TEST DRIVE MEME 005

[rubimods]

⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ 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 any 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, aphrodisiac and truth serum effects, public nudity, exhibitionism/voyeurism, bdsm, kink negotiation, social pressure, and animal sacrifice.

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

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 reemerging after a long winter. 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, will lead people towards the first signs of civilisation, the cabins of those who choose to live beyond Rubilyskoye's formidable walls.

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.

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.

SETTING: CRIME

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.

finding roommates

Don't spend too much time asking questions in the common areas. 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. Maybe you'll get lucky and run into someone who has decided to move out? (Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements; at this point, many characters have used activity rewards to move to accomodation outside the boarding house.)

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 a breakfast of thick grain porridge and caramelised bananas from the new peaks; these NPCs can also answer any questions about the situation. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. Gossip about new arrivals spreads quickly, and Rubeans who run businesses or train trades 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, being offered work, asking questions over breakfast, or staking your claim on a bedroom!

HEARTS FESTIVAL

New arrivals to Rubilykskoye will find themselves strongly encouraged to participate in the current zadza purging festival, and will be assigned either a collar in leather or iron based on their Niez or Wilk mark, or a wrist-strap or manacle that suits the attachment of a leash for those with a Diabel or Skala mark.

Characters are encouraged to embrace this temporary designation as a sign that they will be good citizens; those who object or ignore their designation may find the NPCs try to helpfully guide them, express displeasure at "Void-Touched" who won't assimilate, or in rare cases exert social pressure, coercion, violence or shunning to ensure compliance.

Throughout town various NPCs have set up tents and booths to host myriad performances, workshops, demonstrations, and food stands for their celebration. The foods were made using some of the new flora that have brought back from the peaks. Characters can get their hands on the following heart-themed foods from the second day of the festival onwards:

• HEART-SHAPED COOKIES: eating these intensifies body heat, making characters a great cuddle buddy for the cold weather and likely to strip down, feeling overheated even in a snowdrift
  
  
• BEEF HEART STEW WITH DUXELLES: eating these fills those who consume it with confidence, making them more solicitous and dominant
  
  
• LIME-GLAZED GOAT HEART SATAY: eating these intensifies sensation, making characters more sensitive to both pain and pleasure
  
  
• CINNAMON GLUWEIN: drinking a cup of this hot beverage will make characters especially honest

The nature of the booths set up for performances, workshops, and other goods focuses around the festival's dominance and submission themes. These persist throughout the day regardless of the hour or the audience, so very few people can be found consistently at their places of work during the day this week. In addition:

• Skala and diabel NPCs may offer to share their partner(s) with the Void-touched, or ask to share theirs.
  
  
• PIOTR, a farmer, brings tools over from the farm including bridles and saddles, which can be found at a booth near some hunters who've made anal plugs that end with real animal tails, as well as muzzles.
  
  
• The cages from the Moot Hall have been moved into the streets, and people are allowed to move freely in and out of them. One of them has been covered in curtains to function as a glory hole booth.
  
  
• Some niez and wilk NPCs line up near the main event stage and kneel to offer themselves as human furniture.

However, characters may also come across some carnival games operated by NPCs who are eager to help the Duchess find her heart! Some involve slaughtering livestock by removing their hearts—rest assured, these livestock were already on the menu, but their ritual sacrifice will now involve the cutting out of their hearts. Cut out an animal's heart yourself, or just attend the show! Many of the townspeople will get into it, painting their faces with animal blood or drinking from it.

writer's block?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try reacting to being assigned a dominant or submissive role, scenes where your character is starting to feel the effects of the food, watching (or participating in) a performance, or joining in on a gory animal sacrifice. NPCs that are usually welcoming may strongly pressure even new arrivals to participate in their cultural festivities.

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.

FAQ: DEATH RULES

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.

FAQ: MONSTER CURSES & TIMELINES

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

Poor Merta Chesnokov, the usually stalwart older woman who mans the Apothecary, has been beset by unusual requests in addition to her regular demands, not to mention sweating blood. The festival, a rash of skala blood flu, and a little extra town chaos in January, has brought a high demand to her little shop. Now there's also a local fashion springing up for teas and herbal remedies sourced from the recently revealed tropical mountains.

After another failed tisane test drive, and the third customer asking for a new kind of aphrodisiac to add to their festival food, she was seen tossing down her work knife with uncharacteristic frustration, and taking an "early lunch" that she didn't return from that night. Though her children, friends and employees reach out to her, there's no sign of her until you stumble upon her in the woods.

Merta overboils with her suppressed fury as her body distorts and her flesh blackens and crusts. Her attempts to hold off her transformation have failed, and Merta turns into a Smoldering Skink, a large repillian creature whose thick scales hold back her magmatic insides. The noise she makes is an unhearthly hissing scream like a boiling kettle, and she attempts to vent her pent-up stress by wildly attacking everything in sight. Immediately, the surroundings catch aflame! There will be a small fire eating at the dead wood of a long winter if it's not put out, but your first priority might have to be fielding a stampeding lizard with massive teeth and burning hot scales...

(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?

RULES: CONTENT WARNINGS

Comments

joan dority | oc | ota.

[poleaxed]

a. NAKED AND AFRAID.

Joan fails to cover herself when someone comes upon her nakedness. Six feet tall with long, lean muscle, she learned long ago not to make apologies for her body-- it's not with pride but defiance that she stands among the brush. She's no looker, but fuck anyone who thinks they can use that against her.

Being angry is so much easier than being afraid. She raises her arms, ready to fight. "You did this, sicko?"

b. THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED?

Joan has found ill-fitting jeans (too short) and a shirt made for someone twice her size, but it's good enough for now. She tries to drift into an uneasy sleep, but anyone coming near her will receive, at best, an ill-tempered glare. If someone actually tries to get in bed with her, she'll kick them out, or try to. "Fuck off, pervert!"

c. YOU'RE ALL HEART.

Throughout the festival, Joan fidgets with the strap on her wrist. She's always been twitchy about jewelry, only able to stand necklaces and wristwatches after months of wearing them. Every addition to her person feels like being weighed down. The fact that it's not her choice makes it worse, but even she-- Joan Dority, loud and brash and unreasonable-- can see it's a minor concession at best. She wants to go to the festival. She doesn't let herself wonder why.

(1.) Of course, she goes for the mulled wine first-- gluwein, they call it, and Joan is accustomed to words she doesn't understand. It's such a relief that everyone here speaks a language she can mostly understand; tiny bits of jargon for once don't piss her off. She sips the wine eagerly, letting it go right to her head. She should feel relief, but- "I'm scared."

(2.) As the day drags on, Joan lets herself be drawn into the festivities. It's a sex festival. It's not the sort of thing shed usually encounter, and she wonders if she'd make the conscious choice to go to such a thing if she ever had the option at home. It doesn't matter, though, does it? She has the chance now, and she may never again. Terrible things might happen, and very soon. She should at least investigate.

What attracts her most are the cages, and she watches people move within them, her curiosity abstract, detached. Finally, slowly, she moves toward one with a hole in it. Someone's dick is sticking out of it and, in a moment of daring, she kneels down and runs her finger along the length of it. She doesn't need beef heart stew to make her confident or domineering. She murmurs through the curtained wall, "do you want this?"

There's a sudden thrill-- this person doesn't know what she looks like. They don't know that she's cruel and too tall and ungainly, an ugly failure at feminine grace. She runs her hand over the cock-- sticking through the, what's it called? Yeah, a glory hole-- "Tell me you want it."

d. THE UNQUIET DARK.

(1.) She's not afraid of spiders-- she thinks it's such a girlish thing, squealing from a fucking bug. It doesn't matter that they're huge; she refuses to be cowed, just like she refuses to heed her own sense of mounting dread in this deep darkness.

She sees someone in the nearer distance, just a shadow of a person, a constellated silhouette of pain. Someone caught in a web. "Dumbass," she grumbles, but begins trying to pull them free without question or salutation.

(2.) Deeper in the darkness, things begin to unravel. Joan looses sense of herself, sense of her own body. The chaos and the screaming begin again. She remembers that muddy city on the banks of a river, the running charge of knights, the fire and the fear. Down in the deep darkness, confident she is alone, Joan curls into a ball and begins to sob.

e. EVERYBODY'S GOT THE DEVIL INSIDE.

She's been avoiding people since the darkness, since the memories. She's used to discomfort, and ignores the itch. She's used to anger, too, and it is filed away as normal. But when she opens her mouth, a long, serpent's tongue protrudes. Her vision splits as her irises become goatlike. Horns emerge from her head, curved as like a ram's. Teeth split from her gums, curved and jagged as fang and tusk, until she can't close her mouth anymore. She pants from the heat, and her tongue lolls from her mouth, flicking at scents.

She touches her face, and resolves, in fear, not to look for a mirror; she can't stand the possibility that she's any ugier than she already is. A monster, she's a monster, and she wants--

Joan Dority wants someone to save her. She wants someone to be here with her. All urges she usually ignores, but now- now it's impossible. She slouches toward the nearest person, lays her hand upon their shoulder, feels fabric and skin. Something within her is comforted, but the hunger only mounts. "Please," she manages to push the word through curved incisors. "Please." She doesn't know what she's asking for.

f. WILDCARD.

[hit me up i'm down for basically whatever. feel free to mix and match prompts or make up your own! pm this journal if you have any questions!]

Naked and Afraid

[minuteofangle]

It was only a few days ago that Gabe was in the same position as the snarling stranger: naked, disoriented, angry as hell in unfamiliar territory. Now, he’s moved up in the world. He’s got pants, for one thing.

Pants, a jacket, a big old walking stick, and Ye Old Sunglasses to conceal the fact that he came in without his prosthetics. That’s a fact he prefers to keep under wraps, especially when the circumstances swing weird. Apparently the weird might just be contagious, too. It’s certainly spreading out.

He tilts his head, toggling his tech to a higher sensitivity. She’s taller than him. All puffed up and ready.

Gabe snaps his teeth at her, just fucking because.

“Nah. But you wanna go, we’ll fucking go.”

[poleaxed]

This seems arbitrary. Some small part of Joan, the part with strategic and logistic sense, says a conflict now would be meaningless and prove nothing. Joan thinks of this part of herself as her weaker self, her hesitant self, the part of her that needs to be folded up and put away. When you're backed into a corner, all you can do is strike. If she hesitates, he'll beat her with that stick, he'll bite her unprotected skin, he'll do whatever he wants to her. He has clothes and comfort; she doesn't. That division is the only thing in the world that matters.

She swings with a hard left, aiming for that snapping jaw.

[minuteofangle]

Ah. There it is.

Gabe's smile widens. His tech is working like a dream right now, enough to give him a good picture of how she's standing and how fast her swing's gonna come. He doesn't bother trying to catch it. Just ducks under the blow and swings his stick hard at her knee, going for a hook. Get her on the ground where her height won't matter.

If she wants to fight, they'll fucking fight. He doesn't grandstand, or play. He just goes for brutal.

[poleaxed]

They have the same tactics-- end the fight as swiftly and devastatingly as possible. Joan thinks she has the advantage in surprise and height, if not comfort, and surely desperation makes someone just that much more able. Yet her swing misses, and her opponent moves with serpentine quickness, knocking her flat on her ass before she knows to sidestep. She didn't see him move. Was she drugged? She must have been drugged.

The humiliation of this only furthers her anger, until any rational thought has been silenced in a din of howling, her mind whirling: how dare you, how dare you, haven't I suffered enough, how dare you? She wants blood. A broken nose will soothe her like no medicine can. His or hers.

She tries to redouble immediately, scrambling against the back of a cold oak. Her hands come up like a boxer's guard; her legs do the same. There are not many advantages to being on the ground, except that she's used to fighting men bigger than her. She wasn't always so tall, so well-fed. She waits for the inevitable kick, coiled like a copper spring.

[minuteofangle]

Down she goes. And in a simpler moment Gabe would just kick her in the gut and keep on kicking her until she goes stops thrashing. Get on top and smash her head into the ground until it’s done. You can’t hesitate with these things. You have to go for fucking broke or the enemy will mess you up and there’ll be nothing you can do to stop it. In a simpler moment, he’d end it fast.

In this one, she recovers quick and bounces to her feet. Woman knows how to take a hit, he thinks, and he shifts into a guard stance. Teeth bared.

Oh, she’s a scrapper, huh?

“C’mon,” he taunts, and he swings the stick at her goddamn face. He either needs to keep her at a distance or get close enough to put her into a sleeper—and quickly. Otherwise, she might start to realize certain things.

unquiet dark.

[clawandfang]

There is a giant wolf loping along the edges of the Void, a gray-furred beast with a long braided mane and mismatched gold-brown eyes. He sniffs at the frayed edge of the world, baring his teeth in a silent snarl to find it unchanged, then continues on his weekly circuit.

Except this time, Khoriya finds something new. A human woman, curled up and shivering in the darkness. Pathetic. Vulnerable. Helpless. He thinks to leave her be - no good had come of the last time he'd rescued a human from their own hapless foolishness - and yet...

No one is here to see him do otherwise.

"Get up." There is no kindness in his voice, even as Khoriya nudges at her with a cold nose and whiskered muzzle. If she does not obey, he'll nip her sharply in the shoulder, pointed fangs breaking skin.

[poleaxed]

Something not quite human speaks; in the darkness, she almost feels the shape. A monster. Has death finally come? She's long ago stopped expecting that breathless embrace to be kind. (It never quite takes, though.)

A wolf, and wolves don't have a lot of symbolism behind them. A lion creature, maybe, or a serpent, a man holding his own head, these are things she's prepared for. A strange werewolf convinces her she's not going to die. The grim reaper would be at once more alien and more familiar.

She stands, and wipes tears angrily from her eyes. It's a comfort that she hears no pity. She doesn't want pity. She wants the clarifying cut that comes with conflict, all edges sharpened into pain. "What the fuck are you?" Her voice is still wet, wobbly from recent sobbing.

cw: fantasy racism & references to slavery

[clawandfang]

"I am the beast that will make a meal out of you, if you succumb to this place."

It is a bluff, mostly, but one that he expects quick results from. Khoriya has never shied away from eating humans before, has decidedly not gone soft in his time here, speaking with humans, begrudgingly allowing himself to come to know them as something other than mewling prey fit only for the slave pens, an unwelcome reminder of his own mixed mongrel heritage. That he does not choose to devour her now is only out of practicality, no other reason.

She unfolds to her full height, and Khoriya regards the human woman before him with cold eyes - surprised to lift his jaw slightly to meet her hostile gaze. Finally he jerks his chin to the side with a whuff and a swish of tail, indicating the direction she should walk.

"Go on then."

[poleaxed]

She can't let herself be cowed now, after everything. She thought he was some psychopomp, some inhuman thing she didn't need to worry about showing her fear to. But disappointing reality sets in: this is an unreal world, with inhuman inhabitants. He's a monster, but a recognizable one, under all the fur and scars. He tries to intimidate her like any human would.

She flips him off. "What do you want?" She sticks her hand back down just as quickly, shoves it into the pocket of her trousers. Her back is straight, her chest is slightly puffed out-- unconsciously, she takes on the form of a creature on the defense. "If you were gonna eat me, you'd've done it by now."

[clawandfang]

He responds to the rude gesture with a lazy snap of powerful jaws, a casual threat rather than any real attempt to bite off her hand. But some part of him approves of her spirit, the swift change from sobbing wretched creature to this snappish, fighting animal and his tail gives a slow swish, one side to the other.

"What I want is to scout this stretch of forest without your pitiful whimpering drawing in vermin far and wide. The spiders here are much more fond of squirming prey than I am."

One ear swivels back, catching the slight shift in the underbrush, the skitter of many, many jointed legs as Khoriya swings his head back, a black lip curling back in anticipation of the swarm.

"But it is too late for that. If you'd rather stay and be devoured by them, be my guest."

[otherbitches]

He's warm all over, had half a cookie and some of the stew. He's long past giving a shit what the Rubeans spike their food with. It makes you fuck, it makes you do all sorts of shit. He doesn't really care, and with a few festivals under his belt he's willing to play ball... particularly because of the supple leather cuff on his wrist. His eyes stray from the collars lining the booths. Interesting, but not for him, not here.

He's drinking deeply from his mug of hot steaming wine, then screws his face up when he hears a woman speak. Looks to his side and doesn't recognize her. She doesn't look Rubean, not enough at ease, which means...

"Christ. Did you just roll out of the woods? They've got bath houses you know. Hairbrushes too."

Ah— that slid off the tongue a little too easily, it drowned out the: Me too.

[poleaxed]

Insults, insults are easy. Look at this little twerp, short and stocky and oh-so proud of himself. It kindles rage, a familiar comfort. She glares at him. "Oh, shit, there's a beauty contest? That'd explain your getup. Too bad you left your dress at home."

A lesson she learned young: when men say you aren't enough of a woman, claw back at the same wound.

[otherbitches]

There are a lot of ways to play ball. He takes another swig of wine, covers the way his mouth firms up, how his jaw tightens. Fucking new void touched. Jesus Christ.

Good one. Who'd you learn it from? Not whoever taught you to dress.

[ He looks her over. Clearly unimpressed. ] What are you scared of?

[poleaxed]

"Oh, my God, you do not have the street cred to Queer Eye me with the pedo-stache." If they're going to get petty, they can get petty. But the truth bubbles out all the same-- "They're gonna kill us."

[otherbitches]

"Not all of them." Not all of them want to, even if they're all definitely cultists. But hey, you work and eat and and suffer alongside a people enough, the line between Rubean and interloper starts to blur.

But, HEY, what the fuck kind of insult is queer eye? Figuring it out isn't rocket science, makes his lip curl, mouth still flavored with wine and cinnamon.

"If you get off on being a dumb bitch, I can point you to the right demonstration." He's still looking at her like she's stupid. "'Course, considering you're flat as a goddamn board, not sure who's gonna want to team up."

you're all heart | 1

[dead_tongue]

"Hm?" Just a sound, but one of genuine concern. Six-foot-one, willowy, done up in delicate pink ruffles and pale cream leather, Iggy looks at Joan with warm brown eyes. His entire life has shaped him to be a source of comfort and it is a role he takes to easily no matter his surroundings.

"How come? It's okay, sweetie, nobody's gonna hurt you here unless you want them to." His voice is low and pleasant. Reassuring.

[poleaxed]

Joan flinches away from sweetness, kindness, any of the soft emotions she doesn't deserve. Does he think she's weak, that she needs comfort? She can't believe she said that, and feels disgusted with herself. (And him-- he's tall, he's red-headed, he looks like he could be a more delicate and elegant version of one of her awful fucking cousins.)

Her hackles raise. "I don't need your fucking pity."

[dead_tongue]

Iggy raises his eyebrows a little, but he doesn't recoil from the venom.

"Good, because you don't have it," he says mildly. "You have my understanding, because you're clearly new here. A lot of us were, once, and it's a fucking head trip."

He smiles, cheerful and bright. The worst part about the expression is that it's genuine.

"I'm Iggy."

[poleaxed]

She tilts her head to the side, face screwed up in a sneer. "What are you, some kind of shrink? I don't need this right now." That, she thinks, is the truth. "What's your angle?"

[dead_tongue]

"Sex worker, actually," he says cheerfully. "And I'm not even after your money! This is a barter economy, and I'm ridiculously gay."

He gestures around them with one elegant hand. "It's kinda overwhelming, isn't it?"

unquiet dark - 1

[hislittleflower]

The figure captured in web flinches at the sudden movement on the strands, sure in this moment that she's about to meet the sharp mandibles of one of those fucking huge spiders. Her eyes are covered, arms bound up as if she had been attempting to defend herself, legs tangled together and long blonde hair caught in with the mess of web. Peony is a girlish waif of a woman.

But when the feeling of knifelike mandibles doesn't come, she risks a hushed direction; "There's a knife in my left boot. If you cut the web around my hands, I can free myself."

[poleaxed]

Girly and smooth, Joan associates this obvious femininity with weakness. Sexism runs through her parallel to her blood, a lifetime of indoctrination. It's no surprise, she thinks, that this little girl ended up in a web-

But having a knife on her impresses Joan out of its sheer practicality. Maybe she's not that much of a pushover.

Joan gets the knife out, and starts the cut. "How long you been stuck?" How long do they have before the spider gets back?

[hislittleflower]

"I counted over two thousand. At least half of an hour." Sight gone and having to rely on her other senses made it challenging to tell time so it was a rough estimate at best. It takes the entirety of her self-discipline to remain still when there's a knife so close to her skin.

The moment her arms are unbound of web, Peony rushes her hands to her face, ripping the webbing away from her eyes. "Thank you. I wasn't sure anyone would pass this way." She gasps in relief, only taking a moment to take in the sight of her saviour before she starts to rip at the web clasping onto her legs. "We may need to fight our way out. Do you have a blade?" She warned.

[poleaxed]

Only when she has the information does Joan realize how useless it is. Neither of them (clearly) know the time tables on giant fucking spiders. So she saws at the web until she can hand over the knife, and watches the girl struggle her own way out.

"I got fists," Joan says, injecting the words with false confidence. She decides to try and get her hands on a knife, if she gets out of this alive. God, what a stupid way to die.