dagung | ☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

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* tdm

☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

Test Drive: September

All threads can be considered game canon,

the prompts and test drive itself will be

• Reserves Open Today! If you're interested in securing a spot, put one in! We accept applications without reserves too, of course. Reserves will expire three days before the end of the application period, on the 27th.
• Applications Open The 24th! These will last until the end of the month, the 30th, with the intro log going on up October 1st. The application page can be found here.
• If you have any questions about the game or the world, please refer to the FAQ page; if you still have questions, feel free to ask them! For questions specific to the test drive, please ask them on the appropriate thread.
• For the purposes of the test drive, your character will have access to all magics taught by the Coven if they're a Witch, and as much of their shifted form as you'd like if they're a Monster. Feel free to play around and experiment with each!
• Test drive threads can be used as samples for your applications!

You feel like you're floating. Around you, colors and sounds and smells swirl as if trapped in a whirlpool, vibrancy and hue ever shifting. The more you watch them, the less solid they are; they only become clear out of the corner of your eye. The area around you begins to feel more solid as well, until your feet are on the ground, the wind brushes playfully against your face -

and you know one thing, and one thing alone: this is a dream, and an incredibly realistic one at that.

The Wilde

For once, the forest that comes to view isn’t flecked with autumnal colors, with leaves that fall without the touch of wind. Each branch blossoms with life, flowers of all shades dotting their surfaces as spring rears its head, and you’re tugged from the edge, through a worn path, and deeper than ever before. The gentle laughter and chatter of living creatures filters in through petals that you brush past, hanging from flowering vines winding downward like delicate curtains.

There’s something new to this though, eyes that see and a growing excitement among the forests’ inhabitants: You’re more known to them than you might guess, it would seem.

Outskirts
The meadow where you find yourself is fresh and green, an explosion of color and the sweet scents of flowers and rain. Wildflowers dot the grass, all beginning to open, in sprays of purple and pink and orange. To one end, the stream flows clear over smooth river rocks into a small pond dotted with vibrant blue fish and turtle-shelled ducks floating without a care in the world. To the other, the forest begins with tall, white-barked trees and saplings in various stages of new growth, pushing out tender green leaves. It's pleasant, but strange, because... There is next to no sign of the Cwyld here in this idyllic patch of the Wilde, no blackened foliage or shadows hiding white-eyed Cwyldtid.

The wildlife seem similarly unaffected, even thriving - watch out for the mama petalwolves with their brilliantly-colored floral coverings. Most of them camouflaging themselves in the thickets of wildflowers are followed by bushy, green-leafed cubs, and they're widely known to be aggressive when threatened.

The most inspiring sight, however, is one not seen in the Wilde of Geardagas for many years, due to the wide spread of the Cwyld. A silvery, equine creature emerges from the treeline, trotting slowly toward the pond on iridescent hooves. A single white horn protrudes from its head, and its mane shimmers pearlescent in the morning sunlight. Following it is a smaller, clumsier unicorn with a gold-tinged coat, happy to be out and about. Unicorns are known to be exceedingly rare - to spot a foal in the Wilde is unheard of. You're all very lucky to see the way the forest is healing.

While some may know that the Coven itself has a unicorn in its stables, this wild one is unused to the hands of humans and may hold her ground in protection of her baby, threatening with her horn and performing small feats of magic to that end -- illusion and physical enhancements are its more core offensives, though it can do healing and shields on the other side. The foal, for the most part, doesn’t seem to have a lick of self-preservation (perhaps it’s been living in safety for too long) and won’t mind bounding up to something, or someone, new and interesting, nickering in asking to play.

The Path Through
Onward and inward, traveler. The healing forest is vast, but a particular route is clearly outlined to lead toward something. As you head past the treeline, more saplings of varying heights and ages shoot forth from the ground between the large-trunked trees that survived. Warm sunlight dapples the ground in an irregular pattern of light and shade, and shines off a series of mirrors, each about the size of a large hardcover book, hanging from the tree trunks to either side to form a path.

No two mirrors are alike. Similar to the mirrors within the Looking-Glass House, each is framed in different decorations and different materials, with different engravings or embossings, but unlike the Looking-Glass House, all the mirrors' decorations are visible to passersby. They're well-cared for out here, polished to a shine and picked clean of leaf-litter and outdoor debris; distant, happy voices reveal that the area is far from abandoned.

Each of these mirrors is placed in honor of a Mirrorbound, and all contain an enchantment that, when the surface of the glass is touched, causes it to display short, silent 'moving pictures' of that Mirrorbound's heroic deeds, in Aefenglom, in Dorchacht, or maybe even from the character's home, whatever they may have done to earn this high regard. Whether the retellings are true to life, or completely dramatized, it's clear that much care was put into remembering their individual stories and personalizing the frames of their mirrors.

The path between the mirrors serves the dual purpose of memorializing, and leading the way deeper into the forest...

Within the Wilde
... Where the sound of creatures grow louder and more plentiful, shaping into actual words as characters step into a clearing, more familiar to those who’d dreamed the first dream than most: There may be no long tables set up with food and drink, but the sight of Fae flitting about and gossiping is certainly something all its own. They, along with Dryads, seem to be plentiful in comparison to the waking world, and once they’ve taken notice of the new faces... immediately begin to ask questions. From whence did they come? Were they filled with new magic power, or had they already begun to change? It’s exciting -- they haven’t had new connections to the world in some time, most of the old Bound having returned beyond their glass some time ago, and while it could mean there was trouble on the horizon they don’t seem too bothered by that fact. “Most” returned, it’s said, because there’s plenty of creatures who claim to have been descended from those who helped to restore the balance of the world, proudly claiming so to any who spend half a minute with them.

While they can be spoken to in a sense, characters won’t get anything too crazy out of them -- they’re willing to speak on present happenings (or what’d be present for characters in game) and how that played out, such as how Dorchacht was far more free than it had been centuries hence in example. Anything more pressing, such as how it may have come about, is unable to be understood despite everything else being able to. They tease new dreamers that those of old were brought here, as far as the stories go, to help cleanse the world and return it to what it once was, and joke that they’d better prepare for the same trouble -- what a laugh, their Wilde as it is now, desecrated once more.

But the Fae in particular are tricksy and prefer pranks to actual conversation, picking on anyone in sight to see how true it was that Mirrorbound -- you, apparently -- had powerful magic and amazing abilities as Monsters: Give it a shot, cast a spell or two, show off your more Monstrous talents, they’ll find it a genuine hoot.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Path Through
[So much of Alucard's life is about mirrors, it seems. How they can be repaired. Used to view and change and manipulate the world, bring about ends and beginnings. So to be pulled in to a place through a mirror is not strange in and of itself. It is alarming because it was a mirror within the castle, and thus no other magic should be able to breech it's walls, but in walking along a path of mirrors, well.

Surely there must be one that undoes this.

Alucard's footsteps are soft as he walks along the path, golden eyes carefully studying each as he goes by. His reflection stares back at him, and continues to stare back at him when he walks over to inspect the frame of some of the more noteworthy mirrors. They don't have laguage written on them, as the viewing mirror down in the Belmont Hold does, but pictures are their own language. One that he can follow, after inspecting a dozen or so.

It is when he brushes up against one that the dhampir startles, just a little. There is a life beyond the mirror, and he stays perfectly still as he watches those within go through the motions.]

A library of lives.

[At least, that is what it seems to be.]

But to what end?

Within the Wild
--Well, if you're sure. Thank you.

[Dryads, it seems, are as dense as the wood they live in. Alucard has spoken to five of them so far, all far more interested in overwhelming him with questions than giving him any answers. They speak a jargon he knows not, of Bound and changing and all other matters that they presume he knows implicitly. Of being brought to a place with purpose, and there are so many questions there. These things don't have the right answers, at least not to the dhampir's satisfaction.

Alucard doesn't like it at all, and walks along, gently shooing away a passing fae.]

There's others in the forest, I presume. Seek them out instead.

[And unsurprisingly, that gets a fae headbutting a dhampir, who just stops and looks gobsmacked.]

Wildcard.

[ Another dream?

The first heralded his arrival in this world amid apocalyptic flames, and the second was a stark warning set in a dystopian nightmare - one they're finding could exist in moments, if they don't avert disaster. This is a sharp swerve in a new direction. It's peaceful and idyllic, a pleasant lullaby of job-well-done. Is it? Or just a distraction?

A bigger distraction is the flickering something in the back of his head. For a frozen moment he thinks he recognizes it, but that hope is dashed immediately. The djinn magic that tethered him to Yennefer was a certainty, not quite a feeling or a presence.

He follows it, and watches (unnervingly, from a distance) as fae sprites play bowling with a stranger as the pins. He feels an out-of-body spark of exasperation and thinks: What the fuck? ]

[Alucard has taken away one thing here that is an absolute and utter certainty: he does not like the fae. He does not like their behavior, he does not like how they react to attention or to being ignored, and he would as soon swat at them if he thought it was going to make a damn ounce of difference.

Fae were never stories in Wallachia, so he just.

Keeps walking. Eyes set ahead, praying for the damn things to finally get bored.

It strikes him then that something about himself is wrong in a way that he isn't sure how to articulate. Not yet. Alucard pauses in mid step, eyes suddenly much brighter and wilder.]

[ Geralt's not trying to hide, but he's kept his distance - and witchers are quiet, preternaturally so. He watches the unknown man walk and tries to get a sense of what he is, though he knows it's pointless. Everything smells off, in these complicated dreams. His nose is full of flush foliage and flowers he doesn't recognize.

The man freezes, and Geralt thinks he's been noticed.

... Noticed somehow. If not because he's been spotted.

Ah, shit. Something's up with this, and he doesn't like it. He's considering just bailing and waiting out the dream on the outskirts somewhere, or trying to find Lambert and grill him about what's been happening in Aefenglom while he's been away, but then he feels a very physical presence at his side. Almost startled, he looks over-- ]

Oh, he is very interesting! Pretty and horrible at once! [ A dryad, and a loud one. She drapes her arms over his shoulders and Geralt takes a step back, trying not to stumble. ]

Thanks?

[ 'And horrible.' Jeez ok. ]

[The dryad's voice breaks Alucard from his own sudden panic. He was about to do something logical - attempt to float, as all vampires can - and while it would have been a worthwhile experiment, it also would have sent him tumbling into a panic that no one needed to witness.

And there would have been a witness. Who is not terribly far away, and that dryad is definitely being a dick right now. Actually, that sounds like something Trevor would say, which nearly gets Alucard to laugh.

That doesn't come to pass. The dhampir walks over towards Geralt, but his eyes are on the dryad.]

Uncalled for commentary, I think.

[A very polite and overbearing way to ask someone to leave.]

Oh! You're much prettier!

[ The dryad performs a gravity-defying graceful move from one man to the next, practically floating against the long-haired man's chest, held up by leaves and vines, as though she's being held in his arms. Even if he's not cooperating with said arms.

Geralt brushes some dried petals off himself. ]

I'll stick with horrible, if that's alright.

[ Maybe he could have gotten away with 'pretty' eighty years ago, before the scarring and weathering really set in. He gives this guy a wary look, both curious and apprehensive. You know, as he's smothered by an enthusiastic tree lady. ]

[Alucard just stands there, his arms folded over his chest and his mouth now set in a very deep frown.]

As I said, uncalled for commentary.

[It's rude to side step such a gesture. Alucard knows that, and he does it anyway because the word uncomfortable is a very, very gross understatement for how he feels at the moment. To Geralt, he gives a brief nod of his head, hoping that approaching a man closer to horrible will get the dryad to leave them both be.]

Careful. She'll think it a duo and we'll have real trouble on our hands.

Alucard | Castlevania

within the wild, creeeeeepin

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the path through. hope you're okay with OCs!

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path

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Within the Wild

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