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☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER
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aefenglom's test drive! All threads can be considered game canon, should you choose to do so; regardless of if you pick specific threads to remain canon to the game, the prompts and test drive itself will be. This is part of our September-October event The Price of Revolution, so it's fairly important to note! Aside from that, here are some quick reminders:• 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.With that taken care of...
• 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.
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. |
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Am I? [ It's an absent sort of question, a vague curiosity more than anything. Though now that she's mentioned it, he can feel something on his face, a weight that hadn't registered before.
He reaches up to brush his fingers against his cheek, and can't bring himself to feel surprised when they come away bloody. The river of it continues flowing from his ruined eye anyway, unbothered. ]
Ah.
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She doesn't think she has any bandages on her, but she looks at her sleeve, decides she doesn't have the strength herself to rip the fabric, and holds her arm out to him]
Here. If you can rip it into cloth strips, you can use my sleeve.
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[ It hasn't in a very long time. For it to be bleeding now, it must mean something but Hua Cheng isn't much in the mood to tease out dream metaphors. Not with his own corpse at his feet, at any rate.
Instead he shakes his head slightly, offering her a flicker of a smile. An oddly kind thought, considering the state of her already. Apparently they're both going to walk this dream bloodstained. ]
Keep your clothes. It doesn't bother me.
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Instead she looks at the corpse, then at him, and puts two and two together.] You died. [A statement, not a question, but she tilts her head with a slightly furrowed brow, noticing that this (living?) version of him does seem a bit older.]
You got better?
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[ One eyebrow lifts to go along with the wry question. Anything might be better than lying dead in the mud, he supposes, and Hua Cheng is certainly an improvement on a nameless teenage soldier. He made himself into something more, even if it took his death to do it. Part of him wonders if he should be thankful for whoever it was that cut him down. ]
You could say that. [ He pauses, then can't help an amused exhale as it occurs to him what she's probably asking. ] But better doesn't mean alive.
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When she opens her eyes again she doesn't get up right away, sighing a little.]
Were you wandering as a spirit for a while too? ["Too."] Before this place. Um-- [She pauses and makes a vague gesture at their surroundings.] Not this place. The-- Other world. Aefenglom.
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Yes. [ An easy admittance, who and what Hua Cheng is has been known so widely he can't think of any reason to lie. Though wandering probably isn't quite the word, it's close enough. ] Until I arrived through the mirror.
[ And hadn't that been the surprise. Still is, at times, when it catches him unawares. ]
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[Some exceptions existed. Itsuki looked like he did before he died, for example, and Sae still bore the blood of everyone that had died after she had.]
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When you're strong enough, you can look like anything you want. [ Something he's taken full advantage of, over the years, and not only because it amuses him. He'd put the nameless teenager he'd been behind him a long time ago.
Part of him wonders why he's still looking now. He glances over at Sae again and inclines his head slightly. ]
We can go, unless you have a reason otherwise.
thanks for the notif, dw......
But she doesn't have any particular reason to hang around here, not really. It's just the blood-soaked ground and bodies had been almost comforting in their familiarity. If she thinks about it, though, that's not really a good thing.
So she shakes her head and stands, moving to his side and reaching out to hold onto his sleeve in an absent-minded gesture to not be separated.]
Where do you want to go?
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[ Not really an answer, but as close as Hua Cheng is likely to get on that particular topic. The hand curling into his sleeve gets a brief bemused glance, but he lets her leave it there as he starts to step away.
The battlefield they stand in seems to stretch endlessly in every direction, and Hua Cheng can't tell if that's the nightmare at work or his own distorted memory of it. Either way, it has to end at some point. He's almost certain of it. ]
Wherever you like. There's not much else to see here.
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It's a dream, isn't it? We could go anywhere. But... I don't really have a lot I could draw from... I never left my village before I died. [A pause. A correction:] Before I was killed.
[Because it seems an important distinction, and she figures it's not really a surprise at this point.] I want to see other places.
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But, illusions. He's managed small things here and there, sitting uncomfortably with this power so like and unlike his own, but maybe that can be useful now. Hua Cheng has done similar things before.
He narrows his eye at the endless field in front of them, concentrating on every line and corner of buildings he knows the back and front of. It takes a moment before the images start to shimmer into place, a city slowly building in front of them. Bright and colorful and utterly at odds with the grim battlefield it's being built on.
But perhaps that only makes sense, for the Ghost City. ]
Will this do, to start?
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It's so pretty! It looks like a festival! [She doesn't know if that really makes sense, but it reminds her of the bright lights and decorations of the near-by shrine-- one of the few times, now that this reminded her, that she had left the village. Sort of. Did it count as leaving when the entire village kind of went with you to celebrate too? She'd always sort of thought of the big shrine as an extension of her village, but--
Well, it doesn't matter. She takes a few steps forward, hand never loosening its grip on his sleeve, forcing that fabric out a little as she turns to look at him] Can we look around? What is this place?
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[ The streets may still be forming in front of them but the basic structure is there. Sadly empty, Hua Cheng unsure just how many illusions he can manage at a time, but here and there are the flickers of other forms. The obviously dead, wounds still on their bodies. Stronger ghosts, almost indistinguishable from the living. And some shapes that may never had been human at all, strangely animalistic or completely unrecognizable.
And Hua Cheng moves comfortably through it all, letting Sae look wherever she wants. ]
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Ghost City. [She echoes him, awed.] It's amazing... Everyone here--who did live here--was a ghost? This is from your world? I want to live here...
[YOu know, for a given value of "lived."]
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[ Though many of the ghosts came and went as they liked as well. Hua Cheng had never made it his business to keep track, past making sure that no one caused any trouble. Mostly his reputation ensured few would ever try.
But he leads Sae through what would have been the market place, empty stalls that would have been filled with food or trinkets. It gives more of the sense that they'll be filled at any moment, rather than feeling abandoned, as empty as everything is.
It might be that emptiness that prompts him to speak again, after a moment. ] It was meant for the ghosts. Those yet to move on, for whatever reason.
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It's beautiful... Big brother, did you live here too?
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Yes. [ There's a proprietary sort of fondness to his tone as he says it. ] You would have been welcome.
[ If she'd found it. If their worlds were anything alike. ]
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...I couldn't. [She finally mutters, shoulders slumping.] I was trapped. I couldn't leave. But it would've been nice.
[She sighs, then turns to look at him, smiling slightly.] ...Thank you. Even if it's just a fake, it was nice to visit a little.
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It helps that his attention is taken by their surroundings as the last of his illusions fade. Rather than the battlefield they'd left, they seem to be standing on Aefenglom's empty streets, a curious emptiness to them to make it clear they're still in the dream. ]
Everything here is fake, it seems.
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I was a sacrifice. I was supposed to appease the gods and they would grant us several years of good crops and soil and things like that. But... it was wrong. They did it wrong. [She reaches up with her free hand to touch at the rope-like red mark around her throat, her gaze distant.]
I guess the gods were angry, so they punished everyone through me instead. I came back--Wrong. I cursed the village. Everyone died and no one can leave, until my ritual is completed the right way.
I don't know how long I've been waiting...A couple hundred years, I think...? It all blurs together after a while.
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As for the rest of it, he flicks her a faint smile. ] It does. Time has less meaning for us.
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I knew... what was going to happen... I was raised as the sacrifice. I always knew. But-- But angry... Maybe... [She's not sure why it troubles her, but after a moment she shakes her head and steps closer to him again, as if to half-hide from her own thoughts as she leans against hs arm a little.]
Big brother, how long have you been dead? Do you remember?
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Unless it's for amusement's sake. But there's a desire to be honest with the little ghost next to him. Something familiar there. ]
Eight hundred years or so. [ So much easier to count the years he'd been dead than the years he'd been alive. That should possibly bother him, but it never has before. ]
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