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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, bondage, free use, death, missing persons, snakes.
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, bondage, free use, death, missing persons, snakes.
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 damp mosses and ferns, the balmy summer air warm and sticking 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 their hiding places. With your feet under you, 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 knee-deep and surprisingly chilly. Here and there, dotting the verdant forest, are strange, massive white trees extending into the sky, surrounded by a circle of dead soil. Their sides are smooth and cool to the touch – like bone, for those who know its texture – and they creak alarmingly, threateningly at the press of warm hands.
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 to find civilization.
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. Above the town, drifting like a low hanging cloud over the tops of the buildings, is a pavilion swathed in deep red cloth, and to the north, past the end of the main street, are several large blockades barring further exploration. Somewhat strangely, the whole town seems to be in a state of slight disrepair– workers bustle around, filling in a large hole in the town wall, a woman curses and fiddles with the crank mechanism of a well, and children splash through muddy potholes in the cobblestone, chasing a malnourished looking dog. Here, the bone trees have taken root as well, a few rising through buildings, branches extending through cracked roofs, others rooted in the middle of the street.
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! 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 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 through some upheaval, and its people have suffered a great loss, newcomers are told. 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!
THE FESTIVAL OF SUMMER'S EVE
Despite the repair efforts around town, summer is in full swing, which means it's time to take advantage of the warm weather! Colorful tents have been set up, stages and spaces for "games" to be played, many involving intimacy, playfulness, sex, or "fun". In fact, there's a great deal of emphasis on fun being had all around. Each round begins with a prayer to the Duchess. Not bowing your head in prayer may get you a stares from locals, or worse, opponents may be extra motivated to defeat someone so disrespectful to her Grace.Each Thursday, buildings are festooned with wreaths 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 adorned with grey.
This summer's eve, the locals are eager to explain, is a festival about giving trust to one another, taking pleasure in the present and acceptance in things as they are. What perhaps isn't explained nearly so well is that everyone is expected to demonstrate enthusiasm for the festival activities, lest they catch the eye of the Duchess' watchful stewards. There's a strange energy in the air, furtive, sorrowful looks and forced smiles, but a sense of relief lingers in the festival crowds as they set to celebrating their hearts out.
Tables overflow with refreshments, especially iced 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. And if you should be seen disobeying or disregarding a command, or refusing to issue commands when your turn has come around, well, that doesn't seem like proper active participation at all!
- Rope Tying Contest! Riggers from all around town are eager to show off their rope-tying skills, with contests taking place judging both in their ability to weave an intricate web of knotwork over another's body, and to suspend them artfully for all to admire. And of course, those who are tied up will have to stay in place until the judging is complete! There's a public voting element to the contest as well, as festivalgoers "enjoy" these community pieces of art. Everyone who participates is given ample water, praise, and force-fed an herbal draught to calm their nerves if they seem to be getting a bit too agitated.
- Prison Bars & Glory Holes! Human-sized cages have been dragged out into the festival grounds and draped with heavy cloth. People may enter and leave them freely, taking advantage of the gaps in the bars to indulge in sexual acts with the veneer of anonymity. Sometimes, more than one person might find themselves in the same cage, or pranksters might close and lock the door behind them – oops!
- Spooky Story Telling! As evening falls, gather 'round in a crowded tent as a pair of story-tellers share and reenact tales of monsters and horrors past before opening the floor to the audience to share their own. Ten candles have been lit for the occasion, and one is snuffed out for every new story told. The air in the tent gets stuffy, made stuffier with the musky incense burning in the fire stoking the animalistic instincts of the participants until they give into fear and their more primal urges.
- 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 enough blood to soak through the binding... or find the key, stashed someplace on the festival grounds. Good luck!
- However, those who refuse to get in the community spirit of shared trust and pleasure may find themselves singled out by the Duchess' stewards for some personal, mandatory education on Rubean culture and traditions. They may be forcibly dosed with potent aphrodisiacs, locked into the cages or tied against the bars until they plead for Her Grace's mercy... or have satisfied enough of the sexual or sadistic desires of any passer-bys.
Throughout all of this, the general attitude from the local townsfolk may occasionally come across as strangely admiring or overtly hostile. While many of the common people of Rubilykskoye hold mixed personal opinions toward the newcomers to their town, two extremist groups have emerged with opposing viewpoints: some think you are benevolent, beneficent beings with nascent powers sent to lead and guide them and solve their woes. These people, called Blackguards, will do their best to make sure your participation in the festival is one of joy and pleasure. But others, called the Zlatniki, believe that the outsiders coming into their land have corrupted their fellows and seduced their Goddess, and will do their best to twist their native traditions toward cruelty and vindictive sadism when it comes to the Void-touched.
WRITER'S BLOCK?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try partaking in refreshments, give or follow commands, participate in events, be drafted into games against their will, or suffer the consequences of disobedience!
FOREST DEPTHS
Rumor moves through town quickly: two nights ago, a group of loggers 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 and bring them back home.As you and your fellow searchers venture deeper into the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. The white trunks of the bone trees stand out starkly in the darkness, though you will be warned away from coming too close. 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 loggers 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 logging 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: Cvetanya has transformed after a lover's quarrel turned into heartbreak. Her inner beast – duchozweirz, the natives call it – take the form of a giant snake propelled by hundreds of human-like arms that extend to seize its prey so it might swallow it whole.
Those who are lucky enough to escape Cvetanya's grasp will find that the red scratches left by her monster's hands darken to black and fill them with an icy chill. Warm compresses, hot baths, or some skin-to-skin contact might be necessary for those suffering from her attack.
(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: Cvetanya has transformed after a lover's quarrel turned into heartbreak. Her inner beast – duchozweirz, the natives call it – take the form of a giant snake propelled by hundreds of human-like arms that extend to seize its prey so it might swallow it whole.Those who are lucky enough to escape Cvetanya's grasp will find that the red scratches left by her monster's hands darken to black and fill them with an icy chill. Warm compresses, hot baths, or some skin-to-skin contact might be necessary for those suffering from her attack.
(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?
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Instead, he inclines his head. "A few. Are you offering any answers, then?" His tone is best described as "polite but wary." Waking up nude in a strange place does put one on their guard. He's also aware that he's not sufficiently dressed and in no position to slap away a hand offered.
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She shoulders her bow so the weapon is at least not immediately in hand and gestures to the woods around them.
"I woke up much the way you did a year ago."
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Staying reasonable enough to have this conversation is taking enough doing without stopping to consider some people may not want to go home too closely right away.
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"I have been told an explanation." Which is not exactly the same, is it? Stories exist, and she's fairly sure there's some fact in there, maybe even some truth, but she has her suspicions.
"The very short version is that you were pulled here through the Void—the space between worlds."
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"Pulled by whom? Or what, I suppose," since it might be some sort of impersonal force. And then: "...sorry, if we're going to ... my name is Alasdair." They shouldn't get too far, he feels, without at least having something to call one another.
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"Or he leaves us in the Void, and we either wander here or the Void recedes and lets us out... something like that. As far as where here is, the town is called Rubilykskoye."
She wishes that is the worst, or the least believable news she'll probably give him in this conversation.
"I'm Vex'ahlia."
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"A god of death. Is this meant to be the afterlife, then?" There's the note of skepticism he can't quite keep hidden, despite his best efforts. There are a variety of explanations he can think of for what a place like this might be. It's not impossible he could have unexpectedly died in his home, doing nothing particularly dangerous, but he doesn't find it terribly likely all else being equal.
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And she will grant that it sounds likely that some of the people here are dead. It does open the door to that conversation, still.
"I don't remember dying, and neither do most of the people who have come through. This is the domain of another god. She says she's the goddess of life."
Again carefully choosing her words.
"The rest of us seem to be stuck in the war between the two of them."
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"I see. For what it's worth, I am part of the camp that does not remember a death. But may I ask, without overstepping: What form does the warfare take?" What, in other words, should he be on his guard for?
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"...thank you. It's very kind of you to — I wasn't sure how I was going to explain myself, if I needed to when I first ran into someone. I don't think I was hoping for as much as actually helpful information." Even if most of the news has been bad, her willingness to share it has been a pleasant surprise.
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A pause as Vex tries to decide if she should try to be more encouraging, or if she should stick to the realistic and let the occasional silver lining come as a pleasant surprise.
"Most people here are... not unreasonable, let's say."
Saying they're reasonable might be a stretch.
"I can show you the way back to town, if you want?"
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He may explore the boundaries more fully when he has his feet under him (he gives off that air, at least). But he has more sense than to hope to keep walking without supplies, or even shoes, any longer than necessary. And his gratitude seems genuine enough.
After a brief pause, he adds, "Is it appropriate to offer condolences, that this happened to you as well?"
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"The town is the best place to get something to wear that actually fits. The townsfolk don't care for theft, but they've gotten used to this. They tend to be generous when it comes to making sure we're not wandering around naked."
Regardless of what else they might be less understanding of.
"Just avoid stealing the clothes. They're less generous in that case."
She tips her head down the trail, indicating for him to follow.
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(He's not thinking, as best he can, about how many days he might be here eventually. One at a time.)
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And perhaps a little rounder as well.
"You don't have to make a high priority. There's plenty of other things to get used to, and questions to ask."
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"I don't suspect I'll run out of questions in the near future, however."
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And there's no need to keep shoveling information at him past the point of retention.
"But the very short version is that every adult here has a mark on them that signifies a monster they'll turn into."
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"How is this mark made, does anyone know?" he asks, not letting the cursory inspection slow his steps. His demeanor is not one of a man who often walks through the woods, barefoot or otherwise. Even so, he seems determined to keep up when it comes to both the walk and the conversation.
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Vex marks his search of his own body, sympathetic. Instead of joining his hunt, Vex half turns her head away from him, raising one hand to pull her hair back. Behind her pointed ear, there's a coffin shaped diabel mark.
"We just wake up with these. And if we fail to sate our curse, then we transform. The different marks give you an idea what that might look like, but only broadly."
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Alasdair suspects he is in seriously deep trouble, wherever he is, but he guards his calm. Wringing his hands is not going to help him. Learning things might.
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