6.0 Test Drive Meme

[wellie]

6.0 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 May onward, and can happen concurrently with other events during May and June. This will be the only TDM for May, June, and July.

Applications are open April 26th until May 1st, and May 27th until June 1st. Invites are available for friends of current players.

Arrival: Escape!

Content warnings: forced captivity, blood, eating eyes, drowning in sand, forced intimacy

The First Room

You wake up somewhere dark and damp. Maybe this is your first time waking up here, maybe it's your fourth, but the beginning is the same. You're in a small stone room. The only light comes from torches flicking on the walls. The room is bare except for a metal door. And you're not alone. You and someone (or someones) are here together, and you have to get out.

The door is locked, and to leave it you must just find one key. On the door is a note with a clue:

Freedom is hot!

The key is in fact in one of the torches! Depending on luck, you might find it on your first try, or your fourth. Find a way to extinguish the torches, and handle the hot, hot key to unlock the door.

After this, you find yourself in one of the following rooms. Choose one from the first set, then one from the second set, then one from the third set. You will always end in the final room. You must travel through five rooms to escape.

If you don't complete a task in five minutes, you will return to very first room and have to start again.

You can choose your own path, or comment below to have a random path set for you!

The Second Room

You find yourself in one of the following rooms:
1. There Ain't Room
2. Glitter Bomb
3. Riddles Three

1. There Ain't Room
In this room is a shooting game. There's a barrier with bebe guns attached to it, and at the far end are small cut outs of people. There's a sign on the far wall, in old-West style script, reading:

There Ain't Room

The cut outs look sort of familiar! There are cut outs of you and your compatriot(s), as well as some typical cowboy looking cut outs. Shoot your own cut out to escape! You each must shoot your own one, if you shoot each others', that person feels it as if they have been shot, and will start bleeding.

When you successfully hit all of your own cut outs, the floor under you opens up and you drop into the next room.

2. Glitter Bomb
As you walk through the doorway, you feel oddly.... sticky? Like your skin is covered in honey. Because it is! Yum.

In front of you is a room covered in glitter. There's so much glitter. You can't see a door, but you have to find a way out. Search the room to find the exit.

The exit is a trapped door in the floor. You'll need to make your way through the glitter, all the while it will stick to your very sticky skin. You'll need to dig a big enough path to get through, open the door and get into the next room! Too bad some glitter will come with you, and you'll still be sticky.

3. Riddles Three
A large hour glass in the middle of the room starts ticking down with sand as soon as you enter this room. One three of the walls are riddles engraved in the stone, and chalkboards in front of them. You must answer all three riddles correctly before the sand runs out to escape:

• Where waves kiss sand and breezes blow, where tropic dreams grow, I'm where you want to go. What am I? Answer: Kokomo
  
• With auburn locks and eyes of green, a rival, a threat, a beauty queen. Answer: Jolene
  
• With cowboy hats and boots that stride, no one told me where my horse I ride. Answer: Old Town Road

Once you answer correctly, the hour glass disappears, leaving a hole in the floor that you must jump through to exit.

The Third Room

Next, you find yourself in one of the following rooms:
A. Cry For Me
B. Love Me
C. Hold Me

A. Cry For Me
This room is beautiful and shiny, the walls made of crystals. In the middle of the room is a crystal plinth with a small crystal cup on it. In flowing script around the cup it reads:

Collect five tears

You must collect five tears in the cup to escape. Once you do, an entry way opens in the crystal in front of you.

B. Love Me
This room is very plain, and on a piece of paper dangling from a string in the middle of the room is the instructions for this room:

Exchange five sincere compliments each. Don't break eye contact.

You must do this within the alloted five minutes to escape. If the compliments are less than sincere, you may try again, but if you don't reach the five each by the end of the five minutes or if you break eye contact even once, you will be returned to the first room.

C. Hold Me
This room looks a lot like the pub in town. The walls are wood paneled and there's jangling piano music coming from--somewhere?

In the middle of the room is a mechanical bull, with a sign reading:

Stay on the bull together for 45 seconds.

If you succeed within the five minutes, you're free to continue on!

The Fourth Room

Next, you find yourself in one of the following rooms:
I. Blood
II. Sweat
III. Tears

I. Blood
This room is very tall. There's a rope dangling down one wall. On the wall it reads:

Climb!

And that's what you have to do. The word "Climb" starts to bleed. And then the walls start to bleed. The room will fill up with blood within five minutes, so you better get climbing!

At the top of the room is a hatch that will let you escape through a hatch in the ceiling.

II. Sweat
When you enter this room, one of you finds that you are alone. You're standing at the edge of a pool, and that pool is full of sand. It's also searingly hot in here. On the wall, it reads:

Rescue your partner!

One person is chained at the bottom of a swimming pool full of sand. A counter on the wall counts down until they will suffocate. Better get swimming!

Once you've rescued your partner, a door on the other side of the pool will open up. Better move fast to get there!

III. Tears
This room is dark, very dark. You can just barely see, except for a glow-in-the-dark sign reading:

Eat some eyes!

And that's what you need to do! In the walls are eyes. They're watching you. You must each eat an eye to continue on. Once you do, a door cracks open in the far wall.

The Fifth Room

No matter the path you took to get here, the final room is the same:

The last room you end up in, even though you enter through the same door, you find yourselves separated by a wall. There is a door for each of you at the far side of the room. You can hear each other, but you can't see each other. Each of you have a plinth in front of you, which reads:

Who should escape?

In front of you are the names of yourself and your partner(s). You place the name of the person you believe should escape in a slot in the table.

Once everyone has made a selection, the names will light up:

• If you all chose each other, your room lights up green.
• If you all chose yourselves, your room lights up green.
• If someone chose themselves, and someone else chose another person, the room of the person with the most "votes" lights up green. The others light up red.

If your room is green, when you open the final door, you've escaped! Welcome to Wellstone.

If your room is red, when you open the door, you find yourself back in the first room. Good luck!

When you escape, you step into the lobby of the Staywell. It's bright and airy with beautiful white stone. When you look behind you, it seems that you've stepped out of a supply closet. Weird!

The receptionist greets you as he always does, welcoming you home.

New characters arrive using this prompt. Characters can return from death from the previous cycle using this prompt. You can also just wake up and be in this prompt, so you can do this as many times as you like.

tl;dr:

• You wake up in an escape room! You must finish (at least) five rooms to escape. You have five minutes to finish each room. If you fail, you'll be taken back to the beginning of the dungeon.

It's alive!

Content warnings: public shaming

When you shake off the glitter and the sand, it might be time to head on down into Wellstone town. The air is full of a shimmering warmth that might be familiar to some. It's like the sun has been baked into the very stones and is radiating back up at you. Run-down buildings lean against each other for support, made out of mostly weathered stone with a few old boards here and there to keep structures up. Desiccated, skeletal fingers of dried-out ivy climb them, waving occasionally as you pass. Waving, and… whispering? For more information about how the town has changed, check out this month's Wellstone Post or read the Locations Page.

The town is alive with sneering, whispering voices. It's unclear where exactly they're coming from, but they're everywhere. Step into the Cactus Pad Tavern and you might hear a decisive no manners! spat sharply from the doorway. Make your way to the steaming bathhouse to wash off that honey, but be careful when you're undressing: you might just hear rude snickering from the air around you. Wow, the walls might say, your toes are so long. What weird feet!

The voices might interrupt a conversation at breakfast to make fun of something you said. Your mirror and your wardrobe might question your outfit choices. They're loud enough to be heard by everyone in a public space and seem to delight in saying cutting things at the worst possible moment. You don't recognize the voices, exactly, but they seem just familiar enough to really hurt, and the voices seem to know you well enough. They might even call you out when you tell a little white lie, or let everyone know exactly how loud you snore.

There's no way, seemingly, to get them to shut up, so... may as well get used to it?

tl;dr:

• The town is alive, and it is judging you. Your outfits, your words, your body, your habits: nothing is off-limits.
• The voices sound just familiar enough to feel like voices you know, but aren't able to be pinpointed to a single person.

Comments

iii-b

[andreadallover]

[Młynar hasn't exactly been expressive, either, with his face mostly resting on the 'disapproving' side of neutral. He'd been surprised by the other man's approach to the torches, given that there were certainly ways to simply extinguish the flame, but after getting over the shock and refraining from asking what on Terra are you doing had simply asked if he needed help with the wounds. Młynar had frowned at the firearms in the second room, but mostly because he had a nagging feeling that he shouldn't be able to use them, even after doing so proved straightforward. So the two of them had reached this point with minimal conversation, and that mostly related to what to shoot. They are not, after all, in a situation that invites friendly chatter, if either of them were inclined towards that in the first place. They are in a situation that requires getting out.

Which now, apparently, requires complimenting each other.

Just who could possibly be responsible for this? Is there any reason to any of it? Is the confusion somehow the point?

He glances over the other man as he's examined in turn. The costume Młynar woke up in (jeans and a quilted jacket) isn't as revealing as his fellow prisoner's, but Młynar still cuts a somewhat memorable figure. He's not particularly broad-shouldered, but he is six feet and three inches tall, and his stiff posture often draws attention to that. His slightly shaggy shoulder-length blond hair matches his golden eyes, as if he has a natural color scheme. There is also, of course, the equally blond horse ears and tail. Młynar would classify those as some of his least remarkable features, but it's possible they're noteworthy to someone else.

He doesn't announce that he's starting this ridiculous exchange. He simply does it.]

You remain composed under pressure. [Even while burning your own hand.] You learn quickly. [With firearms, if nothing else.] You keep yourself in good shape. [Obviously.]

[odinpusrex]

[The silent progression of it all has been preferable to Barnabas. The burn he received was barely worthy of the acknowledging by his measure, but it only spoke of the other man's sensibilities when it came to his companion's bodily state. Those concerns were fortunately laid to rest by Barnabas' natural ability to recover from such irrelevant wounds. Indeed, learning how to handle the gun was likewise of little difficulty, with Barnabas' natural inclination towards being a quick study—especially with weapons, even if he found the gun to be rather lacking.

The minimal need to speak to complete the trials have proven too good to be true, if this next one is anything to go by. Though Barnabas is willing to do what must be done to see them through this, and were he one liable to feel relief, he would drink deep its sweet nectar when he hears Mlynar speak.

The compliments are mostly just facts, he thinks, but that is not a problem. It speaks more of this man's astuteness of others, than anything else. He isn't moved by them, but considering the stoic position his emotions seem unwilling to budge from, that isn't a fault of his companion.

He keeps his eyes locked with Mlynar, as per instructed.]

Just as you have proven yourself pragmatic and enduring. [Offering help and moving past when it was not needed.] Capable of holding your own in equal measure when the task asks for it. [It took both of them to deal with the targets.] It is plain you have the wisdom to value quiet over pointless and perfunctory chatter.

[There's a brief pause. Then he adds:]

The ears and tail—they are curious, I do not mislike them.

[andreadallover]

[There is something distinctly unnerving, or perhaps simply unfamiliar, about meeting another's gaze and being complimented. Młynar feels somehow like any praise should come only after criticism, or in the company of a smart remark. He can't put his finger on why. That's something to consider, later when there's more time for introspection.

He blinks in surprise at the last comment, though, eyebrows raised. Curious? Are there parts of the world where Kuranta are so uncommon?

But he doesn't ask yet. For all he knows, saying anything else before the complimenting is complete will trap them here.]

You do not waste your words. [Something Młynar also appreciates under the circumstances.] You remain focused on the most important priorities. [Namely, whatever it takes to get out of here.

That's five. Hopefully it's sufficient.]

[odinpusrex]

[While this is certainly intimate in its own way, to meet another man's gaze and trade sincere compliments like this, Barnabas does not feel too odd about it. He also feels practically nothing at the compliments themselves, perhaps someone with more access to their emotions might, but to him it garners nothing.

He waits for any indication that this was enough, that these were sincere, and that they might make it through. After a moment or two, there's a click of a lock from the far door, which seems to be the indication that they have done it. Marvelous.

Still, Barnabas lets his intense gaze linger for a second longer, not willing to test fate too quickly, before he blinks his gaze towards the door.]

It would seem we have succeeded. Let us away.

[Then he saunters towards the exit without commenting further. Grabbing the door knob and opening the door to see what trial awaits them—

When Mlynar follows, he will find himself in an intensely hot room with a pool full of sand. Barnabas is nowhere to be seen, but there is a counter on the wall, and a message as well:

Rescue your partner!]

[andreadallover]

[Blue eyes...does that remind him of someone? Maybe someone who made smart remarks? He can't place it.

And in any case, that's not important right now. Let us away, indeed.

The heat when he walks through the door is so intense that he instinctively throws an arm up in front of his face as if to ward it off. But he drops the arm after a moment, and it only takes another moment to notice the sign, the counter, and the pool of sand with absolutely nothing around it that someone could tie a rope to, if there was one to be found.

Well. He's certainly not going to leave someone buried in a pit of sand. The fellow may have some remarkable healing abilities, but Młynar has no reason to assume that's any proof against suffocation.

He pulls his shirt up from under the jacket to cover his nose and mouth, closes his eyes, and jumps in. He starts pushing his way to the center immediately - it's the worst spot to need to be rescued from, so by the logic of whatever hell this is it's the first place to go.]