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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Eren is fighting. Maria can feel it in the desperate paddling of his wings against the air; in every labored movement that really shows just how powerful a dragon is. She's not sure there's anything she can do to halt the flow of the water, even when she hears it sizzle and hiss and spit as it touches his tail, even as hard and as fast as she is trying to push herself forward.

She can try for another teleportation spell, but trying to grab him again will just slow him down, and then they'll both be lost.

But she's not going to leave him behind, either.

Her power over water is tenuous at best anymore. Without Alex's help, Maria has so little control; water is far and away one of her worst elements otherwise, but she needs to try something. Or they'll both drown. It doesn't matter if she does; this is her nightmare, and her punishment for the wrongs she committed, but Eren doesn't deserve this. He isn't stopping fighting, and she isn't either.

She growls out an old spell that used to have some oomph behind it, but nowadays has significantly less hold.

What it does is hold the water open behind them, pushing and carving a crescent out as where Maria's magic touches, slows it.

It might not be enough, but if that can buy enough time to help Eren get off the ground, then she can figure out some other way to escape this. Even if the wave is bringing in the silvery luminescence of the Great One, and she can see the background glow get just a bit brighter.] Go! Fly!

[ it was the split second retard that made eren seem to blast forth without the speed he was truly using, masked by the much larger wave and silver monster beneath. his body aligns nearly upright in the sky as he made the curve of his climb direct and up, reaching for the clouds and away from the screaming sea. ]

Hold onto me!

[ as long as she was between the split of his dorsal fins pinned at the peak of his upper nape and just where the curve of his skull began, as long as she was with him, he would fly. if anything, she was half of the reason, other than the sheer force of his wings, that he was fleeing from the nightmare’s grasp in something as small as a nick. ]

Edited 2020-10-13 22:20 (UTC)

[Well, she's still up by his horns, if that matters. They make convenient handgrips, even if she can feel the thick, spiky scales as they rub against her side. If she wasn't wearing thick cloth and leather, she can imagine the rubbing would be quite irritating to her skin. As it is she kicks her feet down to try to give them both a little bit of lift, foot splashing into rapidly deepening water, and then feels the rush of adrenaline as he takes to the air.

So she's dangling off the neck of a dragon, in a nightmare, trying not to drown via the Elder God that's swimming through the rising sea beneath their feet.

But he's gaining on altitude. Faster than the wall of water is rising, faster than the silver fleck has decided to try to rush upward toward them. It's going to breach. It's going to try to drag them back down, even as they get away from the wall of water.] E-Eren, go higher! Higher if you can!!

[Wind. Maybe wind magic will help.

Wind is by far one of her worst elements. The best she can do is a brief, strong upward tailwind, but hopefully it'll work, because that silver shadow is rushing up at them awfully quickly. Faster and faster, and then it breaches the surface and Kos is

Magnificent. But she is also huge, and those long arms reach and reach and reach, the disturbingly human face hidden beneath the tentacle "hair" and the folds of scaled fish skin agape in a silent scream.

And it gets closer, and closer, and Maria kicks her feet, and tries for another burst of air, even though it's getting harder and harder to concentrate on the magic as her mind starts to sink into a panic she hasn't felt in... so many years.]

[ eren’s wings clap like thunder to any advantage gliding below them, using the gust for leverage and just a barrel more of momentum— he doesn’t answer her with words this time, but with a rushing shriek of lungs and harsh squeezes of his chest to make the breaths count. he’s at top speed, he won’t be able to go any faster on his own and would eventually slow down, but for now, the wind— the wind should do, and if he exhausts his muscle higher up, it was for a proper cause. the dragon angles a few more notches into a straight, nearly 90 degree angle to finish off their climb. he’ll do it until he cramps, until his bones give out. the monster—

eren pays the least attention until it’s upon them, tentacles beckoning to catch at his claws and tail first. the wind begins to die, and so does eren’s boost . . . but not eren. his last ditch effort lies in the embers heating the inside of his maw into a melting chamber, down his throat and bringing his jugular scales to an incinerating light; the action is quick and meant to work like a jab, a subsequent defiance as the dragon builds his fire, waits for it . . .

then spews downwards, ribbons of blue blasting from his throat until they quickly erupt into a fiery orange and white barrage at the nightmarish monster’s reaching limbs. it would not have him. it would not have either of them. ]

[It's sort of an instinctual reaction of hers to want to get out of the way of fire, even if her clothes are enchanted against it, even if her natural elemental affinities mean she bleeds the stuff and thus isn't much affected by it, so she kicks her feet backward out of the way of the gout of flame.

And it hits the figure, and Maria stares down with a sort of detached fascination. Kos is a creature of the sea, so of course, there's a limited efficacy, but lots of heat in one's face, all at once, logically means it's shocking enough it recoils. Maria would, so of course, Kos does, and it buys them that space, that little bit of breathing room where the long arms miss Eren's tail and legs, and Maria's as well, where they dangle off the side of the dragon's neck.

Kos falls back into the ocean, a silver flash that splashes the water up dozens of feet into the air like a breaching whale, and then... disappears into the murky depths. Water which doesn't look much like water at all anymore, but more like air and sky, and Maria's fairly certain the madness is starting to pass.

While she's still hanging off of Eren's neck and horns, which is a dangerous time for adrenaline crash to sink in, so she kicks her feet a little, focuses on how far away the ground and the ocean look, and uses that to fuel her grip strength.] I think... I think we can land a tall building. If you can... if... you can.

[ had she not the strength to pull higher and straddle him? after the magic she pulled, eren thinks twice, the muscle of his own wings growing heavy as the bursting rate of his heart finds that they’re out of danger. a good idea indeed, that they land. ]

Hold on until then.

[ it was almost too much to ask, but the dragon does his best to keep his beats quickened enough to cater to both their needs as quickly as possible right now: rest.

he doesn’t choose the first building, but rather the one easiest to land on as his wings hold a slowing glide and his feet fall forward into a hang to cut his momentum in half. another clap or three, and his hind talons rake against a roof for a grasp, and in quick succession came his wings, clasping onto the sides of stone and slants to ease his belly and neck down. ]

[He is also spiky, and she doesn't want that between her legs, if she misses, clumsily, mid-flight. She'd rather just land.

She does hold on, though, even when her arms start to burn with the exertion of keeping her body weight, even when her hands ache and throb and weaken and she doesn't feel like she can do it any more.

Once he lands, even before he's come to rest Maria lets go, and... ends up on her knees. Eugh, how embarrassing, but they're weak with the drain of adrenaline and the terror from the last few moments.

Eventually, she shifts, and sits heavily on her rear, shaking her head. Her whole body trembles slightly from the exertion and the crash.] I would be happy to go the rest of eternity never doing that again.

[ his fatigue is apparent now, the way his body flattens against the roof and his chest expands, how harsh he breathes through his nostrils and needing that air enough that he'd gladly keep his neck into an elongated "s" for a little while. his wings have yet to fold to his sides; instead, the stretch out and expand on their resting surface, just to let the aching membranes that felt like they had spread too thin rest.

thus, it takes a little longer for eren to speak up, his eyes on maria and then down below, carefully dropping his skull. ]

What was that monster?

[She is perfectly fine with the silence, as she sits, and catches her breath, and calms the awful tremble in her body.

What she doesn't want to do is talk about it. Because that involves thinking about it, and she doesn't want to give her traumas more space inside her brain, but... her delusion, her nightmare, almost got them both killed, so she supposes it's only... fair. He knows something about it.] That was Kos.

[She takes a deep breath - it shudders on the way in - then blows it out slowly.] A godlike being called a "Great One" from my world. I wronged her, her followers, and her unborn child in my youth. Their rage became a curse that haunts me to this day.

[She presses her lips together.] I'm not sure why she was after you, except that she simply got caught up in that... wave. Fear you the sea, as well?

[ the sea and fear are two irony pairs. no one would’ve though him to fear anything so abstract. there was nothing to be afraid of, but its burn would repel his dragon mind the same that sun expelled a vampire in the streets. ]

It always symbolized something for me. [ it was supposed to be freedom, but all he had seen when he learned the truths of his world was that the sea was a lie, and that beyond it was another prison. ] I can’t stand seeing it now, much less touch it.

[Maria doesn't have quite exactly the same thought, but what he says resonates almost entirely with her own viewpoint.

She looks back and up at at the dragon for a moment, eyes scanning over his face, his horns, the slight sunset-iridescence in his black scales.

Then they're not so different. She doesn't say that, though, just looks at him for a long moment, then back toward the city. She can't see the sliver of Hunter's Nightmare from here, which means it must only be visible when looking up the street it shines down.] Then we're not so different. Even the smell makes me sick sometimes.

[ the dragon grunts, cants his head in a way that seems to be agreeing. salt and fish. blood. not exactly fond memories.

however . . . the night is still young. ]

I need a little more rest, [ he’s still a pile of dragon needing to breathe, ] but I’ll take you where you need to be. Away from the shitty ocean.

I wasn't heading that way to begin with. I believe it was simply the logic of nightmares.

[She sighs.] ... But if we can get away, far away, from it, I will be all the happier. [She's fairly exhausted as well, and she didn't have to fly. She leans back against her hands, and looks up at the sky, then out over the city again. She likes high-up places, it makes her feel calm, and they're not facing the sea, so even better.] May it not happen again.

[ good . . . the news was good enough. with an affirming purr, eren rests his eyes for a few moments more, bringing with him an eased silence.

then, some minutes afterward, his body shifts. ]

When you’re ready, [ while his wing-webbed fingers curve back and bend into a ready slant, the rest of eren continues to lay against the roof, belly down, with his neck and horns as a valuable crutch to climb. . ] on my back.

[ he’s been flying with more people lately— perhaps it was time to invest in a saddle. ]

[Vaguely, Maria wonders when she became so comfortable being so close to the Monsters. When their noises and their presence didn't immediately instill an adrenaline-soaked jolt and assessment of danger. She's pretty comfortable just sitting - exhausted, and therefore vulnerable - as she is, right next to him. The purr doesn't even elicit a response.

Finally, he seems to start stirring, and she does as well, her legs regaining their strength. She's in too fit of shape to feel sore, but she does feel stronger, even if the air is still dark and oppressive and claws at the back of her mind in the most frustratingly familiar way.

He moves his head, and she looks at it for a moment, trying to figure out how to get up. Like a horse, she supposes, using his horns a bit as leverage, but otherwise more or less easily hefting herself up, and over, avoiding the spikiest bits to the best of her ability.

He's warm, in nice contrast to the frigid sea they escaped. The cold of her own nightmares. That's helpful.] Let us be off, then.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

☆ TDM: SEPTEMBER

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