wellcome | 3.0 Test Drive Meme

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Welcome to Well! Characters arrive a little differently this month (see the first prompt). Your character arrives this month in the middle of the formless desert with only a handful of memories, clad in old west style clothes of your choosing, with no items from home.

Anyone is free to play on the TDM, but you need an invite to apply. Feel free to use these prompts, and interact with the arrival or locations. NPCs are around, but only say a certain set of phrases. TDMs can be considered game canon.

This TDM takes place from the first week of August onward, and can happen concurrently with other events during August and September. This will be the only TDM for August, September, and October.

Applications are open July 26th until August 1st, and August 27th until September 1st. Invites are available for friends of current players.

A Little Lost

Content warnings: heat exhaustion, feelings of unreality

You wake up in a sea of sand. It’s hot, and dry, and it seems to go on forever. You don’t remember much about yourself except your name and a handful of memories that most likely aren’t useful right now.

The sand slip-slides under your feet with every step. Sun beats down heavy and hot on your neck and your head. You’re so thirsty. How did you get here? How long have you been walking? Where are you headed? You can’t know. You feel like you’ve been walking forever, but the sun stays high above you, like it’s always noon. It may have been hours, it may have been mere minutes. What are those things circling in the sky above you? Vultures? That can't mean anything good.

Eventually, you find someone else, another new arrival, maybe, or a resident of the town who may have wandered a little too far into the desert. Maybe they have some water on them? Either way, company is exactly what you need right now, because there sure isn’t anything else in this desolate place. Not a cactus, not an animal, not even hints of a town.

Once you’re together, it seems a little easier to move forward. Time starts to move, too. The sun dips in the sky, your feet tread through the sand, and together, eventually you find the town.

If you take too long after you find one another, and the sun sets, be careful. Cacti sprout up closer to town, and after the sun sets, the cacti start to move, and they seem hungry for blood.

tl;dr:

This time, new arrivals wake up lost in the middle of a vast desert.
There's too much sun, too much sand, vultures circling and too little water.
Finding each other makes time start again, and lets you find the town.
If you don't make it back to town before nightfall, vicious living cacti appear to attack you.

Face Your Fears

Content warnings: hallucinations, reality shifts

In this town, fear soaks the hot, dry air. It lurks in shadows and the corners of rooms, waiting for their moment. What is it that you fear? Monsters? Disappointing your parents? Maybe you’re afraid that everyone you love will leave you, or that you’ll end up alone. Whatever it is, right now, there’s a chance of becoming very real.

It happens suddenly. Your mind drifts. You lose focus on what you were doing, and when you look up again, the world around you has shifted. What was a nice lunch with a new friend or a fun visit to the saloon becomes a nightmare. What fear manifests is totally up to you, and it can be different every time. The person beside you could become a monster you think is trying to attack you, or you could be suddenly alone in a cold dark space, desolate and empty.

Whatever horror your mind conjures up for you, it will feel real in all ways and with all senses including, of course, your perception of pain. As far as you know, you’re trapped in a nightmare with no way out.

Except, of course, there is a way out: you just need to figure out that it isn’t real. Maybe you’re strong enough to do that on your own; maybe you’ll need help from a friend or a new pal, reaching through the illusion to pull you back. After all, these hallucinations are entirely in the mind of the beholder: to everyone around you, it sure just looks like you’re yelling at your pancakes!

tl;dr:

You start hallucinating that the things you fear most are actually happening to you.
These fears feel like real, concrete sensory experiences, even though they're only happening in your head.
You can escape by recognizing that what's happening isn't real, either on your own or with help.

Bullrider

Content warnings: mild bovine coercion, alcohol

Come on, hot stuff. You know you want to.

Bet you can’t stay on for more than half a minute.

You don’t look too tough.

You think you can tame me?

In the saloon, you hear a voice in your head. It calls to you, the words seductive and enticing: you want to prove it wrong, you want to find out what it’s promising, you hate to lose. Whatever the motivation, you find yourself abandoning your drink and making your way to the new attraction at the back of the saloon: the bull.

It’s a big boy: a massive mechanical bull. Covered in spotted cowhide, with a bull head and big horns, this thing sits on a massive pedestal like a challenge. Around it is spread... relatively thin padding and a flimsy rope to keep the audience back an appropriate distance.

The compulsion keeps a hold on you until you’re on the bull. Maybe you’re on it with a friend, or a stranger, and it starts up with a mechanical buzzing. It starts to sway under you, and now you have just one job: stay on.

It starts easy, but gets harder as it goes along. It’s incredibly difficult to stay on for more than a minute. But during that minute, you feel amazing. You feel hot as hell, in whatever way that works for you: sexy, powerful, bold, in control.

Until he throws you off onto the padding or into the crowd! When you get thrown, there's a good chance you'll go flying into the crowd. Hopefully they're ready to catch you!

If by some miracle you manage to stay on for more than a minute and a half, the bartender slides you a bullrider special: a spicy whiskey cocktail with a hint of lime. Feel free to leave it up to pure chance, and have the mods roll a die for you to see whether you manage to stay on or not.

tl;dr:

There's a mechanical bull in the back of the saloon!
There's a strange deep voice in your head, coercing you into giving it a shot.
It's hard to stay on, but when you're on it, you feel powerful, bold and in control.
The padding's pretty thin and you'll get thrown hard when you do. You might hit someone!
If you stay on for more than a minute and a half, you'll get a fun little drink as a reward.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One - A Little Lost

Vierann Guaranty has had better days.

Admittedly, she can't exactly remember them at the moment, but she's certain it's true. Possibly she has also had worse days. That thought, though, provides very little comfort as she trudges over the sand under the baking midday sun. The trudging is made all the more difficult by the ridiculous clothes she woke up in - a blue off the shoulder dress with a very deep neckline and two tiny puffs on her upper arms for sleeves, the skirt of which is cut to reveal one leg and a short lacey black underskirt beneath it, while the rest of the thing trails to the ground in a fall of unnecessary ruffles. There's black lace trim all over it. There was also originally a black corset, but Vierann discarded that immediately. At least she also has sturdy calf-high boots and a black lace shawl, which she's currently holding above her head to provide some semblance of shade. She had tried tying the shawl around her waist and tucking some of the skirt up into it at first, but gave up when the weight of all the ruffles proved to make it impossible.

She'd been able to keep from panicking after coming to, because one of the few things she does (indistinctly) remember is that she's been through something like this before. More than once, even. Dropped somewhere strange, in some odd new role, her memories messed with. It was caused by...a machine, that was it, one that created little alternate realities to pop people into. She could work this out, she's sure, if only she could just get the right clues

But now, after walking for what feels like an impossible amount of time yet looks to have been no time at all, Vierann is growing afraid. The thing about that machine is that she's certain it always put people into its thingummy fields, not person. And apart from a few hazy mirages, some rocks, and the buzzards above, she hasn't seen anything or anyone.

When she spots what looks at last to be another figure in this desert, her relief is followed immediately by skepticism.

"Are you a mirage?"

It's either a stupid question or a rude one, but she's getting fed up with this.

Two - Here We Go Again

The young woman at the front desk is evidently new. This is apparent from all the sand and dust everywhere from her boots to her flyaway curly hair, and, more significantly, from the fact she's trying to have an actual conversation with the receptionist.

"Yes, you told me when breakfast is. And I appreciate that, but where are we?"

"We're so glad you chose to stay at the Staywell. Enjoy your-"

Vierann cuts in, exasperated. "Yes, thank you, you can stop."

She turns around and marches to the middle of the lobby, where she looks up at the ceiling and puts her hands on her hips. "Alright Bannus! Stop this right now! You're not even doing it right anymore. That one's broken." She points back towards the receptionist before resting her hand right back on her hip. "You're being sloppy. Spit us back out and maybe you can do better next time."

She is entirely aware that yelling up at the ceiling is likely to look insane to anyone around. And she doesn't know if there's any chance of tricking a machine by insulting its pride. But she's not above trying it. She's really getting fed up with this.

Three - Atomic City

Later on, a cleaned-up Vierann can be found in the general store, sighing at the shelves of cheap plastic trinkets and oversized hats. She picks up the sole t-shirt hanging on the wall, a black one with neon yellow stars all over it and the words 'SPACE is the PLACE' emblazoned in an equally neon green.

"I suppose it's something." Anything with a proper neckline and sleeves is an improvement, right?

So, like, there’s a crazy lady in the reception.

The man who slunk in has been listening to her raving and yelling for a little while. He came in just as dusty and disheveled, dragging a cowboy hat off his head and then crumpling it in one metal fist. (Why does he have a metal arm? Damned if he knows. All he’s got is that he’s pretty sure his name is James, and the rest feels like loose change in a too-empty jar.) The walk from the desert was long and he looks like hell and his throat is parched, but he was still trying to wait until the stranger was done with her check-in first; he’d been standing patiently next to some large potted cactus while she tried and failed to argue with the receptionist.

Then, after a moment, he’d skirted a little further away from the cactus, remembering the ones from the desert. There are still rents in his shirtsleeves, a streak of blood along his forearm.

When Vierann finally stops to catch her breath, he clears his own throat, his voice cracked and gravelly as if he hasn’t used it in a very long time.

“Uh,” he says. (Strong start, buddy.) Then: “Hey. Are you okay?”

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Vierann Guaranty | Hexwood

here we go again.