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

Harry Du Bois | Disco Elysium

[entroponetics]

1. freedom is hot

The room is small and dim. The stone floor is damp under the man's cheek.

He does not remember this. He does not remember anything. This realization brings a splitting pain in his head, bittersweet and familiar. You're dead, says something in him, some jittering animal fear. You died and this is your shitty afterlife. Pick a direction and run.

But dead people don't get headaches, right? Right, agrees some more sensible part. And: You can figure this out. Investigate the situation. Ask questions.

"I do like questions," he mumbles into the cold stone floor. The man peels himself upright and sits up, blinking in the light of their one flickering torch.

2. love me

Not ten minutes in, the man is still shaking out his burned fingers: reaching directly into the fire wasn't the smartest way to get the key, but it worked. He put a pellet between the eyes of his own cutout with an unsettling lack of hesitation. Now he's puzzling over the note in the center of the room, brows drawn together in heavy thought.

He's a bloated alcoholic with unruly mutton chops and uncombed hair. His outfit is a nightmare of sequins and tassels. He has not moved any slower than a brisk jog since peeling himself off the floor. And now, with that same dogged energy, he's rounding on you.

"Compliment party," he declares, with the confidence of a man who has no idea what he looks like. (You don't want to know, chimes some deep instinct.) "Tell me how good I look and we'll be free to go."

3. it's alive

The man has stripped naked in the changing room. He holds up a towel, considers for way too long—Tuck it around your waist. That's a safe bet until you know the etiquette.—It's called skinny dipping! Let it all hang out.—then finally shrugs, slings it over his shoulder, and strides into Chrono fully nude.

Disgusting, mutter the bathhouse walls. Indecent as always.

"Come on, man, it's a pool party," he says to the nearest wall, as though this is a normal conversation.

4. wildcard

[ Choose your own! ]

5. okay wait one more

[entroponetics]

A burly middle-aged man, still dressed in a riot of sequins and tassels, stands in front of the three bathhouse doors: Aqunid, Chrono, Female. He has the zoned-out look of a guy doing a complex math equation in his head.

Look, he's moved on from obsessing over sexuality, the doors murmur aloud. Now he's obsessing over gender.

"Fuck you, I'm not a tentacle," he mutters at the door. Then nods to himself slowly as though working through a private conversation in his head. Without further warning, he turns to a passerby and asks: "Hey, tentacles are pretty phallic, right? Dick-shaped? Masculine energy?"

[thinkfirst]

Said passerby really, really tries to keep his instinctive flushed and uncomfortable face to himself.

He does not succeed. Flynn goes pink all the way to the ears, which, he thinks, is actually fair, because it's pretty alarming to have your very private internal debate (the one you've been having with yourself for literal months now, the one that reignites every time you come to the bathhouse) suddenly voiced aloud in an unfamiliar voice.

"Um," he manages, trying to smooth down over his own instinctive nerves as he goes—and not think about dick-shaped, masculine things— "That's— I suppose that they do—" which is, in fact, what he's been thinking, but he hasn't even really voiced this aloud except to a few people, and this man is a stranger, and now Flynn's gotten too far down this path to go back, which is pretty unfortunate. He shifts, and the sword at his side clinks—he really does need a bath, blood-and-dust-splattered as he is—and continues, more stiffly, "it's hard to tell, isn't it? I'm never sure which door is right, even after all this time. It doesn't seem that there are consequences for getting it wrong, or possibly I haven't chosen incorrectly?"

cw area man invents genderfluidity and also transphobia

[entroponetics]

He's uncomfortable because he has been wondering the same, murmurs empathy. Harry nods encouragingly, glad to have found a colleague in the study of gender.

"Maybe you can't get it wrong," he speculates, voice pitched low and conspiratorial. "Maybe you're Aqunid and Chrono." He lets this hang a beat then turns to the one door remaining.

The fuck are you doing, man? mutters a much less supportive inner voice. You think you're a woman now? Check in your pants. But this obviously misses the point: they have a mystery to solve.

"We can test it by going inside."

[thinkfirst]

Both. Can he be both? Flynn doesn't, admittedly, think too terribly hard about his own gender, except perhaps to wonder if he's doing it right. That's much more wrapped up in knighthood than manhood, though, and so he hasn't connected those particular dots. Some threads stretch now, connecting previously-unconnected concepts. Flynn shifts again, glancing from the circle door to the tentacle door and back.

"I've gone into both," he hazards, uncertain. "Not— not woman. That one is obvious, at least."

Although a heartbeat later he glances sideways at the man beside him like he's checking. That's obvious to both of us, isn't it?

"And, to my knowledge, no one has yet made a choice that anyone with any authority felt was wrong, although if it didn't matter at all I can't see why there would be a choice. Um. Perhaps if we each test Aqunid and Chrono at the same time, and see...?"

[icecrown]

Of course, Arthas has no memories to confirm, but he is reasonably sure that is a question no one has ever asked him before. Pausing, he opens his mouth to answer, but before he says anything, his brows furrow, and he folds his arms. Answering too quickly would be weird. But also, Arthas considers, taking too long to think about it could also be weird.

"Y—... yes?" He tilts his head slightly, unsure if he's ready to commit to that answer. Does that say something about him?

And really, if he thinks about it, he's not the one with the problem. If anything is weird, it's the guy overcomplicating the door art.

Finally, more firmly: "Yes."

Now that that's settled...

"Why?"

Sure, one says Female, but he didn't think it meant anything significant.

[entroponetics]

"I am not female," Harry declares and points to the door, glad to be confident in something. He's not sure of much, but this feels correct. "But where does that leave me? How do I know if I'm aqunid or chrono?"

He looks to this man and is immediately struck by his appearance: the pale skin and hair, the too-bright eyes. The way he holds still as a frozen corpse. There is something here—

—and it must be related to gender. This is a man, right? Most men don't have hair this long or skin this smooth. How can anyone be sure? This may need more thought.

It leaves Harry squinting at him for several seconds too long.

[icecrown]

Undeath had been kinder to Arthas than most, but that's probably a perk of getting in on the ground floor. No one had murdered him; he had just stopped. Frozen (literal). The rest is probably clean living.

He assumes Harry is staring because he looks dead, not pretty.

"What makes you think you must be what's on the door? Sometimes I pick the Female door because it reminds me of girls."

Which is a perfectly acceptable thing for any hot-blooded man who assumes he's straight to admit to. What Aquinid or Chrono remind him of, he doesn't say.

[gideoncav]

Every goddamn time Gideon Nav ends up in the vicinity of this goddamn bathhouse, it all goes to shit and it all goes to hell and she spends the next week swearing off the hundred-pace radius around it. She tucks the towels she'd pulled off the shelf under her arm and turns, hand held up to block the view just in case the new guy happens to be naked. She keeps her face turned away and refuses to look.

"Yuck," she says with all the disgusted fervor she can muster, because the last thing she wants to think about next time the tentacle monster shows up to eat them all to death is getting eaten to death by dicks, and great, now she's definitely going to be thinking about that next time it shows up. "What the fuck is — you know what? Never mind. I don't want to know."

[entroponetics]

She shields her eyes and he's not even naked. Something in him writhes with sudden panic: Abort! That is a teenage girl. You cannot take your clothes off with a teenage girl in the room. That would be weird and creepy behavior. Another follows this with: You will go to prison and die.

A more useful voice notes, far too late, This was not an appropriate conversational topic.

"I'm wearing clothes," he declares, and just to prove it, wraps a towel around his waist. Over the tassel-heavy cowboy pants. "I just need directions to the dick door. The male door. For men."

[gideoncav]

Aghast, Gideon turns her face up towards the ceiling, desperate for some kind of magic that will instantly transport her out of this situation.

"Holy fuck, just use Chrono and stop telling me about your man dick."

[andreadallover]

The question stops Młynar, who had been heading for the "Chrono" door with the disregard for anyone nearby of a man on a mission, in his tracks. Where the hell did that come from? And what is this man wearing?

Młynar turns to face the doors and their accompanying signs. He's been assuming that 'Aqunid' is just another term for Aegir, and that the door leads to specialized baths for those with more particular demands from water. Tubs with salt water or some such. Just because Młynar seems to be the only Kuranta in town and is thus suffering the indignity of all the dust clinging to his tail and getting into his ears alone doesn't mean that someone around here isn't also an ordinary human. Surely not everyone could be so...odd.

He turns back to the stranger. "I would not have considered it that way."

nsfw text i'm deeply sorry

[entroponetics]

Harry is immediately entranced by the ears and tail.

Whoa, now that's a fashion statement, puzzles one corner of his mind, bemused but kind of impressed. You can buy butt plugs with tails like that, notes another. Most people do not wear butt plugs in public, supplies a third. In response: Most people are cowards.

Harry opens his mouth, closes it on the half-formed Are you wearing a butt plug?, and instead manages a muddled:

"You have ears and also ears."

In helpful clarification, he mimes horse ears on the top of his head with his fingers.

2

[closetdweller]

Uh...

[Urushihara blinked, scandalized in his beglittered black flannel, cargo pants, and black cowboy hat with a feather stuck in the band. He looked like an emo from the streets of Tokyo had been whisked off to the ranches of New Mexico and was utterly culture shook and lost.

He bit his lip, eyes wide with anxiety.]

That. Uh...

You look very shiny?

[entroponetics]

I look very disco.

[ He nods approvingly and considers his options: Don't tell him his shirt is cool, says some inner voice. Teenagers hate it when middle-aged cops say they look cool.

He fixates instead on the hat. ]

Now that's a hat. You look like a real boiadeiro in that hat. That's the hat of a man ready for adventure under the wide-open sky.

[closetdweller]

A boy-a--??

[He didn't understand half of the words, but the tone of voice was amicable enough that he just didn't care.]

Disco. Yeah, like City Pop? Junko Ohashi? Hideki Saijo??

[He was just spitting out words in an attempt to keep up. The five minute limit had his nerves rattled, and he was tired of fighting his way through the Glitter Dome. There were too many tangents-- processing, processing-- ]

With that attitude, you're totally ready for the wide-open skies too, my guy!

2

[searingwing]

[This has oddly been the most at home he’s ever felt here. The presence of this man has that freedom tone to it that feels.

Well.

He doesn’t remember but he looks like someone he’d see in the bar every night.] You look right in those.

[It honestly just feels right. A wreck in progress. Six fingered-] And you will fit in easily. I will cut you off from drinks if you get too unruly at night.

[entroponetics]

Unruly? Me?

[ He spreads his hands as though to show how innocent and ruly he looks. (It does not work very well.)

But: It's said in the spirit of fond familiarity, chimes Empathy. ]

I can appreciate that. [ You won't when he does it, mutters another voice, but he carries on. ] You're looking out for people. Keeping the peace. You're good at that, I can tell.

[searingwing]

Any bartender that doesn’t shouldn’t be behind the bar. [He crosses his arms over his chest. In comparison he’s dressed rather plain. A black coat with a grey shirt under it and black pants that fit into weathered black boots. His hair is pulled back in a high pony tail that exposes some of the scars on his neck. His bare hands have their measure of scars as well. But he nods.]

I get the impression you are the sort to understand that freedom is important. I respect that.

[He is exactly the sort he could imagine Kaeya watching out of the corner of his eye while he drank. Not that Kaeya has drank here come to think of it.]

3

[one_for_all]

There is hoarse, hacking laugh that comes from the other side of the room. There's a skeleton of a man laughing while hacking up a bit of a blood. It's super attractive, trust me. He's also wearing a one piece striped bathing suit like something out of the 1950's.

"Pfffft. Don't listen to them, man. You gotta own you decision."

[entroponetics]

Someone is taking his side against talking inanimate objects. That doesn't usually happen, murmurs an inner voice.

"Thank you." The other guy is definitely not naked, but he also doesn't seem bothered, so Harry manages not to lose his cool. He commits. He owns his decision. He walks naked to the pool, but immediately gets sidetracked by Supportive Skeleton's bloody drool.

"Are you okay? You've got a little..." He gestures as though politely informing someone they have spinach in their teeth.

[one_for_all]

Look Toshinori may not be naked but he's pretty sure he could rock it if he wanted to. There's some weird bumps and deformities poking out from underneath the side of his swim suit that implies it might not be a normal sight though.

"Hey. Don't sweat it. They got weird with me too. I think they're just jealous they can't do it themselves."

Then there's a pause as the drool comes up, and he takes a second to wipe away the blood.

"Uh- What?" He then feels at his cheek and catches the blood. Another second later and he wipes it away. "Oh- That. Yeah. It's been doing that since I got here. Outside of the occasional gut wrenching pain. I'm fine." He's talking pretty casually for someone who just kind of bleeds out of the mouth here and there.

1! (I'm so sorry)

[sixtyinchvoice]

One-One isn't entirely sure how he had come to find himself here in this strange room with the torches, watching the man, and waiting until consciousness finds him again. He doesn't remember, and maybe it doesn't matter. They shouldn't be here, though, he thinks, and what does matter - probably, anyway - is getting out.

As the man stirs, the little round robot rolls towards him, and the lights that serve as his eyes flash in mimicry of a blink.

"I like questions too!" He announces in a tone far too upbeat for the situation they've found themselves in. "Are you my mum?"

[entroponetics]

Harry lifts his head just enough to blink back at - eye level? Light level? Humans are adept at recognizing faces even where none exist, notes the uselessly factual corner of his mind.

The thing may not have a real face, but it has a real voice. Cheerful, friendly. He can work with that. Match its energy.

"I don't know," confesses Harry as he sits up. (Absolutely not, mutter the macho bits of his brain. But what is a mother, begins the artsy voice in his head, and that seems more interesting.) "What does your mum look like?"

[sixtyinchvoice]

There's a long pause as One-One tries to recall what his mother looks like. He knows this. He's sure he knows this. Just give him a second here...

"I don't remember," he answers finally. His tone remains cheerful, but there's a hint of wonderment there as well. It's strange not to remember what one's own mum looks like - he's still fairly sure he ought to know. "I think she might be round. Do you know what your mum looks like?"