memesinthenight | TEST DRIVE MEME #5

TEST DRIVE MEME #5

Hello and welcome to the In the Night test drive meme for October! Thanks for your interest in our game! Reserves open on October 20, and applications open on October 22.

While you're here...
Take a look at our rules and faq pages to familiarize yourself with the game.
Note that we have a reserve cap of 20, and a (current) application cap of 10 apps this month for new players, as the game has a player cap of 60. An accurate count of current players will always be available on the taken page.
TDM threads can become game canon if both players wish. If the situation isn't something that could happen in-game, you're free to chalk it up to some strange hallucination, a shared dream, or other mysterious circumstance.
Note that this is not limited to new characters threading with characters already in-game. If current players wish to thread out the TDM prompts as canon events, they are welcome to do so. They are welcome to make posts in the main comms for TDM events as well. Please note, however, that actual plot clues or happenings will not occur in TDM prompts.
If you plan to apply, please keep in mind that we do require at least one sample thread on the application to be from our TDM (though it doesn't need to be the current TDM).
You're welcome to use the provided prompts or come up with something on your own, but we do ask that all threads take place in our game's setting.

Thank you again, and we hope you'll choose to join us!

log prompts

MAMMA MIA

The town is quiet, the forest spirits behave business-as-usual, Rastus doesn't know what's up. Whatever's going on, you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

And you will, though the hallucinations are subtle at first: objects moving when they shouldn't, people's proportions looking just a bit off, voices in an empty room, and so on. Is it just your mind playing tricks in the darkness? Might be! As the days go on, the hallucinations are harder to ignore, no matter how much you may wish to wave them off as flukes. What's wrong with everyone's faces? When did all the howling start? Who do you hold onto when the world drops out from under you? And those hands...

While you might know it can't be real, it certainly feels real. But at least it can't last forever... Right?

This prompt is a mini version of the game's Bury a Friend event.

GIMME! GIMME! GIMME!

Although the month is already well underway, residents of Beacon will notice a brand new shipment being delivered to the general store—only this one comes via the forest, as a small legion of spirits quickly drop off crates of boxes at its doorstep before scampering back into the woods. Hopefully nobody is riding too hard on hoping for further rations or supplies, because opening them up quickly squashes any notions of a full month's restock. Instead, it looks like each crate is bursting with costumes! Coming in all shapes and sizes to fit anyone of any age or decree, there’s plenty to choose from. Something scary? Magical? Clever? Or maybe even a bit on the sultry side? Dig deep enough, and you’re sure to find something to suit your tastes, props, accessories, wigs and all!

If nothing else, surely you can find an alternate use for a bit of spare fabric in your size, but what's the harm of having a bit of fun? But, oh, be careful if you're playing dress-up while the hallucinations from the event are in play... These costumes might just have a funny effect on you. 🤔!

network prompts

S.O.S.

The morning is interrupted by an alert. The text, which helpfully converts itself to automated speech when opened, reaches every inbox across Beacon, refusing to disappear until acknowledged. The problem? The username it comes from is glitched and unreadable, and all attempts at responding directly appear fruitless. The message is simple, three words:

SOS. SEND HELP.
There's nothing that seems to be able to be done about it, but with the earnestness in which it appears, maybe it would be wise to discuss it with the other residents. Isn’t there something you can do, even to track down the source? Maybe that will help you better put it from your mind.

TAKE A CHANCE ON ME

The longer you stay in Beacon, the clearer it is that you’re here for the long haul. And, on that note, the clearer it is that this place is going to need a lot of work to meet your standards. Obviously there isn’t much that can be done about certain things, like the state of lighting, or some of your potentially missing powers, but there are a lot of things that would certainly improve your personal quality of life. And for that matter, maybe some of your ideas would be agreeable to others, as well.

Whether you’re here to call for the establishment of a club, a new business, or even some kind of monthly therapy circle, the best way to get your message across is to turn to the Network and give your pitch. Whatever skills you may be lacking in the organization of this project, there’s undoubtedly someone out there who can provide. What are you waiting for? No time like the present to start collecting signatures!

QUICKNAV
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I remember that. I don't remember you dying on that trip." Stone shakes himself all over. "I'm going to have to ask around. Find out if anyone else had people from their own worlds with weird, different memories. Come on. Where are you staying? Nevermind, you're not staying there anymore, you're staying with me."

It's been lonely without a roommate. And he can filter out the worst of the Fell stench-- it's not even so bad, anyway, when Kethel keeps itself clean and unbloody.

Since Kethel's approach to "staying" most anywhere is to find an appropriately sized bit of ground and sit there for a while, it isn't hard to convince. Thinking of this like traveling helps it keep its calm, but having a berth and a familiar scent in its nose will help more. It follows.

No, that's not what keeps it edgy. This mismatch is disquieting, like the stupid imaginary shapes writing at the edges of its vision only inside its mind. "You think sorcery?" Sorcery is always worth blaming.

"All of this is some kind of magic," Stone grumps. "We're dead. We're supposed to stay dead, not walk around and get hallucinations and meet people from other shitting planets. It's bigger magic than I've ever seen before, though, and I've seen more than most of the rest of you."

Sort of a helpful thought, in a limited way. Magic is beyond Kethel. And this magic is apparently beyond Stone, meaning it's entirely out of its league. There's nothing it could have been expected to do about this situation. "I don't mind not being dead," it offers with a dry edge that is probably Kethel's idea of humor, but it's hard to say.

Stone snorts, and tugs at Kethel's wrist for it to follow. Another thirty years of familiarity (and a month of being the only one here he knows) has made touching a Fell not quite so bad. "You wouldn't. You're young." Though, honestly, Stone isn't that annoyed by the whole not-actually-dead thing. He'd be less annoyed if he were still back home, and not following phantom scents all the time. "If I was going to be stuck not-dead, I'd much rather it have happened a couple years ago, when I hadn't faded quite so much."

"Is it a problem?" It's certainly a change, and Kethel isn't sure how it'd feel about the same change. It quite likes decoration, even if it's still in the process of figuring it out. Its collection of beads is modest, but even the other kethel in its flight finds the whole enterprise unfathomable. But it can't imagine that being white causes any sort of issue.

Though anything you wanted to eat would see you coming.

Stone glances sidelong at Kethel, then remembers this guy is from before everyone explained what the fading actually meant. "Remember how I could push you around, even in this form?" he says sourly. "I can't actually do that anymore. Losing the last of my color means I'm dying. And I'm stuck at that point of dying for the rest of whatever this unnatural post-life thing is."

Kethel might contend that it let's Stone push it around, because it is essentially a very big teenager and because it generally enjoys doing the bidding of the old consort and earning smidgens of positive attention. Probably best not to start that argument. "I'll fight things for you," it offers, probably electing to start a different fight instead.

You want positive attention, you got it, Kethel. Stone gives him a glower that is one of his patented "I am touched by that but I am too proud to admit it" glowers. Kethel should recognize it from being leveled often at Moon and the queens. "I can fight myself." Now he sounds surly. "But having backup will be nice. There are these spirit things out in the woods. Potentially dangerous."

Spirit makes him think of ghosts, and he has to rely on stories for that. And not many of those. "You can fight spirits?" He was under the impression intangibility was pretty central to that.

"I don't know what they really are, but they're solid enough. They have a scent." That had been Stone's understanding before he got here, too: ghosts as intangible things, that probably don't exist anyway. But everyone here calls them spirits, so he just uses the local terminology. "They apparently killed some of the people here a season or so ago."

Kethel is big and damage-resistant enough to find that comforting. Magic aside, anything solid enough to kill somebody can presumably also be killed as long as you can separate it into enough component parts before they do the same to you, and giant claws and bone plates make that a pretty good bet. "Are they predators or just angry?" Somewhere in the core of Kethel it can't quite shake the idea that sometimes you just gotta eat.

"No idea. It seems like they eat food that we make, so they do eat, but if they were hunting us for food, there'd be a lot more of us dead and missing," Stone says. They're coming up on the Invincible, now, the big three-story inn on top of the tavern. "This is where I'm staying. I'll show you my room. Our room, now. No telling me no, it'll be better for both of us if you stay here too."

Kethel has no objections to the shared space idea. It's used to sleeping alone on journeys, but that's a far from ideal situation. Company is good. Even the idea of having a room is a bridge further than they've come at home. The kethels are always too busy.

Size, though? This is pretty big as groundling structures go, but it could probably wrap itself around the whole foundation nose-to-tail. (It could not, but it errs on the side of assuming it's big enough for any given task.) "You stay in there?"

"It's no colony tree, but it's the only place with enough people in it that I don't feel cut off from everybody," Stone shrugs, climbing the steps and pushing the door open, holding it for Kethel. "Plus it's the tallest building around here-- besides the lighthouse, which we can't get to. There are a bunch of rooms on the floors higher up."

TEST DRIVE MEME #5

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