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

[wewearpink]

Lila's tossing her curved dagger up a bit, catching it easily by the handle every time.

"I've wondered what would happen to the dwarves as well, should Solas get what he wants. But, I'd imagine they'd be wiped out as well, I didn't think to ask Solas when he, you know." She waves as best as she can with what's left of her left arm. "I was a little too mad, I think. Betrayals weren't...uncommon in the Circle, especially if it meant the person doing the betraying would get preferential treatment from the Templars. 'So-and-so's a blood mage!' And then so-and-so would be made a Tranquil. But," her lips thin, "there's a way around that."

The Ostwick Circle was considered as a happy medium, at least by outsiders. Though, Lila could tell them tales that would make their hearts stop.

But when it came right down to it, she knew Solas had reasons behind his actions. Some very good ones from his point of view. And foiling the Qunari plan meant that the leaders of Thedas were safe, at least for now? That was a good thing. It had to be.

It made her wonder...wouldn't have mass chaos and instability drive more to Solas and his plans? So what was the roles of Celene, Briala, Gaspard, Alistair and his missing queen, and the Free Marches in general. Pawns to be moved about the board at will?

Tevinter would be like descending into a pit of snakes, the likes of which they'd just killed. She knew Dorian would do everything he could to help, to point her in the right direction and to the right people

"I sure hope so. Anything but a sponge bath in a river! I got so sick of those along the way! Or the inn. Either way, it would imply that we're to be here for a while."

[maserannas]

"Or the Titans. Or whatever was in the Void that drove even an ancient, incredibly powerful and overconfident elvhen mage to insanity." A quirk of her lips; those stories as told by her people and as written in the Shattered Library. Curious, seeing what diverged, what held true.

"He doesn't know. He hopes. The more he has to face that we're all people, the less steady the path beneath his feet."

Ruthlessly undercutting what was left, foiling his attempts to return the world to a state that he believed would give elves a greater chance to be as they once were, all of it was gambling. He has a two year lead on all of them, but what he refuses to work with and those he overlooks out of his selective blindness are all aids on their behalf.

They're here. They're real. They've achieved and failed on their own, for hundreds of years, and thousands before that.

But it's not something to linger on, here and now.

"However long it takes to appease the, what was it called... full potential? Our Fox wishes to see. Unclear targets make for difficult ones to hit." A nebulous concept, with no clear understanding, and can't she be done with that anyway? She's not that young anymore. Not ancient, either, but that's irrelevant.

"A moment, let me leave the apple basket up there with the one handing them out."

[wewearpink]

"Ugh. Is it just me or does everything seem turned upside down and is in reality way more complicated than I thought it was? Way more complicated than anyone thought they were?"

It's fascinating on the level where she is a mage and spent a great deal of time reading about magical theory, but. Well. 'What the fuck?' has been uttered on more than one occasion.

"You really think he can be swayed from what he wants to do?" Not judgmental, not skeptical, just curious. Because Lila has her doubts.

She wonders who could help him change his mind. She'd do whatever she had to to help, but they didn't exactly part on the greatest of terms. There were so many lives at risk and who could say that if he did somehow succeed, the elves left alive would be who he wanted them to be, instead of still carrying memories of past mistreatment and destruction.

But at the same time, she tried to understand the allure. She figured that if someone came to her saying "I can do such-and-such and so-and-so and all will be better (but in much more poetical and intellectual terms), that would be a powerful draw.

Yeah. Though, she envied the other her. She'd finally managed to flirt enough with Harding to start a relationship and now the other her is having fun not being single anymore.

"Oh, I know! I mean, us being us? What more are we supposed to do? Apparently it's not enough for us to save Thedas from Coryphyshithead. It's confusing. I'd like to have a list of things to accomplish, then huzzah, I'm fixed!"

Lila still feels terribly young. She was only twenty-three when shit got weird. She's twenty-five now, feeling more comfortable in her skin and with the vast amount of power she can wield, but sometimes she still looks in the mirror and wonders how in Thedas she was the lucky one caught up in all of the mess.

"Okay! Oooh, hot chocolate next and bragging rights when we get home!"

[maserannas]

"Not just you!" As a cheerful call back, though the rest she leaves to be unanswered, not feeling any of it requires an answer. Does she think? She believes it's worth trying. What more are they to do? At this point she wonders if the answer isn't 'learn to relax.'

Divested of apples to the curious look of the fox-woman running the stand, she rejoins Lila. The remaining ichor has started to dry, along with blood and whatever viscera might have unluckily landed on her, and she sighs, shaking her head.

"Just like old times," she says, gesturing to herself with her right hand. "Anyway, there's the inn with baths near, then this hot chocolate?"

Note that doesn't mean she has anything to change into, but damp clothing in this weather isn't the worst. A bit of an autumnal nip in the air, nothing cold-catching, really.

[wewearpink]

That makes Lila giggle merrily and shoulder-bump her fellow Inquisitor companionably. "Right, there are two of us! Two of us who know pretty much what the other one went through. Though, it does make me curious about what I chose to do versus what you chose to do." There were so many possibilities! So many ways where they could have diverged and then what? Though, she feels like she needs something stronger than cocoa to broach the subject.

Lila waves cheerfully at the fox-woman with her remaining hand. And she feels positively covered with snake ick. And her dress is a total loss. Oh, well. She'd ruined armor before and was able to do something about it, she figures she can with dresses, too.

"I know! Did you feel...ready when stuff. Happened? 'Cause I didn't," she admits with a small sigh. "Andraste's tits, that's something to look forward to! A nice, hot bath...do you think they have bubbles?"

If they have bathrobes, she's swiping one. Towels, too. One never knew when they'd need a nice towel.

[maserannas]

"I'm certain there are differences enough." Shaking her head a touch, but not at the sentiment. They were two separate people, with two very different places they came from. Inevitably, dozens of choices would be different, from the small and unknown or unknowing to perhaps the larger, more striking decisions that'd come down during her time in the Inquisition. "Even were we closer to the same person, where we might guess each other's decisions, that doesn't make us interchangeable."

As Leliana had not said in so many words in the doomed world she'd encountered her in, but it's poignant, as a reminder and indication.

"I have no idea," she says, shrugging her shoulders, "But I don't see why not. As for your question, what, when I woke up chained in Haven, or after that first rift closure in the temple?"

Heading along the path into the village, getting helpful bobs from giant... walking... sunflowers... along the way.

[wewearpink]

"No, no, of course not. But you can't blame a girl for being curious? Hmm," Lila said in her most merry and cajoling tone of voice. Most people only read the surface-level merry and were slow to recognize the cajoling, if they ever did.

And if the Other Leliana was mentioned to Lila, that would be enough to send her into a controlled rage. Rage at Alexius, rage at the Venatori, rage at Coryphybutt. Mostly rage at the latter. And she still felt it a shame that Felix had to die of Blight sickness, rather than his father. Felix, he could have been worked with. Alexius? He was so far up the Venatori's butt, he could only see what they had to offer.

And Lila tilts her head back. "Ahhhhh. I suppose we all started out that way. You're Dalish and and an elf, hmm? And I'm your garden variety human mage. Neither one of us could be trusted, me a little more than you because of stupid prejudices and the stupid people who follow them. But, really. How many more of us do you think there are? Not even of us, since you'll get my meaning. Let's take a bet!"

Lila, no. Last time you betted at Wicked Grace, Cullen had gotten payback and sent Lila fleeing towards her quarters in only her smallclothes. Yechhhh!

The giant walking sunflowers were a bit of a happy change from what she was used to, so Lila waved at them with her remaining hand before declaring loudly, "On to the inn and its baths! Then, to as much cocoa as we can drink! We have to be able to outdrink Bull, he'll never let us hear the end of it if we can't!"