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Well Mod ([personal profile] wellie) wrote in [community profile] wellcome2024-04-19 04:40 pm
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6.0 Test Drive Meme

6.0 Test Drive Meme

Welcome to Well! See the first prompt for how your characters arrive in Well. Your character arrives with only a handful of memories, clad in a mix of Old Western clothes and clothes that might fit in at a renaissance fair, and no items from home.

Anyone is free to play on the TDM, but you need an invite to apply. Feel free to use these prompts, and interact with the arrival or locations. NPCs are around, but only say a certain set of phrases. TDMs can be considered game canon.

This TDM takes place from the first week of May onward, and can happen concurrently with other events during May and June. This will be the only TDM for May, June, and July.

Applications are open April 26th until May 1st, and May 27th until June 1st. Invites are available for friends of current players.

Arrival: Escape!
Content warnings: forced captivity, blood, eating eyes, drowning in sand, forced intimacy

The First Room

You wake up somewhere dark and damp. Maybe this is your first time waking up here, maybe it's your fourth, but the beginning is the same. You're in a small stone room. The only light comes from torches flicking on the walls. The room is bare except for a metal door. And you're not alone. You and someone (or someones) are here together, and you have to get out.

The door is locked, and to leave it you must just find one key. On the door is a note with a clue:

Freedom is hot!

The key is in fact in one of the torches! Depending on luck, you might find it on your first try, or your fourth. Find a way to extinguish the torches, and handle the hot, hot key to unlock the door.
After this, you find yourself in one of the following rooms. Choose one from the first set, then one from the second set, then one from the third set. You will always end in the final room. You must travel through five rooms to escape.

If you don't complete a task in five minutes, you will return to very first room and have to start again.

You can choose your own path, or comment below to have a random path set for you!

The Second Room

You find yourself in one of the following rooms:
1. There Ain't Room
2. Glitter Bomb
3. Riddles Three
1. There Ain't Room
In this room is a shooting game. There's a barrier with bebe guns attached to it, and at the far end are small cut outs of people. There's a sign on the far wall, in old-West style script, reading:

There Ain't Room

The cut outs look sort of familiar! There are cut outs of you and your compatriot(s), as well as some typical cowboy looking cut outs. Shoot your own cut out to escape! You each must shoot your own one, if you shoot each others', that person feels it as if they have been shot, and will start bleeding.

When you successfully hit all of your own cut outs, the floor under you opens up and you drop into the next room.

2. Glitter Bomb
As you walk through the doorway, you feel oddly.... sticky? Like your skin is covered in honey. Because it is! Yum.

In front of you is a room covered in glitter. There's so much glitter. You can't see a door, but you have to find a way out. Search the room to find the exit.

The exit is a trapped door in the floor. You'll need to make your way through the glitter, all the while it will stick to your very sticky skin. You'll need to dig a big enough path to get through, open the door and get into the next room! Too bad some glitter will come with you, and you'll still be sticky.

3. Riddles Three
A large hour glass in the middle of the room starts ticking down with sand as soon as you enter this room. One three of the walls are riddles engraved in the stone, and chalkboards in front of them. You must answer all three riddles correctly before the sand runs out to escape:
  • Where waves kiss sand and breezes blow, where tropic dreams grow, I'm where you want to go. What am I? Answer: Kokomo
  • With auburn locks and eyes of green, a rival, a threat, a beauty queen. Answer: Jolene
  • With cowboy hats and boots that stride, no one told me where my horse I ride. Answer: Old Town Road
Once you answer correctly, the hour glass disappears, leaving a hole in the floor that you must jump through to exit.

The Third Room

Next, you find yourself in one of the following rooms:
A. Cry For Me
B. Love Me
C. Hold Me
A. Cry For Me
This room is beautiful and shiny, the walls made of crystals. In the middle of the room is a crystal plinth with a small crystal cup on it. In flowing script around the cup it reads:

Collect five tears

You must collect five tears in the cup to escape. Once you do, an entry way opens in the crystal in front of you.

B. Love Me
This room is very plain, and on a piece of paper dangling from a string in the middle of the room is the instructions for this room:

Exchange five sincere compliments each. Don't break eye contact.

You must do this within the alloted five minutes to escape. If the compliments are less than sincere, you may try again, but if you don't reach the five each by the end of the five minutes or if you break eye contact even once, you will be returned to the first room.

C. Hold Me
This room looks a lot like the pub in town. The walls are wood paneled and there's jangling piano music coming from--somewhere?

In the middle of the room is a mechanical bull, with a sign reading:

Stay on the bull together for 45 seconds.

If you succeed within the five minutes, you're free to continue on!

The Fourth Room

Next, you find yourself in one of the following rooms:
I. Blood
II. Sweat
III. Tears
I. Blood
This room is very tall. There's a rope dangling down one wall. On the wall it reads:

Climb!

And that's what you have to do. The word "Climb" starts to bleed. And then the walls start to bleed. The room will fill up with blood within five minutes, so you better get climbing!

At the top of the room is a hatch that will let you escape through a hatch in the ceiling.

II. Sweat
When you enter this room, one of you finds that you are alone. You're standing at the edge of a pool, and that pool is full of sand. It's also searingly hot in here. On the wall, it reads:

Rescue your partner!

One person is chained at the bottom of a swimming pool full of sand. A counter on the wall counts down until they will suffocate. Better get swimming!

Once you've rescued your partner, a door on the other side of the pool will open up. Better move fast to get there!

III. Tears
This room is dark, very dark. You can just barely see, except for a glow-in-the-dark sign reading:

Eat some eyes!

And that's what you need to do! In the walls are eyes. They're watching you. You must each eat an eye to continue on. Once you do, a door cracks open in the far wall.

The Fifth Room

No matter the path you took to get here, the final room is the same:
The last room you end up in, even though you enter through the same door, you find yourselves separated by a wall. There is a door for each of you at the far side of the room. You can hear each other, but you can't see each other. Each of you have a plinth in front of you, which reads:

Who should escape?

In front of you are the names of yourself and your partner(s). You place the name of the person you believe should escape in a slot in the table.

Once everyone has made a selection, the names will light up:
  • If you all chose each other, your room lights up green.
  • If you all chose yourselves, your room lights up green.
  • If someone chose themselves, and someone else chose another person, the room of the person with the most "votes" lights up green. The others light up red.
If your room is green, when you open the final door, you've escaped! Welcome to Wellstone.

If your room is red, when you open the door, you find yourself back in the first room. Good luck!
When you escape, you step into the lobby of the Staywell. It's bright and airy with beautiful white stone. When you look behind you, it seems that you've stepped out of a supply closet. Weird!

The receptionist greets you as he always does, welcoming you home.

New characters arrive using this prompt. Characters can return from death from the previous cycle using this prompt. You can also just wake up and be in this prompt, so you can do this as many times as you like.

tl;dr:
  • You wake up in an escape room! You must finish (at least) five rooms to escape. You have five minutes to finish each room. If you fail, you'll be taken back to the beginning of the dungeon.

It's alive!
Content warnings: public shaming

When you shake off the glitter and the sand, it might be time to head on down into Wellstone town. The air is full of a shimmering warmth that might be familiar to some. It's like the sun has been baked into the very stones and is radiating back up at you. Run-down buildings lean against each other for support, made out of mostly weathered stone with a few old boards here and there to keep structures up. Desiccated, skeletal fingers of dried-out ivy climb them, waving occasionally as you pass. Waving, and… whispering? For more information about how the town has changed, check out this month's Wellstone Post or read the Locations Page.

The town is alive with sneering, whispering voices. It's unclear where exactly they're coming from, but they're everywhere. Step into the Cactus Pad Tavern and you might hear a decisive no manners! spat sharply from the doorway. Make your way to the steaming bathhouse to wash off that honey, but be careful when you're undressing: you might just hear rude snickering from the air around you. Wow, the walls might say, your toes are so long. What weird feet!

The voices might interrupt a conversation at breakfast to make fun of something you said. Your mirror and your wardrobe might question your outfit choices. They're loud enough to be heard by everyone in a public space and seem to delight in saying cutting things at the worst possible moment. You don't recognize the voices, exactly, but they seem just familiar enough to really hurt, and the voices seem to know you well enough. They might even call you out when you tell a little white lie, or let everyone know exactly how loud you snore.

There's no way, seemingly, to get them to shut up, so... may as well get used to it?

tl;dr:
  • The town is alive, and it is judging you. Your outfits, your words, your body, your habits: nothing is off-limits.
  • The voices sound just familiar enough to feel like voices you know, but aren't able to be pinpointed to a single person.

snackin: (huh | sus | look)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-20 04:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[ He isn't paying attention at first, but then this man cuts himself and the scent makes Astarion perk up, watching as his finger wells up. His mouth salivates with hunger, but he holds himself back. ]

Clever. And no. Nothing. Open it, let's see what we're up against.
irondog: (pic#12654331)

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-20 05:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[He slips off his coat and wraps it around his arm. He picks up the key and opens the door. He slips the coat back on. He snags the key on his way out into the hall.

Anything is a weapon if you use it right. There is an odd nagging feeling in the back of his mind. It feels like a song. He runs his fingers over the papercut. The song goes away.

To Astarion, the smell of blood is cut off like a door being shut. Hugh waits for him and walks on through the darkened hall. He opens the next door and they are both immediately covered in honey.

He walks inside. On the other side of the door is a room that looks like a bathhouse. The square pool at the center is full of glitter. Torches flicker in their scones on the walls. He flicks a hand. Honey splats on the stone.]
Anything like this happen before?
snackin: (huh | scared | angry)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-21 07:27 pm (UTC)(link)
[ He pouts at the lack of blood, but knows it isn't really the time anyway. At least there will be less temptation now, and he follows a few paces after only to shriek when the honey is suddenly sticking to him ]

In the Nine Hells! [ He shakes his hands and his arms and nothing happens and he's still sticky ]

No! Nothing like this! Gods, are you a curse?!

[ It doesn't make any sense, but he wants to blame someone, and he's glaring daggers at Hugh ]
irondog: (pic#12654332)

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-21 07:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[Hugh walks along the stone edge of the pool of glitter. No notes around so far. He kicks at the edge of the pool. The glitter sticks to him. He makes a face.]

Tell me what usually happens and I’ll give you an answer. [He kneels down and looks at the glitter. Glitter and honey. This is bullshit.]

No notes so far. See any?
snackin: (Default)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-21 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Nothing like this! It's usually face your worst fears or remember that time you were horribly betrayed, not: now you're a sweet treat!

[ He doesn't move one inch because he can see where this is going and he doesn't want to sparkle thank you very much. ]

There is nothing but glitter and you can see that perfectly well yourself.
irondog: (pic#12654327)

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-21 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)
And the only way out is likely under the glitter.

[Remembering things only when it would hurt. It has the ring of something or someone feeding. But that might not be the case.

Hugh takes a deep breath and jumps into the pool. He vanishes into the glitter. Within the pool of glitter he catches a glint of light. He moves towards it, palming the key. If something tries to kill him, they will lose an eye.]
snackin: (tired | sad | soft)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-22 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
[ Astarion watches him go, and debates for a moment if he should help.

With a heavy sigh, he moves gingerly into the glitter, nudging it aside with a sticky shoe
]

Fine. Alright. Then we find the way out.

[ He certainly doesn't want to be stuck here, even if he is looking much less enthusiastically than Hugh ]
irondog: (pic#12654329)

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-22 02:07 am (UTC)(link)
[A glitter covered hand sticks up out of the pool giving a thumbs up. It sinks back down.

He moves towards the light. The light grows brighter as he inches towards it. The edge of something.

The hand appears up above the glitter and beckons with two fingers. He reaches the top of the glitter and breathes in fresh air.]
There’s a light over here. It looks like the edge of a door.
Edited 2024-04-22 02:08 (UTC)
snackin: (laugh | smile)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-22 04:16 pm (UTC)(link)
[ That's all well and good, but when Hugh surfaces he's covered in glitter, and Astarion takes one look at him and snorts a laugh. The laugh builds and builds until he's bursting with it, laughing blatantly at how ridiculous and silly he looks ]

Gods, look at you! Get this man on a stage!
irondog: (pic#12654332)

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-22 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)
[He spreads his arms once and lets them fall. Glitter and honey is better than blood.

The thought is like ice, sobering him up. He keeps it to himself as he says,]
When you’re finished, let’s move on.

There hasn’t been any memory fuckery yet, but we can’t be sure it won’t happen if we slow down. Right?
snackin: (wave | point | tease)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-25 03:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[ His laughter peters out, but he's still smiling and he waves a hand vaguely ]

Certainly. It's only a matter of time until we remember something horrific, I'm sure.

[ Lead on, Hugh. Astarion watches him expectantly. ]
irondog: (pic#12654338)

Cw: descriptions of battle and death

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-25 06:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Without a doubt. [A thought bubbles to the surface like blood rising to the surface of water.

You’re with me. Something will come up. He ignores it and leads the way to the door below. As the door swings open the glitter pours down a staircase.

The sounds of a battlefield drift through the air. There is a window further down the staircase. And for the first time but it doesn’t feel like the first there is a sense of loss that scrapes fangs across his soul. He walks on,]
Like clockwork, eh?

[The view through the window is of a bloody battlefield. The combatants are in shadow. Great beasts clash with soldiers in a field. Soldiers clash with soldiers. Magic snaps. People fall. Some get up. Some don’t. Hugh looks at it. He walks past before he says,] Like staring into the mouth of hell.

Better not be related to our next challenge.
snackin: (look | determined | annoyed | sus)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-26 08:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Astarion blinks as he tries to suss out what Hugh is talking about. He doesn't see anything when he passes the window, cocking his head and chalking it up to the man experiencing delusions. Certainly possible, with the sorts of people who he's forced to interact with here. ]

Hell looks different these days.

[ Said light, airy. He doesn't remember Hell but he has a feeling he knows a bit about it. He waits impatiently for Hugh to open the next door, staying a few steps above him on the stairs ]
irondog: (Default)

Next room totally up to you

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-27 01:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[His eyes narrow. A visible realization crosses his face. Only he saw what he saw. He files that away as he joins him at the next door.] I see what you mean by this place fucking with people.

[Not great but he can deal. He opens the door.]
snackin: (look | neutral)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-28 12:28 am (UTC)(link)
[ Astarion steps in only the be accosted by the next task:

Exchange five sincere compliments each. Don't break eye contact.

He grits his teeth. He certainly doesn't want to do that. But he also certainly doesn't want to--what? Fail? What even happens if they do?

Turning to Hugh, Astarion looks him over, not looking him in the eye just yet.
]

I know nothing about you.
irondog: (pic#12654329)

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-28 01:58 pm (UTC)(link)
That is mutual. [Hugh studies the room. No, this is the request. There is nothing to assist them. If this bullshit is timed then this is-]

This is meant to slow us down. [He considers what to say while studying his ally.] How about this. We can give feedback about traveling together so far. I do have five good things I can say.

[He waits. It’s up to Astarion if this is the play. It could work.]
snackin: (talk | tease | look)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-04-28 03:53 pm (UTC)(link)
[ It's not a bad idea. He's annoyed that it's not a bad idea, and finally looks up at Hugh, his eyes narrowed ]

Alright. You are... very competent. You handled the glitter quickly and efficiently. [ It's somehow less dire than he thought it would be, to say these things out loud. Maybe because they're objective facts and not saying anything deeper about Hugh's nature. ]
irondog: (pic#12654327)

[personal profile] irondog 2024-04-29 07:09 pm (UTC)(link)
You were quite informative. I got the idea of what to expect in the broad strokes without us needing to slow down.

[It was all sort of complaining but it was informative. And that is sincerely his feelings about it.] And a person who knows how to laugh survives longer in any hell hole.
snackin: (soft | look | neutral | ready)

[personal profile] snackin 2024-05-01 08:26 pm (UTC)(link)
[ The first compliment is very straightforward, and he doesn't mind it at all. Objective facts are easy to accept.

The second one has him flushed--as flush as he can be, with as little blood he has in his system. He coughs, and tries to come up with some more
]

You handled the torch very well. And came up with this quite decent idea.

[ One more Astarion, come on. He takes in more of Hugh, tapping his toe on the ground ]

You have very nice hair.