow break your fall into the attic, but it probably hurts like hell.

Once you're inside the house, you find a quaint, strange space. There's a surreal sitting room decorated with flowers and moss hanging down the walls and the smell of lilacs fills the air. Tea and cakes are set out for guests and you seem to have the run of the house. There are spare bedrooms that you can stay the night in and when you wake the next day, you will be in your own bed in Trench feeling extremely well rested.

Around the house, there are strange objects and curiosities, some of them very familiar and some that just seem useful. You can find at least one item from your own world here, something of great significance, or even something that you thought was lost forever. Or instead of an item from home, what catches your eye is one of the small potions that says 'drink me,' or a strange, useful tool that you find in the closet, or even a wabbajack. No, seriously, it could actually be the wabbajack. The Moss King's a bit of a hoarder when it comes to the strange and surreal things people have lost in bets. Almost anything is possible. A note is attached to the item you want with a promise: “Give and take, tit for tat.”

You can take one item from the house, for a price. Should you have been 'unlucky' enough to have rolled a one or a six? You're now in luck, the Moss King considers that suffering a fair trade. If you rolled any other number, you must leave something behind. If you do, your item is yours to keep. If you decide not to make the trade, you can spend your time in this surreal home, surrounded by hoarded knick knacks as long as you care to.

If you choose not to spend the night, leaving the summer home is a lot easier than entering it: just go out the front door... and then walk along a winding path that allegedly leads back to Trench. It looks and feels like it's going to take forever. Space warps here and you can feel it, it's uncomfortable but not painful. Before you know it, the walls of Trench are visible through those woods and you are in Trenchwood again. Be wary, though, monsters lurk and odd mushrooms with varying unpleasant effects such as hallucinations grow along this path home.

F.A.Q.

1. If characters try to enter the house in a different way than the number they rolled, they'll instantly teleport back to their starting point.
2. Despite what the note says, characters can visit the home again by rolling the die, but the pill that was taken the first time can't be replicated.
3. If they decide not to take the pill, or you visit again, they feel like the house keeps shifting around them, tilting and distorting and revealing horrors in the walls, what horrors they see is up to you. The painful process to get there will be even more harrowing and hard on the body as well. But there's benefit to continuing to go back: the objects you can take.
4. Items taken that are not special items from home and invented by you must either be a one-time use item or a weaker benefit multi-use item. One time use items would be for if you want to give your character an especially big benefit like a staff that instant heals lots of people or a big death laser, multi-use items would have lesser abilities such as providing more endurance in a fight or healing small scratches.
5. The more times your character visits and items they take, the more unpredictable the items become. It's on them for ignoring the note saying you may come only once. You may grab an enchanted sword that's supposed to make you stronger on your third visit, but find when you use it, the enchantment will randomly have the opposite effect. Single use items will also be subjected to this drawback and after their one big beneficial use, the item will become cursed and hard to get rid of, always finding its way back to you. What kind of curse your single use item generates is up to the player. Players may also decide on the method it will take to get rid of their cursed object so long as it's not simple.
6. The price characters pay to get each item may be any range of things: another item from home, any object of general value or personal value, a good amount of your blood (enough to make you woozy when you're done), a small but important memory, if you rolled a 6 and were badly injured falling through the roof or rolled a 1 and suffered escaping the coffin.

CODING

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul opened himself up to the question, but he still doesn't answer it immediately. He picks up one of the darts and weighs it in his hand, then sets it lightly between his fingertips as he lines up his first target, one of the smallest - and therefore most valuable - balloons.]

They don't require devotion or sacrifices, for one. They aren't jealous of other gods and their worship, so you won't need to give up yours.

[Many of these games are about luck. This one purports to be about skill, but even then, the slight sway and bob of the deliberately slightly sagging balloons in the wind, the deliberately misweighted darts, and the nearly imperceptible but balance throwing slant of the boardwalk here conspire to introduce chance to the game.

The balloon pops, struck dead center, and Paul picks up another dart to get its measure.]

And they walk among us, from time to time. This is the Moss King's festival.

[dohaeris]

[alayne watches avidly, gently resting one hand on paul's free arm and idly turning the needle-end of her necklace in the other.

she has never known gods to require sacrifices, except perhaps of bad habits. but devotion...perhaps this means he isn't out to become a septon, after all?]

You don't have to swear an oath to a temple and renounce your worldly holdings, then?

[she keeps her tone light and teasing, trying not to sound particularly concerned about it.]

Have you ever seen them, walking around?

[sansa had always dreamed of celebrating maiden's day, but this is...nothing like the kind of festival she'd had in mind.]

[terriblepurpose]

You could, if you wanted to. There's a variety of practices you can devote yourself to. But no, it isn't required.

[Another balloon pops, another dart picked up and weighed. The barker seems mildly put out, but Paul studiously doesn't notice.

He keeps his tone light to match Alayne's. It comes back to him more easily than he would have thought, even under the shadow of these circumstances: airy, archly playful.]

A few times. Argonaut is the one you're most likely to see. He resembles a moth, although he's less like an insect than that sounds, and he's about the size of a house cat. Do you know what those animals are?

[He's gotten in the habit of checking, instead of assuming.]

[dohaeris]

[she hopes he doesn't leave correspondingly huge holes in woolen clothes, which she thinks is probably very rude to say about someone's god. a god probably doesn't eat anything. she presses her thumb against the dull point of the needle spike. the moth ring from her parents, left behind in her escape. cersei probably threw it into blackwater bay. and another girl, who was always chasing cats.]

We had cats.

[perhaps a little rueful. her brows knit together and she turns inward, a little, towards paul.]

What makes him a god?

[so far he sounds more like a magical creature, perhaps a talking one. she had never thought about what the gods were like before. they were...symbols, maybe. she can't imagine them walking, talking. the stories about the new gods were always parables, stilted and odd. she had always preferred the stories with real characters. it's hard for her to imagine what the mother and the maiden even looked like, outside of the pictures in the sept.]

[terriblepurpose]

[It's within the realm of possibilities that Alayne has adapted to the concept of departure from her homeworld more quickly than most, the way she says had instead of has with that soft note, but Paul thinks the chances shade towards this being a past tense predating her arrival. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, just for an instant, thoughtful and quieted.

Then it's back to the balloons, and another well-aimed toss. There's only one more dart between them and her prize.]

What are they like to have?

[He's usually caution of asking after people's past, now, thanks to the preponderance of tragedy he's found here (another common thread, another piece of the puzzle), but surely, cats are a safe topic.]

And as for what makes him a god - the same thing that gives most people their stations. [A beat, a wry little smile.] His relatives.

[dohaeris]

[perhaps she was thinking of a different kind of Cat. now, though, she thinks of the kitchen cats at winterfell, soft and friendly, often batting at her sleeves. she doubts they survived the razing.]

The cats? They were sweet. They would wind around your ankles, calling for food. The little ones liked to play with ribbon, or anything dangling from your clothes. You didn't have cats, where you lived?

[how better to keep rats out of the kitchens? she doesn't ask if they had rats, because it feels like poor manners. and why use cats as a measure, if he didn't know them? perhaps he simply didn't know them personally.

as for a whole house of gods...she pauses, frowns. it sounds like a whole new category of nobles to deal with.]

Did they make this world, then? This family, the gods?

[she can't imagine what else gods do. she liked the hymns and the weirwoods, but she had never given much thought to the gods themselves. for the first time she wishes she had studied the seven-pointed star just a little, so that she might understand.]

[terriblepurpose]

We had them, but not in the living quarters.

[Too easily subverted to the purposes of assassins, or made liabilities in and of themselves.]

We did have great cats - not as pets, but in the southern jungles. The smallest as large as your Lady, the biggest nearly four times her size.

[He lines up his sights, and sends the final dart into the final balloon, which pops much like the barker's enthusiasm already has. Paul rolls back his shoulders and looks to Alayne with a slight smile of triumph, muted by modesty's demands.]

One of their children made it, or so the story goes. She dreamed the world that gave way to this one, and now her relations oversee it. Her name was Julia.

[It's not a story Paul really believes, but that's still not the purpose of myth.]

That's why this place is called the Waking World. Would you care to claim your prize?

[dohaeris]

[she smiles, and doesn't mention that lady is only half-grown. lady sits and watches paul throwing darts.]

Oh, the cats lived in the kitchens, but they would follow you sometimes. They had a way of getting into any room. There were cats in the barns, too. I should think most farms had barn cats, to keep the mice away. And there were shadowcats in the North, and then lions, somewhere. Outside of Westeros there were all manner of creatures, but I don't know much about them. Did you ever see any of the great cats?

[she beams back at him and claps politely. she turns to the barker, all steel.]

That's my dress, thank you.

[once she has it she realizes a full-length gown with a lot of feathers on the back isn't the easiest thing to carry around a crowded festival but she gamely folds it over her arm and smiles at paul again.]

Well, I suppose it's either my ring next, or my boots.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul's smile grows as Alayne runs through her catalog of creatures, and even more so (though he shades it by glancing aside) when she issues her command to the carnival barker. It's almost enough to make him forget where they are, imagine this as some strange outworld diversion that's landed planetside.]

I did see them, though they're hard to find, these days. I'd show you a sketch if I had one. They have all kinds of patterns.

[They're a variety of species, but he can't know how much that would mean to her. He waits while she arranges her dress as best as she can, and wishes briefly for a garment slip.]

Perhaps the ring? So the last thing is the most difficult to carry.

[dohaeris]

[she sighs wistfully. this has been one of the best nights she can remember, much better than the stupid feast at the gates of the moon with stupid, dull harry hardyng. she hates to think it will be cut short by boots.]

I suppose I'll have to bring it all back to the inn.

[and then she see it, not the black amethyst ring from the eyrie but her old silver moth ring from winterfell, evidently not resting on the bottom of blackwater bay.]

Oh--that's not the ring I was wearing. I--I thought I'd lost it.

[like lady. she blinks back tears. it appears to be set above some bottles stacked in a pyramid shape.]

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul's own ring feels heavier on his hand as Alayne does an admirable job of curbing the incipient shine in her eyes. He doesn't make an effort to disguise his sympathy, though he's careful to curb any signal that might hint at pity, which he's always found one of the ugliest expressions of recognition.]

Sometimes this place brings back things you thought were lost.

[And people, he doesn't say. She'll learn that soon enough for herself, one way or the other - and he hopes it's the other.]

I'll help you bring them back.

[Everyone has been telling him to take a rest. Maybe he should follow their advice. So Paul gives Alayne another small smile, and steps up to the booth, committed to his course of action.]

[dohaeris]

[she beams and touches her free hand (such that it is) briefly to her forearm.]

I can't thank you enough.

[and a small, self-deprecating laugh.]

These games are all very similar. Would that just one of them were running races.

[she's good at running races!]