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

[eyescar]

"Yeah, it has, hasn't it?" It's not as though he's come out of events unscathed; Yuji has his own scarring, just... Not as bad as Maki has. He doesn't know what to say for a moment, other than the immediate urge to try and let Megumi know before he comes across her.

Slowly moving forward, Yuji makes himself comfortable and settles down. It seems rude to just come out and ask what happened to her, but she looks so different from how he knew her, and that's... Surely there's something that needs to be said.

"Does it hurt?" That seems a sensible enough start.

[cursed_tools]

"Not anymore. It did for a while," she said as she looked over the scarring on the back of one of her hands. It hadn't been that long since everything had gone down, yet it felt like forever.

"What's the last thing that you remember before coming here?" She could put things together better if she knew what he knew. Hopefully he knew about Shibuya.

[eyescar]

It was probably closer to something like agony, Yuji thinks, and he has to stop himself from making another comment. Maki probably doesn't want to talk too much about it, and that's fine and makes sense.

He doesn't want to talk about things either, if he's being honest.

"Me? Huh." Yuji frowns, tilting his head. "Okkotsu-senpai just tried to kill me?"

[cursed_tools]

"So you know about Shibuya," she said simply. That was good. "A lot has happened in a short amount of time. Might as well just tell you. Fushiguro and I are the last of the Zenin clan."

She closed her eyes for a moment. She wished that she had some better news for him. She didn't even know how Kugisaki was doing after what happened to her.

[eyescar]

"Yeah, I know. I remember it." It's not something that he wants to talk about - he's avoided it, completely, and it makes him feel like he might break down if he thinks too hard about all the things that had happened. A part of him thinks that he ought to bring his dog here for Maki to see, but that might be too sad.

All of it feels too sad for him.

"... Megumi and you?" He pauses, thoughtful. If there's no one else, that means... "... Mai, too?"

[cursed_tools]

Now that struck a nerve for her. She looked away from him. "I kept my promise to her. She was the reason I was able to do it."

She wasn't going to go into details. Being born twins was bad enough, but female twins? Even worse. Thanks to Mai's sacrifice she was able to keep her promise. She didn't give him any details. She'd look like even more of a monster than she already did. She didn't regret it, but she didn't want to let Yuji see just how ruthless she had been.

[eyescar]

She was.

That's enough for Yuji.

He can't imagine what it might feel like, to lose someone as close to you as a twin - there's no way his own losses could compare to that. He loved Nanami, he adored Junpei, he's desperate to hear about Kugisaki, but to have a sibling and lose them...

Maybe in the future he would understand, when he and Choso are closer. But right now it's an unfathomable pain.

"I'm sorry," is all he can offer, looking away. "But I'm glad you could keep your promise. I'm sure she would've been pleased."