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

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.

"Haven't tried them yet," John agrees, "they might be fine. Your tea's clear."

He hasn't even opened the pot, but still he points to it with total certainty.

"It's just mine, far as I can tell." His lips twist with a wry smile, as though he's taking it personally. "Anybody else could've missed it... It doesn't look right, doesn't smell right, but it's blood."

"Yours...?"

Concern paints over her expression. "Was that pot specifically given to you, or was it mere chance that drew you to it?"

She's not sure how much she can believe in coincidences anymore.

"Hard to say," he agrees, like he's been on the same thought a while. "Guess I'll have to sample some others, see how many turn up bloody. Feels a little pointed."

For more reasons than she could know. He's the only one who'd immediately cotton on to the horror of it, but also, he's probably the only guy who's tasted the stuff on purpose. Better not to mention that bit.

"Any other signs of stuff carrying over? This is my first reset, you know. Apparently I picked an exciting one. They're really pulling out all the stops."

"It's not a reset." She's more certain of that than she ever was before. "It's a progression. For some reason, our calamitous ends are part of that progression - a cycle within that forward movement. Like some kind of...dread season."

She nods in the direction of the server.

"He and the others have the same faces. Same voices. They, too, are not reset...they're moving with us. Their words different, I'm certain...I just need to figure out what they will allude to this time."

"It needs our deaths," he says, like he's turning the words over, and that— that's something. That tracks with his fledgling theories of necromancy, and it leans heavy against the grand, terrible migraine looming in the back of his head. "It's killing us and bringing us back, over and over, because killing us conveys some benefit."

There's a terrify kernel of an idea in him, something he doesn't dare examine, felt like a pang: Can I do that?

John nearly pours himself a drink to drown it out, but of course all he's got is blood, hot and mocking. He blows out all the breath in his chest, leans in to lace his fingers over the table.

"Okay. Alright. Hate to say it, but that does track. Any ideas why?"

His phrasing could be true, but Cecelia certainly dislikes it. But if her simile of seasons were true, then...then death would be as necessary as rain or snow.

She watches him pour the wretched brew, biting the inside of her cheek. Before he can imbibe, she sits up straighter, reaching a bit.

"You--you can just...have some of mine. It's safe." She pushes the pot of black tea in his direction while he's asking why.

"All I have is speculation. I don't remember the entirety of my magic study, and my specialty is certainly not in death..."

Unlike some people at this table. Or likely wandering about.

He scoots the blood-tea away from him with a huff of relief. She's just saving herself from a very goopy lesson in purification, but, you know, it's the thought that counts.

"Thanks." He empties his cupful back into the pot, frowns at the residue, taps the edge of the cup with his thumbnail— it makes a little tink tink tink sound— and the rest just sort of schlorps together into one big droplet. This he also deposits back in the cup. Then he pours himself some tea as though nothing weird just happened.

"Hey, you've been at it longer than me. Your speculation is more than I've got."

It's unpleasant, but...she's glad to see it. Some sign of the powers he exudes out side of making a parade of grotesque skeletons...some show that he, too, doesn't want to be tainted by the wretched nonsense that had led them this far.

She can appreciate that in her way.

Her eyes drop to her own cup, scooting it closer by the saucer, falling into thought for a moment.

"We were waiting for the reset," she murmurs, "to see what was behind that door below the Staywell. Being cautious as to not break the foundations, or cause some new calamity we weren't ready for...

"But this change is so dramatic, so...unlike what came before. It can't be a loop. I'm convinced now. Just as we're evolving when we endure these trials, as we regain what we were before them...this place is, too. I don't know why. But I'll find out." She nods slightly, curling her fingers around the cup's handle.

"Alright," he says, slow and thoughtful. "So we see what's at the heart... see how it ties in with the graveyard, obviously, that's the least-changed out of everything and it's always the eye of a storm... and then what?"

He sips tea, gives a little hum of approval when it's good, sets it back to the saucer with a click.

"And why desert to forest? Look, this'll sound weird, but it doesn't actually... feel more alive than before. The whole place is so soaked in death it knocked me on my ass, my first day, and it doesn't feel any better now. If it's spending all this death-energy on anything, I can't see how."

Soaked in death.

Cecelia feels the dread creep back in; she sips at the tea while her other hand curls into a weak fist on the table. The hope that seeing green had brought...soaked in death.

She'll find Palamedes. She'll see if he thinks so, too. Maybe it's not so rotten as this.

"Careful. Methodical." She speaks with her eyes closed. "We've a new span of time...and even that is not certain anymore. But even so. We should be mindful of what we test, what we see, and what we learn."

"I hear that," he agrees, as though this was explicitly a plea that he not go haring off and do anything weird with death magic, because it probably was. "Door beneath the Staywell, clues in the graveyard, figure out why the death just— accumulates. I'll let you know if I stumble onto anything new."

He'd go through Pal, usually. Not... not right now.

"If you run across anything a life-and-death guy would be useful for, give me a ring." There's something heavily unsaid here, and John is skirting around the weight of it, hiding the tight line of his mouth behind his teacup. "Think of Pal as precision, and me as firepower, if it comes to that."

Firepower...

Against what? she thinks. The very nature of the space itself?

She ruminates on this quietly, wrestling with that and a few things more in mind. Bitter thoughts mollified by a bitter tea...

Supposing there was a need for more struggle, more pain and fighting back, she supposes having someone able to mitigate deadly consequences is a boon - it certainly would've done her well days prior!

But suppose there's a chance, if they worked hard enough, that there would be no need for any further fighting...

Was that too optimistic a hope? Resolution through knowledge, rather than strife? Or was it always going to be a mix of both?

"Darin is searching for signs of that door once more," she says at length, setting her cup back down. "When it's found...it should be investigated with what powers we have at our disposal. Yours included."

He'll take it. Even if he's just powers at her disposal, if he's everyone's pet nuke, their fucked-up trump card, well— still part of the team, right? It's something. Maybe he can win everyone over with pragmatism, at this rate, stomp flat a few town threats until people quit flinching around him.

He doesn't really believe it, though.

"Good plan." He levers a thin smile at her, trying his best. "Also, uh, I'm not sure how this is done, but— sorry if the other guy caused you any hassle? You all weren't kidding about the end of a cycle. I'm here for any plan that fucks with that schedule."

He wasn't present for the world falling in, but that's because he was somewhere worse.

"'Other guy'...?" Her brow knits, running through something quickly before throwing out the best guess.

"Another you, do you mean? Or...someone else?"

His smile is hard-edged and does not remotely reach his eyes, tension in the stillness of his hands.

"Everyone gets an evil twin, right? Mine sounded like trouble. Just covering my bases, here - I haven't met yours."

"..."

Cecelia looks down at her cup pensively for a moment before willing herself to look back.

"It's a good thing. She would hurt you, on a whim. I...I don't know if she did this time around. I wasn't there to see."

This actually soothes him. John nods like he gets it, like he's relieved. At least his aren't the only demons after them.

"Haven't heard anything, so let's hope she skipped this round. Everyone had enough to contend with."

"So I heard." So little had she heard, but it was already so much. She can't help the guilt she feels in being estranged from it in death - as if death was the mercy in this regard!

"I won't ask you to retell it to me, but...having an account of what came to pass...written down, it. It helps. The pages, when kept safely, carry over. I've checked."

He is silent for an awkward, hesitating moment.

"I appreciate that, but I don't have much of an account. I was," and he waves a hand vaguely downwards, "otherwise occupied. Missed all the most interesting bits."

He was with the tendrils under the dirt.

"But I'm sure you'll get the story soon enough." Hopefully not from Palamedes, who isn't likely to tell it warmly.

"You have my sympathies. For as much as we have tried to record and research...it's been hard to mitigate the hazards. It may have seemed repetitive, and it was in ways, but...not enough to protect us all."

"I get it." He does. With what they're up against, it's impressive they don't spend every waking moment getting stomped flat. Then again: they kind of do. "How long have you been in it? How far back do we think it goes?"

4.0 Test Drive Meme

cactus pad

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cw: gross blood magic

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