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

Damn. That kind of ruins the joke, if he got it wrong. John drops his hands and looks kind of sheepish.

"Pretty embarrassing to forget the details of your own empire, right?" He's watching her for a response, waiting for it to hit, the lines around his black-hole eyes gone tight with his smile. "I'm not actually going to smite you for having bad taste in bones. Be not afraid."

It's not hitting. (Or, at least, what he's suggesting is so stupid she's actively refusing to make the leap). She says, scathingly, "I'm not afraid of being smote by some old dick lurking around a graveyard seeing how many bullshit sentences he can string together before the first person he's gotten to talk to him in three months gives up." And then, "You're worse than Sextus."

Wow, okay. Not that he doesn't deserve it, but that's a little harsh.

"Damn," John murmurs, and then amends, "Goddamn," like that'll be the thing to stick the landing.

Finally he goes for: "You know, I've never been asked to prove it. This is a new one for me. We could start speedrunning miracles, but I can't remember any of the greatest hits, so I'd rather we skip that bit and save me the embarrassment. Would it help if we got out of the graveyard? I like the ambience, but it does seem a little on-the-nose."

"You cannot seriously be trying to convince me you're the Emperor." She's so fed up. She doesn't know why she isn't just turning around and taking her chances with the hedge maze. "You know what? Sure. Let's say I'm such a tool that I'm going to take your word, no proof needed, that you, some guy named John, are the Man Who Became God, the God Who Became Man, and I'll say I'm Gideon, the fucking Saint of Gullibility. Piss off."

That's a new one. He didn't know that one. The Man Who Became God and the God Who Became Man? It doesn't answer anything, but it cracks something open in his head, some seizing paranoia— this whole time he's been afraid he'll stop being him, that he's the ghost of a guy who doesn't exist anymore, and he was fucking right—

Maybe that gets to him, or it's the look of disdain in flat-yellow eyes. John's smile has dropped, and there is a beat of silence, a hard stop.

"Careful, or I'll canonize that." His tone still pretends at levity, but there is no more joke in his voice. "Nice to meet you, Gideon."

But what else can he give her, right? He doesn't turn people inside-out on command, that would be weird and creepy. Waking every skeleton in the graveyard would be a dick move. He's trying not to scare her, trying not to give "tyrant mad with power." She's Cohort. He's her commander-in-chief. That's all.

So John blows out a breath, drops the tension, and starts past her into the hedge maze.

"I'll take 'John' if you're not in a 'my lord' kind of mood. You coming?"

"That's what she said," Gideon says, sotto voce. In a normal voice, "Where are you going? I'm not just following you to a secondary location."

But he kind of sounded like he meant it when he said nice to meet you, so she's already adjusting her cloak and walking after him anyway.

"Hey." Sextus got her like this; she can get John like this. "What's your last name, anyway?"

John laughs, a warm and startled huff of breath. He waves her along all the same.

"Town, hopefully. We have a bar, a diner that only sometimes serves blood, an old hotel... Take your pick." These all sound like excellent places to get murdered, he's aware, so he slides her a wry look about it. "Gaius. Don't ask for the titles, the list gets longer every time I turn around."

"Is the blood a necro thing? Do you grab a glass to power up before you head out in the morning?"

Those aren't the greatest implications, but he's too committed to the aesthetic to take her away from the most aesthetically necromancer location he's listed just to try something. That's as good as any bet she's made today, so she sticks close behind him. There are exactly zero downsides to getting out of a boneyard, and she could probably take him.

"What's it serve when it isn't serving blood?"

It's more of a date night drink, John does not say, but privately thinks is funny to him and him alone.

"Not many necromancers in town. Here's hoping it was a limited-time special." He doesn't seem bothered to have her at his exposed back. "They made a mean banana cream pie, but I would guess they've updated the menu. We might as well find out."

"Yeah," she says, preventing herself from asking what a banana cream pie is, or what any of those words mean separately. "Sure. Unless you get us lost first. How many necromancers?"

"Last I checked? Two. Palamedes and me." Plus whatever Alec is, but John is keeping that one close to the chest until he has more data. "Most of town isn't from the Nine Houses. Most haven't even heard of us, though that could be the amnesia talking."

"Didn't know there was somewhere else people could be from. How many cavs?"

"A lot of somewheres, evidently." Which rouses something in the back of his head, that old bad ache, but John ignores it. "Just Camilla, at current count."

Maybe one other, before her. But John gives no indication of that.

"Okay." She'd be interested in meeting Camilla if her conversation with Palamedes hadn't gone the way it had. "Where's 'a lot of somewheres'?"

"Different planets, different systems. Maybe other universes entirely, but that's its own can of worms." He waves it off as a problem for later. "Basically, if you bring up necromancy, expect to get a lot of blank looks."

He's saying that like it's not the best news Gideon's heard in the two hours since she started existing again.

"Used to that." Her understanding of necromancy pretty much starts and ends with bone traps and weird blood shit, anyway. "How many people?"

"Not counting our little club? Twenty, maybe twenty-five." He shrugs as they round a corner and the hedge opens to woods. "I never claimed it was a big town." And then: "Here we are."

Town is a strong word: it's a manor and like three shops. But one of those is the diner, newly remade as a rustic tavern, and John nods approval at the commitment to aesthetic. It doesn't even look much like a place you'd be murdered. He doesn't hesitate to lead her inside.

Her expression doesn't change, not really, but the way she's soaking in the details of the town and the tavern isn't hard to clock. Gideon's taking in everything: the cobblestone outside, the greenery, the vines running up the stones of the buildings they pass. In the tavern, she inhales the colors and decor and the warmth glows of the candlelight.

Gideon follows John to a booth. "Okay," she says, pushing a knuckle against the leather of the booth before she slides into it. "Where's the menu?"

Edited 2023-11-21 06:05 (UTC)

John politely pretends not to notice the way she slows to take it in. He settles into the booth across from her, casts about for some sort of rustic board of offerings— and instead finds the waiter, dressed in a jaunty tabard, chipper as ever.

"Well aren't you cute. How about a milkshake?" It is not wholly clear which of them he's talking to. Maybe both. John waves this off with an absentminded Thanks and collects the menu, which is now printed in fancy script. He passes one to Gideon with a hum of consideration.

"I don't even see a milkshake, but apparently we're doing chicken dinners. Garlic bread, that's nice. And cheesecake, hard to go wrong with cheesecake."

“Who was that?” she asks, taking it from him.

As she looks over the curling, fanciful print, Gideon encounters another problem: it’s not that she can’t read it, exactly, but her ability to read has become somewhat hypothetical. She gets through a few items — like tomato bisque, which don’t even look like real words — before her eyes glaze over and meander pointless over the page. She blinks, shakes the menu once.

“Yeah, sure. That sounds fine — holy shit, is this real paper?”

"You know, I'm not actually sure he has a name." This is perhaps not comforting, but then John is blinking at her, waiting for her surprise to make sense. The Sixth is all metal corridors, he recalls. Necromancer's Marriage Season is not a short book, and there is not a single mention of trees.

It puts him ill at ease; there is something tighter and less genuine in his face as he looks back at her, voice still mild. "Looks like it. Let's hope they put that sort of effort into cooking."

"How can he not have a name?" If Gideon notices his shift, she doesn't react to it. She gives up on pretending to peruse the menu and sets the paper down. "Everybody's got a name." And then, "You know, except the Emperor. You should have picked a better name for the bit. Like, I don't know. Unisimus, or some shit. Something that actually sounds First. Something cool."

He doesn't have a name? What, do people just ignore 'John' because it isn't cool enough? Did he get embarrassed, once he started being God? Maybe he always holds it back so it can be the punchline, so he can see the looks on their faces when he goes Really, you don't have to bow. Call me John.

(In his memories, they scrape the floors and tremble. They do not call him John.)

If the paper comment put him off-kilter, this brings the concern fully into his face. Still: John pauses for a moment to admire her recommendation. It's definitely a winner. He's adding it to the list somewhere above His Celestial Kindliness.

"A proper First name," he considers aloud, like they're workshopping this. "Unisimus Prime. That has a ring to it. But I think I'll stick with John."

The waiter returns, flips open his notepad with the same bright and vacant smile: You tried our pancakes yet? They're just the fluffiest things— "—I could eat 'em all day," John agrees, in unison. To Gideon he raises his eyebrows as though inviting her into commiseration about an annoying neighbor. "Construct. He's doing his best, really. What will you have?"

Gideon looks at the construct. She looks at John. She looks at the abandoned menu that she did not actually read.

"Chicken," she tries, pulling desperately for recollection of the nonsense words John had said, "and the garlic bread? And the... bisque."

"Solid choices," John agrees, very encouragingly. "Same for me, but I'll have the potato instead of the bisque, I'm not really a soup guy." The waiter continues to smile and does not actually write in his little notepad. "And let's have two of the cheesecake special, give that a try." To Gideon he adds: "I'm buying."

He only gets to do this bit once per new arrival, until they figure out there's no money. But from the sound of things, the imperial economy might run purely on bone chips and bad vibes.

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