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

[vibing]

Yeah, yeah... I dunno what else it could be.

"With auburn locks and eyes of green, a rival, a threat, a beauty queen." [ He reads the next one out loud, and sings ] Jolene, Jolene! [ in a cracky voice after it. The situation isn't great, but it still makes him smile, looking back at Cecelia ] Man, I've heard these songs so many times. Didn't really realize I knew them so well.

[sighsheavily]

[shorter is faster; Cecelia moves and scratches out the song titles for Kokomo and Jolene as Yuri's crooning, her mouth twitching.

she scoffs.]

If this was all an experiment to just memorize annoying songs... [she starts over to the third board.]

[vibing]

If that's all this town is after, it's done it's job ten times over. [ Yuri mutters, trailing after her. ]

With cowboy hats and boots that stride [ He reads it out loud, and this one is a little less familiar to him, negating what he just said, but then, he reads the next part and starts to sing it ] No one told me where my horse I ride-- I know this one too! Old Town Road!

[sighsheavily]

[she hastily scratches the title out, her ears full of Yuri's rendition backed by the falling grains in the hourglass. once she's finished the flourishing tail of the 'd', she looks about owlishly.]

Did we--

[wait where did the hourglass go.]

...Do it...?

[vibing]

[ Yuri turns to look for what she's concerned about, and laughs ]

Hell yeah! We did it, Cecelia! [ He holds up his hand for a high-five with a grin ]

[sighsheavily]

[what is a high five. does she look like the kind of girl who high-fives? she's not even looking for it - her attention is already at the space left behind, peering down.]

Oh, look. There's some other room down there, it seems. But...no steps or rope... [she's not supposed to just...drop down there, is she?! egads.]

[vibing]

[ Wow how rude. But maybe it isn't the time to force the issue, even if she is leaving him hanging. He sighs, shaking his head, and drops his hand. ]

Seems like we gotta jump. I can go first. [ That way he can try to catch her, if she's not comfortable with it.

He looks down the hole in the floor, and shrugs before dropping down into it, holding onto the edge, then dropping the rest of the way. It isn't a short fall, exactly, but it's doable for him ]

Not so bad! C'mon, I'll make sure you don't hit the ground hard.

[sighsheavily]

Are you quite sure? [she crouches over the edge, relieved to see he's not far away, but...still not terribly thrilled about the prospect of falling in.] Yuri, I, I don't want to get you hurt somehow, you know...

[vibing]

It's fine, Cecelia. I can catch you. [ He laughs, holding up his arms.

Somehow the world feels lighter today. Maybe with Flynn back, maybe with Cecelia here. It's like things are knitting back together after the awfulness of last month. Now, he can touch her, he can help his friends, he can let down the intense guard he held all of last month ]

[sighsheavily]

[he's taking this so well...it almost makes her want to chastise him. but to do that, she has to be down there, doesn't she?

Cecelia huffs, draws in a breath, holds it, squeezes her eyes shut, and hops down, instantly regretting it with a cry of fear.]

[vibing]

[ As soon as she drops down, he braces to catch her, and manages it as well as he can. He grunts when she hits his body, softening the fall with his knees and his body, holding her close for a second before he lets her down to her feet. ]

There you go. That wasn't too bad, huh?

ur choice of room c:<

[sighsheavily]

[she scoffs a little, still rather breathless, hanging onto him a beat after she's got her feet under her.]

M-my hero... [she quickly gives him a peck to his cheek before letting him go.] Now, what mess have we here...

[vibing]

[ Yuri lets her down to the ground with a little smile. ]

Any time.

[ He looks around the room, only to find a note dangling in the middle of the room. He picks it up, reading out: ]

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

[ A stone drops in his gut. He freezes, not wanting to do either of those things. Although, it is Cecelia. It's Cece and he knows her and he can say things sincere things about her. But five? But eye contact?! ]

[sighsheavily]

Oh, gads.

[she scoffs, her face getting red.] Must it be something so...sincere and embarrassing? [quickly amending:] That isn't to say I've no good things to say of you, obviously! It's just! You know-!

[vibing]

No, I know. [ He feels exactly how she looks, flustered and embarrassed even without starting. ] It doesn't have to be, like... important stuff. I guess. If that's easier.

[ He can do superficial, right.

He forces his eyes up to look at her, wincing like making eye contact is going to kill him ]

[sighsheavily]

[her own expression is rather wincing, her posture stiff and closed-off, arms folded instead of just outright turning around.

her mouth twitches in tandem with an ear.]

Wouldn't that come off as rather...disingenuous? Like, like saying I appreciate that you brush your teeth or something...

[vibing]

Maybe. Maybe, it's-- I can do it. If you can. We can do this, and then never talk about it again.

[ He has to do it for her. That's the only way he's going to get through this. For Cecelia. ]

[sighsheavily]

Well, there you go! [she gestures.] There's one: I'm tremendously grateful for how similarly-minded we are in regard to...to overly sincere, forward-facing sentimentality.

[vibing]

[ He laughs at that, nodding his head. He can take that compliment. He agrees with it, at least. Alright, picking some easy ones that are sincere: ]

I like how practical you are. You're focused on what we have to do, and you don't waste time on stupid stuff. Yeah--I like that.

[ That was awkward, but at least he did it. ]

[sighsheavily]

[she scoffs a little laugh, but bobs her head in a nod, holding up her finger for two:] You're somewhat willing to collaborate on things, given some time and a bit of wearing down, yes? You let me show you how to braid, after all. I appreciate that willingness to be open!

[vibing]

[ Backhanded compliments are nice. He can do this! He holds up a second finger as well ]

You're really nice to show me that stuff even when I'm a stubborn ass about it. The braiding is nice and keeps my hair out of my mouth.

[sighsheavily]

[her mouth quirks with a crooked smile as she holds up her third:] You've always kept me safe, despite all the madness. Truly! I know at least the building won't drop on me right now since you're here.

[vibing]

[ That one actually makes him blush and he desperately wants to look away but he holds eye contact with a visceral force, his hands balling into fists as his face flames. ] Goddess, Cece! Don't--say shit like that.

I, fuck. You have pretty hair!

[sighsheavily]

[her mouth twitches, threatening to cough out a laugh. she holds it in. somehow, it's easier to take compliments eye-to-eye with someone else is way more flustered than her!

sorry for your loss, Yuri, but she must capitalize.

finger four:] You're very charming when you're confident!

[vibing]

[ Goddess, this is the worst. His face is so red and hot and he can't look away, it's taking all of his willpower to hold eye contact with her.

He hisses: ] Stop it! You're making this worse.

I, I, fuck. [ Keep going, Lowell, you're on a time limit ] You're good at books? [ It is sort of a question because he can't think anymore, his brain static from the embarrassment ]