wellcome | 2.0 Test Drive Meme

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2.0 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. This month, there is a strong possibility that those old west style clothes include a pair of jorts or daisy dukes.

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 April, May, and June.

Applications are open April 26th until May 1st, and May 27th until June 1st. Invites are available for friends of current players.

All-Night Diner

Content warnings: feelings of euphoria and mild intoxication, exhaustion

There’s banner over the diner's doorway reading Welcome!, with colorful flags drooping in the heat. Inside, the waiter greets you with a wide smile and an announcement:

“Welcome to the Stardust Diner! Pie’s on the house today. Have a seat.”

During the day, the diner is just that: a diner. You can get anything on the very extensive menu, including prickly pear lemonade. The pie is free, and everything else is put on the tab for your room that will never come due, probably. It seems like a shame to eat that pie all alone! Accepting a piece of pie makes you feel like you should share this moment with someone. Luckily all the booths are plush and open, and it’s easy to plop down with a stranger to share this special moment.

At night, the mood shifts. The diner’s neon sign is a beacon against the thick darkness, beckoning you in with blinking lights and a line of text reading FORGET YOUR WORRIES. Inside, country-swing music rolls in time with throbbing red lights. The tables have been pushed aside to make room for a makeshift sticky dance floor, and the atmosphere is intoxicating.

It’s as easy as anything to be swept along with the vibes, the dancing, the intensity of it all. When you start dancing, you really do forget your worries. You forget that you don’t know how you got here and that you don’t may not even know the person beside you; you forget that you’re supposed to be anywhere else except here. Everything feels briefly perfect and beautiful, meant to be, no matter what else is happening to you.

When you stumble outside, it will be dawn, no matter how long you think you’ve been there, and you’ll be exhausted enough to simply curl up right there in the sand and fall asleep. Hope you made a friend kind enough to drag you home, or that someone wakes you up!

tl;dr:

The diner is open and the pie is free.
If you get a slice of pie, you feel compelled to share it with someone.
At night, the diner transforms into essentially a nightclub. The vibes are intoxicating and you can forget all your worries and dance the night away.
You can only leave at dawn, and your body will be exhausted. Better get help getting back to your room!

Something’s Coming

Content warnings: blood, blood-sucking, monsters

A few hours after dusk, strange creatures begin to scurry from shadow to shadow, chasing after anything that moves: chupacabras. Large ones. They’re big creatures, the size of large dogs with spikes down their spines and tails, dark and hairless with fearsome teeth. They are everywhere, and they are hungry.

They are indiscriminate in who they try to bite: the biggest among you is just as at risk as the smallest, but the bigger you are, the more of them might come for the fight. No matter where you are, there’s a risk: they seem adept at making their way into buildings. You might find one looming over your bed, resting on your chest, getting ready to bite; one might slip into the diner while you’re dancing and latch on when you’ve forgotten to be concerned.

If a chupacabra manages to bite you, it will suck your blood, and it won’t stop until you’re completely drained unless you do something about it. Having your blood sucked by one is not a pleasant experience, it’s excruciatingly painful and the creatures will do their best to keep you prone while eating their fill. The more they drink, the more exhausted you’ll get, until it’s very difficult to fight them off.

They can be killed or scared off, but the further they are into a fight or into their meal, the harder they are to get rid of. If a chupacabra has latched on to you, you’ll need help escaping!

tl;dr:

Chupacabras strike the town at dusk.
They want to suck your blood, and are indiscriminate in who they attack. They will try and drain you completely.
They can be fought or scared off. It's easier to get rid of them if you have a pal.

The Walls Have Eyes

Content warnings: eyes, trypophobia

There are eyes everywhere. They peer out of cracks in walls, the floor, the grout in your shower, an open cut in your skin. There are even eyes in the craters on the moon, staring down at you unblinking.

These eyes seem familiar, even if you don’t remember them. You feel like you do. You feel a heavy weight settle over you when you look at them, guilt curdling in the pit of your gut.

The eyes belong to someone, or someones, who you’ve hurt or let down. They belong to your greatest mistake, to someone who you left behind, to someone who you regret. The same eyes over and over again, or the eyes of many who you’ve hurt, watching you, judging you, pleading for you to save them or apologize or make up for the mistakes you may not even remember making. You just know that you made them. They eyes don't lie.

The more you ignore these eyes, the more they seem to encroach on you: appearing in the walls, following you around corners, in the creases of your knuckles, the fold of your sheets. They replace the eyes of the people around you, the same eyes staring at you from everywhere you look.

Your skin itches with the constant feeling of being watched. Your head feels tight, and your own eyes feel too full, like there’s too much of you inside your skin. You’d do anything to get away from this feeling.

Soon enough, the mounting pressure explodes: you have to confront them and your guilt and your mistakes, and beg for the forgiveness they’re asking of you. Even if you don’t remember what those mistakes were, or why you should feel guilty, you have to tell someone. If you don't, the feeling will only mount, until all you can see are eyes. Eyes, just eyes.

tl;dr:

The eyes of someone(s) who embodies your regret appear in the cracks of the world around you.
The more you ignore the eyes, the more of them appear, and the more you feel an intense, heavy sense of guilt.
The guilt you feel can be based on things you remember, or things you don't. If it's based on things you don't know, your head will also hurt.
The eyes will ease if you admit your guilt, to the best of your ability. Tell someone your guilt, and the eyes will recede.
If you don't, your whole world will become eyes.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Hey there! Characters maintain the same memories each cycle. While the setting somewhat resets, the characters do not.

You're free to have a mix of whichever memories you'd like, combining memories from different hosts.

The only way to remove memories is through death, where you can lose a major memory if your character dies.

One way you could take this within the scope of the game is that the host could change each cycle (we don't really have rules around bodies, so do what you will with their body). And with the host, you could get a different set of Vibes, or: the general idea of how the world works, according to your character.

[ John wobbles a hand noncommittally, which is perhaps not reassuring. He's still frowning out at the graves. ]

More or less. There are the skeletons, and then there's this... I don't know, aura of death, down below. Please tell me I'm not the only guy who can feel the death blob.

What?

[It was.

Ridiculous.

Unblinking, Aizawa stared at the other man with the tired resignation of a teacher that had spent all day wrangling several dozen chaotic teenagers, none of whom listened to him-- because that's what he was, ostensibly. Wary of the sheer bizarre nature of this question, he stepped away from the adjacent grave and into the open.

There was no need to encourage further interaction with skeletons at this juncture.]

Say that again? But use different words.

[ John at least has the grace to look kind of embarrassed. He chews his lip and settles on: ]

Can you, I don't know, sense the bones? They're just, right there. Bit like when someone's right in your personal space, and you know exactly where they are, even though you didn't look up— no? Just me?

[Experiment time. Aizawa's single eye flashed red and his hair swept upward as if caught by a desert wind. He had activated his Quirk, Eraser, just to check on something...]

How about now? Do you still feel the bones?

[ John rocks back on his heels, startled and then openly impressed. ]

Mostly, yeah. There's something in the way now, it's like I can't— touch them. [ He knows this sounds insane, so he splays his hands in defeat. ] Can I do that? I mean, I don't have enough hair for it, but.

That'll be Me.

[Aizawa said-- and finally blinked, deactivating his Quirk. That had been his first real 'test' since his arrival in Wellstone-- it hadn't worked like he remembered, but there was very little at the moment that synced with his memory.]

It's not something you can just copy unless that's already what you can do. But, there's someone in the hotel that can speak with ghosts. The two of you would make an interesting team.

Edited 2023-07-13 15:49 (UTC)

[ It's a relief when the guy blinks, like being able to flex muscles which had seized. John rubs his hands together absently, almost self-soothing, feeling out the death on the periphery.

Is it normal for people to talk to ghosts? He settles, tentatively, on yes. ]

Does everyone get a superpower? Bones or ghosts or [ and here he wiggles his fingers upwards, spookily, to imply Aizawa's floaty-hair bit, ] blocking it?

... I'm fairly sure I had mine before I lost my memory.

[He relaxed his stance, pointedly not watching the eerie stranger at this juncture despite how animated he was. Sensing dead bodies was not too outlandish-- and the man's manner was affable enough.]

But, I'm a teacher of young people that have unique skills. It likely depends on who we were before we arrived here.

Do you just sense the bones, or is there anything else to it that you know?

Edited 2023-07-13 17:23 (UTC)

A teacher...

[ That feels familiar; he thinks he might've been, too. Maybe it goes with the cadavers. Maybe he was, what, a magic doctor? Gaggles of med students at his heels, talking about bodies, learning them inside and out? It sits at a wrong angle, but it must be close. ]

It's more than the bones. But if a man stands in a graveyard and says I feel death, that's a bit alarming or a bit obvious, isn't it?

[Just.

A look. ]

Sir, we are literally surrounded by death, and I'm not going to judge someone on what they can do with their powers.

Well, I don't know.

[ He splays his hands, hapless. ]

This is day one, for me. Let me keep the training wheels for a minute before I assemble the skeleton army.

You might need that skeleton army.

[Aizawa said briskly, attention piquing at this point. Skeletons were already in the picture-- why not more?]

I don't know if you got the memo, but we've got reason to suspect that we're stuck in a loop that ends with the town destroyed.

We'll need all the help we can get. Even if it's skeletons.

[ It's a kidding-not-kidding image that also feels uncannily familiar; trying to picture skeleton armies flares the migraine behind his eyes. So. That's something.

This is more pressing. He drops his hands. ]

We're doing cowboy Groundhog Day?

Yeah.

It absolutely sucks.

[That's an old movie, but it filtered you freely from the black recesses of his own memory. Anything that wasn't Personal seemed to be readily available...]

Edited 2023-07-13 17:48 (UTC)

The teenage boy holding a cola float and a plate of french fries tilts his head at the question as he considers it.

"I guess," he says, with a shrug that draws up the sides of his white poncho to reveal the edges of his slightly cropped white t-shirt underneath. He pops the straw of his drink into his mouth and sips, looking John over with the mildest of curiosity.

He plops himself onto a diner stool at the countertop and sets his lunch down.

"Cool eyes," Alec adds, like an afterthought.

Pal doesn’t know what John’s reaction will be to the bit of misshapen cow’s bone, but he js certainly not expecting that look of pained horror. Perhaps he has said too much. Perhaps he has gone too far. Perhaps cow bones means something different to this man, or perhaps he feels the same creeping disgust that Pal so often does when he contemplates the power at his fingertips.

But it cannot be denied that John sees something in that lump of calcium phosphate that no one but him does, and so he grasps that fact and runs with it.

“Well, the cow was already dead,” he begins, immediately realizing that that might not sound much better. “Perhaps you’ve noticed the piles of bones at the edge of town? My only hypothesis is that some past residents took care of the animals, and when they disappeared, the poor things starved. Which is dreadful, but—well, as far as I can tell, it happened a long time ago.”

He rolls the bit of bone back and forth between his thumb and forefinger like a worry stone. “…it was a rib when I found it. But I’ve found that with the right kind of concentration, I can turn it into other things.” He winces. “Sorry, that was a bit much, was it?”

"No," says John, in a hurry to soothe him, but there's still a crease of discomfort between his brows. He keeps frowning at the bit of bone, tracking its movement between Pal's fingers. "Don't worry about it. Cows are overrated."

He finds that he means it: fuck cows, honestly. The headache has built to an ugly heat in his sinuses, and he sniffs ungracefully, reaches up to smudge away blood on the edge of his wrist.

"Reminds me of something." Here he slants a humorless smile at Pal and tips his wrist to show the blood, which might be interesting or might just be gross. At least it isn't still running; for whatever reason, his nosebleeds end as soon as they've started. "Not very comfortable, that."

The Cat pads across the sand quietly towards the hotel. They initially don't pay much mind to the man petting the horses. Someone sweet talking the animals isn't terribly interesting, or even unexpected. The interest in the skeleton horse, however, is an entirely different story.

"You know, that is an excellent question." It's probably not even them the man is talking to. Who expects a cat to answer them, anyway? Even a particularly unusual looking one. "I suppose once you've met one bone horse, you've met them all. It's not easy to tell them apart, after all."

So, this? This is new. Funny how the bone horses feel perfectly normal to him, but the talking purple cat throws him for a loop.

John considers this a moment, blinking down at the cat. There's something itching in his mind, some old joke about strange worlds and stranger guides— are you here to tell me I've gone mad— but it's beyond his reach. He breaks into a startled smile anyway, taking in the eye-searing neon against sand.

"I'm sure that's not true," he says, regaining his footing as he goes, "maybe we just need to get to know them better. But I guess they might not be great conversationalists, without lungs."

That makes him feel something: a great welling shudder of uncertainty, a ripple through some deep aquifer in his mind. It trips him up, parts his lips with a moment of faraway tension. A distant migraine looms. It's the same one he gets from mirrors and from pressing the tips of his fingers into the sand.

But there's a certain familiarity to having a sullen teenager at his elbow, and John seizes on that instead.

"Thank you." You have to take what you can get, with teenagers. He's certain of this. "Really fits the spooky energy in this town, I think. I'm told there's no lack of ghosts and magic visions."

[ John whistles out a breath, long and low. He only has the gist of what he's saying, but that's enough. Something has eaten away the whole core of him; he feels like a collection of scraps, dizzy with migraine when he focuses too intently on anything above or below the dirt; why not accept that he's going in circles, too? ]

Huh. Alright.

[ He regards Aizawa more thoughtfully, this time, and offers out a hand: frank and open, his palm clean and bare. ]

Skeleton armies it is. I'm John.

[Ah, how Western.

That thought itself didn't have much context. Nothing did-- but Aizawa trusted his body if not his mind, and his gut told him that this was a sound response. Aizawa accepted the offered hand with a firm shake.]

Shouta Aizawa. Please, don't tell me that your last name is Wick.

"Really?" Alec raises his eyebrows slightly as he swabs a french fry through ketchup. "I guess it fits the whole abandoned theme park bit."

He has a vague sense that's a thing, which slots next to pretty much all the other vague senses of the world he's been working with. Something tells him he might want to keep an eye on that, and speaking of eyes again...

"Do they do anything?" He waves his fryless hand vaguely at his own face. "X-ray vision? Lasers? Mind control?"

He pops the fry into his mouth and chews. Not bad.

“I wasn’t aware that cows were ‘rated’ at all,” says Palamedes, relaxing ever-so-slightly when the man reassures him. His own brows crease in sympathy when John’s nose starts to bleed; he takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and hands it over. “Yes, you have to be careful of that. I have found that it is possible to tap into unusual abilities without being subjected to the symptoms associated with memory retrieval, but it’s a delicate dance. Better to approach one’s talents carefully, in my experience.”

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

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2.0 Test Drive Meme

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diner

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