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TEST DRIVE MEME 002
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:
Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, spiders, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, spiders, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE
The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the frost-covered mosses and ferns, the frozen soil cold and just a little damp on your bare skin. Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.
You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards emerging from a temporary retreat from the wintry weather. With your feet under you, and you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, is running actively again as the weather warms back up from the recent snowstorm.
As you explore, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike, and the weather isn't quite amenable to your lack of.
Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.
This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street — a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer — while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. At the far end of the main street, visible about a mile to the north now that the trees and the enormous wall is out of the way, sits a castle with three towers.
When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available — the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.
breaking and entering
If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.
Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings — bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Anyone who's already appeared in the village just as you did today lives here. Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, and some scorch marks still linger from a recent fire, and some furniture is still lying around in splinters.
Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions.
finding roommates
Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.
Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!
OFFERINGS FOR ULANTI
The festival starts in the middle of the night, when the sun and the children are safely tucked into bed. The streets come alive with dancing locals, their faces painted red and purple and black and yellow. They all wear revealing clothing that, to your sensibilities, may seem sexually suggestive. Some individuals openly expose their breasts and nipples, while some others may incidentally reveal when they turn around to tend to their errands that their dress is backless — entirely! market stands and kind neighbors will gladly provide clothing befitting the occasion to anyone who asks.Notably, the locals' choice of clothes reveal a mark on their bodies. An astute person will notice that there are four varieties — and a very astute (
In addition to dancing and the lighting of any number of candles, you may stumble upon fighting rings inspired by Terry Silver's basement club, where the locals brawl until they're bloody and unable to move. Elsewhere, amongst the performance of a number of erotic dancers, you might come upon a face you recognize — naked and collared and caged, tongue pressed to the bars to taste anyone who'll stop and give them a little attention.
Temporary night market food stands offer various forms of alcoholic beverages and sweet and savory street food in suggestive shapes — sausages, popsicles, flowering cupcakes. many of them represent hedonistic indulgences and displays of wealth that the town usually does not seem to possess. This bounty, they attribute to the Duchess' patronage — and much of it is dosed with herbs and additives that enhance the sexual appetites and aggression in any who consume them.
Another kind of temporary stand has been erected — while new arrivals may at first mistake these for some kind of bathroom, it becomes apparent upon entry that they are partitioned stalls with gloryholes drilled between them. Some stalls are closed with an anonymous stranger waiting inside for someone to push a part of themselves through the hole to be lavished with mystery touches; others are fully unoccupied, should your character wish to lock themselves in and wait on the small wooden stool for a partner to offer themselves.
Anyone native to Rubilykskoye will take the time to answer questions about the festival of Ulanti, which functions as a way to purge their bad energy ("zadza") and sate their inner beasts ("duchozweirz"). They encourage characters to join the festivities — which range from staged sexual performances to sadism and masochism designed to feed the desire for violence. all appetites are welcome here, and there are only two rules: (1) stay away from the unmarked, which refers to the locals' prepubescent children; (2) hold nothing back.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try entering the fighting rings, watching or joining a live sex performance, or eating some aphro food (deliberately or otherwise)!
the fathomless dark of pajak wood
At the outer edges of the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day — eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches. In the void, the air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.
Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.
In addition to the spiders, you may come across the sharp-toothed furred yetis that emerged during the snowstorm, still looking for a meal. Each one hunts alone, a fifteen-foot-tall shambling creature that drips black ooze and super-chills the air around it until your skin feels tight and icy. If it gets the drop on you, you're likely to be its dinner. It has emerged from a long summer hibernation to enjoy the colder weather, and it's starving.
Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body — what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?
In the fog, you may also hear the voices of those familiar to you — people you know from the town, or people whom you know with almost perfect certainty aren't here. these figments may recreate unhappy memories or force trespassers to hallucinate their worst nightmares. Nothing is as it seems in the void, and when you swing at these figments, desperate to silence them, it might not be a figment at all, but a friend in the flesh trying to help you. By the time you see their true face, it could be too late to stop yourself.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger!
HIDING INSIDE EACH OF US
Uh oh spaghetti-os.
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
The baker, Nile Yoren, is a likable, middle-aged woman who can fill any request — wheat, rye, even nut breads. She boasts that her sourdough starter belonged to her grandmother. Today, when you enter her shop — to help out or to get a muffin or a bag of rolls — something is off. Her smiling face isn't behind the counter.
Around the back wall, you hear the crackling of the oven. But when you call, she doesn't come out. You have to go back and look for her. What you find is not just the oven crackling, but nile herself — twisted into an incandescent monster of human flame, the flickers of dark orange light like a face howling in agony amidst the yellows and reds and whites. Before you can scramble away, the creature lunges at you. Defend yourself or flee, or her inner beast will be feeding itself on you.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
someone else transforms
The baker, Nile Yoren, is a likable, middle-aged woman who can fill any request — wheat, rye, even nut breads. She boasts that her sourdough starter belonged to her grandmother. Today, when you enter her shop — to help out or to get a muffin or a bag of rolls — something is off. Her smiling face isn't behind the counter. Around the back wall, you hear the crackling of the oven. But when you call, she doesn't come out. You have to go back and look for her. What you find is not just the oven crackling, but nile herself — twisted into an incandescent monster of human flame, the flickers of dark orange light like a face howling in agony amidst the yellows and reds and whites. Before you can scramble away, the creature lunges at you. Defend yourself or flee, or her inner beast will be feeding itself on you.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
you waited too long
At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
no subject
Crawling back on up to his feet, he reaches to take the blanket. After assessing the size, he wraps it around himself to tuck above his hipbones, comfortable with it sitting high on his waist. He'll feel more emboldened to actually step out and meet with Junpei more properly, covered up as such!]
Very fortunate, indeed! You've saved me some dignity, Junpei. You have my sincerest gratitude. I will return it when I have clothing to call my own.
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Don’t worry too much about it. I probably need to … get a job soon so I can actually buy things. I kept hoping I’d wake up. But I haven’t.
[ The jobs here are also worlds different from the teenage jobs back home. Finding something he can do while not exactly being the most athletic guy in the world may be tricky. ]
I can show you to the boarding house if you want.
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[he's kidding, please recognize he's just quick to joke around rather than a complete airhead]
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He gives Ankari an annoyed look. ]
It’s not as if I can prove it. Once you’re here a month and start growing new limbs, maybe you’ll believe me.
[ Only once it’s out of his mouth does he look regretful for being so glib, and he quickly turns away. That was a hell of a bomb to just drop on someone newly arrived, and doesn’t feel like he understands the process well enough to even begin to clarify. ]
no subject
My apologies, all the same. That was a misplaced joke to lighten my own worries. Quite seriously, what is this about growing extra limbs?
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People turn into monsters here if they don’t … give into urges in one way or another. It has something to do with the marks on our bodies.
[ There’s a silent prayer that Ankari doesn’t ask him to elaborate on the urges. Having that conversation with a stranger is bad enough, but having it with a guy as sweetly naive as he’s coming off is pure torture.
He doesn’t want to talk to the cute, polite elf man about survival banging. It’s been too weird a week. ]
no subject
You mean some kind of monstrous urges? And... I spied no mark upon myself when I arrived, what ever do you mean?
[Ankari is being sincere, but only because his mark happened to arrive etched into his tongue. Not exactly something he would notice for himself,]
no subject
It might be somewhere you can’t see. Mine is on my hip.
[ He worries his bottom lip slightly. There’s no need for him to go into detail, right? Someone else can do that. He got the guy a blanket he’s done his good deed for the month. ]
Monstrous … yeah, you could say that. I’m sure someone will tell you all about it. Someone not me.
[ Aaaand he turns to try and walk off before the stupid flushing of his cheeks causes more questions. ]
Boarding house is this way.
no subject
This boarding house is for people like us, those who arrive with nothing but our wits? How charitable. [not said with derision so much as... skepticism.] Boarding isn't a pleasant word they're using for a jail house, is it?
[he might just turn around and go back into the woods, if so]
no subject
[ These situations where he actually has to talk to new people for more than the length of an exchange with the cashier at the conbini or the ticket counter of the theater just keep happening.
And he’s doing better at handling it than he would have thought. He’s not sure how to feel about that. ]
There’s pressure to find a job, but from what I’ve seen they won’t kick you out or deny you food. You just may have to put up with sharing your room with someone depending on bed availability.
no subject
[How is that for naive, Junpei? He's really not making himself seem any more prepared for a whole new world. Ankari has lived the definition of a sheltered life, all in one place.]
I would hate to burden any showing me kindness- does this town have any need for clerking? I am a fine enough accountant. Though, perhaps, hard labor is more of a necessity than such soft handed work.
no subject
[ How he wishes that was totally an absurd prediction, but as he glances up at the sky there’s a worried look. The lack of predictability of this place had him feeling constantly off kilter. ]
There’s an issue with those of us who aren’t from this place and being able to parse the native language. That could pose a problem for you if that’s the kind of job you want.
no subject
If that is the case, we are not reborn to be blessed of the gods here. We must be incapable of knowing their truth. I wonder- [A cruel idea comes to mind, to test if he could speak truth in this new place. If he could, he's terrify this helpful lad and there's no benefit to that.]
-never mind. I'll find something to do with myself, so thank you for the fair warnings. Develop some new skills, perhaps.
no subject
[ That muttering is for for himself than for Ankari. Junpei is unsure where he can find a niche in a world where most work does rely on physical labor, especially having never held even an entry level job back home. ]
Oh, I guess I should warn you … people in town and in the boarding house …
[ Just as he’s about to reach for the door handle, the door flies open accompanied by a cacophony of loud laughter. A couple stumbles out, all over each other to the point it’s almost difficult to tell where one body ends and the next begins. This is especially true with how little they’re wearing.
While Junpei initially looks spooked, once what’s going on registers he rolls his eyes and steps aside to let them pass. They don’t even seem to notice they’re not alone, commencing in pawing each other and exchanging loud, wet kisses. Junpei waits until they’re out of earshot and turns to give Ankari an unimpressed look. ]
… tend to be like that. A lot.
no subject
Especially not the couple that come stagger out of the doorway. Ankari does a wide step away from them, falling in closer to Junpei without quite falling behind him. He shield the younger man if they went for him next, but luckily they are headed elsewhere.
Ankari just leans down to speak a hushed question]
Now, now, is that what you meant by urges?
no subject
[ Well, he clued him into the most embarrassing part. May as well just tell him the other half as he motions for him to enter the boarding house. ]
It’s that, or fighting.
no subject
[that makes a whole lot of sense, slots a confusing element of all of this into place like a missing puzzle piece.]
You also have a room here? I will return your blanket as soon as I acquire something like trousers.
no subject
[ He steps aside in the entry way so as not to block the door, eyes drifting to the various occupants and their usual boisterous shenanigans. For a moment, he seems slightly distracted, but he shakes it off. ]
Remember what I said about this place being unpredictable. I mean it. A chair came to life and trapped me once. Don’t let your guard down.
[ Ankari’s pleasant demeanor has already warmed the boy up to him slightly. There’s real concern at the edges of his attempts to sound nonchalant. ]
no subject
That sounds... most strange, yes. Do not take offense to this, as you seem quite capable of taking care of yourself, but... are you doing alright? You are a young one to be somewhere like this.
[...]
Unless I am misreading human age. [very possible, he's not spent much time around humans, the noble ones he has met have looked much older than Junpei]
no subject
I’m fine. I’m eighteen.
[ As of this month. ]
That’s considered the age of adulthood in most human cultures. But thanks for your concern.
[ He’s absolutely not trying to stand taller. If Ankari notices such a thing he’s imagining it! ]
no subject
[just medieval dark fantasy things, Ankari isn't going to bat much of an eye at eighteen as a suitable age for sex. Humans also live hundreds of years less than elves, they can't take their time like such a longer lived race can]
I would still be lost and naked in the woodlands without you, so you have my sincerest thanks. Though you asked for nothing, please know I owe you kind favor in return. Please, let me know if there is anything I could help you with.
no subject
[ Ankari will suddenly hear Junpei’s voice in his mind, even though his lips don’t move: It can get a little annoying when people want to talk about embarrassing subject matter with everyone and there’s no blocking it out.
He then returns to speaking on the physical level: ]
So. Enjoy that.
no subject
That's- ... Anybody here can do that particular trick?
no subject
Yeah, and not just when you’re near each other. It means communication is fast, I guess, but I prefer the kind I can ignore if I want to.
[ Granted, not that he got very many messages on his cell phone, but it was still nice to be able to put it away for a couple hours to watch a movie or sleep. ]
no subject
[Mentally noted! At least Ankari won't think he's going mad due to hearing voices in his head. He's used to his own wrecking his day with overthinking, but having other people in there will be new]
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