rubimemes | SPRING TEST DRIVE MEME

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SPRING 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: murder, bondage, sensory deprivation, aphro, coercion, waxplay, whips, free use, and orgiastic behavior.

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

SPRING TEST DRIVE MEME

TDMs in Rubi are posted every quarter at the beginning of the season. As such, this TDM is open until the next TDM is posted in July.

Feel free to post on this TDM until the Summer TDM goes up. Please check the Calendar (linked above) for more information on precise dates.

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 dewy mosses and ferns, upon cold soil and feeling 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 to cast a suspicious eye upon this new creature appeared in the woods. With your feet under you, you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, is running actively again as the weather warms into full spring bloom, a hint of humidity in the air.

As you explore, you may encounter caches of clothing left in painted crates or placed in hollow tree trunks. They contain loose shirts and trousers, perhaps even a moth-eaten coat, along with a note that includes a bare-bones explanation for your arrival and a sketched map toward town. You may also 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 a couple thousand has cobbled streets and signs lit by gas lamps. 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. However, there's a stressed, ramshackle air about the town – multiple buildings in varying stages of disarray or construction, charred edges to wooden walls, as if some local disaster had taken place a few months back, and the townsfolk are still picking up in the aftermath.

When you enter, the streets are full of busy people bustling about, 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 most of the townspeople 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! Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, some scorch marks still linger from a fire about a year back, and the place seems somewhat in disrepair

Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner: a thin stew 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. The town has recently been brought back from the brink of a terrible calamity, newcomers are told, and everyone is doing their part now to restore it to its former glory.

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!

SPRINGTIDE FESTIVAL

The flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping, and what better way to ring in spring than with sweet blood sacrifice in its honor?

All around town, somewhat macabre decorations have been arranged... with a floral, spring-like twist. Animal skulls adorned with painted red-and-pink flowers hang from doorfronts, streaming flowing trails of woven ribbons and ivy. Garlands of dyed eggs are strung from lamp post to lamp post. Stalls line the streets, offering intricately worked leather masks for festival goers along with decorative bits of neckwear strangely reminiscent of a hangman's noose. In addition to satisfying the needs of the curse marks that afflict the townspeople, the overarching theme of the festival seems to be a celebration of communal endurance and defiance of death.

FAQ: CURSE MARKS

Festival Entertainment includes, but isn't limited to:

A wrestling ring in which naked, oiled up combatants are also offered a choice of weapon from a wooden mallet to brass knuckles to a tiny knife barely the length of a pinky. Nothing that's likely to kill anyone outright, of course, just enough to spice up the competition a bit.
Various competitions of endurance upon the stage, from lying perfectly still as hot wax is dripped over one's naked body to a whipping game where the first to yelp loses, and another where prone volunteers have clamps affixed to nipples and genitals, with increasingly heavy weights attached. Losers are hung upside down for communal use, thighs spread and notched for every person who partakes... but all in good fun and the spirit of shared pleasure.
A version of blind man's bluff where several kneeling participants are blindfolded and their wrists and ankles hobbled with a knotted length of rope. The first to crawl up to one of the circle of onlookers and bring them to orgasm is deemed the victor and may leave the ring, while the losers may be expected to play another round… and another… until they've succeeded in claiming their own victory.
A crude public shower and sauna have been set up to rinse off and relax after festival fun. Be careful to stay hydrated, because the temperature inside the sauna is steaming hot. Cups of cold tea are served to all in the sauna, leaving a refreshing tingle in your extremities... and an urge to put your mouth to use upon another person's body.

Almost all of the food and drink present are dosed with the Rubean's usual blend of stimulating aphrodisiac herbs, so common in their cooking as to be totally unremarkable – and not something they would warn anyone about before partaking. And of course, there is the ever-present orgy in the background, taking on a bestial, animalistic edge as festival-goers revel in pain and pleasure alike.

For every shared carnal experience during the Springtide Festival, partners will leave matching marks upon each other – a shared bloody 'X' carved on the left shoulder, a bruised imprint of teeth on the right buttock. These wounds are proudly displayed for all to see, with those who've accumulated many marks being treated like rockstars, adulation and cheers following in their wake, toasts raised in their presence, and people eager to approach and further add to their collection.

And of course, those who bear few-to-no marks are all the more likely to be propositioned by fellow Rubeans, and looked askance if they refuse. Everyone is expected to share in the springtime spirit, after all.

As a general rule, the Rubeans attitude toward the strangers among them, also known as Void-touched, is one of welcome, generosity, and social pressure bearing from gentle encouragement to actively overbearing, with an emphasis on conformity. Now that you're here, of course you'll want to start contributing and acting like a proper member of the community! But beware, for not all of the villagers are open and welcoming to the new Void-touched. Some, known as the Zlatniki, resent the presence of newcomers who don't respect their ways, don't offer proper worship to their Goddess, who flaunt their outsider status and lead members of their community astray. These villagers may resort to trickery, coercion, or even violence to ensure compliance.

WRITER'S BLOCK?

Join a competition on purpose to prove your endurance, or alternately find yourself 'helpfully' shoved into line to go up on stage. Find yourself dodging grabby villagers or swoop in to save someone else from being propositioned. Share awkward eye contact or a cup of tea in the sauna.

VESENYA LOVTI, THE SPRING HUNT

At some point, in the bath, while you undress, or even during the throes of passion, you might find the name of a stranger written somewhere upon your skin.

At some point, you might catch a glimpse of an act of wanton, inexplicable murder. A laundress toppling over with an arrow jutting out of her eye as her fellow washerwomen yelp and hurry to make sure she doesn't fall into the well. A farmer enjoying a pint in the tavern, only to fall out of his chair, coughing up bloodied bits of metal shrapnel while the barkeep looks on with a smile. In the aftermath, a shadowy figure skitters down the rooftops and rips a silver locket from around the laundress' neck, and the barkeep casually cuts the farmer's ear from his head. While most onlookers seem only mildly put out by the inconvenience, some even cheer or egg on the murderer.

At some point, you might hear someone asking around. Does anyone know who this is? With your name upon their lips.

If you ask around, you'll learn of Vesenya Lovti, the Spring Hunt and an annual cultural tradition among the Rubeans. For those not in the know, during Vesenya Lovti, a name of a fellow community member will appear somewhere on each Rubean and Void-touched's body. The Duchess has decreed that the goal over the month's standard festival revelry is to kill that person before getting killed yourself, and a trophy must be taken by the killer from their intended victim and cast into the festival bier in sacrifice. Worry not, for their benevolent Goddess will resurrect all who are killed just in time to catch the festival's closing ceremonies. And of course you'll be participating, right? Wouldn't want to disrespect your generous hosts' local customs, after all...

WRITER'S BLOCK?

Murder and be murdered. :') Or do your best to avoid both. Save a stranger from a knife attack, or whisper a warning into someone's ear about the poison lacing their meal. Ask around to find out about your target (feel free to make up NPCs), while trying to stay discreet. But be careful. Interfering too much in someone else's hunt or being too outspoken about 'barbaric practices' might earn you a trip to the stocks, at least until you've learned to be a little more open-minded about traditions that bring the whole community together.

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.

In addition to the spiders, you may come across the sharp-toothed furred yetis that emerged during the snowstorm, still looking for a meal. Each one hunts alone, a fifteen-foot-tall shambling creature that drips black ooze and super-chills the air around it until your skin feels tight and icy. If it gets the drop on you, you're likely to be its dinner. It has emerged from a long summer hibernation to enjoy the colder weather, and it's starving.

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!

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

Abram, the potter, narrowly survives a poisoning attempt during the spring hunt, but the stress of it has sent him over the edge. The salamander shape of his inner beast – duchozweirz, the natives call it – rampages through the stalls of the festival, leaving a trail of char and ruin in its wake and spitting molten rock at those who might attempt to quell him.

(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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

springtide.

"Well, this is rather morbid," Percy says dryly, looking at a skull overflowing with posies. It's strange, but there's something amusing about the whole thing. His own death - and resurrection - have given him a new appreciation for just how odd reactions to the subject really are. Is a party any less normal than sealing up a corpse in a stone box in the basement and trying not to think about it?

These days, he's not so sure.

He stands at the edge of the wrestling ring, leaning on a rough-hewn cane and watching with a mix of fascination and horror as they go at it. When a set of brass knuckles connects with a nose a little too close to him, he cringes back from the spray of blood. "Ugh - that got in my mouth -"

Which sends him to the shower and sauna, eventually, so he can wash his face and gargle. Going into the sauna properly takes a little more effort for him - there's little to enjoy about the idea of sitting around naked with dozens of strangers, his still-gaunt frame covered in old scars. But eventually he ends up sitting on a bench in the humid air, having left his clothes and glasses tucked neatly away outside it, sipping a cup of tea and stretching his shoulders a bit. At least the world's a bit blurrier this way.

He's feeling more hot and bothered by the proceedings than he'd like to admit, even to himself - no doubt the result of days of aphrodisiacs building up in his system. It's mortifying, but by the sound of it, it's unavoidable - and he startles more easily at the moment, when someone sets a hand on him.

vesenya lovti.
NB: Graphic violence

He's ambling through the marketplace when a child starts shrieking, staring at her mother, who's fallen to her knees, hands scrabbling uselessly at her throat. Blood gouts out, and Percy doesn't hesitate to hurry over, dropping his cane as he crouches, trying to get pressure on the wound. Whoever slit her throat did a fine job of it, though; his palms slip, and everything smells of iron. He looks to the nearest person and barks out orders. "Get help! Quickly, she's dying -"

Later, after he's learned of the Spring Hunt - and that's likely a fun conversation, good luck to whatever poor soul has to explain it - he goes to the banya to figure out whether he's been affected. For all he examines his body, though, squinting at patches of skin along his thighs and ribs, he finds nothing. Eventually, mildly piqued by this point, he has to approach someone else. "Excuse me - I'm sorry to bother you, but is there anything written on my back?"

(Your name's low on one of his ass cheeks, impossible to see without a mirror and kind of a stretch even then.)

wildcard.

[ Percy's available to show up anywhere aside from "naked in the woods, having just arrived." Besides these prompts, he'll be especially easy to find at the boarding house, his friends' home, and at one of the local blacksmith's. He's also going to try to make inroads with the hunters' lodge, if only to get access to the local firearms.

Things to know: He's from the end of season 3 of The Legend of Vox Machina and has yet to fully recover from everything that happened to him. As of now, he still uses a cane to get around and isn't up for big shows of exertion - though that doesn't mean. If you want to plan anything out, feel free to PM me. ]

A hand clapped on his shoulder with a laugh as Jordana was incredibly amused at the reaction.

"That's what happens when you sit in the Splash Zone. Here." She pushed a tankard into his free hand. "You can finish this ale to wash it out."

Edited 2025-06-01 02:37 (UTC)

"Thank you." Under other circumstances, he'd be a little more priggish about drinking a stranger's beer, but beggars can't be choosers. Percy takes a big swig and swishes it around in his mouth before leaning over and spitting it into the grass. One more ugh, and then he's glancing at the woman who handed it to him. "I think there's another mouthful left, if you'd like it back."

"Finish it. I can get another. I can get you one, too. I know which vendor isn't spiking their ale." Thank Gaia, she could smell it when they dose as heavily as they seem to be.

"Otherwise you're going to be taking your chances."

He makes a face - but he does lift the tankard back up to his face and drain the rest of it. "I was under the impression that I'm always taking my chances."

Everything's adulterated, and everyone just accepts it, from what he's been told.

"Some risks are greater than others. It seems like you would benefit to having your wits about you." Jordana gave a little gesture to the cane. "Lest you find yourself doing something you'll regret once sober."

She gave a shrug. "Then again, some say that's half the fun."

He raises a brow at that, but offers no commentary in return - not on the subject of his cane, anyway. Setting the empty tankard aside, the crowd shouting around them as one of the wrestlers goes down, he pulls out a handkerchief and starts dabbing away the blood drying on his face.

"Most of my regrets have been sober ones." Lightly enough that it might be a joke. "But I am a fan of my wits - I'd rather keep them."

"Good luck with that." It was a struggle some days. "I haven't seen you around. Fresh from the woods or have you been here a while? I've been... a little out of contact in the recent days."

That's what being dead did to a person.

"That depends on how long it takes before I'm no longer fresh." The word reminds him a bit too much of corpses for his own comfort, but that's neither here not there. "A week or two, not much more. Where have you been?"

From what he's learned thus far, out of contact isn't an easy thing to do with the Void pressing in at all sides. Just how far had she managed to go?

percy de rolo | vox machina

wrestling ring

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cw: aprho

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wildcard; housewarming

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