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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
Sam lowers her wrist from where he pulled it up before realizing his gesture was going nowhere— at least not without her. She jerks her head in a general direction and takes all of one step; further progress depends on his cooperation. "It's in my room at the boarding house. Come on."
no subject
He cooperates. It takes a few steps for their footfalls to sync up.
"Are you going to tell me what it is we're going to get?"
no subject
Her brow furrows as she really takes in his face. With only a few weeks under her belt, she doesn't expect to recognize everyone, but she would have remembered someone with such an extreme case of Scorpio eyes. "Did you get here recently?"
no subject
"Very," he answers, and takes her measure in kind. Her clothes fit her well enough not to be castoffs like the ones he's wearing. He presumes anyone with the means to move out of the boarding house would do so, so she hasn't been here terribly long. "What's the longest anyone's been here? Do you know?"
cw: roofie mention
cw: roofie mention
"Roofies," he questions flatly.
cw: roofie mention
As they come up on the boarding house, Sam sees that a small crowd has congregated near the entrance for some unknown reason. Creative maneuvering of their linked arms becomes necessary to move between them. On the other side of it, she continues: "Anyway, it's only a problem if you ate anything." Which, it now occurs to her, is entirely possible. She did, before she knew better. "Did you?"
cw aphros (+ongoing)
No, whatever the townsfolk have spiked him with is definitely not a muscle relaxant of any kind.
Swallowing, Hap strongly considers lying to her. Habit. Getting out of these bonds feels as vital as securing a subject. Recruitment relies on the removal of obstacles — but it would be no less of an obstacle, having to justify an ill-timed hard-on.
"Yes, I did." His embarrassment is terse. "But I can control myself. I'm not a slave to passing urges."
no subject
"'Passing' might be aspirational, but you do you," she says, pushing through the heavy door into the boarding house with her shoulder.
no subject
There's a frisson of intrigue to that. He tells himself it's neither here nor there. Separating from her is all that matters.
"How long does it last?"
no subject
no subject
He knows where to start now. Induce a release of dopamine and oxytocin.
"Why keep a knife in your room?" he asks as they reach her landing. Surely, out there is where she'd need it. As a resident of the boarding house, if it's unsafe, he'd like to know.
no subject
But just because the question hits uncomfortably close doesn't mean he meant it to. She puts herself in his place and draws the obvious conclusion: he isn't asking about her whole deal, he is asking about himself. About whether he is safe here. And that, she can easily answer.
"Despite outward appearances, this town isn't all friendly neighborhood communists. There are people who aren't too pleased with our presence. They tried to burn the place down a while back." That was before Sam's time but she has made a point of learning about anything that affects her safety.
"In here." She leads him into her room—to her relief, as empty as she had hoped—and up to her bed, where she can't avoid tugging his wrist along, requiring both hands to lift the mattress and retrieve the knife tucked under it. Daylight filters dimly through the window to catch along the 8-inch blade as she pulls it from its sheath.
no subject
Larger concerns slip to the back of his mind as they enter her room. Increasingly, the sounds of revelry have fallen away. The enveloping noise has become the muted crackle of laughter heard through a single window. They are alone. The emptiness of the room is welcoming; the stagnancy of the air relaxes him.
Each tug on his wrist rattles him a little less. Hap helps with the mattress, holding it up so she can retrieve the knife. He needn't have asked why she kept in here. He could have just waited. That's not a knife one carries concealed.
It's for hunting.
Hap's eyes may widen, but he keeps his promise. He's not going to back out. It's sharp. It'll get the job done. He offers his shackled forearm and traces a line along the back with his finger.
"Here, like this." Head down-turned, he looks up at her. "Veins aren't close to the surface, so the bleeding will be manageable."
cw: cutting, blood
Her knowledge of anatomy is limited but he seems sure. She will have to take his word for it. It doesn't hurt that he volunteers to go first.
She doesn't prolong the anticipation: without further ado, she touches the blade to his skin, slicing carefully along the line he indicated. Sam's hand is steady and it takes minimal pressure to draw his blood. She wants to want to look away when the crimson trickle starts to travel down his forearm. She doesn't.
cw: cutting, blood, fiction disregarding proper medical procedure
"Would you mind — ?" Hap has to drag her wrist along to start unbuttoning his shirt. "You can cut it into bandages."
He could have used his sash if he'd had the presence of mind to untie it from the loose double loop that hangs around his neck. But who knows, maybe their hosts would take offense to that.
no subject
When he has mostly shrugged out of the shirt, Sam uses the knife to section it into long strips, then wraps his forearm. Shooting an inquisitive look up at him, she asks, "Tighter or looser?"
no subject
He appreciates the quick work she makes of the fabric. He'll keep the leftovers for similar use, considering the embrace of violence he's observed. Air adheres to the sweat that gathered on his skin, stiffening his nipples. He'll ignore it if she will. Having meant to wrap his arm himself, Hap offers no protest when she goes about it instead.
He glances up when she asks how she's doing. Just fine, is the truth. He tells her, "Tighter."
no subject
She pulls more forcefully on the makeshift bandage, straining the fabric to a tighter bind, then securing with a firm knot. One of the strips she cut from his shirt is used to wipe his blood from the blade, which is far from ideal, but it's what they've been given to work with. Isopropyl alcohol isn't for beggars stuck together in whenever-the-fuck time period this dimension best resembles.
Finally, Sam offers him the knife, handle-first, and holds out her forearm.
cw cutting, blood
He looks from it to her, not asking for her permission, but confirming he will proceed. Then, with great care, he sets the blade against her skin. His knives are cold and featherlight. The hunting knife's bulk is a stranger to him, but the strength and depth of flesh are his oldest friends. Mindfully, he applies the slightest pressure to create an incision that mirrors the one she drew on him. Unlocked, their shackles clatter to the floor.
Hap offers her the knife back, and with his bare hand, dams the trail of blood speeding down her wrist.
cw: cutting, blood
It doesn't make any anatomical sense, but Sam can almost feel her pulse throbbing at the wrist, just under his fingertips. She accepts the knife back without thinking, realizing immediately that she should have reached for the spare strip of his shirt instead, to get started dressing her wound. An easy fix would be to pull her hand free from his grip. Sam does not do that.
cw blood
He can control himself. So can she. He waits for her to pull away.
no subject
Her self-control is reserved for bloodier circumstances than this. Instead of pulling away, she drags her gaze up along his chest to meet his eyes. "That's one of your problems solved. As for the other one, you can keep riding it out — or, if you want to, you can stick around a little longer. Up to you."
no subject
"What's your name?" he asks, his thumb gently following the median nerve down the inside of her wrist.