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

cecelia ardenbury - an oc - ota

[sighsheavily]

o1. twelfth hour (fcfs)

-!!

[she wakes up with a gasp, with the breath that had escaped her in the eleventh hour. or...would have, if it were real? was she dreaming? hallucinating? it's not often she finds herself resting on her back, yet here she is, jolting to consciousness in the hotel room.

her hotel room. an unbroken door, windows not hastily boarded up against standstorms...

after a few minutes to just...take stock of herself in what small, easy ways she can, Cecelia gets up, crosses the room, and opens the unbroken door to peer outside and see if anyone was even there, ears straining to hear other signs of life.]

---

o2. diner (ota)

[this is uncanny. she's sat in this very booth dozens of times for untold amounts of time at various times of day, but...

...but she had been there when the windows shattered. she'd seen it obscured and lost to sand.

during the day, she occupies that seat alone save for a couple, weathered notebooks. but there's plenty of table to sit down at should someone with a fresh slice of pie need a seat; either she doesn't notice it, being so engrossed, or she doesn't mind.

during night, well...]

Something's off.

[she's not even inside (yet), standing across the dusty road and glaring at it. her remark is for whomever is near her.]

It's not been like that before. It's changed. But I didn't see it change at all.

---

o3. chubacabra (fcfs)

No! AH--

[turns out the spell Hold Person only works on...y'know. people. it's a terrible thing to discover when one is being accosted by a horrid, bloodsucking creature, but that appears to be Cecelia's fate, seeing as she couldn't outrun it and now has the monster latched onto her leg - one that will not let go despite her desperate kicking at it in the sand.]

---

o4. eyes (ota)

[oh, this is horrid. revolting. Cecelia doesn't like it, in fact!]

No, no... No, none of this is precisely the same. This isn't a proper loop at all. [she's muttering aloud, drumming her pen against the dining hall table, her leg anxiously moving underneath it, eyes fixed down on her notepad.

see, if she keeps her eyes down here, she doesn't look up and see the Horrors peeking around at her.

she'll look up if she hears someone's footsteps, however, shooting a fast glance toward them to scrutinize them before her gaze darts back down.]

Mm. There's still food remaining. Take what you like.

1 slides a gremlin

[rottencactus]

[Cecelia hears something faint but extremely familiar. After all, who else would be making those kind of sniveling panicked noises other than one particular purple weirdo.]

They're not heeeeere ....there not heeere...!

[What is he doing ...? He seems to be pacing around some ways down the hall, looking at the walls and ceiling. Weird...]

yesss gremolinnn

[sighsheavily]

Wait--

[just as he turns his back to her and starts ambling the other way, Cecelia calls out, peeking out of her room partway.]

Wait, boy! Who? Where--where are the others?

[rottencactus]

H-Hie!?

[Mayoi whips around when he hears a voice, eyes falling on Cecelia for a moment, eyes going wide, before ...]



[He takes off running down the hall away from her!]

[sighsheavily]

A--!

[...

her hair wasn't that messy, was it? she can only just watch him vanish, in no way able to match that frenzied pace.

she sighs, rubbing at her face. maybe she had been dreaming all along...?

no sense in panicking up front: she'll take some time to change clothes, pin back some of her hair, and start downstairs. perhaps she'll spy him when she moves into the dining area...]

3

[notidealist]

[Thud. Thud. Thud. Someone is approaching at a dead sprint like a runner in a race.

The beast has her leg and the darkness makes it hard to see. But Wolfwood knows the night. He swings a wooden board and it hits the creature in the face with a meaty crack. The board cracks but, the bloodsucker is briefly dazed.

The fuck is that damn thing? It's nothing he's seen before. But the damn thing wants to eat-

Fuck it. He makes a noise of disgust and steps closer, hefting the board.]

If you got any tools to get it off, now's the time!

[sighsheavily]

[she yelps, having been so preoccupied that she didn't realize anyone was coming at all, let alone with a blunt object. she flinches, shielding her face with an arm. the crack makes her jolt.

panicked:] I've nothing! Not-- only--! [she frantically pats herself down, letting her notepad and pens spill out into the dust.] Even that I, oh-! [ow. pain.]

[notidealist]

[A pen. He ducks down to snatch it up and flips it. What do you do when a critter is trying to kill someone? Easy.

The pen is mightier than the sword. He rams it into its nose and up towards the brain. It won't kill it. But it is having an issue right now. The Chubacabra lets go and he slaps it upside the head with the board.]

Toss me another pen. [This is bullying but he doesn't give a shit. Damn thing trying to eat someone.]

[sighsheavily]

[her head's spinning, both from fright and blood loss. yet somehow, she can put his command together in her head and find sense, scrambling around to find where the pens fell, sitting up and tossing it his way.

it's a bad toss.

she has a bad DEX stat.

she's lost a lot of blood okay.]

3

[fellthroughtheworld]

[Ruby hears the cry and rounds the corner to see what's going on. She sees Cecelia and the creature latched to her. Her fists clench and there's a moment where she pivots and prepares to move in to help.

But then an echo of a voice plays through her mind.

"How many more lives do you have to ruin before you realize you aren't cut out to save anyone?"

And she freezes. hands fall down uselessly to her side as a sense of fear and grief take hold of her.]

[sighsheavily]

[Cecelia would not say she's happy to facilitate the stunting of character growth in any circumstance, least of all one involving so much blood loss on her part!

as it stands, until some smelly random who wears shoes without socks rushes in with a two-by-four, Cecelia is, as the kids say, kind of fucked. can't just unlock her third eye and magically migraine-learn some fire spells to save her life, smh.]

[fellthroughtheworld]

[Wow. Way to call her out on not wearing any socks Cecelia. That's just rude.

Either way she watches this for what probably feels like ages for both her and Cecelia considering the circumstances.

She's not sure she would call what she's doing steeling herself. But there's more to what she remembers that helps her take a step forward. It's not exactly graceful, but she lunges at Cecelia and the creature and wraps her arms around the beast, making an awkward attempt to try and pull the beast off of her.]

[sighsheavily]

Ah--

[dazed, Cecelia blinks through the dizzy swirl of shapes her darkvision gives her, crying out in anguish as the pull just...pulls her, too.]

Stop, STOP! Ah-!!

1-ish

[thinkfirst]

[ Flynn wakes slowly with the sun streaming bright and heavy into his room, painting the backs of his eyelids red. He wrinkles his nose, tries to turn away from it and roll away from the ache in his body. Everything hurts. He must have been sleeping... wrong...

Except, no. That isn't right. It shouldn't be so bright in here. The bed shouldn't be so large: he opens his eyes to a pillow and sheets beside him, and silence, thick and heavy, and a room he hasn't seen in two months. The world outside is whole and hale; the walls are here. Yuri is nowhere to be found. Flynn has fire in his eyes and fear on his tongue, and his head is hazy and aching, and his limbs feel sluggish. He stumbles up out of bed, turns the wrong way into the bathroom out of habit and curses under his breath.

The sink, filled with cold water, is only very little relief when he plunges his entire head into it and comes up sopping and clear-eyed and confused, staring at his own reflection. His knuckles are white against the porcelain. ]

This is wrong.

[ He tells his reflection, frowning.

By the time he has put his hair back into order and gotten himself dressed and poked his way cautious and confused out of his room (his room, not Yuri's), and then through the hallways and down to the lobby, nothing makes any more sense. No one else seems to understand what happened to the storm or the sand or the dust or the darkness, and everything seems perfectly fine, like maybe that last awful month was a prolonged, shared kind of nightmare, except—

at the flash of familiar red hair against washed stone he still freezes, his heart suddenly slamming rabbit-quick into his ribs. Cecelia.

Real Cecelia? Proper Cecelia? She's taking notes, it looks like, scribbling in her notebook—

He makes a small, startled sound, and his boot scuffs against the ground, just enough to alert to his presence, and then swallows around his own roiling fear and tries not to think about the way his body had felt, and why he's here, and how he could possibly be here, standing there.

It's just Cecelia. She'll know what's going on. It has to be the real her. ]

Cecelia—

[ his voice is choked all the same. ]

[sighsheavily]

[it's the last few pages of this notebook, because the rest are in tact. she has to make note of what's happened, link it to these etchings from the past, or else it--

?!

hearing someone nearby is one thing, but the struggling noises and the sudden sound of her own name in a dreadfully familiar tone is another thing entirely.

her stomach drops and skin goes cold.]

...No. [absolutely not. Flynn? here?

Flynn is dead. she watched it happen. the woman with her face did it.

that means he's a specter, right? come to torment? to shame? as he should, but all the same--

her eyes well up against her better wishes, and while her mouth opens and closes, no sound comes out. all she can do is shake her head.]

[thinkfirst]

It is you.

[ Flynn's voice is dripping with relief; all his doubts flee the moment her face crumples. The other Cecelia, the one who—

(his mind won't go there; it's a hazy thing, for now, less because of this place and more a device of his own mind to protect him)

She's shaking her head, and she looks stricken and pale and awful, and Flynn knows that they're in the middle of a public place but he's here and she is here, and that's what matters, because if Cecelia is here then they'll be find because she will figure it out, and it's that which finally propels him forward across the stone, almost stumbling with relief until he's close enough to grasp at her forearms, looking over her face, concern warring with everything else. ]

It's you, isn't it, not the— do you know what happened— are you alright?

[sighsheavily]

[as he gets closer, Cecelia's eyes widen like a frightened animal. with her breath caught in her throat, she tenses up, recoiling from reach out of reflex, as if being touched would be physically painful. she tightly hugs her arms to herself.]

No, no, you... [her mind races, gaze flickering past him, about the place, back at him.] That would mean...it didn't happen. [think faster.] Hallucination? Delusion? No--

4

[vibing]

[ Flynn told him that Cecelia was back too, that she's alive and well, and Yuri--hasn't been avoiding her exactly, but he hasn't sought her out, either. He needs to see her, but is afraid at the same time. The devastation in her face was so acute, it's seared into his mind, and he knew, he saw, her fall, her death.

It's so much, so much. But there she is, in the cafeteria, looking for all the world like she's always been there, that she never went limp.

She glances at him, and doesn't tell him to go away, so he eases into the seat across from here ]

Thanks. At least it doesn't taste like sand anymore.

[sighsheavily]

[she hadn't even registered it was him at first, so wrapped up in trying to keep her focus away from being focused on, yet when he approached and sat down...and spoke...]

...

[she looks up. his are the only pair of eyes she needs to focus on right now; don't let your gaze waver, Cecelia.

so she stares at him, trying to read his expression. she wonders if he, perhaps, despises her. for her behavior, for her weakness and hysteria. for letting Flynn die.]

[vibing]

[ Yuri shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He has to do this eventually. The town isn't very big, there aren't that many people here. He needs to make this right, however he can.

But she isn't talking. And he isn't either. He meets her eyes for a moment, then looks down at the plate. There's a muffin she hasn't touched, and he picks it up, peeling off the wrapper ]

You said something about a loop?

[sighsheavily]

[straight to business. Cecelia feels a knot of guilt and hurt in her chest, but it's...probably deserved.

her gaze flicks down to the notes she's been reviewing.]

It's just guesswork. I've been thinking about the loops the concierge and other automatons are in. Talk of storms.

1, buckle up here comes the pain train

[searingwing]

[Standing in the hall, staring back at her is familiar man. His eyes had been empty and dull until he spotted her. He takes a step forward.] Cecelia?

[He doesn’t dare raise his voice. If this is a dream then he doesn’t want to disturb it. Another step. He comes close enough that with one breath in he offers her his hand.

Like he has any time things are terrifying.]

YESSSS ALL ABOARD

[sighsheavily]

[she is quite keen to the sound of that particular voice, no matter how soft. hearing her name in it draws her attention immediately, and whatever else was on her mind dissolves.

relief floods in like a tidal wave, and she barely breathes before she’s moved in to grasp his hand and pull herself to him.]

Diluc! Oh, thank goodness…!

[she may not know what’s going on, but at least he’s here.]

[searingwing]

You’re alive. [He sweeps her into a tight hug. He has to be sure she is alive. He can’t handle being lied to again. He can’t.

But he can hear her heartbeat and feel she is alive. Some of the fear ebbs and he feels the panicked edge dulling.] How?

[sighsheavily]

Alive? [her tone is incredulous. she almost wants to laugh, but there was no jest in his tone - no mirth in his eyes, from what she saw.

still, that...

loathe to let go, she clutches at the back of his jacket as her brow furrows.]

No, I...I had the most dreadful dream - worse than the eye. I daresay I can't remember where it started or...where it...stopped... [no, that's not right. even as she speaks to it, she realizes that's not right.]

...I was dreaming, wasn't I?

[that had to be a dream.]