countryclub | March TEST DRIVE!

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meme: tdm

March TEST DRIVE!

MARCH 2023 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 Bowl of Miso Soup]
[Image Two: A Lonely Lighthouse at the edge of a pier.]

Prompt Two
[Image One: Two super-imposed people with time elapse city lights surrounding them.]
[Image Two: Two people with glowing energy flying between their mouths.]

Prompt Three
[Image One: Gif of "Run" written on a wall in blood as someone stumbles past.]
[Image Two: Zombie Dog from Resident Evil.]

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TDM Questions • Reserves • Taken • Applications • Full Navigation

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A Weirdly Banal Arrival

WHEN: End of March to mid-April
WHERE: The Farther Shores/The Boardwalk
CONTENT WARNINGS: Uh, you were a squid and now you're you!

April begins as a quiet month. It's actually bordering on a disturbingly quiet one. Even the Trenchies seem almost briefly on edge on the first of the month when there appears to be nothing going wrong at the time of the first sleeper's arrival. Squids swim to the shore with ease, the currents being helpful rather than harmful, and the transformation is surprisingly easy and painless. Outside of the outright strangeness of having been a squid only moments ago, you are not greeted with any difficulties upon arrival. The weather is just cool enough to appreciate a jacket or extra layer at night, and there are no storms other than occasional spattering of rain in the early mornings, when nobody is up. You arrive to a city that seems to be as at peace as is possible when it is steeped so deeply in blood rituals and strange monsters.

You are greeted by the greeters, who have bags that contain your possessions and clothes for you. All of them look towards the lighthouse with nervous gazes, remembering past years' problems this time of the year, but nothing seems to come of it. After the first day, the Trenchies feel comfortable enough and begin setting up booths where new residents of the city can ask questions. There are booths set up each by one of the local representatives of the Arcane Scholars and the Disciples, who seem to be trying to convince every sleeper to come to them for their answers, enticing them with a broth not unlike miso soup to help fill up. You'd better get used to eating mushrooms, they will both tell you. The broth is warming, hearty and gives a feeling of peace to even the most disturbed of souls. Otherwise, it does little else.

Of course, the Trenchies have a little ulterior motive in trying to entice people. They're quite busy participating in a little playful rivalry, trying to convince people to favor their ideals over others. Both booths will ask the same question. “Do you believe it is better to have someone strong to work beside, or to know enough to walk on your own?” The odd question hints to the perspectives of both groups, but either way they're keeping “score” in order to give each other a hard time if more answer one way or another. Should you answer Work Beside, you might be given a voucher, entitling you to an extra batch of incense from the Disciples. Should you answer Walk On Your Own, you will be given a voucher for a free book by the Arcane Scholars (or a free visit to allies sin the Luminarium, if you're not the reading type.). If you feel like you got embroiled in something bigger, not to worry! You didn't. They're just clearly being a little bit petty, and everyone else seems to think they're being a bit silly. Either way, welcome to Trench.

F.A.Q.

Anyone who wishes may answer the question, new or old, but you can only get ONE voucher, so “choose wisely?”
Further inquiry will show that there really is nothing going on here other than some librarians and pthumerian priests being petty with each other.

Getting to Know Each Other

WHEN: All of April
WHERE: Around Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Out of Body Experience, Body Disassociation, Body Swapping

Argonaut likes to think of itself as a helpful soul. With newly minted sleepers arriving every day, it hopes to help them get to know their situation better and better, and what better way can there possibly be than to walk for a day in each other's shoes? Surely they'll thank the helpful little explorer for this new adventure on which they have embarked, without being asked if they actually wanted or needed it? Whatever, this will be fun and after the last few months, Argonaut thinks people could also use a little bit of fun to go with hope for a new tomorrow!

It happens seemingly without warning. As you are walking along, a small and fluttering moth of gold happens to flutter right into your field of vision. This only happens when you happen to be facing someone else, and there is no warning whatsoever. As soon as it enters both of your fields of vision, golden light erupts disturbingly from your mouth and theirs, rushing towards the other person's mouth, while you feel deeply cold inside. A second later, and you are staring at yourself from within this new body! Any magical or psychic powers that you had which are not of Trench origin (such as blood based powers) have traveled with you, but all blood-based powers and physical powers (such as super strength) remain in your own body. No power, however great, seems to be able to undo this change and you appear to be stuck like this!

The transformation lasts for exactly 24 hours. Regardless of how separated you might be at the time, a month will again appear to you after the end of that period, turning you back into your normal self. Feel free to attack the moths if you'd like. It isn't as if Argonaut or their followers don't die often enough after all. However, this is only possible after they have surprised you with the transformation, should you find your body swapped with another. Well, at least it's temporary, so this isn't so bad right? You just have to endure being someone else for a day. Of course, the bad news is that argonaut dies a lot, which means that their memory is not exactly perfect. So, it is entirely possible that if you happen to be in sight of another person, you might get bodyswapped with an entirely different person!

Don't worry. They'll get this right. Eventually.

F.A.Q.

This prompt is easily avoided by simply not encountering a golden moth this month.
Argonaut's moth agents cannot be noticed before they surprise someone and cause the transposition of souls, but they can be attacked and killed easily afterwards if desired. If encountered in this fashion, their ability cannot be resisted.
Body Swaps last for 24 hours at a time, not a minute more or less, and cannot be undone by any other means. However, body swaps can continue into the wrong body, day after day, for as long as you the players wish to do this. By the last day of April, Argonaut themselves will step in to “Fix this” and everyone still body swapped will return to normal on the morning of the last day of the month.
Blood Powers are body-locked and do not transfer. Powers that are Mental or Skill-based may transfer if you wish (or not if you do not wish them to transfer). Powers that are inherently physical such as an armored hide or supernatural speed do not transfer.
No memories are conferred by transferring bodies, only a new body to walk around in for a day. Good luck!

Run

WHEN: The First Week of April
WHERE: Trench
CONTENT WARNINGS: Monster Horror, Running for One's Life, Possible Character Death

Everyone needs a little exercise, right? Something goes wrong in the rest of Trench, or perhaps someone thinks that it would be a good time for everyone to get out and get some exercise. Either way, the result is that the moaning lantern network seems, for the first week of the month, to not be working properly. The only lantern that appears to be connected to any of the lanterns in town is the one that attaches to the distant Outpost that was established months ago by sleepers, away from Pthumerian influences for the time being. That tiny enclave's lantern appears to still be lit and working, allowing teleportation outside of the city of Trench, but no other appears to be working correctly. You might get lucky after multiple attempts at different lanterns, but it feels really hard to get any sort of connection. It appears that everyone will just have to explore the city of Trench the old fashioned way, by foot.

Well, that's irritating, you might think, but it's far from the worst thing in the world. Perhaps you do need some exercise. First there was the wooden root barriers and now this. Well, at least your legs still work, so you might as well get to walking. All seems well and good when you're traveling inside of the districts, but it's when you get outside of town that things get a little dicey. See, while the hunters quickly mount defenses at the edge of each district to ensure its security (almost as if this sort of thing might have happened before), they can't also keep the paths between districts nearly as safe, and the monsters that sometimes lurk outside of town seem to know it. (This has definitely happened before.)

As soon as one district is out of sight on the road leading to the next, you can hear it. Howls. When you turn back, you see zombie dogs and feral, burning hell hounds in the distance. They snarl. They snap. They bark. Above all, they are coming for you, so you had better either be ready for a fight, or get to really testing those legs of yours! The good news is that the hell hounds, zombie dogs and monstrous wolves are definitely defeatable. The bad news is that there's several of them, so it really is a question of whether you have the skill to beat them back until they stop coming, or you're willing to run. Your odds are better if you do run. They're fast, but they're not as fast as normal, living hounds it seems, which gives someone with a running start a fighting chance. You'd just better treat this as a wind sprint to get to the safety of a friend or the hunters. You wouldn't want them to catch up would you?

F.A.Q.

Lantern network lanterns are very inconsistent during the first week of the month, unless to reach the far distant Outpost. Returning is possible from the Outpost, but for some reason only to the lantern that was used to reach it by that person. Teleportation powers also seem to be limited to a distance of about a football field and line of sight.
This event can be avoided in the Outpost, by traveling in large groups or by remaining inside of single districts. Teleportation lanterns can work, but only very sporadically during this period.
Beating monstrous hounds is possible, but requires skill, strength or powers and probably numbers, as they will attack in packs, enough to be legitimately threatening. Death is possible from this event.

CODING

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She can't really think of a counter to that argument other than 'nu-uh!' which was both immature and largely ignorant. Jakku hadn't exactly had formal schooling, after all, she'd heard that the Jedi played a large part in the Clone Wars, but not all that much else. Other than Anakin Skywalker had fallen to the Dark Side and between him and Palpatine, the Jedi Order had been destroyed.

And it's okay. She's pretty blunt when it comes to discussing her truths as well. She'd rather get it straight without a candy coating to make it easier to swallow.

"...he wanted to give me only three lessons. And he said that those lessons would teach me why the Jedi should end." Rey still didn't believe that was true, that there had to be a place for the Jedi Order, but an order wasn't made up of one person.

But what he said piqued her curiosity intensely. "You and Luke are training together?" No judgement, just wide hazel eyes.

Hearing that Luke in the future had wanted the Jedi Order to end when he'd expressed such a desire to keep it going here was surprising, especially considering it seemed from all intents and purposes he'd had a hand in training both Jaina and Anakin. "Perhaps he saw that the Jedi and Sith had both become obsolete by that time. That it was time for something new to be created out of the ashes of both," Maul mused aloud.

"Yes. When he told me he'd been trained for at most a few days, I took it upon myself to show him more of the ways of the Force." There was so much which would be lost if Maul didn't pass on some of what he knew to the next generation. "I have become a teacher for many people here, particularly those with extraordinary abilities." He realized how that might sound to someone who was firmly of the belief that the Sith were evil and quickly added more on. "Not to turn any of them into future Sith, mind you. I merely like passing on the knowledge of what I know to those who are willing to learn."

He was already assessing to see if Rey would make a good student in the future.

Rey had no way of knowing that Luke wanted to continue the order and even less way of knowing about Jaina and Anakin. For her, the only students had all been killed when Kylo Ren destroyed the temple and fled to become Kylo Ren. That he'd come so close to killing his own nephew out of fear of what that nephew would become. And she wonders, does she know more about Kylo than anyone?

That would make sense. He was very frank about most things they discussed during their moments when it was just the two of them in the galaxy.

And Rey thinks for a long moment, her nose scrunching with the effort. "That sounds like someone else I know. He offered to be my teacher, show me the ways of the Force." But Kylo hadn't said anything about only the Dark Side. Maybe...just maybe. And she's visibly reassured when he says that he's not training future Sith.

"I...know I have this within me. That I still need to learn how to control it. And myself." She looked down with a slight frown. Rey angered far too easily for her own good, but she didn't know how to control it.

"I am sure things are different in the future with the purge that happened of both sides. What I teach are lessons that reach back over a thousand years into the past, though I have updated them so they will not become stagnant." A problem with the Sith is that, just as they hypocritically claimed the Jedi were like, they had fallen into stagnant complacency. They were unable to adapt and evolve, which had eventually become the personal downfall of Darth Sidious.

"You will have heard the Dark Side is evil. That is not so. It is often used for evil or selfish purposes, but at its core, it is not inherently bad or wrong. It is merely one half of a whole. On any planet, light cannot exist without darkness. So it is with the Force." Maul's voice was earnest as he explained his philosophy. He was less of a Sith than he used to be. Perhaps he was starting to evolve into something else, something new that was neither Sith or Jedi.

"A thousand years," she repeats, trying to not sound as fascinated as she was. She had no real knowledge of the history of the Jedi (outside of the purge) or the Sith. Kylo hadn't claimed to be a Sith. At least not in any of the...interactions they'd shared. He'd seemed determined to blaze his own trail as a Dark Sider. And the blaze was often literal. "So, both sides were stagnant? That's why both were...the last of their kinds?"

"...I. There was an--an incident. When I was being trained by Luke. He was upset with me since my connection to the Force led me to the Dark Side. And there was a--a cave. On Ahch-To. A Dark Side cave. I couldn't resist...exploring it." Leading to a moment she'd feel always, even at the moment of her death.

Two hands reaching out through the Force to touch, transcending thousands upon thousands of light years.

"Precisely. Sidious did not want the Sith to continue on after him. He wanted to be the last one and that is why his downfall came about." Though he worried about what had happened in the future, knowing what he did of Rey's father and the girl's fate too. "One must continue to evolve or perish."

He nodded understandingly. "There are place in the universe that are strong with the Dark Side. They can show you much. My home planet of Dathomir is one of them, a giant nexus for the Dark Side to flow through. You see? It is possible for any Force user to touch the Dark Side. If that is possible, then it is not something unnatural or to be avoided."

"But why? He was the most powerful Sith Lord I've ever heard of. Why wouldn't he want others to follow in his footsteps?" Rey felt confused and was afraid that it showed on her face as much as she didn't want it to. "I...can't see anything wrong with that. Life changes people, circumstances change belief."

"It's just that when I did touch the Dark Side, I was told not to. That it was a one way path to letting it have sway over my entire life. That there was no escape." Even though she'd tried to save Ben as much as she possibly could. She wanted him to embrace the Light again. Only then would she feel comfortable in her feelings towards him. 'You're not alone.' She'd clung to that with every ounce of her strength until Kylo chose power over her.

"Because he wanted to be the last, the one, the only. He sought immortality so that there would be no need to continue on with the lineage of the Sith. I have heard things about the future that have made his quest all the more...disturbing now that I know the truth." In hindsight, so many of his actions that had seemed strange at the time added up and made sense when they were all lined up and put together.

"Being told absolutes such as that serve no purpose for either Sith or Jedi. The Dark Side can have a purpose for both sides, especially if one learns control. Fire can be destructive and burn down whole forests if left unchecked, but a small campfire you control can keep you warm." By that token, there was also a place for the Light Side in Maul's life. Even if he didn't try to touch it directly himself, he'd been shaped for the better by the Jedi in his life who let it flow through them like Luke, Obi-Wan, and Ezra.

"...that's. What about the future? And the truth of why he did what he did?" She figured it had to have taken place in the past since Palpatine was dead, blown to bits by a reformed Anakin Skywalker. Snoke had come out of nowhere as far as she knew, but she'd never heard about him claiming to be a Sith Lord. Neither did ~~Ben~~ Kylo Ren.

The scary thing was, all of that made a lot of sense. She knew Luke would've been horrified as he was already afraid of the Dark within her and that Kylo Ren would've been thrilled as it would have brought her one step closer to him. And she knew she angered and enjoyed battle far more than a Jedi should. "I." She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as her curiosity got the better of her. "...how do you keep it as a campfire and not as a wildfire?"

"He took an ancient Sith practice of transferring the spirit of one person into another body and sought to put it into practice. I suspect his first target was Luke or perhaps even myself--" It wouldn't have surprised him if Sidious had been keeping him around all those years like a fattened calf, just waiting for the day he'd be ripe for the slaughter. In a way, it had been a blessing he'd lost the fight to Obi-Wan and been forced to break away from Sidious' control. "--but as usual, he had a number of plans put into place when that one didn't come to fruition.

He smiled in that wise way that most old mentors learned at some point in their time being a teacher. "The same way you learn anything else to do with the Force: control. You must learn to control it instead of the other way around."

"Oh. I didn't even know that was possible, but I hadn't had the chance to read the texts before I," she shrugs, "washed up here." Rey thinks she should feel guilty about stealing the ancient Jedi texts, but Luke clearly wasn't doing anything with them, other than having them out on display. What good was that to anyone? So she figures she'd rescued them from being relics of the ancient past. And she wrinkles her nose slightly at the mention of other plans. "What kinds of plans? The stories all say that Darth, uh, Anakin Skywalker threw him into a pit on the second Death Star. Then it exploded. It's hard to come back from being exploded?"

It's a very mysterious smile. But at least it's a smile. Luke was far more grumpy than anything. "So...I'm sorry, I'm still trying to get things straight, a little bit of Dark is okay as long as I control it and don't let it control me? That's. I'm sorry, but that's against most of what I've heard and been told before."

Powerful light, powerful darkness. Luke had said that. Even Snoke, that disgusting old reptile, said that she was the light to balance ~~Ben's~~ Kylo Ren's darkness. But each had said it in a way which seemed to her to be as a wall between them.

"Texts? You had some ancient texts with you?" Maul had seen such items before, reading them in his master's collection when he was a young boy. They weren't always the most helpful things, sometimes fragmentary or contradictory, but oftentimes something useful could come out of them. "Some of this is guesswork, mind you, but I think what happened is that he transferred his spirit into a new one in the last seconds before his original body was destroyed." He was filling in some gaps right now with knowledge and guesses but it mostly made sense.

"Jedi say that because they fear and shun the Darkness. Ironic given their attitude towards fear in general. But if you keep running away from something that calls out to you, you are still showing fear, just in a different way. The Dark Side is not just anger and hate. It is passion and courage and determination. Something with those qualities in it cannot possibly be all bad. It just so happens that so many who use it are corrupted into evil. But there are places in the galaxy where the Dark Side exists in harmony with everything around it. On my home planet of Dathomir, the entire planet exists as a nexus for the Dark Side. Those who live there are not evil. They simply exist just like any other beings in the galaxy do." Welcome to Maul's TED Talk of 'Why the Dark Side is not evil', be prepared to stay for quite some time.

"I do. They were waiting for me on shore, along with this little girl," Rey points to the porg on her shoulder which screams in greeting. "I'm thinking 'Sunshine,' since she's determined to not let me sleep." The texts were confusing. What she could read of them, that was. Many were in languages she didn't recognize and for all she knew, could be dead languages. "...what? How. I've got to warn the Resistance, is there any way to get in contact with those on the outside? There's got to be a way."

And...that makes a shocking amount of sense. She'd always been intense in her emotions, when she spent what little time she did training with Luke, she'd always had a hard time getting into the peace of meditation. Her mind would wander, towards Finn who was still in the hospital the last she saw him, to Leia, who was fighting a war on two fronts. Personal and militarily. She'd always wondered how calm and hopeful Leia always seemed, even when things seemed to be at their worst. But, as for Rey herself...passion. Courage. Determination. Those were all worthy emotions, worthy goals. If she could point ~~Ben~~ Kylo Ren that way, maybe...but she couldn't finish that thought.

"An enter planet where the Dark Side is...I dunno if I want to say rules? But has sway, maybe? And the people aren't evil? Why was I never told anything about that?" She sounds plaintive with an edge of desperation. If she can get ~~Ben~~ Kylo to settle in that way, maybe they wouldn't be impossible?

“Oh no. Not another of the little beasts,” Maul groaned upon seeing Sunshine. That was all Trench needed, yet another fat little porg wandering around to join the rest of the flock that had been left here by the previous Rey. “Kylo has been watching over a group of them. I asked him if I could eat any of them but he refused.” Maul sounded surly about that fact. What was the harm in eating the fattest of the bunch???

“Alas, there is not. We are in a completely different universe, not merely on a different planet. But things will not continue on without you back in our galaxy. Time simply stands still until you return there,” Maul explained. That soothed the worries of some people but for others it alarmed them.

Maul closed his eyes as he thought of his home planet and all the years he’d spent away from it. “It is possible those around you simply didn’t know. Or chose not to know. Ignorance is a powerful and dangerous weapon. Many have always been prejudicial to the Dark Side simply because they see it as a bad path to go along. But on Dathomir it is not an evil entity. It is simply there in the animals, the plants, and the people the way the Light Side runs through everything on many other planets. One has to choose to do bad things the same way they choose good. It is a conscious choice. You can do good with the Dark just as you can do evil with the Light.”

"Really? You don't like them," Rey asked. She thought they were rather cute, an almost foreign concept given that nothing on Jakku was cute. And then there was the tale Chewie had told her about the time he tried eating one, how porgs all gathered 'round and gave him sad eyes. He'd yelled at them, but still couldn't enjoy his treat.

And Rey's eyes widened at the concept of time ceasing. What a time to stop, after being knocked out by a lightsaber she helped split in two! But if she was unconscious, maybe ~~Ben, Ben, no he wasn't Ben, he was~~ Kylo Ren was, too.

"I'm sorry, I'm still...having a hard time with that, especially since Luke seemed to panic when he felt that I'd went to the Dark during one of our training exercises. But if I can choose, if I can do what will serve me and everyone around me best, shouldn't I know how to control myself when I do slip into the Dark?" Because she knew that would always be a possibility. And maybe she could persuade a certain person to not let it define his whole self?

"A more useless species I have yet to encounter. They simply waddle around with those big sad eyes and chirp instead of doing anything of value. If they were being bred for food, that would be one thing, but as of right now all they do is take up valuable resources while looking cute."

"Luke is a wonderful Jedi but he also has never allowed the Dark Side within his mind. I think it is because he feels he will not be able to resist the temptation of it, allowing it to rule him instead of the other way around." It was only a theory of Maul's but he felt it had some merit to it.

"That is why you need a teacher who has been in the Dark his whole life. I can show you how to touch the Dark Side without letting it corrupt you into someone you are not." It had taken Maul a long time to come back from what Sidious had put him through, using the Dark to shape him into a weapon, but Maul felt he'd finally come back to what he was meant to be as a Nightbrother of Dathomir all along at his core.

"Isn't cute enough of a reward," says the scavenger who's seen few thing which count as cute, ever.

"So....by doing so, he cuts himself off from half of the Force? And I--And I imagine he wouldn't like that in his students." A memory plays in her mind as clear as crystal, Ben asleep in his bed while Luke loomed over him, his lightsaber drawn. And Ben defending himself. If Kylo Ren were to be believed. That in itself was a giant question pressing itself into her mind.

"So you think---you think I need a teacher?" She's been offered that before. Remembering, Kylo Ren didn't say anything about teaching her the Dark Side of the Force, simply the Force. Her instincts tell her to tell Maul yes, though.

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March TEST DRIVE!

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