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.

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[By this point she's found a half wall to rest the bar on and a something she can hold in one hand, and is attacking the tip with a will. She doesn't seem surprised to be addressed.]

I hope so.

[The old woman holds up... this is a poking stick, that's all she can say, and examines the end. Her voice is rough and cracked and a bit querulous, but there's still vigor in it.]

Be better if I had a hammer and an anvil. Better yet if I could heat it first, not that this would get me anything great. But, it's more dangerous now than when I started.

[She looks over at her audience with a crooked half smile.]

I was a swordsmith once. Been a long time though.

[ Oh, this was a mistake, but one he can't make himself regret: a swordsmith, and an experienced one, at that, standing in front of him. Flynn swallows, watching the sun glint off the very tiny facet at the tip of the rod. ]

At the very least if you find yourself beset by any particularly vicious snakes, you'll be alright?

[ He steps closer against his better judgement, though well out of swinging range. The longing on his face is hard to hide. ]

How hot would it need to get in order to be properly shaped? I suppose a campfire is out of the question?

Hah! We'll see. A lot of those about?

[She raises her gray eyebrows as she picks up on some anxiety, and sets the poking stick back down on the half wall with slightly theatrical care. Lashan is in good condition for someone physically in her midseventies but she doesn't think someone so young and hale-looking would have much to fear.]

Mmm. Yeah, I'm afraid it is. I'd need something a lot hotter and more consistent. Probably charcoal's involved, and... a bellows apparatus to feed it air.

[She grimaces as she hits the edge of her knowledge. A forge that can handle iron - she must have been familiar with those, but there's a gap now and it hurts to approach. Better veer off instead of peering into it.]

Looking for weapons?

[ Charcoal, and a bellows, and red-hot metal being pounded into shape. It's an abstract idea more than a memory but it still makes him ache. Flynn hesitates for just a moment, then uncurls his arm and pulls from the belt at his hips a little piece of metal that was stashed there, mostly hidden by his jacket.

It is, now that it's out in the light, very clearly the hilt of a sword. Nothing fancy: just a wrapped steel grip and a flat crossguard, blackened across the top, with a little twisted bit of melted metal right where the blade should be. ]

Something better than this. I was hoping... but it doesn't matter anyway, because I seem to have forgotten how to...

[ He makes a rough little sound and looks away, sharp, annoyed at his own emotion. His knuckles are white on the sad little grip. ]

I was a swordsman, I think, except that if you handed me that poker I wouldn't know what to do with it anymore, so it's much better in your hands.

[She'd like to touch and handle that useless remnant of a sword, but Need's more intent on the boy, her black eyes sharp but not without sympathy.]

You forgot recently, and not as part of [She gestures, indicating this whole situation], is that it? This is a fresh wound.

How did it happen?

[ Perceptive, Flynn notes absently, or perhaps he's just that obvious. He isn't sure he likes the second option, but it's worth keeping in mind. Probably he should be better about controlling his own reactions, so that he isn't so easily read by strangers, but... there is something so achingly familiar about this particular stranger that maybe, this one, it's alright.

Carefully, he holds the hilt out for inspection. ]

To be very honest, I'm... not sure. You're correct. When I arrived here initially, I didn't know much about myself, but I knew how to use a blade, and well. After— after the town was... destroyed, and I was lost, I woke again without that knowledge. That's all I know. I know that I should know how to hold this, but I can't make it work.

[It's some of both. Lashan takes the sad remnant of a sword in her large, scarred hands and weighs it, turning it over, though she mainly keeps her level gaze on the boy it belongs to.

There's enough solid weight in the hilt to suggest the tang of the blade is still there under the grip. The knowledge of what she could do with this, if anything, exists but it's out of reach, with all that actual experience of making and mending swords. Regardless she has the sense that it's been a staggeringly long time since she actually worked in a smithy.]

I see. [Sort of. Lashan is the sort who likes to piece things together in the background for herself more than have them explained to her. She can ask clarifying questions later.] A serious loss. Your body itself has forgotten, I assume. As if you'd had a stroke.

Can you learn it again?

Yes!

[ To the first, a desperate burst of affirmation because yes, that is precisely what it feels like: the knowledge was there and now it's gone like it never was at all, except he remembers holding a sword tight in his hand and fighting like he was in a partnership with it. It feels, he imagines, the way it might to have lost a limb. ]

And— and I have to— well, it doesn't matter whether I think I can, does it? I'm going to try. I have to. Being defenseless, here, it—well, I think it really is best to have some kind of weapon. The one you're making is better than nothing.

[She nods.]

Good. It's a terrible blow to lose that skill. It was part of you and I doubt anyone here has many of those to spare. But you can't let that loss consume and define you. You might never get back to what you had, but you're young and strong and what you can accomplish is worth working towards.

[This feels right. It feels good to have advice to give, even if it's brief. Lashan exhales, sinks back a little.]

Tell me about the dangers here.

[ It means almost too much to him, is the thing. It means enough that maybe Flynn will cling to those words later, alone in the darkness of his room when he's swinging a stick and trying to remember how to make it dangerous. That he is free to re-learn those skills— that just because he can't use a sword doesn't mean it's a permanent state, that the lack of it doesn't have to define him— it means everything.

He clings to them, a little selfishly and a little desperately, and swallows back the part of him that wants to ask this perfect stranger are you sure and how do you know and can you teach me.

It isn't the time. He can be useful now, in other ways, and so his back straightens up and his stance evens out and he says, like a military report, ]

They're varied. That's part of the problem: it's impossible to predict from month to month what the next threat will be. At first, we were simply threatened by creatures under sheets and a vague sense of dread, but it has escalated. Last month, there were... versions of everyone in town, like seeing a copy of yourself. Those copies were trying very hard to kill us. Not having a weapon made it very... difficult. To survive.

[The desperation in this boy's eyes... Poor thing is in a period of loss and uncertainty and wants something to be sure and true. Lashan takes a couple steps closer, offering the remains of his sword back to him in an open palm. If he doesn't shy away from her reach she puts her other hand heavy on his shoulder for a moment, her black-eyed gaze steady.

She is sympathetic, and glad that he's trying to move forwards instead of lying in the grief of it. There's also a 'but' there which, she doesn't know what it is. It's not a malevolent one. Maybe just that she's reserved and it doesn't feel right to show too much of that sympathy.]

Good lad. [She considers the news.] How long have you and others been here? I'm going to assume no one's appeared to tell you why any of this is happening.

Do you think these were close reflections of the people they mirrored? Did they know things you didn't?

[ He more than accepts the touch: he takes it like he was made for it, leans in a little, startled at the closeness and more startled still at how it (and the praise) makes his stomach lurch with some strange combination of satisfaction and anxiety.

Good lad. He has done well. He has to continue to do well. How closely those two facts are twined.

Carefully, with all the discipline in him, he keeps his gaze and his voice steady. ]

This is the beginning of the fourth month since I woke up here along with most of the others. While we've been gathering information as best we can, the existing occupants of the town are few, and they've never had answers. Talking to them, you'd think nothing at all was strange. It can get quite frustrating.

[ Nope, don't get off-track, Scifo, you were asked a question. Focus. Flynn swallows. ]

The doubles, though— they did seem to know much more than any of us. They were accurate reflections in appearance, but they were uniformly much worse people than anyone currently in town. They acted as though they were the true versions of us. It is... hard to say that they weren't, because it's hard to say who we really are. We could be anyone.

[Need purses her lips slightly before she can make her expression resume steady, sharp-eyed neutrality. They've just met; it's not healthy for this boy to immediately crave her approval like he's a dog she raised from a pup. She reminds herself, the situation is strange and unstable and she doesn't have many of the facts. Also for all she knows withdrawing just yet will immediately put him into a spiral of shame, as young people are prone to.

It's exhausting to be a child. She's glad to be old.]

I see. I don't expect you to know everything, but now I must wonder if they appeared as you did and became hostile on sight or whether they hated you from their first moment here.

[Knowing that would tell her something... if she knew more. How annoying.]

One of them hurt you?

[ Later, he'll have the good sense to be embarrassed about it, and remind himself to reign his emotions in. It won't work, but he'll certainly try, because the spill of naked feeling over his face at that question is embarrassing, too much. He looks away, swallows hard. His back is rigid. ]

It will not sound like the truth, but— one killed me. Just last week. I shouldn't be... Their lethal intent was clear. This is not a safe place.

[Need has withdrawn her hand so she can clasp both behind her back, as best she can with shoulders that protest the motion. She studies the boy, taking in his face, his body language.]

Hmm. No, I believe you. These aren't normal circumstances. I imagine the typical rules for what is and isn't possible have been suspended, or are malleable. Have others died and returned? Were you so unfortunate so as to discover this, yourself?

[She is dead herself, and has been for a long time, but sees no reason to tell this to an overwrought child at the moment. There's... oh, how annoying, the sense of things she can't consciously recall is very strong.]

[ Flynn's answer sticks in his throat; he swallows around the lumpen swell of emotion and answers, as steadily as he can, ]

I believe I was the first. I also know there were others, and that no pattern is clear. You, um... seem familiar with disruptions like this, to be asking these questions. I suppose it's foolish to ask whether you remember why?

[She smiles a little crookedly and does not say what she already decided to withhold, for the moment at least.]

I know I'm quite a bit older than I look, and you may have noticed, I don't look young. I'm sure I've had a lot of strange experiences I don't recall. Losing memory and context does turn some older people childlike and anxious! Maybe it's just in my nature to be steady.

[ A little smile flickers onto Flynn's lips, there and gone again. He relaxes, at least, some of the tension bleeding from his shoulders. ]

A steady nature is certainly a boon. I, ah, wish I felt a little more steady. It's been difficult to keep a clear head. Is there a trick to it?

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