May 2022 Test Drive Meme

[folkie]

MAY 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]

A PLACE IN THIS WORLD

Content Warnings: Possible insanity via cuts by thorns. Temporary nullification of abilities.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

The world comes into focus in one sharp, overwhelming rush. You are laying on the ground surrounded by staggering walls of flowers of all types and colors. Their sweet scent fills the air and the sky above is clear, blue, beautiful, and endless. It would be easy to be lulled into a quiet nap in such a peaceful place. You can even hear a soft, disembodied voice singing songs from some unknown place all around you. After some time, this siren song creates an intense yearning that will eventually bring you to your feet and pull you forward. You are filled with the urge to find someone important. You may know who or you might just have some aimless, faceless person at the forefront of your mind.

All you know is that when you finally find them, you'll know. Is it love? Is it a friend you have always needed? The perfect enemy? Only time will tell, but for now, you must find them. The flower maze is dense and for now, it doesn't seem like flying out and above them is an option. If you try, you just wind up vaulted back into the maze. Nope! This trial is about using other means of exploration. Maybe you can destroy the flowers, but you will find that this flower field is apparently endless. If you get cut by thorns along the way, you will become increasingly hectic about finding this mystery person. Some have been thrown into insane desperation just looking for their People among the flowers.

But once you finally find them, you're both filled with relief and the flowers around you blossom wider. You can then treat the flower maze like a solvable puzzle and get your way out of it. However, some people spend a bit more time in the maze since once you do find your person or people, you will be stricken with the urge to talk to them, to "open up" about your yearning to find them...even if you've never met them before!

OUT OF THE WOODS

Just outside of the flower maze is a little festival set up just on the edge of Willow and partway into Epiphany! Little stalls of food and drinks have been set up - and we mean little! The good folk who set up these stalls are magical cats standing upright and wearing clothes like little people! All the stalls are cat-sized and so are the dishes and food - which means most of the people walking through will likely be quite a bit bigger! That's okay, the cat folk seem happy to serve you bigger or multiple helpings of their yummy soups and bread. None of them seem able to really communicate with the new arrivals, but that's okay, their cute meows are fun to listen to anyway.

The music is a bit more pronounced here and a handful of cat couples are dancing around. Don't be surprised if they encourage you to join in the dancing! Maybe you didn't actually find someone in the flower maze - if not, the cat folk will encourage you to dance with another new arrival to get to know them! Because apparently dancing with someone you don't know is a good formal introduction? Ah well. Sometimes it's just the idea that counts.

There will also be some supplies to help patch people up who have gotten a lot of cuts from the flower maze. Some of the bouts of insanity are probably still going a bit hectic, so you might want to lay down in the recovery area until you feel a bit more stable. Talking to people apparently helps with the stability, so maybe strike up a conversation with a fellow newbie?

ENCHANTED

Content Warnings: Optional selective amensia and/or altered sense of self, possible monster/creature violence, temporary enchantments, forced relocations.

LONG STORY SHORT

You're in a very unusual, specific outfit and in a place you might have seen once or twice in a storybook or in the imagination of your childhood. For some, you might pick up on what's happening immediately. For others, you might be so immersed in the role that you don't realize it - but you're featuring in a classic fairy tale. Maybe it's Sleeping Beauty or Little Red Riding Hood or Tale of the White Snake or The Mirror of Matsuyama. Either way, you're the main character or the main antagonist and it looks like you're going to have to play out the story with whoever you're stuck with!

The other person in the trial can either match up to the other side of the story or just arrive as themselves and have to play along. Trying to just abandon the trial is quite literally impossible! You're stuck in the weird woods or high tower and trying to "leave" just results in you going in repeated cycles until you wind up where you started. You have a role to fill and you might as well get used to playing roles in Folkmore! It's time to understand how these trials work. What lesson are you supposed to take away?

If you're grumbling about it or are left confused, don't worry! Thirteen will appear to those struggling and explain the situation: "You need to play out the story! C'mon. Everyone knows this story...Right? Well, whatever, it's obvious! If you play your part, I promise I'll give you something you want." Can you really trust a fox though? Especially the fox who brought you here? She laughs before you can really pester her for more information and vanishes in a burst of red dust. Foxes really are mischievous, aren't they...At least most fairy tales are incredibly short, basic, and straightforward so most people should be able to figure it out!

In theory.

DAYLIGHT

At least the Fox wasn't lying. When you complete the task of the story, the fairy tale world will melt into one of the settings in Folkmore and you will be brought back into the current reality. You will be left in the weird clothes, but fear not! A mystery trunk has appeared in front of you and whoever you completed the trial with. Inside the trunk, you will find some of your canon clothes and a few canon items. Nearby, there will be some weapons sticking out of the ground: basic swords, guns, shields, etc. These items might not be enchanted, but at least you have something to work with!

Better yet, you don't necessarily have to complete the Long Story Short prompt to find these trunks either! They seem to be dotted around Folkmore and you might find them just by virtue of exploration! The trunks seem to mysteriously know who is opening them so you won't find someone else's stuff by accident, but you might have to fight over who gets the sword in the stone...

A word of caution to those who grab the weapons...You will immediately be tested on how good you are with them. As soon as you have pulled them out of the ground, the ground will begin trembling and a serpent-like creature will form out of the ground. If you're in Wintermute, you have a sizeable icy creature to deal with. If you're in Cruel Summer, meet the fire-breathing snakey nightmare that's going to try and roast you alive. Don't think Epiphany or Willow will have gentler creatures! They might be covered in moss or flowers but they will hit just as hard. You have to defeat the angry creature - or try running for your life. They are relatively easy to beat and people without powers can manage if they are highly skilled or...really lucky...Or if someone far more capable finds them! Good luck. As a pro-tip, maybe don't pull weird swords out of the ground in the future.

Comments

long story short

[backronym]

[Theo is absolutely not Aurora. He's not nearly as refined, as graceful, or as well-suited to a flowing scoop-neck dress. At the moment, frozen in a half-step, he doesn't even look as well-practiced as the princess at remaining generally upright under his own power.

(Maybe the persistent hopefulness at the edges is a bit like the person he's meant to be, soft and quiet and doggedly real in spite of the hurts every world seemed inclined to pile on.)]

--really?

[Theo's well aware of how this story is meant to go. He's also fairly certain that the woman (or entity, perhaps; the taste in the air since she's appeared feels more than a touch like The Enchantress more than anything else) is meant to be encouraging the opposite behaviour.]

[medeiun]

Yes. ( Maleficent answers immediately, dark mouth releasing the words in a hiss. In her tension she may seem angry, but it stems from some odd blossom of fear. For her, perhaps the two emotions have been so intermingled over time that they are one and the same.

Her eyes flash with that green, as though lit with fire. Why should she try to protect him? He is only some boy. And if what the Entity had said is true (it most certainly is), she must let this story unfold for this dreamstate to be over.

....And yet she stands here, warning him. )

It is Cursed. As soon as you touch it, you will...

( The dark fairy's words halt for a moment, expression unreadable. Then, after a moment, she repeats the same words she'd once unleashed. It had once been with hatred, fury: raw and unchecked. She'd wanted to see their suffering. Waited years and years for it.

Now the words are quieter, said slowly. )

....fall into a sleeplike death. One from which you shall never return.

[backronym]

[This is not quite how the story goes. Or, at any rate, this feels slightly crooked from how the story is meant to go, like a thin crack in a mirror that the eye has trouble catching.

These aren't quite the flashing green eyes he's used to, either. Still, they're very much tugging on an instinct to hold still and listen.]

Isn't...? [Honestly, it's embarrassing to have to speak up about it. It's something she clearly knows. It's something this particular pocket of the universe seems to be requiring of them.] Aren't you meant to want that?

[That feels harsh. One hand lifts and waves, safely clear of the spinning wheel.]

To keep things trotting along?

[medeiun]

( He isn't wrong. She is meant to want that. And she did want that once, more than anything else. To hurt the girl, so that she could hurt Stefan. And some part of her wanted to hurt as much else as she could in that process. She'd delighted in seeing humans' hurt, fear, anger, upset, all directed towards her. Let it come. Let them see her as the darkest thing they had ever known.

She'd played that role once in a story of her own making, and she's supposed to play it again now. Perhaps some part of her still prefers to be seen as villain, always will. And yet, something in the pit of her stomach aches quietly. )

...I am, ( she admits, eyes moving to the spindle that awaits him. His face is soft, sweet. Maleficent hesitates, not knowing how to express the reason for her hesitance. He clearly knows how this story goes, though, so she turns it back around on him for a moment. )

...Are you really so willing to let yourself be put under such a curse? For the sake of this trivial game?

[backronym]

Well, might get lucky. Sometimes it's only one hundred years, or some handsome prince comes and sorts it all out.

[Theo manages a chipper enough tone and the cadence of a slightly flippant joke, but there's no denying the strain in his smile. Having to rely on the good will of a prince riding in to save the day hadn't gone exactly to plan, the last time around--or, perhaps, had gone somewhat to plan but still managed to break a few tender pieces of his heart. He suspects there's no chance that an Asgardians would be appearing for an assist, even in this strange patchwork pocket of the universe.]

Besides, like you said-- it's a game. [Hopefully. There's enough optimism left in him that he can apparently feel fairly confident about this point.] If I've got to have a bit of a magic nap, but it means someone else gets to go home or-- get some piece of themselves back, that's not nothing, is it?

[Would he do it for himself? Maybe. Would he do it on the hope that someone else caught in this confusion might have a bit of peace? Readily, earnestly, and without batting an eye.]