dagung | ☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

Test Drive: September

All threads can be considered game canon,

the prompts and test drive itself will be

• The Application Queue is open. Apps can be submitted at any time but will only be processed as space opens up and game plot allows. 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!

• And finally, since this is part of our event, characters already in-game ARE allowed to top-level on this post.

Mirrorbound who come to the Coven after dark on the 27th, who have volunteered to assist in waking the sleeping citizens of Dorchacht, are ushered into a large room laid with pallets on the floor inside a huge chalk circle. With Nessie are a group of sleepy-eyed Witches in loose robes, their expressions calm and almost dreamy despite the seriousness of the situation. These are the Dreamers, an oft-secluded group of Witches who study Divination and dream magic almost exclusively. They show signs of suffering some of the dangers of dreamwalking - they space out often, or doze off and have to be woken by one of their fellows. Still, they seem to know what they’re doing as they prepare candles and fragrant incense. Magic pulses through the floor, tingling threads of it escaping to reach out harmlessly toward the Mirrorbound who filter in.

Miss Nessie is the one to explain the ritual in a solemn tone as she oversees the final preparations and the other gathered Witches. "You all seem to have an uncanny ability to dreamwalk that we do not fully understand. Normally such a thing is difficult, it is, but the Mirrorbound are capable without even trying." She takes a breath and lets it go, standing straighter, determined. "Hopefully we can trigger that ability tonight. Theoretically, magical energy can be harvested from the dream planes. While you sleep, and dream, we will perform a spell to allow you all to bring back that energy crystallized into a physical form, and that is what we will use to wake the citizens of Dorchacht. The more you can collect, the more people we can help."

Her determination gives way briefly to open worry, and she admits, "We don't know what form this shared dream will take, or what dangers it may hold. With the spell going, any injuries you sustain in the dream will also carry over to your physical body, so be careful, yes? You can still back out, of course, and none will hold it against you. For those who stay, healers will be on-site and monitoring your physical forms."

Those who stay will be given a piece of a very rare lavender mushroom used by the Dreamers called Faecap, which works quickly to induce sleep - and shared dreaming. As they drift off, the sounds of soft chanting fill the large room.

[Due to the untested nature of dreamwalking, IC volunteering isn't necessary to participate in the TDM - your character may simply find themselves in the shared dream when they go to sleep that night, similar to how TDM characters will just find themselves in it.]

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, and a sour wind brushes across your face and through your hair. It seems to claw at your consciousness like chilling, spindly fingers -

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

The Nightmarescape

This is Aefenglom, and yet it isn't, at the same time. A large Victorian-styled city of cobblestone streets and close-together buildings, cut through the center by the River Temese. Whether you recognize its specific features and structures or not, you know deep in your bones it isn't meant to look like this. It's subtle at first, but it becomes more and more obvious the longer you walk the cobblestone streets. Everything is... almost gray, desaturated in color. Buildings are crooked, tilting at improbable angles. Clocks are upside-down. Writing is backwards or unrecognizable. The night sky above bears a greenish hue to it, and the stars seem to swim in and out of different formations. The city is also hauntingly empty - except for your fellow dreamers. The space yawns like it wants to be filled with life; it craves, it's hungry for it.

A City Void of Life
It does begin to fill, in time. The longer you're present in the dream, the more things shift and slide. You can feel it drawing from you, your memories, your thoughts and feelings, seeking out your fears and anxieties, your worries and your upsets. It slips right into your cracks and it digs out what it seeks. It turns the shadows of your mind into horrifying possibilities. Twisted features from your life overlay themselves on the empty city of Aefenglom - a single room, a building, a creature, a person. Not quite memories, they're all off in some way, adapting to the dream, warping. Don't get taken in by familiarity: whatever has drawn itself from your head is very, very dangerous. Shadows lurk where they shouldn't, once welcoming rooms close in on and threaten to suffocate you, a friendly creature's teeth and claws become pronounced and vicious, the darkened figure of a loved one watches you with blank eyes and malice in their smile.

Whatever has appeared, it's a manifestation of your nightmares, and it wants to hurt you and the other dreamers around you. Maybe it's a dark what-if that has whispered in your ear at night, a bad end that you feared but never came to fruition, or maybe it's simply just the ugly representation of your greatest fear. Whatever it is, it's out for blood, and it's joined by fragments from the other dreamers. Hopefully you find a friend to help you out. If there was ever a time for a team-up.

It's possible to leave the nightmarescape Aefenglom to try and escape these bad ends and what ifs. Time and space work strangely in this dream, and it's just a few steps to Dorchacht or the Wilde, or a quick tumble to the caverns Underground. Movement seems to be more about intent than direction. But it just gives a new backdrop for your nightmares, because they will follow, they will pursue you doggedly, melding into the scenery.

Face Your Fears
Those who came here on purpose know what the mission is: to collect the crystallized magical energy present in this dreamscape to wake a city cursed to sleep forever. Let the others know, the ones who wound up here on accident, and maybe they can help you - each fragment of a nightmare contains this energy, even theirs, and can be collected and brought back by the dreamers who will wake at the Coven. The energy presents as black orbs, hard and clear like glass, no bigger than large marbles, with images of your terrors dancing deep within them.

Coming by these orbs isn't exactly easy, however. To do so, you have to face manifestations of your worst fears. Defeat them - physically, emotionally, by standing up to them and staring them in the face, there are many ways to banish a nightmare - and they'll condense down into the dark glass pieces. With each defeat, the changes to the landscape sprung out of your head will disappear, and that part of Aefenglom (or Dorchacht, or the Underground, or the Wilde) will right itself, ease back into something normal, the oppressive air fading. The shadows will shorten and color will seep back into that patch of scenery.

And hold tight to those crystals if you dare - other nightmares are drawn to them. These may not even belong to anyone in particular, but to the continent of Geardagas itself: grasping Shades of Monsters and Witches both, with white eyes and blackened skin, who wish to spread their infection; half-burned Dryads screaming for help; gleeful, malicious Fae playing terrible tricks, more twisted and insectoid than the Fae most know; a growing, creeping blackness that can only be the Cwyld itself. Even the land you walk on, or may walk on in the future, has many fears.

It's a good thing some of you have new abilities at hand, and some of you have a few neat changes to help, or perhaps they aren't new at all. Regardless, use your abilities well and work together, it's time to face your fears.

Flitting Shadows
Those who are attuned to their surroundings might notice something off - beyond everything else that is already quite off, that is. The sense of being watched, wherever you go, no matter where you turn, is strong and creeping, until it consumes your consciousness. Always just outside your peripheral vision is a presence, a shadow, lean and cloaked. No matter how quickly you run or how suddenly you turn to catch it, you can never quite get a glimpse of the figure's face, if it even has one. Trying too hard will make you dizzy, nauseous, as it evades and evades and evades. You might not be able to see a face, or much more than the vaguest hint of a shape, but it sees you.

Don't let yourself be distracted from your mission, or from simple survival if you aren't the heroic type. If you linger trying to catch the specter at the edge of your vision, the nightmares will find you, readily and easily, vicious and ready to make you fight for your life. Ignore the sound of wings flapping in the distance, a whisper in an indistinct voice, words you can't hope to understand or even separate from the gnawing paranoia that roars in your ears.

The presence never reveals itself, and never attacks you directly. You get the sense that it's trying to determine what, exactly, you're doing - and that maybe it's trying to sabotage your efforts to collect the hard glass marbles of energy from this plane.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Wen Ning keeps his arms over his head, not looking up even as he senses the phantom fade away and be replaced by another figure. It doesn't matter, because although the tone has changed the voice is the same. He can't look Wei Wuxian in the eyes.

To have done something this terrible and not even remember it, he must truly have lost control of himself.]

I'm sorry... [All he can do is repeat the same apology, throat tight.] Young master... I didn't mean it.

Wen Ning, you're having a nightmare.

[wei wuxian is in it too, though not a part of it - at least not the wei wuxian who touches his shoulder and tries to pull him to his feet. he tries to be gentle, but they only have so much time.]

I need you to help me. Do you understand?

[he should, as much as he's done it.]

[The words I need you to help me automatically get him to finally peer at Wei Wuxian through his arms - and he finds himself staring, despite himself. Because the man talking seriously to him now has a pair of rabbit ears. It's a complete tonal whiplash as far as his thought process is concerned.

This is a dream. Of course it's a dream. Wei Wuxian is a rabbit and he's dreaming.]

Y-yes... [He blinks in wonder at the man, because it's all he can do.] What should I do, young master?

[those words get the reaction that wei wuxian was expecting. he smiles at him, forgetting about the golden eyes and rabbit ears, and all his other puca changes that he's used to by now. but the surprise of his appearance seems to have broken through the fear that had ahold of wen ning.]

We need to face them. All the scary things here. It's important, people will die if we don't. [and then it dawns on him that the ghost general is in fact staring at his ears.] Wen Ning, my eyes are down here.

[Wen Ning immediately turns his gaze downward so it meets the other man's eyes (which are different now too, he realizes), and he nods his head.] Sorry. Sorry, yes.

[It will just be really, really hard to keep from looking back up.]

[He straightens up, allowing the other man(rabbit?) to help him get to his feet.] If none of this is real [then he didn't kill any other innocents] then how do I fight it?

[He's sure willing to try.]

You have to fight it the same way you fight everything. If it pushes, you push back. And harder.

[wei wuxian won't leave him alone though. he'll fight wen ning's nightmares too.]

What was attacking you?

[It surprises him that Wei Wuxian doesn't already know, but then the specter had been quiet ever since the actual(?) living version of him had appeared. Wen Ning turns his head toward the direction it had been in, looking between there and the man in front of him. It isn't there.]

It was--

[He almost doesn't what to say who it was. But then that becomes a non-issue as shadowy arms come out of nowhere to try and wrap around Wei Wuxian's neck.]

Master Wei!

[he was so focused on wen ning, and so used to the dangers that nightmares like this posed, that he almost forgot about those dangers. turns out wei wuxian is still a little reckless, just reckless with bunny ears and a tail now.

but those ears do come with their advantages. it's an extra sense, something that makes him react without thinking when those arms reach out for him. wei wuxian spins and aims a kick at the midsection of-

himself? only twisted and angry. more a memory than a complete fabrication.

he scowls and hands the ghost general his sword.]

I'll distract it, you finish it off!

[He's so sorry, he's so sorry... Wen Ning hadn't wanted this real(?) version of Wei Wuxian to see the nightmare this place had created for him. He doesn't want the other man to think he places any blame on him.

He starts to apologize again out loud, but then the rabbit-man has turned around and he's immediately distracted by the fact that there's also a tail. It's a great, unintentional way to get Wen Ning back into the game as he can only accept the sword after that point and go after the shadow.

As he's headed for it, it takes a step back and raises its arms. All the bodies laying around them start rising to their feet, angry glowing red lines spreading across their necks and faces.]

Master... be careful!

[then wei wuxian should be apologizing too, for giving him this fodder to form nightmares with.]

I'm okay! Now!

[with its arms lifted, the other him is vulnerable. exposed. as for the bodies he raises, when one corpse stands, wei wuxian kicks it down, and races past wen ning to get to the next.]

[Wei Wuxian is ordering him onward, so onward he goes. It's very important that he focuses on the enemy in front of him and not how the other man still manages to look adorable with his bunny ears and tail while fighting undead.

He slashes it once and it seems to do nothing, passing through the hazy form of the doppleganger as though it's made of smoke. Wen Ning clenches his teeth, worried he won't be able to get rid of the nightmare at all this way. He slashes a second time with a similar result.

Then, for some reason feeling as though it's something he absolutely must try, he draws the symbol for a banishment talisman in the air at the specter's chest level. The red eyes in the dark form appear momentarily surprised before it explodes into a mist that quickly dissipates, leaving only a small black orb.]

[wei wuxian would like to think that he was always adorable...but the ears and the tail certainly help.

he takes a quick glance back over his shoulder, distracted from his own enemy by wen ning's struggles. one of the corpses grabs his arm and pulls at him, which wei wuxian answers by slashing it across its face. he slices half of it off in the process - puca do have some nasty claws.

he's about to go to the ghost general's side and help when he finally banishes the nightmare him. the corpses that were under his control disappear as well, turning into little more than whisps of smoke. wei wuxian smiles at the sight, and then does jog over to him.]

Wen Ning, you did well. I knew you would.

[Staring at the orb, Wen Ning reaches out for it only when it looks like might be able to fall. He's not sure what to do, what this is, or how the fight ended up this way in the first place. He's glad for the praise, but...]

I... I don't know what I did.

[Technically speaking he has some vague idea of what he'd attempted to do, but how he'd done it is another matter entirely. He hasn't practiced cultivation techniques like that in some time, and hadn't exactly been stellar with them when he had.

He stares at his empty hand, the one not currently clasping the orb, as if it holds the explanation he's looking for.]

☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

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