reddosmod: (Default)
Deer Country Mod ([personal profile] reddosmod) wrote in [community profile] countryclub2022-07-25 10:37 pm
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July Test Drive Meme!

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. ]

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.

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.

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.

CODING
acidjail: rights to use paid by me; do not take (06)

cw: hypnosis, unwanted kissing

[personal profile] acidjail 2022-08-07 08:22 pm (UTC)(link)
The only things left in the whole cold, miserable universe that Mercy had left to fear (before she had nothing left to fear at all) are intimately known to her. She does not flinch from the pathetic little man whose low cunning has won him the briefest of false victories; she welcomes his idiot attempt to grapple with her, dredging up a comprehensive library of unpleasantness she has yet to inflict, and so once again, in the span of less than a minute, she is surprised.

He kisses her.

Her body locks up like a frozen tablet, nothing but a glaze of white-hot noise behind her snapped open eyes as he invites his probing tongue into the slack shock of her half-parted lips.

Blood and saliva, the most commonly used paints in a flesh magician's palette, and even in the wilderness of her staggered fury she remains perfectly adept at isolating and incinerating the foreign invaders in a flash of color-draining affront. This little man, who will be much littler when she is done with him, has chosen another absolutely juvenile trick, which is nearly as offensive as the daring to lay hands upon the inviolate temple that is a Saint's own hallowed flesh.

"How dare you," she says, dreamily anticipatory, in a voice that tenderly promises such great and terrible violence that even God Himself might blush at it, "How dare-"

The white-hot noise shades pinkish, then pink. Her already hugely open eyes strain to open wider, flooding with new shock, and she looks at Waver as if seeing his face for the first time, and truly marking it. Her eyelashes flutter frantically as she claws her fingers into the sand and straightens her back like one shot clean through the body, and she takes a huge, gasping breath - and slumps, bonelessly, back onto the sand. There she sprawls, insensate and diminished, under the effects of something most unsettling: something new.

(The trees blow in the wind. Pinkish strands of strange flowers brush across her cheeks. There is someone sitting beside her that she knows, if she only opens her eyes.)
slightlytaller: (discerning)

cw: UNCONSCIOUS NAKED LADY ABANDONED ON THE BEACH

[personal profile] slightlytaller 2022-08-07 10:47 pm (UTC)(link)
The scent of a mediterranean summer, with the dizzying blend of florals and the salt-spray of the sea, dissipated into the breeze as Waver wiped his lips. For a brief, wild instant he wondered if a certain ancient king, the man that conquered so much of the world that dozens upon dozens of cities still bore his name, had encountered this flower, drank it's nectar, and sat under it's drowsy, fern-like branches.

...Odds were that yes, Iskandar-- Alexander the Great himself-- had many encounters with the surreal flowering tree that would eventually be called albizia julibrissen. He would ask about that later.

Upon feeling the effects of the foreign flesh magic that bore down on him with the weight of a star start to release, he moved quickly. Digging into his pocket, Waver produced a copper coin-- one of many coins from London that he kept on his person, and non-too-gently pressed it against her lips.

"May Mariana show mercy and bring you back into her arms," He uttered quickly. Then, as an afterthought, he added: "Or, at least still your tongue."

Straightening his stance, he then did the smartest thing any man in his position would do.

Run.

The cloak was her's to keep, should she wish.

Should Mariana allow it.

All he cared about was his survival. There were students to attend to, and people that depended on him.

If there was a tingling on his tongue, he ignored it. It was no worse than some of the more questionable potions he had drank over the years.

For now.

acidjail: rights to use paid by me; do not take (06)

cw: body horror, forced empathy, fungus

[personal profile] acidjail 2022-08-13 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Mercymorn wakes to the brush of pink across her nose, a gentle ripple that blurs the lines of dream and reality. The heaviness on her lips is nearly like a kiss, and all around her are flowers, their scent redolent with sweetness over the faint hint of decay. She shifts, restless, on the sand.

(Inside of Waver's mouth, spores nestle against the slick epithelial cells of the oral mucosa, their simple and elegant function activated by the mechanical recognition of foreign territory.

They unfurl in microscopic pink strands, weaving down in search of the slender branching cell network that they so closely mimic, but with greater speed and aggression than any natural growth. They are a thalergetic marvel wedded to the blood of this world, two magics intertwined, and they do only one thing, and they do it very well, and very quickly. Contact is made. A connection is formed. It lies latent, awaiting signal.)

Her mouth parts. The coin clicks against her teeth. Mercymorn snaps upright like a flicked blade, as sharp and lethal, and she stares straight ahead with fixed eyes and shivering shoulders, hands balled into cut-palm fists.

(The signal comes, and they explode into furious transmission, a seething storm of tumultuous sensation like a siren blasted into an ear, thought obliterating rage and the wild, wide sweep of physiological activation across every cell and sense.)

"Bastard!!" Bawls the Saint of Joy, as much like a child as she accused him of being, a welter of boiled over rage that sweeps all other feeling aside.