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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
She opens her eyes slowly and tries to tug at her arms, but finds them immobile, her wrists tingling. She tries to eke out a yell, but she breathes in and her windpipe tightens. Her eyes almost flash gold, and her instincts kick in before her thoughts do. "Let go!" she screams, and she presses an open palm to the flowers below her. The lilacs go grey for a moment before a vine pulls her hand away, and she wrenches her arm to try to free it again. She looks towards Noelle, still always in her actual eyes, and yells more harshly than she wants to: "Get away before I hurt you too!"
She can't infect these flowers, these vines. They won't let her touch stay long enough to cause any problems, and the ones she'd started to kill are already growing back. And like they're learning, or like they already know her, they start wrapping tighter around her limbs, her neck, and dragging her into the air. They spread her arms wide and bind her legs tightly so she can't do anything to fight back, and the vine around her neck slithers and coils itself as a snake would. She gags and coughs up blood.
cw: body horror
This is different. Noelle knows what Jessica means. Don't look at me. Don't touch me. She thinks of Krouse, who just wanted to hold her, and how revulsion rippled through every scrap of meat making up her hideous form.
She thinks about it, and when Jessica begins to cough up blood, she ignores it.
It's difficult to make her lower half be gentle, and even harder to use it for anything resembling a fine motor skill. Most of the hands that resemble something a human would have are either too big, or twisted and deformed in their smallness. There is a limb extending from the palm of the hand that makes up Noelle's right hindquarters, flanked by long, prehensile tentacles. That seems to be Noelle's best bet. She takes a breath, and rolls the dice.
A palm slides under Jessica's head, supporting her skull and neck like she's a young baby. Tentacles wrap around her waist, all mixed in with the vines. The sensation makes Noelle want to shudder - to salivate - and while some of the mouths in her lower half probably do, she's able to keep a white-knuckle grip of composure with respect to her upper.
"I'm sorry," Noelle apologizes, still unwilling to raise her voice. "This is going to hurt."
Noelle bears down, summoning all her monstrous strength, and she pulls, until the vines encircling her friend's body snap.
no subject
Then Noelle grabs her, or some of the things that Noelle is using, and she pulls, and it fucking hurts. Any illusion of tenderness in the palm's touch snaps in time with the vines, and she doesn't have the sense to tell the difference between the bad tendrils and the good ones; she already knows that she'll bruise, but bruising is better than death. Pain means she's still alive, and her right shoulder must be very alive indeed.
The vines hover for another few seconds before falling back to the ground and slinking away, perhaps in defeat or perhaps to just redouble their efforts. Blythe doesn't see it happen. She's breathing, shallow and quick, her ribcage moving up and down in a way that she hates to be reminded of. She turns her head as much as she can without injuring herself further, trying to find her friend's face again. The whole time, something inside her is demanding an answer; she is ignoring it.
"Noelle," she says weakly, then repeats her friend's name a little louder. "Noelle, you—they're gone. They're broken."
cw: body horror
Noelle can smell Jessica's sweat, her pain, her fear. Except she can't, because that doesn't make any sense. People don't smell pain. But then again, Noelle is not a person. People don't have heads for legs, either.
The image of Jessica's scars linger in Noelle's mind. If she thinks about them for too long, the pounding gets worse. But Noelle can't not think, either, because if she turns herself over to instinct, there's no telling what she might do.
"I'm going to get you out of here," Noelle says, and her voice doesn't sound like her own, not when it comes out of so many mouths. "Then I'll put you down."
Sure enough, Noelle wastes no time leaving that place. Once she's sure the ground is safe, she sets Jessica down, as gently as she's able. Then she slinks back several feet, folds her upper arms over her chest, and looks down at Jessica with wide, glassy eyes. Her shoulders are shaking a little. Noelle doesn't know how to stop it. She barely knows how to make her body do anything.
"Are you hurt?" Noelle asks, her voice small. It's an idiotic question. It still feels important that she gets the answer.
cw: bone stuff
Once she's set down on the ground, she takes a couple tiny, tentative steps before looking above and in front of her, to Noelle proper. And she says, "I am," but she's speaking almost a little calmly about it. She carefully, slowly lifts her right arm up, bending her elbow so it crooks over her head, and wraps her left hand around her right wrist. And she pulls, and there's the thunk of bone settling back into socket, and she winces the whole time she's doing it.
And then she lowers her arms just as slowly, and it still hurts, but it's better than having been eaten by vines. So she breathes through the residual pain and tries to hide that the whole process had gotten a couple tears to fall. She blinks them away along with the reminder that she is still human and resolves to determine if she likes that or not later. "You saved my life, Noelle," she says instead of almost anything else. "Thank you. I... didn't want to die there."
cw: bone stuff
At least Jessica seems to know how to take care of herself. Noelle watches her re-locate her shoulder, which might be one of the bravest things Noelle has ever seen. Jessica didn't even scream. Noelle wonders if Jessica also feels like screaming, all the time, or if that's more of a Noelle thing.
Noelle is totally unprepared for Jessica's gratitude. It's unfair, maybe, to keep expecting disgust from Jessica when Jessica seems to feel none of that towards her. Maybe Noelle can let her guard down a little, too.
Her shoulders relax. Noelle blinks away a few tears of her own.
"I didn't want you to die either." Noelle pauses. Can Jessica hear her heart pounding in her chest? It's so loud. "When we find Krouse again, you should stick with us. If you want."
no subject
"He had nothing but good things to say about you," she starts, not really relevant to the part that she wishes she could show better gratitude for. It is easier to discuss someone else. "And everything he's said has been true. Your leadership, your quick thinking, your problem solving." Nothing about her body, but Jessica won't mention that, either. What she will mention is something that feels embarrassing, but... they're talking about things that Krouse said. So it's appropriate.
"He nicknamed me Jess," she says. "If you want to call me that, too, you can."