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

... Were you in my memories? What you are looking at is Yharnam. Or to be most precise, you are looking at a Nightmare version of Yharnam, in the same way the surrounding area... [She makes a motion to the twisted version of Aefenglom around them.] is Aefenglom. Nightmares twist the city where I come from, as well.

[She makes a more serious face.] And Yharnam... Yharnam was a terribly violent place. One in which some - nay, many, later on - people were never expected to live to see the dawn. It was soaked in blood in other ways, for how people imbibed it.

No. Gra-Eileen's, she talked about the city. [Only briefly, and that she was a hunter. Not all of it made sense. But Mikasa imagined it didn't make sense the same way that her world and titans didn't to others. Mikasa's carefully blank face watched, head-turning to look back at the bodies. Her antenna giving a flick at the scent of blood and rot that couldn't be escaped. Lips thinning as she thought her words through.]

...The violence around them made them violent? [She'd seen that. Seen it too much. Like when Floch tried to tell them to burn civilian houses to get back for the walls being breached.]

No. Their nature as humans made them violent. Their addiction to Blood exacerbated it, until they became Beasts or drowned in it. The hunters most of all. That nightmare you see before you is called the Hunter's Nightmare.

[But that's getting Too Close to Things Maria Doesn't Want to Talk About. So she doesn't, and waves a hand.] That matters not. What I find more concerning is how these two dreams may yet interact with each other, considering they are, in fact, both dreams.

Addiction to blood... [Mikasa wasn't one for metaphors and pretty words. But that could have been taken in two ways, they liked fighting. Or, the option that seemed more likely from what Maria and Eileen had said, people were literally addicted to blood.

It makes her pale, mouth straining.]

...Are we really in both? Isn't this a dream of Aefenglom that's mimicking the dreams you know? [But she groans, cutting herself off with a little huff. This is too much thinking.] Anything I should know about this place?

The point is that if they are both dream realms, there is a chance that it could be connected. It would not be the first time. [There were layers to the Hunter's Nightmare, after all. You could see Yharnam under the Fishing Hamlet. (And you could see the Fishing Hamlet from the Nightmare Frontier, but Maria never did go there)]

The only things you need to know... is that anything that isn't a skeleton is going to try to kill you to feast on your blood. Or just to kill you. The skeletons are harmless. They just reach and groan in agony, but they're more or less simply decor.

And...

[She squints up the river.] I would not recommend following this river to its source.

[A soft sigh slips out, the fae giving up on watching the blood trickle down the street. Her boots hitting the cobbles, then her wings gave a small droning buzz as they flickered into life. Quickly hovering to catch up with the witch... Is this what Armin and Historia had felt like with their short ass legs? Having to move a little bit quicker than normal to keep up.

But she's there, at Maria's elbow... Maybe she shouldn't have called Levi a runt. But her black eyes follow Maria's gaze, or attempt to.]

Why? What's there? [Because it sounded like Maria knew. And that it was dangerous. Even if the skeletons looked somewhat dangerous to Mikasa. Though they did seem pretty frail compared to what she was used to. Then her antenna twitch, a thought occuring.] ...Wouldn't that be where this source of magic is though?

A truly hideous Beast guards the entrance to the prison and the Research Hall. At least it does in the Hunter's Nightmare. A former Hunter, and leader of the Hunt himself, he became the very thing he hated eventually. We all do.

[Maria wrinkles her nose, either way. If that is the Research Hall, and the Astral Clocktower, then the entrance to the Fishing Hamlet is there, as well. And that is the source of the Nightmare, so it makes sense it would be the source of this one as well.

So, logically, Maria wants nothing to do with going that way, and she looks back toward the streets of Aefenglom - familiar, but twisted - and decides that way, instead.]

It may be, but this is a small sliver. This will go away when we all awaken, I'm sure, just as easily as trying to figure out how to defeat a place.

Is it really guarding those places? From what Eileen had said, I thought they'd... Been lost. [Like those that had turned into a titan.

The twisted streets were odd. How some building that might have looked vaguely familiar, if it weren't for how empty it felt. Lifeless. Like there had been people and they'd just vanished. Not having time to leave. Like when they'd had to run with nothing but the shirts on their backs, and how Trost had been after they'd blocked the wall but before the residents returned.

It being a dream meant that no one would return. Still, her head fell, watching where she stepped. Her ears and antenna would catch anything approching before her eyes did anyway.]

What's your plan then? Find another nightmare? [It made sense, a place wasn't really a thing that could be fought. Though it did bring up another issue. What if they only came across places?]

It is guarding it, because it knows no other life than to protect the church and its secrets. That is what he took with him into his Beasthood... and his death.

[Which, Maria thinks, is sort of the fate that befell them all, regardless of if they were associated strongly with the church or not. ] My plan, then, is to go and find anything else of note here, and not worry about that. Perhaps we'll find something more easily dispatched, like a person, or a Beast.

[The fae's voice lowers into a mumble. Not really expecting an answer.] It sounds like you knew him. [Probably a dumb comment, given Maria referred to the beast as a 'him', she'd have to have known something.

Then speaking normally.]

I hope that will be enough to help them. [The sleepers. Mikasa really did wonder there. Why the mirrorbound had had to go to sleep, enter the dreams to help them. But the sleepers were trapped in another dream.

Then her antenna gave another twitch, the fae's head snapping up to look down a winding side-street.]

Something more tangible can likely be defeated over and over again. Nightmares have an uncanny ability to repeat themselves, after all.

[Like her life after death.

Fun, fun times.]

We'll see, though.

Do they? Normally I wake up, then have the same dream the next night...

[Normally it involved watching the light leave her mother's eyes as her corpse fell to the floor. But the fae gave a soft chirp. Hurrying up again, watching the alley as she passed, but keeping close to Maria and see what came.]

Yes, that is it repeating itself. Just as mine do.

[Maria: Casually admitting she has nightmares.

Just... continuing on.]

Besides, after this night, this one should be gone, anyway. Then we'll have no reason to discuss any of this anymore.

[Didn't that mean there was a chance these streets would just continue? Endlessly trapping them in the nightmare? But Maria knew this place better than her, both the nightmare and the city. That much had been proven back during the fae's first attempt at going outside the brightwall.

She didn't want to be any more of a distraction than she already was, so the fae trudged along. Secondary arms slightly raised so the barbs could lash out at anything that approched.]

☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

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