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☆ TDM: MARCH
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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. Aside from that, here are some quick reminders:• The Application Queue is open. Applications run on a rolling queue system. The application page is always open to submissions, and applications will be processed in order of submission. Verdicts will always go out by the final week of a month, though we can't promise an exact date -- we'll get to them as quickly as we can throughout the month! If your application is submitted during the last week of a month, it may be rolled into next month's batch of applications. The application page can be found here.With that taken care of...
• We have a brand new Game World Wiki created with the immense help of our Wiki Bards: Noa, Prince, Maruah and Ran. Thank you so much! It's still being updated, but most of the main game info is there for you in an easily searchable manner. All other info can still also be found through our Navigation page!
• 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!
• For current characters, TDM threads can be used for AC.
• And finally, since this is part of our event, characters already in-game ARE allowed to top-level on this post.
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, the wind brushes playfully against your face -
and you know one thing, and one thing alone: this is a dream, and an incredibly realistic one at that.
The Calamity
The taste of magic in the air is electric on your tongue, supercharged, bright, a little tart and fizzy like popping candy. The settlement you find yourself in is unfamiliar to you, but you can tell it is bustling, beautiful, a center of culture and activity for its bygone era. The architecture blooms with elaborately carved flourishes, but you cannot shake the feeling of... otherworldliness that it brings to mind. (Perhaps you are a veteran of these dreams and remember a ship with similar embellishments from far away, that came bearing invaders, in a time long ago.) It is nearly impossible to tell what season you find yourself in - pockets of spring bloom with new life, right next to pockets of winter snowstorms; playful fall winds laden with leaves tug at your hair, and in some spots, it feels hot and muggy like the middle of summer. None of these patches of seasonal mayhem are very large, a few city blocks’ worth at most, and they all butt up against each other, tumultuous, fighting for real estate in a place where the magic bubbles freely up through the ground like a wellspring, uncontrolled. In a way, it seems like a wilder version of Aefenglom’s seasons always being opposite the season in the Wilde, similar but more widespread, more disharmonic.
The Calamity
The taste of magic in the air is electric on your tongue, supercharged, bright, a little tart and fizzy like popping candy. The settlement you find yourself in is unfamiliar to you, but you can tell it is bustling, beautiful, a center of culture and activity for its bygone era. The architecture blooms with elaborately carved flourishes, but you cannot shake the feeling of... otherworldliness that it brings to mind. (Perhaps you are a veteran of these dreams and remember a ship with similar embellishments from far away, that came bearing invaders, in a time long ago.) It is nearly impossible to tell what season you find yourself in - pockets of spring bloom with new life, right next to pockets of winter snowstorms; playful fall winds laden with leaves tug at your hair, and in some spots, it feels hot and muggy like the middle of summer. None of these patches of seasonal mayhem are very large, a few city blocks’ worth at most, and they all butt up against each other, tumultuous, fighting for real estate in a place where the magic bubbles freely up through the ground like a wellspring, uncontrolled. In a way, it seems like a wilder version of Aefenglom’s seasons always being opposite the season in the Wilde, similar but more widespread, more disharmonic.
 Fit to Burst The settlement is bustling and full of that otherworldly architecture, spirals and tendrils and vaguely floral embellishments, except... If you look closer, you can see that only a few of the buildings are really made that way. An illusion covers the rest, purely cosmetic, a glamour; it's a shimmering image laid over reality until you look beneath it at the squat, simple houses made by mortal hands out of rough hewn wood or bricks of packed mud. The people are just as disparate as the buildings beneath it all - glittering-eyed Fae, taller, more elongated and insectoid than those seen around Aefenglom, though many of them use glamours to appear more fantastical and beautiful; humans teeming with magic, who use it freely for anything and everything; other bipedal Monsters with rougher, more bestial features than longtime residents might be used to, more in tune with their natural abilities. It wouldn't be a bad idea to explore your new surroundings, though you're likely to garner attention. Unless the world you come from is a more medieval time period, your clothing, perhaps even your hair or other aspects of your appearance are likely to stand out. What will make you stand out even more, though, is not drawing on your abundant new magical powers, or strong new Monster abilities. That shop there requires flight to get up to the second story front door. That home down the street can only be unlocked with a burst of flame. Torches when it grows dark? No, don’t be ridiculous, you can't light your own way? Your hair looks hideous, darling, why haven’t you put on a glamour? Reluctance to use these abilities abundantly and freely garners frowns of scrutiny and disapproval from those natives around you. "We're free here under the Fae folk. They've taught us so much, we never go hungry, we’re never beaten down by the weather." Their words hold truth - their twisted-trunk trees are bursting with fruit, their haphazardly laid out crops flourish in a matter of days rather than a season, rain and snow can be directed at will with just an application of the wild, free magic bubbling up from the ground in rivers. There is a hierarchy in this settlement. The Fae are above all, and can often be found partying into the night with sweet wine and hallucinogenic mushrooms, teaching humans and Monsters to harness their natural talents and the magic of the land by day. Their attitudes are condescending toward these lesser beings they’ve granted their favor to (including you, now, and aren’t you just the most interesting, darling little things?), delighting in spreading their knowledge. The humans and Monsters still seem awestruck by their benevolent masters - a word they mean in the sense of 'teachers' - accepting their gifts, using their magic, and none of them will so much as whisper a complaint. Not when it’s safe here. Not when all is well. It's more than they can say for the lands outside of their paradise, even if things do happen here that the Fae do not like to hear them speak of. Gain the trust of the natives, and you might hear rumors, whispers of a rotting pox hitting other communities far from here, or first hand accounts of how so-and-so witnessed another death just last week, a human woman blew up in town, and some of the Monsters, they been goin’ right bestial. Shh, shh, you didn’t hear it from them! (Don’t let the Fae catch you gossiping. They might just take you and the native both aside, whisper in your ears, let the magic wind its way around your brain until you don't remember any longer what you were talking about or even who you are, where you come from. You were having a good time though, right?) You can try to leave the settlement, to explore the woods that surround it, but you’re likely to be noticed and warned: "You should stay here, make sure you don’t run into any of the unfriendly locals - they don't care for our masters." |
 The Emergence Time passes strangely in a dream. It might feel like a handful of hours, or even a few days, before a change can be felt all throughout the strange, unsettling paradise. If you’ve had a recent brush with it in the waking world, you might recognize the signature of it - the Cwyld. Something in the air feels very wrong, like a chill in the middle of summer, a sudden warm wind in winter; the plant life beneath your very feet begins to blacken in color, with near-indiscernible white lines marring their surfaces, and no matter who you are, no matter the pride you may take in your courage, a shiver raises every hair on your body without fail: Something wicked this way comes. The wellspring of magical energy flowing like a river beneath your feet takes on a new feeling when you try to draw from it, a dark and heavy sensation, oily and creeping. Reaching for the magic, it feels as though you're reaching into hollow darkness, dried up and consumed, and the disparate plants of different seasons, growing alongside each other, begin to bulge grotesquely and burst, splattering an unknown black substance over anything unfortunate enough to be in the splash zone. Possibly even you. Don't pass under the fruit trees. The infection has seeped into the overtapped leyline, and it bleeds through the settlement quickly, much quicker than it seems to move in the current-day waking world. The plant life, with their roots dug deep into the earth, are only the first casualty, as it spreads rapidly to the animals, and then the natives, blackening and tainting everything it touches. The village is thrown into chaos. Fae and any who seem to have Dragon in them are the first to show signs of infection, blackened veins visible under paling skin and white film growing over the eyes. Bodies grow brittle and twisted the more it spreads and settles in. Humans with an abundance of magic are the next to lose themselves to it, quickly followed by other Monsters. While in the waking world, infection spreads more slowly, here, it can be almost instantaneous, the process of becoming a Shade, losing all sense of self. They have no resistance to the Cwyld, and in this dream, neither do you. You're just as susceptible to the infection, and some may find themselves succumbing to the infection spreading to the heart and pumping itself through their veins. Becoming a Shade is a painful experience, a painful existence, as the life is snuffed out of you and your body keeps going. In this dream, you might be lucky (or unlucky) enough to keep your wits about you, to remain sentient and somewhat yourself - or you might become one of the mindless, violent many whose only directive is to spread the Cwyld to everything that lives, including your fellow dreamers. Even if you do stay aware of yourself, it is hard to resist the pull of the Cwyld on your mind, urging you to spread and infect, to leave nothing whole and living. Before your eyes, the settlement begins to die. You can't help anyone who is already infected, even if you know healing spells that work in the waking world, unless you're willing to put them out of their misery before they become a Shade corrupted beyond all assistance. You might be busier trying to save your fellow Mirrorbound, though, as they try to avoid that fate themselves or fall prey to it in front of you. And while the earth and plants and people around them turn black and fall to ruin, any of the Fae who managed to remain untainted simply flee, running from the settlement without stopping to help anyone in need, not even the students who so looked up to them. Note: Becoming a Shade in this prompt is optional, and Mirrorbound Shades may keep their minds or not at player discretion! Infection will not carry over out of the dream. Dying in the dream will put your character back at the edge of the village, uninfected and alive again, to witness the rest of its downfall. |
 Light It Up Help comes in an unexpected, unwanted form. Those unfriendly locals the residents of this village spoke of previously appear through the morning mists, shrouded in clumsy protections like masks and gloves, and practical, non-flashy spells. The group is made up of grim-faced humans and Monsters, a surprisingly cohesive unit of people who look out for each other as they make their way through the woods with torches held aloft. They are hardier than those indulged, magic-glutted folks who suffer now. These newcomers are dressed more practically, for working land or fighting battles, but they, too, have humans among them who can harness their magic. Their witches keep their torches lit, and work closely with their Monsters, helping each other in a way that will not feel unfamiliar. They've come today, they'll say if you get a chance to speak with them, however briefly (they're a little busy to answer too many questions), to try and stop this blight on the land before it can reach their village, some miles to the south. They've seen it before, though never this severe. This Cwyld will spread and spread, until there is nothing left. Best to burn it all down before its tendrils creep too far, before its roots dig too deep. They fight and destroy the Shades however they can, showing no mercy, though their spells are crude and simple, and their Monsters use their natural forms without any showy abilities, depending on claws and teeth and strength to do their jobs. Working together, with simple weapons in their hands, they are formidable. Even if you kept your mind, kept your speech, they will not let you live if you were infected - and may not let you live even if you weren’t infected, just to be safe. You may join them, if you wish, help them burn down the blackened trees or even Shades that were once people - or you may fight them, but they won't relent. They burn the whole settlement down, leaving wide patches of scorched earth like blackened scars on the land. It’s the only way, they say, from their limited experience. Everything must return to the earth. As the settlement goes up in flames fully, they retreat, only remaining long enough to ensure the fire stays where it needs to stay, and will not spread to uninfected forest. For those of you who were completely uninfected and may have thus been spared, they are still unwelcoming and will not allow you to travel back to their own village with them, threatening with swords and flames any who are too insistent. They aren't too keen to talk, but you may get a few answers out of them, the basics - some of their parents originally lived here, learned magic from the Fae, though when they saw the dangers, they left, believing that such power should be used more sparingly, more responsibly. Against the Fae, if at all possible, and against their destructive ways. It was just a matter of time, they thought, until calamity struck, and lo. You just saw what happens, what that much magic can call down in divine retribution. How magic itself fights back against the excesses of those who would abuse it. |
no subject
Maybe it's unfair; maybe it's inevitable. He shudders, breathes, and his mind filters through the commands voiced and unspoken.]
Rugelach.
[The first thing. Burned, cursed, strange.]
Strawberries. Madeleine... Sharlotka.
[His head jerks, turns sideways. He coughs wetly against his shoulder; when his neck droops forward, a bright red stain is left smudging the white cotton.
He's not struggling; it seems as though he has little struggle left in him. The fight is staying himself for longer, before it's lost to insanity, or death, whichever comes first.]
no subject
[Near wrinkles his nose up slightly at that.]
Of course it is. I'll remember that.
[It wouldn't have been realistic to expect L to answer with anything simple like a specific candy bar or cake flavor. He makes a mental note of everything mentioned. It might make gifts easier after this is over.
He frowns at the coughing, but doesn't move closer to get a better look.]
Look at me. What's my name again?
[Answer the question. Maintain your focus. Ignore the disease. It's heavily doubtful that he'll be able to get L to trick himself into thinking he's healthier than he actually is. Yet there's no better time to try.]
no subject
He looks at Near with red-rimmed, heavy-lidded eyes. They seem as though they can't focus on the other man, staring somewhere into a middle distance before faltering blearily, trying again.
They widen. He bolts back against the pole he's tied to, feet scuffing against the dirt floor. It's the first sign L has shown like cowardice, the first sign suggesting that escape might be a motive.]
...A.
[The vowel sighed, a gentle sound, a petrified sound.]
Why... why are you here, you'd...
[Harsh and violent movements, mindless of the bindings or the pole; hurting himself is preferable to this perceived encounter.]
I didn't know.
[He shakes his head, tense and frantic.]
Please believe that I didn't know.
no subject
It seems as though the man is beyond hypnosis at this point. If the naga's attempt had done anything it hadn't been enough. The infection has spread too far into the witch's system. Near slithers back slightly, raising himself from the ground.]
Linden.
[Not L. This is an instance where using that name in an attempt to draw him back to the present might instead only push him further into the memory. There's a good chance that trying to pull him free of this will be futile. Even so, he'd rather not purposefully make it worse.
This isn't going to be pleasant.]
Linden Tailor. Look at me. I'm not angry.
[He doesn't directly contradict the man. He doesn't try and tell him he's not who he thinks he is. Someone in a delusional state won't respond well to that. L will have to draw his own conclusions.]
no subject
To pull his gaze back to Near's face is astonishingly difficult; it's clear in every moment that passes, the hoarseness of L's voice and the pallor of his skin.]
No... you're not angry. They said that you never were...
[Haunted eyes break away again, before returning to inhabit their torment.]
They always said that nothing at all bothered you. Obviously, it... it wasn't the case.
[He speaks quickly, as though pressed.]
I truly wanted it to be, I spent days going over all the ways it could have been foul play, because I wanted to think that someone could be that strong, but...
[His breathlessness is the only thing that keeps him from continuing in the same broken, strange, desperate vein. It's likely that once he recovers, it will continue unless he's interrupted.]
no subject
He can't tell L that he's not seeing what he thinks he is. This isn't a spell he can break the man free of. The best he might be able to do is calm him somewhat.
Not that he's particularly good at comforting.
Though Near had wanted to avoid actually touching L for as long as possible, he decides that the best course of action he can take right now is to slap his mentor as hard as he can across the face.
(And it has to be as hard as he can, or else it probably wouldn't do much at all.)]
Stop talking. I told you to look at me. Are you that afraid?
[It's not a fair thing to ask. Anyone would be afraid in his position.]
no subject
He falls otherwise silent, the back of his head resting against the pole he's secured to, and he stares back at Near with nothing short of wan misery in his face.
It's a lapse; a break. Near's command is enough to hold, but so is whatever delusion that has L in his thrall. There's no clearing of the mental fog, no epiphany, no dawning that this really is still his Bonded.
He's bewildered; he doesn't understand why this boy, of all people, stands before him, or what it means, or what he wants.]
no subject
All he wants to do now is keep L calm. It will be easier on the man physically if he doesn't flail about hyperventilate.
Whatever L is seeing doesn't matter as long as they can accomplish that much.]
There you go. Just breathe for a few moments.
[This would be a good time for him to sit cross-legged in front of his bonded. It's a shame he doesn't have legs anymore.]
I left my cards in my other jacket.
[Not even a joke, but a serious admittance.]
Otherwise we could relax with a game. Now, can you tell me what my name is again?
no subject
Sitting still, he's able to breathe a bit easier, after a spell. Lungs that can fill halfway are better than just a third; the subtle difference seems to calm him, and lodge him more willingly under Near's hypnotic influence, but the answer he gives is still lost, and doubtless discouraging.]
A.
[He says so plaintively, as though it is the only possible answer and should be obvious. It's cruel, in fact, for the ghost to make him say it again.]
They said you didn't ask for help. No one believed that you needed it. Did you hope... was it your wish that someone would ask you, first?
[Would if have changed anything?]
no subject
I don't remember.
[A true enough answer, since he's not the person in question.]
I'm sorry. None of that can be helped now.
[He attempts to sound comforting. It likely isn't very successful given his overall lack of experience in that area. Near is not the one anyone would want consoling them after the death of a loved one.
It's enough that he's not acting irritated, hopefully.]
Can I ask you not to feel guilty?
cw: suicide
It's enough, in other words, for Near to not affect irritation. L can fill in the rest with a misfiring mind awash in painful detail. There's plenty for both of them.]
Please ask. Ask for anything at all, but that...
[He shakes his shaggy head, which appears quite heavy.]
I've seen that death before. I know what happens when it's survived, I... know how long it takes to cut through a rope with a pair of sewing scissors. But I don't know what you wanted. I don't know, because I was in Dubai and maybe that was still too close...
no subject
But this is a delicate subject, and Near is not a delicate person - at least outside of what he lacks physically.]
It's hard to say now. I would tell you if I knew. If I remembered.
[The naga keeps close tabs on L's appearance, watching his breathing and his pallor. At some point he will have to take action. Perhaps he should be doing it already. But he wants to hold out for the very small chance that the man won't become a shade.
He'll give it only a little longer.]
I will ask for something else, then. Since you've given me permission. I want you to relax and take careful breaths.
no subject
His breaths are measured. Careful, just as Near asked. But they rattle, and relaxation seems difficult as his body is dying. He shivers against the ice, taps the back of his head against the pole he's bound to, as if in practice. He does so again with slightly more force, enough to make a sound.
The bond is fraying and splintering, but through what remains is an offer. I can take care of this; I can clean up this mess.]
cw: asphyxiation
Near promised this. It had been a big promise to make when he'd made it, but he'd fully intended to go through with it. Even though he's never killed anyone with his own hands before, especially not someone he's close to.
L's illness and decline is a mix of cold and hot over their bond, and he feels feverish even though a hand gently placed against his forehead lets him know he isn't. The tips of his fingers feel chilled, his center mass too warm. Is this all from their connection or is he anxious to do this?
There are various items in the room that could be used as weapons. He could bludgeon L's skull in with enough strength behind the blow. Of course Near's lack of strength is the real issue here. He can't leave a job partly finished. He won't make a mess of what should be a simple job. And aside from that... it's just tacky.
He could use his fangs, but he refuses to do that as well. That requires stretching his mouth wide in a way that he abhors. It's vile and animalistic and L isn't allowed to see him that way, not even in this state.
No, there's another option yet available to him and it's the cleanest one. He slithers around behind both man and pole and reaches one arm around both of them. The inside of his forearm rests against L's adam's apple. Even if he doesn't have much strength on his own, a snake's body is made for constricting. With his other arm and the weight of his whole body curled around the pole he can apply the force needed to cut off his bonded's breath and snuff out his life.]
It will be fine. Maybe you'll even forget this.
[It's a temporary death, he reminds himself as he turns his eyes to the opposite wall and does what he needs to do.]
cw: asphyxiation
That would change, of course, the moment his cooling lungs drew breath as a shade, and his the husk of his body snarled and frothed with mindless rage. It's better that Near is doing this now, that Near approaches while L is slumped and ragged already. The Cwyld has stolen most of his breath already, and the last little bit still carrying life will stifle more swiftly than a candle in a downpour.
He's not thinking about tacky, or even easy. He's thinking about how much effort it is to keep the cycle moving in his chest, and how he likely can't brain himself on the pole at his back because he simple can't strike with the force and speed required.
The alternative is harder, though. The alternative is losing himself, to an impulse that only destroys and devours. He could hurt Near. He rallies for another attempt, but instead of throwing his head back, the slender bone of Near's forearm presses against his throat, resting at first, then constricting, tightening with the help of some leverage against the pole itself.
At the end of it all, it's easy. It goes softly; it's done in less than a minute. The irony of it is that in spite of the legendary fight he'd given Kira, L dies like one who saw it as a possibility from the start, accepted it, even invited it. The suffering's gone, and with it the struggle; for that alone, Near may feel some sense of relief, and the sense that his predecessor shared it in his last moments.]