3.0 Test Drive Meme

[wellie]

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.

Comments

John Gaius | The Locked Tomb

[necrolord]

1. the bull

"Hold my beer," says God.

You did not ask for this. You probably don't know this guy. The man beside you is kind of scrawny, thirty-something, unremarkable apart from the awful eyes: black from edge to edge, alight with a ring of white fire. In this moment, they burn with old strength. He rolls his shoulders, he cracks his neck, he exudes the eclipse-heavy confidence of someone with power.

The bull throws him on his ass in four seconds flat.

It's kind of impressive: he hits the ground at a bad angle, and with an ugly crunch. There is a moment's drawn silence.

"I've remembered something," says the guy from the floor. He sits up, rumpled, a little mournful: "I am not an athlete."

2. the desert

When you find him, he's sitting in the sand, cross-legged and slouching. From a distance, he looks half-dead. A guy wearing all black, in this heat? It'd be a miracle if he didn't get heatstroke.

But he's awake and alert, as you draw closer. There is blood smudged at his lip and chin, in his ear canals, crusted at the corners of his eyes. With one hand he wipes at it, absently, with a sleeve; with the other, he sinks his fingertips into the sand. He keeps drawing his fingers out, frowning at the way the sand sinks to fill the hole.

It all reminds him of something. The heat, the thirst, the plodding emptiness of a wasteland-- the way sand gives under his feet-- but the sky is wrong, too clean a blue. The air doesn't smell right. He shouldn't be alone.

"Can you feel it?" he asks when you're close enough, his voice cracked and low. "It's all humming."

So that's normal.

3. wildcard

[ Tap me at ochrona or hit me with your own! ]

2

[toteninsel]

Ariane takes a seat beside the man in black, and she watches him work. They're a pair of corpses, the two of them: covered in bandages, white-haired, and rail-thin, Ariane looks like the desert wind could easily pick her up and carry her away.

His unnatural black eyes look into her equally-unsettling red ones, and he asks the first sensible question Ariane has heard in this place.

"Song of my soul, my voice is dead; Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed; shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa."

Too bad her answer isn't sensible at all. But it makes sense to Ariane. Carcosa, the ancient city, just out of reach. Wellstone, the town at the edge of an endless desert.

"Is it calling to you?"

[necrolord]

It's the cadence of a poem that cuts through to him, jars him out of his reverie. He looks at her, properly, for the first time; those eclipse eyes focus, tighten at the edges. There are flecks of blood in his eyelashes.

"I don't know that one." He sounds a little impressed about it, even more when he parses the wreck of her: bandages, creepy eyes, a supernova of something-else under her skin. It's like she glows under blacklight. He doesn't have the words for it yet. "Yeah— yeah. I don't know what it is," and here he chews his lip, digs his fingers into the sand in fitful little clenches, "but it's everywhere. It's in the dirt, in the air, in us.

"I know it sounds insane," he adds, impatiently, like that's a caveat they need to get out of the way. "But— do you know what I mean?"

[toteninsel]

It doesn't sound insane. It sounds like having words for what's finally on the tip of your tongue. It's like remembering, but memories always hurt in this place, and right now, all Ariane feels is relief.

"I think I do." You can never be too sure, with words. That's why pictures are better. "I don't feel it all the time." Only when she's really happy, or frightened, or angry. "But when I do... it's like something I can reach out and touch. Something that's more real than any of us can see or hear or feel." A river, maybe.

No, bigger than that: a sea.

"It's from the King in Yellow." Ariane tries to smile. She's almost good at it. "I found it in a pit." Cool, huh?

[necrolord]

The wound tension begins to drop out of him. He lets go of the sand, and exhales a low, slow breath. With her at his side under the beating sun and the too-blue sky, he settles.

"Buried out in a mystery desert. Maybe someone didn't like the poetry." But he says it like it's cool. He reaches up again, a little more gently, to wipe the crusting blood from his eyes. "Can I hear the rest of it?"

1

[dishonestea]

Oh, you don't need athletic skill for this.

[The blue woman drawled, leaning over to regard the bedraggled man on the floor with a wicked grin on her face. She was undeterred by... everything. The uncanny eyes, the unfortunate landing.

Instead, she offered God a hand.]

You just need a little hand-eye coordination. Come on-- I'll show you.

[necrolord]

[ Well! That's a new look. John blinks up at her, momentarily startled, then with open interest. He clasps her hand without hesitation, levers himself unsteadily to his feet. ]

Also not my wheelhouse. Go ahead and show me how it's done.

[dishonestea]

[She's aware of what she looks like-- and she was banking on having plenty of attention one way or another.]

Oh, you're coming with me.

[Grinning, Cecily dragged God into the bull ring once more. ]

[necrolord]

[ He was really expecting more of a spectator role in this. She tugs him past the rope, and there's a thrill of unfamiliarity to that: he's abruptly sure that no one is this bold with him.

He gives a startled little laugh and lets her. ]

Alright, easy. I can embarrass myself twice.

1

[vibing]

Yuri takes the beer with a smile of anticipation: he's got to see this. The bull is fun, and it's extra fun because it throws literally everyone. He's expecting a pretty good show here, and then--

Well. He laughs, bright and loud, and leans over this guy, dangling his beer with two fingers.

"Yeah, you can say that again. Jeez, man, it's like you've never met a bull before."

[necrolord]

"Cows hate me," John tells him, mournful. He picks himself up with no grace whatsoever, but he also takes the beer. He doesn't seem particularly upset, or particularly injured, other than his now-decimated pride. "Bad idea from the start. Thanks."

[vibing]

"All cows, or just," Yuri nods his head toward the mechanical bull still grinning. He isn't drinking alcohol himself, a bottle of sassafras soda in his hand.

"It was pretty impressive," how bad he was at it.

[necrolord]

"That one in particular," John agrees. This doesn't necessarily answer the question, but it's weird to admit you get splitting headaches whenever you think about cows. "Always nice to be called impressive. Maybe I was warming it up for the next guy - set the bar low, you know?"

1.

[hellonspectacles]

For better or worse—no, no, definitely for worse—Palamedes does know this guy. He’d been sitting at a table in the corner, oblivious to the commotion, scratching away at a notebook, when the man from the cemetery had appeared at his elbow, looking determined and far more confident than he had a right to be. Curious, Pal watches as he mounts the mechanical creature, and he has to try very hard not to smile when, moments later, he goes flying.

“You don’t say,” he says when John returns, nudging the beer across the table towards him.

[necrolord]

John drops heavily into the open seat, his hair now a little rumpled. He does, at least, take up his beer.

"Cross that off the list of possibilities. Or maybe it's just that cows are cursed."

[hellonspectacles]

“Maybe cows don’t like you. Maybe you’re a vegetarian—or the opposite. You love steak.” Palamedes doesn’t have a beer, but he does have a glass of lemonade, which he now sucks through a straw.

“You’re going to have quite the bump tomorrow.”

2

[hallucinogem]

The man in black walked across the desert, and Emerald followed.

That might not be quite accurate, but there's a cowpoke with green hair and fringed leather ambling up to this strange man sitting down in the middle of the desert either way. He looks like he's seen some shit, like maybe he's tangled with a creature that she hasn't quite pinned down yet, and her hand moves to her hip as though she's expecting there to be a weapon there. (Instinct is weird.)

"It's humming?" she asks instead once she's close. Once she realizes that a person who's just playing with the sand probably isn't at risk of being attacked, or of attacking himself. What is at her hip is a canteen that's full of fresh, clean water, which she offers to him as she gets down on her haunches next to him. "Are you feeling okay? You must be dying of thirst out here."

[necrolord]

She crouches, offers the canteen, and he looks up at her properly. It's not pretty: blood like tear-tracks, gone crusty in the sun. He sniffs inelegantly, tongues blood back from his teeth, and takes the water.

"Thanks." His voice is an ugly rasp, but he's at least rallying back towards coherence. He even has the grace to look— embarrassed? It crinkles awkwardly across his face, clashes with the bright-on-black eyes. "Must be."

That's all he says for a long moment, as he sips water. He doesn't have to be told not to chug it.

"Imagining things, I guess," he says, finally, with scraped-together composure. "Fun new kind of mirage."

[hallucinogem]

"You'd be surprised," she says with a friendly sort of smile. It's good that he knows what he's doing with the water; now he just has to find some shade and she'll be less worried. But that can wait, and she wants to make it clear that she's here to listen. Even if she can't hear or feel everything.

"When I first got here, the walls had eyes that were screaming at me." About what? It's not important. "What's the humming like? You said everything's doing it."

1

[thinkfirst]

There is also, a beat later, a hand being shoved into this poor man's peripheral vision. The hand is attached to a blonde man who's smiling in a sheepish, I definitely just saw you eat it but I'm politely not acknowledging what a whiff that was sort of way.

"Think of it this way," Flynn says, quiet under the growing sounds of clapping as someone else approaches the bull. "You probably have a lot of other skills instead! Are you alright?"

[necrolord]

"That's the spirit," says John, all mournful resignation, but he takes the hand and levers himself up. He cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders a little gingerly, but the expected ache doesn't come. "Only thing broken is my pride."

The fall managed to knock off his black cowboy hat. He puts it back on a little crooked, still rumpled, and gets out of the way of whoever's up next.

"Guess I'll stick to my strengths." He pauses a beat, for emphasis: "Watching supportively over a beer."

[thinkfirst]

Oh, it works so well on Flynn, who is so easily amused: he snorts, bright and surprised, and flashes this good-humored man an equally-easy smile. This is a horrible little town and everything is trying to kill them, but there's something nice about hanging out in a place you've come to know with pleasant strangers who take their losses in good humor. Flynn's already gesturing him to an empty seat at the bar.

"Then, by all means, let's soothe your pride with one. You've earned it, with a performance like that—it really wasn't that bad. I've seen worse tonight alone."

Ok. For reals this time. 2.

[mediaphobic]

Black was emblematic of the two-fold madness of the desert. It at once brought you infinitely closer to death by the heat, but it also allowed for friends to find your body in the blinding abyss of pale sand and unforgiving sunlight should the worst fate be at hand. Shouta Aizawa was also clad in black, and mentally prepared for the pain of heat exposure should town be further away than he had anticipated.

All he could rely upon in this abyss was his instincts. They told him to keep moving.

However--

"You look like shit."

'Humming', the man who could sense the dead had said. Frowning, Aizawa peered down at his dusty hands in wonder.

How would being among the walking dead twice over feel to this man?

[necrolord]

Oh, it's this guy. That's nice; familiar faces are comforting, right? John could use the comfort. It'd been one thing to feel all those bones in the dirt, thinking he must be imagining things. It's another to feel all the bones in all the dirt, and know that he's not.

He'd barely been aware, before, of Aizawa's bones and Aizawa's blood. Now it's like a constant press upon his peripheral vision. The man is a lit-up beacon in the back of his head, and it's going to drive him insane.

"Thanks," he croaks, but he does scrub the blood out of his eyes with a sleeve. So that's improvement. "And yet I'm having such a nice day."

[mediaphobic]

If John had a headache with only Aizawa and the sundry numbers of the dead under the sand, then he was going to have a worse one in town.

Aizawa, however, seemed unbothered by his state. For all he knew, he was dead anyway -- and his only goal was to stop the incessant loop that they were all entangled with. Frowning, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to John.

"I'd offer you a drink, but I'm tapped out. Try to get yourself a little cleaned up before we get back to town."

His tone was as flat and mild as always, but there was a noticeably tension in his jaw as he scoured the horizon. Unease gnawed at him, and sharpened his ears to every little sound that whispered over the desert.

"The script is different already," he said, verbalizing the source of his tangible discomfort.

"We never woke up in the desert before. I don't like this."