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

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.”

[necrolord]

John considers this with the slightly pinched, faraway frown he gets when he's fighting through a headache. He drums his fingers against the side of his beer.

"I think," he says, slowly, like a man uncovering some visceral truth, "I hate steak."

He abandons the effort and lifts his glass in cheers. The beer is awful, but it fits the middle-of-nowhere diner atmosphere. He can respect that.

"It wasn't that bad." He touches his head, his shoulder, flexes the fingers he fell on. "Nothing aching now, anyway."

[hellonspectacles]

"I don't think I've ever had steak," Pal says, coming to this realization in the moment. "I did have a hamburger at the diner once, but I prefer the waffles."

He looks up from his notes and scrutinizes the man for a moment, as though he could tell how much his head will hurt just by looking at him. "Well, don't try it again. Just to be sure."

[necrolord]

John splays his hands as though in defeat. "It wasn't high on my to-do list. You saw how the first one went."

Everyone did, probably. Assuming Pal looked up from research long enough to take notice, which, to be fair, is fifty-fifty.

"Tell me you weren't taking notes on my performance."

[hellonspectacles]

[Very briefly, Palamedes is tempted to lie, to say that he was doing exactly that, and launch into some theory regarding John's physical fitness or lack thereof.

But in the end, he hides a smile and decides not to. For one thing, he is far too excited to explain what he is actually working on.]

I wasn't, no. I'm comparing some recent observations about the town to what it was like before the last storm, and comparing those comparisons to the changes inflicted by the storm three months ago. Wellstone appears unpredictable at first, but I'm beginning to see certain patterns emerge.

[necrolord]

[ It's charmingly ridiculous to sit in a cowboy bar taking notes on weather patterns, but also deeply practical. John huffs a little laugh and gestures go on with his beer. ]

I'm listening. Tell me it doesn't have to do with cows.

[hellonspectacles]

[Palamedes grins briefly.] No cows. On my honor.

[He flips back through his notebook to an earlier point, not because he actually has to remember, but because he believes in being precise.] Now, keep in mind, I am technically only working from two data points here, but the parallels between the two are consistent enough that I’m growing confident that we can call it a pattern.

Every three months, the Staywell and its environs begin to crumble. It begins as natural phenomenon: sandstorms, mostly, of increasing ferocity, though swarms of insects played a role the last time around. Eventually, the destruction builds to an uncanny crescendo. The ground itself collapses under our feet, the out-of-doors becomes impassable, and, eventually, the Staywell itself caves in. That happened last less than a week ago.

[He taps his pen on the paper thoughtfully.] At least, it feels like it was less than a week ago. You see, as soon as it seems it’s all about to end…we wake up. And all is repaired.

And that’s when things get interesting.

[necrolord]

[ He's heard the gist, but it's good to have the details from a reliable source. ]

You're telling me we get cyclically buried in bugs and sand. [ It would be reasonable to sound distressed about this. Instead, John has gone thoughtful, as though dwelling on some great puzzle. ] Putting the ground in Groundhog Day.

[ He quirks his eyebrows at Pal in the way of a bad joke. ]

[hellonspectacles]

More or less, yes.

[Though John hasn't actually asked for it, Pal is about to launch into the rest of his explanation--the aforesaid interesting part--when he catches his companion's look.]

What's a groundhog day?

[necrolord]

[ John immediately deflates a little, disappointed that someone would ask. The details very much escape him. ]

Old movie, I'm pretty sure. Same vibe. [ He gestures vaguely at vibe. ] Don't let me stop you. The dying-and-coming-back bit isn't the highlight?

[hellonspectacles]

Well, it’s a sort of highlight. Not being dead has its uses. But it doesn’t tell us much about our material reality.

[He pauses to take a sip of his lemonade, mostly for dramatic effect.]

After we come back, there’s something different about the buildings. Not visibly, mind. Something’s off on a molecular level. None of the relative age signatures make sense. It’s like the town becomes temporally unstuck.

[He beams, clearly expecting this to make sense to John.]

[necrolord]

[ This makes sense in the broad strokes, less so in Palamedes beaming about it over a lemonade. John is silent a beat, as though waiting for some drawn conclusion, some great understanding that has come of this. None arrives.

With a sort of fond resignation, he steeples his fingers and leans in to consider the implications. ]

Okay. Let's say I follow. We die, the whole town dies, then the whole thing just— [ He pops his intertwined hands apart in illustration. ] Comes apart, gets stitched back together?

[ And then, in genuine thought: ] So the buildings unstick. What about the people?

[hellonspectacles]

Something like that. Or maybe it’s like a scale that needs to be readjusted. Reality falls back into place, but it takes a little while to settle. [he holds out his hand, palm down, and tips it side to side]. Whatever metaphor you use, it speaks to an inherent artificiality to our environment. That’s the interesting bit.

[John’s question, though, gives him pause. He taps his finger against his chin.] …Not in the same way. Well, not at the same time. One could argue that we’re unsticking all the time, though. We change. We remember things, and forget them again. We’re being…well, readjusted.

[He stops, frowns.]

Oh dear, that is a compelling theory.