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

in the manor.

It's some days before Cecelia makes any appearances outside of a room on the second floor. Save for maybe some screaming one could've heard in the hedge maze days prior, she hasn't ventured out. Granted, that ceaseless sense of duty did have her figure filling up the window to peer down and spy the heads of the people she knows and cares about, but that's less an appearance and more an apparition, isn't it.

When the crushing feeling of anxious anticipation for some new doom to appear eases up and she's taken the time she needs to tend to old harm and tie up new corsets, she steps out to take stock of this new place. It is new - the name can be the same, the concierge's voice and face can match, but this isn't the Staywell - she's determined to believe. It may be the same story they're in, but it's a new chapter.

Clad in deep green silks with cactus blossom accents lacing some of the trim, hair neatly drawn back in a thick braid, ring dangling from a cleaned silver chain down her neck, Cecelia takes her time to wander and consider the place. It's familiar in ways that make her head ache consistently, but in some moments stronger than others. This feels more comfortable by far, even though her skin still prickles with the expectation of a hazard.

That's why her breath cuts short whenever she hears footfalls down a hall or up the nearest stairs; her keen hearing both helping and hindering her sense of safety as she waits with unease for the owner of those steps to emerge. She can pray for either a face she knows and loves, or hope for an amenable presence who will let her fall back into the comfortable role of guide.

...For what little that would do! She still needs to check on her things! Thankfully, she can share that purpose with whomever crosses her path.

at the cactus pad.

If she thinks too long about it, she may cry out of relief for the sight and smell of proper tea. It was such a comfort before the blood began to flow, and even before then, back when young lost Mayoi had tended his tiny tea garden...

All of that...it's gone now, isn't it. The thought makes her heart ache.

I'll remember you, she thinks, sitting down at a vacant little table with a weirdly on-brand teapot housing a strong, black tea. She may have elvish blood and a fondness for floral notes, but an undiluted, bitter leaf hits the best for moments such as these.

She means to just sit with the cup for but a minute or two before taking it with her, but...um...

"..."

Wiggling without getting too indecent about it proves futile. Red-faced, she looks around the place for sign of others' distress. It's not just her, is it? She didn't...sit in something weird, did she?

Gads.

Edited 2023-10-21 15:39 (UTC)

Naturally, John Gaius drops into the chair opposite. There's a teapot in his hand, carried over from wherever, done up appropriately in pitch black with gold accents.

"Got a minute? I want to show you something." She won't want to see it, but they'll cross that bridge when they get there.

Her eyebrows lift and subsequently narrow out of reflex. He may not be doing it intentionally, but he brings a certain...essence that just preemptively has her feeling dread. As if it were a stink, but without a clear indicator.

That said, the wincing of her eyes isn't because of him in particular, but because he sat down before she could warn him. Oops.

"Indeed? I...I suppose I have time." Given I cannot get out of this bloody chair. "What is it?"

"Take a look."

He flips his cup in its saucer, pours the tea - with, give him credit, the grace of a man who drinks a lot of tea - and lets her observe the steaming dark liquid, its scent sweet and metallic.

"So, the bad news: town's not as blood-free as you'd think."

It doesn't look like the 'water' had, but John doesn't sound like he's joking.

She can't help the way color drains from her face to see it, and as the coppery scent slips in past the notes of her own tea, her stomach starts to clench. Already, the want to flee bubbles up in her. Flee, scream, cry...all worthless things, yet nature insists for some reason.

"...None...none of the faucets I tried yielded even a hint of red," she utters, trying to keep the fearful waver out of her voice.

Cecelia Ardenbury - an OC

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