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

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."

[poleaxed]

It, he, whatever, speaks a language she can understand. Threat and attack are weight and counterweight. Something about the promise of hurt in those jaws has her interest. She walks with him.

"You were hunting." She's never seen something like this. There's nothing about wolves and men in her understanding of the universe, but the universe is strange, and has fooled her before. She rolled with the punches then, and she will again, by God. "You're a werewolf? Why don't you attack me?"

Is her beating, bloody heart not good enough?

[clawandfang]

"Hmph. I am no werewolf." He has been asked this before, and finds it as amusing as it is somewhat offensive. "If you mean some half-transformed human wearing a wolf's skin. And no wolf either, but a worg, a Moon-blessed beast destined for dominion"

Said matter-of-factly, with no particular pride behind the declaration. Since she finally seems agreeable enough to leaving this damned place, Khoriya adjusts his stride to allow for a long-legged human to keep up... at a fast jog.

"Though even baseborn wolves know better than to attack a human without a pack or provocation. You lot are so bloodthirsty... and your meat is not worth the hassle." Said with the faintest trace of amusement in that growling voice as he turns his head to give a deep sniff in her direction - a respectful distance away, not shoving his muzzle into her collar or inviting the fist he suspects she will not hesitate to use. "And you. What are you doing out at the edges of the Void without a blade in sight?"

[poleaxed]

She decides that the wolfman is safe, precisely because he obviously isn't. Inhuman, the rules of her world do not apply to him. Until he actually ponies up and bites her, none of his threats matter. The freedom to do what she likes, then, with such an enticing threat at the end, is an enticing, heady thing.

She jogs along.

"Maybe I'm hunting, too," she lies. She showed up here with no guns, and she knows nothing of traps and lures. "Haven't you seen the spiders, man? Do you eat them?"

What does he eat; what is he; what can he do? The more she thinks of him, the less she has to focus on her own weakness.

[clawandfang]

The bald-faced lie prompts a distinct roll of eyes - quite a sight on Khoriya's wolfish face, but there is something about her brazen fearlessness that he does not despise. They will not speak of how he found her, curled up and weeping.

"Best grow fangs and claws of your own before going hunting again, little whelp." There is nothing little about her, that's just how Khoriya condescends to humans in general. "The spiders and I keep a wide berth of one another - they fear me and I recognize their strength in numbers." Which does not, to be clear, mean that he fears them.

"Just as you should seek strength of numbers among your own, back in the township. I assume you are human, at least. You smell human enough. Find yourself a blade. And do not eat the spiders."

That's all the Big Wolf Life Advice he's got in him.

[poleaxed]

He's a monstrous creature, some kind of intense demon of speed and violence. She doesn't have to worry about being judged on any terms she can understand or care about; she's already failed, and there's some freedom in that. By the same token, he's some inhuman monster made to hurt. The vitality of this potential is enticing. He could attack her at any moment. By even talking to him, she is being very brave.

"Maybe I'm a lone wolf." Funny joke, ha ha. "If you're not hunting spiders, what are you looking for, out here."

[clawandfang]

Ha ha indeed. The massive canine head swings Joan's way and he blows a sharp, amused boof of hot air and doggy breath in her direction. It is easier to be emotive in his four legged form, with no other onlookers. If she ever accused him of being helpful or playful in any way, Khoriya would simply deny it.

"I am mapping out the edges of the world, where the forest fades to Void. To see if there have been any changes since my last expedition." A wolfish shrug, though there's a measure of irritation in his voice as he adds: "No such luck."

[poleaxed]

"Huh." There's really no response to that, except- "Why? What good'll it do?"

[clawandfang]

Wow, asking the hard questions today, Joan! Khoriya stiffens ever so slightly, unused to being pressed so bluntly.

"There is very little that we understand about the Void - how it presses in, cutting us off from the rest of the world. When it recedes to reveal new territories, and why. I choose to make it my concern."

And it keeps him busy, another way to fill the day for a wolf who'd once handled nearly all of the logistical and practical considerations for an army on the march. Though Khoriya doesn't like to think of anything he does as make-work.

"And because sometimes I find insolent pups lost in the dark." Even Khoriya, a poor judge of human ages, can tell that she's far too old to be considered a pup. But there's something about her feckless and inquisitive questioning that reminds him of one. In the near distance, the walls of the township loom just past the treeline. He points with his nose, and a flick of bushy tail.

"There. You will find safety."

[poleaxed]

She looks up (up, up) at him and sneers, her canines briefly on display. She was once told that her 'spirit animal' was a goat, because she was so stubborn; she always wanted to believe it was something more wild and free.

She doesn't want to leave yet.

"Did you call me a pup? Like a puppy?"

[clawandfang]

"Indeed."

Answered in a toneless growl, and the look he levels at her bared teeth is flat with condescension. What's she gonna do about it?

[poleaxed]

For a moment, she remembers men, real men, human men, the ones who find her ugly and off-putting; she remembers the way they become uncomfortable when she talks back; she remembers how much more uncomfortable they become when she flirts with the.

Her grin is too sharp for the words coming out of it to be genuine. "Are you coming on to me?"

[clawandfang]

Uncomfortable? Maybe. Baffled? Definitely! Her retort earns Joan a deeply confused flattening of ears.

"What?" Now Joan gets a wolfish squint. "Is this some sort of joke?"

It is, right? Not that... Khoriya hasn't done his share of bedding down with humans and various other flat-faced races in his time here, but. Out of necessity, and nothing else. Certainly he could never be accused of 'coming onto anyone' at any point.

[poleaxed]

Joan feels suddenly powerful, elevated past the one foot difference between them. She has him on the backfoot, it feels like. She's made him uncomfortable. The only way to go is to keep going. "Do you even fuck people? I mean people-looking people. Humans."

She has not watched enough Star Trek for this conversation.