wellcome | 5.0 Test Drive Meme

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5.0 Test Drive Meme

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Welcome to Well! 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 February onward, and can happen concurrently with other events during February and March. This will be the only TDM for February, March, and April.

Applications are open January 27th until February 1st, and February 24th until March 1st. Invites are available for friends of current players.

Arrival: Six Feet Under

Content warnings: graves, being buried alive

You wake up in the ground. The hole you're in fits your body nicely. Just as you wake up, dirt spatters onto your face, into your eyes and mouth. Maybe that's what woke you up. Before you've had a chance to clear it, more dirt drops onto your body from above, again and again, in a grim rhythm. Until you get out of there it won't stop.

Unfortunately, you're six feet deep. You might want a hand.

More unfortunately, you won't get one from the person with the shovel. The gravedigger, silhouetted in black against the sky above you, will continue to shovel dirt onto you while you try to escape. Once you're out, she loses all interest and moves on to the next grave. She doesn't acknowledge you in any way.

Above the grave is a headstone: your own. It says your name and it might have your birthdate. The death date is unreadable. There may be an epitaph about your life. It doesn't look new. In fact, it looks as old and worn as the rest of the graveyard. Other open graves are scattered around in this graveyard, and other people are climbing up out of them, too. Maybe you want to lend them a hand, or maybe you want to get out of here as fast as possible.

A mossy wrought-iron gate leads out into greenery.

Now that you're out, you need to find your way... somewhere. Not here.

For current players, you're welcome to have your character wake up for the cycle like this.

tl;dr:

You wake up in your own grave! Someone's burying you alive! Better get out of there.

The only way out

Content warnings: being eaten alive, carnivorous flowers, intoxication

The graveyard is in the middle of the maze: a sprawling hedge maze on the outskirts of Wellstone town. The ground is soft with recent rain, and the hedges are just blooming green like it's early spring. Your shoes squelch in the muck.

It starts easily enough. As you make your way deeper, though, you'll start run into things that make the maze… harder. Gigantic flowers block the way down one path, and they titter together as you get close, swaying and moving in ways that flowers shouldn't. If you do get too close, a flower lurches forward and snaps its petals around you like jaws. Are those teeth?! They're like foot-long cactus spines, sharp and deadly. You might want to get out of there, and fast. The teeth hurt, and the inside of the flower isn't a cakewalk either. It hurts your skin, and if you're in there too long, your skin may start to burn off.

Down another path are more flowers. These are smaller, and oddly fleshy in color and scent. At the center of each flower is an eye. Some of them seem familiar, although you can't figure out why. As you pass, the eyes roll, following you closely. If you make eye contact and any of these flowers, you feel a chilling wave of fear that roots you to the spot. Your stuck in its gaze, staring back at it as it stares impassively at you. You have the horrible feeling that if you stay here, something awful will happen. It grows worse and worse, more acute, but no matter how strong that fear, you can't move your feet. Someone, or something, has to break your eye contact with the flower.

At a final turn in the maze, the sweet, soft scent of lilacs fills the air. You're sure that scent means you've found the end, and that you should follow it. Naturally, it doesn't. It leads to a dead end. Again. This one, at least, is beautiful: it's a little meadow surrounded by hedges, blooming in lilacs and lavender and little purple-headed poppies. The scent is heady and overwhelming. It fills you up. It settles into your head like a haze, making it hard to focus. It seems like an amazing idea to just… stay here. Lie down, maybe, among all those nice flowers. Just for a little while, you tell yourself.

Only, it may be more than a little while. The longer you sleep in this lovely little meadow, the more vines and flowers will grow over and around your body. Eventually, they'll make their way into your nose, your ears, your mouth and start to pull you down into the soft earth. Someone's going to have to wake you up and get those vines off unless you want to stay in this maze forever!

When at last you find your way out of the maze, past the treacherous flowers, you set your sights on Wellstone: a town in the first bloom of spring, a light mist making everything dewy and bright.

tl;dr:

After you leave the cemetery, you find yourself in the maze. There are flowers that are obstacles along your way.
There are large, flesh-eating flowers full of teeth that want to eat you.
There are fleshy flowers with eyes in the middle that, if you meet their gaze, hold you with fear.
There are lilacs that lull you and make you want to lie down and take a nap. If you do, vines will wrap you up, making it very difficult to get out.
Once you make it through all the obstacles, you can make it out of the maze into Wellstone.

Scent of death

Content warnings: bad smells, potential for body horror

It isn't just the maze blooming with the coming of spring: Wellstone itself has burst into bloom. It seems that everywhere you look, flowers have invaded the town. Sweet snowdrops poke their heads up between cobblestones. Violets wink from shadowed corners. Morning glories climb walls and line windows. They all smell wonderful, good enough to make you want to bend down and take a good, long sniff.

Except for one. Blooming in the courtyard of the Staywell, just in front of the door in a little garden circle, is a corpse flower. The flower is massive: over three meters tall, giant stamen thrusting up to the sky with frilly red leaves around its base.

It's hard to avoid the flower: any time anyone opens the door to the courtyard, the scent enters the lobby, the parlor, the cafeteria. It seems to permeate the Staywell at random times. And the scent is strange: if you try to talk to anyone about it, they don't agree with you on how it smells. And they won't agree on how it affects you.

Smelling the corpse flower makes you feel a little... strange. Its effects vary by person, and even when a person smells it more than once, the effect might change. At first you feel a rush of disgust, then nausea, then--well.

When you smell the corpse flower, you might smell:

The most delicious thing you can imagine. You're suddenly extremely hungry and feel compelled to eat as much as possible.
The most wonderful, nostalgic scent. You feel compelled to proclaim your loyalty and friendship to the next person you see.
The most relaxing thing. Your body feels loose and relaxed and you feel at peace. You want to spread the love and feel compelled to get everyone else around you to chill the fuck out.
Sugary sweetness. You feel an intense draw of affection toward the people around you and feel compelled to compliment them in increasingly over the top ways.
The scent of raw, rotting meat. Everything around you suddenly look strangely... meaty. Is that chair made of meat? That wall? You're very acutely aware that you are made of meat, and that everyone around you is made of meat.
The smell of death. You feel a horrible, creeping sense of guilt and feel compelled to confess something awful you do or do not remember doing to the next person you see.

Comment below if you'd like a random smell (or feel free to select for yourself). Effects last anywhere from half an hour to an hour. Characters can experience different effects throughout the TDM. The corpse flower will be in bloom the first week of February and the first week of March, and closed the rest of the time.

tl;dr:

There's a corpse flower blooming in the courtyard of the Staywell.
When you smell its scent, you'll smell a scent that makes you do--something! Select from the list what you'd like to happen, or comment below for a random effect.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is that so.

[the answer placates her for a moment, but it sends equal amounts of doubt and worry through her brain that get filtered into an insidious desire to confront, to push back. she hears a hiss that sounds like a voice but it only comes from within.]

And for those of us who do not know who we are. Do we have souls, as well? Is a soul only counted as existing if we know the name that we have given our meat? [she's staring ahead, almost blank.] I am Blythe, but I am incomplete. My soul is in tatters, then?

No, of course not. I think—... [ another pause. ] I think everyone is made up of different things working together. The meat, as you say, is our body. And then we have souls that tell the rest of us what kind of person we are. That's like what's in your heart. What's in your head is something separate.

[ he thinks about it a little bit further and feels pretty satisfied with that. it makes the most sense, after all — he can't remember everything, but he's still someone, he's still ryouma, whoever that's supposed to be. he can only trust his gut and hope he's being true to the person he's meant to be. ]

You call it incomplete, but I think everybody goes through that sort of thing. Everybody has to figure out how much their heart and their head can agree on things.

[the thought of splitting the heart and the head drives a stake behind her eyes. she closes her lids tightly and tries to avoid the pain, thinking only that it's something like what she's felt throughout her body occasionally since she's arrived here. a mysterious pain that's sharp, but disappears if she gives it enough time. it's never in the same place twice, like a side effect of that lightning animating her.]

[she lets out a shaky breath once the pain in her brow passes and pretends it didn't just happen.]

My heart leaks through my throat. [cheerful.] I can't recall what it is that my heart and my head should agree on. I am incomplete. [she repeats it like it has any more meaning this time, then elaborates.] It is like something very, very important has been taken from me. Not my memories—something greater than that. Something with a weight and a feeling.

[ something important was taken? something with weight and feeling? ryouma doesn't realise he'd started holding his breath at some point until the pressure he feels in his chest registers as more than the phantom ache ryouma has felt since he got here. ]

You know what—...

[ he hesitates again, afraid that if he says it out loud, it will become something he has to acknowledge properly. it's easier to focus on who's in front of him instead of thinking about his own strangeness; why can't he just be human and normal and make some new friends? ]

You might be on to something with that. Maybe it's something this place does to people? We don't even know how we got here or why we're here at all...

[ he has not ruled out the possibility that they're dead, but he also woke up in a grave. ]

I awoke in a graveyard.

[she says it simply, but has a feeling that she doesn't need to elaborate. she already believes that everybody arrived there one way or another based on the others she had found herself rising with.]

But I do not feel dead. I feel as though I am dying, and I believe I have been dying for a very long time. My meat rots faster than others. I do not know why. [a real bundle of sunshine, this one.] And I do not know why we have been stolen away. That will be the mystery to solve, then—how to become complete again, and why and by whose hand we were made incomplete. Have you been here long?

[it might be the most normal thing she's asked so far.]

I don't really feel dead, either.

[ but then he has no idea if he'd be able to tell the difference, which is why it remains a possibility. ]

But, you know, technically, everyone who's alive is dying from the moment they're born...

[ it's meant to be encouraging? ]

See, if I were you, I wouldn't worry about that too much. Nobody knows when their time will be up, so everyone should do everything to the fullest. Somebody's meat might rot slower or whatever [ he's trying... ] but they could trip and die getting out of the bath tomorrow.

[ he can't think of a more disappointing way to go, personally. ]

In any case, you're right about there being a mystery. Maybe somebody else around here has some answers. I haven't been here very long at all, just the time it took to walk here from the graveyard.

Yes. Nobody knows.

[it's an agreement, sure, but it feels distant. like maybe she somehow knows, even though that's obviously impossible and she can't pinpoint why she would even think otherwise. and yet, she can't deny it, either. it's strange. she doesn't want to consider it for too long.]

I have heard about a meat room—[she smiles, and this one is more self-aware.]—perhaps underneath this very building? And bizarre happenings such as that corpse flower behind us. The one that wafts its sweet scent into our noses to remind us only that it exists. This town is full of questions without answers. Those I have met so far only seem interested in solving the immediate problem and otherwise peacefully coexisting in an environment that is toxic to them.

It's almost disappointing.

Corpse flower..?

[ he turns to look at it, clearly surprised to learn the actual name of the plant emitting a scent that has felt so warm and familiar. he'd accepted it without wondering how it could be, but then a lot of things have been happening to him that he doesn't have answers for today. as long as it hasn't tried to eat or maim him, he's been fine with that. but meat rooms? toxic environments? maybe he should be looking at things more closely, even if he'd prefer to just go with the flow. ]

Well, maybe they aren't sure where to begin or aren't suited to this sort of thing. [ he always likes to assume the best of people. ] Meat rooms..? That's pretty weird stuff.

Perhaps so.

[she doesn't know how much she believes that. it's never sat well with her, the idea that people can simply allow themselves to participate in something that hates them, something that would never want them dead but simply wants to turn them into hollowed-out corpses that still shamble well enough to turn a profit. but she keeps this to herself. she's kept a great deal of this to herself since arriving, she's noticed. and this is how she tricks people into believing she is a pleasant person.]

Yes, rooms made of meat. The going theory, you see, is that the town itself is alive. [it's easy to deflect like this, to lean into the eerie. she has never been much of a storyteller, but the words come all the same.] The room of meat is a stomach that sweeps all of us into it, bathing in its acid and nourishing the buildings, the plants, the people... and the wolf. Like the flower itself, sending a very specific scent to lure and gather all kinds of prey into its gaping maw.

[ ryouma thinks she's a fine storyteller, and her words have certainly captured his attention. he wants to forget having learned about this crazy theory and knows that he can't forget about it all at once; he can't pretend it doesn't exist if there really are rooms made of meat out there connected to everything else. it's not like this is a perfectly normal town, after all, which makes even the most absurd-sounding suggestions seem plausible. ]

Wouldn't you want to avoid going in there if it's a big stomach? Nobody chose to come here, but if it just wants to lure us in, you can decide not to be some weird living town's lunch...

[ it's a stubborn, juvenile position to take, and how he folds his arms over his chest and pouts doesn't help. it's still easier than admitting this information doesn't sit with him as easily as other things have so far. ]

[blythe laughs, and her voice is at once dry and dark, a rasp that almost feels like a human who's never heard laughter before trying to mimic it. she leans forward, bony elbows digging into her thighs, and looks carefully at the person she's tricked into having a conversation with her.]

Oh? And if the meat room had a way to read directly into your soul? Suppose that's where our memories have been taken, and it knows more about you than you even know is possible. It knows exactly how to bring you to where it wants you. [she smiles, but there's teeth to it this time. behind her, the door to the courtyard is open, and she is breathing deeply.] You would simply not be tempted?

Ah, well—...

[ he laughs nervously like there's something funny about the question. there really isn't, but whatever's shifted in this conversation has shaken him enough to make him awkward. ryouma isn't quite sure what to make of blythe after all of this, but he's curious about what sort of place she came from. he supposes he wonders what sort of place he had come from himself, and that's really the whole point, isn't it? ]

No, I guess you're right.

[ ryouma also knows he never would've been able to ignore something that significant regardless of whatever stubborn streak makes him want to think about something else for a while. ]

I don't think I could go on knowing there might be answers there. Maybe it's the only way we can go back to where we came from. I guess if I died along the way, at least I know I tried. Even if I was able to keep on living like this, I would still only be living as a part of myself.

[and like a predator herself, blythe waits. she waits, and she listens. and she gives her prey enough time in silence to think that the danger has passed.]

[and then she leans back, and it looks like her stance is relaxing almost completely. she breathes out and rests her hands on her stomach instead, and her gaze flickers above their heads to a nondescript point on the ceiling.]

Correct. Once you see the path forward, you pick up your feet and you walk along it, and you do not stop. Even if you know how the path ends. Even if you know it's taking you to the one end that all paths lead to. [she looks down, and she's smiling a little more pleasantly now. at least she's put her teeth away.] Thank you for the indulgence. I am not certain of all my convictions, but the ones I still feel in my chest scream to me that inaction is poison. You understand.

Oh? Well, I'm glad we understand each other.

[ or, at least, that that's her assessment because ryouma is not sure he understands any more now than when they started. he certainly finds himself more at ease when she relaxes, but even so, some of her words stick with him in a way he can't shake. that word poison and a question of conviction calls to some core part of himself that's difficult to discern without the context of memory or experience. ]

Not sure about poison, though. Inaction is a waste, and no good can come of it, but poison given at the right time can be a medicine that heals. Just don't ask me where I heard that.

[ it's possibly just a justification for something. in any case, ryouma is pretty confident they both have souls, and they've established the status of everyone's meat (or magic cosplaying very convincingly as meat), but introductions? it slips his mind sometimes. ]

Oh, uh, what should I call you? I'm Ryouma.

[ there's a beat before he feels the need to add to that, the corpse flower's influence still at work. ]

In case you wanna look me up later when you start trying to solve mysteries or something.

Ryouma.

[she repeats it without malice, without the same intimidation that she had found herself swimming in. this is not only meat, she thinks; this is a person. a person who has his own thoughts about what poison can do, which she thinks is very funny. funny enough to draw up the corners of her mouth, but not in the same terrible way.]

My name is Blythe. I do not yet know how much mystery-solving I will do, but I will be certain to keep you in mind. And—to be clear. I am very, very aware of the capabilities of poison.

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