February 2023 Test Drive Meme

[folkie]

FEBRUARY 2023 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]

SPRING BREAKS LOOSE

Content Warnings: extreme weather

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.

BUT SO DOES FEAR

Content Warnings: Fungus, spores, live burial, mental confusion and hallucinations.

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.

Comments

[somethingrevolutionary]

Mel would cross her arms at being told to stand by and be rescued when she's in the middle of being murdered. No, she would use those arms to kill her attacker, if only she had access to them.

"I meant," Mel bites out narrowly, "will your attacks harm me, if I bite it?"

Not his opinion on her actions. She'll bite and she'll bite and she'll bite that monster into a thousand bites if she has to. If that contributes to the battle. Oh, Mel has no faith yet in their victory. This yordle talks a good game, but so many do. The earth could start to eat him up at any time. Then what? They can die together? Rather, he can watch her die knowing what shall come for him?

No, Mel would rather bite the disgusting flesh if it should increase her odds the most infinitesimal amount. Not quite waiting for his opinion, since he is not forming more electricity, Mel bites down hard into its foot. That chunk and a chunk more of its foot stays in her mouth when it flies off.

Mel spits it out. Well then. "Thank you," Mel says to the yordle.

Next business at hand: dirt. Still having only her mouth, Mel pushes her jaw down, so that dirt tumbles into her mouth. She picks her jaw up and spits the dirt out as hard as she can. It makes it... a handful of inches. Fine. Mel will dig herself out one mouthful at a time if need be.

[makeoutwithme]

Despite his insistence to let him take care of the grotesque creature trying to snuff the woman into the dirt she kept biting into the undead ripping flesh from bone. Quite a disgusting sight truth be told but one thing was for sure she was not one to let a dire situation get the best of her and simply give in.

When the skeletal beast was presumably taken care of, Scanlan rushes over to Mel's side to kneel close at hand. "You alright there, lady?" Kind of an obvious question given the situation at large as she was just recently being pummeled into the ground by a cryptic skeleton.

"Hold on, I'll have you out of this in a jiffy, give us a hand here Bigby!" On cue the large materialized hand hovers over to the pair of them. Instructing the purple hand the bard begins to dig up the loose soil around Mel's person to slowly begin freeing her from the earthy prison.

[somethingrevolutionary]

Mel spits out the latest mouthful of dirt, her face smeared with dirt that covers her makeup. It even fills some of the space in her earrings. It's disgusting and terrible. Compared to moments before, when a live monster stomped about attempting to finish the job of pushing her under the ground to suffocate, she's stellar.

"Far better than I was," Mel says, "I'll be even better once... Bigby gets me out of here."

She stops digging herself out since the yordle is free to use his magic to free her. Something lifts off her shoulders far more than dirt. "Thank you for your magical aid," Mel says, "I am sure, for all my efforts, I would be dead without your intervention."

Her pride isn't so great to ignore it. She acknowledges instead.

The Diablo 4 beta consumed me this weekend apologies

[makeoutwithme]

It did not take long for Bigby to help remedy the situation at large, Mel freed from the mud and dirt which threatened to bury her alive. With no further imminent danger and his counterpart no longer restricted, Scanlan dissipates good ole Bigby's hand and offers his own kneeling as she got up onto her feet. A sincere smile forms over his lips as he chuckles modestly under his breath and waves a hand in rebuttal.

"Thanks is not necessary! I would have done what any other should at the sight of a lovely lady being quite literally stomped into the dirt."

Pulling a simplistic handkerchief from the breast pocket of his tunic the bard extends it towards the other, a rather gorgeous woman now that he got a better look over her even if she was covered in grime and muck at the moment. Her grandiose attire and general way she held herself made him think she might be some sort of royalty? Anyone lavishing themselves in that much gold jewelry had money at the very least.

"Haven't seen your face around Willow before...You come around here often?" Was Scanlan hitting on the woman he's just met and potentially still in shock from almost being killed? Maybe, maybe not.

[somethingrevolutionary]

Should the lady be any less lovely? Mel thinks. Not that the yordle could tell with most of her underground. A face is only so much to go on, and his view rather obstructed by a most unlovely foot. No, no, as fits his electric move and other language, his style is over the top and flirting to some degree. How much reflective, how much actual interest remains to be seen. They have only just met.

Mel wipes her face clean, then her arms. By that point, the poor handkerchief is more than overloaded with muck and grime. "Unless you can clean this repeatedly," Mel holds it back. Alas, she shall remain covered in dirt and grime of the earth. She's had worse. It could be viscera.

"I'm considering coming around Willow less frequently, at least while mushroom beasts that bury you beneath the ground are a threat," Mel answers. Yes, she's only come the once, but this stranger needn't know her for the newcomer she is.

[makeoutwithme]

Scanlan watches on idly as his counterpart wipes away the dirt and grime from her person to the best of her ability with the handkerchief provided, chuckling with a shake of his head plucking it from her grasp and shoving it in the back pocket of his pants. "Afraid not darling I am not typically in the business of playing housekeeper." Sure he could act the part if absolutely necessary but he was usually more of the heroic type saving damsels in distress or slaying whatever monstrosity was next on the chopping block.

"Well that's too bad it's a rather nice place when it's not crawling with this month's fresh horrors Thirteen has cooked up for us." Smiling coyly as he stands beside the woman towering over him now.

"Do you require further aid besides a warm bath and some clean clothes? I may not be an accomplished healer like my companion Pike but I have some skills at my disposal." If she needed minor healing for any abrasions or blunt trauma with the likely headache incurred the bard could spare some healing words.

[somethingrevolutionary]

"No, you don't seem the type," Mel smiles. Heaven forbid he met her mother. Ambessa Medarda would eat him alive, one way or the other. Some attributes might be her taste, but she very much liked being waited on more than he seemed inclined. Just as well, the fewer people here her mother's type the better.

"It's a rough treatment for arrivals with only the one set of clothes," Mel comments, "They're well hidden under the dirt, but I expect there's some bruising from being pushed into the earth. It was solid enough without me being pushed into it."

Her eyes catch sight of a chest beyond her companion, and Mel wonders if it will have further clothes. One thing at a time.