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Entry tags:
SUMMER TEST DRIVE MEME
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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
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?
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?
no subject
And the worst part is, if he had to choose between his sworn brothers, between who lived and who died...
The very worst part is Xichen knows exactly who he would choose.
Even after everything, he's not sure he'd hesitate.
"I'm glad he didn't."
no subject
It's the direct acknowledgement of a dark truth. And hearing it mirrored back towards him strangles the remaining irrational hope he'd still held out, for their Da-ge to love him again. Jin Guangyao exhales softly and closes his eyes, shocked by the depth of his own furious despair. He's known this himself for years; what difference does it really make, hearing Lan Xichen agree with him, out loud?
(It makes all the difference in the world. He just cannot unpack all the reasons why.)
He forces a smile and says, "As am I." When he opens his eyes again, there's a bit of wetness at his lash line, but he stubbornly ignores it, clears his throat and reaches for his composure. "Well, now Er-ge knows what I remember. What is the last thing Er-ge remembers?" Time to deflect and redirect so he can pull himself together.
no subject
He has yet to take even a sip - not because he doubts the safety of the drink. But the thought of consuming anything right now makes his stomach turn.
Xichen considers asking A-Yao if he really wants the answer to that question. But he also cannot simply say there is no more need for lies and then turn around and keep things from A-Yao.
Then again, how fair is it to dump these truths on the shoulders of a (relatively) innocent man...? Da-ge yet lives, and all of Jin Guangyao's darkest deeds are well ahead of him.
He cannot blame A-Yao for what he has not yet done. Or may not do at all! How writ in stone is the future, truly...?
How fair is it that A-Yao unwittingly keep his future killer in the warmth and safety of his abode...?
Xichen spends a long, long time turning this questions over in his head. When he finally comes to some conclusion, his voice sounds miles off.
"This one entered seclusion nearly three years ago," he says. "However, this one would caution A-Yao about asking further questions, unless he is certain he wants the answers. I will not lie, but it would be wrong to lay such burdens on you unbidden."
no subject
("It takes more than dead men to fool me," Lan Xichen had said. Lan Xichen had said--)
"Don't." His whisper is little more than a breath of air. He shakes his head once, tight and controlled. "Don't tell me. Er-ge, your face tells me enough to be afraid of what I might hear."
no subject
His touch doesn't linger - he doesn't dare, he has no right to reach for the other man - but his fingers curl, as if to hold that precious warmth, the reminder that A-Yao is alive and well, in the palm of his hand.
"This one will say nothing on the matter then, until A-yao asks him to."
I missed you, he thinks desperately, and for a moment, Xichen looks ready to fall apart.
And then, impossibly, he rallies the last of his strength and manages to muster some veneer of his usual serene dignity. His exhaustion is still apparent, but he will not lay this at Jin Guangyao's feet until the other man is ready.
He finally takes a sip from the cup.
"...It's good," he says shakily.
no subject
"Thank you." That veneer of genteel serenity renders Lan Xichen beautiful in the same way a dead bloom preserved by a snap frost in the spring is beautiful. He looks like a ghost of himself, and Jin Guangyao finds it difficult to look at him. Or to look away from him.
The compliment about the tea, at least, puts a faint smile at the corners of his lips. He dips his head slightly and says, "I will convey your compliments to Ningguang-guniang." It's as he's straightening his head that he remembers, that he realizes--
Ah. He draws in a careful breath. "Er-ge, there are other important matters we must speak of. About the Void, about," and here he self-consciously flicks his gaze up to Lan Xichen's again, and then away, "about my time here."
no subject
He almost begs his friend to spare him a little longer if it can wait.
But he stops himself because he has been spared too many painful truths before, and look how that all turned out.
He can't be kept in the dark forever.
About my time here.
His head shoots up, a worried crease between his brow.
"A-Yao? Has something happened? Are you alright?"
no subject
(It's sincere enough; however, given the subject they were just discussing, calling it warm would be a stretch.)
"I am fine." He's fine now, anyway. "Please, Er-ge," he goes on, reaches out to touch his arm again, "be at ease."
Where to even begin? He purses his lips, silent for a thoughtful second or two. Then: "Have you found your curse mark on your body, since your arrival? Is it like mine?" Deftly, he rolls up the sleeve of his sword hand to reveal the black wilk mark spidering up the inside of his wrist.
(The location of that mark doesn't have any significance to Jin Guangyao himself. It probably will for Lan Xichen.)
no subject
There is a tightness in Xichen's throat as he stares down at A-Yao's sword arm; still intact, still lovely and pristine as ever.
He runs his finger over the mark, just to feel that pulse of life under his friend's skin once more. It grounds him, warms him, settles some of his nerves.
"Mine was not too hard to locate," he says, pushing aside his curtain of hair to reveal the skala mark on his forehead. "Though I haven't had an opportunity to ask many follow-up questions. The hunters -"
He hangs his head, and withdraws his hand, letting it settle in his lap.
"I suppose there is nothing that can be done about it now."
no subject
Gently, but with certainty, he says of the hunters, "They will be recovered by the Duchess's spiders, in time," gently squeezes his hand on Lan Xichen's forearm one more time, and then withdraws his touch. His gaze lingers on the location of that skala mark, and it is so easy to picture the Lan forehead ribbon wound there instead.
"The curse marks." He shifts his wrist, drawing his sleeve back across the mark to hide it from view again. "Naturally, they indicate that we are cursed, us and the Rubeans alike. Each month, we must take steps to..." Heaven and hell, this is difficult. Jin Guangyao makes a delicate gesture with one hand. "...sate the demands of the curse, or risk transforming into the very creatures you and I were tasked with eradicating in the jianghu, as cultivators." So far, so good, right?
no subject
He watches the other man's face now, reads the discomfort in his features, and Xichen's worried furrow makes a return.
"A-Yao," and his tone is plaintive and gentle all the same, "what are you not telling me...?"
no subject
He breaths out and steadies himself. "You must sate these demands--zadza, is what the Rubeans call it--every month through violence, or..." His words taper off, and he raises his eyebrows deliberately. "Through intimacy."
no subject
There are The Rules, of course. The Wall of Discipline looms over Xichen even so far from home. But he has been known to bend or break the rules when he deemed it necessary. There are many, many rules Xichen would break for A-Yao, had the other man only ever asked.
(Not anymore, of course. He has no right to even think of his friend in such a way when he betrayed so, so much.)
"I imagine by violence, sparring alone would be insufficient. And by intimacy, A-Yao does not mean just a hug or holding hands."
There are other implications there too, ones Xichen knows if he dwells on for any length of time, he may crumble into dust.
Maybe...
Maybe being some beast and disappearing into the wilds would be easier.
no subject
The other implications hang heavy in the unspoken words he doesn't share, in the cautious way he eventually risks meeting Lan Xichen's eyes. It's rather obvious, of course; Jin Guangyao sits before Lan Xichen, hale and healthy, not sporting any evidence of monstrous transformation. The home around them is one that he has clearly made himself comfortable in over the last several months. (There are some personal effects around this guest bedroom, too; a woman's comb on a vanity by the window; a man's coat that is far too long for Jin Guangyao's slight frame.)
He studies Lan Xichen's expression carefully. Gently, he offers, "Er-ge may ask me any questions that he wishes."
no subject
A lover. Or lovers.
Xichen shutters his expression, hating that the feeling that first crawls up from his all-consuming numbness is irrational jealousy. He forces it back down because he cannot fault A-Yao for surviving, or thriving. Isn't the latter what he always wanted most for the other man...?
A-Yao has had to manage on his own, and as ever, exceeds all expectations and built a life here.
Xichen cannot help but feel like an intruder; his friend's killer, sitting in his home.
"How often must one partake in either act...? And to what extent?"
If he can get by on killing dangerous monsters in the woods, it would be little more than business as usual.
no subject
(That this place might finally grant them the freedom to explore something they have both wanted for years cannot make up for the many, many obstacles it has introduced instead.)
"There is some literature about it, which may be more helpful than anything this humble one might say, at the library. Perhaps you should visit." He tries to offer the option out with a soft smile, and the warmth in his expression is sincere, but it fades the longer he watches Lan Xichen's expression.
A moment's hesitation, before he summons the courage he has acquired for himself during his time here, and reaches out a hand to very gently touch Lan Xichen's wrist. "Er-ge, I can help you, if you will let me." It doesn't take an immortal sage to figure out he's not talking about directions to the library.
no subject
He cannot help but cover Jin Guangyao's hand with his own, running his long, gentle fingers over unmarred, intact knuckles, marveling at the pulse of life and thrum of spiritual energy under his fingertips.
So lost in thought is he, Jin Guangyao's offer takes a moment to register.
When it does, Xichen's head shoots up and for a moment, he looks as though he might accept.
(It would be so easy to say yes, to reach out for the person he's wanted for twenty years.
And he knows how truly awful it will be when Jin Guangyao finally learns the truth behind his death.)
Gathering all his willpower, he pulls his hands away.
"It is a kind offer, but I cannot. When A-Yao knows the truth, if he still wants this foolish er-ge in his bed after... then I will not refuse."
He's not going to lay with the love of his life under false pretenses.