rubimemes | TEST DRIVE MEME 001

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!test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME 001

⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:

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, waxplay, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.

✧ ✧ ✧

Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. For the first round, this test drive serves as characters' arrival into game.

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.

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

AWAKENING IN PAJAK WOOD

The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest warmth of the sun. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the daylight has taken on a sickly green tinge. You lie amongst the mosses and ferns, the 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.

Fortunately, you seem to be alone. The birdsong continues 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. Amongst gnarled oaks and moss, you see nothing around. No sign of civilization or sentient life. Movement flickers at the corner of your eye, but it's just a curious animal — brave squirrels or lizards who have come to see what stirs in their home.

Then, like the rippling of the horizon at noontime, the ash-gray soil around you undulates. Sea, not earth. Something else has come to greet you — their grey bodies blended in so easily with the floor, but as you stagger to your feet, you see them. Thousands of spiders roll like waves underfoot. They crawl towards you from the darker edge of the forest.

attack

Individuals who attack the spiders will find the small spiders are easy to kill, but the pheromones released by their corpses draw larger spiders in their place. 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 will attempt to use their webbing to handicap 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.

FAQ: DEATH RULES

hunt

Any aspiring monster-hunters enterprising enough to try to follow the spiders to their nest will move eastward. This way, the forest grows darker and darker — though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset.

In the void, the birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs, but soon it is impossible to see. Even with the brightest magical light does not reach further than a few inches. The air grows heavy and thick, 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. Soon, you cannot move at all.

Turn back while you still can — collapsing out here is dangerous. The void can play tricks on your senses. You may find yourself reliving unhappy memories or hallucinating your worst nightmares.

SETTING: THE VOID

But flee the spiders westward and you will discover that the wood is well-populated with the survival resources that someone might seek — berries bushes and trees bearing stone fruits; sticks and dry leaves to aid in the building of a fire; rocks big enough to fashion into crude weapons; small animals that can be hunted or caught; hike long enough, and you might just find the freshwater stream that runs north-to-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads.

What's more, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist hiking parties, others may still be naked and confused and processing how they have no memory of how they got here. They all stagger vaguely, as you do, with only the sun for a waymarker — and even that won't last long.

Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty, as it's going to be a long hike. If you sneak a good look at your new companions, you may four varietals of marks on their bodies. Maybe someone will even point out that you have one, too.

FAQ: CURSE MARKS

EVERY DAY LIKE THE ONE BEFORE

Hike far enough — or long enough that the sun does go down — and signs of life come into view. The glow of fires and lights, the smooth curve of a stone wall. A town sits at the edge of this wood, a reward to the survivors.

The fifty-foot wall of beige stone protecting the town's perimeter has only a single entrance — an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people into town from the winding dirt road. Attentive eyes may note that the road itself bears the mark of many wagon wheels and horse hoofs, but not cars.

guards

The guards grant entry to anyone who attempts a conversation with them. However, if your character is more likely to attempt to sneak in, overcome the guards, or attack them, please reach out HERE.

Inside the wall lies a quaint, historic town with a population around five thousand. The streets are cobbled, and their signs are 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 bank — 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.

No matter what time you pass through the gate, the streets are full of people. The climate of the bustle befits a night market or a busy friday downtown — plenty of people to ogle at your exposed body. But despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, the locals don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. In fact, the further into town you go, the more you may notice that 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! If anything, they seem to be under the impression that you're naked to participate in the evening's events with the rest of them.

Those still determined to find proper clothing will find that modern clothing stores aren't a thing here. The closest this town has is a tailor's shop, which is closed for religious observance, and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.

Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! The locals will gladly share what they have with those who ask politely — but those items are as revealing as what they're wearing. You might get a mesh bodysuit or drape outfit. Remember not to be ungracious! it's only appropriate for the occasion.

steal clothing

Anyone unwilling to ask nicely for help could break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry. Notably, inside their homes, the people of the town also appear to own some more modest apparel. Be sure to alert us HERE if your character pursues this option.

SETTING: CRIME

And what is the occasion? The locals are excited and flattered by any interest in their ordinary weekly prayer: the folks dancing and selling their wares are all offering their energies to give thanks and ask for their god's patronage! The abstractions are all familiar — fertility, harvest, peace. Smalltalk makes them eager to chat and draw you into those festivities — including some ceremonial wax-dripping on the exposed parts of your body!

Anyone who chats at length with the townspeople will gather that the locals feel it's better for the newcomers to dive into the deep-end because, since you'll be settling in here, they expect you'll want to participate down the line. They seem to be under the impression that the new arrivals are a boon from their god.

In addition, many of the locals' choice of clothes reveal the same four types of marks on their bodies as the folx who were wandering out in the wood!

ROOM AND BOARD

Once you're tired out, the locals will help you find a place to stay. The boarding house is several stories tall and spacious, accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines.

Beyond the overgrown yard is a bright red door, which opens into a spacious cottage.

The house has clearly been empty for some time — dust has gathered on various furnishings — bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. According to the locals, it has remained empty since its last occupant passed away, and that's all they'll say about that!

Each floor of the house has a shared sitting room, but only the first floor has a kitchen — large enough to support feeding the entire household. Here, a few of the townspeople will help out — they stock the kitchen and help make dinner for the new arrivals.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

spiders of pajak wood
cw: nudity, descriptions of spiders, harm to spiders, minor spoilers for nona the ninth.

Is there a word, John wonders, for a dreadful sort of nostalgia? An aching memory for the worst moments in your life? Because that's evoked in him now, naked in the wilderness, remembering how he'd once wandered an Earth emptied of life. But there is life here: small as bacteria all the way up to things skittering and chirping, a wondrous ecosystem that he takes a quiet moment to appreciate even as dread awakes in his bones.

The nudity doesn't bother him, completely at home in his body: stocky, brown skin, salt and pepper at his chest and temples, unshaven face. The spiders don't bother him either: little flashes of thalergy. What scares him is the way he can't feel Dominicus, is unsure of his connection to Alecto, that with so much life abundant his necromancy has nothing to grasp onto. It's like being thrown back ten thousand years, when he could puppet the dead and cure cancer but not much more than that. The man who became God has once again become Man.

John starts by killing the spiders, extending a hand and sucking their little life forces away so that they fall in swathes — he harvests the thanergic energy of their deaths — he feels the difficulty of what was once simple. Time was he could do this to humans with a thought and gesture, but he suspects that might be beyond him, for now.

But their deaths bring more spiders in their place: large red spiders of a type John has never seen before, dropping from the trees and flexing their many jointed legs. Disgust pulls at the corners of his mouth and he backs up: he can kill some, but does he want to risk trying to kill them all? His nudity now does feel like vulnerability, especially when he isn't as certain of his immortality. The spiders are smart, trying to cut off his exit through the trees — without assistance there's no guarantee John will escape this situation safely.

foraging in pajak wood
cw: nudity.

[ John senses the presence of another person through the trees before they actually come into view. He lifts an open hand, ostensibly a friendly wave, and stands confident and immodest, still not wearing more than the vestiges of spider silk. ]

Hi.

[ As he approaches, his defining feature becomes clearer: his eyes are fully black, even the sclera, just a faint ring of white gold around the pupil like a solar eclipse. But despite that he seems friendly, perhaps even nebbish, certainly harmless with his awkward half-smile and the tired shadows smudged beneath those eyes. ]

Do you know the way to the nearest transport?

new in town

The guards let John into the town, seeming neither to register him as a threat or a deity, not understanding him when he asks about the Nine Houses. The townspeople here are equally carelessly friendly and disrespectful, a kind of casual treatment John hasn't experienced in millennia upon millennia. They talk about their gods, plural, with a reverence that spikes an ugly envy in the pit of John's chest.

Where the fuck is he? Not the outer colonies, mentioning "zombies" or "Blood of Eden" gets as little response as asking about the Nine Houses. Instead the townsfolk seem convinced he's been sent by divine will, which makes him chuckle with a helpless desperation.

Someone gives him a toga-like wrap, which feels enough to be getting on with, and another offers a belt that helps him cinch it at the waist so he stops accidentally exposing his hairy ass to all and sundry. Not that anybody seems bothered. In fact, the easiest way to spot other newcomers is to look for who is acting embarrassed for their modesty, and John's black eyes are watchful as he considers who else might be in the same predicament he is.

"Hey," he says to someone who looks like they aren't into the whole public nudity thing. "This is weird, right?" He lifts a hand to rub the back of his neck with a self-effacing chuckle. "I really need to talk to someone else who understands this is fucking weird."

there was only one bed

[ John is a late arrival, and he's also late to look for a room given how much time he spends in the town, so when night falls he realizes that the offered rooms are mostly already taken. So he's just going to hopefully sidle up to someone still awake, any stranger who seems open to approach: ]

Room for two?

[ He holds up his palms disarmingly. ]

I don't snore. Or I don't think I snore?

[ Problem with sleeping with your subordinates is they don't tend to be honest if you keep them up all night snoring. ]

ooc

(( i love prose or brackets, reply in whichever you prefer! also happy to roll with different scenarios if you have an idea, and i am absolutely down for any thread to go in a smutty direction if you don't mind a ten thousand year age gap, he's bi and in his slut era. catch me at

linhardt if you need to chat! ))

Edited 2023-05-25 03:50 (UTC)

The eyes are hard to miss. Even for someone like Danny, who so regularly stared into an abyss that so thoroughly stared back, it's what he notices first: the eyes, black as a yawning chasm, black as space, black as the Entity's hungry mouth. Danny, comparatively: all unassuming dimples and big brown wouldn't-hurt-a-soul doe eyes and a neat assembly of long limbs folded onto the bed, legs crossed at the ankles, naked shoulders propped against the wall.

He doesn't look like much. He looks like even less when he slants a Boy Next Door, I'm Just A Little Guy, Honest smile up at his new roommate. Bedmate?

"Sick toga, Augustus," he says in lieu of a greeting or direct answer, because he didn't get a toga. He got a pair of threadbare, lace-up trousers that hang loose and airy everywhere except where he'd like them to.

Then he scoots without complaint to the far edge of the mattress, for John to lounge or sit as he pleases.

"You got a little something" — with a sweeping gesture to his head, where strands of gossamer cobweb still cling to John's hair like a fine, shimmery crown — "right here."

John loves the clean slice of a renaming to denote a new life in a new world, so he considers rolling with "Augustus" (so similar to Augustine that it aches in the deep chasms of his ugly heart). Takes the space offered, bare legs stretched out, elbow back on the sad flat lump that passes for a pillow.

"Thanks," he says distractedly, lifting a hand to run through his hair and completely missing the web in question, catching maybe a little on the left and thinking that's it, leaving behind sticky glinting strands that make him look like he's greying more than he actually is. A sheepish smile over at his new bedmate, because he too can do easy harmless Just Some Guy deception.

"Spiders," he says by way of explanation, grim like a shrug. Fucking spiders.

It is the death that summons her, the thanergy produced an instantaneous siren call as soon as it reaches the outer edges of Harrowhark's senses. All of her yearns for it, despite the Lyctoral well—it is one thing to be able to fuel yourself and quite another to be separated from the energy which has long sustained you, which created you entirely.

In order to respond to it she is forced to separate from the shields of bone she built herself, and she almost does not see the individual who has done the killing, having lost the tree of the Necrolord Prime in the forest of spiders. When she sees him, she's almost stunned. She's definitely shocked silent. Her mouth starts to open, and then close again, and then—

"I do not think that engaging in combat is a wise choice," she offers softly. His Celestial Kindness is such an uncertain, tenable comfort now. Harrow does not know what he knows of her, or what he thinks she knows of him; what he remembers or has experienced. She is not sure whether to fear him or take comfort in his presence. She finds herself doing both when not thinking overmuch on it, and in a situation that involves staring down enormous arachnids, thinking overmuch on it is certainly a waste of her senses. But she has to check, she must be sure: "Providing you are seeing what I am."

That has never not been a mystery, but it is rarely one voiced.

John considers this situation with a brutal efficiency, having always been quick-minded: he is vulnerable right now, left with only the fragment of Alecto's gift that lived in him rather than the full extent of his power; Harrowhark is a potential threat if she figures that out but also a potential asset given her talents; she would doubtless believe him were he to gaslight her about the spiders, but then he would have to ignore the spiders, which could quickly become a problem given how aggressive they're acting.

"I think I can handle some spiders, Harrowhark," he says with gentle not-quite-condescension. Another one drops down behind him with a nasty noisy gnashing of its fangs - he never knew spiders' fangs made noise.

Things they could both have gone a long time without knowing: that. Harrow's life is not enlightened at all by the added knowledge about spider articulation and motion sounds. Harrow is a bit relieved that she's not the only one having the spider experience, but is just as concerned about the fact that everyone being aware of the spiders means that they could have a very unfun time being eaten by spiders.

Since as far as Harrowhark is aware, neither John nor herself would actually die from it.

That becomes on many levels even worse than being killed.

"Do please enlighten me as to how," at least she's saying this nicely; the last time she saw him he told her a long, sad story and also drew her initial with his in a heart after removing A and E, and that simply made it sadder to her--"because I see no way to easily beat them--drop two and four more appear, but do they pursue humans merely attempting to leave their territory?" Harrow can handle some spiders so long as they're just coexisting. Harrow can not handle some spiders who attempt to kill her God or herself.

Despite looking like a man who has been on a six month bender (just as he had in their dream, though there it was the long hair and unshaven beard of a prophet wandering the empty world) John takes on the tone of her patient Teacher, the one that makes people want to impress him.

"You've extinguished all life on a planet; this isn't anything for you to fear," he says, and now suddenly it's gone from John taking care of it to John encouraging Harrow to take care of it. But then, he's uncertain of his power right now and deeply uncomfortable revealing that, even if she could probably figure out that far from Dominicus and Alecto he suffers more than a lyctor who carries their other half with them eternal. What he has access to is that bitten off remnant, not the full flood of power that he gathered when he became a god.

"The external shell of an invertebrate isn't all that different to a skeleton," he lectures, in full schoolmaster bullshit mode now, as calm as if this is all by his design. "You should be able to control them like constructs. If there are too many, simply turn them on each other."

[ when Felipe emerges from the shadows, he gets the feeling that he was being expected. he thought he had been quiet in his step, but apparently the man heard him approaching. he's not wearing anything and there are some scratch marks on his arms, but otherwise he appears unharmed. quite relaxed too, given the situation. ]

Hello.

[ he's not easily embarrassed, but there's just something awkward about two people meeting for the first time when they're both naked and lost in a strange forest. "hi"? Felipe can't help but smile at the situation. ]

Well, I was hoping that you'd have a clue.

[ John is used to immediate deference, scrambling and acquiescent attempts to serve him while John attempts humble, sheepish modesty — but this man doesn't even seem to recognize him. Responds to him like they're equals — and maybe they are, here, naked in the strange woods together. Made peers by circumstance, at least temporarily.

So that's why he pauses a moment, recalibrating himself in the wake of that response, his small smile a little strained. ]

I see. A pity.

[ He would like to get off this healthy living planet and its abundance of spiders. ]

All right, I suppose then we're just going to have to find someone who does know. Preferably in this direction, if you don't mind, since I came from back that way and it wasn't pleasant.

[ Gesturing in the directions he means, east and west respectively. ]

[ it's a plan since they have nothing better. ]

Sounds good. Personally, I cannot recommend that direction either.

[ now it's Felipe's turn to gesture toward the bushes he came from. sadly, something tells him that their new direction isn't going to be all clear from spiders either.

once he's closer to John, he notices his eyes and how dark they are, but he refrains from commenting on it. instead he pretends that he's unbothered by them, even though the sight clearly gave him pause. he clears his throat. anyway, moving on. ]

Can't wait to find out who thought that robbing me was a great idea.

[ robbing and abandoning him in the forest. he was quite pissed off when he first woke up, but then the spiders became a distraction. ]

You believe we have been robbed?

[ Laughable, though he doesn't laugh, just raises his eyebrows as though that's the most interesting thing in the world. Of course, the wilderness surrounding them is very different from the spaceship he was previously on, so he's aware something serious has happened even if he can't remember what. ]

If there's someone in these woods with my clothes I'd quite like to find them.

[ He walks alongside Felipe, bare feet picking through the underbrush, wincing a little at a particularly sharp stick. ]

john gaius • the locked tomb • niez

one bed!

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spiders;

light of my life hello

sorry 4 the delay

<333

foraging in pajak wood

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Spiders

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cw: animal death, gore

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new in town

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part new in town, part wild card. very late with a great big starbucks. HTN spoilers within.

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foraging in pajak wood

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