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5.0 Test Drive Meme
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 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:
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:
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:
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.
no subject
Not much. [ He says, easily. ] Not to be the bearer of gloom and doom, but the sooner you get used to that concept, the better off you'll be.
The long and short of it is, we've all been kidnapped by some unknown motherfuckers who get off on fucking with us. The town may or may not have ghosts, but don't call them ghosts, because it's a whole [ Noelle might imagine a hand waving mid-air in the slight gap ] thing. We've got hallucinations, weird people-puppets running all the fake businesses, some kind of flesh sculpture situation under the hotel, and every three months the town blows up and we just wake up again in the spooky graveyard. And the food mostly sucks now.
no subject
Okay. [ She sounds, weirdly enough, okay with all of this. ] If they're fucking with us in a restricted, limited way, then it's a game. Do you know the rules?
no subject
[ He approves of the question. ]
We can't leave the town, for one thing. Any time you try, you get lost and die. I haven't tried it, mind you. Left that to the more intrepid local citizens. And speaking of dying, you can die here and come back, which is extremely fucking weird, but helpful. Everything the place does to us, brain-wise - besides the amnesia - has so far had some kind of off switch. Either it just wears off, or you can make it stop by figuring out what the trick is. Usually it'll be whatever it feels like you should be doing.
What else...if you get invited to a 'party', it's mandatory. Don't eat or drink anything there until you see if it fucks anyone else up first. Sometimes they'll put these stupid rules up when you're there, so check for that, because otherwise you have to sit in timeout for a while if you break 'em. Annnd [ fuck him, there are a lot of rules ] try not to be a total dick? Since we're all stuck here together, and we have enough drama.
Not a rule. Just some advice.
no subject
Thank you. I'll try not to. Be a dick, I mean. That's probably more of a rule than we give it credit for.
Kind of weird that they have timeout for parties, though. I don't know if I've been to a lot of parties, but I think that's unusual?
no subject
[ Always nice to hear from someone who's actually able to understand how fundamentally off all of this is. ]
Anyway. [ Alec flops back on his bed, spreading his hand over his stomach. ] That's pretty much everything I can think of.
So. What's your deal? Besides trying not be a dick.
no subject
She has a choice, here. Keep her cards close to her chest and stay safe, or take a chance. ]
I mean, I don't remember a whole lot. I like computer games.
[ She'll roll the dice. ]
Do you know what a parahuman is?
no subject
Yeah. [ He says, startled out of any pretense. ] I am one.
no subject
When she speaks again, her voice is barely above a whisper, just loud enough to carry over the speaker. ]
How do you know?
no subject
There are easy, quick answers. Does your brain have an apparently weird amount of lobes? In your worst memory, does anyone blow up for no clear reason? Is everything else you remember more or less generally terrible? ]
I woke up knowing, I think. [ He presses his bare toes against his bedroom floor. ] I guess it came with the power.
[ There's a notch in one of the stones in the wall across from him. He studies it absently. ]
Remembered my trigger event later.
[ If she knows what a parahuman is, maybe she knows what that means. Maybe she even knows what it actually means. ]
Hey, you maybe want to switch channels? If we're talking top secret parahuman facts.
no subject
Okay. Which one?
[ She'll switch it to whichever one Regent thinks is best, and then follow up with: ]
What do you mean, a trigger event?
channel 1 > channel 4 [private]
And she doesn't know what it means, which is either good or pretty fucking terrible news for her. ]
It's what people call whatever happens to you that activates your powers.
[ He slouches over his knees, suppressing a sigh. ]
For most people, it's the worst day of their life. Something that pushes you right up to your limit, and then pushes you over.
To get powers, you have to have something really shitty happen to you. That's the trade off.
channel 4 [private]
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
[ 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. ]
no subject
[ 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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
[ Noelle says, without missing a beat. This is surely something everyone knows.
But she will concede: ] That does sound kind of boring.
no subject
[ 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?
no subject
[ 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. ]
no subject
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?
no subject
[ 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. ]
no subject
[ 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.
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