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6.0 Test Drive Meme
6.0 Test Drive Meme
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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
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!
1. There Ain't Room
2. Glitter Bomb
3. Riddles Three
A. Cry For Me
B. Love Me
C. Hold Me
I. Blood
II. Sweat
III. Tears
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:
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.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.
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.
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:Once you answer correctly, the hour glass disappears, leaving a hole in the floor that you must jump through to exit.
- 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
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: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!
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 your room is green, when you open the final door, you've escaped! Welcome to Wellstone.
- 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 red, when you open the door, you find yourself back in the first room. Good luck!
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:
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.
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Młynar tries cutting off any further talk on the topic by raising a finger to his lips before trying the handle. He opens the door about half an inch and waits, listening for any guard that may have been alerted.]
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After a long moment of silence, he whispers to Mlynar:]
I don't hear anyone comin'. You?
[Probably not, if Ademnet hasn't. But who knows what those big horse ears are capable of?]
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No. We should move quickly.
[So saying, he opens the door wide enough to pass through and immediately steps into what should be the standard dungeon hallway that looks to be beyond it.
Instead, he's immediately deposited into another room, and covered in something...sticky. It weighs his ears down, giving them a depressed droop.
The floor is a shallow pool of glitter.
What is going on here?]
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Only now does he notice that the torch he was holding is no longer in his hands. He stares at them for a moment, then looks at Mlynar.]
What in the turdblowin' name of mercy is this?
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Młynar is not considering the bright side right now.
He doesn't have experience being moved like this via Arts. This could all be an illusion, of course. But if it is, it's one that's detailed enough that the level of power and control necessary to cast it probably isn't far off from the level needed to cause the door to actually change into wall behind them. A glance over his shoulder shows a very convincing expanse of solid stone.
Młynar does, though, have context for glitter. Those fools who call themselves knights just because they can knock some people around in an arena use it on outfits sometimes. Or at least it's common on all the inevitable merchandise. For reasons he will be unable to explain if asked, Młynar is completely certain of one thing about glitter: it's impossible to get rid of even if you aren't covered in...yes, this has to be honey.
He is also certain that if there's a door out of here, it's under the glitter. There isn't one anywhere else, after all.]
Hell. Someone has decided to put us through a uniquely incomprehensible hell.
[He begins trying to shove glitter aside with a foot. It mostly sticks to his boot.]
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Yeah. That's about what I figured. [Muttering:] Dal's turdblowin' tits.
[He scans the walls in vain for any sign of an exit, but all he can see--besides glitter--is stone. Either the way out's under all this mess, or there ain't a way out at all. From what little he knows of magic, the latter option might well be true. But he'd be a fool to give up without trying.
He wades forward grimly into the glitter to search, licking his hands clean like a cat. It's not like he has any other way to remove the honey--and hell or not, free food is still free food. There's no guarantee of when anyone will feed him next.]
Pound me with a pike of splinters. Wish I could remember which eyeless bastard I pissed off this much.
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even...
He knew someone who cursed a lot, didn't he? Not recently, but...now that he's trying, Młynar can barely recall anyone at all. If he could get rid of this headache, if they could just get out of here, maybe things would be clearer.]
Do you perhaps remember meeting anyone from Leithanien?
[It's still his best guess.
Młynar takes off his jacket, using the honey-free interior to clean off his hands, face, and ears as much as he can. Hopefully nothing will suddenly make it appear on his shirt too.
After a moment of consideration, Młynar drops the jacket and starts pushing it forward in a straight line, as if it's some sort of mop. If he can push enough aside and follows a grid pattern, perhaps this won't take an unbearable amount of time.]
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[Ademnet wades forward through the glitter, cursing quietly as he goes. The weight and stickiness on his clothes makes his skin crawl, but if entering this room is what inflicted the honey on them, perhaps leaving the room will remove it. He sure hopes so, anyway.
With a soft thunk, his foot encounters something solid. Ademnet kicks it again, just to be sure, then turns to Mlynar.]
Hey, over here. Think I got somethin'.
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It is also beside the immediate point.]
I may have offended a dignitary from that nation. [Recently, Młynar thinks.
He comes over and, after a moment of hesitation, crouches down next to the spot Ademnet indicated (it will take him at least a month to get all the glitter out of his tail now, he's sure). Using his ruined jacket, he pushes enough glitter away to reveal what definitely looks like a door handle.]
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A dignitary, huh? Some nobleman? Whatever you did, I bet the bastard deserved it.
[He crouches down to help unearth the door, coating himself further in glitter in the process. Whoever invented this sparkly garbage was sadistic, to say the least.]
Only lord I remember is the one I'm bound to, and I'm pretty sure he don't like me much. What did you do?
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He returns to trying to locate the edges of the trapdoor as he answers.]
I assisted an injured child when he would not, out of fear for his 'safety.'
[Młynar's disdain is clear. He wouldn't have harmed the ambassador (to avoid an international incident, if nothing else), but the man had certainly been an ass and Młynar has no compunctions about making his opinion known.]
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[He tugs on the handle of the trapdoor, and it lifts slightly. With his free hand, Ademnet brushes more glitter away.]
Pound his safety. You did the right thing.
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Thank you.
[That's probably the polite response?
With the boy pulling on the handle, Młynar gets a grip on one side of the door and helps pull it upwards. This disturbs far more glitter than the process appears to justify.
The trap door opens onto...darkness. Against all laws of physics, even the light from the room they're in doesn't penetrate beyond the floor. Of course. Why let them plan ahead?
Młynar tosses his jacket down into the dark. It soon lands with a soft thwump. So it is, at least, reasonably safe to assume there's a floor.]
Cry for Me
Toh's prick, now what?
He gets out of the way of the trapdoor and tosses his sticky, glitter-encrusted cloak aside.]
The drop ain't too bad, and this place seems safe enough. Come on.
[Ademnet makes no attempt to read the instructions. Instead, he strips off his shirt--the least sticky article of clothing he has--and begins wiping himself furiously with it. His back and shoulders are a mess of old whip scars, and someone has burned a prominent brand onto his right wrist. Normally, he would keep all of this hidden. Now, trapped with a stranger Toh knows where and fighting a stubborn, losing battle against shiny grit, he just can't bring himself to care.]
Blind me, what I'd give for a bath.
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He doesn't wait for Ademnet to call back up before following in one decisive jump.
Młynar has a number of criticisms he could make, starting with the inadvisability of dangling one's legs into the unknown and continuing through the suggestion to let the taller person go first into a room of indeterminate height. He doesn't offer them, partly in the interest of time but mostly because he's alarmed by the sight of the boy's back. The scars are old, but they're extensive.
Yes, Młynar can certainly guess what being bound to a lord meant, and what kind of man that lord was. And if he has any say in it, Ademnet won't be going back to Aralis.
Not that he'll be saying that - not yet. They don't even know where they are, after all.]
I could stay in a bath all day.
[He does not want to think about how long it will take to clean his tail.
Once you adjust to the strange light, it becomes clear that the only real feature in this room is the plinth in the center. He heads over to examine it. A cup, and instructions.]
"Collect five tears."
[...
... what.]
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Could be another riddle, right? Like the one with the torches. Try lookin' for rocks shaped like teardrops--maybe they got somethin' hidden in them?
[Draping his shirt around his lashmarked shoulders, Ademnet turns his attention to the walls, searching for anything that could be interpreted--however loosely--as a tear. The walls sparkle nearly as much as the tohburned glitter, but there don't seem to be any loose rocks...or any cracks that could mark a doorway, either.
Hmm.]
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Do they actually have to collect five tears? What kind of demand is that? Młynar hasn't cried since...
since...
Shouldn't he be able to remember that? His mind offers up some vague recollections of the war, but he has no idea if he cried during any of it. And that was what, close to twenty years ago now? He did something between then and Dzwonek, surely. He's been trying to ignore the fact that something is wrong with his memory, but it's getting harder and harder. How long will this last?
He realizes that he's frowning deeply at the walls, and corrects his expression into his typical neutral frown. It's one thing for him to be worried; it would be another to further worry the boy.
He turns back to the plinth and examines his burned hand. If he squeezes it hard enough, could that produce five tears?]
I don't think it's a riddle.
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Not after...
The back of his head throbs in warning, and his memory draws a blank. Reluctantly, Ademnet gives up his search of the walls and comes to examine the cup instead.]
Dal's tits, this is stupid. You got anythin' worth cryin' over, or should I try?
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He looks again at his hand. The blisters are concentrated on his fingers and the top of his palm. Very straightforward to aim for.
Młynar picks up the cup, lays his left hand flat on the top of the plinth, and then slams the base of the cup directly onto the burns.
Well, there are definitely tears starting at the corners of his eyes as he grimaces.]
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Whoa, hey, there's no need for that! I was askin' a question, not sayin' I wouldn't!
[Part of him is selfishly relieved to sit this round out. He squashes that thought and grabs the cup, lifting it up to examine Mlynar's hand.]
This is what you call not gettin' burned that bad? Blind me. We still might end up needin' to fight our way out of here, dalpound it, and Toh only knows what else this place wants us to do. There's no point in gettin' past this room just to get caught 'cause of somethin' that needd two hands!
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The boy does make a good point, he has to admit. This may have been a...slightly hasty decision. But still, there aren't many people who can simply decide on crying and do it immediately. This seemed not only like the simplest way, but the fastest.]
Be that as it may, I suspect it is best if we proceed as quickly as possible.
[He flexes his left hand. He can still move it, so clearly it's fine.]
It isn't that bad.
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[Mlynar has a point about moving quickly, but that doesn't take the disapproving dad look off Ademnet's face. He keeps his grip on the cup, ready to snatch it away if Mlynar tries again.]
I can do the rest of it. A couple of good hard slaps in the face should sting enough without leavin' any kind of lastin' damage, yeah? Just do it with your hand and not the cup.
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...Wait. "I can do the rest of it"?]
...Are you asking me to slap you?
[Surely not.]
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Obviously, yeah. If the only way of makin' you cry is beatin' seven shades of misery out of your hand, puttin' you in charge of cryin' ain't sensible. The longer we stay here, the more likely we get caught, yeah? I'll take a few slaps over that, easy.
[He taps the scar on his cheek.]
Trust me. I ain't made of tohburned glass.
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[In these particular circumstances, it is a reasonable suggestion. It's just that the idea of hurting someone else to meet this damned requirement is an unpleasant one. Shouldn't he be responsible? He's the adult, after all, and even though Ademnet is certainly not made of glass, that doesn't mean Młynar cares for the idea of adding to the boy's history of injuries.
But they really do not have many options. It's much more sensible for them both to take a smaller injury than risk being unable to face whatever's next. It is, at least, not as if Młynar is asking the boy to suffer something Młynar wouldn't go through himself.
He purses his lips, but gives a small nod.]
When you're ready, then.
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cw: disembodied eye trauma
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