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

• 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.

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[Maria's lip curls; enough that her fang is exposed again. It's a sneer, and it's a displeasured grimace, and it's a lot of things that Maria herself isn't even quite sure of. Her emotions are a little all over the place right now.

That was by far not the answer she was expecting, so she's also surprised.] Gehrman is... [And she kind of chokes on it a little, snapping her jaws shut and grinding her teeth a little. No, and no again, she does not want to believe this, and yet here it stands.

This has to be a trick of the nightmare. If it's not a trick of the nightmare, then she's...

Disgusted.] -- I am one of Gehrman's apprentices. When were you created, Doll?

[There's two answers, really. And Maria knows she's not going to like either of them, but especially if this was somehow his way of grieving.]

[ Time was something so difficult for her to grasp, as her earliest memories were nothing but faded images and glimpses of Gehrman. Of the workshop. Of the warmth of being held tightly on quiet nights. Of a voice that carried on a one-sided conversation when she hadn't the ability to respond.

And then there was the dream. ]

Time is so fleeting... It must have been decades ago, now.

[ And this hunter was one of his apprentices. There are a few names that stick out to her; names that Gehrman spoke aloud in the midst of his restless sleep. While he usually begged for deliverance, there were other times when he cried in sorrow. She used to wake him from his dreams when they seemed too unpleasant, and for a moment, it seemed the glimpse of her caused him momentary relief up until he reached to touch her face, the feeling of her porcelain skin bringing fully into consciousness. His expression would then fall with realization, disheartened and wistful.

She was told never to wake him again. ]

Are you Lady Maria?

[Oh gods, it knows her name. Maria's look darkens even more; had she fur along her spine, it would be bristled in aggression and discomfort all over again.

Decades ago. Maria did not survive for too terribly long after the Fishing Hamlet... but she also doesn't know how long she's been dead in the the Yharnam that, say Eileen hails from.

So it's inconclusive, but she's still getting the sinking feeling it was still probably after her death.

She answers slowly, but curtly. She has no time for this... awful whatever the hell it is.]

... I am. And you were built in my image. By my former mentor. Likely after I died. Now you know why I want nothing to do with you.

[Even though it is... dizzying to consider the implications of all of this. She's going to try to mute that as much as possible. Bottle that right up, it's no big deal.]

Yes... I suppose.

[ Oh. Is that what it is? Perhaps she doesn't understand entirely just how awful it is to Maria that she even exists, but there's some other bits of understanding there. More than what she used to have.

At the very least, it explains the connection. ]

He still grieves. Ensnared within the Hunter's Dream after he was granted stewardship by Flora, the Moon Presence. I accompanied him from the waking world, where I had no voice. Though, since the dream began, he no longer seeks out my companionship. He instructs new Hunters in the dream and I embolden their sickly spirits with the echoes of blood.

[ Probably more information than Maria ever cared to know, but it's there. More importantly, though: ]

What happened to you? He would never speak of you when I inquired.

Does it truly matter? Fine, if you must know: I took my own life. Wrenched a blade through my throat. Perhaps I should have picked a better method than that, though, seeing as afterwards I had to keep reliving it.

[Not like some poeple here don't know she's dead, but this may be the first time she's mentioned how.]

Once, perhaps, I would have had sympathy, but if you return to your... dream, and you speak with Gehrman again, tell him this: I am glad he grieves, and hope it lasts and eternity and more. He should have found a better way to do it.

[Oh yeah, she's mad at him, too. Of course it sounds like he made some pact with a Great One as well. Good gods, Gehrman.]

You must suffer greatly...

[ That's certainly a lot to take in at once. The price to pay for wanting to know the truth, she supposes. A little too much is making more and more sense, and too quickly.

There's a mixture of emotions, some familiar and some unfamiliar as she stands in silence. She can barely hear the noises coming from a couple of the corpses in the street. If this is a dream of her own, why hasn't she woken up yet? ]

Such words... would only serve to break him further.

[ It may be for the best that she rarely speaks with Gehrman. That is a request that she does not wish to fulfill if she can help it. He may not even believe her, and it would only be rubbing salt in an old wound. ]

Yes well, we were all broken by our experiences in Yharnam. It matters not, and he should not be getting away with this.

[She's going to ignore the comment about suffering. Of course she does. She's depressed to the point of suicidal, and more than that... she's from Yharnam. She just said what happens in Yharnam - it is a world of suffering.

Like this. This is suffering.]

... And you have imparted knowledge I do not want, whilst I face the hell I was to be punished forever in. Somehow this fits in a way I cannot describe.

[ The heaviness that she feels upon waking from her dreams pales in comparison to what she feels here and now. Nevermind the gruesome scenery and horror that surround them both.

It was a truth that neither of them needed. Even when she doesn't know the extent of why Maria chose to take her own life, she knows all too well that a Hunter's life is full of hardship. Every restless night of Gehrman's would have been more than enough for her to make that realization.

If only she knew how to wake herself from this nightmare. She has no ideas, but she could at least leave Maria's presence. ]

Whether it fits or not, it was never my intention to add to your suffering.

[ She takes a small step back, causing thick ripples in the blood soaking her boots. ]

I will leave you be now.

Intention means very little in the face of such pain, but I suppose I can take some solace that a Doll thinks it is capable of doing anything like that.

[Maria tilts her head, eyes drifting from the Doll to the backdrop, and back.]

... Yes, well, don't do anything to others with your fae trickery. Wearing my face, you'll just get me in trouble, and I've little desire to have to explain to them why this is so.

[ What a dreadful introduction and an even worse realization. There is no need to outstay her welcome. The doll turns slowly, stepping through the blood and over a corpse before slowly looking back. ]

I haven't reason to trick anyone. If this is truly a dream, surely I will wake and return from whence I came.

[ She pauses briefly. ]

This place... Aefenglom. What is it? Will this nightmare end?

Aefenglom is... a realm beyond a dream, from what I can tell. This is a dreamscape, but Aefenglom itself has a physical presence in the waking world. It is a place of magic and mythology even beyond what Yharnam is, though the... gods of this place do not seem to tread among the mortals.

[A brief tilt of her head.] It will end, eventually. I will awaken, and hopefully, you will return to your dream.

Though I would recommend not wandering too far into the depths of that nightmare behind you. That is a dream from home - the place of the final fate of all Hunters; where they face a hunt eternal when they die, consumed by a never-ending lust for the very Blood that allowed them to Hunt in the first place. It is a hell, in the sense of religions that are not taught in Yharnam, a place of punishment and torment for those who decided to walk the path of Blood.

I am already from that place. I don't think you should be trapped there as well. Hopefully when this dream ends, you are not taken to this place [She motions behind the Doll] either.

[ Were it possible for her complexion to pale, it would have done so immediately. Her eyes follow in the direction of the nightmare, the sinking feeling that accompanies this new knowledge stirring up more emotions than she knows what to do with.

That is the fate of the hunters after death? ]

Oh... [ Her voice is a touch breathless. While she never forgot each and every hunter that passed through the dream, there were a few she had been closer with. It pains her to think that such a nightmare should be their fate.

A touch of something... of need almost drives her forward. Who was there? How did they die? What manner of suffering are they being subjected to?

Once she realizes that some time has passed since she has said anything more than that pitiful, breathless response she turns to look back at Maria. ]

Ah... Forgive me. My thoughts drifted elsewhere. Thank you. I will heed your warning.

[ A beat. Well, now she has further questions. ]

How is it that you were brought here from the nightmare?

[Really? This thing wants to keep talking?

Eugh, fine.]

Would that any of us knew. All I know is that I was defeated by another Hunter in the Astral Clocktower, and as I fell to what should have been my actual, final rest - beyond when I should have had my rest in death - I toppled through a puddle of blood and out of a mirror.

No one else has other recollection of how they got here either, except they fell from those same mirrors. Would that I know what brought us here so that I may destroy it and never return.

[ Another lapse of silence. There is so much that seems uncertain or unknown to her, a doll, who would never experience the waking world. For Gehrman, who was indefinitely stuck within the Hunter's Dream. And now? For the hunters, as they embark on a new journey beyond death, and not a merciful one, at that. ]

How terrible...

[ All of it. Every bit.

On top of that, she really doesn't even know where to go from here. Perhaps she can find a safe spot and wait the nightmare out. ]

I would have assumed death to be final.

Would that it was. Unfortunately, it seems there are other plans for me.

[She narrows her eyes a little, and then stares back at the Doll.] Not that I am surprised, but it is still unpleasant.

Then I will burden you no longer.

[ Her attention returns to Hunter's Nightmare and she very well may be gazing at it until she wakes up. If she wakes up from this strange dream.

She casts one final glance over her shoulder. ]

Farewell, Lady Maria. [ She steps away, through the blood, looking for another path and maybe higher ground, away from the reaching corpses. ] May you find comfort when you wake from this nightmare.

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☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

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