2.0 Test Drive Meme

[wellie]

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.

Comments

John Gaius | The Locked Tomb | will keep canon for next TDM

[necrolord]

one. diner nights

There's a new guy in the Diner. That's normal, and so is the guy, mostly: he's profoundly average-looking, brown-skinned and skinny, probably thirty-something. The outfit is a little much, but that's probably not his fault.

It's the eyes that stand out, when he turns to look at you. Black-on-black with a luminous ring, burning like an event horizon. He's been scanning the crowd as though looking for someone, frowning faintly, but now he rallies to a smile and raises his beer in greeting.

"Having fun?"

two. horses

The new guy is trying, with painful earnestness, to befriend every horse in town. Someone's deigned to hand him a fistful of sugar cubes, and he's outside the hotel with the tied-up steeds, cooing and petting their big soft noses.

Then he stops. He turns, as though drawn by a magnet, to stare out into the desert. There, a skeleton horse walks among the scrub, its bones gleaming bare under the sun.

"Who is she," he whispers, faux-reverent or maybe real-reverent, and he wheels on you. "Can you introduce me?"

three. graveyard

There is a man standing silent among the graves, eyes unfocused, staring out into the middle distance. As you approach, he rocks back and forth on his heels, chews his lip.

"Okay," says the guy, real slow, like he's building to something. "Let's pretend this is a normal question. Can you feel the skeletons?"

graveyard smash

[hellonspectacles]

By sheer coincidence, Palamedes has slowly been making his way towards the man over the past twenty minutes or so. Every few plots he pauses, crouching down to look at the gravestone; sometimes he takes a notebook out of his pocket and writes in it, sometimes he briefly rests his hands on the rock. Sometimes, he just seems to look at it for a moment, and then move on.

Pal has been in Wellstone five months now, and it hasn’t escaped his notice that sometimes the graves change. There’s a pattern to it, he’s sure—if only he can find it.

He doesn’t even notice the newcomer until they’re nearly on top of each other, and when he speaks, Pal looks up sharply from where he’s crouched at a grave nearby and blinks his luminous grey eyes at the man.

“Not precisely how I would put it…but yes. More or less.”

[necrolord]

At this, some tension goes out of the man's shoulders, and he exhales a long breath.

"Well, cheers for that," he says, and turns to face Palamades; his smile is faintly wry, under the horrible eyes. "I was beginning to worry it was just me. How would you put it?"

[hellonspectacles]

To be entirely fair to John, Palamedes once called the graveyard death-y; in comparison can you feel the skeletons is a lot more precise.

Pal begins to smile as well, though his expression falters slightly as the man's eclipse-like eyes suddenly bore into him. It's almost enough to make him hesitate--but it's not like anyone can help what their eyes look like, right?

He brushes himself off as he stands. "I would say that I can sense the presence of buried organic material consisting of a mix of protein, collagen, calcium, and phosphorus. But that's just a fancy way of saying 'bones.'" This time he does smile, awed and hopeful. Nearly everyone in town can tap into some ability or other, but none of them have described anything so familiar as this. "You really can sense it?"

[necrolord]

John catches the hesitation, and his smile goes a little lopsided, awkward; he knows how he looks. But this is more interesting, so he seizes on the question.

"I really can. Except it's," and here he waves a hand, vague, "less collagen and phosphorus and more a dead body. I can see you," he tips a hand to Palamedes, "and that headstone, and the fellow six feet under the dirt. A bit like looking into a pond and seeing the fish under the water, except it's not really looking. Hell of a thing to put into words."

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes nods eagerly, excitedly. Whatever discomfort had briefly made him hesitate has fully evaporated. What the man describes isn't precisely the same, but it's remarkably close to his own experience. "No, no, I know what you mean--only, Emperor's bones, it took me weeks to figure it out. For me, it's like the pond has lots of muck in it, and I can only see one bit of the fish at a time. So I have to piece what I'm seeing together from its disparate parts."

He offers his hand. "Palamedes Sextus. Would you mind if I tried something?"

graveyard

[sacrilegiousact]

[It's an odd question. At least, he thinks it's an odd question, with how little he remembers about what's normal, but he doesn't really think he's normal, and he certainly doesn't think having pitch black eyes is particularly normal.

So instead of acting particularly shocked, he glances towards the graves. Does he? He feels something, but he can't say it's tied to the graveyard. Certainly not skeleton related. Probably.]

The skeletons buried here specifically?

[His tone is remarkably deadpan. This might as well just happen.]

[necrolord]

[ 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.

graveyard

[mediaphobic]

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.

[necrolord]

[ 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?

[mediaphobic]

[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?

[necrolord]

[ 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.

[mediaphobic]

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.

diner

[anglophone]

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.

[necrolord]

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."

[anglophone]

"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.

[necrolord]

Is that the bit they're in? He wasn't aware, but it sounds like it could be true.

"Not mind control," he says, with a slightly uncertain smile. It hurts, again, to dwell on this. "Haven't figured out the lasers yet. Hopefully I'll crack that one just in the nick of time, when we're under attack by," and here he waves a hand, vague, "desert monsters. Zombies, apparently."

[anglophone]

"Lasers are good," Alec says, lightly, "Maybe you can make their heads explode. Grapes in a microwave."

That's how you deal with zombies, going by jumbled impressions of digitized ghouls on the other end of imaginary weapons. He's pretty sure the guy isn't being entirely serious about the lasers, but the zombies don't sound that unbelievable.

"I'd rather deal with zombies than whatever is going on with the meat puppets." Alec turns to the waiter, who's cheerfully polishing a milkshake glass. "Hey, dipshit. You know anything about the brain-hungry undead?"

"You tried our pancakes yet? They're just the fluffiest things. I could eat 'em all day," the waiter answers, brightly. Alec pulls a face and tsks, shaking his head.

"See? Now that's disturbing."

Two;

[curiouslycursed]

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."

[necrolord]

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."

Three

[gotaknife]

At first, Martin thinks the man standing in the graveyard might need help - something in the way he's just staring off into the distance. There's no shortage of weird things that happen around town, so maybe this guy is just the victim of one more.

He's not entirely sure what to expect when the stranger opens with 'pretend this is a normal question' except for anything but. Feeling skeletons sure wasn't on the list, though, and suddenly it's clear. This guy isn't the victim of some weird thing, the odds are, he is some weird thing.

"Ah. What? No, no - I, uh, definitely can't feel any skeletons?" It's not an intentional question stammered out, but Martin can't help following it up with, "Why? Can you?"

[necrolord]

The guy winces, but in the awkward, smiling way of someone making an embarrassing confession at a party. He scrubs a hand back through his short hair, blows out a breath.

"Maybe a bit. How bad do you think it would be, hypothetically, if I thought I could sort of... see the skeletons in the graves? Would we chalk that up as normal-grade going crazy, or...?"

[gotaknife]

It's weird. It's beyond weird, but at least the stranger seems as perplexed about it as Martin does, and really, is it any weirder than when he arrived and there were eyes everywhere, even blinking up at him in his oatmeal?

"Well... Weird things happen here sometimes. I guess this wouldn't be the weirdest, exactly? And, I mean, I guess if you have the presence of mind to think you might be going crazy, you're probably not?" There's a beat of hesitation. "When you say, you can see the skeletons in their graves, though, do you mean you can like, see them through the dirt see them, or...?"

[necrolord]

"Not see them see them," he agrees, as though relieved to sort this out aloud, "it's more like— you know when you're in a dark room with somebody, and you know where they are, even though they haven't moved in a bit? That peripheral feeling, you know?"

He chews his lip, considers this.

"Suppose it's not much better to say I can feel the skeletons, is it. I'd probably chalk that up as sounding worse. I swear it doesn't feel creepy."

[gotaknife]

It's a bit concerning, this stranger and his ability to... see, or rather feel the skeletons in the ground and Martin is genuinely unsure which would be worse.

"Yeah... yeah, that's definitely... um. Unique, I guess?" It's probably the kindest way he can describe it anyway. "But, I mean, I guess it wouldn't feel creepy if it's something you could always do?"