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

[gideoncav]

If the way he's eating is meant to get her to follow suit, it super doesn't.

But she does at least rip this piece of bread in half before jamming it into the bowl of garlic bread dipping sauce. She stares at it steaming, doesn't know what to do about it, and just repeats the process of forcing herself through the heat. Having been expecting it, she doesn't cough this time.

Gideon listens to his explanation, but the warning is lost on her. She's not at all dissuaded.

"Okay. What do you mean, was? You get the only sword?"

[necrolord]

He winces a little: it kind of hurts to watch. There's enthusiasm, and then there's this. Which is how he knows she wants to be out the door and into the woods before they've even finished lunch.

"I got the coolest sword." This is objectively true and he says it like apologetic fact. "Not the only one. I'll warn you, not all of them were useful. I've seen wooden swords, cardboard swords, and one really impressive gummi worm. Even then, I can't promise the trial is still out there. It's been a few weeks, and things here tend to come and go."

[gideoncav]

“Okay. So I won’t take something useless. I’m not settling.”

The bread really is good; she’s pulling apart the last piece. It’s a tough learning curve, but this third go results in reasonably bite-sized pieces.

She considers asking what the fuck a gummi worm is, but asks instead, "How can you know, anyway? No way you know how what makes a cool sword. What’s yours made out of? Bones and leather?”

[necrolord]

"You don't really get to choose from a rack," he tells her, amused and faintly apologetic. "It's more like one of those little machines where you put in a coin and hope for the best." And, upon consideration, "Sometimes it pelts you with rocks."

The waiter reappears, now with their chicken, and John sits back to let him serve it. He still gestures with a fork.

"Black steel and only a little bit of leather." He lets this sink in as an objectively cool sword, and adds, "The leather is also black."

[gideoncav]

She's staring at the chicken blankly, working out how to best begin her assault. Gideon ends up pushing at piece at random. The skin breaks and a piece separates easily enough, which she stabs unceremoniously with the tines and puts in her mouth. It's even better than the bread.

"Look, what kind of sword?" She asks, fishing, pushing her bowl to the side to pull the new plate closer. "Straight or curved? Long or short? One edge or two?"

[necrolord]

She seems to be getting the hang of it. Still John cuts his chicken into respectably small and manageable pieces with the distinct hope he'll be leading by example.

"Rapier." He remembers rapiers. The faces blur, but he remembers hands on hilts, watching the sparring matches across grand marble floors. He's always loved rapiers: cool, ceremonial swords. "Long, thin, and fast."

[gideoncav]

"Oh, fuck," Gideon says despairingly, her dreams of trading bone jokes for a good, solid, two-handed sword crushed. She does at least take John's example and pick up her knife, which had until now been neglected. The pieces she's cutting aren't anywhere near as respectable. "That's a cavalier's sword."

[necrolord]

"Not what you're trained in," he fills in. It's said like a question. He remembers Annabel's blade, and he remembers the blades of his— friends, disciples, chosen, whatever— but the greater context is lost on him. Marriage Season had only cared about swords as sexy set dressing, which, fair, that's just taste. That's the only use he's had for the black rapier.

If John is honest with himself, which it's sometimes useful to be, he has been keeping it like a talisman. Draw a sword and maybe Annabel will arrive to wield it. But she hasn't, and for all the time he's spent hefting its weight and hearing the blade whistle through the air, he has remembered little of use. Fragments. Ceremony and play-duels, mad sleepless nights of research. Every piece of it has ached.

Frankly, it's worth more to him as an accessory. With a sword at his hip, maybe fewer people will think to balk every time he moves his hands. But he feels wrong carrying it: embarrassed, almost, as though someone will catch him pretending. Call him out for acting as though he doesn't need Annabel at all.

He's being weird about this. But the sword has been gathering dust in his closet, right beside the skull, a few restless weeks too many. John continues, leadingly: "Not something you could use."

[gideoncav]

“I can use a rapier,” she says, bubbling with sudden defensive energy, stabbing a piece of chicken that’s a bit too big. She sticks it in her mouth and bites down on the bait so hard the hook lodges in her cheek. Her mouth is full of blood. She keeps on and doesn’t notice.

“I’m good at it.” Something sticks in the back of her head. There’s a pause as the gears pull loose and start to go again. She swallows her mouthful and goes for the bread. “Look,” she continues, on vibes alone now, “everyone in the cohort learns the rapier. It’s a just in case thing, right? You only get one cavalier per necro, so if the cav dies first, you need to be able to grab a backup.”

[necrolord]

That does sound like the kind of thing he'd do, make everyone learn his favorite sword just in case they have a sudden specialist sword need. Sounds like the kind of thing the Necrolord Prime would do, anyway, and John doesn't really feel like untangling that right now. He eats his chicken and listens, head tipped to her, quiet and intent.

"Alright." He does not actually care whether she can use a rapier. John needs— it's hard to articulate. He does not need an expert defender, a perfect warrior, a Camilla-sharp guard dog. He needs a bulwark against the bullshit of this place. He needs an anchor. He needs the certainty of Annabel's footsteps at his side, the balm of someone else's breathing, a gap filled in. He needs what his disciples had: an agreement not to go it alone.

"Finish your lunch," he advises, and punctuates it with a forkful of chicken. "Then we'll see what you can do."

[gideoncav]

Gideon doesn’t do great with being outright told what to do. She doesn’t react to the flippant proclamation super well in the moment. She may have said one or two four-letter words and may have made a gesture to emphasize where he can shove certain things.

And yet, a mere half an hour and a single slice of cheesecake later, she still finds herself in John’s room, arms folded and leaning against the wall while he digs through his closet.

Her reasoning feels solid: if she can get him to give her the sword he isn’t using, it’s better than nothing until she gets her hands on something better. Besides — she had, unfortunately, set herself up for this. She said it herself: she’s a soldier trained to be a cavalier replacement, and he is a cavalier-less necromancer, even if this one is a total nut job.

Fidelity, or something. She’s fairly sure that’s the feeling she’s supposed to be having about this.

“How are you going to judge what I can do, exactly? Want me to go wave your toothpick at Sixth?”

[necrolord]

"Not today," he says, because the idea of Gideon and Camilla going after each other with swords does sound worthy of spectating. He's pretty sure Gideon would be dead meat in that matchup, but that's mostly because Cam is ballsy enough to draw on God and not even let her hand shake. "Here we go."

John emerges with a sheathed blade clasped in his hands. The scabbard is something he found at the general store, bulky and generic in cheap leather. There are rhinestones; it's not great. But the hilt emerging from the top is a beautiful sweep of black steel around supple dark leather, every curve precise.

He draws. The blade is dark and glossy, and sits easy in his hand, for all that he holds it like a total amateur. John sets the ugly scabbard aside and hefts its weight.

"To tell the truth," he murmurs, voice dropped low, "I've been keeping this in hopes someone would come along to wield it." He lifts his eyes from the sword to Gideon, and for a moment seems to assess her: the way she holds herself, the wary slant of her mouth. The eyes. He always comes back to the eyes. "This is not a safe or gentle world, and I find myself without a cavalier."

He lays the blade across his open palms, offered out.

"If you agree to raise this in my defense, should I need defending... we'll find ample opportunity for you to use it." She does not yet comprehend what she's dealing with. Not what's coming for them, or what it means to have God in her corner. "And I'll be at your back, should you have need of spooky necro shit. Fair?"

[gideoncav]

"I'm never going to need spooky necro shit," she says reproachfully, but the defiance has lost its bite. She steps away from the wall, closer to his space, eyes on that perfect, perfect blade, tilts her head a little to watch the way it catches the light. Gideon does not reach out. Her posture doesn't relax. It doesn't become any more open. But her interest is unmistakable: the way her eyes drink it in, the way her hand flexes where it rests on her bicep.

She knows a necromancer needs a cavalier, knows they're stronger with someone cutting things down. Is that it? It's the most plausible conclusion she can reach: he's lost his fuel source, and he's grabbing the first one that comes along, and he's not even really bothering to check whether she's lying about her ability to fill the role.

He's desperate. That must be it.

"You don't know me," she says, unsure. There's something dense building in her chest: a provocative lull of being needed, the incredible urge to reach out and grab it. "I could just take this and stick you with it. I could take it and leave and never talk to you again, and you wouldn't be able to do shit, and then you'd be out your sword and still without a cavalier."

[necrolord]

He almost says, Try it. There's a quick and dirty initiation for anyone. It worked for John: a guy can ignore feeling every mote of life and death in the soil, but he can't ignore the way everyone else crumples when they have fallout in their hair. A blade through his heart might even tickle. Maybe it would stop him for a full second, a full minute, maybe it would feel like he's finally resting his eyes.

But then she'll do something awkward like scream or cuss him out and run, or— worse— hit her knees and pray. He'll have to work them right back here, to this moment. Skipping that just saves time.

"You could," he says. "But I'm about as useful with no sword and no cavalier as I am trying to carry it alone. I'll take the gamble." He does not lower the offered blade: it stays between them, shining against his plain and uncallused palms. "I know you're a soldier, you have bad taste in graveyards, and you have good taste in jokes. That's enough."

[gideoncav]

That's enough.

Something slots painfully into place as her fingers curl around the hilt before she even makes a concious decision to do it. Even just at this initial contact, the antsy crawl of being unarmed fades; the uncertainty in her eyes is giving way to determination.

She takes it from him, steps back. It's not the sword she wanted, but it feels good and familiar in her hand. She swings it out, tests the weight of it, lets the blade fwip through the air as she points it to the floor.

"Fine." It forms a handsome line from its end, through its blade, over her black-cloaked arm. She brings it up in a practiced motion, hand level with her chest, the blade perpindicular to the ceiling. She's looking it over, eyes critical, but there are no scratches or knicks or so much as a fingerprint to marr it. She says, more confidently, even as her muscles begin to tighten, "Deal."

Gideon meets his gaze past the line of the rapier, takes her last breath, and turns to stone.