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Well Mod ([personal profile] wellie) wrote in [community profile] wellcome2023-04-20 02:05 pm
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2.0 Test Drive Meme

2.0 Test Drive Meme

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.



rustedknight: (rusted - 010)

[personal profile] rustedknight 2023-05-04 08:42 pm (UTC)(link)
[ There's no need for Emerald to worry. Jaune's protectiveness extends indiscriminately to everyone, as he'll prove when he winces lightly at her question, then turns apologetic. ]

I do. So does everyone I've talked to. There's nothing happening to you that isn't happening to everyone else. [ His tone is serious, but still gentle and calm. ] Anything strange you're thinking, or feeling, or seeing, there's a good chance it's happening to someone else too. So you can always talk about it, ask any question you want. No one is going to think it's weird.

[ He half-turns in the booth to face her better, resting his hand on the table's edge. ]

Everyone is missing most of their memories. We're all here in a town called Well. There are the people who were here when the first people like us arrived, like the receptionist, and then there's - well, us. The newcomers who don't remember how he got here, or much of anything else.

That's the first part. Are you following so far?
hallucinogem: (i'll settle for lies)

[personal profile] hallucinogem 2023-05-05 03:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[emerald nods along, and there's part of her that is calmed by this idea. the idea that she's in the same boat as everybody else, that she's not being singled out. she has no idea why that's a comfort, but she doesn't know enough about what's going on inside her own head to question it, either. it's... a weird sort of conflict to have to live with. but she's trying very hard to avoid thinking about it too much, and the pie is helping.]

[she only just met jaune, but he really does seem like a nice person. she appreciates, in her heart, that he's taking the time to treat her like an equal and give her some guidance. and she doesn't know why that's so important, either, but... maybe she doesn't need an answer for that yet.]


Okay, so none of us know much about who we are, and the town's small enough that everyone gets hit by the same stuff. I'm with you so far. What's part two?
rustedknight: (rusted - 011)

[personal profile] rustedknight 2023-05-05 04:26 pm (UTC)(link)
[ All the things that comfort Emerald in Jaune's explanation are there because he's felt the same way, and he still does. This is how he wants to be spoken to when he doesn't know anything, and it feels only natural to make that his guide for how he speaks to others. ]

We don't know how to leave. [ He raises a finger from the table, forestalling concern. ] Yet. There hasn't been much tried besides walking into the desert, which - is definitely an idea, but it didn't work, so please don't do that.

[ He'd have to go out there and get her, and it would be a whole thing. She looks smarter than that, but you never know. ]

That's one of the mysteries. As far as I know, everything else is also part of the mysteries, but I'm sure there are people who have figured out more than I have.

Besides that? It's not so bad here. The food is all free, you don't have to pay for the hotel, and you can take anything you want from the general store. The people have been nice, and most of them are helpful. If you stay inside at night, avoid the monsters and the cacti, you'll be all right until we find our way out of here.

[ Let's see...anything else... ]

Oh, right! And the whole town collapsed earlier, I think. Or exploded, and then collapsed? Either way, it put itself back together, and most people were fine. So that's probably not something to worry about for the time being.
hallucinogem: (i'm after rebellion)

[personal profile] hallucinogem 2023-05-09 04:11 am (UTC)(link)
[well, that's a little different. she absorbs it, and by the end of it she's forgotten that she was even eating any pie in the first place. there's some things in there that seem obvious—don't go die in the desert and all that—but then there's... more interesting things. mysteries, as jaune had put them.]

[she leans forward and thinks on the very idea of leaving this place to begin with. it feels cushy enough here. she's still a little suspicious of things almost inherently, but it doesn't feel like... it doesn't feel like it's a trick. none of this feels like a trick, she realizes as she takes in everything about jaune. the tone, the knowledge—and what feels like absolute sincerity, too. like he's the kind of person who couldn't lie if his life depended on it.]

[once she's gotten the rundown, she does focus on one thing that doesn't quite fit together in her head. (if she thinks about it, she's a little worried she'll start getting that killer headache again like when she'd been wandering over here in the first place.)]


You say most people. Are there some people who didn't make it out of the town putting itself back together like that? 'Cause if there's one thing I know it's that nothing comes free in life, and if all this feels too good to be true... it probably is, you know?

[there would be more gravitas to that sentence if she hadn't taken one of the last few bites of pie she had.]
rustedknight: (rusted - 010)

[personal profile] rustedknight 2023-05-17 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Her perspective isn't one that occurred to Jaune before she voices it. He hasn't thought any of this was too good to be true, because it's largely seemed pretty unfortunate, whatever positive spin he's tried to put on it to try to make things easier for her.

It makes him wonder what sort of place she might have come from if a handful of creature comforts and the promise of being looked out for by a community is too good to be true, that there must be another catch somewhere past the lost of their memories and abduction to a strange place.

He watches her eat her pie with a soft furrow to his brow. A feeling he knows enough about now to mark as familiar stirs in him. It's not that she doesn't seem like she can handle herself, or anything like that - she doesn't give off that impression - but everyone can use another set of eyes looking out for them specifically, right? ]


Some people didn't make it. [ He confirms, quietly. ] No one is sure what happened to them, exactly.

But that's not going to happen to us, all right? Because we know about it, now. And if you know about a danger, you can learn to avoid it.

[ Because he's not going to let it happen again, to her, or to anyone else. ]
hallucinogem: (i'm after rebellion)

[personal profile] hallucinogem 2023-05-20 03:24 am (UTC)(link)
[maybe eventually she'll find out what exactly it is making her feel like this is the peak of living. maybe she'll get some context for the nagging feelings that she hasn't had a chance to piece together yet. but until then, she'll just be on her guard as much as she can be, just in case.]

[she sizes up jaune with her eyes, and eventually, after a silent moment, she fixes him with an appreciative look and an upturned corner of her mouth.]


Yeah. You're right. Now that we know what's coming, we can prepare for it, and that keeps people safe. [and, fully aware that she's about to say something very corny, she barrels through the sentence anyway.] And for as long as I'm living here, I guess I don't mind being responsible for a handful of other people. Making sure they keep their heads on their shoulders.

[the reality of the sentence crashes into her a moment later, and she's ready for a deflection once it hits. parried.]

As long as I'm not stealing any problem kids from you with that whole idea. You can have those.
rustedknight: (rusted - 005)

[personal profile] rustedknight 2023-06-25 11:32 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Jaune is visibly buoyed up by Emerald's smile and verbal commitment to taking care of others. If it's corny, Jaune is apparently quite the fan of corn. ]

That's a great attitude. I think you're going to fit in here.

[ What a relief, meeting a like-minded person. Someone who steps up to take responsibility for other people, even if she couches it in a little joke at the end that makes his own smile slant sideways and widen. Despite some scurrilous rumours yet to be spread, Jaune does appreciate a joke or two. ]

And if you're sure you don't want the problem children, I guess I can hang onto them...some of them are pretty endearing, but, well, all the more reason for me to keep them.

[ Even the really annoying, silver-eyed ones. ]
hallucinogem: (and the joke's on you)

[personal profile] hallucinogem 2023-06-26 04:27 am (UTC)(link)
[he might have the wrong idea of exactly how noble and upstanding emerald can be, but she still thinks... she still thinks that this is something she can do. help out others. make sure everyone gets by okay. it's a community, right? that's how communities survive. how does she know that? don't worry about it!]

I'm just doing my best. Glad that you could be my introduction to this place, Jaune. I can't wait to meet some of the other people around here and see what we're all dealing with.
rustedknight: (rusted - 005)

[personal profile] rustedknight 2023-06-27 05:50 am (UTC)(link)
[ Jaune is a fantastic judge of character. Just ask any reputable source, like his best friend, the Curious Cat. ]

That's great. Really great.

[ He beams at her, then glances around the diner, looking out for any other new people...no such luck yet, but hope springs eternal. He'd love to see Emerald get introduced to a few other of the nice folks around town. ]

I'll tell you what. I'm going to see if I can track down a few others and send them your way - just to get you integrated. [ He starts edging out of the booth with the bouncy energy of someone much younger, or perhaps more dog-like. ] How does that sound?
hallucinogem: (too hard to find)

[personal profile] hallucinogem 2023-06-27 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)
[emerald, without even thinking about it, moves herself out of the way so jaune can get through easier. it's honestly really great to see something like this, and she's thrilled to get such a warm welcome. he's a good guy.]

That sounds awesome, actually. I'll probably be hanging out around here all night, and then... well, I guess there's not many other places to go, really. But just tell 'em to look for the girl with green hair and I'll be glad to strike up a conversation.

[she reaches out to shake jaune's hand. this seems a little more awkward of a gesture for her, but she's doing it anyway.]

I appreciate it. Thanks, Jaune.
rustedknight: (Default)

[personal profile] rustedknight 2023-06-30 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Always happy to help.

[ Jaune demurs, a touch bashfully. His interactions (that he can recall) don't always go nearly this well. He's already getting ahead of himself imagining strategy meetings and battle practice.

He clasps her hand firmly and gladly, his callouses not rough enough to make the contact uncomfortable, or so he hopes. Any awkwardness on her part is easy for him to overlook in the depths of his own, but - this did go pretty well. ]


It's been good meeting you. Really. Really, really good. [ That's too many 'really's. ] So - I'll be seeing you around.