SUMMER TEST DRIVE MEME

[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 coming 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: nudity, D/S mechanics, public sex, aphro, death, missing persons.

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 emerging from a temporary retreat from the wintry weather. 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, is running actively again as the weather warms back up from the recent snowstorm.

As you explore, 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, and the weather isn't quite amenable to your lack of.

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. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings — bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Anyone who's already appeared in the village just as you did today lives here. Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, and some scorch marks still linger from a recent fire, and some furniture is still lying around in splinters.

Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions.

finding roommates

Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.

Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.

writer's block?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!

THE FESTIVAL OF SUMMERTIDE

Summer is in full swing, which means it's time to take advantage of the warm weather! Around the town, various games are being played, some sport-based and some more concerned with creativity, problem-solving, sex, or 'fun'. Each round begins with a prayer to the Duchess. Not bowing your head in prayer may get you a few stares from locals, or worse-- opponents may be extra motivated to defeat someone so disrespectful to her Grace.

Each Thursday, buildings are festooned with wreathes of wildflowers, tables are laden with food and drink, and everyone is given colored sashes to wear over their clothes. Festival goers are not allowed to enter the main events unless they wear a sash, and to get a sash they must reveal their curse marks. Those marked with the curse of Wilk receive blue sashes, Diabel get red, Skala receive green and Niez are as ever adorned with grey.

FAQ: CURSE MARKS

Summertide, the locals are eager to explain, is a festival about adapting to the needs of others, and accepting things as they are. What perhaps isn't explained nearly so well is the expectations placed upon festival goers. Each event has a goal to be achieved, balanced on the point of competition or participation.

Tables overflow with refreshments, especially drinks and chilled fruit to cool the summer heat. Rubeans traditionally spice their foods with aphrodisiacs, something that is so culturally normal to them that they don't feel the need to mention it.

An outdoor feast starts the festivities, with commanders, who are expected to give orders, and followers, who must follow the whims of commanders, whatever they decree. Who commands and who follows is decided by the curse-marked sash participants wear. But there's a twist-- every three hours, a horn blows, and the roles switch at random; commanders become followers and vice versa. Many festival-goers, now in a position of command, are eager to get petty revenge on the followers now at their mercy.

Fencing! For health reasons, any cut must be properly cleaned, and kept free of contaminants; for this reason, fencers are expected to compete fully naked. Otherwise, you might get some cloth in your cuts!

Wrestling! Wrestlers are well-oiled for the matches, making it hard to keep your grip on a slippery opponent. The winner of the match is declared when they have their opponent pinned... and at that point, the winner can do anything they like to the loser until they can get away, if they even want to.

A game going on throughout the town, regardless of whether someone consents to participation, is something the locals call Lock and Key. The rules are explained after you are grabbed and tied by your wrist (or ankle, whatever was available) to someone else: the locked binding tying you two together is blessed to be unbreakable until you each draw one another's blood... or find the key, stashed somewhere in the town. Good luck!

Anyone who refuses to play along will be ejected from the festivities, and made to run through the crowd while being whipped with thin wooden sticks.

Throughout all of this, some of the implementation of these games may occasionally come across as either overly cruel or overly kind. The common people of Rubilykskoye are of two minds when it comes to the treatment of newcomers: some think you are beneficent, sent to fix their problems and free them of your woes. These people, called Blackguards, will do their best to make sure your participation in the games is not marred by cheating, excessive violence, or pain. But others, called the Zlatniki, think little of the outsiders coming into their lands, and will do their best to twist their native traditions toward cruelty and vindictive unfairness when it comes to the Void-touched.

writer's block?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try participating in events, having your characters go against opponents, be drafted into the games against their will, or watching others perform!

NIGHT OF THE HUNTSMEN

Rumor moves through town quickly: two nights ago, a hunting party went out into the wood, and no one has seen them since. Anyone who wants to prove their worth to the community is encouraged to join the search parties going out to look for them; in Rubilykskoye, those who provide food for the community are highly prized, especially when they brave the woods to do so.

You see, the woods aren't entirely safe. Near the town, it's nothing to be alarmed by, and of course the search parties find nothing there. They must delve deeper, and that's where you end up. 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.


Many peel off, going back to the town proper. The searchers become fewer and fewer. Maybe some of them are going back home, but maybe they're getting lost. Eventually, you walk around a large tree, and you're alone. It's just you and 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?

Yet the further you go, the more convinced you become that the missing hunters are near by. You're sure you can hear them on the wind, their voices calling out between the trees. Did you just see something out of the corner of your eye? You have to find them. You have to make all this darkness worth it.

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! Feel free to find the bodies of the missing hunting party-- or hallucinate that you did.

RELEASE YOUR INNER BEAST

Something's wrong here.

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

Early one morning, alarm bells are rung. The people of Rubilykskoye are quick to explain while boarding up their windows and locking their doors: The Szymanskiy brothers have all transformed! Their inner beasts - duchozweirz, the natives call it - take the form of creeping, skeletal horrors. The beasts hunt and to kill, ripping their prey apart, but that's not all they can do.

Those who are lucky enough to escape one of the Szymanskiy triplets will leave feeling... changed. The psychic residue these monsters give off cause the afflicted to seek out danger with reckless abandon; they will run toward the monster, into fights, and refuse safety when offered. They must be restrained in a secure location to wait for the pheromones to wear off.

(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]

[ There is no such sound, but Noth swears he hears the slice loud in his head, like someone sucking in air through their teeth. That someone is mocking him, the same way they falsely raised the alarm when a Rubean forcibly invited him and Gabe to participate in this game. His initial reaction feels dumber now, given how short-lived the ordeal was.

The bindings fall off. His arm doesn't feel like it's made of stone anymore. It's hot, though. And there's blood. Agate would have hated to let his blood go to waste. ]

It worked.

[ It worked. Noth is smiling at his own gash. If only things were this easy before. ]

It worked.

[ Oh. ]

Your arm. [ Noth's gray sash is going to get stained red. He's determined to dab the blood around Gabe's wound. ] I'll get water. Where is Magda.

[minuteofangle]

It's fine, Noth.

[ Gabe pulls back, waving it off. It's one cut among many. It'll heal. In time, it probably won't even leave a scar. And it's far from the worst bullshit the locals have pulled. On balance, it barely even qualifies as pain. ]

You okay, man?

[marcas]

[ With his offer rejected, Noth replaces the sash. Two women rush by them, tied together, but they're giggling, chasing down the prankster that threw their bindings on them. Playing the game, as Noth and Gabe probably should have. It takes him a moment to stare at the ones they dropped before he gains the courage to pick them up. ]

I am. It hurts a little. But it's fine. Thank you.

[ If only things were this easy before. If only people were as quick and practical as Gabe back then. ]

I wonder if there really is a key.

[minuteofangle]

Probably somewhere. Just be happy it didn't make us stupid horny.

[ Though it still might, considering. Gabe sighs. ]

You want a beer? Or whatever you drink?

[marcas]

[ It takes him a moment to interpret what Gabe says as humor. Smile: engage. ]

Yeah.

[ Though he would be glad regardless. He still doesn't want — that. Staring down at the blood on his own arm, he decides he can't bring himself to stain his sash after all. Not if it's his own wound. It'd be ruining a gift for a not good enough reason. ]

I'll drink beer.

[minuteofangle]

Okay. Beer it is.

[ Gabe claps his hands together. ]

C’mon, lead away.

[marcas]

[ The smile has a little more confidence now; he'll grab something to clean his arm when he finds a volunteer to take the bindings and hand out items that festival goers might require. There's enough magic going around that he can use to cheat and accelerate the healing process, if only so people don't have to worry about a cut or feel compelled to ask who did it to him. As for Gabe, ah. He'll take responsibility for that.

They head over to a table next, where people aren't playing the other game. That one Noth was a little better at, but switching between ordering and following is too inconvenient if he wants to have a normal conversation. He'll bring both beers to Gabe's chosen seat. ]

Have you played that game before—?

[minuteofangle]

[ Sometimes Gabe gets twitchy in crowds. Can't stand the noise, starts to hate other people for existing, for the noise of their breathing. And sometimes he cannot stand himself for the same and needs the pomp and circumstance, all that noise as a distraction from his own thoughts.

Truthfully, he can't decide where he swings right now. He strikes an uneasy balance in the middle and just holds his hand out for the beer, knocking it back wth a groan. ]

Not that one. Others. Gotta listen to the instructions before they get weird and kinky.

[marcas]

[ Oh. He almost forgot how comfortable Fifty The Tree Top Drinker is with it. Noth will take some more time, sat down next to him, starting with a sip that turns into a slightly more empathic gulp. ]

And you. Always have a knife with you.

[ Are these two things related, perhaps. ]

[minuteofangle]

[ Gabe’s eyebrows just go up. ]

You don’t?

[marcas]

[ Promptly, and simply, ]

No.

[ It'd be illegal to do that back home.

Where he isn't anymore.

Hm. ]

Should I.

[minuteofangle]

Probably. The locals like to lay hands.

[ He takes another long swig. Exhaling. ]

Sometimes it's just a game, you know, some bullshit. Haha, everyone laughs, it's all good at the end. And sometimes it's not. Better you've got a knife if it's not.

[marcas]

[ He thinks about it for a moment. Struggling with the thought. He's already been touched a few times, and maybe he was lucky that people backed off when he asked them too. Might have something to do with his height and build, but that won't be a deterrent forever.

Another drink. ]

Where did you get yours.

[minuteofangle]

Traded one of the hunters for it.

[ Gabe lifts his bottle with a sigh. ]

You don't have to give them sex. They'll ask for it, but you don't have to.

[marcas]

I know.

[ It was the case back home, though people were nowhere near as fervent about it. The food here sometimes makes him think it's a good idea, but when the time comes it just — doesn't feel correct. The void-touched are a lot easier to deal with. More understanding.

Like Gabe. ]

I haven't done anything I didn't want to.

[ Highly subjective, and very unreliable when it's coming out of Noth's mouth. His baseline is a little tragic. ]

Are you worried about me, Fifty?

[minuteofangle]

[ Gabe's mouth just twitches. Not a smile. ]

Nah, [ he lies. He worries about Noth a lot, actually. But Noth's not one of his, just a stranger who's too goddamn nice for his own good. ] Just making conversation.

[marcas]

Okay.

[ That’s Gabe’s answer, so Noth accepts it. ]

Does your arm hurt.

[minuteofangle]

Nah. Just a cut.

[ He's mostly forgotten it, truthfully. ]

Sometimes you have to bleed a little to get out of things around here.

[marcas]

Many people don't like to bleed.

[ It upsets them, and Noth understands why. Who would want to seek out pain when their body rejects it?

Also many people, he's learning. ]

So I try not to do it. But it's necessary, here.

[minuteofangle]

Shit just happens sometimes.

[ Gabe tilts his head. He could leave it be, he knows. But: ]

Which part wigged you out earlier?

[marcas]

[ Noth stops when he catches himself fidgeting. It's best to busy his hands with the drink before he clarifies. ]

When we were playing the game?

[ It hardly felt like a game, it certainly didn't feel like they were playing. It's what others are calling it, is all. ]

[minuteofangle]

[ Gabe inclines his head slightly. He can't make eye contact anymore, but he still mimes it. ]

Something did.

[marcas]

[ His next breath feels like it's weighing down chest, heavy when he exhales. No one needs to see him to guess his silence is avoidant, but the answer is inevitable. He likes Gabe. He makes Noth feel like he's looking out for him, so it wouldn't be right to lie. Talking about it is the hard part. All the words are tangled and coiled like a chain. ]

There are people who want to lock me away. Where I came from.

I thought they found me. But it was a game. But I couldn't stop thinking about it.

[ And then there was Gabe's voice. ]

You fixed my thoughts.

[minuteofangle]

[ Ah, Gabe thinks, and he sits with that for a long moment. Playing the words over, considering their meaning from different angles. He wishes this shit surprised him, but it doesn't. People do evil things to each other in every world he's ever heard of, or visited, or thought about. He thinks maybe that's just human nature at this point. An inevitability. ]

Sometimes your brain thinks something bad's gonna happen. Thinks it hard enough that your body starts to get the message, too. I could hear it in your voice.

[ He says it as gently as he can. ]

I just gave you something to focus on. You brought yourself back.

[marcas]

[ Facing Gabe's silence, Noth's assumption is that he's either said something wrong or talked about it for too long. The pause is filled with him drinking, now halfway finished with it, too early to consider getting another one yet.

And then there's Gabe's voice, again. Noth watches him attentively, nods to himself. Hums so Gabe can hear the acknowledgment. ]

Mhm.

[ Squeezing the cup. ]

Does your body do the same.