tdm iii

[pareidoliamods]

test drive meme iii

navigation. locations. application. rules. faq.

Welcome to our third Test Drive Meme! The TDM is open to anyone to play and can be game canon. The TDM takes place beginning July 1; its events can take place at any time until the next TDM.

Applications are open perpetually, and you may apply at any time. Invitations are automatically extended to the Plurk list of any member of the game, including the mods.

Pareidolia’s next event drops July 1. Our upcoming calendar can be found here.

i. arrival

content warnings: n/a

Though some wake in the mud reeling from a nightmare, for most, arrival comes differently.

You are disoriented. Your thoughts lag behind, distant as a fading dream. You don't remember why you began to haul yourself upward, but you're moving relentlessly, hand over hand, certain that stopping is not an option. Sound echoes oppressively: your heavy breath, the water dripping from the walls, the slick metal rungs of an endless ladder creaking under your weight.

You reach the top and push open the metal hatch door. Finally, the darkness relents, and you pull yourself up onto the cold, muddy earth of an alley between two dilapidated cabins.

Your senses begin to return to you as you lie aching in the gloomy twilight. You're in the clothes you were wearing last, but nothing else from home. Your pockets are empty; any jewelry or trinkets or notes are lost. Instead, a new, unfamiliar iron key hangs from twine around your neck. At your feet, the door to the hatch remains ajar. Beyond the opening is dark as pitch. A roiling fog spills through the opening, curling into the air to thicken the mist already clinging to the ground.

A crow watches from a perch nearby, cocking its head at you before it spreads its wings and vanishes in the dense tree line.

Welcome to Pareidolia.

tl;dr

☠ Characters arrive in the clothes they were wearing last, nothing else from home, and a key around their neck. The key unlocks their cabin — if they can figure out which one that is.

ii. let the ash bear witness

content warnings: n/a

Should you crawl back through the metal hatch, you find yourself somewhere else entirely. You step into a large, circular clearing full of wildflowers. Here, the chill is not so biting, and the flurries of snow melt to cool rain as they meet skin or earth. Sealed glass jars hang from the trees that line the edges, contents murky. Getting too close to them sends a visceral wave of revulsion washing over you until you're driven back. At the center of the grove, a well-worn ring of dirt is home to a large, roaring bonfire. It burns hot and bright and hungry, releasing a thick black smoke that curls upward to join the clouds.

On a nearby stump, a stack of papers flutter under the flat rock that pins them down. A tin cup holds a dozen charcoal pencils, ends cracked and worn soft. On the rock, in a sure, blocked hand, is written: FEED IT YOUR HEART.

Whatever wishes or secrets or regrets you mark the paper with, the fire consumes your offering. Most offerings it takes it greedily, paper instantly burning so bright and hot its white ashes catch in rising smoke that curls upward to briefly form a face, a gesture, a whisper of a voice.

Feed it a deep secret or a painful regret, and the paper burns slowly. Its edges curl in, slow and deliberate, as if the fire has found something to savor. Sometimes it leaves something behind in the ash, strange and small and unpredictable: a warm pebble, a oiled twist of wire, an unmarked coin. Nothing it gives you seems useful, yet everything seems hard to throw away.

Sickle waits at the edge of the clearing. She doesn't speak or approach. She only stands and watches what you feed the fire.

tl;dr

☠ Attempting to return through the hatch will send you to the grove.

☠ The grove is also accessible as normal via a path into the forest, found off the town's main area.

iii. once known, since forgotten

content warnings: sensory hallucinations

At the center of town rests a creaking building larger than the rest. With its cracked windows and crumbling chimneys, the community center is a inviting respite from the chill outdoors. The building's double doors push into a large, open room littered with tables and cots and chairs. Odd decorations are hung about the walls and ceiling, and bookshelves are cluttered with candles and games and anything but books.

At the far end of the room, a large fireplace crackles, warming the hall. Two iron pots simmer above the fire, filling the room with the mouth-watering smell of fresh stew. The curved handles of ladles peek over the rim of the pots. Bowls are stacked haphazardly on the ledge of the fireplace.

Have you always been so hungry? When was the last time you ate something? You can't remember.

One stew is thick and savory, filled with meat and vegetables. It's rich and filling, and once you've eaten it, lies can no longer pass your lips. No magic compels you, no urge to spill your secrets overcomes you, but all the same — any lie you speak dies in your throat before it can shape on your tongue.

The other stew is unique to everyone who tries it. The smell is strange: familiar and nostalgic in a way that tugs just behind your ribs. Maybe that makes you need to try it. Maybe it curdles your stomach and turns you away. For those who eat it, each bite tastes like something you didn't expect to miss. Some find the warmth and joy of a meal eaten outside with youthful laughter and sticky fingers; the soothing comfort of something made just for you. Others find a final dinner shared in silence; the aftertaste of a night racked with sobs.

The fire crackles. Little bubbles pop as the stew simmers and never seems to run out. Chairs scrape softly. Bowls and irons and little metal spoons clink as they're filled and empties.

There's plenty of room at the table.

tl;dr

☠ In the Gathering Hall at the center of town, two pots of stew simmer above the fire in the hearth.

☠ One is thick and hearty, and eating it nullifies your ability to lie.

☠ The other has a smell you can’t place, strange and nostalgic, and eating it tastes like home — for better, or for worse.

Comments

QUESTIONS

[pareidoliamods]

OFFERING

[pareidoliamods]

You're welcome to come up with your own small, useless trinket for the fire to exchange for an offering. You can also comment here (with or without the contents of the paper), and we'll make a suggestion!

II. SICKLE

[apatetic]

If your character chooses to approach Sickle in the clearing, respond here.

Alexander J. Mercer | [PROTOTYPE]

[black_light]

ii. let the ash bear witness

[Alex, of course, does not do what the rock says to do. Instead, he takes up his own intermittent post by the roaring blaze, seeming to while away the time working on a wood carving with a knife he has a very firm grip on.

He's pretty good.

The moment you're done writing your heart onto the page, Alex looks up from his little project. He stares at you with his usual, meaningless glower.]

I'm not going to ask what you wrote. But I'd like to know why the hell you wrote it.

iii. once known, since forgotten

[The material reality of Blacklight is thus; he cannot eat food the way that the living do. Alex, however much his life might be simplified by it, cannot eat the soup. He can't. He simply can't eat the soup. It cannot be done by him. He's unsoupable. No soup for viruses.

As things stand, Alex stares at the soup. He's almost certain he's being made fun of, again in that cosmic way that needs no actual intentionality.]

For a place so barren and inhospitable, it can't fucking get enough of giving us suspect foodstuffs. [It's not clear if he's talking to himself or you. He's the kind of guy who can monologue to the empty air, see.]

ii.

[d9x]

The papers seem to burn differently each time. I wonder if the charcoal has been soaked in something acting as a retardant. The more you write, the slower it burns, right?

[ She looks up, turning her paper to Alex. The paper is marked corner to corner with dark scribbles of graphite, illegible and meaningless. Dax smiles at him, eyes crescents under her bangs. ]

If our captors are going to try to convince us the fire is sentient, they could at least give us something harder to test.

[black_light]

[Alex... wasn't expecting that. He scoffs, shaking his head, but a smirk nevertheless appears on his lips. He returns to his whittling.]

But is that the point of the exercise? I'm not so sure.

[There is nothing so crass or obvious as a sliding of his eyes or a shifting of his posture, but Alex's inhuman senses still focus on Sickle. They return to Dax a moment later.]

Have you noticed anything other than the time to burn?

[sir_samuel]

I. Arrival

This isn’t the first time that Vimes has awoken in a brain-muddling haze to find himself in an unfamiliar place, but he can usually pinpoint why it’s happened*. But the last thing he can remember, he had been walking home in a hazy-with-heat Ankh Morpork afternoon to read his son his usual bedtime story***, content in the knowledge that no one was currently trying to kill him.

Plus, when he wakes up in an unfamiliar place, that place has never been clinging to a seemingly-endless ladder slick with dew.

But there’s no time for him to stop and wonder what the hell is happening here. All Vimes can do is grit his teeth and climb. And climb. And climb.

By the time he reaches the top and pushes open the hatch, Vimes is sweating and chilled to the bone. Hauling himself up, he collapses on the muddy ground and tries to catch his breath. His senses are still a little hazy when he spots the crow eyeballing him.

Vimes eyeballs the corvid right back.

“What are you looking at?”

* For example, he has upset the wrong nobleman-slash-princeling-slash criminal mastermind and they’ve decided to kidnap him, a freak lightning storm near the university caused some kind of magical cascade that knocked him into another dimension, or he drank a whole bottle of Bearhugger’s whiskey in less than an hour.**

** The second one hasn’t happened in six years, two months, and thirteen days, and he has the medallion to prove it thank you very much.

*** Where’s My Cow?, the height of literal brilliance according to two-year-olds across the Disc.


III. Once Known, Since Forgotten

By the time Vimes reaches the community center, he has discovered two things: one, he’s nowhere near Ankh Morporok, and two, someone has taken his cigars.

He isn’t sure which he is more angry about.

Despite his foul mood, the warmth of the fire draws him, and the smell of the bubbling stews makes his stomach growl. Suspicious enough not to eat mysterious foodstuffs immediately, but familiar enough with hunger not to be too picky, he grabs a spoon and carefully tastes the more familiar-smelling of the two.

It’s not until he ladles himself a bowl and tries a little more that he realizes why he was drawn to it. The stew is a Cockbill Street special, the food of the desperately poor but aggressively respectable, flavored with old bones and collected vegetable scraps, filled with grayish chunks of meat that, in life, probably went moo or oink instead of squeak. As is the case with anything related to his childhood, the stew fills him with an unsettling combination of nostalgia and shame. There’s just too much he’d still prefer to forget.

He finishes it without even realizing.

I

[black_light]

"An old man trying to hold a conversation with a bird."

Alex, as is usual for him, says this from outside the person's line of sight. In this instance, he's behind the subject of his address. He stares, impassively. Judgingly? It's a bit unclear underneath Alex's ever-present glower.

Re: I

[sir_samuel]

"Ha. Ha," Vimes says to the gloom. He pushes himself to his feet slowly, ready for the speaker to attack him from the darkness. There's always a chance the speaker has a buddy who is creeping up on Vimes as he speaks, too. Carefully, he slips his hands into the pockets of his jacket--

--And finds no brass knuckles resting comfortably inside.

Well, shit.

"How about you show yourself?" he says. "Bit awkward, talking to a disembodied voice like this."

[black_light]

Seeing no reason not to, Alex draws nearer and out from the fog and shadows that he was hiding in, stepping around and into the man's vision.

"Good instincts," Alex says, the hints of a smirk pulling at the edges of his lips. "But if I meant you any harm, I wouldn't have said anything. You and I? We're allies of circumstance, here and now."

i.

[d9x]

The sharp protest of the hinges on the hatch startles her. She turns towards the noise too quickly and stumbles, catching herself against the wall of the nearest cabin. She presses a hand to her temple, trying to dismiss the wave of dizziness by sheer will.

"Hey," she starts, forcing herself to focus on the elderly human before her. Ezri Dax sinks to her knees a few feet from him and presses a hand to her chest. Nothing pings, and when she looks, her expression sours with dismay. Her hair is sweat-slicked to her forehead, and the red-and-black uniform she wears is streaked with mud.

"It's a bird. I don't think they talk." Gently, "Are you all right?"

[sir_samuel]

“Mrph,” says Vimes. “Eugh.” He’s covered with mud himself, and while it’s the kind of thing that happens to him plenty often, he’s definitely not happy about. Vimes pushes himself to his knees and gets a good look at the girl. Mid-twenties, distressed, wearing something that that ‘uniform’ even if he doesn’t recognize it. He doesn’t notice the spots right away, given all the muck.

“Just peachy,” he says gruffly, though his expression softens slightly as he eyes her with concern. “I should be asking you the same thing.”

[d9x]

"I've had stranger wake-ups, believe it or not," she says over a breath like a laugh, like that's supposed to make him feel better. There's warmth in her voice and expression and the offering of her hand, filthy as it is. Even if it is a practiced, professional sort of certainty.

"Captain Ezri Dax. Commanding officer of Federation vessel U.S.S. Aventine."

The uniform already gives her alliance away. A ship designation isn't anything more of a risk at worse and a potential comfort to a disoriented civilian at best, and if there were some drawn out sabotage on the Aventine to get access to the symbiont in some bizarre strategic ploy for military secrets - it isn't as if there were any other Trill on board.

"What can I call you?"

doctor (the institute) | leech

[medsaine]

i. arrival

The climb is long, and the hatch is heavy, and their arms ache in a way this body isn't used to. Medical professionals rarely need to have the sort of stamina that would make this climb bearable, but still. Perhaps an oversight to correct at a later date. A note to be made, at least. They reach on instinct with another pair of hands in a library in a room 362 miles away, to rustle through pages for --

Their hand finds only soggy earth and the tiny stones embedded in it. They are not in the library. They are not anywhere else.

It is alone.

Disquieted by the realization, the body climbs up onto the muddy ground, bundled in a thick coat and hat and gloves that speak to a harsher environment. The air is breathable, the cold is bearable even in the twilight. It touches its face, fingers hovering over its nose and mouth as if expecting something more to be there.

Had it fallen asleep on the train? Is it still asleep, trapped in the oddity of human dreams, creating this world where the moon is whole and the wind lacks teeth? Château de Verdira is not so far that sleep should have been required. But it had been an expected stretch of one hour and forty-two minutes before the arrival of the next stop, and sleep is not a susceptibility is had ever been able to rid its hosts of.

It stands, and without a second look to the hatch smoking in the dirt, begins to walk.

ii. once known, since forgotten

The layers have been peeled away, coat and hat hung on hooks in the hallway, gloves laid out on the stones of the fireplace to dry by the fire. Without them, the body feels smaller than it should. There is a fragility to the bones, an unfamiliar singularity to the methodical expansion and deflation of its ribcage.

The doctor sits at a table, younger and smaller than it is used to, spoon held loosely in its brown hand. The stew is hot and oddly metallic. It's cheap meat and boiled-down wheatrock, strained and diluted three times over. It is familiar and foreign and puts pressure in the jaw.

It sits with one brown hand flat on the table, one with the spoon held loosely over the bowl, and stares up at an elk head mounted to the wall across the room, dark, organic eyes caught by the clouded glass as if trapped in lockstep with it. The doctor rocks, just slightly, slow and subtle as a pulse.

ii

[black_light]

Alex, by sheer habit and inertia, arrives at the gathering hall as he has every day at this hour since the start of the logging project. Sometimes there will be people already there; sometimes he will be alone there. He will be there for precisely an hour, unless he is talking to someone at the end of that hour, in which case he might be there for more than an hour, but rarely much more.

Today is a day where someone else is present when he gets there. More uniquely, however, is that the person already present is a new face. And one that appears to be caught in some manner of duel with a dead elk.

"You're new."

[medsaine]

"Yes," it says, setting the spoon down in the thin broth. It tears its eyes away from the carcass to cast its level, expressionless gaze on Alex. "Do you have any idea where we are relative to Inultus? Or where we are at all."

[black_light]

"Really new."

Alex draws closer, circling around to a close enough seat. He pretends to sit down.

"My answer to both of those questions is no, and I've never heard of Inultus before in my life. Everybody else in town'll tell you the same."

I

[heartshapedobject]

[* You stare at them blankly. You climbed out not long ago, your body moving ahead of your mind, your stiff limbs moving through the motions while you struggled to comprehend how you came to be here.

And someone followed behind, even as you stood there, your feet planted in the mud, your body no longer moving to the tune that you think it was supposed to. Instead, your fingers move when you direct them, you have to breathe, as it doesn't do that on it's own anymore. You open and close your fist - wiggle your fingers.

It is a unique sensation. Interrupted by another stranger.

Human.

Deep within you, a pang of loathing reaches your SOUL. Memories faintly held of older experiences, or newer ones, ones that never happened to you.

So you stare. And you say nothing.]

[medsaine]

[ The Institute meets the child's stare. It takes in the disoriented delays in its movements and determines a measured lapse between neural initiation and muscular response. Conscious, yet unautomated. Rarely does it see such unfocused vacancy in bodies not its own. ]

You are struggling to self-regulate. You may be in shock.

[ The thing in the shape of a young woman tilts its head to the side. If it blinked at normal intervals, the way it turns to invite this child to sit on a nearby tree stump might be inviting. ]

Please, sit.

[ It stares for a moment as it attempts - and fails - to determine the appropriate address. Eventually, it settles on a safe neutral. ]

Sern, are you in pain?

ii

[gastro]

At some point during the doctor's vigil, a young woman comes in from the cold.

Her shoulders are hunched, her arms wrapped around her midsection. At first, it might be easy enough to pass this off as something to do with the chill, but even as she adjusts to being inside, she doesn't straighten up. Despite her posture, it's pretty obvious that she's quite tall - and a careful observer might notice there's something off about her proportions, the size of her shoulders and arms not quite matching her height.

The warmest place is the doctor's table. Noelle sits there, but as far away from the other person as possible. She doesn't take any stew, but she does stare at the cauldrons with a drawn, haggard expression. She looks exhausted.

"Um," she says eventually. "You might want to be careful about that stew."

To Noelle, it smells like raw meat. It would probably make this other person sick.

Kris Dreemurr | Deltarune

[heartshapedobject]

I. and i looked, and behold a pale horse

[* You follow the motions. You are under ground. Nightmares have repeated this pattern, but never quite like this.

It's nice. Not to have to think about anything. Not to have to struggle. Your body moves on it's own, and soon enough you find cold metal against your cold fingers attached to your cold hands.

Cold.

You pull it off, and climb to your feet.

And that is when the thinking begins.

Your body falls slack. You have to catch yourself before you fall. You feel the tensions in your body loosen as you are placed in control. Unconsciously, your hand finds your chest. The warmth of your heart can still be felt, burning like a furnace amidst your stiff and cold body.

It isn't gone. The thoughts remain. The faint voice remains. The memories, fragmented, remain.

And yet, for once, you are alone.

You can't help but laugh. The sound is strangled, fried and heavy, like fingernails scraping glass. It isn't pleasant, but then again, neither are you.]

II. and his name that sat on him was death

[* Hunger. Warmth. The needs that come with having a body, being a human being, or even a living thing. You have always needed them, even as the vessel, but you can't remember ever feeling them this sharply.

So you have a bowl of stew. It doesn't even cross your mind whether you should be eating it. Except right now. Right now, you find yourself massively doubting yo - or no, you just downed the whole thing. That's not actually - okay.

Your bowl is empty as you ravage it, sitting by the fire and warming your cold and stiff body. There are bits of stew on your face, but you don't care, because you were hungry.

Something happened to you. You don't seem to care.

You turn to the next one, wiping your face with your sleeve. It was already filthy from the mud.

Butterscotch and cinnamon wafts from the pot. And that gives you pause. From the looks of it, it's another stew. Those aren't stew ingredients. Perhaps this is a call for restraint.

Except it isn't... because you're already piling it up.]

Magic stew, I think. [* You blurt it out without thinking. But it smells like something. Like a living room filled with a mother and father and a brother that don't look like you. Like family friends coming over to your house. Like the times when you and Noelle and De -] Shut up.

[* Your voice turns harsh, almost a growl. It is hard to tell who you were talking to. Even you don't know. You glare at the bowl with something resembling hatred.]

i

[black_light]

[When Alex hears laughter, his attention gets grabbed. It's a rare noise to hear around town, after all. And, pulling up comparisons to memories that aren't quite his, this isn't exactly normal laughter.

So he goes to investigate, and the source of the laughter turns out to be some shrimpy kid. Alex scoffs to himself, deciding not to bother with his usual cloak and dagger, and just approaches clearly from within the kid's line of sight.]

Something funny?

[heartshapedobject]

[* The laughter disappears dies in your throat, as soon as it begun. You cough, despite yourself. Your voice is rough.

Not alone. Never alone.

You look up at the stranger, your eyes flat and feigning disinterest.]

Dunno. [* Your voice is casual, almost bored. There's a lot of things you could be feeling, a lot more that you should be feeling, but all you can summon among the dense cloud of angst that follows you is a faint curiosity.] Where am I?

[thinkerseven]

[ Fortunately, the person in the room with them gets told to shut up a lot. She doesn't take it personally, and she knows it isn't directed at her.

Those memories hurt. It's written all over their face. That's a lever Lisa can use, but it's not that interesting to her. Most of the people she knows has lost someone. What she wants to know is who they're talking to. ]

Consider that statement disregarded. I didn't hear anything. [ Lisa sits across from them and smiles. It's not kind, but it's not unkind, either. ] Is it at least a decent-tasting magic stew?

claps happily

[heartshapedobject]

Cinnamon. [* You shrug. You feel restless. Being approached by a stranger like this doesn't make you feel any better.

It isn't the memories. That is something that you remind yourself - the memories are... fine. Home. Parents fighting. Divorce. Grief. Friends. Brother. All wrapped up in a tangled mess.]

Haven't had any yet. [* Feeling uncharacteristically chatty, you continue...] My guess is that it's designed to trigger some kind of nostalgia, memory from the past, that kind of thing.

[* It's hard to hide the way that you're just a little bit taken aback by your own behavior.]