dankmemes | test drive meme #13

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!test drive

test drive meme #13

Welcome to Hadriel's test drive, and thank you again for your interest in the game! As always, our reserves page is here, and our applications page is here! Reserves open September 24th, and apps are open October 1st.

Two quick points here as well:
1. Any thread made in Hadriel's test drive will be accepted as the sole Action Log sample in the application.
2. All threads made in the test drive can be considered game canon, either through handwaving or through a shared mental experience while coming through the Door!

Test drives will be broken up into specific god mini-events, during which your characters can see how well they fare under the watchful eye of one of the gods. Choose wisely or just simply pick 'em all, and have fun!

F E A R

SCENARIO ONE: DON'T LOOK AT ME
[The Door brings in all that is chaotic and evil in the world. This may include you, may include the person next to you... and may include the monster behind you.

Watch out as you explore the streets of Hadriel, because you're not alone, and there's always something lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect chance to hop right on you and chow down. This time, the Door has brought in several Boos, from the Mario video game series.

These monsters can be menacing, but are also incredibly shy. When looking directly at them, they will cover their faces and fade into the background- however, when turning away from them, they advance on you until they're in the perfect spot to take a nice big bite. The only way to defeat them is to escape this part of the level- that is, run madly away and try to keep up eye contact while you do so. They may look cartoonish, but those ghost teeth can be sharp!]

SCENARIO TWO: YOU'VE GOT RED ON YOU
[Hadriel is home to many things- temples, irate gods, angry citizens and... well, zombies, apparently. Beware as they start to walk/stagger/generally kind of shuffle around the streets of the city, since where there's one or two, there's usually a hundred more just waiting for the right moment to strike.

Zombies attack Hadriel by the dozen for this prompt, and nowhere in the city is technically safe from them! While they're not necessarily fast or intelligent, they have an advantage on you in that they have a lot more friends and they can't feel pain. So saddle up, bunker down, and try to survive the infestation!

This is a mini version of our Dead Men Walking event this month!]

R A G E

SCENARIO THREE: CAPTURE THE FLAG
[Hey, what's Hadriel without a few mind-numbingly stupid games to forget the fact that you're in a murdercave that routinely tries to scare the crap out of you while also maybe killing you every once in awhile? You're not quite sure who came up with this particular mind-numbingly stupid game, but you seem to be playing, so get your running shoes on and grab that inhaler!

This is a game of Capture the Flag, and thanks to Rage, you're really starting to feel that competitive spirit. You're going to win- you have to. So what if you incur a few fouls along the way?

There's a red team and a blue team for this prompt, with both teams trying to protect their corresponding flags. Try to strategize to take the other team's precious flag, chase someone from the opposing team down, or just go all out and full body tackle that poor guy who got a little too close to your territory- it's all on you!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mm, no, but it's better and also easier to be angry at a person than a circumstance.

[Even if there's nothing you can do to them because they're a) unreachable, b) unkillable or c) you don't get to be the first in line for that sort of revenge, or a combination of all three. At least it's better to have a target for that anger. There's nothing worse than having some random circumstance fuck over your life or the life of a loved one.]

Underground, though, eh? Descriptive! [She looks up toward the cavern ceiling.] You must really like the change in scenery.

[Don't he know it, heh. Except not so much, it turns out. Anger requires too much work for him to bother to get fussed half the time. He burned cold maybe once or twice in his life, and it sputtered out just as quick as it appeared. Maintaining it was too much for a guy like him.

No wonder he ended up the way he did, huh?]

Oh yeah, went straight from the, uh, proverbial frying pan and into the fire, as they like to say. At least home wasn't full of things trying to kill ya.

[Wasn't "full" of them, maybe. But oh, they sure were there, weren't they?]

[She's now scanning the ceiling, trying to judge how far away it is and what sort of wings she'd need to reach it.]

Well...no cave goes on forever, yes? There must be a topside somewhere up there. Anyone tried digging through the roof yet? Could fly up and turn myself into some sort of reverse oil drill, I'd wager...

[But if actual gods want them here, it's probably not that simple. She turns her head into a drill bit anyway, for emphasis.]

Hate to break it to ya, but I think if it were that simple the people here would've tried it already. This place has...well, it's my understanding that it's been around for a while, and so've the people in it.

[But then, he always did give up easy. No real point, huh? For all they know they could just be in some kinda isolated pocket space, some kinda extant dimension removed from everything else.

But that'd be ridiculous, right?]

Hmmm.

And...

[An alarming thought has occurred to her, and she smiles rather thinly.]

Going home, I imagine. Not that simple either, is it?

Nope.

[He spreads his arms wide in an artless shrug, exaggerated indifference rolling off from every line in his grin, the knowing downward wink of one eyesocket.]

Once you're here, you're kinda here to stay. 'Til such a time that the gods don't want you anymore. But I guess they ain't ones for rhyme or reason, or predictable patterns of any kind.

[Ah.]

[So.]

[This isn't a case of borrowing, then. This is a case of kidnapping. Some asshole has gone and yanked her right off the Tree entirely.]

[And back home...]

I see.

[He looks like he doesn't even care. He even winks at her, because it is, after all, objectively hilarious. Does that come from being here for so long that he's gotten used to it, or does he just have practice for that sort of thing? Take nothing seriously and nothing serious will take you, her parents used to say.]

[But back home...]

[She pushes another loose brick off the edge of the roof. It doesn't even hit a zombie, just smashes to pieces on the pavement.]

And being gods, I would suppose that they don't much care whether someone is needed elsewhere.

[She peers over the side. The sound of smashing bricks has drawn a handful of zombies. Camille props her hands on her hips.]

Everything dies, every single thing, even the sort that would claim to be immortal. [Her grin splits her face in half, her teeth like that of an angler fish.] If my sister dies because I'm here and not there, I suppose I'll have to decide that I do have truck with gods.

[Well, okie fucking dokie then. That is a grin that rivals his, honestly, an impressive feat. It just goes and bisects her face, huh.

Yeah, she don't seem too pleased about that. Must be nice to care that much about the way things are back home, huh? Must be awful nice to have that kind of passion and strength sealed up in your SOUL.

Must be nice.

'Course, it must also suck to high hell.

Sure looks like it.

Sans grins.]

Nah, sorry. They don't much care who they pull in, or how long they keep 'em here. Hard to really say.

Like you said - they are gods.

[She clears her throat and her face reforms itself, or rather, now she has a cat's head. The fur and general cat-ness stop very abruptly at her neck.]

[Sure, it's nice to care, and also terrible, though it helps a lot that most Folk don't care about much beyond their immediate interests. Family, friends, territory, possessions, that sort of thing. Amorphs are even more insular than the average.]

[Family is just very important to her, and she's already lost one sibling already.]

No need to apologize. I'm not in the habit of eating the messenger. Either way, I suppose I'll have to have a chat with one of them sometime in the near future.

...What sort of gods, anyway? Gods usually have a shtick, I've found. You said they were emotions-based?

Well, good. I've had just about enough of things tryin' to eat me, and nobody wants to get a bunch of old bones stuck down their throat.

[~~tell that to your improbable number of fangirls sans but ok~~

He nods tiredly.]

Yep. You got Hope, you got Fear, you got Delight, Rage, and Sorrow. Not all of 'em are what you'd expect, though. This? [He opens a bony hand to gesture at the putrefying hordes below.] I'd guess this is Fear's doing. That's pretty obvious.

What's not obvious is that Fear cannot tell a scary story to save his life.

Weellll...

[She peers at him for a moment before shrugging. There's several entire species back home that would beg to differ, but it's probably best not to bring it up.]

What, no Melancholy? No Ennui? No Schadenfreude? What a shame. [She clicks her tongue.] And of course this would be the work of someone styling themself as Fear.

[She snickers a little at the comment, though it comes out a bit like hissing with the cat head.]</small Not seen a proper scary movie in awhile, I'd reckon. Awful human-centric, too, but I suppose it's hard to make a movie that pleases all audiences. Or frightens them, in this case.

Yeah, looks like they're just the basics for now. Every now and then we get to vote Hadriel's Next Top Emotion on in. 'Pparently you get incentives.

[GPS. Orchards full of things that a skeleton like him can't eat. Yeah, real great incentives. He'll just feel goddamn fantastic about it.

"Sleeping," he's pretty sure, is an emotion, and should be ranked high on the list. But it ain't. What a loss for everyone involved.]

Real great place we got here, huh?

[She blinks owlishly at him, or at least cattishly.]

...That's the silliest damn thing I've ever heard. What possible incentive could there be for Fear? Fear is annoying at best and pointless at worst.

[She heaves a sigh. Stuck here, worlds away from her cafe and her sister, and she has to put up with Vote Your Favorite God Onto the Island or...whatever? This is absurd. Usually she likes absurd, but this is where she draws the line.]

[Apparently it's where the small skeleton draws the line too, judging by his tone.]

Oh, indeed! Quite the tourist destination! Are we allowed to just vote all the gods off the island? Because that, I could get behind!

I dunno, man. I wasn't here to vote the guy in. Assumin' he wasn't here to begin with.

["Sorrow," though. Nice for them to feel like shit for a few days, all for something Sans couldn't even eat since none of the fruit was calibrated to accommodate someone made of magic.]

You could always talk to 'em yourself. They like to talk to us here and again. Pretty far up their respective high horses, though.

Powers above. [She massages her kitty forehead.] Voting for gods. This is dumb.

Oh, I think I absolutely will be having some words with them. Hmm, I wonder...can you punch a god in the face? Being smited or whatever might put a damper on things, buuuutttt...

[The temptation is Real.]

[Oh boy.]

Oh boy.

[He eyes her with a peculiar mixture of expressions that might be difficult to discern in their entirety - curiosity, maybe. Intrigue. Bemusement. Concern?

Nah, concern sounds too much like "worry," and he doesn't deal in worry. Not especially.]

Rage'll have a real field day with that one.

[He looks...bewildered, maybe? She's discovering that it's awfully hard to read an expression without, yanno, skin and muscle, or at least magic pretending to be skin and muscle.]

[Still, she likes that expression and grins brightly at him, clapping her hands in front of her.]

Oh, but just imagine the headlines! "Local Crazy Fistfights Actual God of Anger." I'd be famous! Posthumously. They'd make me into one of those...those...those silly things they put on the internet. Where they take pictures of cats and put words on them. Shame that I won't be remembered for my pies instead, but one has so little time on one's hands. Doubt they hand out blue ribbons down here, anyway.

[She laughs, still that weird giggle of hers.]

Though to be quite fair, I think Rage might be one of the few I'd get along with.

Death ain't really permanent here anyway. Hope brings ya back after a few days.

[If he's anything but nonplussed about that, it doesn't show in his expression. He more or less just seems resigned to it. Kinda just how things are with him. The slow cascade of changing circumstances that he accepts as they come, because what the hell else is he gonna do about it?]

So, uh, yeah, there's that little tidbit that I think you'll find relevant.

Brings us...back?

[Oh, that's. That's.]

[That's relevant.]

[It's the first time in the conversation that she's actually looked quite a bit unsettled. Her cat ears press backward.]

Does he, ah, have the decency to...bring us back as ourselves, or...?

[Hmm. Yeah, that wasn't a real favorable reaction. Sans's skull lists to one side in quiet contemplation as he considers her words. Bring us back as ourselves. You lose somethin' somewhere along the way back to the land of the living, pal? Drop somethin' in the Styx?

Sans, personally, wouldn't worry about it. But then, he didn't have to die to lose all the important things. Not in any of the conventional ways.]

Far as I can tell, yeah. You'd have to ask someone's gone and done it.

[What is dead should stay dead. If it comes back, in her experience, then...well.]

[She looks down at the zombies again.]

[Maybe there is something to be said for the horror behind corpses getting up and walking around. Trying to kill you. Trying to kill you, even if maybe they once knew you.]

Bit unnatural, that.

[He shakes herself out and turns herself all the way into a cat, albeit one still wearing a miniature version of Sans's hoodie. She hops up onto the roof edge and settles down, loaf style.]

But then, one person's unnatural is another person's natural, I've found. Suppose I can't complain, if the second chance is real. Though, gods and all, I'd imagine there are strings attached to that sorta thing.

I imagine there is, yeah. Unless those strings are just, "you're here now forever, congrats on your new underground home, you're welcome."

[That's what he'd assume, but then again, he's got no clue. He doesn't know anyone who's died and come back.

Just someone who's died. Just the one person. She'd gone in scared, however much she insisted to the contrary. He didn't blame her for that, nor did he blame her for that rampant state of denial.

All things must die.]

Mmm, indeed! Yes, I can tell, this place is going to be a lovely summer home. Caves full of stupid things looking to nosh on tasty Folk, ridiculous fake gods, dubious second chances, and all while no doubt things go to utter hell back home!

[She turns her whiskers forward in a cat smile and peers up at him, tail lashing slightly.]

Tell me another joke, Bluebird of Happiness! Cheer me up!

[Uh-huh, sounds like she's startin' to get it. Sans nods with a conceding shrug of his shoulders as if to say, yeah, pretty much. She really just about covered it right there. Someone should stick it on the pamphlet. Make it the cave tagline.

He quirks a supraorbital ridge in mild amusement.]

Bluebird of Happiness?

["Happiness," he imagines, because of the grin (close enough) and "Bluebird" because...ah. Right. The jacket. The jacket whose clone she decided to start wearing. Guess he's really selling it as a fashion statement.]

Uh, all right. What d'you get when you cross a joke with an existential crisis?

Hu hu hu! Little fluffy bluebird, you are! And all smiles. Funny thing, if you look at a bluebird straight on, they look so angry and indignant! Ah, but don't worry. Too big a bluebird for this little cat right now~

[Yeah, yep, that nickname's gonna stick.]

Ooh! What do you get when you cross a joke and an existential crisis?

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cw mild body horror

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