October 2022 Test Drive Meme

[folkie]

OCTOBER 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]

SHINING

Content Warnings: Possible insanity via freezing. Temporary nullification of abilities.

COLD AS YOU

You were falling...

The world snaps into place all at once; you are laying on the ground, surrounded on all sides by towering bushes that stretch up towards a beautiful sunset sky. The bushes were clearly flowered at one point, but now the flowers have died and all that remains are browning leaves that are beginning to fall. On the chill air you can sometimes hear the sound of music, too faint to completely determine.

As you stand, you are filled with an intense desire to find someone. You might have an idea of who, but chances are you do not - you just know that somewhere ahead of you is someone that you need to reach. Whether they are friend or lover or enemy remains to be seen.

You wander the maze. If you're the impatient type and you have the ability, you might try to fly out but you will simply be vaulted right back down if you do. Something clearly expects you to play by rules which were never actually explained. As you move through the twisting passages of nature, you will notice that there is a frost creeping along the branches on either side of you. This frost brings a deep chill with it, and it encourages you to move faster, to find that nameless person now now now! If you take a very long time to wander the maze you may very well be on the verge of freezing and half mad with the desire to find someone. If you try to force your way through the bushes, the frost will crawl over your limbs and inspire both the freezing and near madness at once.

When you find your Person, the cold evaporates. The air suddenly feels merely crisp, and the leaves on the bushes seem more vibrant. The two of you now can focus on finding the way out - so much easier now - but any sense of urgency will have passed and you may just walk for hours, talking and sharing things about yourselves.

It is possible to solve the maze alone, but it is much easier (and more pleasant!) with someone else.

KEEP YOUR BRITTLE HEART WARM

When you exit the hedge maze you will find a stunning display of lights: hundreds of candles and lanterns decorate the ground and hang from trees, illuminating a clear path over a gently sloping hill. When you crest the hill you can look down and see a beautiful hot spring sprawled out below. It too is lit up by hundreds of lights, all of them glowing under the late autumn sky as it darkens towards night. There are changing rooms where you can stash your clothes (yes, there are bathing suits for the very shy) and bathing stations to ensure that you are clean before entering.

The water of the springs soothes madness and heals physical injuries or any frostbite that may have been sustained in the maze. It also relaxes you, making you perhaps more likely to open up to anybody else present.

The hot spring is staffed by many mice. They don't speak, but they squeak to one another in such a way that it sounds like they are singing - high lilting chants that seem to promise that everything will be okay. They are happy enough to band together to bring you towels or hot tea. The spring is open 24/7, always with lights to fight the cold and darkness of winter.

HIGH STRANGENESS

Content Warnings: Monster sighting, optional violence.

GLITCH

Folkmore has trains and of course the cat bus, but it also has roads, mostly utilized by horses and bicycles. Maybe you're looking for the convivence store, or maybe you just like walking. However it happens, you find yourself on a lonely road at dusk. It is unusually quiet, almost as if the world is holding its breath.

Suddenly you hear the sound of wings. A man-sized creature soars above you, something with huge red glowing eyes. It drops something at your feet: a walkie-talkie. The creature lands some distance away, staring at you, and a thought arises unbidden in your mind:

Help them.

The walkie crackles and you can hear someone speaking, asking if anyone is there. It is another Star Child, brought into this trial as well. They are in danger somewhere nearby; maybe stuck on the edge of a cliff, or trapped on a rope bridge - whatever it is, they need someone else to help them get to safety. If they have any powers, they have been temporarily nullified, but if the rescuer has powers they remain intact. That's where you come in! Using the walkie you must communicate with one another so that the rescuer can reach the person in trouble in time!

But what if you don't make it in time? Or decide that you're not the hero type? Well. The rescue-ee will suffer a terrible fate... for a few seconds. Then the entire world fuzzes and resets, but this time the roles have been reversed. Both parties will remember what has already happened, so if you just ran off into the woods with no intent of helping the first time you miiiight get your just desserts! This process will repeat over and over, people switching sides every time, until someone is finally rescued or the sun rises. Whichever comes first!

If you do succeed at a rescue, you will hear the rustle of huge wings once more. This time you don't see the mysterious creature, but you will find a mystery trunk. Inside you will each find some of your canon clothes and a canon item. Looks like teamwork is rewarded! Nearby, there will also be some unenchanted weapons sticking out of the ground: basic swords, guns, shields, etc.

BAD OMEN

You don't necessarily have to have completed the rescue trial to get some goodies, though! Those aforementioned weapons are scattered all over Folkmore. But if you just go to grab any of them you'd better be prepared to fight; after all, nothing comes for free!

As soon as you have pulled a weapon out of the ground, a tall, man in a black suit and hat will appear from seemingly nowhere and attack you. He has no weapons but he is extremely strong. He's also just really creepy - his face looks like it might be fake, somehow. The only way he can be killed is with a wound to the heart - any other supposedly mortal injury will result in another man in black appearing. It is possible for someone with no combat training to beat these creatures, but they really might appreciate a little help from someone with more experience!

The good news is that they won't mess up your clothes any, as none of these creatures bleed. Because that is totally normal.

Good luck!

Comments

[maserannas]

You don't listen well, do you?

( Said with a sigh, because she doesn't expect the young, and especially the young and human appearing, because blessings (not called such, but things of a nature similar to it) were cast over areas or people, and she has no idea how one not bound to a rune might effect her magic.

Not that the suited man appeared to care, beating at the ice with his fists. )

Have a ring that worked like that, wonderful in a fight. ( Only it didn't need touching, only the presence of harmful intent and her own wariness to activate, but that's neither here nor there. Nor is she, as she darts to the side, calling out: )

Keep his attention divided!

( And allows her staff to send another bolt of spirit energy flying at the suited man, feeling a sort of... strangeness, but not a prohibitive one, in the process. The blessing's interaction as one unfamiliar use of magic and mana meeting what she knows, or what she expects to know.

The bolt strikes, and the suited man shudders, but none of these are yet killing blows. All ones that slow and wear down, but that's it: killing in one strike is not as easy as people might hope, and takes a bit more preparation. Or more ice. Or more fire. Or more lightning!

Ice mines are what she lays down across the spaces between herself and the suited man, one also ending up before the young man with his tome. )

Avoid moving straight forward, for your sake!

( They'll activate once stepped upon, and as the suited man beats himself free of the ice that first held him, he cranes his neck to look from her to the young man, debating who to pursue first. )

[callofbeauty]

[Listen? Excuse you, he's eighteen and already knows everything! And as the designated braincell holder of his canon, nothing has yet to disprove this. At least he did seem to be right in assuming the magics wouldn't react poorly, truthfully he was unaware of the concept, as the backlash from his magic occurs at the time of the cast after all, and only lashes back at the caster. Though if she took note during the fight, the gems on the cover of his spellbook would gradually be growing dark and foggy the more he cast.

And cast he did! Overall his spells weren't terribly different from hers though with less nuance, but a fireball was a fireball, ice was ice, and a barrier is a barrier nuance be damned. That said, he he was decidedly less mobile- by choice. He was content to plant his feet and cast with the idea of making himself the easier target. She did go through all that trouble laying a spell before him after all, and for as much as he looked soft and dainty... he was anything but.]

Did you now? Perhaps I should have changed up the spell for variety, I'll keep it in mind for next time. Hm-?

[He noticed, between their relentless barrage of spells, something was off. Instead of the creature doing what is should be doing and dying, it... seemed to be getting bigger? No, it had extra arms? Limbs?]

Wait, hold on! Something is wrong!

[And after giving the magical haze a moment to dissipate... there were now two creatures?!]

[maserannas]

( This is what she's missed and also absolutely not missed about working with teenager youths one on one, but at least it's familiar especially with the braincell holding teens where as his magic is...

... part of her ever growing understanding of how nuanced and different magic is across the worlds they come from. She might catch sight of the gems, but it registers as background information where the creature-man attacking is forefront.

She snorts at his comment, but pauses when he calls a hold: no reason to ignore if something's catching his attention, though as he says it, the same is registering to her. Where once a singular suit-man in hat stood, now he stood with his twin, and the same uncanny expression on their faces, the same too loose holding of their limbs. They'd barraged the one down to killing degrees: now there were two?! )

The Blighted thing doubled itself?

( Neither one of them now acted over injured, either. While she set a slew of ice mines along the ground again, once more interrupting their darting progress, now it was two on two, each facing their own suited man. )

This is ridiculous—let me try something different!

( Ellana kept her hand on her staff, ready to use it as an offhand weapon, while green-coloured energy pooled at her left arm's stump, then abruptly shot outward, ignoring the working of whatever grappling hook launcher she's wearing. The form of the missing part of her arm can be see, and held in that transparent, green hand is the hilt of a sword of matching colour and transparency.

While one hat-man is held partially immobile, she moves toward him, using her staff to deflect a blow of his long arms, bringing the mana-sword slamming into his chest. It enters at the ribs, and goes sideways with the jerk of her arm, sliding free again while the front of him bloodies and spurts. Chests make for large, easy targets, and she needs to see if this makes another one appear.

It does not.

Unfortunately, even as she moves back out of range of the dying flails, that doesn't explain directly to her what's happening, though she can? Theorize? )

They might be resistant to magic caused death—can you keep that one pinned down?

( Time to trial by error through it. )