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3.0 Test Drive Meme
3.0 Test Drive Meme
Premise & Arrival ֍ FAQ ֍ Apply ֍ Navigation
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:
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:
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:
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.
cows
It tips his hat up over his eyes, which flare white-on-black, awful as an event horizon.
"Go easy on my ego. I should've taken notes."
Re: cows
She huffs, a breath and shrug of shoulders more than a laugh and takes a sip of her drink. "I think that might be your --" She pauses then, startled out of her cool demeanor as she turns to meet his eyes. "Problem," she finishes, because it's rude to be so obviously thrown.
His eyes are like a total eclipse. She can't remember seeing an eclipse -- if anything, all she gets is a general need to protect against light and heat, and she can't swear to that being any sort of real memory of home or just notes her brain has taken after trudging through the desert -- but it's still enough of a concept in her head for her to recognize the idea of a star blotted out by something in front of it. Only, his irises, so dark she can't quite differentiate the pupil without studying them, shimmer darkly, an oil slick more than a planet.
They're impossible eyes. And there's something about them that makes Camilla feel that she should drop her own, or -- or something, and that twists in her stomach. She can't tell what, except that they're deeply unsettling.
(She hates these unassociated feelings. She's lived her entire life laying out data and evidence when she had any doubt about anything. So far, aside from his eyes, this guy hasn't done anything except tell some random patron hold my beer and do abominably on the mechanical bull; and also, she supposes, assume she had any intention of doing anything to his ego.)
So she holds his gaze after that first stutter and curls the corner of her mouth just a touch upward in what, for Cam, is a smirk but a good-humored one. "Taking notes, I mean," she adds, more collectedly, and tilts her head at the bull. "I don't think you can learn this one that way."
She presses her lips together for a second and decides to just joke about the elephant in the room. "Did your sclera --" Camilla taps her eyelid under the white of her eye. "Look anything like mine before you got on that bull? Because I might have some bad news."
no subject
She's bold enough to startle him into a laugh, regardless.
"Two black eyes," he jokes, and takes a pull of the beer. "Sounds about right. At this rate, I'll never make it as a real cowboy."
no subject
That’s a terrible pun, and she makes a really? sort of face even as she smirks into her cocktail. This one — she hadn’t cared what you got for free and she isn’t getting a whole lot from the names of drinks — is sharper, sweeter, less smoky. It’s all right.
“You did wipe the floor pretty hard,” she parries, absolutely deadpan. His lack of concern makes her think that’s a no to his sclera having been white in the last couple of hours, and she wonders why.
“Got one on me. I don’t even know what a cow looks like, much less how to…cowboy.” Camilla takes a long sip. “Not that I’d know, I guess,” she notes, her tone a little sardonic, “But no headache if I try. So I assume it isn’t forbidden knowledge.”
no subject
"I know cows," he says, more darkly than cows probably deserve. "Migraines the moment I try to call up a cow fact. For me, they're up there with the secrets of the universe. Don't write them off just yet."
He's clearly fucking around, but the hard lines at the edges of his smile are real. It's been a long string of headaches since arrival.
no subject
(Besides the eyes.)
"Maybe that's why the bull cleaned up with you," she says, picking up her drink, and gesturing with it vaguely at the metal thing. "Maybe at home you're a wrangler of...dangerous...quadripeds." She can't keep a straight face through wrangler of dangerous quadripeds, and grins; it flashes wide and white and disappears. "But it can't let you remember."
Cam presses her lips together at that, rocking onto the balls of her feet in thought. "Whoever did this to us didn't think that much through very well," she says slowly, and takes a drink. "You might not get the memory back, but you can figure out what kinds of things hurt to think about."
no subject
John drinks long enough to let this very stupid pronouncement ring, then clicks his beer back down. He tips his head to her in agreement.
"Gives us the broad shape of things, I guess, if only by process of elimination. Somewhere to start."
no subject
Her head twinges a little then, but she can't pay attention to it for too long, because someone passing drunkenly echoes yeehaw! (cowboys, then, statistically) and she snorts at it and lifts her glass to that and takes a drink.
"Exactly," she says. "It's not that useful as a tactic, I suppose you can't dig very far. But it's better than nothing. Or potentially, worse than. I don't know about you, but I've got the feeling that wherever I'm from, waking up somewhere you don't recognize with no memories isn't an every-day occurrence." She raises her eyebrows at the middle distance and examines the dregs of her glass, setting it back down on the bar.
"I'm Camilla," she says, realizing they've been chatting without having ever introduced themselves. Forcing herself to actually meet those nebulously-empty halos -- feeling that disproportionate unease and smallness in their reflection -- she extends a hand toward Black Hat Cowboy Guy.
no subject
Probably doesn't matter, anyway. What are the odds, right?