Test Drive Meme #6

[inthenightmods]

TEST DRIVE MEME #6

Hello and welcome to the In the Night test drive meme for November! Thanks for your interest in our game! Reserves open on November 20, and applications open on November 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 7 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

KEEP YOURSELF ALIVE

When the spirits decide to throw the residents of Beacon a feast, you have two options: partake or abstain. It doesn’t take long for the effects of the food to become apparent. Either you turned away from the temptation and watched your gluttonous comrades fall into a deep, comatose slumber…or you’re among the dreamers, and you awake to a Beacon of a time long forgotten. It's the same Beacon that was left upon falling asleep, but now, the sunlight is bright overhead and songbirds can be heard throughout the forest. The bonfire has been replaced by an ornate fountain, like a proper town square, and there's no lighthouse out on the peninsula.

While dreamers have the chance to explore, those stuck in the waking world find themselves swiftly overcome by a horde of violent green-eyed spirits that attack everything they can get their hands on: even if that includes an individual that’s left asleep and helpless. Regardless of your strength, this is your task now. Protect and defend the town if you want there to be anything left of it.

Although, unlike the official event, there will be no mod-run groups for dreaming and exploration, you’re free to write your character waking up in a sunny version of the known locations in Beacon and write your own psychological horror breakdowns of the dreamy world. Or, if you choose to write your character as a defender, feel free to make up your own green-eyed spirits to fight while looking over the comatose bodies of the dreamers.

This prompt is a mini version of the game's Enter Mr. Sandman event.

SHEER HEART ATTACK

You’ve never seen him before. A giggling little boy, cloaked in shadow, beckons you to follow through the forest. He travels quickly, always too fast to quite keep up with, and takes you through the trees with ease. If you choose to keep following, you're lead to an old, abandoned house, and once inside…find that the dining room has been all done up for a sort of dinner party. Various spirits clatter at the seats, pounding the table with forks and knives. They’re not the spirits you know. They’re not the chirping, scuttling friends that can be encountered around town.

No, these are long-clawed and jagged-toothed. They’re dirty and sunken-eyed, their masks streaked with red. The little boy collapses in a pile of wooden limbs at the foot of the table. Closer, now, the light of your lantern shows him for what he was: a puppet. The puppeteer makes itself known where it had hidden itself against the dark ceiling, eight long legs creeping into the once-unoccupied space of the doorway. As it blocks the way out, and the other spirits grow ever noisier, the looming figure of the Baubledook takes their rightful place at the far end of the table.

You have very little time to ask yourself: are you the guests of honor...or the main course?

network prompts

TOO MUCH LOVE WILL KILL YOU

Another week comes, marked by Robin's latest bulletin posting on the Network. But this one's a bit different: as a final note to sign off on the latest updates, she encourages everyone to give thanks in the spirit of the harvest season. Whether you want to thank someone directly or maybe say something more abstract, don't you think you'll feel better if you spread something positive? No? Not incentive enough? Well, this time, Robin appears to have accounted for the no-fun naysayers that try to skirt around her attempts at community building.

All readers will quickly discover that they're unable to navigate away from the bulletin until a thankful comment is left. There must be some kind of keyword function programmed in to only allow escape to those who have left thankful content. Better think of something, cynics and grumps. If nothing else, there's probably no way for the Network to tone police?

I WANT IT ALL

A friendly pumpkin sprite has appeared in the bottom corner of your tablet's dashboard! It's a loving and smiling companion, asking quite frequently to be attended to and, most importantly: fed. Curiously, the more that you feed the digital vegetable, the bigger it grows...until it's actively blocking out parts of your screen. You could stop feeding it, of course. It's not real or alive, so what's the harm? But as it grows hungrier and more insistent and you continue not to feed it, it cries and cries until it goes from sad to angry.

And then you notice it chomping at the edge of the screen, eating it away, bit by bit, blacking out the corners and working its way inward, making apps inaccessible and the network harder and harder to navigate. Maybe you should have given it what it wanted.

QUICKNAV
comms	|	network • logs • memes • ooc
pages	|	rules • faq • taken • mod contact • player contact • calendar • setting • exploration • item requests • full nav

Comments

julia wicker | the magicians

[ourladytrees]

sheer heart attack

[ Of course following the little boy turns out to be a bad thing. Really, she should have learned by now, but it was a kid. She couldn't not follow him, not when he might need her help. Which is why she hurries through the forest, ducking beneath branches and climbing over protruding roots. It's why she goes into that house that looks like something out of a nightmare, because whatever's inside can't be worse than what she's faced before.

She didn't think the universe would see that as a challenge. But that's cool. These spirits aren't so scary— Okay, no, that one is a bit, actually. ]

Shit.

[ Julia stares at the Baubledook, a trickle of actual fear going down her spine as she takes in those long fingers and that pale face that smiles so terrifyingly... But then she remembers who she is, all she has been, and she straightens her back, hands at her sides sparking with bits of magic at her fingertips. Because fuck this. ]

too much love

I am thankful for the people who stood by me while I got my shit together. Especially the ones who aren't around anymore. Though I guess in this place that's most of them.

There, you happy now?

2 much eliot

[itselbitch]

I accept payments in wine and joints

[ourladytrees]

Yeah, sorry, fresh out. You should have said something five mins ago

[itselbitch]

damn
the one time being fashionably late has failed me

how could death betray us like this?

[ourladytrees]

You can't really be surprised, we're always getting screwed over

[itselbitch]

oh you know I'm not
even slightly

which is probably why it's even more surprising that I somehow managed to get some grass here
and somehow the plant isn't dead yet so

I guess I'm the new Josh around here

[ourladytrees]

You got. Wow. How did you manage—

No, don't answer that. I don't want to know. Something good has finally happened and we should just enjoy it

All hail the new Josh

[itselbitch]

honestly?
yes

but alas, I don't think I can live up to his legacy
aside from the dead part
well I mean I guess we're still alive sort of

anyway
you don't happen to remember that little uh tree thing you did for us, do you?
I was thinking Lil Hoberman here could use some friends

[ apparently that's what it's named. well, more specifically, he's decided to name the plant and the strain "the hoberman", but details. ]

[ourladytrees]

[ As usual, their lives are an overcomplicated mess that defies all coherent explanation. Why should their afterlife break that pattern? ]

Lil Hoberman. That's cute, El.

I don't have the same kind of power anymore but I can try. Though there is always the chance I might do the opposite. Fair warning.

[itselbitch]

please don't hurt him
he's a innocent herb that simply wishes to grow big and strong

I'm willing to let you try but please don't let this turn out like Gerald

[ourladytrees]

Maybe find me a weed to practice with. Just not your weed.

[ There are probably other ways she could have phrased that. ]

Who's Gerald?

[itselbitch]

I wonder how I'll find anything in this forest

[ haha... no he'll get you one. ]

hm you know what? I guess it would be on brand for Quentin to avoid telling you about the time he killed a puppy
not that you were really on speaking terms with him at the time?
but also he probably forgot poor Gerald's name anyway

[ourladytrees]

[ There's a whole lot in that message and only some of it that she really cares to address. Sure, she'd gotten better and grown from her experiences, but those had been far from her proudest moments. ]

I did hear something about the puppy but, yeah, pretty sure he forgot Gerald's name. Poor little guy. Q said he was cute.

[itselbitch]

[ eliot's fine not talking about it. they've long moved on from that time anyway. it feels like a decade ago now. ]

oh he was the sweetest thing
sometimes he'd get fussy at night and he'd calm down when I let him sleep on my pillow
and he always knew how to cheer me up

I miss Gerald
but he really didn't deserve being forced to live that way either

[ourladytrees]

[ An entire lifetime. It's hard to believe how little time has actually passed for them since all of this started. Well, that they can remember, anyway. ]

I'm sorry you lost him. You're right, he didn't deserve that life, but that doesn't make it easier to be without him.

[vampirella]

based on the energizer bunny levels of over-enthusiasm and exclamation points, doubtful.

i wouldn't waste time trying to make that one happy, she's clearly overcompensating for something. it's a losing battle.

[ourladytrees]

Good to know. Are the other natives as bad?

[vampirella]

( IMPORTANT NOTE: carmilla's tastes are a bit skewed... )

the bird guy by the bonfire isn't so bad. the librarian is delightful.

[ourladytrees]

[ Bird guy by the bonfire. That's actually a fairly tame description compared to what she'd encountered in Fillory. ]

That's the first time I've heard someone have a good opinion about a librarian in a long time.

[vampirella]

modern tastes are notoriously terrible.

( carmilla loves to read, she's always had a soft spot for librarians. even mildly terrifying mysteriously veiled ones that occasionally munch on their own literature. )

Sheer heart attack

[moderatelymaladjusted]

[The little boy was new, his giggling unsettling but Quentin had followed him through the woods anyway. This place really wasn't a place for kids, and he has time to spare a quick thought to Mary before the boy disappears past a crop of trees.

There, looming like something out of a nightmare, is a house. A regular, dark house, with tree growing close enough to make it look crowded against them and Quentin sees the tailend of the boy's coat as he slips through the open door.

Jesus.

This feels like the worst idea, but the kid shouldn't be out here alone. The forest was no safe place for children. And Quentin hurries after him and almost runs smack in someone else.]

Fuck! I'm sorry-- but you just stopped and I-- I-- oh my god, what is that?