3.0 Test Drive Meme

[wellie]

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:

• 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

[more_magic]

"I hate it," Darlington admits, though he's grateful for the sympathy. "Not something I'd wish on my worst enemy." Just saying the word makes something surge bitter and hot in his chest, a feeling that counters but doesn't dispel the colder, tenser fright already nestled there. It's gone before he can take hold of it, try and examine it, and as familiar as that's started to seem, he can't be glad of it at all.

The offer of help the man extends is distraction enough, and he nods. "Help me gather these?" he asks, nodding down at the vials. "I might not know what they're supposed to do, but they're...they feel important to hang onto."

[hellonspectacles]

Oh. Oh dear. Palamedes could have offered all the sympathy in the world for the dreadful veil of ignorance bestowed by Wellstone. He could have even provided some reassurances: what you know will come back to you, even if it happens slowly and rarely in a logical order. But he can’t do a lot about hallucinations.

“Ah, I’m afraid we have a problem,” he says with a slight wince. “There’s nothing there. Unless you mean to gather every grain of dirt and sand, in which case I would recommend we find some tools to make it easier.”

[more_magic]

That Darlington can hear the apology in the other man's voice is small comfort--indeed, it adds just a little more to the confusion he's been feeling since his arrival here. "Not the sand, the vials. I need--"

For a moment, the object in his hand flickers and fades, only compounding the creeping sense of fear that's surrounded him since the appearance of that first vial and the lack of anything that followed his consumption of the stuff inside. He flinches, shamed by his terror but unable to shake it. "They were there, though," he insists. "And they were important, and they're...I know they're meant to do something. They have to."

[hellonspectacles]

“I’m sure they were.” There isn’t a hint of pity in Palamedes face, and though he sounds a bit embarrassed for the other man’s sake, he doesn’t appear precisely concerned anymore. He steps closer with his hands spread in a gesture of openness. “Look, I think I know what’s happened. I have to admit that visions of vials don’t quite fit the pattern—mostly people have been seeing monsters, or fire, or, I don’t know, a horde of spiders. But people have been seeing things lately. The good news is that, while the incidents tend to be unsettling, they are also singular.”

[more_magic]

"Legitimate threats, you mean, rather than..." Darlington huffs a breath. "The existential terror of the empty vessel?"

The sarcasm feels bitter and noticeably untrue; it hadn't been the vials themselves that caused the fear, but the...lack of feeling that came after drinking their contents. The idea that this was what he'd been given is almost worse than the relief of the explanation, but it's enough to break the remainder of whatever delusion he'd been under. The slight weight of the vial in his hand fades to nothing, the others at his feet winking similarly out of existence, and he shakes his head. "I think it's done now," he says. "If it's as singular as you claim." He studies the other man. "Did it happen to you?"

[hellonspectacles]

“Well, to be fair, I don’t think spiders are actually very dangerous. For all we know, those vessels were much more deadly.” He watches as Darlington’s gaze goes from focused to blank as, presumably, the hallucinations fade from his view. “I’ve been lucky enough to avoid the experience,” he admits ruefully. “So all I can do is imagine what sort of humiliating fears lurk in my subconscious.”

He offers his hand. “Palamedes Sextus. I take it you’re new.”

[more_magic]

He nods, conceding the point. "They may well have been," he agrees, though the words feel briefly false--then true--then false again. "But the fact I expected something to happen, and the fear came when nothing did, is....it's difficult to parse, even knowing they weren't ever there at all."

Feeling another ache build at the back of his head, he pushes the question of the vials aside and takes Palamedes' offered hand. "Daniel Arlington. I woke up in the desert only this morning, so yes, I'm new to wherever this is." He tilts his head, wryly thoughtful. "Can't say I recommend the experience thus far."

[hellonspectacles]

“Oh dear, not you as well.” Palamedes grimaces, then realizes how that might have come across. “Sorry, not your fault, obviously. You see, people didn’t used to get dropped into the desert, but it seems to be a growing trend. I’ve been trying to organize regular search parties, but there’s a lot of terrain to cover, and it’s surprisingly difficult to map. I’m glad you found your way to town in one piece.”

[more_magic]

"No offense taken," he assures him. "I heard the same thing from the woman who...rescued me really is the accurate term, given how long it felt I'd been stuck out there." He nods towards the building they'd both just come from. "Cecelia said that previously, you all woke up already checked into a room here, which is its own brand of unnerving." He lifts a shoulder. "Albeit less sandy, I'd imagine."

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes suppresses a smile as he imagines Cecilia's response to being deemed someone's rescuer. That would please her, he thinks, though she would never admit it, grumbling all the time. But in her heart, she would preen.

“That's right,” Pal tells Darlington. “It's a new variable, and a troubling one at that. Our captors are clearly trying to test us, though what they hope to glean from these horrid experiments, I haven’t been able to figure out. At least not yet.”

[more_magic]

"What have you found out?" he asks, the eagerness behind the question a momentary surprise--but a comfortable one, a piece of himself fitting neatly back, lessening the void of everything else. If there are answers to be found here, answers Palamedes already has and might be willing to share...that might be enough to build on. Even if he has nothing else, he'll have that.

[hellonspectacles]

“Emperor’s bones, where to start? No, this is a conversation much better suited to a more comfortable environment and a cup of tea. Let’s go inside, and I can show you my notes.” When Daniel doesn’t seem to object, Pal turns on his heels and heads into the Staywell lobby. “Tea is there,” he says, pointing to the little station in the corner. “I’m just going to run up to my room to gather a few of my more salient notebooks.”