June 2023 Test Drive Meme

[folkie]

June 2023 TDM

Introduction

[ TDM Questions ★ Jump to Comments ★ Full Navigation ]
This Test Drive meme is open to all.
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 and work like "mini-events". For new players and characters, you can choose to have your TDM thread be your introduction thread upon acceptance or start fresh. Current players are allowed to have in-game characters react to TDMs via the Network or make a Log with the prompts they want to participate in.

TDM threads can be used for spoon spending at any time by characters accepted into the game.

Playing and interacting with the 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 always encouraged to tag new people on the TDM!


🦊 New Star Children meet the Fox still in their worlds, and she brings them into the new realm of Folkmore. As you follow her, your body begins to change and new characteristics emerge. These may stay for a while, or perhaps they will hide away after. And during all of this, the Fox explains to you where you will be going: to Folkmore.

and then... you fall like a shooting star, falling to the land in a burst of starlight.


🦊 Experienced Star Children are already familiar with this time of the month. There are shooting stars all across the sky, and some fall to the land, which means the Fox has brought new arrivals. These newly arrived Star Children will face some tests, but Thirteen wants the more seasoned residents to participate as well.

Perhaps you follow the falling stars on your own, or perhaps the Fox simply teleports you there, but it appears you too will be part of this.

[ Prompt One ★ Prompt Two ]

Right Where You Left Me . ★

Content Warnings: Alternate Universe, Memory alteration/altered sense of self, Exhibition

If This Was a Movie

You forget everything the fox told you on your way over. You forget your own history. You remember a completely new one, one that matches whatever story you're now in. It could be a story from your world—a folk tale, a novel, a movie, a telenovella—or one you've never heard of. Whatever it is, this is your life now. Your memories match as though you've lived here your whole life. The tone may match your world, or it may drastically differ.

And you're not alone.

Whatever scene you're in features at least one other Star Child in the same situation you are. They might also be a new arrival, or they may be someone Thirteen has plucked up out of Folkmore and brought here to join you. Whether you've known each other your whole previous life or never met before, you know each other as the people in the story—whatever relationship that is. You don't remember being placed here. It's your life! It always has been.

The two (or more) of you pick up at whatever point in the story it is. Perhaps it'll go the same way as the original story. Perhaps not. You still are you—memories redacted—after all. This story is yours to write together!

The outfits, the setting, the NPCs (played by Spirits going along with things), etc. all perfectly match the story and adapt with you as you create your own retelling.

Big Red Button

As it turns out, you aren't only in an entertainment, you are an entertainment. Across Folkmore, large screens showing these stories appear: in every school, in public squares, before a large meadow, in the middle of the desert, you name it. It's also streaming on everyone's relics. Everyone has the chance to see your story play out.

That's not all, Star Children are your key out of the story and into Folkmore itself. Along with these screens, there are big red buttons. Digitally, a big red button appears on people's relics when they watch these stories. It's pretty simple. Someone presses the big red button and you're free! The reason doesn't matter—boredom, pity, recognition, the irresistibility of buttons. These are the only way out, so when you get out is completely up to your fellow Star Children.

Once the button is pushed, an invisible wall between your story and Folkmore falls away. With it, you regain all your memories from home and from the walk to Folkmore with the fox. All you have to do is step out of the story and into the school of Baba Yaga. The school of magic. Thirteen isn't there personally, but you may feel her spirit around you. Baba Yaga—Thirteen—is the school itself.

A small chest is also there as soon as you leave the story containing an item from your homeworld. This may even be a weapon or magical item.

Small bat spirits have a couple stations set up within the school near where Star Children exit their stories. If you're injured or need to rest, they are ready to help treat you or provide you as many pillows and blankets as you wish. If you're hungry or thirsty, the other station has food and drink for all. Steaming tea, freshly baked bread, and all sorts of warm comforting foods. You'd be forgiven for thinking it might be autumn. They want you to be at your best when you leave Baba Yaga and enter the rest of Folkmore via Exile.

No Body, No Crime . ★

Content Warnings: Optional mind/body split, Possible invasion of privacy, Possible monster/creature violence

Eyes Open

When you leave Baba Yaga, you're somewhere in Exile. Not even the Spirits or experienced Star Children can tell you where exactly you are. The school walks around on its chicken legs. Unless someone leaves at the same time as you, you'll start in different places. You'll have to find your own way out.

If you have been exiled before, you'll have an easier time navigating the land. It'll help guide you toward where you want to go. If you have never been exiled before, you'll have a harder time navigating this section of Folkmore. The trees may try to push you back. Perhaps nothing happens, exactly, but the aura is one that doesn't want you. Regardless, there's enough fog that it's difficult to see where you're going. Attention certainly seems to be on you. Are the trees watching? Is the water listening? Those are simply stories Spirits share to scare new Star Children isn't it?

Suddenly, you may appear to be in another part of Folkmore! It could be anywhere. It could be a public area, a business, someone's home… Wherever it is, if you try to touch something, you realize you cannot. Instead you pass right through solid objects. You cannot open a door, but you can walk right through it. You may surprise someone with your sudden appearance, or perhaps you reach out to people you see for help. Perhaps you simply explore this new area where you were.

Take all the time you want. Hopefully nothing bad is happening back with your body still in Exile… On second thought, perhaps you don't want to spend too long away from your body. You can use your own skills or get help returning to your body or find yourself suddenly back in it. Time to take stock and maybe find your way back to the rest of Folkmore body included.

Cowboy Like Me

On your way through Exile, you may come across weapons sticking out of the ground. Swords, axes, shields, bows, guns… All manner of non-magical weapons. They're simply there, scattered here and there, free for the taking. It looks like someone had a bad time trying to get out of Exile. Whoever the weapons belonged to, they don't need them now.

A word of warning to those who grab the weapons, as soon as you do, one of the dangerous creatures in Exile will find you. These creatures don't only have sharp claws or fangs, poison or sharp senses, they are intelligent. You'll need not only the weapon(s) you grabbed but your wits to defeat them or the luck of someone else coming along to help you out.

Comments

Cowboy Like Me

[expensiveidiom]

Edward hadn't been tempted by the weaponry lying around. It was fine, but he wasn't looking for a weapon so he hadn't picked one up.

He couldn't help catching attention when Tinya was under attack and he nodded a bit more serious.

"Not sure we've got a choice." Edward commented as he found himself a polearm and swung it into a position to take aim at the visitors. That would put him in their crosshairs too.

"Some place this is." He grumbled.

[unphase]

Tinya could be considered a weapon in and of herself, given the Coldblood she'd inherited from Deer Country--fire, ice, and lightning were hers to command--but there was something to be said about a good, old-fashioned scrap without powers necessarily being brought to bear.

This seemed like one of them. Besides, she had enough anger in her to fuel a great many attacks. But she smiled warmly at the young man joining her, pleased to see that allies at least could be depended upon anywhere.

"I'm afraid we don't." Try to sound a little more gleeful, Tinya, won't you? She twirled the bladed staff and then shoved one of the bladed ones into one of the creatures' stomachs. The creature stumbled back, a cross between a groan and a growl escaping it.

"Believe me, I've been in worse," Tinya called out merrily. "I am Tinya! What's your name?"

[expensiveidiom]

He ducked a punch swung at his head and whirled around to bring his foot up in the midsection of the enemy before whacking it with the polearm as an insult to injury, it was already going down with a cry.

"Feels like just about any other day." He commented dryly, agreeing with her assessment. This wasn't that bad.

"Edward Elric." Ed answered, keeping his eyes on the fight rather than her.

[unphase]

Tinya feinted with the staff, then brought her hand up, unleashing fire on a small cluster of the creatures. Not a pretty way to go, she knew that first-hand, but entirely effective.

"Honestly, there are times I wouldn't know what to do with myself without a good fight," she said conversationally. As though she were talking about the weather or other ordinary social pleasantries.

"It's good to meet you, Edward," she called out, ducking the blow by another creature, then driving the blade up into its chin. "Are you new here as well?"

[expensiveidiom]

"I'm sure that I'd be bored without it." He said, throwing a harsh right elbow into the nearest creature. "Hurt, didn't it?!" Edward taunted, jabbing the pointed end into the next one. These were the trashiest of trash mobs, really.

"Yeah, never been here before." He murmured. "There was a fox involved. Things got weird. I get the feeling I'm not in Amestris anymore."

[unphase]

"So would I," Tinya called out girlishly. She was twenty, more than a full adult by her world's standards, and a princess. Such battles weren't meant for her by law and tradition, but such battles were thoroughly enjoyed.

"At least I'm not the only one with a fox. And you're not. Nor am I in Trench. We've both been stolen away. Now the only question is, what shall we do about it," she called out with a friendly smile.

[expensiveidiom]

"At the moment? Get rid of this mess." Edward cackled a little bit. "After that, I don't know."

He hadn't really processed the whole being snatched from his world, but not? The fox was weird.

"There's gotta be a way out right?" He didn't really want to be away from his brother for that long.

[unphase]

"After that, there's got to be some kind of meeting place for those of us who are new to get the lay of the land. At least there was the last place I was in."

She was all too familiar with the sensation. At least this time she'd been asked first and reassured that things would be all right back home while she was here.

"Honestly? I don't know. Short of reaching our potential and the Mistress only knows what that might be."

[expensiveidiom]

"Guess you have a point." Ed said as he slammed his polearm through one of them, watching it twitch on the ground.

"Do you see an end to these things, because I'm starting to wonder."

[unphase]

"I usually do," she says with a wry grin at Ed.

"The things we're facing? Yes, of course I do. What's to come? Hmm. That's a much more tricky matter to sort out. One would think the answer would have to be 'yes,' but is full potential something that even is achievable? By anyone? Honestly, I have my doubts. It may easily be one gilded cage for another."

Tinya wished she had it in her to soften the blows. In the past, she had done so. But now? Best to get people acclimated to their new realities as soon as possible.

[expensiveidiom]

"I did mean the first one." Edward snorted a little bit, but full potential was definitely a vague term. By what metric? It wasn't like he could get better at alchemy.

Fortunately, he didn't appreciate people softening blows and would rather look at something head on, no matter how difficult it was. "I wouldn't say I was in a gilded cage before."

[unphase]

While Tinya knew she needed to build up her mental defenses considerably. She was going to fight a telepath when she got home, she couldn't have the other girl reading Tinya's mind and knowing every move she made before she did it.

That's the best way of living, really. To anticipate the worst and be able to plan for it. "Oh? Then where were you?"

[expensiveidiom]

"Any cage I'm in, is one of my own making." Edward quipped, because that was true. He signed up for what he got, controversies aside, and he was responsible for his mistakes, as he thought he should be.

"The country where I'm from. I travel a lot, I happened to be in the North." He wasn't really supposed to be fighting anything, but well, no one could really tell him what to do, could they?

[unphase]

"Really? That sounds unpleasant. If I may, how did that happen?" Because she remembers being dragged back into her mother's orbit after a roaring success at the Paris Opera Ballet. She was so angry to be taken from a place which appreciated her.

"Is that traveling part of the cage or a momentary escape from it?" Because she could see it working and not working at the same time.

[expensiveidiom]

"I made a mistake." Edward said bluntly, but didn't expand on it. He wasn't very likely to, of course.

"The traveling is more the former, at the moment. I don't know what will happen when I find what I'm looking for. I can't think about that. I have pressing issues."

[unphase]

"Ah," she said. Given the bluntness of his reply, he probably wouldn't take too well at being asked further.

"Don't we all...but according to what I've been told, there's another us still back home, making choices and living our lives. Maybe those issues are what will help you reach your potential. Whatever that means, the fox ducked the issue when I asked."

[expensiveidiom]

He likely wouldn't.

"Yeah, I don't know what to think about that. It's good in a way, but in another it might mean I'm stuck here and I'm not that thrilled about that either."

[unphase]

"Neither am I," Tinya agreed readily. "I don't like the thought of a me who isn't me going about all of my business. It me wonder where the other versions of ourselves came from and if they'll be willing to leave when it's our turn again."

[expensiveidiom]

"There's that, and I have a lot of unfinished business." He looked way too young for that to be true, but it wasn't.

"And I have every intention on finishing that." No matter how long it took.

[unphase]

"That makes two of us. Yours wouldn't happen to involve a telepath, would it," Tinya asked with a grim sort of humor that implied that someday, somehow there would be blood spilled. And it would be the telepath's.

"As do I. Honestly, I think such places do choose us because of the amount of unfinished business we leave at home. It's not as interesting to have us, otherwise," she said with a chuckle that was black as coal.

[expensiveidiom]

"God, I hope not." Edward laughed, ending in a bit of a snort. "That's not the kind of thing that exists in my world, I'd have a hard time figuring out how they managed that to begin with, aside from parlor tricks."

He scoffed lightly. "Then they should know what I do with these kinds of challenges."

[unphase]

"You're lucky, then. I'm still not sure how to confront someone who knows all of my moves before I make them," she says with another dark chuckle.

"Hmm, let me guess...you ruin them before the other side knows what's hit them?" And she smiles.

[expensiveidiom]

"I like to think I'm not that predictable." Edward said with a smirk. Of course, that in itself was kind of true.

"That's always the better plan, but you know, I'm creative."