dagung | ☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

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☆ 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.

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Might.

[And then Geralt explains the rest. Alucard closes his eyes for a moment when the man finishes, and lets out a sigh through his nose. They've only just dealt with Dracula. Now...now this.]

Wonderful. [He's so tired. It comes through in his tone.] The infection's nature is what, precisely?

[ It's an understandable reaction. Distantly, he wonders what this man has been through to make him seem so bone-tired, but it's not his business. (Even though the game mechanic tethering them unbeknownst to either, says: Yes it is.) Exhaustion is a state of being for Geralt, though he buries it beneath his professional calm. The last time he had a break, he was actually dead. ]

The call it the Cwyld. It kills living things, people, animals, plants. Corrupts them somehow and makes their only purpose spreading the infection. Fire does a good job stopping it, but burning the whole planet poses an obvious problem.

[ A world has to be alive after, or else you haven't actually saved anything.

The petalwolf in the distance leaps over something, spraying pink and purple flowers, calling in canine chirps to her cubs. ]

I see.

[It's a deeply understated reaction for what Geralt has shared. What he's described feels like something Dracula might do if he was not a man for absolute overdramatics. A long, creeping death and visible path of destruction. Making the world itself spread it's death.

Lovely. Wonderful. Fan-fucking-tastic.]

And so this is the path to drawing those in to hopefully mitigate the problem.

[His head snaps up at the distant petalwolf's movements. The flowers are a riot of colors, but it's the noise she makes that puts something like a smile on the dhampir's face. Wolf language doesn't change, it seems.]

Got no idea why people from other worlds are drawn in. We're certainly not treated like incoming heroes. More like a bureaucratic immigration headache.

[ Geralt doesn't seem mad about it, though. The leaders in Aefenglom itself appear to be trying in good faith, and as someone who has been a part of a force that forcibly abducted people from one dimension to another for nefarious purposes, he can say with some authority that nothing about the way they're being treated stinks of malicious conspiracy. If there is some awful secret being covered up, they're doing a solid job.

Things could be a lot worse. Things could be like they are in the neighboring city of Dorchacht, where Geralt's sleeping body resides, hidden away in a Resistance safe house.

Instead of going into the expanding horrors of local politics, he watches the petalwolf. He detects a flush of enjoyment from the other man--

Strange. He withdraws, trying to shutter his own mind. It probably feels like a cold door being quickly shut. ]

That's...

[Quite a few words that while Alucard understands in the abstract, well. He's still a medieval Wallachian recluse who was raised by a vampire and a doctor and thus not as familiar with civics in practice. He mentally settles on that's a lot, and it continues until there's a weird shudder at the back of his brain, threatening to move down his spine.

It's a new sensation, one Alucard's never felt before, and he doesn't like it. He doesn't like it so much that he stops moving, a frown deep set on his face.]

What was that?

[ Geralt would love to be a medieval recluse. Instead he's a medieval wanderer, who's seen too many border conflicts and attempts at ethnic cleansing. Wouldn't it be nice to just stay at home. More than that, wouldn't it be nice to just never give a fuck. (Yeah, right.) ]

.. I'm not sure.

[ Splitting hairs, clearly. He doesn't sound like he doesn't know what the other man is talking about. No 'what do you mean, what was what'. There's resignation there. He doesn't want to acknowledge it because then it'll be something actually fucking happening, in a dream of all places--

A leafy green wolf cub rolls out of the undergrowth and into their path. Curious but nervous, it scrambles to its feet and looks at him, pacing, torn between running back to mom or getting closer. It's a sight to behold, strange and sweet. When the mother petalwolf comes rushing out, Geralt raises one hand. A shield blooms around them, barely visible and shimmering, gently barring her from attacking them.

More for the wolf's protection than theirs.

It's the most graceful bit of magic he's ever done in this place. It felt too easy - unbelievably so. Like he can just dip his fingers into it and do anything. He's never felt that way before even in a dream. ]

[Alucard is stiff. The sensation has passed, but hell if it doesn't disturb him down to the bone. Geralt's response is about to get questioned, because the wording is what it is, but then--

wolf.

It is Alucard's own instinct to want to shift into his fluffier form. Both for the cub's sake and the sake of it's mother who will doubtlessly have opinions on the little run away. Alucard takes a step forward, but his change in form does not come.]

That's...

[He doesn't like this one bit, and a flash of real worry crosses his face. It's gone by the time the cub's mother comes out, and all is well. Er, not well, but addressed in a way that solves the problem, and Alucard's eyes go to Geralt again.]

A magician, then.

[That's fine. Puts him at ease, in truth.]

Only here. I could do a few small utility spells, at home. This world pulls us in and then gives people access to its magic, be it like this or by turning them into 'monsters'. Their terminology.

[ The M Word is such a disaster, in his opinion. Whoever's running PR for this world should have picked something else. Changers, the reformed, animagi, anything. Instead there's this yoke of negativity from the get-go, because language and words carry a dense weight.

Also it makes it real fuckin hard to tell people 'I hunt monsters' without them losing their shit. ]

I never seem to have this kind of aptitude when I'm awake, either.

[Alucard heard those air quotes. That speaks to someone who knows the term does more harm than good, but also makes it clear that there are people around with deep fears about those who fall under such a heading. He doesn't like it at all.]

Skill with magic is just a matter of practice and intent, at least according to a...a friend. [The word, as applied to Sypha, feels like a trite understatement in many ways.]

And any other strange sensations one might be feeling at the moment?

[ A friend, huh. Somewhat knowingly, Geralt says - ] I've got a friend, too. A sorceress. She says magic is a science and an art a matter of will, all at once. The hardest thing in the known world to master.

[ Alucard's friend is probably a lot nicer than Geralt's friend, who once nearly killed him for using that very word.

And, ah, that question. Geralt continues to watch the trees. ]

I'm feeling several. I haven't yet encountered it in the waking world.

Are you sure we don't have the same friend?

[The talk of will is uncannily akin to Sypha's explanation of how magic works. All talk of intent and forcing it into the world even as it struggles and tries to resist. In time, Sypha might have more thoughts on the science end of things but...

...that's not a train of thought to explore around others.]

One that starts in the back of the head and then feels ice cold?

Mm. Probably. Unless you're from the Continent and have heard of the Lodge of Sorceresses.

[ Of which his friend is not a member, but it's a fine yardstick with which to measure recognition. Maybe. He could start using something older, considering his lifespan, and that of most mages.

The wolves have moved on, and perhaps they should, too. Take in more sights of this peaceful forest, so lush and alive when the world of Geardagas is anything but. Geralt lets conversation lapse for a while, and it's obviously deliberate. While it's easy to interpret it as him stonewalling the other man, the truth is more mundane; he doesn't know what to say about any of it. ]

They talk a lot about 'bonds', [ is what he says eventually. ]

Then it is two different people with similar brains.

[Alucard's glad that the wolves have retreated to safety, although he probably could have stared at them for hours yet. They were wonderfully unique creatures, and he would have happily spent a day or more observing them if he could.

But this place has more important things to focus on than just wolves, and so he follows in silence. The lapse doesn't feel natural or comfortable, but Alucard understands that. Some things are a struggle to talk about.]

Bonds. Or what sort?

[ Geralt has a wolf medallion on, silver with red eyes, hanging on his chest. It's dead, here, unable to sense magic that runs too deep for his witcher senses - just decoration. Not as cool as a real wolf, though, or especially these floral ones. (Maybe he just looks like a hippie with a howling wolf shirt. Maybe it's ~*a sign*~) (No it's just lame)

There's a glint in the distance, something in the dark tress. Glass? ]

... The native magic is volatile, and requires things to balance it. The suggested treatment is to link people together. I've never experienced it.

[ Because he'd rather explode and die. The discomfort is probably tangible, even though his expression remains neutral. ]

[~~Do 3 wolf moon shirts exist here~~

Alucard's eyes do catch the medallion, but it's only after a little bit of sun bounces off of it. He hums softly, but makes no attempt to ask after it. Not right now. The way Geralt speaks makes it clear that they are treading on what could politely be termed difficult emotional terrain.]

I see. [Linking, bonds, it follows. He's never heard of magic being that volatile, and if it was...

...he thinks of circuits and how the lights in the castle work. A completed circuit of sorts, although Alucard doesn't dare to go further than that. Discomfort is coming off of Geralt like waves, and Alucard gives him space out of instinct.]

Is there a given reason for such a hard to control nature, or is it simply there and all must deal with it?

[ ~~Hopefully~~

'Difficult terrain' is a good way to explain Geralt in general, though he prefers to hide in a cave and ignore anything emotional. They don't work correctly in him in the first place - he's a mutant, someone who was meant to be stripped of all emotion. Which isn't possible, not even with the Trials a candidate witcher is put through, but it does leave them changed. Distant. Strange. Geralt's grown a lot, in a century, and has learned to navigate a great many emotional things, compared to most witchers. But he's still a witcher.

That's not why he's so against this world's bonds. (Though, surely, he wouldn't like them much on principle.) It's that he knows something of them in his own world, and hasn't healed from its loss. ]

If there's a reason, I don't know it. Seems to be the way things are, like a principle of physics.

Mmm, I see. [Alucard says no more for the moment, because he understands principles. Immutable ways of how the world works because if they stopped functioning, everything would be chaos.

Silence settles back over them both. It isn't comfortable, just brimming with low tension that makes the dhampir even more worried about what may come next.

There's no petalwolves further along the path. The density of mirrors begins to break up, suggesting that the path ahead will, eventually, be without them. Then...well, who's to say what comes next?

A howl from further behind them both seems to be a sign that the mother wolf has all her pups with her now, and Alucard turns to give it a better listen. The timber of it is fascinating, a lightness to it he hasn't heard before.]

These animals aren't common in the waking world, are they?

[Probably not. But it's worth asking, and worth luxuriating in if they are not.]

[ One mirror nearest swirls with fog, beckoning, offering glimpses of figures that may or may not familiar. Won't you come look? it seems to say. Geralt hasn't yet encountered them, and regards the things from afar with a skeptical look. ]

No animals are common the waking world.

[ sad trombone ]

The plague infects everything. The only wild animals I've seen have been rabid, attempting to spread it by attacking, fighting until dead. But these, specifically, I've never even heard of before.

Then this is a place of memories beyond simply the mirrors.

[Alucard ignores the mirrors entirely, even though he swears one of those fog swirls flashes a familiar blonde that almost gets Alucard to stop. A mirror with that is...bad. A very bad idea, and an awful distraction if this dream forces him to stick around.]

A world with no wildlife at all, that's truly miserable.

[ The swirls glint and spark, moving from mirror to mirror, following them. Pay attention to meeee. It morphs, trying to show off Alucard's feats of bravery, if only someone would look. (What an annoying mirror.) ]

Memories in the mirrors?

[ Oh, fuck that. Pass. ]

Yeah, well, it's a world dying of a horrific disease, so there's a lot that's miserable.

I suppose instinct told you not to walk up to them and investigate much further. [Alucard is now pointedly keeping his eyes from the mirrors. This is overwhelming enough, thank you, mirrors.] But yes, if you go up to one of them they include acts if various people. None I know, but...

[Yeah. Fuck that.]

Is there anything that isn't miserable I suppose is the only remaining question I have.

[ The mirrors, perhaps sad over the lack of bite (hah) from Alucard, give up, and shift their target. The swirling mist shifts to display a figure with stark white hair, and Geralt frowns before looking away. He doesn't want to see himself. If they were showing his absent family, maybe, but he knows everything he's done. His little mirror-self is sitting on the edge of a green field, observing something in the distance, gold and feline. ]

Mmn, no.

[ It's all misery. ]

Besides widespread indoor plumbing, I guess. Only the ancient elves where I'm from had figured that out, and it's only still installed in some of the bath houses. Mages don't bother with it when they can just conjure up water.

Only indoor plumbing? What about electric lights?

[Only makes it clear that Alucard is very much used to running water.

He keeps ignoring the mirrors. The hint of white hair suggests that it is Geralt in their reflections, and there is no reason to prod at such things.]

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☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

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