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Entry tags:
February 2023 Test Drive Meme
FEBRUARY 2023 TDM
INTRODUCTION
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.
Content Warnings: extreme weather
the time is near
in from the snow
the time is near
The earth is awakening.
You are aware of this fact before consciousness truly returns. One minute you were a falling star but as your body reforms you can sense the freshness of spring just around the corner. In your minds eye you can see circling birds in the sky, feel the first warm breeze of the season, and hear icicles melting into crystal puddles.
But something isn't right.
The moment you are truly awake you find yourself in what could generously be described as a shack built in the snowy wasteland of Wintermute. You and another Star Child are at least being kept warm by an electric heater, but there really isn't much in the way of amenities otherwise. More disturbingly, the entire shack has a deeply oppressive aura to it, encouraging the pair of you to leave as soon as you can.
But where can you possibly go?
Stepping outside reveals the answer, as parked not far from the shed is a dogsled, complete with warm winter gear to protect you from the cold.
The dogs themselves are the real marvels; not flesh and blood, the sled dogs are in fact automatons. The winter sun reflects off of their silver and copper bodies and the steady tick of their inner workings breaks the chilly silence. Each dog has a key sticking out of its back, turning slowly.
The oppressive sense you felt in the shack continues to grow. Your thoughts begin to turn negative: sad, paranoid, fearful. It is quite unbearable... until your eye falls on a delicate splash of purple against the snow.
Close to the dogsled, a single crocus pokes out of the ground.
The very sight of it calms you down. Picking it will make you feel happy, and you will find yourself blurting out the first pleasant memory that comes to mind.
The robodogs bark, delighted, encouraging you to climb aboard the sled and look for more of those flowers!
Every crocus you collect will make you feel positive emotions and the urge to share good personal moments with your companion. The more you find, the happier you will be... and you might get quite close to a total stranger as a result as well!
in from the snow
While you are out and about, you'll want to keep an eye on your team of dogs - they can and will lose power after a point. Your job as a good dog driver is to keep them wound up! Yes, you'll have to stop and physically wind the dogs back up when they lose steam.
You are likely to discover weapons jutting up from the snow. These are all unenchanted items, basic swords, guns, shields, etc., but the second you pull them from the snow the weather will take a turn for the worse. You may even be subject to a sudden avalanche! Hopefully you got the dogs wound up enough that they can get you out of there without any damage!
Eventually the dogs will choose to take you to Akhlut Station in Wintermute where you can catch the train somewhere a little warmer.
Content Warnings: Fungus, spores, live burial, mental confusion and hallucinations.
putting roots in my dreamland
coast is clear
putting roots in my dreamland
Willow is definitely warmer than Wintermute. The tail end of winter means that while much of the farmland is still blanketed in snow, the more wooded areas have large clear patches beneath the conifers. The ground here is damp and rich smelling. Poking out of the soil are tiny white mushrooms. These fungi glisten wetly, strangely compelling in their little rings of earth. You just want to take a closer look... maybe have a seat under the conifers and listen to the snow melt...
The mushrooms enchant anyone who gets close to them into simply staying put. They cloud the mind, leaving you in a dimly pleasant haze, while your body sinks slowly into the earth. The longer you stay, the more you sink - maybe a passerby can come and pull you out! If you don't wind up suffocated by dirt you will find that your head clears on its own once night falls. You will probably still need a hand pulling yourself out of the ground, but at least now you know what's going on.
The woods at night are not still - there are mice and owls and the usual nocturnal critters. There is also something else, something that moves slowly beneath the trees checking the mushroom traps. About eight feet tall, this lanky creature resembles a human skeleton held together by muscles and tendons of moss and fungus. Its head is a huge mushroom cap, underneath from which glitter a pair of bright blue eyes. If it finds any unfortunates stuck in the traps without anyone to help them, it will push their heads beneath the soil and hold them there until they die.
The sight of this creature inspires feelings of disorientation and hopelessness. These feelings are lessened when you are in close physical proximity with another Star Child, so it is to your advantage to stick together. The mushroom creature's objective remains the same: to feed the living earth with your body.
The creature is not particularly tough - its flesh is soft and gives way easily. You can defeat it easily with weapons or even your fists provided you can get close enough without succumbing to the disorientation and hopeless feelings. Oh, and you may not want to hit it on the head...
The mushroom cap, when struck, showers spores everywhere. These spores burn if they land on your skin, and if they get in your eyes they cause vivid hallucinations of ghostly figures reaching for you, trying to immobilize you. These hallucinations are so real that it is likely you will act as if they are real, standing still as if you are restrained.
If you defeat the mushroom creature, it will dissolve into the ground and leave in its place a wooden chest. Inside each of you will find some canon clothes and/or an item from your homeworlds.
coast is clear
Not far from the forest treeline, a bonfire burns merrily in the center of a circle of light green tents. The tents are kept warm by portable heaters, with some containing food and drink, and others offering small packs of seeds as gifts. These seeds are for common earth flowers and vegetables. One of the tents provides first aid supplies, in case you got roughed up fighting a giant mushroom or something.
The tents are staffed by squirrels and chipmunks. Just plain old ordinary squirrels and chipmunks. They don't speak - only chitter and occasionally screech - but they will help as best as their tiny paws allow.
This is a good time to recover, and also to talk to any other Star Children you may see.
no subject
Viktor looked at Rio with a touch of sadness in his smile.
"I first saw her like this when I was a child. But let's just say that something bad happened to her back then. I'd like to think Folkmore gave her a second chance too."
With no good way to take just the stem, all of Mel's hand and wrist gets wrapped in Rio's tongue, which is a very ticklish sensation. And leaves behind it a fair amount of slobber. Viktor offers a shamy cloth that only had one engine grease stain on it.
"Ah right. I meant to warn you about that."
no subject
Her face loses much of its dignity in the sudden moist environment her whole hand, even her wrist, winds up in. Not an assault, mind you, just... unexpected. Mel holds out her hand, dripping thick wet mud onto the lab floor because her hand had been filthy covered in dirt. It's the topper to all the other reasons Mel needed a shower. Small mercy that it happened beforehand.
"Thank you, Viktor," Mel says out of both habit and honest gratitude for the cloth. It may have only had one stain before, but it comes away dark brown wherever it touches her skin.
"I've had worse in diplomatic talks. I'm not squeamish," Mel says, "I also mix my own paints."
no subject
"It's nothing. Don't worry about that cloth, since it will need to be cleaned now."
Since it and the lab floor was now sporting a fair amount of slobber-mud. Poor Mel is already covered in dirt so this is just adding gross on top of gross.
"You'll probably be wanting that shower now."
Viktor pointed it out for her.
"There should be clean towels on the shelf next to the shower stall."
no subject
"No worries, Viktor. It's only a little... pre-shower."
She reaches up to scritch Rio's... upper cheek or perhaps it's another section of anatomy. Mel doesn't know anything about her kind of creature.
"Yes thank you, Viktor. Please assure Jayce I am okay, if he arrives while I'm in the shower."
Mel heads upstairs to the shower. Though she moves at a normal speed with all her regular grace, inside she's impatient and more than ready for the shower. Her skin feels uncomfortably dirty—not the way when she mixes her own paints, but more akin with viscera.
She strips Viktor's clothes with ease, loosely folds them and sets them aside, and steps inside the shower. The water's cold at first, but it doesn't bother her. As it warms, she takes down her hair, setting everything aside. Mel sighs as brown water circles the drain. Even without soap, so much water comes off. She won't linger, but she'll make sure to get all the dirt off.
no subject
The downside, Jayce is even more covered with dirt than he was before. But ey, the shopping bags he was carrying with Mel's new clothing were intact. After grabbing some of the many flower crowns offered in Willow by pretty much all locals, Jayce changed directions and flew straight up to the lab.
The reason why he bothered to grab some flowers before going back becomes obvious enough the moment JAyce steps into the lab. Rio is all over him in seconds, used as she is of him bringing flowers often. He pats her head and leaves her munching happily on a few flower crowns while he inquires about Mel's whereabouts.
"Hello! Is everyone okay?"
no subject
Viktor looked over Jayce's dirty and bedraggled state with a bit of a smirk.
"You both need to stop wearing white."
At least they both needed to stop wearing it while they were in Folkmore because that urge that each had to help other people was apparently a dirty one.
"I'd suggest you also take a shower when you can, since although you weren't buried, apparently digging someone else out is dirty work."
no subject
A problem.
Delicately, Mel spreads the neck of the shirt apart, and sure enough dirt lines the entire thing. Both sets of clothes—the first being her original clothes she arrived in—are unwearable if she wishes to stay clean. As a lady with some composure and class, well aware Viktor is not a servant and would especially take poorly to being treated as one, Mel considers the bathroom again with a long sigh.
She exits the bathroom wrapped in a white towel, barefoot and otherwise naked save for her jewelry, even her Noxian ring, and heads back toward the lab proper. The murmur of familiar voices brings a smile to her face, and Mel's posture is as proper as ever, no matter the outfit. However, she uses her memory of the room and immediate spotting of them to ensure neither of them, not even Jayce, gets an inappropriate glance up her towel.
"Hello, boys," Mel says, "I see we haven't solved the problem of grime in my absence."
no subject
"You might be onto something." Folkmore clearly has a vendetta against his clean and very white clothes, every time he wears them, something happens to ruin them.
"And yes, it was. Luckily, no one was too badly injured or died. These monsters are growing bolder, but they're not too strong." Jayce is about to suggest to Viktor not to go to the forest or follow any weird mushrooms he sees when Mel makes herself known.
Mel, wearing only a towel. His eyebrows go up, almost reaching his hairline. Hm, very distracting. After clearing his throat, he raises the hand holding the shopping bags he's brought with him.
"I, eh, brought you new clothes." There are a couple of new dresses, fancy ones like Mel usually likes to wear, as well as another set of more comfortable, casual clothes to sleep in.
Jayce didn't bring anything for himself, but he keeps spare clothes in the lab, so he will grab them and take them with him and go take a much-needed shower too.