wellie: (Default)
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.



anglophone: (Default)

diner

[personal profile] anglophone 2023-07-13 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
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: =+ (a million years away)

[personal profile] necrolord 2023-07-14 07:19 pm (UTC)(link)
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: (002 | those wooden boys)

[personal profile] anglophone 2023-07-14 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
"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: =+ (to the heavens)

[personal profile] necrolord 2023-07-21 03:23 pm (UTC)(link)
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: (002 | those wooden boys)

[personal profile] anglophone 2023-07-21 09:45 pm (UTC)(link)
"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."
necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (ninety meters of brick)

[personal profile] necrolord 2023-07-27 01:15 am (UTC)(link)
John tips his head like he's really considering the head-exploding plan. Still: it's the demonstration that's properly spooky. He whistles long and low, impressed, as the guy walks away.

"Here's hoping those aren't the zombies. I don't love the idea of ordering pancakes by day and," here he makes a horrible little boom gesture with his fingers, "by night."
anglophone: (010 | little dogs like you)

[personal profile] anglophone 2023-07-27 03:10 pm (UTC)(link)
That's a good whistle. Alec makes an internal note to find out if he knows how to whistle later, for similar conversational purposes.

"Doubt it." A quick break to cram more fries into his mouth, watching the waiter go through more of his mechanical routine. "Zombies are dead. They're not."

Alec drags his straw back to his mouth and drinks deeply, one long continuous obnoxious slurp. He taps his fingers on the counter top. The waiter's left foot catches funny on the floor, and so he stumbles awkwardly.

The waiter's smiling expression shifts. It's barely noticeable, a faint and passing consternation, hardly a dent in his sunny good cheer before he rights himself and keeps moving. Alec has stopped slurping.

"Careful," he says, softly. "That floor looks slippery."

Alec's plate of fries slides down the counter to within John's reach. He slips off the stool and stretches his arms out behind his back, rolling his wrists.

"You can have the rest of those, if you want. I just remembered I have to go check on something. Best of luck with the laser eyes, yeah?"
necrolord: == (all that's left)

[personal profile] necrolord 2023-07-27 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)
John watches. It's a little thing, easy to dismiss, and yet. He feels the stumble like the hitch of some phantom limb; it's all cluttered in at the edges of his awareness, his peripheral-vision-but-not. Kills him with migraine when he tries to untangle the details, but if he just sits back and trusts his gut, he knows what he's seeing. There are muscle groups and medical terms just past the tip of his tongue.

Mind control? he could say. Or some tutting concern, probing and intrigued. I get the cool eyes and you get telekinesis for assholes?

"Sure," he says instead, like he believes it. But he's looking at Alec too thoughtfully to sell that. "If you find the zombies, let me know."

He takes up a fry and settles in to watch the waiter walk away.
anglophone: (008 | i might have hit my peak already)

[personal profile] anglophone 2023-07-28 01:47 am (UTC)(link)
There's a version of Alec that would know enough to pretend to flinch under the thoughtfulness of John's more-than-human gaze. This version meets the balefulness of the floating coronal ring with a lesser kind of thoughtfulness, the pale blue as shallow as the black is deep.

"Likewise." Alec smiles like any mildly obnoxious teenage boy might smile. "Unless you get bit first."

He walks out of the diner with a slight saunter, brightening his smile as he goes past the once-more oblivious waiter. He'll be halfway back to the hotel when he realizes he didn't ask for the stranger's name, and sitting on the front desk when it occurs to him that he probably should have. Oh, well.