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TEST DRIVE MEME 005
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ 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
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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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!)
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
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?
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?
tw: eye stuff.
Her thumbs move off his throat, and her hands move up, beginning to jam her thumbs into the darkness where his eyes should be.
tw: eye stuff, biting
Prior, who’d go for the obvious weakness just like this woman does. It sends pulsing, starburst aches through his skull: a curl of revulsion hot in his chest as she forgets his throat and goes straight for the place his eyes used to sit.
And in honor of his baby sister, Gabe leans forward and bites the goddamn hand that’s going for him.
no subject
Quentin drops the bag he's carrying (clothes, boots, scarves for folks just dropped) and bolts for them, hops and minnows around trees with singular focus. If the noise wasn't warning enough, he calls out ahead of time: "Heyheyhey! Enough!" Neither face strikes him as familiar; he doesn't know what kind of reaction he's going to get putting his hands on either of them, but hey--at least he's in full winter gear, a little bit shielded if they want to turn their teeth on him. His forearm shoves against Gabe's chest, open gloved palm against Joan's bare sternum, exposed fingertips fitting between her ribs. "Let go! Back the fuck up, let go!"
no subject
The calf-eyed man, who's now seen her naked in the dirt, peels back her eyeless attacker. Joan knows a good turn when she sees one, and slithers out from underneath the body atop her. "He's a fucking monster."
It's not her fault. None of this is her fault.
no subject
Could've, should've, would've. Too late now.
And then, of course - of course - his tech glitches out. Leaving him with nothing at all.
Gabe bares his teeth, angling his face toward them. He can't hide the horror of his goddamn eyes, so he doesn't try. And he doesn't waste time trying to grope around on the ground for the sunglasses: it won't matter. "Oh, fuck you. That's what you fucking get when you swing at somebody."
no subject
"--look. Look, assholes, the good news is we're all monsters. Trying to kill each other probably just bought you both a couple more days of humanity. Christ. Lady, I've got--" He points roughly towards the direction he came from. "--go get my bag. Start with the clothes, we'll worry about the bite later."
no subject
"Shut the fuck up. Nobody cares about your sob story." She spits in the direction of her former attacker.
Only when the other man, the peaceful man, mentions her bite does she remember it. Raw and wounded, prickling with blood, and she can't touch it or she'll reveal her shame again. She walks, shoulders back and spine straight, to the pack, refusing to be cowed. Only one eyes are turned from her does she dig for clothes like the filthy animal she knows she is.
no subject
How's that for irony?
"You're flat as a goddamn board," he sneers, throwing out an attack so she'll get pissed again, start something, he doesn't fucking care. Anything that shifts the energy away from the fact he's going to have to grope around for his stick in a minute, for the glasses.
He tries it subtly, shifting his boots through the snow to try and bump up against it.
no subject
That sound is him pushing the walking stick closer to Gabe's wandering fingers. He doesn't realize glasses are missing.
In the bag on the ground about thirty feet off, near a rough-beaten path that she might have found if she decided to keep walking instead of taking a swing, there are a couple of loose shirts and roughmade trousers. It's all more the type of thing someone would wear around the house, handmade and a little lumpy, big enough for most anyone he might find out here. It's more about modesty, but there's a wool blanket tangled between pieces of clothing.
no subject
She ignores the blanket. It feels desperate, even as her body aches with cold.
Vindication will warm her. She refuses to acknowledge any fault she may have had-- she knows she hit the first blow, but who would him, when he was found on top of a naked woman, trying to kill her? Being a woman is, in this rare instance, an advantage; she will use it as such. "Do you attack everybody you come across, or d'you wait for them to be fucking nude? Pervert."
no subject
Not good. Better to go on the offensive.
He hisses at the noise, cocking his head to try and pinpoint that shit - but it's just the man pressing the stick closer.
He snatches it up before it can be taken away from him. Guard yourself, motherfucker, he can hear the instructors jeering. Or they'll get your ass and you'll deserve what they do. The glasses are gone, lost in the scuffle, and that'll be a humiliation he just has to bear now because he refuses to get down on his knees and grope around for them. Not in front of the enemy.
"You're not my type," he shoots back. There are other implications to that moment, the fact he was on top of her and she was naked: he doesn't want to go there. "And I really hope that shit gets infected."
The human mouth is a filthy thing. Bites so rarely heal how they ought to. And by God, if that's the only victory he can snatch from this moment, Gabe will fucking take it.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Interesting.
He taps the stick on the ground, doing a slow sweep to try and find the goddamn glasses. But he listens, too. If they lunge for him, he'll make them regret it.
"You the welcome wagon, or something?"
no subject
"New people tend to come out of the Void in waves. A couple weeks every few months...more people show up out here. We try to keep an eye out, especially when it's this cold." A long glance back at Gabe. "When did you get here? You found the boarding house and everything?"
(The idea of the boarding house sparks a mumbled aside to Joan, assuring, "There's a donation bin there, you'll probably find a few things that fit you a little better. Something over nothing for now, but...")
no subject
She will, but not yet.
(The thing is, he's weak. She knows he is, she can see it in his eyes, the way he works himself up about her, about them, about caring for others and working as an apprentice. He's weak. She doesn't have to waste her venom on him. He isn't a threat. This is what she tells herself.)
So she takes the blanket, and his advice. It is cold, and she is dirty; the blanket fixes none of that, but hides the evidence. Her shiver, for starter, the way her lip and jaw twitch. "I've had worse than this prick," she says, to save her pride. "We'll all go back together. I won't let him fucking assault you, and you can call the police or whatever."
There, now, she's in charge.
no subject
The reaction he gets is variations on the same. Horror, pity, revulsion. He knows they look a horror. Knows, too, that people think they can play him because of it.
Sometimes they can. But he makes them pay every time. And his tech is going to say a secret as long as it possibly can.
"You're the one who swung first," he points out snidely. She, his nameless enemy, who Gabe hopes dearly will get frostbite on her tits. "Ain't no police here."
That part was explained. That part he heard just fine, even if he's still wrapping his head around the whole sex cult nonsense.
no subject
His gaze sticks back on the third party, though. Hadn't seen the glasses before, and he wonders where they were picked up now. How he found them. Who knows--you lose one sense, you're supposed to balance out all the rest, right? "...No police." He agrees eventually, which naturally prompts the elaboration, "We take care of each other. Discipline and watch each other. If one of you died out here, the other would have had to make it up--especially with no one to bring you back to life."
no subject
Joan, who doesn't have enough tit to get frostbitten on.
"If you don't got police, what happens when people get murdered?"
no subject
Too late to get out of it. He tightens his grip on the stick, brows furrowed. “Bring back to life?” he replies softly.
He doesn’t offer a name.
lemme cook up a lil ff taggy....
It's a decent opening, actually, to a walkthrough of the place. If Joan and Gabe keep a reasonable enough distance between each other, Quentin can talk them through the impermanence of death and the community litigation around it. Crimes of the head and heart lead nicely into the question of monsters, at which point he shows his curse mark (niez, nested in between the bones of his right forearm) and conscientiously doesn't demonstrate the telepathy involved. He explains the Void-touched, yanked from hundreds of different dimensions to be trapped here, searching for the best way to survive and the best way to get out.
He explains that, for reasons he doesn't have the time (or heart) to spell out, they need to be careful. "We don't all get along," Is the sweet, stern button he puts on it as they approach the massive wall that separates Rubilykskoye from the woods outside, "but we're all in this together. We have to protect each other. All the time, inside these walls and out.
"So consider cooling it on the scratching and clawing. I dunno."
no subject
It bothers her, so she ignores it.
To Quentin, she says, "so you were on a team sport in high school."
no subject
Boggles the mind, don’t it?
So, he tucks the information away. He commits it to memory.
Then, very evenly:
“You got a real clinic around here or is it bullshit and leeches?”
no subject
"If you need first aid, you can go there, or you can find me at the apothecary. Or call me. I've got a little experience. Like now--" Facing ahead, he nods towards a small building with moderate traffic and open doors: the clinic. "--I'll get your bite cleaned up, Joan. You can meet the staff, but I've already got you."