villagememes | test drive

Entry tags:

!tdm

test drive — winter

WINTER TEST DRIVE
Welcome to the test drive and thank you for your interest in The Village. This test drive is not game canon but will allow players the opportunity to experiment with game mechanics, the setting, and the flexibility of choice allowed by this game. The following prompts are examples of typical situations characters might face in the game. At least one thread from the TDM is required as part of the game's application process.

The setting details and locations are still being unveiled in the game, so prospective players are welcome to play with established locations or create their own within the general setting of Mathias.

( Recommended listening: ♫ )

INTO THE ENDLESS
Winter has arrived in Mathias. Snow falls steadily, big puffy flakes that pile up quickly in drifts as the wind blows them around town. The trees in the forest are covered in it, the branches bending under the weight and shaking when the piles fall from them to the forest floor. The roofs of buildings become solid white and drifts form in doorways as the wind tries to rush inside anywhere it can.

New arrivals wake in the forest, with its winding paths twisting back on themselves as they branch in either direction. It isn't safe to stray from the path, there is a menacing fog that waits just a few yards inward in any direction, but for now, there is nothing impeding movement along those snow-covered paths that cut through the trees. Continue stumbling in one direction and you'll reach the small town, coming out near the mishmash of quaint houses that nestle beside crumbling ruins that used to be homes. But choose the other and you'll seem to stumble on forever, huddling against the wind until there seems to be a clearing up ahead—

And then nothing. The earth opens up before you in a ravine so deep that the bottom cannot be seen. The other side can be seen, tantalizingly out of reach, and there is the sense that safety is just beyond, if only you could get there. But with that sensation is also the knowledge that if you stay here, you will die. The edge seems unsteady, like getting too close would set it crumbling and send you tumbling into that dark endless nothing that waits below...

BODIES WITHOUT SOULS
Benedict Books is nestled quaintly on the square surrounding Mathias's Town Hall, a thick layer of dirt covering the front windows. Looking through those windows provides a much different view than looking directly into the shop through the doorway — vague shapes and forms of figures seem to be inside, though no details can be determined through the streaks of grime. Flickers that resemble flashlights can be seen passing along the windows from time to time, and on occasion there is even a muffled tapping sound that comes from behind the glass, as if someone is trying to get your attention. The same distorted figures can be seen looking through the windows from the inside outward, but moving from one side or the other reveals... nothing. There is nothing there, and perhaps it is all in your imagination.

A portrait hangs at the front of the store to illustrate the namesake of the little shop... that may, in fact, not be so little. Dust covers everything in sight and detritus litters the wooden floor, as if someone left the door open and allowed half the forest inside.

The books are mostly familiar titles from the 1990s and earlier, but close examination will reveal that key details seem to have been changed. They fill shelves in neat lines along the walls and rows in between, the building almost seeming to stretch on forever until, finally, a small office can be seen tucked away in the back. A glance back toward the front door gives the impression that the room isn't that big, after all. Strange that you previously thought so.

Prying the door open is the only way to get inside the small office; the hinges have rusted and are caked with dirt and grime. Search as you might, there are no interesting bits of information to be found here beyond a few inventory lists on the little desk. There is, however, a green and gold safe in the corner that, no matter how many times one turns the dial, simply clicks and clicks. Scratches around the safe indicate that someone tried to get in at one point, though there's no indication as to whether they succeeded.

THE END APPROACHES
Standing at the center of Mathias, the town hall is a modest two-story building that would be welcoming if not for the faded sign, chipped paint, and deafening silence within its empty halls. It's a typical government building, with a reception desk at the front and rows of identical offices within, the names half faded from each door. But what catches the attention is a large bulletin board on the main wall beside the reception desk, once meant to hold flyers or announcements for the community.

What it holds now is decidedly different. Tacked onto the board are scraps of paper covered in an assortment of handwriting styles — requests for supplies should anyone find them, pieces of information shared in the hopes of someone understanding the strange symbols and mathematical equations, notes about those missing or recently deceased. And over the center of the board, tacked on top of other papers, is a map discolored with age. Mathias Township can be read in the corner, a stretch of forest displayed beneath it, but everything else has been smeared to illegibility with red... ink? Upon close examination, a keen eye will realize that the ink is actually blood, though whether it is human is unknown. And scrawled across that forest, nearly covering the illustration of a clearing and a large house within, are the words

he is coming
A number of tarnished metal pushpins are scattered around the edges of the board, waiting for future messages to be shared, and a stack of pristine white paper and pile of cheap ballpoint pens rest on one of three chairs beside the board. The chairs are clearly meant for those waiting for meetings and are covered in the same layer of grime as everything else in the building — everything except the pens, paper, and bulletin board.

navigation | faq | locations | setting | mod contact

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He looks at her sidelong. She doesn't understand yet.

She will.

He gestures as they approach the house. "It's this one," he tells her, opening the door and letting her in.

It's fairly obvious from the dishes on the counter and the lived-in quality of the house that Bright doesn't live here alone. He heads for the kitchen. "Tea?"

It's also obvious that they've been here a while. Not just a-few-hours a while. Dani studies her surroundings, confusion quickly taking the place of the anger she felt outside.

"What-? Uh. Yeah. Sure." She follows him, looking at those dishes like they might come juping out of the sink at her. "Who are you staying with?"

"Two cowboys," Malcolm told her, getting tea and teacups down from the cupboard. "They've been... helping me. At night." He filled the kettle and put it on to boil. "One is a US Marshal from Kentucky and one is... a dentist from the Old West."

"...Cowboys." He's getting a distinctly odd look from her, but hey, it's a day ending in y. "A dentist?"

Dani presses her fingertips against closed eyelids. "Okay, Bright, you're going to need to start making sense in the next ten seconds or I'm picking a direction and we're walking in it until we find civilization."

"We can't walk to civilization," Malcolm informs her gravely. "We'll find the ocean or we'll find the fog and we can't cross either."

He studies her for a moment. "Everyone who's here was brought from... somewhere. Not the same somewheres. Sometimes different dimensions... one girl I met was from a different planet." A beat. "But she's dead now."

"No, stop it." The words are sharper than she means them to be. "Listen to what you're saying. We need to get out of here."

She braces her hands against the island countertop, forcing herself to think. Dani's focus ghosts around the room again, then lands on Malcolm. "Three weeks. You said you've been here three weeks. How can that be possible?"

"There's a man here that claims to be an occult detective that uses magic to find clues," Malcolm tells her. "And I've seen him do it. How is that possible?" he asks.

That, she doesn't believe. He might. She doesn't. But she can't deny the fact that they're standing in the middle of a house that's been lived in. One he navigates with familiarity. She's scrambling to make some kind of sense of it, to slot the fact that he's been here for weeks in with the knowledge that she saw him hours ago. The two facts bounce off each other like poorly-matched magnets.

They've been helping me at night.

It feels like someone just slammed all the air out of the room as the implications hit.

Dani presses the fingertips of one hand against her lips, forcing her thoughts back into order.

He looks like hell. Like absolute hell, worse than she's ever seen him, and it's not just because he's not wearing one of his suits and hasn't bragged about getting two hours of sleep.

"God, Bright." She feels like she's had the bottom knocked out of her stomach. "Your meds. Your restraints."

Dani wants to say something smarter. But she's hung up on the miracle that he's still alive. She swallows around the knot in her throat, moves around the island, and yanks him into a rough hug. "Cowboys, huh?" Her voice is quiet. "They take turns hogtying you, or do they get to draw straws?"

He clings to her.

"Excuse you, I hogtie myself," he says with a shaky laugh. "They take turns waking me up," he admits after a moment. He closed his eyes and pressed his face into her shoulder. "And... stopping anything... untoward from happening on... bad days."

She hugs him tighter. "I'm moving in until we get home. Your cowboys can deal."

"They might insist, actually," Malcolm told her.

He wasn't sure he could call them his cowboys but. He still liked the sound of it.

"Good to know you haven't started hanging out with stupid people while you've been stuck without us."

She's just going to hang on to him until he makes the first move to pull away.

He laughs into her shoulder.

"Reading people is sort of my whole thing," he reminds her. "They're good people."

"And I guess you're too smart for anyone stupid to put up with you."

She shifts one hand to the back of his head. It's hard for her to figure out the words for this, for the tangled mess of feelings she's probably going to need a couple of days to sort out. Her own anxieties, the things that don't make sense, the fear that Malcolm might be a little more far gone than ever. Gratitude for his unknown caretakers. Very quietly, she says, "I'm glad you're still with us, Bright."

The kettle came to a boil. He let go of her.

“Technically, you’re with us now,” he teased, pouring water into the cups and dropping in teabags.

One corner of her mouth tugs into a crooked smile. "Yeah, well. Major Crimes has dibs on your ass."

She hoists herself up onto the island, letting her feet dangle. "How much have you gotten put together about whoever's behind this?"

He puts a cup of tea in her hands. Simple black tea; nothing so nice as Earl Grey to be had here. Still, it's warm.

"Are you afraid if I get close to a Marshal, the Marshal's Service will steal me away?" he teases, picking up his own cup.

He presses his lips together at her question and looks down into his drink.

"Not much concrete and I don't know if we'll ever be in a position to get anything concrete," he admits. "The way I see it, we're like animals in a zoo. We don't know where the door to the enclosure is, much less what the other side of it looks like or who has access to open it." He took a breath and looked at her. "Whatever you do, stay out of the fog, okay?"

"Nah. Tracking down fugitives doesn't have the same pizazz as picking up dropped bodies. Besides, Edrisa would miss you."

She inhales the steam from the tea, trying to focus on the normalcy of the moment. That Bright doesn't have any real leads is unnerving. "No demands? Nothing?"

It doesn't make sense. Dani takes a sip of tea. "What happens in the fog?"

"No demands, like, hostage demands. One time they told us not to go outside and another time they told us to keep some lanterns lit. Otherwise no." He looks at her grimly. "Maybe they're getting everything they want from us."

When she asks about the fog, he wraps his hands around his cup.

"The fog seems to have a fatal effect. It acts like a chemical asphyxiant on the human body, from what I could tell on examination of the victims. I'm not an ME." He takes a sip of tea. "Some of them turned up alive again afterwards, but some didn't."

Silence. "Wait. What?"

She could swear she just heard him say some of them turned up alive again.

He looked up from his tea to stare at her for a moment.

"Which part?"

It was all crazy, right?

She gestures with her mug. "How can the fog be fatal if they showed up alive?"

"Well, they showed up dead first," he told her. "And we buried them. Henry and Raylan and I. And then some of them came back. And a couple of the ones that came back... dug up their dead bodies, which were still very much dead. This place can make you question some things. If Henry and Raylan weren't here, I'm not sure I would know what was real and what wasn't sometimes. Considering."

Considering he was off his meds and that included an antipsychotic that barely contained his brain's blur between real and imaginary on a good day.

"And it can be tempting to go into the fog," he warned her. "People... hear things in there. Friends' voices. That sort of thing. But it isn't real. It's a siren's song."

"So let me just. See if I'm keeping up here. We've got aliens. Time travel. A magical detective. And clones."

She looks at her cup. "You got anything to spike this with?"

"The cowboys make moonshine, but it tastes like drain cleaner," he warned. "There's also a vampire," he added to her list as an afterthought.

(no subject)

bronxbae - 2021-01-13 03:48 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

abrightboy - 2021-01-13 04:37 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only