wellcome | 5.0 Test Drive Meme

Entry tags:

5.0 Test Drive Meme

Premise & Arrival ֍ FAQ ֍ Apply ֍ Navigation

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

[ The background noise that accompanies Noelle's transmission gets louder. Then, without warning, she shuts her walkie-talkie off.

Back behind the bathhouse, Noelle slumps further against the wall, closes her eyes, and mutters fuck me.

She switches the walkie-talkie back on. ]

Okay. That makes sense. I think I know part of mine.

[ PLEASE don't ask her what it is, thanks! ]

Sorry that you had to go through that too, I guesss.

[ Alec waits for her again, bouncing his knee, thumb poised on the transmit button.

He thought everyone with a power here was a parahuman at first. He'd acted like he was around people who got it, to one degree or another. By the time he figured it out, it was too late to put some things back in the box.

Being the only one had been fine. Most people here are just a different kind of freak. But now he is, apparently, part of a population of two. ]

Yeah. [ He says, quiet and calm. ] Well. You too.

[ That she went through it, same as him; that he's sorry she did, for whatever that's supposed to mean when it's one stranger to another, and he isn't even really sorry; just going from me to we. She can pick whatever she wants out of it. ]

My name's Alec. I mean, it's Regent too, but you know. Be weird to call you Noelle if you're calling me Regent.

[ Based on her limited experience in this place, most people are sorry for Noelle when they meet her. She doesn't take much stock in it.

You too is still nice. It sounds like something a teammate would say.

Noelle wonders what Alec looks like. Is he horrifying, like she is? It would be terribly rude to ask, and would also blow the point of doing this over the walkie-talkies anyway. Hey, did any part of your body get swapped with monster parts? Maybe even a lot of monster parts? Inquiring minds want to know.

Stupid. She'll ask something else. ]

Okay. Well, it's nice to meet you, Alec.

Do all parahumans have two names? I know I had a handle for Ransack, but I can't remember what it was.

[ He bites the tip of his tongue lightly as he probes the edges of memory, brain pretty much immediately fizzing up over it. ]

The ones I remember.

[ Regent, Imp, Grue. Hijack. ]

So I don't know. Maybe? But it's not like there's anybody here who cares. [ Right. She wouldn't know that. ] You're the first other one besides me. Some other people have powers, but it's not the same thing. Apparently.

[ Does he know Ransack? It doesn't ring a bell, but he doesn't really remember the names of any video games. ]

So watch out for that, or a wizard is going to act like you're the dumbass for not believing in magic.

Huh. They must get their powers another way, then.

[ That sounds nice. As far as Noelle is concerned, having a supernaturally bad day doesn't grant any powers that are especially worth having.

Then Alec brings up wizards, and Noelle's mind goes someplace completely different altogether. Thankfully. Wizards. Ranged casters. There are a few different builds for them, like Krouse's preferred illusionist. But they're not real. ]

Wizards? You're serious? Like, pointy hats and everything?

[ Nobody tell Krouse about the pointy hats. ]

You're not going to believe this.

[ For the first time, Alec sounds actually mildly disappointed by something. ]

They don't even wear the hats. [ Unbelievable. Appalling. ] Actual wizards, and not a single pointy hat between them! We've been lied to by Big Wizard our whole lives, and for what? The van airbrushing industry?

[ At Alec's disappointment, Noelle actually laughs. It's a hoarse, unpracticed sort of sound, and over the walkie-talkie might just as easily read as a cough. But it's there.

Noelle doesn't like what her reflexive surprise entails; adds that to the growing list of things she's not thinking about. She's got a good thing going here. She and Alec can shoot the shit, and he never has to see her, and so none of this ever has to change. ]

Oh, man. That sucks. Then what's even the point? If I put in all that work learning and managing those spells, I'd at least want the hat to show it off.

[ The rough laugh is gratifying. Alec's slight smirk deepens on his end of the connection, and he pulls one foot up to tuck against his knee on the opposite side. ]

They have zero swag. [ He intones, tragically. ] All they do is weird math and argue about whether ghosts are real.

[ He considers that, and opts to throw them a bone. ]

Okay. There are the skeleton minions. But they use them for, like, chores. We've had a grand total of one skeleton army attack, and they didn't even have swords. It's bleak out here.

Well, they wouldn't have swords. Most skeleton minions, unless you upgrade them with an earth elemental, don't have very good strength scores.

[ Noelle says, without missing a beat. This is surely something everyone knows.

But she will concede: ] That does sound kind of boring.

Mm.

[ The short hum is the verbal equivalent of a shrug, buzzing with incidental static. He circles his anklebone with his thumb. ]

Maybe they'll take feedback from two of us. [ It's worth a shot, his tone suggests - at least for the sake of the bit. ] What would you recommend for the skeleton arsenal? Assuming we don't turn up an earth elemental.

But before you say yours, hear me out - nunchucks?

Nunchucks.

[ For once, Noelle actually sounds... animated? Maybe even excited. Her voice definitely comes in a little louder. ]

That's actually not bad. The momentum can make up for the skeletons' lack of strength... the only problem is we'd probably have to make them ourselves, unless there's a weapons cache no one is telling me about. [ Typical. ]

I was going to say that a skeleton army has its strength in numbers, which means we'd need to come up with a halfway-decent battle formation if we're using nunchucks. Can't have the skeletons whacking into each other. They could fan out like geese, and then they'd protect their necromancer in the center, too.

[ This might be the most words Noelle has strung together at once in this place. She does remember to pause here, to see if Alec is on the same page. ]

[ Not bad, she says.

Maybe she's humoring him. He'd take it if she was. It's not like this is all that serious. ]

We could make nunchucks. [ How hard can it be in Hypothetical World? ] Geese like a V, right? That'd work. The necromancers are kind of squishy, so tanking with minions makes sense.

[ By 'kind of', he of course means 'very'. He shifts backwards to fall flat on his bed again, one leg still dangling and the other still bent. ]

You're not a complete casual, huh?

Typical necromancer.

[ Noelle says, like dealing with necromancers is a common problem for her. ]

We'd need materials. Maybe stone? There seems to be a lot of that around here.

I played Ransack professionally. [ Noelle says, matter-of-fact. It's not a huge deal. She's still a little proud of it. ]

Seriously?

[ His interest perks up. It's not hard to tell he's mildly impressed. ]

Now I really wish we had Ye Olde Medieval Tymes consoles. Nobody here games. Except card games, which are fine [ club solidarity ] but it's just not the same. Nothing explodes.

[ Virtual explosions are much more fun than real ones, on account of not actually blowing you up. ]

Maybe we trade skeleton management tips for the nerds inventing an arcade machine.

[ Alec is right. It's so much cooler when there's explosions.

Once again, Noelle is glad Alec can't see her. If he saw the tips of her ears turn pink, or the way the writhing parts of her lower half quicken in response to her beating heart, she's not sure what she'd do. Find another hole to crawl back into, probably.

He'll never see her. Noelle has already decided. He'll never see her, so he can keep being impressed, and everything will be fine. ]

A wizard's console would be pretty cool. [ Noelle tucks her chin and smiles, privately, just for herself. ] It's the least they can do after not wearing hats.

You play card games with...Keiichi, then?

[ Names are hard. You'd think Noelle would be better at it, what with fewer memories in her brain, but nope. ]

You know Keiichi?

[ That's another hurdle gotten over, and before Alec even realized he was thinking about hurdles to get over in the first place.

He wants her in the club. It's probably not the most rational decision, considering he doesn't actually know anything about her except for the two things they have in common. Then again, he only had one thing in common with Keiichi when they met, and look at them now. ]

He's the club founder, actually. [ There's a smidgen of pride there. ] Him and Satoko are the ones who are really serious about it. Then there's Olympia and Dax. They're cool.

I could talk to them about getting you in. No guarantees, but I am kind of a big deal around here.

[ The club. A card game-playing club, presumably. Noelle barely hears Alec's posturing, because the second Alec extends his invitation, all the blood in Noelle's body - and that's a lot of it - feels like it's rushing to her head.

She can't turn off the walkie-talkie. Alec will suspect too much if she does. There's a quiet thunk when Noelle sets it down so she can hold her face in her hands and not scream.

Ultimately, covering her eyes doesn't help at all. Now, instead of seeing her surroundings, she sees Keiichi stare at her. The worst part is that he didn't even mean anything bad by it. Anyone would stare. Alec would, if he ever met her.

She has to use her lower half to pick up the walkie-talkie. For a second, Noelle considers gripping it so tightly the piece of junk shatters, then remembers that she's lucky to have this connection at all. She passes it up to the arms in her upper half, then brings it up to her face.

When Noelle finally responds, there's no distress in her voice. There's nothing at all. ]

Yeah. He's cool. [ A beat. ] Thanks for the offer. I'm good.

[ It shouldn't be this easy to keep the aching want out of her voice. Noelle doesn't bother to think about what that means. ]

[ Alec has no idea what he did, but apparently it wasn't great.

Maybe it was too much, too fast. He got ahead of himself, caught up on a dumb whim, and now he's made it weird. ]

Okay.

[ Alec affects easy nonchalance. ]

If you get bored enough to change your mind, let me know. [ He can tone it down more than that. ] I know it's kind of kiddie shit. Like I said. It's bleak out here.

[ Alec thinks Noelle doesn't like the club. Nothing could be further from the truth. The discrepancy makes Noelle's heart thud in her chest.

Maybe it's because she's so practiced at it that she knows she won't be able to hold it together much longer. ]

It's not. [ Not kiddie shit, not at all. ] It sounds cool. I just - can't.

[ Does the flat, dull ache in Noelle's voice get broadcast over these cheap piece of shit walkie-talkies? Noelle hopes not. She could really use a break. ]

It was nice to meet you.

[ That's all she's got. Noelle switches off her walkie-talkie and sobs, out in the woods where no one can hear her. ]

Nice to m-

[ She's already gone. He's talking to nobody.

Alec switches off his walkie-talkie and sets it on his stomach, looking up at the ceiling.

She just can't. She's a parahuman who wanted to know about parahumans. All the air in the conversation got sucked out when he brought up getting together with people. Alec isn't smart, but he's not a complete idiot.

She thinks there's something wrong with her. She's almost definitely right. Alec is pretty sure he already doesn't care.

He could leave it alone. Let her have her space. But that doesn't sit well with him, for whatever reason. He's not much for responsibility, but there's a certain level of sticking together he assumes comes with the territory, if the people involved aren't total assholes. She didn't strike him as an asshole.

He'll have to think about this. Come up with something that'll calm her down. Keep it light and easy. He can do that, he's pretty sure. ]

Talk to you later.

[ He says, quietly. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

5.0 Test Drive Meme

channel 4 [private]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject