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

[marcas]

[ What's a witch to him? Isn't a witch the same to everyone?

(Well — not always the same. One coven built an army of monster slaves, another witch went solo after slaughtering her entire family. The possibilities are endless.) ]

You know. [ He gestures with his hands, as if mimicking one of them. ] They have magic. Spells. Potions. Servants.

[ The last word is more of an answer than he intended it to be. ]

[minuteofangle]

I don’t, actually.

[ But he takes the information he’s given and considers it thoughtfully, humming to himself. ]

Well, let’s call magic a big old maybe where I’m from. You a servant, then?

[marcas]

[ Maybe translates to yes, but I don't have proof, and Noth accepts it without argument, because most people are better off that way. Then the Done Goofed face makes a second appearance. He sure is talking too much for someone who's used to keeping to himself back… where he came from. (It doesn't feel right to call any place home.) ]

No…t right now.

[ He's bracing for. Something? ]

[minuteofangle]

Hmm.

[ There are a couple different ways Gabe could take that, some more pointed than others. If he were in a mood, he could go on the offensive, needle the other man until Noth gives him something useful. Something Gabe could sink his teeth into. ]

You don’t have much of a poker face, huh?

[ An educated guess. His tech can’t do much to read facial expressions but Gabe can catch tone just fine. ]

[marcas]

[ Instinct proving Gabe right, Noth's fingers brush over his jaw in reaction, brows drawn together. Is that an insult, a compliment, or a fact for fact's sake? ]

I don't play poker.

[ Another fact. ]

Should I have a poker face?

[minuteofangle]

Probably.

[ Gabe puffs out a breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. He can feel another headache coming on fast and hard. It feels like there are rocks in his skull, weighing him down. ]

Seems like you say more than you mean to. And here I’m not even asking anything weird.

[marcas]

[ Well, he's not wrong. Which is also tragic. ]

Okay.

[ Enter: awkward pause. ]

... Are you hungover?

[minuteofangle]

That does tend to happen when you drink.

[ He puffs out a breath. ]

Yep, I sure am.

[marcas]

You should sit down, then.

[ While Noth gets up, ill-fitting clothes stretching over long limbs and wide shoulders. He looks around to remember where the kitchen area is. ]

I'm going to get some water. [ Recounting the list to himself, counting each item with his fingers: ] Aspirin. Toast. Crackers. Eggs. Fruit...

[ He'll just keep going until someone stops him. ]

[minuteofangle]

Huh.

[ Well, that's not the response he was expecting. Gabe leans on his stick for a moment, cycling his tech. Wondering what the fuck he's supposed to do with this tall motherfucker.

Making friends doesn't seem like a bad bet, to start. ]

That's mighty nice of you. But you don't have to do all that, we just met.

[marcas]

[ It's too late, he's too focused, and there's nothing better to do. Noth will find that they're lacking the majority of the items on the list, so the best he can do is come back with a glass of water and a handful Rubilykskoye's version of crackers. He looks as accomplished as he can be — so not very. ]

There's no aspirin.

[minuteofangle]

[ Gabe just sighs and sits his ass down in the nearest chair, resting his stick against his shoulder. ]

So, I'm gonna take a gander and say this is your job, huh? Doing shit for people? And no, they don't have any aspirin here.

[marcas]

Every job is doing things for people.

[ Very deep. He holds the water and crackers out for Gabe once the stick is on his shoulder. ]

Are you visually impaired?

[ Look at all the words he knows. ]

[minuteofangle]

[ Ah, Gabe thinks, breathing deliberately slow so he won't tense the fuck up. There it is. Because people notice certain things about him when they're in proximity for long enough. They wonder about the stick, and the sunglasses, and the deliberate way he moves, and nothing he does - not a goddamn thing - will ever be enough to hide that. Without his prosthetics, people just draw the inevitable conclusion.

His jaw works. Then he flicks his fingers at Noth. ]

Big words for you, [ he says, very evenly. ] Touch it to my hand.

[ The glass. Gabe refuses to grope out in the air for it. ]

[marcas]

[ He can't tell if he's being roasted. The command takes over the part of him that doesn't know what to do unless he's being useful, though, quickly moving on to place the side of the glass against the joints of Gabe's fingers. Then he lifts it enough for the other man to find the base with his palm. Should be easier to just deposit the food on his other hand.

He'll stand around for a while longer in case there's something else Gabe wants. ]

They're not that big.

[minuteofangle]

[ So it goes. Gabe closes his hand around the glass and drinks slow, trying to order his thoughts. He’s been in a mood lately, swinging violently between extremes. Unable to settle unless something or someone puts him down. There’s an inevitable ending to that nonsense, and not a good one.

He tilts his head back. Miming like he’s watching Noth as he takes the crackers, too. ]

There’s a mark on you now. Like the one on my neck. You know what it is?

[marcas]

A mark.

[ He doesn't like that very much. He'll like it even less whenever he gets a chance to look in the mirror and lean in close enough to spot the inverted triangle on his iris, or when someone points out that said eye is having a little rave party.

Noth hasn't tried the network yet, though, so he's safe(?) for now. ]

No. Who gave it to you? Does everybody have one?

[minuteofangle]

Wasn’t really clear on how it happens. But everyone’s got one. [ He makes a face. ] I haven’t got it in me to be subtle right now, so you’re just gonna have to roll with this: the shape’ll show what kinda monster you’re gonna turn into if you don’t fuck or get violent enough.

[marcas]

[ The kind of monster you're gonna turn into. He's flooded with memories of the ritual; transforming for the first time; his horror when Agate branded him as her Nithing and ordered the beast to commit any atrocity that happened to cross her mind; the brothers that captured and threw him into a prison for being a dead witch's monster.

His heart is beating faster, his chest suddenly feels tight. He didn't have a visible 'shape'. Agate never mentioned that he was a part of any 'kind'. The Bestiary monks only needed to know where to lock him up.

The rest will land eventually. ]

Are you— [ He stops, scared. And hopeful. ] Are you a Nithing.

[minuteofangle]

[ Gabe tilts his head, lowering the glass. There’s a whole lot underneath the tone that Noth takes, the least of which is something Gabe’s going to call hopeful. The desire for recognition, searching for familiar shapes. He almost regrets having to deny it. ]

Got no idea what that is, [ Gabe replies frankly. ] I’m just me.

[marcas]

[ The tension in his shoulders comes loose. It's mostly relief. Then come all the tardy questions rushing back into his mind, but only after Noth sits down. ]

Can you explain.

[ Which part? ]

Everything you said.

[minuteofangle]

[ Gabe’s eyebrows lift. He can feel a headache busking inside his skull, centered between his empty eye sockets. Pulsing like a drum.

He exhales and pinches the bridge of his nose. ]

Pick one and we’ll go from there.

[marcas]

[ He tries to recall what Gabe said, decides that'll be the order of his questions. ]

Who put the shape there?

[minuteofangle]

That part’s not really clear to me, [ Gabe replies frankly. He could lie, but there’s really no point to that. He taps two fingers to the mark on the side of his neck. ] This one’s mine. Locals call it diabel. I woke up here bare ass naked in the woods with that inked on me. Doesn’t come off, by the way.

[marcas]

[ Diabel. Mental note: Gabe's monster is a (the?) devil.

(He almost asks if there was another man on a tree when he got here.) ]

What are the other monsters.