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June-July 2024 Test Drive Meme
June-July 2024 TDM
Introduction
Welcome to Folkmore's monthly Test Drive Meme! Please feel free to test drive any and all characters regardless of your intent to apply or whether you have an invite or not.
All TDMs are game canon and work like "mini-events". For new players and characters, you can choose to have your TDM thread be your introduction thread upon acceptance or start fresh. Current players are also allowed to have in-game characters post to the TDM so long as they mark their top levels ‘Current Character.’
TDM threads can be used for spoon spending at any time by characters accepted into the game.
Playing and interacting with the TDMs will allow characters to immediately obtain canon items from homes especially weapons or other things they may have had on their person when they were pulled from their worlds! There will always be a prompt that provides some sort of "reward" to characters who complete certain tasks.
🦊 New Star Children meet the Fox still in their worlds, and she brings them into the new realm of Folkmore. As you follow her, your body begins to change and new characteristics emerge. These may stay for a while, or perhaps they will hide away after. And during all of this, the Fox explains to you where you will be going: to Folkmore.
and then... you fall like a shooting star, falling to the land in a burst of starlight.
🦊 Experienced Star Children are already familiar with this time of the month. There are shooting stars all across the sky, and some fall to the land, which means the Fox has brought new arrivals. These newly arrived Star Children will face some tests, but Thirteen wants the more seasoned residents to participate as well.
Perhaps you follow the falling stars on your own, or perhaps the Fox simply teleports you there, but it appears you too will be part of this.
Content Warnings: Ghosts, Potential Violence, Potential Death
Summer has hit. It's hot, and nowhere is it hotter than Cruel Summer. Naturally, new Star Children arrive in Cruel Summer with no indication of which direction to go to escape, unless they're so lucky as to arrive near the Selkie River. The water provides a break, and a selkie skin will protect Star Children from the heat. Though beware the cruelty of leaving a selkie without their skin. Along with the heat, Star Children can hear whispers and the echoes of screams throughout Cruel Summer. There's no obvious source of the noises. Not the normal creatures. Not anything anyone can see.
Whether new or old Star Child, anyone lost, overheated, in need of a rest, or anything else will find a friendly spirit will find them in the sands, rock, or shores of Cruel Summer. They'll guide the way toward the huts found in Cruel Summer. These huts have changed; the huts are bigger and grow together, making them one interconnected twisting winding empty town. No one appears to live there. The wooden town is in disrepair, varying from building to building. Even so, they are cool inside, a welcome break from the summer heat.
No matter how one entered, even through the swinging doors to the saloon, that exit disappears behind Star Children. There's no turning back. The only way out is to explore the way through the buildings. This fact continues to be true building to building as exits continue to vanish. The abandoned town isn't as empty as it first seems. As Star Children explore the branching paths through the wooden structures, they see ghosts of spirits going through the paces of their lives. They're familiar to these spaces and interact with missing objects that sometimes shimmer in spirit energy.
Spirit Children may interrupt these routines to try to talk with the ghosts. Some ghostly spirits are friendly. They may interact with Star Children as though they're someone else, someone the spirits used to know. Others, like the bartender, may treat them like a new customer. Other ghosts are determined to stick to their routines and, should Star Children continue to interrupt, will attack those who disturb them.
These spirits may kill Star Children when they attack. Normal weapons won't hurt them. There are revolvers, shotguns, iron pokers, hunting knives, and other plain weapons around to grab in self-defense. Salt bullets and iron will dispel ghosts. These weapons may be grabbed at any time. However, doing so attracts the creatures in Cruel Summer. A blood red worm spitting yellow acid may break through the floor to eat or spray Star Children. An enormous coyote may leap through the window. Whether attracted by the use of weapons or passing by, any dangerous creature found in Cruel Summer seems agitated when they come near these structures and will attack them and anyone inside. They will focus especially on anyone with a stolen selkie skin.
Should Star Children die, whether to ghosts or creatures, they will not immediately return to life.Do not pass go. Instead they will haunt the ghost town for one week in the room where they were killed. Other Star Children may recognize them and work to snap them out of their routines. Yet nothing will free the Star Children's spirits before the week is through. At the end of the week, they'll come to, alive, in their bodies in the room they died in. Best get through and out of the ghost town before dying again!
A constant through these scenes are the spirits' spoons, visible somewhere in each scene. The ghost spoons are whole. Once free of the ghost town, Star Children may choose to travel to the Shattered Spoon Shrine in Never Fade to search for the broken fragments of any of these spoons. They are in such small pieces, however, that no Star Child may feed them enough Lore alone to bring the spirit back. Two or more Star Children may spend time in the Shrine creating and feeding Lore toward the spoons to heal them. It just may be enough to bring someone back.
Summer has hit. It's hot, and nowhere is it hotter than Cruel Summer. Naturally, new Star Children arrive in Cruel Summer with no indication of which direction to go to escape, unless they're so lucky as to arrive near the Selkie River. The water provides a break, and a selkie skin will protect Star Children from the heat. Though beware the cruelty of leaving a selkie without their skin. Along with the heat, Star Children can hear whispers and the echoes of screams throughout Cruel Summer. There's no obvious source of the noises. Not the normal creatures. Not anything anyone can see.
Whether new or old Star Child, anyone lost, overheated, in need of a rest, or anything else will find a friendly spirit will find them in the sands, rock, or shores of Cruel Summer. They'll guide the way toward the huts found in Cruel Summer. These huts have changed; the huts are bigger and grow together, making them one interconnected twisting winding empty town. No one appears to live there. The wooden town is in disrepair, varying from building to building. Even so, they are cool inside, a welcome break from the summer heat.
No matter how one entered, even through the swinging doors to the saloon, that exit disappears behind Star Children. There's no turning back. The only way out is to explore the way through the buildings. This fact continues to be true building to building as exits continue to vanish. The abandoned town isn't as empty as it first seems. As Star Children explore the branching paths through the wooden structures, they see ghosts of spirits going through the paces of their lives. They're familiar to these spaces and interact with missing objects that sometimes shimmer in spirit energy.
Spirit Children may interrupt these routines to try to talk with the ghosts. Some ghostly spirits are friendly. They may interact with Star Children as though they're someone else, someone the spirits used to know. Others, like the bartender, may treat them like a new customer. Other ghosts are determined to stick to their routines and, should Star Children continue to interrupt, will attack those who disturb them.
These spirits may kill Star Children when they attack. Normal weapons won't hurt them. There are revolvers, shotguns, iron pokers, hunting knives, and other plain weapons around to grab in self-defense. Salt bullets and iron will dispel ghosts. These weapons may be grabbed at any time. However, doing so attracts the creatures in Cruel Summer. A blood red worm spitting yellow acid may break through the floor to eat or spray Star Children. An enormous coyote may leap through the window. Whether attracted by the use of weapons or passing by, any dangerous creature found in Cruel Summer seems agitated when they come near these structures and will attack them and anyone inside. They will focus especially on anyone with a stolen selkie skin.
Should Star Children die, whether to ghosts or creatures, they will not immediately return to life.
A constant through these scenes are the spirits' spoons, visible somewhere in each scene. The ghost spoons are whole. Once free of the ghost town, Star Children may choose to travel to the Shattered Spoon Shrine in Never Fade to search for the broken fragments of any of these spoons. They are in such small pieces, however, that no Star Child may feed them enough Lore alone to bring the spirit back. Two or more Star Children may spend time in the Shrine creating and feeding Lore toward the spoons to heal them. It just may be enough to bring someone back.
- Whispers, echoes of screams, etc become common throughout Cruel Summer
- Huts become bigger, interconnected, growing together. Anyone lost, overheated, in need of something in Cruel Summer gets a friendly spirit redirecting them to these buildings
- Buildings will still be in some state of disrepair, but like a whole twisting winding town
- Insides are a cool respite
supernatural ghost spirit air conditioning - Only way out is through, no turning back, as the exits disappear behind you
- Many are friendly, but some are not. One can attempt to talk to them, but how interactive they are varies
- Occasionally other creatures from Cruel Summer may burst in and attack
- If a Star Child dies, rather than return to life immediately, they stay a ghost for about a week, part of the tour
Content Warnings: Fire, Coerced Confessions
Fire! Fire across the realm! For the second half of June, wildfire burns everywhere. While it doesn’t hurt Star Children, it can reduce everything else to ash: homes, businesses, gardens, spirits. The local spirits will be in a panic and beg Star Children for help from small ice mice in Wintermute to fennec foxes in Cruel Summer. How can Star Children help? Confessions. Anything the person they are with doesn’t know. The more earnest and meaningful the better.
When wildfire erupts and spreads, Star Children may stand in or in front of an area they want to protect and confess something to another Star Child who happens to be nearby. Their neighbor? Their partner? A stranger lost in a new land? These confessions simply need to be something the other person doesn’t know to protect structures and spirits. Memories related to the confession will show in the fire. The fire will fuel these memories until they run out of energy, dying down to embers. At least in that place at that time.
Should something start to burn before someone confesses, multiple confessions are necessary to catch the wildfire’s attention and distract it from the fuel source it is feeding on. Two or more Star Children will need to make confessions whose memories are shared in the flames. Water powers can also help quell the flames, but confessions are necessary in the end.
Once July hits, the wildfires are mostly gone, only sparking up here and there on occasion. In their stead are embers. They spark in the air like fireflies and fly around Folkmore, attracted to Star Children. These embers land on Star Children and make them glow. There’s no pain. In fact, the embers provide sparks of insight into memories, situations, and other emotional dilemmas that Star Children haven’t previously understood. Talking the issue over with another Star Children provides further emotional clarity.
Spirits are welcoming to both embers and Star Children. Confessionshelp Folkmore grow as well. Gardens bloom in beautiful displays. Crops grow healthy and joyful. It’s even possible to hear humming from some of the vegetables and fruits. The land grows with the Star Children. Anyone who lacks a green thumb can work their way around that with confessions! Save that dying plant and grow those tomatoes.
One time that a Star Child confesses, either to wildfire or to embers, they will find a jeweled box shaped like a flame. The peak of the flame comes off to reveal the insides. Within, there is an item from home. It may even be a weapon or magical item. Larger more meaningful confessions are more likely to receive weapons. These items may even be larger than should fit in the box or its entrance. Whether the box should only hold a single ring or fill the palm of one’s hand, these items fit. Star Children also can keep the jeweled box, and this one item from home can be stored within the box. Other items too large to fit the box will not enter it. Only the one from the box.
Fire! Fire across the realm! For the second half of June, wildfire burns everywhere. While it doesn’t hurt Star Children, it can reduce everything else to ash: homes, businesses, gardens, spirits. The local spirits will be in a panic and beg Star Children for help from small ice mice in Wintermute to fennec foxes in Cruel Summer. How can Star Children help? Confessions. Anything the person they are with doesn’t know. The more earnest and meaningful the better.
When wildfire erupts and spreads, Star Children may stand in or in front of an area they want to protect and confess something to another Star Child who happens to be nearby. Their neighbor? Their partner? A stranger lost in a new land? These confessions simply need to be something the other person doesn’t know to protect structures and spirits. Memories related to the confession will show in the fire. The fire will fuel these memories until they run out of energy, dying down to embers. At least in that place at that time.
Should something start to burn before someone confesses, multiple confessions are necessary to catch the wildfire’s attention and distract it from the fuel source it is feeding on. Two or more Star Children will need to make confessions whose memories are shared in the flames. Water powers can also help quell the flames, but confessions are necessary in the end.
Once July hits, the wildfires are mostly gone, only sparking up here and there on occasion. In their stead are embers. They spark in the air like fireflies and fly around Folkmore, attracted to Star Children. These embers land on Star Children and make them glow. There’s no pain. In fact, the embers provide sparks of insight into memories, situations, and other emotional dilemmas that Star Children haven’t previously understood. Talking the issue over with another Star Children provides further emotional clarity.
Spirits are welcoming to both embers and Star Children. Confessions
One time that a Star Child confesses, either to wildfire or to embers, they will find a jeweled box shaped like a flame. The peak of the flame comes off to reveal the insides. Within, there is an item from home. It may even be a weapon or magical item. Larger more meaningful confessions are more likely to receive weapons. These items may even be larger than should fit in the box or its entrance. Whether the box should only hold a single ring or fill the palm of one’s hand, these items fit. Star Children also can keep the jeweled box, and this one item from home can be stored within the box. Other items too large to fit the box will not enter it. Only the one from the box.
- Last two weeks of June, wildfire burns across Folkmore. After that, they are rare.
- Confessions can protect or rescue buildings, land areas, and spirits.
- Come July, embers spark across Folkmore like fireflies. They provide insight for Star Children. Talking helps.
- Confessions help the land grow.
- Confessions reveal a jeweled box containing an item from home.
no subject
Besides, immediately following his observation (Big Spiky Black Thing Gets Bigger, Spikier, Maybe Less Black Because It's Glowing Somehow?) the words cut through, possibly even more-or-less as intended – because sure, who doesn't like having a fascinating pet project to work on, anyway, to combat the ennui and malaise of the ongoing millennia, blah blah blah...?
Calling him 'a black god who wished to tear the world apart' still seems a little harsh, though.
... doesn't it?
John holds up a hand, and counts off, not starting with an upraised thumb but instead an index finger. "One, are you gonna bother telling me what it is you actually mean by calling me that? Or are you basing it entirely on the hair and eyes, because proportionally speaking I think 'brown god' would be a lot more accurate, and two, the fuck kind of world are you even talking about, and also how literal is your choice of words, there, because unless you're talking about limestone it is really not easy to tear even little rocks apart, let alone any sort of inorganic matter."
Even so, on a riled-uppedness-scale, this is barely topping out at 'mildly indignant', no matter how intent he is on stopping this conversation until he knows exactly what these accusations are supposed to mean.
(And maybe, eventually, he'll even ask about Augustine's wrist.)
no subject
(That last really is most important; he can acknowledge so much in a dim way, even if he doesn't feel the frisson of wary relief that smooths his feathers and slows the lashing of his tail.)
He's got the grace to let that indignation (
and relief) check him, slow him down to answer the questions rather than keep at the accusations. Almost, he laughs; does breathe out through his fangs in a huff, and holds up his own talons in mirror of John's counting gesture to enumerate his answers."There are being two types of god Generation dreamed into the world: the white to grow and build and heal, the black to trick and destroy and chasten. You are called Scourge of Death and Lord of Resurrection but are much more kin to the Thief and her thousand black children in your raging. At least," he allows, "the you I know was. Perhaps you are being better behaved here in Paradise?
"For," second talon, "the Waking World where I am coming from is an Earth, marred by ancient cruelty, and the you there wished so much to be free of its true masters he tried to kill one. Without regard for what that may do to the wounded world, or we who dwelt upon it."
Third talon. "So not a literal destruction but one of the soul." And he'll stop dead there, because he knows better than to reveal his own knowledge of how many Earth-shaped notches that would put on John's metaphorical belt.
no subject
He puts his hand to the side of his face, fingers up by his temple, and rests his elbow in his other hand, staring at/through the bipedal-puppet's-face in front of him as he attempts to process just how fucked up that is.
"Okay... okay, so, nga hapa whakamaori," he mutters, and taps the nail of his ring finger against a canine tooth four times, speed increasing by milliseconds each time, which might or might not seem like a tell indicating an increase in decisiveness, or... some shit like that.
(Does he need to pepper his sentences with so many phrases from a language he might be alone in speaking, in Folkmore, and has made no effort to determine who else might actually understand it? Wait, is that why – )
"Going to guess, though, that this 'true masters' bit is a load of tai manu," which is maybe more of a dig at present company than he even realises, "what with sounding more like some sort of festering, cancerous invasion force. Gonna tell me otherwise, karetao hoa?"
(There's something of a rustling sound coming from behind the door, arguably not ... entirely ... dissimilar to the sound of a cat swiping a paw under a closed door in an attempt to catch and pull it open, for all that nothing actually intrudes into this bony liminal roomlet; John ignores it, regardless.)
no subject
That thought's sufficient to provoke an awful sympathetic sorrow in any elf, even a dead and distaff one. Illarion's struck dumb a moment by the recognition--and then the meaning of what John's said pierces through, and all the feathers on the shrike's spine stand on end. His tail smacks soundly against the barrier behind them, and damn whatever's scratching at it.
"Truly? Are you so jealous over her, you won't even allow she might have other caretakers?" He's slipped his fae persona in his fury, fallen into his own native tongue; but at least he's control enough to vent his spleen about an insult to the Pthumerians rather than what's really got him riled.
Puppet friend. Big Bird was a stupid nickname but it wasn't--that, with all it implied.
(With all--Illarion is too angry to notice--this John couldn't know enough to imply.)
no subject
Even while an aspect of his mind is noting that, though, most of him is dropping to a flat (flatly-unimpressed) affect. "Ignoring the difference between a caregiver and a caretaker, you mean? Oh, I'll allow as how all sorts of folks have claimed to care for her, over the millennia. Some of 'em even have cared, whether or not they knew what the fuck they were doing. The worst of them have always been the ones trashing the place without any care at all, yeah, but the ones that'll break your heart are the ones who have the best intentions and the least sense of reality."
(Yeah, yeah, he knows he ended up there; that doesn't mean he's going to reflect on that, at any length, here and now with someone who thinks he knows John better than he has any right to!)
"The ones calling themselves masters, though?" This creature has either no visible eyes, or entirely too many eyes for someone with only two to stare down, and so John doesn't even bother; he gives his head an angry shake, scoffing quietly. "Nobody calling themselves the 'true master' of a place is coming from a point of caring. And you can get off my balls about it."
('Big Bird' might just be descriptive, given that a shrike is much larger than the sort of birds native to the Maine coast. Of course, it also might be describing the tallest resident of Sesame Street...)
no subject
This is the precise opposite of getting off someone's balls about anything. It is also the stupidest possible approach Illarion could take to this man, and yet surprisingly--
as he'd found, after John paraded Kiriona before all of Trench as his,--
he finds himself unafraid.
Perhaps this is all the Fox needed him to show. Perhaps that's all right.