August 2022 Test Drive Meme

[folkie]

AUGUST 2022 TDM

INTRODUCTION

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Welcome to Folkmore's monthly Test Drive Meme! Please feel free to test drive any and all characters regardless of your intent to apply or whether you have an invite or not.

All TDMs are game canon. You can choose to have your TDM thread be your introduction thread upon acceptance or start fresh. Each TDM will provide a scenario for how characters arrive in-game that particular month.

Playing TDMs will allow characters to immediately obtain canon items from homes especially weapons or other things they may have had on their person when they were pulled from their worlds! There will always be a prompt that provides some sort of "reward" to characters who complete certain tasks.

Current players are allowed to have in-game characters react to TDMs via the Network or make a log with the prompts. Current players are always encouraged to tag new people on the TDM!

TDM threads can be used for spoon spending at any time by characters accepted into the game.

[ Prompt One ★ Prompt Two]

Summer Is Over

Content Warnings: snakes, cultists, optional violence.

FALLING DOWN LIKE PIECES INTO PLACE

A breeze with the crisp smell of dying leaves caresses you awake. You sit up to find yourself in the middle of an apple orchard, rows spreading out in all directions. Mouth watering apples hang from the branches, and nobody will stop you from taking one. You can wander the orchard as long as you like, but eventually you will find yourself emerging into the front yard of a little farm. There’s a red barn with perfect white trim set far back, and to one side of the yard is a kiosk modeled to match the barn. This is staffed by a woman who sure looks a lot like the fox that brought you here.

On the side of the kiosk are advertised a few different items: pumpkin spice lattes, hot apple cider, cold alcoholic apple cider, and hot chocolate. The cider, you will be informed, is made on site. (But you have to be of legal age to be given that hard cider!)

There are two other things advertised: APPLE PICKING and a SCAVENGER HUNT.

“You need a buddy for those, though,” the woman running the kiosk will tell you. “Lucky for you there’s plenty of people you can pair up with.”

If you elect to try the scavenger hunt, you and your partner will be handed a piece of paper. On it reads the following:

TAKE A PICTURE OF THE FOLLOWING ON YOUR RELIC! :)

- YOU HOLDING HANDS WHILE YOU GO DOWN A PATH
- FEET WITH AUTUMN LEAVES
- SOMETHING YOU THINK IS TRULY BEAUTIFUL
- A GENUINE SMILE

“When you’re done, bring it back here and show me,” the woman instructs you. “You’ll get a prize if you do.”

It’s an easy enough list, right? Although you have to follow the instructions - you really DO have to find something you genuinely think is beautiful, and that smile can’t be forced! Those might require opening up to your partner a little bit!

If you succeed in the scavenger hunt, you will be gifted with an item from home.


Now, what if you decided to go apple picking?

You will be given a bucket. “Be careful to only pick apples from the trees in the rows,” the kiosk woman tells you with a secret smile. “You don’t want to bother the old trees off the path.”

Yeah. That sure sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it?

If you do stick to the orchard proper, you will be able to pick your fill of apples. All of them are crisp and sweet and delicious. But at some point you will see the other trees.

They’re both huge and old, standing on two sloping hills just past the orchard rows. One of them has apples red as blood, and the other apples gold as the sun. In the shade of these trees are weapons sticking half out of the earth, as if they were carelessly buried many years ago.

If you pick one of the red apples, you will find that you are suddenly besieged with huge snakes. They are as big as anacondas and an inky black that absorbs the light, with eyes the same red as the apples. They aren’t poisonous, but they bite and they crush, so you’ll have to fight them off at least long enough to run like hell!

If you pick the golden apples, a crowd of people will silently begin appearing from the orchard. They are all wearing animal masks… and they are all holding hand scythes. Uh oh. You’ll have to fight them off in order to escape! If you don’t manage that, well, in some places it’s traditional to have a big ol’ sacrificial bonfire…

All the weapons below the trees are non-enchanted items, but you may keep them.

Plaid Shirt Days and Nights

Content Warnings: Optional themes of identity and school trauma.

IMAKEOVER MAKEOVER

Thirteen believes passionately in education. There are, after all, five academies in Folkmore all catering to different types of learning. While these academies are open year round, it becomes apparent if you walk through any of the districts housing shops that back to school is definitely a thing.

A new school year represents a chance to learn more about the world, and about yourself.

Also? It’s a great time for a makeover!

Yes, step into any of the shops selling clothing and accessories anywhere in Folkmore and you will find yourself passionately invested in helping another person discover who it is they want to look like! Do they want to look cool and aloof? Warm and approachable? Are they an e-boy or a cottagcore witch? Punk or prep? You two can figure it out together!

As you shop together you will find it easier and easier to open up to one another, sharing who it is you want to be.

You’ll also be able to score a sweet outfit. Nice.

SAVED BY THE BELL

Wander into any school in Folkmore and you will find a handmade poster instructing all new students and faculty to report to the auditorium. Normal enough, one supposes… but the moment you enter the room you will find reality swims all around you and all of a sudden you’re stuck in a school nightmare!

You know the kind. You’re late for class, no matter how fast you run. You’re in gym class, trying to climb that goddamn rope. You’re getting your books dumped. You’re naked and giving a book report.

These could be memories, but it’s just as likely that they aren’t - you and another person are just trapped in this cliche together. Whichever one of you is in the audience role could maybe help the other one out? Get them some pants or something? Yeah.

Comments

[necrosavior]

Ninth, her name and the name one of her used. Gideon hopes it's for her. She decides it is, and if she's wrong, she'll cross that bridge when she reaches it. Having no idea what came of Camilla, that minor issue of losing consciousness when she died, Gideon's glad to see her alive and well.

"Ask and ye shall receive," Gideon jokes. She takes another couple steps forward, checking out the weapons for ones that suit either of them. A pair, an equal set, for Camilla. Preferably something large for Gideon. Though, if she wants Harrow to get into shape, perhaps she should pick a rapier (groan).

"Wanna do it?" Gideon asks. They're gonna do it.

[goesloud]

Camilla doesn't laugh, not exactly, but she makes a quick dry sound that Gideon is free to interpret as amusement. For a moment she only watches the other girl as she moves toward the array of weapons scattered beneath the tree, only quietly marvelling at how she moves. Vibrant and alive. It's a sight for sore eyes, after ugly indeterminate months spent in close quatres to her inanimate counterpart.

She shakes her head, hair cutting fluidly away from her face, and then she's approaching. Eyes sharp, as Gideon suspects, for an equal set of knives. Walking into the not!trap is rash and frankly inadvisable, but when one's world has been balanced on the brink of ending for what feels like such an impossibly long time, who could blame her for wanting to cut loose a bit?

"I'm surprised you even have to ask." Of course they're gonna do it.

CW: references to suicide/sacrifice

[necrosavior]

Gideon blinks once. The Sixth always seemed so reasonable, measured, mature. Then Palamedes blew himself up to attack Cytherea, while Gideon was helplessly pinned like a butterfly in the hallway, able to hear every word of the conversation. Camilla attacked Cytherea with a vengeance and offered to sacrifice herself in hopes Gideon and Harrow got out. That should have been enough to make her change her mind, but Gideon had 'won' that sacrifice game and died. Her continued existence in Harrow's head lacked most memories of the time, if she had them, and there was the battle and the Big Conversation right before she came to Folkmore. So, perhaps it's reasonable her opinion remained that of the Sixth as she met them.

Gideon shakes her head once and laughs. Her tail unwraps from around her waist, where it looked no more than a scaled belt, and Gideon draws two rapiers from the ground. They don't quite match, but they're the same length.

"Ready or nooooooot," Gideon calls out. Her tail reaches up and picks a brilliant red apple.

apologies for the wait! ;;

[goesloud]

The tail is both new and unexpected, even if it elicits no more than the slight hike of Camilla's brows toward her blunt-cut bangs. There's a question to be answered here, but it's one that will have to wait for later because Gideon is already on the move, drawing weapons. The new appendage is already reaching toward the twisted branches, plucks one bright apple free--

--and Camilla moves to take the weapons, centre of gravity already shifting from one foot to the next in pure anticipation. Anticipation which is swiftly rewarded as - like smoke, or the sudden spill of liquid - a mass of inky-black serpents leak out from the foliage around them, one wickedly fanged bastard uncoiling itself from a branch behind Gideon's head.

"Look sharp," Camilla says even as she's already bursting into action, flowing forward with swift, sure movements as she slices Gideon's would-be attacker in two.

[necrosavior]

"Aiglamene, look away," Gideon mutters. She was never even allowed a knife in her off hand, much less another sword, a whole length sword. These are rapiers, not Camilla's twin knives. Her left hand holds close, the rapier a sharp edge between her and something coming for her. In a burst of movement, Gideon closes twelve feet to her reach and stabs the rapier neatly through a bright red eye.

This isn't like facing Naberius in the training room or constructs in Drearburh. It's the heralds, the fucking space wasps, except these snakes are the color of space, dark voids like shadows on the ground or around the tree trunks or anywhere else they come from. There's more. There's always more. Gideon doesn't want to test her ability to regrow a thumb. Thankfully, she has muscles.

Sticking near Camilla's back, guarding her as much as anything else, Gideon practices her precision in bursts of movements, counters that parry snakes to the side, and an occasional second shishkabob. "What you up to?" Gideon asks, stabbing number six through the top of its mouth to its brain.