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TEST DRIVE MEME 004
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ 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: spiders, animated skeletons, aphrodisiac effects, exhibitionism/voyeurism, bdsm, kink negotiation, knifeplay, potential dismemberment.
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: spiders, animated skeletons, aphrodisiac effects, exhibitionism/voyeurism, bdsm, kink negotiation, knifeplay, potential dismemberment.
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 despite the growing chill.
wildlife encounters
The longer you hike, the more unsettling sights await you: animal remains, some partially stripped of their flesh or discarded entrails left exposed to the cold. As you continue on your way, you might even swear you catch a glimpse of what appears to be a fully-formed skeletal creature observing you from a distance. Surely, that’s just your mind playing tricks on you... These creatures may be unsettling, but they show no signs of aggression to folks who keep their distance.
In the forest, 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. It's already full of people who appeared in the village just as you did today.
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!
RECUMITA
The festival fills the streets with dancing locals and all the stuffs of a street market. Despite the challenges posed by the snow-in-summer, farmers are grateful to announce that the situation is not as dire as initially feared. As a result, the harvest festival of Recūmita becomes a celebration of unity and gratitude to their fellow townspeople for salvaging an almost-frozen harvest, the Duchess' magic for protecting and reviving it, and the 'Void-Touched' who braved the Void to strengthen her.Over the weekend, all regular work is put on hold, except for the necessary festival preparations. The streets come alive with vibrant stalls and stands, offering a wide array of delectable treats and refreshing beverages. From barrels of beer and cups of kvas to mouthwatering roasted meats, delightful squash-based dishes like pumpkin latkes, honey-glazed brussel sprouts on skewers, hot borscht in both pork and vegetarian variations, and tantalizing mushrooms stuffed with leeks, cranberries, and bryndza cheese, there is an abundance of flavors to indulge in.
The first day of the festival transforms the streets into a bustling night market, where shopkeepers organize an assortment of carnival-style games. Test your strength in arm-wrestling contests or challenge your pain tolerance in contests where individuals whip each other to determine who yields first, whether to pain or pleasure. In one corner, Terry's Rubean student sets up an unsanctioned fighting tournament, while in another area, a path of hot coals awaits the daring souls who wish to traverse it. Instead of traditional pie-throwing stands, knife-throwing stands attract participants who willingly become targets.
Enthusiastic Rubeans, particularly those involved in integrating the Void-touched, take it upon themselves to enhance the festivities. They recruit local participants and willing Void-touched individuals to partake in an impromptu stage performance, with no need for rehearsals. Come as you are and join the spectacle! Once the performance begins, the passion and excitement behind their efforts become truly evident, as all the performances call for explicitly sexual or violent acts to be performed together.
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
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.
Rubilykskoye's performance troupe is thrown into a state of panic as they make a shocking discovery: Vyanchaslav, their unofficial manager and conductor, has vanished without a trace! Vyanchaslav plays a crucial role in the troupe, overseeing small inter-troupe matters and having the final say on casting and rehearsal time. He is known for his reliability, making his sudden disappearance all the more perplexing, especially right before a major event.
The last time anyone saw Vyanchaslav was in their usual rehearsal space, just before a crucial run-through of their upcoming performance. His absence during that rehearsal was highly unusual, and it left the troupe members worried and confused. They are now frantically trying to piece together what might have happened to him.
As they search for Vyanchaslav, they notice a faint sound lingering in the air – the distant whine of a fiddle. However, there is something unsettling about it. As they follow the source of the sound, the room grows darker, and an eerie chill runs down their spines. Those who draw close enough to properly hear Vyanchaslav's song will feel inclined to dance themselves til their feet bleed, til their lungs give out. That is, provided they don't cut a devil's bargain with him first, selling something else to the devil in exchange for their freedom.
(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
Rubilykskoye's performance troupe is thrown into a state of panic as they make a shocking discovery: Vyanchaslav, their unofficial manager and conductor, has vanished without a trace! Vyanchaslav plays a crucial role in the troupe, overseeing small inter-troupe matters and having the final say on casting and rehearsal time. He is known for his reliability, making his sudden disappearance all the more perplexing, especially right before a major event.The last time anyone saw Vyanchaslav was in their usual rehearsal space, just before a crucial run-through of their upcoming performance. His absence during that rehearsal was highly unusual, and it left the troupe members worried and confused. They are now frantically trying to piece together what might have happened to him.
As they search for Vyanchaslav, they notice a faint sound lingering in the air – the distant whine of a fiddle. However, there is something unsettling about it. As they follow the source of the sound, the room grows darker, and an eerie chill runs down their spines. Those who draw close enough to properly hear Vyanchaslav's song will feel inclined to dance themselves til their feet bleed, til their lungs give out. That is, provided they don't cut a devil's bargain with him first, selling something else to the devil in exchange for their freedom.
(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
Riverlands. [ A placating answer as he eases another step forward towards his phantom image of a brother. He thinks, he doesn't actually know. That's where he was. Significantly where he knows Aegon was not. His steps fall in some predatory sort of swagger that ends in lashing outwards to crowd his brother up against the nearest tree. Hand clamped firmly around his chin to look him eye to eye. ] Somewhere you should definitely not be right now.
[ They're at war. Their king is naked and isolated in the woods (allegedly.) They are both without their dragons (confirmed.) No, he still doesn't even know if any of this is even fucking real to the matter of how turned around he is by his own prior night's events. ]
Prove you are my brother.
no subject
Was he going to die? It was incredible timing, really, it only felt like hours ago he was boasting to anyone who'd listen that Aemond was the best of them all. Maybe Lucerys was the push he needed-- the new title he earned among the smallfolk, whispered in the court, now a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The king's hands snake up, slow, as if he expected the younger prince to startle, before they cradle his face between them. A dirty thumbnail presses into the scar beneath the shiny sapphire he can see his own reflection in, small and weak, forcing another laugh from him. Violet eyes do not shy away from their shared, charged gaze, a familiarity that brings him comfort despite being half-convinced this could be the end of him. ]
I am flesh and blood in front of you, brother.
[ Abruptly, Aegon wrenches his head free from Aemond's hold, fingers digging into the prince's skin as he bites at his mouth, ripping his bottom lip between jagged teeth until he can taste salt and iron. ]
(cw: just expect ur average brotherly targcestuous things happening in this thread. and blood.)
The curl of his hand pushes back against his brother's throat, back into the grit of the bark as Aemond growls (alarmed!) Attempting to tear his head back and away from Aegon's dull, dirty little fingernails clawing into his skin. Prying himself away, the other man gets thrown wayside of the tree trunk as he wrests himself free before his lip gets torn off. ]
— fuck [ Said wholeheartedly, with his whole chest, as he gurgles and spits out a wad of blood onto the forest floor at their feet. Staggering, blood dripped and gently spattered down his chin. He draws the back of his hand across, smearing it away as he looks down at Aegon's tossed form. Briefly forgetting the load of fuckery happening around them. He better not be laughing. ] It's not fucking funny.
no subject
Are you done with whatever fucking nonsense that was?
[ The king's eyes are bright, wild, as he peers up at his brother, the surge of adrenaline and the thunderous beating of his heart so it intense that it's overwhelming his senses. He hoists himself up, bracing on his elbows, whats left of the blood he didn't swallow dribbling from lips twisted in a roguish grin.
Aegon's gaze flickers, catching a glimpse of the half-eaten carcass rotting next to him, flies and maggots lying claim on its entrails. With a resounding UGH he recoils in revulsion, setting off another fit of uproarious laughter. ]
no subject
If he wasn't convinced before, he is now. Aegon's wholeness and existence is a chapter in a book he is not ready to pick up quite yet. Even though it is here and now that he cannot escape from. A disgruntled sigh is all the response the king is going to get as he turns to try and find his way. Ignoring the foul corpse rotting beyond Aegon's nose.
However long it takes Aegon to realize that he isn't going to stop, wait, or turn around for him is his business. Aemond is walking straight deeper into the wood, bare as a babe, in an ambition veiled panic. If he keeps walking straight, he will hit something eventually. ]
no subject
Aegon wipes his chin off with the palm of his hand and drags it through his hair before he realizes, but he's already disgusting from rolling around on the ground so what hurt does the red in his platinum waves do him? He's much more concerned with whether or not his brother actually knows where he's going, but he's assuming the worst (they're both very lost), so instead he jests: ]
I believe it is treason to abandon your King.
no subject
[His voice is dull in retort, “jesting”, except he wouldn’t be. Distracted, as he tried to discern where they are, which way is even north. The sky is gloomy and plain above the tops of the trees. Eerie without a wind to follow or a direction the clouds seem to flow.
He hasn’t ruled out a dream. That the bumbling idiot trailing behind him is Aegon in his best image. Better remembered than the last that Aemond had seen him. A miserable shadow of his former self. He pauses then to turn and look over his shoulder. As though to confirm that isn’t the case some mangled thing would be staring back at him.
No, still just a fool looking like a wildling with blood in his hair and dirt on his hands. Aemond’s lips press into a fine line, blood still flowing down his lip and down his chin.]
I can’t feel her, Brother. [ He admits, forcing him to confront the gravity of what they’re in . That quietly asks him to not be an absolute shit for more than five minutes and think. Assess. Where is your dragon? ] Can you feel yours?
no subject
And then he frowns, deeply, miserably. They could have avoided this conversation with no objection from him, the king doing what he'd done best: cramming, concealing, contorting unwelcome thoughts and feelings into the shadowy abyss within him. Aemond's words only forces the dark pit to open, an insidious emptiness taking residence, a void as vast as the night sky, swallowing the echoes of laughter and drowning the vibrant hues of joy he'd briefly felt moments before. He thought he had felt hollow before, but now he was haunted by the absence of something indescribable. ]
Do you think we've descended into the Seven Hells?
[ He wasn't joking this time, the monotony that seized control when he was trying desperately to hide his vulnerability returning. It would be easier to swallow that truth, he thinks, than any other. It was an acknowledgement to his question better than anything else he can muster, yes, they had yet another pain they both shared. For once he wishes Aemond could be spared from it. ]
no subject
We need to keep moving. [ Aemond turns around again to keep walking in the direction he's chosen. Pushing forward is all they have, so an answer his brother is never going to get until they find something that provides some clarity. He refuses to believe they're dead and descended.
The thought plagues him again like the itch underneath his skin. Kinslayer, they both were, king and brother. Even if Aegon looked long before he had become one, Aemond still knew. Aemond still remembered the gravity of Rook's Rest, which settled as a heavy stone in his stomach. He had been so excited to be away from King's Landing, to make his mark upon the world. Now, he wants nothing more than to return to it. ]
no subject
He instinctively draws closer to Aemond as they begin to move again, rattled, wanting to be within arm's reach should some devil come. There could have been a worse hell, at least, finding solace in the fact they would be enduring this together rather than in bitter isolation. Each time amethyst and sapphire cast a glance in his direction, a brief flicker of emotion still elusive to him before he settles into his customary icy, unyielding stare, he wonders if his brother would prefer it the other way.
Aegon knows better than to spiral, unable to swat dark thoughts away with his cups, redirecting his attention to the boundless woods ensnaring them. Perhaps, he muses, it might have been preferable if a malevolent force were to confront them, sparing them the ordeal of this seemingly interminable journey.
He allows the quiet to settle between them for some time, the only audible backdrop being the crackling of branches and the wind coaxing trees to shiver. The king, eventually, audibly groans, making a show of how tired he felt as he drags his feet through the muck, whining as he speaks: ]
Carry me the rest of the way.