4.0 Test Drive Meme

[wellie]

4.0 Test Drive Meme

Premise & Arrival ֍ FAQ ֍ Apply ֍ Navigation

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

[sighsheavily]

"Proper water, I take it," she remarks with a slight flat edge, her eyes wincing. She immediately regrets speaking at all in light of that beaming expression; so rare has a smile been seen, especially on poor Flynn's face, that she oughtn't have sought to dampen the spirit of it so soon.

"I'm sorry, dear. It--it's still fresh in-mind. But I can't stay stuck there, can I."

[thinkfirst]

"Real water," Flynn says, gentle, smoothing right past that edge. How can he fault her for it? He'd had to sit on the edge of the steaming pool for nearly an hour, suspicious and too afraid to hope, before getting up the courage to put a foot in. Even then he'd scouted around the entire building, into its nooks and crannies, smelling for the copper-scent of blood.

"Clean and clear," he continues softly. "I checked. It's beyond strange, Cecelia. It's like... like Wellstone put on different clothes. I can't begin to think what it means, and I'm sure you'll be able to put something together once you've had a chance to poke around, which you really don't have to do now, if you'd rather stay here."

[sighsheavily]

"There's so much to do, isn't there..."

She promised herself she wouldn't feel guilty, hiding away in Darin's room for a couple days. She promised, and yet, standing before Flynn...she can't help it.

"I need to find my proper room, then. Ensure my notes survived. Perhaps you can help me?"

[thinkfirst]

It's the chance to help her, maybe, that has him straightening with something like duty-endowed pride and smiling wider.

"We have a better chance between the two of us," he says, cheerfully and largely incorrectly, and offers an arm like the knight he knows he is to the lady she's dressed as. (And is, really: of everyone here in this dusty— damp, dust gone— town, she's the most proper). "Please, my Lady Cecelia, this way. What hallways have you tried? I can tell you that there's nothing but empty rooms back down those stairs."

[sighsheavily]

It's all too easy to take that arm and settle at his side; it comes about as naturally to her as perhaps it did to him, and she's too thankful for the comfort it brings to question it. Still, 'my Lady Cecelia' gets a half-smirk, amused.

"This and the floor below," she replies. "I'd have liked your advice sooner, but I already saw for myself. Shall we try a floor above us? And pray some sign of my notes remains despite the changes."

[thinkfirst]

"Oh," Flynn can't help the distressed little intake of breath as that possibility expands horribly in his head. He's already swinging them around, aiming for the opposite end of the hallway where another stairwell should be, he thinks, but falters for a moment.

"Do you think," their feet echo unfamiliarly. It's a strange thing to notice, maybe. Flynn shakes it off with a grim set to his mouth, "Do you think we should work on making copies of them to store in multiple rooms, if they are still there? I'd hate for all that work to go to waste..."

[sighsheavily]

Months prior, the prospect would've fueled Cecelia with a fiery purpose. Now, though...it makes her feel so very, very tired.

"Rather than make a complete replica of it all," she says, working through her opinion on it as she speaks it, "I would rather test that idea with a smaller sample. Imagine the wretched feeling of having spent so much of a month or more in making copies that wouldn't last a fresh disaster! I've already struggled to feel of value in my efforts as it is, you know?"

[thinkfirst]

Flynn understands. Of course he does: the feeling of having lost something you put so much time into, and pinned so many hopes on, is a terrible one. He'd do anything to feel like he knew what to do with a sword, at this point.

Stairs rise ahead of them. That's a good sign, at least. "If you start to struggle with that again, please come to me, and I'll be glad to remind you what a valuable resource you've created for all of us. We'd be floundering in memory without you. Why is that a struggle?"

[sighsheavily]

"Don't be so sure," she murmurs, gathering up some of her gown in order to avoid stepping on it on their way upward. "I think you are all of you far more resilient than you would give yourselves credit...and that's excluding this morbid matter of reviving repeatedly."

[thinkfirst]

"But we haven't really had to try without you," for very long, Flynn does not add, because he's still too raw from the weeks she was gone. They had, just a little bit, fallen apart without Cecelia's steadying influence. He isn't ready to bring that up because she'll just find a way to feel bad about it, probably, and Flynn isn't going to make her feel worse for anything in the world.

They crest the stairs, at least, and Flynn looks down the hallway for something familiar. Of course, he finds nothing, and deflates just a little. "It may be here, but I couldn't say for sure. I never thought I'd find myself missing the hotel as it was."

[sighsheavily]

She understands the unspoken part, a twinge of guilt pinching at her gut. That's not entirely true, she thinks. But it doesn't utterly count, does it? What would she have done being there in the midst of skeletons and floods? Be one more person to panic about?

"I'm more relieved," she admits, her free hand feeling around herself for her key. "It feels like proper progress at last to me. This one, I think."

After they ascend to the next level, she starts to eye the room numbers until finding the one which matches hers.

"Still on the far end of a hall, just as last time," she murmurs, letting Flynn go so she can unlock and open the door, finding the place fairly clean...save for the scattered notebooks about.

"...Well. Seems about right."

[thinkfirst]

Flynn bites down on a snort of laughter, fond and bright, and presses the door open a bit wider for her. "It wouldn't be your room if it weren't covered in notes— does this look like everything, at a glance? I suppose you're right, and that it really does indicate that we're doing something, and it's always a good day when we get the chance to clean up!"

[sighsheavily]

She proceeds in and bends to pick up the nearest notebook - cactus-shaped and familiar - and smooths out some dog-eared pages before opening it up properly. After a couple seconds of skimming, she feels a beat of unease.

"...No, this...might be wrong, actually. Do you recognize this at all?"

Because she thought she did. In fact, some of this shorthand feels right, and the penmanship as well, but...there's things in here she can't parse.

[thinkfirst]

Flynn leans carefully over her shoulder, his hand half-pressed to another notebook, familiar from his own inventory under the heavy clouds.

"It's yours," he says after a moment, and shifts closer to look over her shoulder more closely. "But I can't read it. That happens with your notes, sometimes— shorthand, I thought it was? You don't recognize it?"

[sighsheavily]

"It's my handwriting," she affirms, dread sinking and knotting in the pit of her stomach. "I wrote this.

"I can't...read it. I don't know what these symbols mean at all." Don't panic. She wants to, very much so, but she swallows back on that urge. Her hands shake a little and prompt her to grip the book tighter as she scours the curious symbols peppered between lettering she does know.

"I don't remember...what I wrote."

[thinkfirst]

It's hard not to hear the worry there, tight in her voice; Flynn's hand drops steadying to her shoulder before he can even really think about it.

Of course she's worried. Hasn't Flynn heard some variation of her worry a hundred times, that her only contribution is these notes, her archives? He knows perfectly well what it's like to pin your entire identity on a contribution, and better still what it's like to have that promptly ripped away. Sympathy tugs sharp at his lungs.

"Let's try another one," he says, keeping his own voice even, a counterbalance. "We can sort them, see how many are written this way."

[sighsheavily]

Right. Another. This could be a fluke. A very targeted fluke, but then...things have gotten quite personal here before, yes? So--

So another. She snaps the book closed, stuck in place briefly by his hand on her before she moves to grab another one off the floor, hoping against her suspicions.

"..."

More of the symbols. They mean something, but she doesn't know what that something is. Don't panic.

"No. Not--mn. No. These don't...I can't read these ones. These," she taps at the angelic glyphs mixed in the script, "these ones. I wrote them, but I don't know what they mean anymore. I've...I forgot, didn't I."

She didn't realize that could still happen. She thought this was all about reclaiming, not...losing.

[thinkfirst]

"....you must have," Flynn says, soft and heavy-hearted. They don't mean anything to him either, and goddess but he knows that deep, bone-sick feeling of having forgotten, knowing you should know how something works only to pull up blank bare space. Like a part of you is missing. "I'm sorry, Cecelia. Can you— is it just those symbols? The rest you can read?"

[sighsheavily]

"The rest I, yes. I recognize some of the shorthand. Phrases. But when they're together with...mn. These. No, I still...context, maybe, but it'll take days, weeks, oh--"

She squeezes her eyes shut, clenching her jaw for a moment.

Is this how it starts? There was a notion that, perhaps, everyone trapped together would wind up the way the concierge and the others of the town were. Is that part of this? Is she--

[thinkfirst]

"Weeks," Flynn repeats again, and then his hand is back on her shoulder, steadying. "I won't tell you that— that it's alright. When I forgot how to use my sword it... felt like I'd lost one of my limbs, or forgotten how to breathe. I felt beyond useless. Even now, having been training— but you have weeks, and you have help, in whatever way I can offer it. You've remembered forgotten things before."

[sighsheavily]

Lost limbs, lost breath...Cecelia holds hers until she can fight back the want to cry aloud, and her back quivers from being touched.

"Things I, I didn't already know from the onset," she points out, voice thick. She can't help her want to argue and be right, even distressed. Maybe especially distressed? "Gads, Flynn. What if I start forgetting all of it? Then what!"

[thinkfirst]

"Then we'll remind you," Flynn says, quiet but firm, and curves his palm over her shoulder like an anchor and a blanket all at once. "We can't all forget, can we? If you forget more, then I'll just tell you everything you've told me, and we'll make new memories, and you'll still be here."

[sighsheavily]

The gesture prompts her to turn and press her face into his chest, hugging him around the waist in order to smother the tears spilling over.

"Don't be ridiculous!" she manages after a sniffle. "This is ridiculous..."

[thinkfirst]

"It is," Flynn agrees, because it is and also because there's nothing else to do or say but hug her, too, as tight as he can like he can keep off those hopeless feelings with the force of his will alone. "It's beyond ridiculous and it's— it's terrible to forget and it's just as terrible to remember but it's alright, because you can handle it, and if you can't, that's what Darin and Yuri and Diluc and Palamedes and I are for."

[sighsheavily]

To do what? she thinks mournfully. Read things for me? As I slip into a stupor like those denizens?!

It's not like she can say that's the outcome for certain, but she can't help but fear it all the same. There's only so much she can feel in control of, so having some of that control torn from her is frightening. Perhaps this is punishment for downplaying the value of her work before the storm.

Flynn asserts she can handle it, so what choice does she have but to handle it? Anything less is pathetic. That thought stays any further sniveling or sniffling, prompting her to will herself to swallow the remainder back and push away so she can find something to wipe her face with.

"Enough," she sighs. "Sobbing won't get anything sorted, will it."