4.0 Test Drive Meme

[wellie]

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!

Comments

Daniel Arlington | Hell Bent

[more_magic]

1: welcome home
Darlington breathes easier almost from the moment he steps foot inside Staywell Manor, the stone and wood and carved beams feeling...not familiar, exactly, but like some half-remembered comfort. Maybe it's the mere aesthetics of it, the sense of history, of care; chairs positioned around the room in twos and threes, firelight glinting richly off of the leaded glass of the narrow windows.

He could live here. He could be happy. It could be his, or at least some corner of it. The thought of that aches, low and dull, but he can't put a finger on why.

After check-in, he climbs the stairs in search of his room--and yet, each flight seems to take longer than it ought, each hallway bending at angles that never feel quite exact. Fitting his key in a lock, he turns it only to feel resistance. Rattling the doorknob does nothing either, and, after a moment, he lifts a hand to knock. In a place like this it feels unlikely they'll be made to double up, but anything seems possible.

2: warm your bones
The cloak he'd found in his room did him few favors, but at least it's warm, decent enough for the trek between the Manor and what seems to be the only pub in town as the evening's gloom and mist roll in. Inside, it's busy, though the general atmosphere is less convivial and more...frustrated, with occasional pockets of resignation as he scans the groups clustered around a few of the tables. Darlington chalks it up to nothing much exactly--at least until he finds himself stuck to a seat as well, a card arrayed on the table in front of him along with a teapot emitting a slow curl of steam from its spout.

He's tried getting up, and it's an embarrassment he'd little care to repeat again.

"I don't think--" he starts as someone pulls the empty chair out from the other side, then stops, watching helplessly as they sit, making the same mistake as he had only a short time before. He sighs. "Well, I suppose we're in this together now."

3: wildcard
Different idea? Have questions? I'm open to pretty much anything! Hit me up over at gripyfish and let's talk!

2

[thinkfirst]

Flynn blinks at him from the other chair. He didn't precisely make a conscious choice to sit here, but in a strange way, at this point, he's sort of used to that. It's a nice change to be somewhere different, even though the layout is very nearly identical and the bartender hasn't changed a bit.

This is a new face, too, which had been half the point. Flynn doesn't like to let anyone be in this town too long without a friendly face, and who knows if he's seen one yet, although maybe that's purposeful, considering.

"Yes," the word is syrup-slow and careful, dragged into a question, "I suppose we are. Would you rather not be? I'm sure I can sit somewhere else, if you'd like to be alone."

He half-twists to look around, like a new and empty table might spring up behind him to offer itself so he isn't imposing.

[more_magic]

He'd meant to warn, and only sounded rude; that much is clear, from the reaction he gets in return. As his new--acquaintance? companion? partner in imprisonment? the terms seem ill-defined--twists, looking for an easy exit, Darlington can't help a wince.

"It's not you," he promises. "Or that I want to be alone, it's...well, I'm not certain you'll be able to get up again."

[thinkfirst]

"It is very nice by the fire," Flynn agrees, relaxing back into his seat like that's the crux of the problem: that this is a particularly desirable and warm table on a particularly cold and rainy night, and that the comfort is going to absolutely override his own willpower.

All of that might be true, but he watches the firelight dance on the table and the fine china, casting little orange flickers around themselves and thinks that this place is never really that easy.

"Or," he continues with a soft frown knitting his brows, "do you mean literally I won't be able to get up even if I desperately wanted to?"

[more_magic]

He grasps the rudimentary outline of their situation quickly, which is a relief; even though it's hardly his fault, Darlington feels guilty enough for not stopping things sooner. "That one," he says, with a brief nod in his tablemate's direction. "Based on what I've noticed at the other tables, and on what I've tried and failed at myself, I think we're both stuck here for the foreseeable future."

He pauses, a wry, thoughtful look on his face for a moment. "There are worse situations, I'd imagine, but there's an embarrassment to this one I don't think I like."

[thinkfirst]

Naturally, Flynn has to confirm this. He tries to do it discreetly— a little wiggle in the chair, feeling the strange stick like someone's glued him down— but the chair scrapes along the floor in protest, rocking with him, and he winces and settles back.

"Of course," this more of an annoyed huff than a word, with an accompanying scowl cast at the table, "this would happen again. It's— well, you've only just arrived, haven't you?"

2

[anglophone]

The teenager now glued to a chair wriggles experimentally, more for the show of the attempt than anything else. He shrugs, then raises a hand to wiggle it like a scale balancing.

"Three out of ten entrapment," he says, casually, flopping back in the seat to slouch against the backrest, "You should've been here for the tentacles."

With that distinctly unominous pronouncement, Alec gives Darlington a once over that has a lot of nerve coming from a boy in a confection of a white and silver lace trimmed shirt. He raises his eyebrows when he's concluded his inspection, but he lets the cape go uncommented on for now.

"Sup, newbie," he says, "Welcome to weird, fucked up amnesia jail. I'm Alec, and I'm kind of a big deal around here."

[more_magic]

Darlington has no past experience to reference, and even fewer memories to cling to. Whatever his past had been, it's gone, aside from scraps; glimpses of things he can hold for only a second or two before they're gone again. Neither fact changes the sense of utter familiarity he feels, watching Alec slouch and survey and smirk at him. He's dealt with this before. He's been annoyed by this before, though not--he thinks--from this particular source.

"Daniel," he says, his tone even, modulated on that same instinct of familiarity he can't place, but trusts. "I think I'll pass on the tentacles."

[anglophone]

"Shit," Alec says, eyes widening in performative realization, "Why didn't we think of that?"

Then he smirks, resting a hand on the edge of the table. He taps his thumbnail on the hard wood, a tiny rhythm just off a real beat.

"Daniel," he repeats, rolling the name over his tongue and flicking it off experimentally, "Danny? Dan? Probably not. Anyway. How's the head feeling? Lighter than usual?"

[more_magic]

The tapping is off-pace enough to be an irritant, another annoyance from an already pestilent source, but it should be easy enough to ignore. Should be. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Darlington latches onto the break in the rhythm, feeling the error in it, the order disturbed, a pattern almost calling to him to set right.

Something else flares in his chest at Danny, a thought--a shred of memory--there and gone before he can take hold of it. "It's Daniel," he says again. "From what I understand, it's not unusual to come to this place with little more than a name to put to your own face in the mirror. Can't say I like it, though."

1

[sighsheavily]

The jiggling of the handle is startling at first - alarm-sense from horrors prior to this room - and it takes a beat for Cecelia to catch a breath and relax. It's harmless finagling, not threatening pounding...

She crosses the room and carefully opens the door partway to peer in hopes of someone familiar looking for her...only to see a stranger.

She blinks.

"...May I help you?"

[more_magic]

The door opens and Darlington steps back, half in surprise and half out of a sense of...not guilt, but something close to it, like being caught in a moment there's no good explanation for. The woman inside looks just as unsure, and for a moment they both stare at each other.

"I just got here," he says, with the decency to look and sound apologetic. "I think I'm lost, this isn't...they told me room 1898." The number seems too high, even for a place of this size--but it's all the information he has right now.

[sighsheavily]

It takes some time, but the more the man talks, the longer she watches his face, the more she realizes he is no stranger.

It's been...a long series of happenings since last this man stumbled into view.

He's not covered in sand this time, at least.

"Too high indeed." She opens the door more fully, revealing a room that seems to have gotten into a fight with a stationery store for all the notebooks and papers lying about in stacks and piles.

"May I see it? In relation to my key, maybe we'll have you a clue of direction."

[more_magic]

Whatever Cecelia may feel about revealing the current chaos of her room, Darlington doesn't pick up on any of it as he steps inside. Really, the stacks of papers, the books and notebooks piled on all available surfaces feel...almost comforting, familiar in the same nebulous, flickering way as the worn wooden treads of the stairs or the solid stones of the manor's walls, damp and lightly furred with moss. He hasn't been here, but he knows this kind of disorder.

"Good thinking," he says, handing over his key when she asks. "It's odd they have a room reserved for me at all, but I'm not going to reject the gift of it." He lifts one shoulder, a slow, still uncertain shrug. "Frankly, I don't know if I should be rejecting much of anything, right now."

[sighsheavily]

"You were in the register before," she murmurs, turning the key over and considering the number. "Before the desert vanished...It stands to reason you would remain, if this really is an extension of what came before.

"Mm, I don't think this is the same floor..."

1:

[hellonspectacles]

The Staywell only has four floors now, which means his own room on the sixth floor should be gone, and yet, by some baffling miracle, Palamedes had found the room with the lock that fit his key. What’s more, despite the changes in decor, despite the floods and the horrors, everything is as he left it. Notebooks cover the dresser and the desk, pens have been discarded on every surface, a few dry teacups sit, abandoned long ago. Even The Necromancer’s Marriage Season lies splayed-open on the bedside table.

Still, Pal isn’t about to take it on faith that nothing has been lost. He’s collecting the notebooks that lay around the room and sorting them into piles by date and topic when the knock comes to the door. He opens it and blinks with surprise when he sees that the young man he met outside earlier that day is standing on the other side.

“…Oh! Hello again. Glad to see you made it in. Can I help you with something?”

[more_magic]

"Making it here seems only half the problem," Darlington admits, his shoulders relaxing at the sight of an even mildly familiar face on the other side of the door. "I must've taken a wrong turn on the way to my room. I tried asking directions, but..." He sighs. "The gentleman at the desk was hardly forthcoming." If he'd wanted a refresher on his room number, or a reassurance that there'd be breakfast in the morning, he'd have had it, but nothing more than that.

Behind Palamedes, Darlington can see the clutter of notebooks and discarded cups and plates, the paradoxical erratic disarray of focused industry. It's familiar in a way that it shouldn't be, given how blank everything else is--and yet, the sight is a comfort all the same, and interest sparkles unguardedly in his eyes. He nods towards the piles. "I didn't mean to interrupt, but I think I understand now what you meant downstairs when you mentioned some of your more salient notebooks."

[hellonspectacles]

“The floorplan is a bit puzzling, isn’t it?” Pal says wryly. “I still need to map it, though I’m already half convinced that the result will be nonsense. We can’t really rely on stability of place, you see.” That had been true before, but now, with trees and swamps where cacti and deserts had once been, Wellstone’s stability seems seems even more precarious.

He dismisses the apology with a wave. “No need—I’m just checking to see if anything’s missing after the latest disaster. So far, so good. If you’re still interested, I’m happy to share some of my notes.”

[more_magic]

"Definitely still interested," he says, his eyebrows going up as he takes note of the other bits of information there. "I'm afraid to ask what kind of disaster...or that there's enough for this to be the latest in a series."

The idea that there's danger here is disconcerting, to be sure. It still does little to dim the interest in Darlington's expression.

[hellonspectacles]

"The answer won't make you happy, but I think it's better to know than otherwise, particularly given that something similar will probably happen again." With this rather ominous statement, offered fairly cheerfully, Palamedes beckons Darlington in. Despite the chaos of the notebooks, it's probably easy to see that someone with a well-developed sense of order lives here: the bed is precisely made, shoes have been lined up by the wardrobe in an orderly manner, and a stack of unused notebooks sits in a neat pile on a side table.

"Some sort of apocalyptic event happens every three months, by my count," he explains. "Three have happened thus far, the most recent just a couple of days ago." Pal goes to the bookshelf and takes down a slightly battered looking notebook with a cactus on the cover. "I've been recording each one, noting the differences and similarities among the particular catastrophes. Thus far, it has always entailed some sort of storm, and often--" a grimace-- "a flood or burial, but the exact nature has varied."

1

[necrolord]

So: this is a first. No one's ever knocked at John's door, not since he had the admittedly very funny idea of keeping skeletons in his closet. That last bit might be backfiring, because when he goes to let the stranger in, it's with an air of guilty chagrin. Like they'll sense it. Which, if his visitor is Palamedes, they totally will.

That'll definitely help him sell the I'm-not-an-evil-tyrant thing.

"Need something?" He's a little bemused to find an unfamiliar guy standing in the hall, but if somebody sent him along, it must be for a reason. It'd be nice to hear that his rep as a healer withstood the skeleton war.

[more_magic]

At least the whole situation is equally as awkward for them both, if the expression on the other man's face as he opens the door is anything to go by. The eyes are their own surprise, too, but somehow Darlington knows better than to stare.

"I'm beginning to think a map might've been helpful," he admits, looking down again at the key in his hand. "Apparently, I have a room here, but god knows where." He looks at him again, and can't help a quick, almost rueful laugh. "For all I could get out of the receptionist downstairs, I'm not sure he does either."

[necrolord]

"He's a funny one," John agrees, and there's a knowing edge to it, like this is a joke. He could get the skeleton in the closet up and walking around and it'd be about as much of a person as the receptionist, he's pretty sure. Some corner of his head says construct. "I'm not convinced the numbers are arranged in any pattern humans can comprehend. You want company?"

He wasn't doing anything much, and there are few distractions like a brand-new arrival. You know it's bad when John feels like he has a grip on things by comparison.

[more_magic]

"I don't want to put you to any trouble," Darlington says, an instinct of politeness that seems both natural and...off, somehow, a muscle unexercised for some time. He shakes off the thought, or lets it slip away; right now, it's hard to tell which. Neither seems likely to do much to improve his situation, or the awkwardness that still lingers like a third body between them.

"Then again, I've been looking on my own for far too long, it feels like, so company's sounding pretty good right now."

[necrolord]

"It's no trouble." He says it just as easily, like this little song and dance is standard. "We can pretend I'll get any better at navigating this place with practice."

John waves Darlington to lead on, and follows him out into the hall, shuts the door behind him. Actually stops to lock it, too. Normally there would be no need to bother— who has valuables, here?— but, well. It really will be awkward if someone finds the human skull behind his cloaks.

"First day? The arrival isn't easy." He crooks a sympathetic smile at Darlington, falls into step at his side. "If you have questions, now would be the time. I'm John."