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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.

odinpusrex: (87)

[personal profile] odinpusrex 2024-05-10 02:17 am (UTC)(link)
Shrewd thinking and swift action saw me free.

[He says as he pulls himself out of the sand the rest of the way, engaging his arm and core muscles to free his legs, before rising to his feet. Somehow he is nimble on the sand, able to determine where best to step, as he makes his way to the edge of the pool to find actual sturdy and solid ground to stand.

Sand is just...pouring out of his clothes as he does. He actually looks a little put off by all of this, by the sand that's so clearly still in his boots, and Lord knows where else... For all he might be slightly annoyed, as he looks to Cecelia, his expression returns to that expressionless neutrality.]


Well done.

[Then he looks to the door.]

Shall we?

[Straight to business, this guy...]
sighsheavily: (pic#16420024)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2024-05-10 02:30 pm (UTC)(link)
R-right. Guh... [she just needs a moment to get on her feet again and climb out of the pool. no time to fuss about appearances, though she's certain she looks an absolute mess from being water-soaked, sand-covered, machine-thrown...

she wants to nap so badly, but there's no chance she's taking a reset in any of these rooms.

once she meets him at the entryway, she gestures.]
Take a breath, then move. [because who knows what may try to steal their breath when they pass the threshold.]
odinpusrex: (159)

[personal profile] odinpusrex 2024-05-13 03:30 am (UTC)(link)
[The suggestion gets a slight rise of his eyebrows. Does he look like he needs a breath? He is breathing quite fine as it is, though he supposes a lesser man might have been shaken by the possibility of suffocating under the sand. It isn't that he liked the situation either, but he certainly finds it difficult to be shaken by it.

After all, here he is, free and able to continue. Still, he nods, allowing them a moment, though the heat of the room is hardly a comfort either, and he feels the sweat running down his face and neck.

A second passes, then another, then he opens the door and walks through.

Only to find himself alone in some room, another door on the far end of it. Strange. He surveys his surroundings, looking for any sign of Cecelia, but he sees none. And so, he continues forth, perhaps this was it, though he had reason to believe it shouldn't be that simple.

And he's right, it isn't.

Standing before him is the instructions and the options. Who should escape? He wagers both of them have proven their worth, but he suspects that isn't the true riddle here. So he pauses, considering what the trial is truly after.

Selflessness, perhaps? Selfishness? Does only the one with the most votes go through, regardless of any measure of morality? Hm...]
sighsheavily: (pic#16420024)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2024-05-13 06:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Wait--

[where did...he go? where is she?

Cecelia hugs her arms to herself, unnerved by the narrowness of the room as she carefully walks forward to the plinth. she squints and frowns at the decision laid bare before her.

it seems simple, which means it may be a trick.

or...not a trick? playing off her suspicions, perhaps?

she clicks her tongue and exhales in a scoff.]
...Well. What happens, happens. [and she'll have to endure the rest.

she puts the stranger's name in the slot.]
odinpusrex: (128)

[personal profile] odinpusrex 2024-05-13 11:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[He hears her, but he chooses not to speak. Considering the trials were framed around cooperation and assistance, it stands to reason this one would prove similar. As such, he puts Cecelia's name in the slot, and he waits.

Though, not for long, because both of them are gifted a green light, and the door unlocks. That almost seems too simple, but there is nothing that immediately dispels the potential illusion of victory. As such, he crosses the threshold, and finds himself coming out of what seems to be a closet of some sort. Greeted by the receptionist, though he barely cares to acknowledge them.

His curiosity is more on the girl, and where she is...]
sighsheavily: (Default)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2024-05-14 12:36 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, goodness gracious.

[the exasperated exclamation comes in a sigh as she appears, blinking a few times to get her eyes to adjust to the shift in lighting. she scans around, double-taking at Barnabas before fixing on the concierge, at which point her expression pinches with concern.]

The old uniform, the old lobby, is it...? [her eyes search the receptionist's face of unyielding amicability, holding out her hand and murmuring her name at his questioning, letting a key drop into it.

are they...going backward? surely not, right?]


You're still unhurt, yes? [she looks up at Barnabas as her fingers close on the key.] Do you...recognize this place at all, by chance?
odinpusrex: (152)

[personal profile] odinpusrex 2024-05-14 12:45 am (UTC)(link)
[Ah, there she is. As he watches her interact with the receptionist, he looks almost like a standoffish animal than anything else, but when she asks him that question, that standoffish aura seems to just shift to neutrality once more.]

Indeed, I am unharmed, yet I do not recognize this queer place. Though it would seem you do.

[Then he steps forward, looking to the receptionist with a sharp stare before he offers his name, and takes the key offered. Looking at it as he holds it between his fingers as if it would answer the questions he doesn't seem keen to voice.]
sighsheavily: (pic#16420024)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2024-05-14 11:17 am (UTC)(link)
Indeed. This is... [she looks about, frowning.] Is it exactly the same? It almost feels as such, but...that was months ago.

[she hesitates, chewing on her lip for a moment.]

...I regret to inform you that...that you've come to a place that is very prone to...changing. In both subtle and violent ways.
odinpusrex: (39)

[personal profile] odinpusrex 2024-05-18 12:32 am (UTC)(link)
[He nods. It's shallow, almost imperceptibly so, but it serves as his silent acknowledgment. He isn't sure what to think of it, really. Of this place, of the circumstance, or his place within it. He simply has a key, and this woman who seems willing to answer questions, though he has no intention of holding her hostage in so doing.

His gaze flicks to her, deciding he will ask at least one thing.]


Spoke you of months ago—how long have you been here?
sighsheavily: (pic#16590720)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2024-05-19 10:16 pm (UTC)(link)
More than a year, if the days can be judged properly as we've counted them... [if their memory of those days can be trusted.] If it's been any longer, I've yet to reclaim memory of it.
odinpusrex: (115)

[personal profile] odinpusrex 2024-05-29 10:34 pm (UTC)(link)
[Barnabas grows silent. Well, okay that's like saying water becomes wet, but still he doesn't say anything for a few moments as he mulls that information over. That's a rather long time to be in this place. From how she's informed him of its changing nature, he can only assume that she is not here by choice any more than he is.

Which means she also cannot escape, but can he? She has proven herself rather formidable, after all, so it stands to reason that—]


Escape is not possible, then.

[A beat.]

Or you have failed to conquer the trials before you.

[Much like those rooms they just left, right? Is this all a test of some sort? Was that the tutorial, of sorts?]
sighsheavily: (pic#16420024)

[personal profile] sighsheavily 2024-05-31 06:18 pm (UTC)(link)
If it is designed at all, yes. [it does rankle a little to be so subtly-yet-bluntly accused of failure, but things are hardly so black and white.

after combing stray hair over her ear, she proceeds along the line of headstones to stop before the nearest, rifling through her notes to confirm the name.]


One could suppose much of what happens here is...byproduct. Circumstance. Culminations of other designs of which we and the happenings are but collateral. Certainly we are not the only beings trapped here, but so far we are the most visible...and autonomous.