October Test Drive Meme!

[reddosmod]

OCTOBER 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: A snowy, rocky beach in winter. ]
[Image Two: Bowls of mushroom soup and bread. ]

Prompt Two
[Image One: Dali painting of the moon as a city]
[Image Two: Twisted, warped cityscape]

Prompt Three
[Image One: Monster choking a sleeping person to death]
[Image Two: Death hovering over a sleeping person]

BONUS PROMPT
[Image One: Liminal Space image of a nondescript room with strange ledges]
[Image Two: Cenobite woman with borg-like attachments to her face]

[NAVIGATION]

TDM Questions • Reserves • Taken • Applications • Full Navigation

[Jump to Comments]

STANDARD ARRIVAL

WHEN: First Week of NOvember
WHERE: The Farther Shores/The Boardwalk, Koz's Orphanage
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 is not the greatest month to wash up on the Farther Shores. It's November and you'll pretty much immediately hate it! The waters are frigid but not quite frozen yet, but that won't make your arrival any less uncomfortable. Thankfully the Boardwalk seems well-stocked with heavy blankets and furs to give to newly awakened Sleepers. Barrels of hot chocolate and hot alcoholic cider are readily available to warm people up. There are several stalls selling hearty soups willed with mushrooms, potatoes, beans, and other filling components.

Fresh baked bread and pastries are sold on wax paper. Enjoy a steaming cinnamon roll or croissant or just your standard bread and butter. Many bakers have set up temporary stoves and seem to invite teaching Sleepers how to cook and prepare bread and pastries. Maybe knead some dough, learn some tricks of the trade. If you help out ab baker, they might even thank you with a sack of flour or other ingredients for bread!

Like last year, as the Moon shifts to Bone, whispers and hushed talk begins anew among the Trenchies about The Tower. There are whispers that something feels wrong. "You know Trench is his body, right?" one might say. "But look at what's been happening. Is everything alright?" There is nervousness, agitation. Trenchies can't seem to put a finger on it. One of the old fishermen mutters under his or her breath if overheard in this time. "Long time since we tried to leave the Tower's shield. Hope didn't bring anything back from out there. World's a strange place."

None of them seem to have anything specific to add. They just seem nervous for some reason.

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

IMAGE OF THE SELF

WHEN: Halloween through all November
WHERE: All of Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Distorted Reality, horrifying cityscape images, mounting paranoia, displacement

---

"They say that Trench is the body of the Tower." It is a saying so often repeated during the Bone Moon season that it becomes more of a mantra. Whether or not it is actually true remains a hotly contested debate between Arcane Scholars and Disciples, one of the few times that neither side fully agrees even with themselves. Yet, if it is true, what happens if the person whose body serves as a city begins to have an identity crisis of sorts? That certainly seems to be the case this month.

At random times, it just happens. You're walking from one place to another with your friend. You just stepped out of a lantern network teleportation circle. You open a door. Suddenly, everything is just wrong. It feels like you are in a surrealist's nightmare. Walls appear to be bleeding concrete in all directions. Stairwells twist impossibly, as if M. C. Escher himself were the architect. The pathway to where you intended to go warps and transforms itself into a perilous, twisted monstrosity that you have to navigate. Worse? The way you got here is just gone behind you, leaving you only the path forward.

Navigating this isn't impossible, but you will definitely need help. It might be that one has to stand on another's shoulders to get over an obstacle and then help them up. Maybe someone very small has to crawl into an opening to reach the door handle so the way through can be found. It varies, and the effect lasts only as long as it takes to get where you're going, but while you're here the reality continues to shift and some of these twistings could easily crush you! Don't tarry too long!

NOTE: The physical danger here is from environmental hazards. Feel free to choose any you like, but they will all return to normal when your character reaches their intended destination. Trenchies know nothing about this, though if one asks one of the former wastes, they will ward themselves as if against evil. They know something, but they dare not speak and will whisper hurriedly that the sleeper had best not talk too openly about this. "Best not to draw attention right now."

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP

WHEN: Last Week of October through the first week of November
WHERE: At Home, in your bed
CONTENT WARNINGS: Severe Insomnia, Sleep Deprivation, Deprivation induced hallucinations and mood swings

---

Something is clawing at your mind from the moment that the first signs of the cold coming. You can't put your finger on it, but even as you see the people of Trench preparing for the next month's arrival of sleepers, you can see they feel it too. Something claws at the mind and for a few people in Trench, this becomes a very literal problem. The thoughts are so overwhelming that you can't manage to find a good night's sleep. This problem is especially prominent for new Sleepers, who seem prone to arriving with terrible bouts of unexplainable insomnia.

That sounds simple enough to deal with, right? Perhaps some sort of sleep aid, or working oneself to exhaustion, and you can power through it, right? No. Nothing seems to work at first. Searches for a monster are futile. Warding and incense seem utterly ineffective, and no matter how hard you try, night after night you cannot sleep. You are terrified of falling asleep. If you fall asleep, you may never wake up! Even characters who do not fear a mortal death feel themselves compelled by this, and the longer that they do not sleep the more corruption risks them at its door. A night or two missed is one thing, but eventually irascibility sets in. Hallucinations may eventually start to crop up. The body needs REM sleep. It needs dreams, yet the horror that threatens the person will not allow them to sleep, for fear that it will come for them while they sleep. What 'it' is, they do not know.

There is only one solution. For those who already spend time with others? This is a simple thing, but they must still agree to do it. You can solve this curse only if you do not sleep alone. Another must stay awake for the vigil through the whole night. Simple enough given their insomnia, but they will be assailed by their own horrific lack of slumber. Only, after you have had a good night's sleep, be sure to care for the other who was so kind to you. Why? Because anyone so unkind as to not help their erstwhile companion sleep after they have finally gotten rest will find out that those fears were not unfounded and the next time they sleep, they really do not wake up!

Death, in this rare case, comes in the form of a heart attack. Its source is unknown, and all that the sleeper will remember is the worst nightmare of their life as they lay in bed, dying in soundless screams. So, be sure to take care of each other, sleepers!

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

THE VEINS OF THE TOWER

WHEN: November 1st (And only November 1st)
WHERE: Beginning anywhere, ending in A Nightmarish Place
CONTENT WARNINGS: Liminal Space, Disorientation, Hints of horrible monsters, Possible Death, Insane Zealotry, Mutilated Bodies

---

Rumors have lingered since the first encounters two months ago of a 'space between spaces' that people could accidentally fall into that this occurrence has not been entirely limited to the month it first happened in. Every once in a while, on unusual days, it has happened since that time. There appears to be little rhyme or reason to it, but it has happened again. Maybe you took an accidental step backwards. Or maybe you were crazy enough to have identified some spot you disappeared before and you were actually experimenting with the effect every day to see when it happened. You know, to chronicle the dates it happen, to keep a record, to understand it better, all of those sorts of things that cause some sleepers to poke things that are Better Left Alone because that's what some sleepers do with their free time, and then they touch the spot with something and suddenly they and everything around them are sucked in. How you got there is not important. You're here now, wherever here is.

Only this time its different. You're not in the spot you were last time, and in the distance you can hear shuffling of feet. Dread enters your heart, as you know that you do not have the means to fight whatever it is. You have an overwhelming urge to run, to flee at top speed. You and whoever is "lucky" enough to be with you must run as fast as you can, around corners, a roaring, inhuman scream echoing through the hallways, slamming into walls. You can't quite see it, not unless you want a swift, awful death at least. But around a corner there is salvation, an elevator shaft and the door is open. Frantic scrambling, running and jabbing buttons will cause the doors to close, just as something black like a giant hand grabs the far wall. You hear the rush, the scream. The elevator shudders three times as something pounds on it, but you're safe. Or, are you?

Instead of the usual moldy hallways, you see what looks like a hospital hallway. Anyone who lived through the nightmare may have awful flashbacks, but nothing is chasing you this time. The impossibly stretching hallway seems ceaselessly unchanging, each door locked, at least until you happen to notice a grate on one of the overhead air conditioners open wide. If you are curious enough to crawl up and into it, you're treated to a long scramble through the passageway, right up until you hear voices, menacing ones in the distance. Crawl quietly!

A grate emanating ugly, light is up ahead. As you and your companion work your way over, you're hopefully not heard. Through the grate, you see something awful. Two mutilated and disfigured figures speak while a third, calm and ordered looking woman listens. She seems to have mutilated her throat such that she should not be able to speak, and the other two appear have performed torturous experiments on their own flesh, their twisted visages that of the 'Zealots' that the Sleepers sometimes whisper about in fear. "It is almost time for the harvest. We made the quotas last cycle but only barely. The need is greater. Sacrifices must be made," one hisses. The other nods vigorously. "Yes. The situation is decaying. We have to move to stop this before it gets out of hand."

Before they can say more, however, the third woman looks up, directly at the grate. She smiles once, and a voice echoes from her throat as what appears to be a mouth inside of it moves, her own lips unmoving. "Continue this discussion later. It seems the problem has worsened. We will need to step up security in the meantime." She reaches out a hand and wrenches. The air shimmers around them and suddenly the duct you are traveling in collapses and breaks beneath you. Instead of falling into the farm, however, you find yourself falling through darkness for what seems an eternity, until you collapse hard to the pavement, in front of the entrance to the Gate, your breath coming back to you slowly, shakily.

NOTES: Death is possible should a sleeper assault the first creature. It is a being of impossible angles and blackness, is itself unkillable and will rend its victims to oblivion through brute force. Fighting the Zealots is not possible through this prompt. The grate cannot be opened in time to exit into the Sleeper Farm and engage them. However, the astute will be certain that there was for a moment an actual entry through and into the Sleeper Farm, somehow. Those familiar with these locations will recognize them as being Floor 1, the Stalls

[JUMP TO TOP]

CODING

Comments

[worldcleansing]

[ Small enough that he'd be safe if their interaction turns physical... or, it would have been true in the world he once knew. This land offers no guarantee. Even if she's another Sleeper, it's possible this woman has the capacity to vaporize him even from a distance. ]

I'm human.

[ Still cautious but not one to play timid, Light finally begins to bridge the distance between them. He stops still outside of easy reach, but it should allow them to converse without needing to make too much noise. ]

But not a human who came here by choice. Do you know where we are?

[ It's very likely that her situation mirrors his own, but it's a question worth asking. ]

[acidjail]

[Up close, the woman has a mildly unusual appearance: her hair is rose-gold and woven into a crown braid above an oval face of nearly the same colour, set with eyes of a peculiar reddish-brown hue, like churned clay mud. She has to tilt her decided chin upward to meet his gaze, but there's no trepidation or uncertainty there despite their circumstances. She takes his measure with unabashed clinical interest, sweeping him over head to toe.]

I haven't the slightest idea where we are - or how we came to be here, or, most pressingly, how to depart.

[If anything, her demeanor is more irritably inconvenienced than frightened, but whatever she makes of him smooths back precisely one degree of her annoyance. She takes a swift breath through the nose, and nods, some internal decision reached.]

But the only direction is forward. You may refer to me as Woe, if occasion calls for it. I propose we not linger.

[worldcleansing]

[ Light wishes he had more experience to draw from to determine what this world wants from them. Is there a goal? Is this place intentional? What's the meaning? There is one thing that holds his confidence. ]

I'm Light. Considering how big this space seems and how much of it is hidden, it's probably not a coincidence that we were placed so closely together.

[ It'd be easy to wander in the space and not meet another person. It is possibly a coincidence, but assuming otherwise doesn't seem dangerous.

Sight will do them little good; the fog hangs too heavily to make that sense reliable. Light hopes smell will never be his only indicator of direction. Touch also seems useless. That leaves their ears for now, but other than their voices, it's eerily quiet, all noise eaten up by the fog. ]

The door disappeared behind me. If we were meant to meet and there is a way out, it will be in the middle.

[ Otherwise they might have found it without running into one another. ]

It relies on a few assumptions, but I haven't seen anything else that indicated a way out.

[ Even following that logic, there are a few paths to take. Deciding to choose the right, Light takes the first steps. She's right in that action needs to be taken. ]

We don't know what else is in the fog, but if we're attacked, stick with me.

[acidjail]

[The boy apparently possesses that most rarefied of qualities: common sense. Her poised tension doesn't dissipate, but it no longer bears down as intensely on Light as it does on the mutually adopted task at hand. She follows a half-step behind him with precision suggestive of practice in doing just that.]

The theory fits an observed pattern.

[Being forced into proximity with strangers and set some interminable little puzzle against her will has becoming a distressingly common occurrence in the past few months. The one advantage of this place so far is that is not the place she was.]

And I most certainly have no intention of losing track of you.

[She mutters, direly, her frustration a itch flitting under her skin that has nothing to latch onto. She perversely and briefly wishes that he had done something to irritate her, so she would have some point to focus her pent nerves on.

She grits her teeth hard enough in contemplation of this predicament that the firsy rasp of shifting concrete is almost lost on her. She tilts her attention to the noise, and the absence of what she might expect behind it.]

The door disappeared. [She says, quietly.] The architecture is aberrant.

[worldcleansing]

[ The sound is soft enough that it could be easily lost in the thickness of the fog, but it's just faint enough to hear. He stops, listening, until Light comes to the same conclusion. Neither can say with certainty that the obscured alleys are empty of any other life. An uneasy feeling in his gut suggests that if they're not alone, the third party is likely to be hostile. They need to be prepared for the possibility.

Light takes the time to consider his temporary companion. She's stern and outspoken but didn't seem to fight him for the lead. Just as naturally as he fell into the front position, she'd fallen a close step behind.

Some may just call that smart.

She's also small, considerably more than him, and so far hasn't shown any display of power. They haven't needed it, but it's likely she doesn't have any that's immediately useful. If nothing else, the woman will have blood magic that's currently stronger than his own if she's been here long enough to notice a pattern.

While he likes to think his job at the NPA prepared him for this, he's not often in the field. He's been trained so Light isn't without some skill, but oddly enough, the supernatural isn't part of law enforcement training.

At least she's angry instead of panicked. ]

It's playing with us.

[ They're in a game. ]

But I don't share its sense of humor.

[ His footsteps continue again now that he's sure the 'danger' has passed. Maybe she has some information he can use. ]

Woe, how long have you been a Sleeper?

cw: death reference

[acidjail]

[Woe finds it garish to make unnecessary shows of power, but more to the point, it does not occur to her that one might be reassuring for her companion to witness. Years of prowess and sainthood bred a kind of expectant solipsism into her that is hard to shake with only a handful of months of obscurity and weakness.]

Since spring. About six or seven months, intermittently.

[Information she peels off like it's meant to be discarded. The duration is a curiosity to her, and she doesn't know what value it might have to him, so she is free with it. She even sees fit to explain a bit further without prying.]

By which I mean I have spent as much of that time as I have been able submerged - although as a solution to your confinement here, I can't recommend it. The game players are loathe to give up their pieces at the pieces' discretion.

[They have that much in common. Disdain for the Pthumerians is a point she can agree on nearly anyone with. It's what wrinkles her nose in distaste as the grinding resumes closer to them, her hands curling into sharp-knuckled fists as she shadows the taller young man. There's something deliberate to the nearness and the timing of the noise that offends her for its attempt to frighten them.

The wall that looms out of the fog ahead of them does much the same when she spots the narrow, broken drainage pipe that extrudes from it, far too tight for Light's shoulders even at a glance. She hisses through her front teeth like a grass viper, whispering and slight.]

I should have stayed in bed. [She complains, pettishly, stepping around him and approaching the pipe - which of course is only just large enough for her, and extends a shadowy and unknown distance forward.] Appalling - no, trite! It really is, you wretched edifice, you monumental tediousness!!

[She appears, for all the world, to be conversing with the wall.]

[worldcleansing]

[ It's easy for his sigh to be lost among her colorful vocabulary. He can't help but note that despite her anger, she doesn't curse or use coarse language. It really does continue to add to the image of a refined lady.

A refined lady that's being forced to crawl throw the narrow confines of a dark sewer. While Light feels confident that it's likely safe — this is meant to be an exercise in team building, and the blocks don't allow for one of them to die — he can't very well promise that nothing will happen to her. ]

I'll compliment you on your vocabulary, but it's probably not the time.

[ Undoing the buttons of his jacket, Light knows there's only one thing he can offer, but nothing changes the fact that they need for her to crawl through. He isn't going to lose body mass within the next few minutes. ]

I don't like the idea of asking you to go inside, but without it, you're just as trapped as me.

[ With the buttons undone, it's easy to shrug off the jacket. ]

Wear this. More than protecting your clothes, it's big enough that it should hang over your hands, too. It's better than nothing if there's anything sharp inside.

[acidjail]

[She is still peering into the darkness ahead when the young man begins unbuttoning his jacket, and when she tsks herself away from to to address him directly she blinks in a flicker of surprise at the offered covering. It is a meticulously polite consideration, with still no fault in it she can fairly pick at.

But she has not been spoken to like this in what is, even for her, a long time. Not even 2B takes this register with her, as gentle and solicitous as she is. It gives her pause, enough of one to be notable, before she takes the extended garment with two hands and shrugs herself into it.]

I promise you, I've been in darker holes than this.

[It's almost like reassurance as she begins to button the jacket from the bottom up, sleeves bunched around her wrists and threatening to engulf her fingers already, as he said. She tries to remember the last time someone thought she might do with a jacket.]

But I do hate putting my hands in the ick.

[She really does, a statement underwritten by the frisson of disgust that replaces the lull of thoughtfulness she was regarding him with. She is capable of tolerating every disgusting thing this universe may have to offer, but that doesn't mean she wants to discover some unfathomable oozy horror fingers first.]

And you may want to cultivate your own collection of synonyms if you spend any more time on this dreadful rock. It gets horrendously dull only saying - 'oh, that was nasty' or 'I hate this' - every time some terrible thing happens.

[Jacket donned, she faces the pipe once again, pops her fingers together and overhead for a stretch, and hoists herself into it with as much dignity as a person can have in a oversized jacket crawling into a pipe: not very much.]

Don't get eaten while I'm gone.

[Her voice echoes, and then she's crawling forward, first on hands and knees, and then, in an unwelcome development, on her elbows and belly. The pipe is at least dry, but she has no idea what residue might have accumulated in the dark of filth and rust. On the other side, she's forced to squirm out in a way that makes her extremely cross, but she doesn't cut herself on the jagged metal edges. From there, it's a brief matter of finding a promising looking crank, which pops a seam in the wall, and isn't that something?

Only a few minutes after disappearing into the pipe, a matching seam pops on Light's side of the wall, and a rather more disheveled Woe stands in the hidden doorway and waves into the dark beside her.]

[worldcleansing]

I didn't get eaten.

[ Light offers up a comment as a way to lighten the mood just a little as his eyes search for injuries that don't seem immediately present. Considering how willing Woe was before she went in again, it's likely she's even less happy now that she's had to crawl through the dark, damp, and likely disgusting space. ]

And you did well, even if it wasn't a fun job. That's our confirmation that we were meant to meet each other. I wouldn't have fit into that space. If it follows the same pattern, my turn will be coming next.

Before we move forward... You seem okay, but are you?

[ Woe seems an odd mixture of old fashioned sensibilities mixed with a strong pride. Light has no doubt that she'd write off any injuries as unimportant. Considering their fates are now tied to one another, it seems best to address any possible dangers instead of having her collapse a bit further down the way. ]

[acidjail]

[Concern, still. She's had more of that bestowed upon her in the past six or seven months than she's had in half a myriad, and for all that Cytherea had to say about its cloying irritation, Woe remains on her back foot with feeling that does not rise to the threshold of reaction. She does give him a curious, shuttered look, working at the buttons of his soiled jacket in reverse.]

It's unnecessary to praise me for doing the only sensible thing to move forward.

[Compliments, too, first her vocabulary, then her willingness to act instead of quiver and moan. Surely, there is an ulterior motive, even if it is only the very simple one of wanting to be likeable]

I am not hurt. [She shrugs out of the jacket and offers it back, unblinking at its condition.] Or likely to be.

[Her mouth thins, the mental process of her consideration so obvious it might as well be literal gears churning above her head, and then she sighs, a huff of air that drives her flyaway hairs away from her mouth.]

I am a veteran of the frontlines, not a blushing blossom. If I presume your competence, I expect you to presume mine, and if either of us are disappointed - disappointment is a common enough condition I pray you might endure it.

[worldcleansing]

[ Her comments earn a slight frown. ]

It might be a cultural difference, but where I'm from, concern isn't the same as underestimating someone. I know the difference between annoyance and fear, and I know which one you showed before crawling inside.

[ Light accepts the coat but holds it off to the side. He has no interest in it, either. Perhaps even less than her. ]

You've been here longer than I have, and you might be from a world that allows you abilities I can't dream of having. I won't sell myself short by saying I don't have anything to offer this partnership, but I'm also not going to assume you're the weaker of us.

[ The frown settles into something a bit softer. ]

If it will help, you can return the question. If not, we should keep moving.