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

Questions?

[wellie]

Random escape room path

[wellie]

Comment here to request a random set of rooms for your escape room experience.

Hugh De’Ambray | Kate Daniels series

[irondog]

Arrival: Escape

[Awareness comes slowly. The thick fog in his mind gradually parts as his body moves on autopilot. He sits on the stone floor. He’s sat on floors like this one before.

He’s run behind a truck. Been left in the wilderness with a knife and a canteen. This is familiar.

His name sits in his mind like a word of power. The significance of that statement doesn’t make sense. He discards it. First, survive. He stands up. The torch light flickers as he turns to face the other person in the room.]

Well, shall we? [Hugh is a tall man, built like a brick wall. Even in western duster and button up shirt, he looks like a solid man that would be comfortable on a battlefield.]

Escape rooms: there ain’t room.

[Smack.

The Bebe bullet hits a cutout and something shifts in the air. Hugh pauses in mid-survey of the room. Something tugs at his mind like a song just out of reach.

He turns, focusing on it. The unknown could be a threat. But something about that nagging feeling matters. Not threat.

A problem. He moves closer to his companion and the scent of blood, faint but there.] Stop shooting. Something happened just now.

Escape rooms: Sweat

[The timer ticks but he doesn’t hear it. He tosses the duster off and leaps into the pit. He hits the sand and swims to the center.] Try to keep your head above the sand!

[When he reaches them, he grabs the chain. The heat is dizzying but he holds it fast. He pulls and halfway down the chain is a sharp edge.

The world kicked him then it touched his face. He breathes deep.] Get ready to move fast.

Wildcard
[For any ideas you got toss a pm or hit me on plurk skyheron.]

arrival

[snackin]

[ Coming back to himself is a strange sensation. He was aware through the month, but he wasn't in control, and he hated it deeply and purely. Except that he gave up fighting at one point early on, and simply watched as his body moved, as it was used, as it killed itself out in the rain.

Wouldn't it have been so simple if that was it? If that was the end? But, no, of course not. Instead, he's woken up in yet another strange place, this time a stone room with yet another stranger. ]

Shall we? Shall we what? Find what new sort of hell we're being subjected to today?

[irondog]

It’s that or stand around in this room, isn’t it? [He glances around. Plain stone walls. Torches. A door.

He walks to the door and pulls the note off.] Fantastic.

[Freedom is hot. He looks at the torches.] Before I look closer at these torches. Why not tell me what sort of ‘hell’ happens here?

[snackin]

[ Astarion drags himself to his feet with a heavy sigh ]

Oh, you know. Having your flesh burned away by acid after losing bodily autonomy, for starters. Why not a feast where your become half beast? Or mushrooms that show you the worst thing that's ever happened to you? Oh, or the fact that we can't remember anything and were kidnapped from our homes with no discernible way back!

[ His volume increases sentence by sentence until he's panting, his arms out for emphasis. He sucks in a breath and drops them with a huff. ]

Fine, burn your eyes in fire for all I care!

[ He struts over to the door and pulls hard on the handle which doesn't budge at all ]

[irondog]

[The anger washes over him. Oddly it doesn’t bother him at all. He looks at the note. It has a nice sharp edge.]

You can keep talking if you like. Get it all out. [He walks closer to the left torch by the door. The faint glint of metal catches his eye. He studies it. He looks around the room.

Nothing to put it out.] Just curious, but what do you have on you? Any water?

[snackin]

Do I have any water? Of course I don't have any gods damned water.

[ He gives up on the door, turning back to this man with his teeth gritted. ]

Tell me that's not your only solution here.

[irondog]

Of course you don’t.

[Survive first. He walks a little closer to the flame. He checks the note edge.]

We’ll do this the other way then. [He drags the note along the edge of his palm. Paper cuts are frustratingly thin. But it’s enough. Blood wells up and he sends a spark of magic into the blood that seeps from the cut. The blood spreads over the note and turns it into a hard red card.

He takes a step to the right of the torch and flicks it. The card hits the key in the torch and knocks it free. The note comes through, untouched by flame. But it turns to dust once it hits the floor.] Hear anything by the door?

[snackin]

[ He isn't paying attention at first, but then this man cuts himself and the scent makes Astarion perk up, watching as his finger wells up. His mouth salivates with hunger, but he holds himself back. ]

Clever. And no. Nothing. Open it, let's see what we're up against.

[irondog]

[He slips off his coat and wraps it around his arm. He picks up the key and opens the door. He slips the coat back on. He snags the key on his way out into the hall.

Anything is a weapon if you use it right. There is an odd nagging feeling in the back of his mind. It feels like a song. He runs his fingers over the papercut. The song goes away.

To Astarion, the smell of blood is cut off like a door being shut. Hugh waits for him and walks on through the darkened hall. He opens the next door and they are both immediately covered in honey.

He walks inside. On the other side of the door is a room that looks like a bathhouse. The square pool at the center is full of glitter. Torches flicker in their scones on the walls. He flicks a hand. Honey splats on the stone.] Anything like this happen before?

Light Yagami | Death Note

[pereatmundus]

Arrival: Escape

[Waking up alive and autonomous should have come as a relief, but Light's in no mood to celebrate his resurrection. His head throbs like a hangover, and the hazy memories of dying in agony haunt him like a half-remembered poltergeist. He wants nothing more than to wash off the lingering sense memory of acid and rot, curl up under a heavy blanket, and not say a word to anyone until he's figured out what the hell to do next.

But instead, he's here. Locked into some sort of dungeon--trapped again, trapped still--without even the solace of being alone and unobserved. Part of him wants to throw back his head and laugh at the hopelessness of it all. Instead, he walks over to examine the door, his seething frustration obvious despite his attempt to sound calm.]

All right. Let's get this over with.

[searingwing]

[Silence. Diluc steps towards the door, reads the note, and turns to the torches. He pivots and walks to the southwest torch.

He thrusts his hand in and retrieves the key. Then walks to the door.

Before he was calm because of the effect of the circle but uncertain and trying to appeal to Light’s reason while also aware light could be dangerous. He had seemed unfinished. Or just a young man figuring things out. That man is gone.

The look on his face now is entirely different. His expression is unreadable. A fire lives in his eyes. His gaze is sharp and piercing. His posture is perfect and his steps make no noise as he motions for Light to move. Steam rises from where the key touches his hand. Sweat being burnt off. He waits.]

there ain't room, cw: blood

[thinkfirst]

It's— fine.

[ Flynn grits, wincing around the bolt of pain blooming in his shoulder. Blood is already seeping to the surface, staining the blue of his shirt an angry violet, but his weird little gun is still raised, aiming true at where a cutout was just a second ago.

Not very convincing, he tells himself, and aims a pained little smile at Hugh. ]

Really, it's fine, it must have ricocheted. We should be careful where we're aiming. Did you hit one? I couldn't see.

[pereatmundus]

[Well, something's lit a fire under Diluc's ass. Light doesn't mind, exactly--the less insufferable conversation he has to make with this man, the better--but he makes note of it all the same.

Maybe the fungus got him, too. That would leave some scuffmarks on his pride for sure. Though God only knows what else happened last month while I was confined...

Without a word, Light steps aside from the door to let Diluc work.]

cw: blood

[irondog]

I did. If you ignore that it is only going to be more of a problem later on.

[He sets the gun down, flipping the safety back on. He focuses on the bloom of color at the shoulder. The song seems to come from there.] Let me see.

Młynar Nearl | Arknights

[andreadallover]

1. THE FIRST ROOM

[Whatever power put Młynar in his current attire was considerate, though he doesn't yet have any reason to think about the matter closely. He's dressed in mismatched costume pieces: jeans (blue), quilted medieval doublet (black, with gold trim) and a cowboy hat (white). But however unfortunate the fashion sense may be, the jeans do have a hole in the back for his tail to fit through, and the hat has holes cut in it so that the pair of horse ears on top of his head can move freely.

He takes off the hat. It feels ridiculous to be wearing some random hat in...what is this? A dungeon? His head hurts, and it's hard to focus, but a dungeon would make sense. He's made enemies of some of the nobility, he thinks. It must be that he finally bit off more than he could chew.

But he's not the only one here.He doesn't recognize his cellmate, but maybe they remember more than he does.]

Are you awake?


2. THE SECOND ROOM - Riddles Three

[Młynar stands there, unmoving and expressionless, as he reads each of the riddles multiple times, line by line. At one point, he squints slightly, but-

yeah he's got absolutely nothing. He doesn't even know what one of these words means.]

What is a horse?

[...says the man with horse ears and tail.]


3. IT'S ALIVE

[The voice rings out as soon as he steps into the Staywell.]

Tsk! Still never learned to tuck your shirt in, hmm?

[ Młynar whips his head around. Who said that?

(The shirt under his doublet is, indeed, untucked.)]

Feel free to pick the rooms

[searingwing]

[He slides the key into the lock and turns it. The door cracks open. He pushes the gap open a little wider.

Fingers of light from the torches don’t pierce the darkness beyond. He steals the key from the lock. He pockets it and holds up a hand to Light.

He listens. There is a fresh breeze passing through. But he doesn’t hear anything alarming. He nods once and slips into the darkness. He doesn’t bother to make any light. Nothing jumps at him as he walks into the hallway. Just like the room is square grey stone. His eyes start to adjust to the darkness as he walks.

The hallway is short. The door beyond it is ajar. He pauses and looks at Light, and pushes it open.]

Room Two: There Ain't Room

[pereatmundus]

[The continued silence is starting to feel pointed. Light nods politely and pokes his head into the next room, looking around warily for traps before stepping inside. A shooting range, with the two of us as targets. Interesting. Light wiggles the butt of one of the guns, testing how firmly attached it is to the barrier (very). Then he turns back toward Diluc.]

Would it be cheating to detach the guns somehow and take them with us?

[snackin]

[ Oh, wonderful. He's here again, and with Light. He does enjoy making Light irate, but he doesn't quite enjoy being stuck in a small, perilous space with him.

He slowly pushes himself to his feet, watching Light's back as he fusses with the door. ]

The key is in a torch.

[snackin]

[ He pouts at the lack of blood, but knows it isn't really the time anyway. At least there will be less temptation now, and he follows a few paces after only to shriek when the honey is suddenly sticking to him ]

In the Nine Hells! [ He shakes his hands and his arms and nothing happens and he's still sticky ]

No! Nothing like this! Gods, are you a curse?!

[ It doesn't make any sense, but he wants to blame someone, and he's glaring daggers at Hugh ]

Flynn Scifo | already in the game | couple days after the start of May

[thinkfirst]

1. arrival // the escape room

[ Flynn wakes with a start, gasping air sharp enough back into his lungs to make a few of the torches on the walls around them flicker. There's nothing like breathing back into your own body already upright, especially when it's been a few days since your fingers were your own. For a second he just stands there, breathing hard despite the lack of exertion, curling his fingers up and down and up again because he can. There's nothing fighting him. He can taste the stale damp air on his tongue and feel it move along his nose as he breathes. One of the torches, closer to him, flickers with a faint sort of heat. ]

Thank the Goddess.

[ He breathes, half to himself, and then glances up with another startled little sound, bitten-off. ]

Oh— oh! You're here. That's— I really need to get back!

2. escape // the lobby // mostly for yuri

[ Flynn bursts through the door gasping, covered so thickly in glitter and blood that only the bright blue of his eyes marks who he is, and promptly freezes.

He's been running on frustrated adrenaline for the undetermined length of time that he's been in that dungeon, bent entirely on moving forward, getting out, getting to the other side. Focusing on a series of frustrating and deadly tasks is the perfect thing to stop you thinking about where you're aiming and what might be happening, and he'd gotten as far as maybe this will get me back into my body and stopped there, clinging to that desperate hope. Somewhere on the other side, he'd told himself again and again, repeated like a prayer, should be Yuri, hopefully unharmed and waiting out the end. Flynn can't leave him alone for it.

So, naturally, he wasn't even remotely expecting to be spat into the bright stone-washed lobby of the hotel. Not the manor, his mind supplies, half-shrill. The hotel, front desk and all, with the central fire and the low couches he'd huddled with Cecelia, without any rain or acid-eaten stone or sumptuous tapestries.

He's dripping blood onto the white floor. He doesn't notice. He's frozen in place, unable to figure out what exactly is going on. ]

[searingwing]

No one told us any rules. [No rules. They do what the fuck they want. He inspects the gun. He isn’t familiar with the weapon, but it is a weapon. He steps to the side and checks the set up.

No magic. No mechanisms. It is just firmly in the barrier.] No wards. They’re not trapped.

[irondog]

[Hugh walks along the stone edge of the pool of glitter. No notes around so far. He kicks at the edge of the pool. The glitter sticks to him. He makes a face.]

Tell me what usually happens and I’ll give you an answer. [He kneels down and looks at the glitter. Glitter and honey. This is bullshit.]

No notes so far. See any?

[pereatmundus]

[Of course it's Astarion this time. Of fucking course. Light gives the door a spiteful, futile kick, then tries to wrench the torch out of its sconce.]

Not your first time either, huh? My condolences.