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7.0 Test Drive Meme
7.0 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 August onward, and can happen concurrently with other events during August and September. This will be the only TDM for August, September, and October.
Applications are open July 27th until August 1st, and August 27th until September 1st. Invites are available for friends of current players.
Arrival: Catacombs
Content warnings: claustrophobia, caves, feeling of being watched, paranoia
You come to in a hotel. It seems like it was a nice hotel, once. It's missing a wall in the lobby, the floor cracked away. If you look out, it's dark and strange. You can't see much outside of the light of the lamp on the desk. It seems like there should be a receptionist there, but there's no one. No one at all to greet you, except, perhaps, each other.
If you venture out of the derelict hotel, you find youself having to climb down wreckage of buildings--many of which look the same as the hotel you were just in. The derelict buildings are unstable and strange--some seem to have been destroyed in floods, others are corroded away, one strangely covered in what seems to be dry blood. Be careful descending the several stories to the ground, although each subsequent hotel is more and more destroyed than the last.
Past the hotels are a dark series of tunnels and caverns. Some contain the magical, some the dangerous, some are open and free to be explored, to find remnants of people unknown.
One of the tunnels, lined around its entrance by the ragged edges of what looks like torn skin, opens up into a winding stone staircase that leads up, and up, and up. It's at least a hundred steps as you climb, but the most steps your climb, the lighter it gets. Up and up, until you step blinking into the glowing neon of the diner. There's a hole in the floor, the linoleum seemingly fallen away to let you through.
Once you step into the light, you feel a bit strange. Maybe it's the dazzle of the desert sun, or maybe it's the pervasive feeling of being watched. Out of the corner of your eye, you think you see someone watching you--but when you turn to look, there's no one and nothing there. But the feeling is always there. The only way to be free of it is to delve back down into the catacombs.
The sense of being watched may put you on edge. It might make you more snappy, or it might undermine your inhibitions, making you more likely to take risks, to try and prove whatever or whoever it is watching you that you are one to be watched. Prove them wrong, or right.
The waiter greets you with a smile, as if this is a totally normal way to enter his place of business.
"Welcome to the Stardust! What can I get for you? We have a nice cherry pie right now! How about I warm up a slice?"
Welcome to Wellstone! For those who have been here before, the town is repaired, the cracks in the earth gone--except for the one leading down the stairs in the diner. The saloon has cold drinks, the bathhouse has hot baths and a soggy coyote manning the towels. The receptionist hands you a key when you enter the hotel, the bulletin board is ready and waiting with multi-colored post-its. And the General Store is stocked to the gills with cowboy trinkets and paraphernalia, including massive stetson hats, headlamps, and lanterns. Somehow they work without any visible power source--weird! When you pick up a light source, the air crackles around you and if you have a walkie-talkie, it buzzes with static.
tl;dr:
You come to in a hotel. It seems like it was a nice hotel, once. It's missing a wall in the lobby, the floor cracked away. If you look out, it's dark and strange. You can't see much outside of the light of the lamp on the desk. It seems like there should be a receptionist there, but there's no one. No one at all to greet you, except, perhaps, each other.
If you venture out of the derelict hotel, you find youself having to climb down wreckage of buildings--many of which look the same as the hotel you were just in. The derelict buildings are unstable and strange--some seem to have been destroyed in floods, others are corroded away, one strangely covered in what seems to be dry blood. Be careful descending the several stories to the ground, although each subsequent hotel is more and more destroyed than the last.
Past the hotels are a dark series of tunnels and caverns. Some contain the magical, some the dangerous, some are open and free to be explored, to find remnants of people unknown.
One of the tunnels, lined around its entrance by the ragged edges of what looks like torn skin, opens up into a winding stone staircase that leads up, and up, and up. It's at least a hundred steps as you climb, but the most steps your climb, the lighter it gets. Up and up, until you step blinking into the glowing neon of the diner. There's a hole in the floor, the linoleum seemingly fallen away to let you through.
Once you step into the light, you feel a bit strange. Maybe it's the dazzle of the desert sun, or maybe it's the pervasive feeling of being watched. Out of the corner of your eye, you think you see someone watching you--but when you turn to look, there's no one and nothing there. But the feeling is always there. The only way to be free of it is to delve back down into the catacombs.
The sense of being watched may put you on edge. It might make you more snappy, or it might undermine your inhibitions, making you more likely to take risks, to try and prove whatever or whoever it is watching you that you are one to be watched. Prove them wrong, or right.
The waiter greets you with a smile, as if this is a totally normal way to enter his place of business.
"Welcome to the Stardust! What can I get for you? We have a nice cherry pie right now! How about I warm up a slice?"
Welcome to Wellstone! For those who have been here before, the town is repaired, the cracks in the earth gone--except for the one leading down the stairs in the diner. The saloon has cold drinks, the bathhouse has hot baths and a soggy coyote manning the towels. The receptionist hands you a key when you enter the hotel, the bulletin board is ready and waiting with multi-colored post-its. And the General Store is stocked to the gills with cowboy trinkets and paraphernalia, including massive stetson hats, headlamps, and lanterns. Somehow they work without any visible power source--weird! When you pick up a light source, the air crackles around you and if you have a walkie-talkie, it buzzes with static.
tl;dr:
- You wake up in a derelict, destroyed version of the Staywell Hotel. You must make your way out of the hotel, down past many other destroyed versions of the Staywell, and through the catacombs to get to the surface.
- On the surface, you step into the Stardust Diner, and immediately have the feeling of being watched.
Ride 'em Cowboy
Content warnings: mild bovine coercion, alcohol
Come on, hot stuff. You know you want to.
You don’t look too tough.
You think you can tame me?
In the saloon, you hear a voice in your head. It calls to you, the words seductive and enticing: you want to prove it wrong, you want to find out what it’s promising, you hate to lose. Whatever the motivation, you find yourself abandoning your drink and making your way to the new attraction at the back of the saloon: the bull.
It’s a big boy: a massive mechanical bull. Covered in spotted cowhide, with a bull head and big horns, this thing sits on a massive pedestal like a challenge. Around it is spread... relatively thin padding and a flimsy rope to keep the audience back an appropriate distance.
The compulsion keeps a hold on you until you’re on the bull. Maybe you’re on it with a friend, or a stranger, and it starts up with a mechanical buzzing. It starts to sway under you, and now you have just one job: stay on.
It starts easy, but gets harder as it goes along. It’s incredibly difficult to stay on for more than a few seconds. But during that time, you feel amazing. You feel hot as hell, in whatever way that works for you: sexy, powerful, bold, in control.
Until he throws you off onto the padding or into the crowd! When you get thrown, there's a good chance you'll go flying into the crowd. Hopefully they're ready to catch you!
If by some miracle you manage to stay on for more than 45 seconds, the bartender slides you a bullrider special: a spicy whiskey cocktail with a hint of lime. Feel free to leave it up to pure chance, and have the mods roll a die for you to see whether you manage to stay on or not.
tl;dr:
Come on, hot stuff. You know you want to.
You don’t look too tough.
You think you can tame me?
In the saloon, you hear a voice in your head. It calls to you, the words seductive and enticing: you want to prove it wrong, you want to find out what it’s promising, you hate to lose. Whatever the motivation, you find yourself abandoning your drink and making your way to the new attraction at the back of the saloon: the bull.
It’s a big boy: a massive mechanical bull. Covered in spotted cowhide, with a bull head and big horns, this thing sits on a massive pedestal like a challenge. Around it is spread... relatively thin padding and a flimsy rope to keep the audience back an appropriate distance.
The compulsion keeps a hold on you until you’re on the bull. Maybe you’re on it with a friend, or a stranger, and it starts up with a mechanical buzzing. It starts to sway under you, and now you have just one job: stay on.
It starts easy, but gets harder as it goes along. It’s incredibly difficult to stay on for more than a few seconds. But during that time, you feel amazing. You feel hot as hell, in whatever way that works for you: sexy, powerful, bold, in control.
Until he throws you off onto the padding or into the crowd! When you get thrown, there's a good chance you'll go flying into the crowd. Hopefully they're ready to catch you!
If by some miracle you manage to stay on for more than 45 seconds, the bartender slides you a bullrider special: a spicy whiskey cocktail with a hint of lime. Feel free to leave it up to pure chance, and have the mods roll a die for you to see whether you manage to stay on or not.
tl;dr:
- There's a mechanical bull in the back of the saloon!
- There's a strange deep voice in your head, coercing you into giving it a shot.
- It's hard to stay on, but when you're on it, you feel powerful, bold and in control.
- The padding's pretty thin and you'll get thrown hard when you do. You might hit someone!
- If you stay on for more than a 45 seconds, you'll get a fun little drink as a reward.
Off into the sunset
Content warnings: coercion, body horror, monsters, flesh-eating acid, altered mental states, eyes
Come on, hot stuff. You know you want to.
You don’t look too tough.
You think you can tame me?
Those same words in a similar voice call out to you no matter where you are in Wellstone: in the hotel corridors, in the desert, the tunnels of the catacombs. It's again hard to resist the call, and you move toward the voice.
A silhouette looms before you. It looks a lot like a bull, but you can't make out any specific features except the horns and its sheer size. It's still while you mount it, still for a moment to let you get your balance, before it's racing through Wellstone on fast hooves.
There may be someone already on it, or someone coming to the beast at the same moment as you. You mount it together, in a strange headspace where all you can do is mount the beast.
You don't know where it's heading, but you know it can't be good, for now that you're on the creature, you can see it for what it is. It's a bull, sort of. A bull without skin or fur, flesh and muscle undulating under your thighs, flexing and pulling in a way that you shouldn't be able to see. Between the fibers of muscle, you see eyes peering at you, eyes looking at you, eyes blinking, eyes crying. The beast is a kind of horror, and when you look at those eyes, that horror pierces into you, deep into your core.
Now, you probably want to get off. Your body is frozen, holding on to flesh and horns. The only way to get off is either to rally yourself, digging into the depths of determination in your soul, or to have someone encourage you. If you're on the beast together, you can either spiral into despair, or encourage each other to let go, to get off of there. If someone is watching from the sidelines, they can help, even if they probably can't keep up with the beast.
If you're able to get your body to unclench, you'll be thrown off the beast, falling heavily to the ground in a pile of pain. But at least you aren't being carried where it wants to take you: If you're on the surface, it takes you to the well in the middle of the graveyard and dumps you into it, letting you fall the long, long fall into the cistern below. If you're in the catacombs, it will dump you right into the acidic water of the cistern to be eaten alive.
tl;dr:
Come on, hot stuff. You know you want to.
You don’t look too tough.
You think you can tame me?
Those same words in a similar voice call out to you no matter where you are in Wellstone: in the hotel corridors, in the desert, the tunnels of the catacombs. It's again hard to resist the call, and you move toward the voice.
A silhouette looms before you. It looks a lot like a bull, but you can't make out any specific features except the horns and its sheer size. It's still while you mount it, still for a moment to let you get your balance, before it's racing through Wellstone on fast hooves.
There may be someone already on it, or someone coming to the beast at the same moment as you. You mount it together, in a strange headspace where all you can do is mount the beast.
You don't know where it's heading, but you know it can't be good, for now that you're on the creature, you can see it for what it is. It's a bull, sort of. A bull without skin or fur, flesh and muscle undulating under your thighs, flexing and pulling in a way that you shouldn't be able to see. Between the fibers of muscle, you see eyes peering at you, eyes looking at you, eyes blinking, eyes crying. The beast is a kind of horror, and when you look at those eyes, that horror pierces into you, deep into your core.
Now, you probably want to get off. Your body is frozen, holding on to flesh and horns. The only way to get off is either to rally yourself, digging into the depths of determination in your soul, or to have someone encourage you. If you're on the beast together, you can either spiral into despair, or encourage each other to let go, to get off of there. If someone is watching from the sidelines, they can help, even if they probably can't keep up with the beast.
If you're able to get your body to unclench, you'll be thrown off the beast, falling heavily to the ground in a pile of pain. But at least you aren't being carried where it wants to take you: If you're on the surface, it takes you to the well in the middle of the graveyard and dumps you into it, letting you fall the long, long fall into the cistern below. If you're in the catacombs, it will dump you right into the acidic water of the cistern to be eaten alive.
tl;dr:
- A voice calls out to you, no matter where you are in town. A bull appears, and you feel compelled to ride it, either alone or with a friend.
- As soon as the bull begins to run, you see that it isn't really a bull at all, but an awful fleshy, eye-full monster.
- It wants to dump you into the acid of the cistern, and the only way to get off is to rally the depths of your determination. It's a lot easier to do that with a friend!
no subject
“Of course it doesn’t have a mind. It’s dead. It’s a construct, not a person.” He knits his brows together and turns to look at the girl. “Are you saying that you did nothing to make it come into being? It just…started following you?”
no subject
"Con-what? I only touched it and it woke up." Frowning, Daine adjusts her borrowed coat. Should she demonstrate? She has a sense that whatever's been happening when she touches them probably shouldn't, but it's not painful or upsetting. Until this last one, they've stopped moving and gone inert when she's told them to, but even if this dead two-legger isn't as obedient she feels safer with it than she does with this tall living one.
She glances around. There are other bones showing here and there. This scapula at around her eye height seems likely. As she approaches and starts to reach for it, the skeleton pads after her and catches her wrist gently. Daine pulls free, instantly contrary. "Don't you be like that. What's it matter to you? Are you jealous?" she demands. The skeleton does not have any form of answer to that, but it stays close.
no subject
He decides to try a different tack. “I could show you the way out of here, if you like? Perhaps he won’t follow you topside.”
no subject
"I can smell the way out myself. Or I could. Two-legger noses aren't worth much," Daine complains, tipping her head back and trying to scent the air. Wanting to spite the skeleton that's only working off of her own subconscious desires she reaches for the scapula embedded in the tunnel wall again. It doesn't try to stop her this time.
When she touches the bone there's a blinding white flash, shocking in the dimness, as another portion of her life force transmutes all at once and sinks into the remains. Daine hisses through her teeth, dark spots in her eyes and a roaring in her ears, and sways as her knees go weak. The hovering skeleton braces her, clicking its teeth together once or twice. The clicking doesn't correspond with the jaw movements someone saying I told you so or anything similar would use, but the impression is there regardless. "Don't fuss, I'm fine," she mutters.
Another skeleton, this one shorter and with a dramatically fractured skull, is pulling itself together and trying to get out of the wall, the stone that had held it trapped cracking and crumbling. As it tries to step out into the tunnel it's arrested by part of one foot still stuck in the wall, and somehow manages to look startled. Give it a minute.
no subject
The new skeleton extracts itself from the wall with great effort, its posture and movements unlike any construct Palamedes has seen, either in Wellstone or in his memories. They’re fluid, downright human. Like the first skeleton, this one doesn’t even seem to quite realize that it’s dead.
“Have you put their souls back in them?" he asks, sounding awed and excited. "Is that it?"