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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
No. Do you?
no subject
[ Does one call Aleksander Morozova a "friend"? For simplicity's sake, she will. But Genya and Alina are her friends, and she doesn't wish to discount them at all. They're here, and perhaps she'll tell Genya that there's a boy named Wesley Zoya's scrutinised enough to deem worthy of remembering his name. ]
Perhaps you're lucky. Sometimes being trapped in a small place with people you know isn't a blessing at all.
[ She'd know, even if she would prefer Nikolai was here to be a pain in the ass. ]
no subject
That's good to some extent though, right? You've got more in common than most around here.
[Besides being naked and new to town, that is. Now with a soft teasing smile:]
None of them the type you want to room with kind of friend?
no subject
[ And Zoya has a feeling it'd be better that she isn't sleeping in the same room as Genya and Alina. She refuses to sleep on the floor ever again, even if it isn't a dusty, dirty road, and kicking either of them out of bed doesn't seem fair. Besides, Alina looks like a snorer and Genya a kicker. Sometimes it's good to have familiarity backed into a corner, but she's trying to think ahead to how beneficial it'll be.
But she can't help but smile and cock her brow. Any chance she gets to fluster someone, she'll take it. ]
Do you not want to share a room with me?
no subject
[Still would be a good match up - who knows what other people here are like, he happened to stumble on into something half decent so far. He doesn't even know for sure that he doesn't snore but he wasn't likely designed to, so. He pushes himself back up to rest on his elbow, and combs his hair back from his face.]
I'll take my chances, though. I'm a deep sleeper.
no subject
I tend to be a light sleeper.
[ War will do that to you. So will a shitty mother. But Zoya inhales deeply instead, glancing around the room before she moves and drops onto the bed that she supposes is now hers. She can relax. She tells herself that she can do that for just a few moments before returning to business. ]
Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this? A strange world with strangers.
no subject
[Not quite so literally different but - hey, maybe this is still part of his world. It's not one he explored much prior to his little bubble bursting. But either way, he knows what it's like to be put out of his element and feeling helpless in the transition. He looks at her, and then sits up slowly, rubbing at the inner corner of his eye.]
For a long time I lived a really simple life, where I only really interacted with one person. Sometimes I would follow them out places, or hear stories from them but... I guess you could say I was really sheltered. Then one day I wasn't anymore, and I had to learn how to adapt. This is sort of the same, on a larger scale.
no subject
At least you're not alone in being thrown entirely out of your element.
[ She doesn't feel she's the comforting type, but it's a fact, and probably a comforting one at that. ]
You can meet new people. The townspeople seem… overly friendly and severely underdressed.
no subject
[He's not that uncomfortable being naked but at the same time, c'mon. Practicality. It is interesting to see how this town approaches displays of nudity and sexuality and how that contrasts with how he expected 'the world' to view it based off of what he knew before. It actually helps him acclimate a easier than if he'd known more of his own world first, and learned to be demure Here he can potentially skip that step and just Be Like The Locals one day.]
Not sure what tomorrow will bring, but - yeah, meeting new people sounds nice. But I'll make sure nobody nicks my bed if you cover mine in turn. We might be here for a while.
no subject
It'll take a lot of getting used to. Fjerda and its conservative nature would die here. ]
Anyone who thinks of taking my bed will live to regret it. [ She smiles at that, although it's not as sharp. If she has to drag someone by the ear and throw them out the window, she'll do it. Zoya doesn't care. She's a creature who enjoys comfort, and she's not one to give up her seat for anyone. ] Same goes for yours, obviously. It's a good thing we have a window that opens. It's been a while since I've thrown someone out of one.
[ She's joking. Mostly. ]
nothing new to see here
[Said with some genuine hope that she would - Wes has become quite fond of stories, or at least used to settling into the designation of listener to the point it feels like second nature. His curiosity will continue to get the better of him, especially now that he feels like they're sort of friends. Friends watch each other's beds, right? Friends also tell friends about who they've thrown out windows and why.]
👀 cw: also i guess defenestration
[ Although, Zoya's smile contradicts that. It's proud. She does momentarily consider making up a story about how one of the counts did get handsy with her at the Grand Palace, but that would be a grand lie, for they'd have lost their fingers and their life if that were the case.
People here didn't seem too fazed by the presence of powers. And Zoya has never been afraid herself. ]
I was training someone in how to use their powers. He doubted himself over and over. Nothing I said seemed to sink in. So I told him to look out the window and tell me what he saw. Before he could finish his sentence, I him them out the window.
[ More like a shove. A little tap full of aggression. ]
He called enough air to stop himself from a disgusting fall. [ She shrugs. ] He stopped thinking and started trusting himself. That was the entire point of the lesson.
[ Zoya never would've done it if she thought Adrik couldn't catch himself. He'd lost so much spirit after the civil war that she had taken it upon herself to show him just what she saw: a survivor.
And he was. One of the best. ]
no subject
[He laughs, just lightly, at the tail end of his words because - well, that is a pretty funny way to get someone's ass in gear. Not unlike a bird learning to fly for the first time after being nudged out of the nest. Instinct kicks in. He's already honed in a little on what she's said about powers, and his imagination's already rolled forward about what that could mean. Envious, but a daydreamer, he watches her.]
Tell me he thanked you.
no subject
She speaks fondly: ]
Of course not. Adrik likes to wallow, sulk and complain. He's an endless storm cloud.
[ And him thanking her would only prove something was amiss with him, like perhaps he did actually hit his head on the way down. ]
But he did stop doubting himself. That was the whole point. I didn't do it for his gratitude.
no subject
Kind of wish our room had more windows, as a precaution.
[He wants to see her yeet people.]
Anyway, ah- are you an early riser? I usually am but I don't know that I'll fall asleep any time soon.
no subject
[ She says with a smile. As dramatically poetic as that sounds, a Commander's work—no, Queen, she supposes now—doesn't wait. There used to be a time when Zoya hardly got any sleep at all thanks to Nikolai and his overpowering demon. But she likes to rise early and go to bed late, and supposes nothing will change now that she's not in Ravka.
She will be soon, obviously. What Zoya wants, Zoya gets.
She cocks her brow at him, wishing to tease. ]
What? The day's festivities haven't tired you out? You could always go down to the streets. I'm sure someone would happily help you.
[ What with how… friendly this town seems to be. ]
no subject
[Another laugh, a little less mirthful but still wryly amused. There are still quite a lot of people mulling about, and it's not that he's uninterested in the most of it so much as... he's quite overwhelmed by the intensity of it. That's the thing he's going to have to acclimate to the most: dealing with people in large numbers.]
Crowds give me a headache. I ah, I came from a very remote village and this is proving to be a shock to the senses. Not always a bad feeling but, y'know. I prefer one on one talks with interesting people for now.
no subject
She considers lying: she can't relate; small villages never prepare anyone for the big city life. But this isn't a city, and it's already remote as far as Zoya can tell. ]
I came from a small village.
[ Telling him isn't going to disadvantage her, is it? Nikolai would encourage her to find similarities with those around her. Makes her more likeable, apparently. ]
Many of us liked to keep our clothes on for our town activities. But I can see how this would be a shock if you're not used to the unusual.
[ With a shrug, ] And crowds are overrated.
[ She doesn't particularly like them, either. Too many idiots tend to congregate and make noise. ]