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

[unghosting]

What she sees is a guarded young man who looks like he hasn't slept properly in about twelve years. He's pale and gaunt and has a terrible dark shadow beneath his lone eye, not having recovered yet from a solid year of extreme stress and grief and living on the run, unable to find enough to eat or a safe place to rest for longer than a few hours. Kevin has recently been taken into a noble household and is being given ample time to recover there, but he's haunted by nightmares and has been recovering from an injury besides, and the strain etched into his features simply isn't the sort of thing that can be erased in such a short amount of time. The injury in question was healed upon his arrival in this place, but his hair isn't yet long enough to keep it covered, and so the bandages on the left side of his face will remain for the moment. Given that he looks more like a ghost than anything else, it's probably no surprise that the burns and blisters on his elegant hands don't seem to be impeding his knitting progress much.

He'd be terribly handsome, if he didn't seem so haunted. Pretty, even. Probably it's no wonder the place saw fit to slap him into a dress.

A part of him wants to balk at being stared at so, even by a bird. Perhaps especially by a bird. He has seen what that beak can do and would like very much to keep his remaining eyeball. More importantly, it does cross his mind that there is a person in that bird, and when they're done here he will have to deal with that person, which is undesirable. But if he doesn't get the bird out of the story he won't get out himself, so there's nothing for it.

When he is satisfied that the sleeves are more or less the same length, he begins the bind-off. Although the mob has receded, he moves as fast as he can anyway. The last thing he needs is for the bird to get bored of him and fly away or something.

[integrous]

All of this is so strange, Asahi thinks.

She didn't really pay much attention to the details of this situation earlier, after all. She was just worked up already about somehow finding herself no longer in any human form, and then even more worked up when she saw some people drag off someone who didn't look like he had done anything worthy of being dragged off for in the first place. Other than that, she had hardly even taken a look at Kevin. What registered with the girl at most was the fact that he was wearing a dress, which is.. a little strange, but hey, he can live his life if he wants to.

But now she's closer and now she doesn't have tons of people around her to distract her, Asahi can take a proper look at the guy. At his pale skin, the bags under his eyes-- no, eye, there's only bandages on the other side. His hands almost look like they're even worse off.

.. What happened to him?

Asahi would like to express some concern here, but there's only so little you can do in a bird body, and even less so when you aren't used to navigating one. It means she opens her beak, trying to say something or ask something, but all that leaves said beak is - obviously - just a swan honk.

Great.

Frustrated by her inability to do much of anything here, Asahi just attempts to show concern in the only way she can in his form. She moves her neck, which is pretty hard because it's so much longer than she's used to, until her head is hovering over his thigh, and then lowers it to rest said head on there.

She isn't looking at him, so hopefully Kevin won't have to worry she's just looking at his remaining eye as a snack. Instead Asahi temporarily closes her eyes, like she's trying to say that way that she means him no harm, despite the way she violently chased away those people earlier.

[unghosting]

Kevin goes very still, having no idea what to do with this. He gets on with animals better than he does people most of the time, but this is...technically not one, right? So why...? It's sort of a forward gesture, then, isn't it? He supposes in this context the swan is supposed to be his sibling, but all of his own siblings were pretty terrible, so the notion of having one that isn't is honestly equally baffling.

After a moment, he gives the swan a decidedly awkward pat on the head, the gesture a complete opposite to the elegant confidence with which he nailed that guy's kidney a bit ago. At least the swan seems to mean to stick around, if nothing else. That means he can afford to slow down a little, and finish off the shirt at a pace that doesn't hurt quite so much.

Kevin may be a champion at tolerating pain, but he's been in an awful lot of it lately, and finding his wound healed has been the one thing about this place that pleases him so far.

Once the sleeve is finally completed, Kevin glances around until he spots a knife sticking out of the fallen peasant's shoe, takes it, cuts the string, and sets the dagger carefully in his lap instead of returning it. Then he scrunches the shirt up until he can hold it open at the neck, the way he remembers his nanny doing for him as a child, and holds it out to the swan. Come on, strange red birdie. This is for you.

[integrous]

Asahi moves when she feels Kevin starting to shift - if not just so she can actually look to see what he's doing now, since she's pretty sure he's no longer on the shirt, judging by the movements she can feel just through leaning on him like this.

So she cranes her neck to look in Kevin's direction, seeming a tad surprised when he's holding out the garment like that. She kind of gets what the gesture means, especially when he's giving her that expectant look, but Asahi isn't quite sure why any of this is happening. Is he giving that to her as thanks for her defending him just now? She's not sure how to feel about that as a present.

On the other hand, Asahi would feel too bad about just straight up rejecting a present from someone who seems so hurt, so she just moves closer until she's right underneath it, and he can just drop it straight onto her swan body.

A swan body that doesn't last long. The moment it's on her, Asahi starts to shift. The bird's body starts to stretch, the red feathers receding into just as bright red hair, her wings growing into arms -- all the way until the swan seems to have changed into a human girl, who seems.. well, in a moment she will probably be relieved, but right now she just seems incredibly confused about this development. She glances down at her body, touching it.

"W-Wait, I'm back to normal?!"

For a moment she seems to totally have forgotten Kevin's presence, but after a frantic pat down of her body she suddenly looks back at him.

"Do you have any idea at all what's going on here?"

Something about her look is almost pleading. Please, Kevin. Please tell her you know, because Asahi herself sure doesn't! She's just about at her limit of confusing things she can take in so rapidly in a row.

But as always with Asahi, the thought doesn't last long. Especially when she can see those bandages on his face, and remembers the wounds on his hands, and that immediately forces the confusion to the back of her mind in favour of: "W-Wait! Hold on! No, are you okay?!"

.. Is that the most pressing issue here?

Asahi isn't sure, but it's the last thought that came to her just now, and she can't help but be most concerned with what's at the forefront of her mind at any given moment.

[unghosting]

Kevin opens his mouth to answer her, but shuts it again when she just barrels right on to the next thing. Not that it isn't a fine question. Is he okay...? In the grand scheme of things, no, absolutely not. In the immediate moment, though, hm.

He glances at his hands. Not in great shape but he can flex them which means if he can find a sword, he can use it, so it's fine. He glances around them, and notices the remaining scenery of the town square is starting to fade out, the stupid stake replaced with trees and a cute little path and the sounds of a pleasant festival off in the distance. So, then, probably they've fulfilled whatever the story wanted, and there's no need to go through the rigamarole of explaining the curse to the king and whatever else.

Therefore, Kevin shrugs and moves on. He's been worse!

"Fox said I had to play out a fairy tale," he says, returning to the first issue. His voice is soft, and he speaks like he's out of practice with doing so. "Said she'd give me something for it."

Tellingly, there is no fox to be found. Behind him, though, as the landscape shifts, some sort of treasure chest sort of a thing shimmers into existence. There are weapons scattered around it.

[integrous]

Asahi glances around them as the fairytale fades. She pats down her shirt when she realises the thing he made is replaced by her own school uniform, the one she was wearing before she was suddenly a swan of all things. She'd almost question why this is the end of it, but..

Well, for one, she's pretty glad to be out of something that was taking away her humanity, and the girl is also just rapidly learning to not question stuff in this place. Everything is just ridiculous, apparently.

Even as a treasure chest suddenly appears.

Maybe this stuff just.. happens.

Asahi looks like she might get whiplash from how quickly her head turns to look from the chest towards Kevin.

"Like that?" She points at it.

Though she may be a little reluctant to trust the treasure chest and its content at this point, considering everything that has happened so far, it at least is the thing here that looks the most like it might be some sort of reward.