July Test Drive Meme!

[reddosmod]

JULY 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: Colorful paper lanterns shaped like jellyfish lit up and hovering in the air. ]
[Image Two: A person with long hair wearing a crown dedicated with shells and rocks. ]

Prompt Two
[Image One: A GIF of waves breaking roughly out in the middle of the ocean. ]
[Image Two: Strong waves crashing into a lighthouse and rocks. ]

Prompt Three
[Image One: A large Ningen (a sea creature that is half human, half monster, and has no face except for a large slit for a mouth) towering over a deep sea diver. ]
[Image Two: A person standing out on the rocks with their arms out stretched as the tentacles of a large sea monster wave in the air above the ocean. ]

[NAVIGATION]

TDM Questions • Reserves • Taken • Applications • Full Navigation

[Jump to Comments]

STANDARD ARRIVAL

WHEN: August
WHERE: The Farther Shores/The Boardwalk
CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A

---

You're one of the lucky ones. Your journey is smooth sailing and you wind up exactly where you're supposed to: on the Farther Shores. You grow out of your squid body without a hitch, either with the help of another Sleeper or one of the Wakers, and you get to discover this new world. All new Sleepers might take some time to find their bearings. It might be tricky to remember how to use your body parts the way you're supposed to. You might stumble around the beach or forget how to talk - but don't worry! It'll come back to you sooner or later.

Hopefully, you've found something to wear, either in your Welcoming Bag or otherwise, and can start familiarizing yourself with your surroundings. Maybe you help some other squids out on the beach. Waking up sucks! You feel for the little guys. And hey, maybe you're hoping one of those squids is a good friend...Stranger things have happened.

SEASONAL DETAILS ON THE BOARDWALK
This month has an entire festival dedicated to Mariana. The people of Trench seem to be quite enamoured with her, despite her often cruel and unpredictable behaviors. The festival has gone all out with decorations. The boardwalk will be lined with lanterns in the shape of various sea creatures, such as jellyfish, dolphins, seahorses, and (of course) squids! These lanterns will be lit every night throughout the month and will burn through the night. They are bright beacons to a month that is otherwise becoming more and more gray and chilly as time passes.

The people of Trench are also decked out for the occasion. Blues and greens are the popular color choices for outfits, and many people will even decorate their hair with pieces from the ocean. Whether it's with full headpieces that are worthy enough for mermaids or just something as simple as weaving shells into a braid, everyone seems to have something on them that ties them to the sea. There are stalls set up to help newcomers (or oldies who just want to have some fun) decorate their hair as well and face paint for those who want to go the extra mile.

The festival comes with all sorts of celebrations that can be partaken in at absolutely no cost. There are food vendors, though they seem to be short on seafood this month. Likely it's due to the rough seas with waves so treacherous that not even the most skilled of sailors seems to be able to get out into them. They'll remark on how difficult is must have been to swim to shore in those awful waves. So instead of fish and shrimp, there are other sea-dedicated dishes: seaweed salad, noodle dishes made with seaweed broth, caramelized chicken in a fish and ginger sauce, etc. There are also ocean themed desserts, such as cupcakes with blue frosting shaped to look like a great wave. There are games such as dunk tanks, dart balloons, ring tosses, and other typical carnival entertainment. If you can think of it, it's probably there. At the end of the night, there's often a fireworks display over the rolling waves.

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

rough seas and high winds

WHEN: Last Week of July, First Week of AugustT
WHERE: Beach and Nearby Oceans
CONTENT WARNINGS: Threat of drowning, severe weather phenomena, Environmental hazards, possible death

---

For some reason, Mariana is particularly wrathful even as the month begins. Even leaking into the end of the month of July, the sea begins to foam and rage in ways that are almost impossible to imagine. As you stare out int the beachheads, you may see vast waves and surf that would daunt the most professional of surfers. Water crashes into each other in colossal spouts. Waterspouts can be seen as storms occasionally buffet the coastline and just out into the ocean itself. However, the one thing about this chaotic energy is that it is just that, chaotic. One moment the sea may be calm, and the next it is a roiling, seething force out to destroy everyone.

This is, naturally, dangerous for those who are just hapless squids trying to reach shore. They may find themselves inexorably being flung towards sharp rocks and shoals, threatened with being dashed upon the stone near to the coast, or they may find themselves constantly swirling in eddies and whirlpools to the point of near exhaustion. However, they are not the only ones so threatened. Even those on the coast are in near constant danger of being washed right back out to see by an unexpected wave and sudden rip-tide. There are wood planks and other detritus to grab hold of, but it is very much a battle for one's life out there!

The sea's rage, the locals say, is because Mariana is particularly incensed over something that occurred. They do not know what exactly, but many have said that sleepers have felt a particular brunt of this ire lately. For now, it is a game of survival and a constant battle to bring people in safely.

Notes:
-Any natural weather occurrence is possible in the first week of August and last of July. Seemingly impossible combinations may occur (A waterspout in the middle of the eye of a hurricane, almost anything.
-These threats will be upon anyone who is not far enough inland to enjoy the festivities. The beach is not truly safe and sleepers are hustled inland quickly.
-Death is possible, though sleepers who die in the ocean find themselves returning very quickly as squids for some reason, within 24 hours, only to be threatened again before they eventually find shore.

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

of monsters in the water

WHEN: Throughout August
WHERE: The coast and waterways
CONTENT WARNINGS: Monster Horror, Possibly Getting Eaten, Threat of bodily harm, Unnatural Physiology, Existential Dread

---

Something has been dredged up from the deep by the storms that rage. It is said that Mariana not only presides over the oceans, but also the most powerful monsters that dwell within the deep. Some of these, it is believed, may be the remains of Pthumerians whose minds and lives were lost during the hard times before, or the spawn of their mating with things other than humans. Whether these rumors are true, eldritch things have begun to emerge from the depths and darkness, things best left unseen.

Throughout the month of August, it is possible to encounter creatures that can only be described as monsters emerging from the water. With every passing storm, another emerges. Some are as large as small kaiju, while others are closer to human size, and each shares very little in common with the others, save for two particular details. The first of these is that they are all aquatic in nature and bear at least a passing similarity to sea monsters of ancient legend or particularly large and dangerous aquatic animals. Giant cuttlefish, Megalodons, Plesiosaurs, Octopi, Sea Cucumbers, Whales, or any of a number of other sea creatures appear to be their basis. The other similarity, however, is that all are hideously and grotesquely deformed. Tentacles, second rows of teeth, great clawed hands and feet enabling them to walk on dry ground, a thousand eyes all over the hump of a hunchback whale all shooting laser beams in the full moon, almost anything seems to be possible, though the changes are all chtonically horrendous in nature.

These creatures are violent, dangerous, and horrifying to behold. Just looking at them jars the mind and threatens to damage one's psyche while they try to understand what they are seeing. Bones are in seemingly impossible angles, bodies moving in ways that they shouldn't. Just looking at them can cause nausea, vertigo or mental breaks, though the danger does not stop there. They are agents of chaos, seeking to destroy mind or body, on a rampage whenever they reach ground, though they do not delve far into Trench beyond the waterways and beach, almost as if they are prevented by something. When one strays too close, an ominous light glows from the tops of the tallest spires in the city and they are inevitably repelled, but until they are killed or sent back to the deep from whence they came, they remain a threat outside of the city.

[JUMP TO TOP]

CODING

Comments

[acidjail]

[It has only been a handful of minutes, and Joy has already had a terrible day. She has been dragged up out of the waters. She has been a squid. She has had a tantrum that has not gotten anything out of her system. She is naked and chilled and has bits of viscera in places no viscera ought to be. She is being spoken to familiarly (Miss!) by some ghastly little shade. There is something profoundly, intimately wrong with her blood, a horrific disorder and rebellion of the cells.

She bristles visibly at the girl's intimation of payment, as if that spectacle had anything to do with her, as if she imagines she has taken some revelation from Joy that the Saint might quiver at. Her butterfly flits from her nose to perch beside her ear, a bizarre ornament on a horror like the one she is.]

I haven't the slightest interest in learning anything about this wretched brackwater.

[She pulls an exaggerated frown, nose wrinkling in disdain, and emphasizes her point with a pronounced little:] Blech.

[loopsbian]

Then I won't bother. Far be it from me to interfere with the thrill of discovery!

[ she reaches into the air, pressing her thumbnail to the pad of her middle finger before audibly snapping. smoke bursts forth, and then a black dog - a large one, something closer to a wolf than a puppy - drops from it. it paces to satoko's side, standing and watching mercymorn warily the whole while. ]

Do you have a name? It's going to get tiresome, just calling you Miss the whole while.

[acidjail]

[Joy glares at the new creature irritably, but without surprise. It takes so very much to surprise her, anymore, and even this nightmarish purgatory lacks anything that feels novel enough to be worth subjecting herself to the awful affair of knowing about it.

This isn't the first time she's washed up on this shore. She is trying not to remember that, either.

She straightens her back like a pin and flattens her hands on the tissue-slick rock beneath her, lifting her chin, and for all that she is a disgusting wet horror of a thing there is a grace to the gesture bred of ten thousand years of repetition.]

You behold the Saint of Woe. Marvel that you are so blessed.

[Then, with a derisive sniff:] Or don't. See what I care.

[loopsbian]

My, the Saint of Woe! Not quite the name I asked for- [ yep. she's going to be exactly that much of a little shit. ] -but that is the quite the title, Miss. Consider me impressed!

[ she gives a little round of applause for mercymorn. it is very unbefitting of her ten thousand years of stature and grace. ]

A Saint... From Earth then, aren't you? [ she says it casually, as if just anyone should know the name. as if anyone would know immediately. ] That was a Christian sort of thing, wasn't it? For people who died for their God?

[acidjail]

[Sarcastic condescension is a note that no one but her nearest and least dear companions have attempted to play for the Saint in millennia. Even the puerile, squawking fools of the Edenities have had more sense than to try it, save for one dreadful incompetent. It supplants whatever heretical and evidently dead little superstition from some badly named planet the girl is babbling about in Joy's interest, her head cocking as she looks at the still nameless child as if she cannot quite understand the words falling out of her mouth.]

Aren't you a clever one?

[She asks, breathily rhetorical, with the lightest unsheathing of an edge in her tone, a razor scraped across velvet.]

Oh, a Saint does die for her God, a thousand times over. [She runs her tongue over her teeth, turned abruptly conversational.] And then once. Is that what this is all about, then?

[loopsbian]

How should I know? This is the first we've met.

[ ah - there it is. the woman's hackles rise, her tone going from impotent fury to a sharper, more powerful steel. for her part, satoko visibly relaxes. a different sort of danger, in its own way.

how entertaining. even if she dies a few times here, she'll be leaving content. ]

Touchy subject? My apologies. I remember death being disorienting, once. [ she gathers her skirt in her hands, giving an overblown curtsy - and while the distinction may be subtle, she's mocking the gesture itself, not the other woman. ] Satoko Hojo. I don't have any title quite as grand as yours, but I have been called the Witch of Certainty. A pleasure to meet you, Saint of Woe.

[acidjail]

[A particular dreaminess enters the Saint's eyes, rust-clot reddish brown softened by the dawn's light. She props her bloody chin in her bloody palm, elbow braced against her knees. Indifferent to her own nakedness, she sifts her gaze across Satoko from head to toe, nothing gentle in the idleness of her curiosity.

The ridiculousness of the curtsy is what tips her over the edge. She has never been so inoculated against nostalgia as she's been accused of being. It's only that almost nothing is worth being nostalgic about.]

How many times have you died, Witch of Certainty?

[She's hardly ever seen the point of being indirect.]

And don't be shy.

cw: discussion of death, suicide, satoko

[loopsbian]

How many...? [ that gets a laugh from her, high and energetic. ] Saint of Woe, please, try to understand! If I'd bothered to keep count of such things, I'd have lost myself long ago. Though, let's see... I wonder...

[ perhaps it's idle boredom. perhaps it's genuine endearment towards this barely-contained, primal shriek of a being trapped in the shell of a human woman. but regardless, satoko stops what she's doing and thinks- genuinely thinks, doing some arithmetic in her head. ]

...mm, there were a few hundred or so before I remembered any of it. [ a promising start. ] A few decades, maybe another century's worth after that? I still bothered to live most of those out, rather than just leaving immediately. Those were some of the most memorable deaths, if I may speak frankly! I still thought myself some degree of human, after all. And despite what some people may think, suicide most certainly isn't painless. Especially when most are simply so bad at it.

[ and if that were it, it'd be easy enough - but it still wouldn't be enough to explain the raw death this girl exudes. she continues. ]

A hundred years of quietude, while I watched most of the ones I'd missed. And then I got tired of drifting along, and took matters into my own hands.

[ she chuckles, an almost nostalgic tone entering her voice. ]

Sometimes I'd make a little game of it. I remember a digital lock, once - one of those ones with eight digits, you know? And I killed myself each time I guessed wrong. Would you believe I still remember the code? One-three-two-zero-one-two-three-four. Goodness, I couldn't even tell you how many centuries ago that was...

cw: discussion of death, suicide, mercymorn

[acidjail]

[Mercymorn listens placidly, quirking her exquisitely arched eyebrows at this and that tragedy as seems appropriate. She doesn't get it precisely right.]

Congratulations.

[She drizzles stickily, like syrup.]

That is one of the most tremendously macabre and distasteful reminiscences I've ever heard, and I was once forced - wholly against my will - to listen to a five hour and thirty seven minute long discussion about whose dead tits had looked the most like a particularly pendulous mountain range.

[She looks out to the sea, drawn back by the sounds of the waves, and stretches both her arms out over the tops of her knees.]

Yes. I suppose you would stop being human, after all that. [She hums, a brief, electric short burst.] You must be quite good at dying by now, one would expect.