wellcome | 4.0 Test Drive Meme

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4.0 Test Drive Meme

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Welcome to Well! This cycle is a little different, if you've visited us before—this TDM takes place in Well's updated setting. See the first prompt for how your characters arrive in Well. Your character arrives with only a handful of memories, clad in a mix of Old Western clothes and clothes that might fit in at a renaissance fair, and 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 November onward, and can happen concurrently with other events during November and December. This will be the only TDM for November, December, and January.

Applications are open October 27th until November 1st, and November 27th until December 1st. Invites are available for friends of current players.

Into the Maze

Content warnings: deadly traps, aggressive foliage, vines, potential drowning, spikes

You wake up surrounded by green. Thick, dark hedges as tall as two adult humans stretch all around you. They're thick, nigh-impenetrable. You don’t quite know who you are, but you’re pretty sure that here, right here? Is not where you want to be.

You’re at a crossing: paths stretch out between the hedges on four sides of you. Which path do you take?

The sprawling hedge maze is vast and complex, especially if you’re not even sure where you should be going. Along your way, you hear giggling, shouts, excited screaming, low murmurs, and, sometimes, the sound of radio static. You might see the faint outline of someone slipping around a corner, and hear them giggling, a long, white dress or robe following them as they move. But you never find whoever, or whatever, is making these noises.

If you follow them, you instead come across:

Thorny vines laying on the ground, or hidden in the hedges, that slowly wrap themselves around your ankles or your wrists, pulling you back, trying to subsume you into the hedge.
A dark pond stretching clear across the path, blocking your way. You can wade into it, but when you do those voices get louder, so much louder, screaming in your ears. The bottom drops away from your feet. Strange things brush your ankles, turning into hands pulling you down into the oily water. The more you panic, the more difficult it is to get to the other side. Staying calm keeps the water at about chest height.
Pieces of the path fallen away, down into a pit full of spiny cacti. You might not want to test this one, and instead trust yourself to jump across. It’s just short enough a gap to be scalable by most, but it sure isn’t a comfortable distance to cross. If you do fall in, boy howdy do those things hurt. You’ll need some help getting out!
The graveyard. There’s nothing getting in your way in the graveyard, but you may simply stumble upon it. The graves are overgrown and covered in moss. The ground is moist and springy. In the middle you may find an old mossy well filled with clear water.

Thankfully, at these obstacles, you might find another person, equally as lost as you. They may have been following the same person. Once you join forces with each other, the way out is easier to find. Not easy, but possible. If you continue to forge on on your own, the exit will never reveal itself to you.

When you do finally stumble out of the maze, you’re greeted with the site of Wellstone.

tl;dr:

You wake up lost in a hedge maze! You hear strange voices around you, and a figure dressed in white runs away from you.
You run into obstacles: spiky vines, a deadly pond, a pit full of cacti, or the graveyard. Work with another character (or not) to escape the maze!

Welcome home

Content warnings: disorientation, feelings of being lost

When you stumble your way into the run-down old town of Wellstone, the deadly peril of the maze seems to be over. It’s cold and damp, sure, but at least you’re not in danger, and you’re in luck: up a small hill beyond some gates, you can see an ornate house with golden windows, practically beaming warmth.

Staywell Manor is a grand place, with high ceilings and exposed, ornate beams, lush carpets and tapestries, beautifully upholstered furniture. A man dressed like a butler (the old hotel receptionist, for those who’ve met him) greets you with a bland smile:

“Welcome to Wellstone. We’re so glad you’re here with us! What’s the name on your reservation?”

You remember your name, and you give it to him, and he offers you a heavy brass key. No matter the number, your room does exist in the four-story manor, and is decked out with a four-poster bed, a nice settee, and a closet full of clothes that fit you like they were made for you. They’re a strange mixture, though, a mishmash of old American Western rhinestones and denim and medieval fabrics and silhouettes in bright colors. You might find a fringed tunic dyed bright red, or a pair of cowboy boots with the toes curled up like a jester’s slippers, bell-tipped and absurd. Are those pantaloons made of denim? Weird!

While the manor is lovely and inviting, and much warmer than the outdoors, it is also pretty big. Well, it must be, because you keep getting lost! It’s incredibly difficult to find your way to your room this month. You might find your way to the wrong floor, to the parlor, to someone else's room. Remember to knock!

tl;dr:

You're in the town of Wellstone, where it's cold, damp, and rainy.
Staywell Manor is warm and inviting, but hard to navigate, and you're prone to getting lost in its halls.

Warm Your Bones

Content warnings: alcohol, intoxication, accidental consumption of blood, hallucinations of demons and shadow people

The town of Wellstone has clearly seen better days and warmer seasons. Cobblestoned streets trace their way between crumbling buildings overgrown with moss and ivy. The early-fall nip in the air is enough to make your breath fog up in front of your face. Clouds hang low and sulky over the down, spitting out little bursts of rain here and there. Wind whistles between the close-crowded buildings, blowing a few leaves and the odd tumbleweed along the damp stone.

With the heavy chill in the air and fog drifting the streets at night, thick and cold enough to creep into even the warmest clothes, it’s tempting just to stay indoors.

Luckily for everyone tired of the damp, the golden light spilling from the Cactus Pad Pub beckons. Just walking inside hits you with a blast of warmth. A fire blazes at full strength in the hearth, snapping and crackling, but more than that, every single table is set resplendently with mismatched fancy china: cups, saucers, creamers, little pots of sugar, and of course, tea, steaming and hot.

It’ll be hard to resist the urge to sit down at one of these little tables, and the moment you do, you’re stuck there for at least an hour. Truly: your butt is glued to that chair. At least there's tea, and there are cards on the table with conversation starters on them. But these conversation starters are a little, ah... odd? Comment below to get a conversation starter for you and your tablemate!

May as well have some tea while you’re here, and hope that it is in fact tea. You have a one-in-three shot. The steaming liquid in that pot might be:

Piping hot black tea, caffeinated and bracing. Drinking it makes you energetic and exciteable and very eager to talk to your neighbors. It also makes you feel extremely fancy! Put that pinky up and use the biggest words you know to impress everyone around you.
Dark mulled wine, spiced with ginger and cloves. Drinking it fills you with unbridled confidence bordering on arrogance. You'll feel lordly in whatever way makes sense: condescending and snotty, benevolent and patrician, whatever you might be prone to.
Something… else. It’s dark, hot, and sweet, but there’s an odd metallic tang that sits strangely on your tongue. Whatever it is, it’s addictive. The more you drink, the stranger the world around you becomes: you’ll see faces in the shadows and glowing red in the eyes of your companions. Shadowy figures seem to haunt the walls of the pub, moving toward you. You’re filled with fear and paranoia but rooted to the spot.

Each of these effects lasts from half an hour to an hour, and longer if you drink more of whatever is in your respective pot. Once you're free from the table, if you sit down at another one, you'll be trapped there, too.

Feel free to ask the mods to roll for you to decide which teapot your character gets, and for a conversation starter, just for you!

tl;dr:

There's a fancy tea party happening in the Cactus Pad Pub. It's sort of mandatory.
Sitting at a table traps you at the tea party for an hour, and you'll be drinking one of three random drinks, each with different effects.
There are conversation starters on the tables to help you get to know your fellow tea partiers!
Tea makes you social and fancy, mulled wine makes you lordly and a bit drunk, and the last hot, sweet liquid tastes weird and makes you see demons.
Ask the mods to roll a random teapot type for you if you'd like!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ To be fair, the man he's rounded on takes eerie up another notch: black waistcoat, black cape, each eye black from edge to edge beneath a burning ring of light. If Loki has any ability to sense divinity, the guy nearly has god of the undead stamped across his forehead.

Still, when Loki reacts, he splays his own hands like a guy trying haplessly to fend off a mugging. All clumsy and earnest, no threatening grace. ]

Whoa, easy. [ But he doesn't seem actually bothered, because he carries on: ] You know, they seem to move the exit every time. Want to join me?

[Loki doesn't mind the black so much as the deliberate calm the man displays. Something in the back of his head rings an alarm, warning that it's easier to get what you want with friendly charm than with force. He's not suspicious, exactly, but without really recognizing it, Loki decides two can play at that game.

He shakes a finger in the air, eyes wide.]

I thought so. I was mapping it out in my head and the only other explanation would be a truly enormous garden, and who even has the time for that? [He glances around them, sweeping a hand at the graves.] Certainly not this lot.

[Loki approaches, hands dropping to his hips.]

But maybe the two of us can sort it out. Say, you don't happen to know how we got here, do you? [His eyebrows raise in innocent expectation, but should the stranger have any suspicions of him, it's clear this is bait.]

[ John crooks a smile at the dead-people joke. He huffs out a breath that's nearly a laugh, at the wide-eyed performance of uncertainty, but just turns on his heel and waves Loki to join him. ]

How long a version do you want? I'm pretty new, myself. Three months. I think the real veterans have survived a whole nine.

[ Because that's comforting. ]

[Loki follows, squinting at that response.]

Nine months in this maze? And you're still hoping to escape? I'm sure I look brilliant but you're putting an awful lot of faith in my abilities in assisting you if that's the case.

Oh, nah, the maze is new. Don't sweat the maze. It's the [ and here he waves a hand, vaguely ] world in general we're stuck in. You know it was a desert until about a day ago? Now we're doing a woodland theme, apparently.

I've heard the phrase 'pocket dimension' thrown around. Or 'magical purgatory,' if you like the sound of that one more, though I think it raises a few more questions than we're prepared to answer.

Either way, about once a month, you wake up to some new gimmick. Like a giant maze.

[Loki's mouth falls open as the man talks, brow furrowing in confusion.]

I-- what? Purgatory as in we're dead?!

[He comes to a full stop in the middle of the current lane of the maze they've entered, gesturing behind them even as he's fairly certain the path they'd taken out of the graveyard has, somehow, relocated.]

Then what was that? A graveyard full of especially dead people?

[Loki's mouth goes dry and his arms fall to his sides as realization hits him. The slightly theatrical volume he's been speaking at fades to something far softer.]

Is that why I can't remember...well, anything?

[ John carries on another few paces before he realizes Loki has drawn up short. He turns back to face him, palms splayed again in that placating way. ]

Sorry, see, that's what I'm saying. The 'purgatory' angle is a whole can of worms, I should've just left it at 'pocket dimension.' [ He does look kind of apologetic, gone awkward in the face of actual alarm. ] I get the sense that some people think it's aliens, so really, the jury's out. I would personally put my money on us not being dead.

[ He steps forward, closes the distance between them so that he can speak more carefully. To this, there's an actual hesitation. A greater sense of weight. ]

The memories will come back over time. I wouldn't push it.

[ Because they're all probably shit, he doesn't say. ]

[Loki presses his lips into a thin line. As...oddly lonely as it is, not remembering anything, he can see why someone might prefer it. It's frightening, not knowing, but so is imagining what you might find out.

And, assuming the man isn't lying out his arse, that grave tone seems to indicate that there's plenty worth forgetting. At least, there was for him. And so no, he won't push it. He nods, motioning for them to continue.

After a few steps, he offers with a small smirk:]

...Aliens according to who, though?

[ He'd have better material for a joke if the abduction and probing hadn't been the worst thing of all time. As it stands, those wounds are pretty fresh. John skims past it. ]

We really ought to take a poll. But there were some very impressive crashed spaceships lying around, a few months back. Which, personally, I'd take over this decor.

[ He spreads a hand to the utter, eerie uniformity of hedge. ]

Or do you mean according to which planet? We might have a few represented. [ In a tone still pitched towards casual, but perhaps less convincingly: ] If 'Nine Houses' rings a bell, let me know.

[Crashed spaceships. Plural. Ah. If Loki had had any doubts that whatever brought him here was big, the implication that there might be some intergalactic conflict involved has washed those away.

Loki sighs, running a hand through his hair.] Unfortunately I appear to be fresh out of bells. Or things to ring them with. However that saying is supposed to work. [He glances at his companion sidelong.] I take it you've recalled a bit more than your own name, then? Which, ah, speaking of. Mine is Loki. As far as I know, anyway.

[ He makes a little sound of agreeing sympathy low in his throat, and turns to offer a handshake as they walk. ]

John. A bit, yeah. I was— [ and he's never introduced himself this way before, so he seizes on it: ] —some kind of researcher, back home. Medical, healer stuff. You ever need a bone set or something sewn up, come to me, I can magic it all back together.

[ This is the kind of misrepresentation some people might label flagrant lying, but all the pieces are true, so fuck it. ]

Anything you could do before, it'll come back in pieces, just like the memory of learning how to do it. It's a little like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, but some asshole will only give you one piece at a time. And the jigsaw puzzle is your brain.

I'll keep you in mind should I ever decide to, say, fall off the top of a hedge rather than walk a maze the rest of my natural life.

[God he hopes he's kidding.]

But...hm. I hadn't considered skills. I mean, obviously I have the basics down, walking and breathing and all that. But I suppose if I can't remember my life, I...can't really know what I was capable of.

[Loki's expression is cautiously hopeful. It's only up from here, right? Gaining skills without having to work at it doesn't sound so bad, really.

He tucks his hands into his pockets, thoughtful.]

So...when you say magic, do you mean that literally?

Edited 2023-11-05 20:50 (UTC)

Very literally.

[ This is the easy part: surprisingly safe waters, for a guy who doesn't want to admit the extent of what he can do. Admitting that he can do anything isn't the difficult bit. ]

At least half the town can work some kind of magic. I'm one of the necromancers, which sounds spookier than it is. Dead bodies are our domain, sure, but so are living ones. Like I said, great for healing.

[ This is, again, John putting a bit more of a spin on things than most would dare. Palamedes doesn't do much healing, and the jury's out on whether other necromancers even can. That might be a John-specific thing. But it sounds friendlier than I'm really good at raising the dead. ]

Is this stirring up anything useful?

[Loki's next step hesitates, hardly for a second, but if John's looking out for his reaction, it's there. There's really very few things with the prefix necro that bode terribly well. And given where they'd run into each other...

Nope. No. That is a bridge to cross when it appears, given the circumstances. He needs all the help he can get, and anyone whose memory extends beyond the past two hours is a blessing at the moment.]

Nnno. Can't say it does. Well, only-- it's strange to think of there being, hm, magicians or what have you around. But it doesn't feel unfamiliar, exactly? Just. Uncommon, I suppose.

[Casually, almost teasingly:] Should I be worried about any of the others, when I'm done not being worried about you?

I'll take magician, even if it makes me sound like a guy doing card tricks. Wizard feels familiar.

[ Lich comes to mind. He ignores that one. ]

Genuine answer? Not that I've met. With the world itself throwing curveballs and mazes at us, you get a lot of team spirit.

[ But he hesitates. There's something here, and John is choosing his words carefully, picking his way around it. ] Every now and then... once a season, maybe... we get monsters coming into town. Doppelgangers, evil twins. They just passed through, so we should be safe for a few months yet.

[Sorcerer is closer to what feels right for Loki, though he can't even begin to imagine why. And even that isn't quite right.

Loki gives a wry smile at "team spirit", but it fades quickly as John goes on. He hesitates, but he's already reading between the lines.]

Monstrous doppelgangers of us? They come through and-- and what? And then they just leave?

[Or perhaps they don't. How would one even know, when no one remembers anything properly themselves?]

Cause trouble, mostly. Sow division, that sort of thing. Try to make you look bad.

[ Or murder half your friends in a dramatic show of power, but who's counting? ]

I know it sounds dire, but they do have tells. Their touch burns— or, more accurately, rots. A handshake will give them away.

[Loki pales slightly, but forces a laugh.]

Looks like I'll be shaking a lot of hands, then.

[They cover a few paces in silence before Loki asks:] So they show up, ruin your relationships, and leave? But they've come back and do it again a few months later?

This is where I plug 'healer' again.

[ John says it like a joke, as though being able to mend the damage negates the unpleasantness of sustaining it. ]

That's what I hear. Again, I'm only three months in. We don't have much data to work from. Maybe you can help us crack it - why us, why doppelgangers, why a hedge maze? It's a long list.

[Loki stands up a little straighter. Yes. Perhaps he could. He's clever enough. He thinks.

...It sounds like it would make him look cool, anyway. Like a hero.]

I'll keep an eye out, then. Whenever we get out of here. Which will hopefully be soon as I very literally cannot remember the last time I ate.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

4.0 Test Drive Meme

the maze

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omg ty for the paid! I'm working on my app tonight :D

hell yeahhh my pleasure!!

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