1.0 Test Drive Meme

[wellie]

1.0 Test Drive Meme

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Welcome to Well! Characters arrive the same way every month. Your character arrives with only a handful of memories, clad in old west style clothes of your choosing, with 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.

Applications open on January 20th, and the game opens on February 1st. Invites are available for members of the mods' plurk lists.

Put on your dancing shoes

Content warning: Alcohol, intoxication, altered mental state

Something’s happening at the Cactus Pad Saloon. It’s lit up bright against the growing night, and music spills out onto the street. Seems like a fun time that you should check out. In fact, it’s hard not to check it out: the closer you get, the stronger the urge to join the fun. If you’ve been spending a lot of time alone, you’ll feel even more compelled to come get a drink.

The bartender serves up anything you can think of: from whiskey to apple juice to blood, if that’s your preference. She doesn’t blink an eye, no matter what’s ordered. The funny thing is, no matter what you order, once you take a sip, the world feels a little easier to deal with, your worries seem to melt away. You’re flush with sudden confidence.

If you strike up a conversation with the person next to you, conversation flows like you’re talking to an old friend. You feel a sense of kinship, deep and meaningful, good or bad, that bonds you together.

The old record player is playing a fun ditty, and the longer you stick around, the more you’re tempted to join, or start, the dancing. Whether you’re a great dancer or you have two left feet, you find that you feel capable of dancing like no one’s watching. No one knows you here, after all. You barely know yourself, so why not draw a partner into the fray? A party’s better together!

If you end up staying there til closing time, the bartender kicks you out with a gruff “come back tomorrow,” leaving you to stumble home with your new best friend. What was their name again?

Sand trap

Content warning: Quick sand, potential drowning in sand

You step through a door into a room you didn’t mean to enter. You were trying to head into the saloon, or your hotel room, or the bathroom, and instead you’re here: in a small, tight, windowless room in a white-washed building. The air here is old, stale, and thick. Hazy gold light bounces off the walls, but you can’t tell where it’s coming from, since there’s no visible ceiling. The walls just stretch up and up into bright nothingness.

Someone else is there, too, coming through an identical door on the opposite wall. Both doors snap shut, and won’t open again, no matter how hard you try. They won’t even break.

This might not be so bad, except that a sound starts to fill the space: sand, trickling down the walls. It’s just a dusting to start. It comes sprinkling down above, seeping through the cracks in the door. The longer you stand there, the faster it comes: sand flows down the walls in massive torrents, building up on the floor, shifting and thick, trapping you in place.

The only way out is up. When you look again at the walls, you’ll notice it: about 10 feet up the wall hangs a flimsy rope ladder, half-hidden by the waterfall of sand. You’ll have to work together to even reach it, or maybe let the ever-growing pile of shifting, slippery sand lift you up? Be careful, because even if you manage to reach the rope, you both have to get out of here, and the longer you’re here, the faster and harder the sand falls. The ladder seems to go on forever, tens of feet up an endless wall. The better you work together, the closer the top seems. No matter how well you collaborate, they're at least 50 feet high.

When you’ve fought your way through the sand and reached the top of the ladder, you finally see it: the sand is coming in through the open windows of a steeple. You can’t see where it’s from, not really. You can’t see much of anything, but it’s clear: the only way out is, well, out. You have to jump, trusting that yourself and your companion will be safe.

Once free, you land together outside of one of the buildings or rooms you were trying to enter, like nothing happened at all. It’s a calm day, after all.

Memories of the living

Content warning: Cemetery, contemplating mortality

Dusk settles purple over Wellstone. Early stars are out, the moon is thin, and you find yourself inexplicably drawn to the graveyard. You can resist, but the more days you do, the harder it gets. The graveyard is calling to you in a voice you can’t hear.

While it seems small before you enter, once you start walking through the crumbling graves, it seems to stretch endlessly. You pass elaborate dust-covered crypts carved with strange angels; bleached wooden crosses overgrown with cacti; a crumbling old well, long gone dry; worn-down headstones jut at odd angles. Some graves have old offerings on them, brightly colored beads or candles or framed photos, sun-bleached beyond recognition.

You may have been walking for five minutes or fifty, but when you look around, you can’t see to find the exit. You hear howling, and see the flicker of lights from behind the graves, but you can never find their source, no matter how much you look. No matter how long you spend in the graveyard, the sun never seems to sink lower in the sky. An oppressive sense of being watched grows to the point that you whip around, expecting to find someone there until—

You do. You find each other. Others drawn here to the graveyard, walking among the crumbling stones, will end up by the same headstones. Exploring together eases the watchful feeling just a little, but it won’t help you get out. No, you’re looking for something. The exit? No, you’re sure there’s something more important than that.

If you follow your impulses, you may just find it: a gravestone, weathered, old, with a familiar name on it: yours. Your date of birth can be visible, but the date of death is too weathered to read. You may find an offering there, something small and meaningful to you, a small shiny coin or some bright beads.

Once you find your grave, when you look up, you’ll see the exit. You’re really not that far from it, after all, the rusted iron arch barely a stone's throw feet away. Your companion won’t see it yet. You can make a dash for it, get out of this awful place, or help your companion find their own gravestone. When your companion finds their stone, they will also be able to see the exit. Exiting together will alleviate the impulse to come back to this place. Leaving alone will only draw you back, making it more difficult to find your grave again.

You can take the offerings left on your grave if you want, but the sense of being watched will only grow greater until you’re compelled to return them, and leave another offering of your own.

Comments

Harold Finch | Person of Interest (will match format)

[man_who_sold_the_world]

I. Arrival
The first thing that registers is pain. Dull, but very present and steady, centered in his neck and along his spine and hips.

This is normal. Normal for him. Maybe even...right somehow. Not worth remarking on, as he gets his bearings and makes his way to the reception desk, with an unmistakable limp.

"Harold-" He starts, knowing that he should have a last name, yet it doesn't immediately come to mind. Strangely, a whole list of types of birds do. That, he considers privately, is a little unusual, isn't it?

"Finch," he settles on, some well-worn sensation slotting into place, as he says it. Yes. He's offered these two names together, many times.

The receptionist accepts the name with aplomb, and offers a room number and key in return.

Harold turns his head slightly towards a figure spotted out of the corner of his eye (ignoring the flare of increased discomfort, both physical from the twinge in his neck and emotional from feeling like someone's creeped up on him), and offers a small polite smile.

"Oh, hello. Are you checking in, too?"

II. Dancing Shoes

Harold has huddled onto a stool in the corner, with his barely touched whiskey. His posture stays notably rigid, become slumping is barely possible, much less comfortable.

If anyone mentions joining in the dancing, Harold glances towards the dancing floor, almost wistfully. "Oh, I- I couldn't possibly keep up. But thank you. I'll consider it, if a much slower number comes up."

III. Memories of the Living

Once he finds himself in the graveyard, it takes him barely anytime at all to locate a gravestone with Harold, and a birthdate on it. He's not surprised that the last name is as worn away as the death date.

In fact, standing here, he feels almost entirely calm - except for grief laced with something sharper and turned inward. Heavy emotions, yes, but settled. Packed away.

"Strange," he murmurs. "It's almost like I've done this before."

( iii )

[offseers]

Done what before?

[ noah finds the graves a little off-putting. should husks really be buried into the ground like this? though he supposes it's neater than finding them around the world. ]

[man_who_sold_the_world]

Looked at my own grave.

[He glances sideways, and adds, reasonably-]

But that doesn't seem likely, does it?

[offseers]

I can't really say what is likely and what isn't.

[ his handful of memories don't help him much. though . . . dead is dead, certainly. ]

[man_who_sold_the_world]

Hmm. Yes, most of us seem to be lacking quite a bit of context, don't we?

Even the people who ostensibly live here. [The recursive loops in conversation with locals are noticeable, some corner of brain picking away at how they fit together. If he sat an observed long enough, could he figure out exactly what prompts trigger which responses?]

[offseers]

[ noah nods. ]

For me, just seeing these . . . "graves" is strange.

[man_who_sold_the_world]

[Harold shifts to face the young man more squarely.]

Burying the dead?

[offseers]

Yeah. We were at war, so we didn't really have the time or energy to bury our dead. We sent them off through song.

[man_who_sold_the_world]

[He's missing something here, surely. He's fairly certain plenty of peoples at war bury their dead, when they can recover bodies.

He thinks...maybe he has does so? Been to funerals of the fallen, at least.

Was he a soldier? Is that where his injuries came from?]

I'm terribly sorry to hear that.

[But he can't quite help but ask.]

So you'd leave the bodies behind?

[offseers]

Yeah. We don't take them with us.

[man_who_sold_the_world]

[A very brutal war, then. Fast and dire.]

Is it jarring? How...still things are here.

[offseers]

[ noah considers this thoughtfully. ]

It is strange. It's very quiet at times. I don't remember it being quiet.

[man_who_sold_the_world]

I think...I've been very used to quiet, at times.

[He he shifts on his feet a little; standing in one place can be wearing.]

Do you have one of these markers around?

i

[mediaphobic]

"...hm?"

The man in the rumpled clothes sitting nearby looked like he had been... sleeping. The comfortable chair in the lobby had been his napping spot of choice-- and he was still rubbing the grainy remnants of sleep from his dark eyes when 'Harold Finch' spoke up.

Only the coffee-- stale, bitter, and burnt but strong enough to wake the dead had him ambulant at all.

"I think I already have..." He trailed, frowning over the steaming hot sludge that passed for a cup of joe in this place before shrugging. With a tired stretch, he raked a hand through his loose, shaggy hair and focused in on the well dressed stranger.

"Come on. Let's go find our rooms. This place can't be that hard to navigate."

[man_who_sold_the_world]

Harold shifts to look, and, well-

Isn't immediately impressed by what he sees. But first impressions can often be deceiving.

"You think, but you're not sure?" he asks, dryly. "But you're right, it's that not that large an establishment."

He gestures an invitation to walk along together.

[mediaphobic]

"The people at the counter keep repeating themselves,"

He explained quickly, and double checked the numbers on his key before heading towards the hall. For a man that looked so slovenly, with his unshaven face and unkempt hair, he moved with an oddly brisk intensity that was only matched by his unblinking gaze.

"I don't trust them, but it is what it is."

Aizawa shrugged. It wasn't like they had a choice in matters.

"Aizawa Shouta," he added by way of greeting. "It looks like our rooms are on the same floor, Mister Finch."

[man_who_sold_the_world]

"Do they?" Harold murmurs. "How strange."

He'll have to circle back around and observe some more, at some point. Right now he's making an effort to keep up with his erstwhile companion's brisk pace.

"So they are," he says, more agreeably, then hesitates, some niggling bit of formality in the back of his mind. "I beg your pardon. I'm not even sure why I'm doubting my guess here - what is the proper polite form of address for you?"

[mediaphobic]

"To you?"

He glanced over in unblinking analysis, and hummed under his breath as he thought this over.

"Aizawa's fine."

[man_who_sold_the_world]

"But not Mr. Aizawa?"

Some part of his rebels at this unevenness in address, honestly.

[mediaphobic]

"Mr. Aizawa then, if that helps you feel better."

A shrug. It didn't matter much either way for him.

[man_who_sold_the_world]

"It does; thank you."

Harold pauses.

"Do you remember how you got here? Or much else, for that matter?"

[mediaphobic]

"Only my name, my nationality, and that I'm a teacher. Apparently."

It was all a blur, but dwelling on what they couldn't change was going to get them nowhere. He needed to be rational about this-- someone had to be.

"What about you?"

[man_who_sold_the_world]

Harold's brown furrows as he ransacks what memories he can scrape together.

"I think I must have been a farmer, at least at some point."

[mediaphobic]

"Farmers. Teachers. "

He huffed-- not necessarily at Finch, but at the larger situation at hand.

"Do they expect to kidnap professionals, drop them in a pile of dust, and expect us to build a community with nothing but our wits?"

Because... It was liable to start working at this rate.

[man_who_sold_the_world]

"If for some reason I can't currently fathom, you had resources, but not man power. Or maybe more accurately....brain power," Harold muses in response.

"Maybe so."