TEST DRIVE MEME: MAY/JUNE

[ryslighelpers]

TDM: MAY/JUNE

Welcome to the Ryslig Test Drive Meme! Below are a few prompts to get you started, but you may make up any prompt you desire! Please take a look at the navigation page for rules, setting information, and links to reserves and apps. Have fun!

SCENARIO ONE

You wake up on the beach thoroughly drenched, with your mouth full of sand. The salt water is making all the cuts and scrapes on your skin sting and the sand isn't helping. The air is slightly humid, ruining any feeling of refreshment you might have gotten from your dip in the ocean.

There are lights in the distance, but the unfriendly scent of gunpowder fills the air. If you're lucky, you're alone. If not - you might find yourself staring up into a pair of monstrous eyes or down the barrel of a local's shotgun.

SCENARIO TWO

So you've just arrived, and already some of the natives are trying to get on your good side with offers of food, shelter and other luxuries in return for hoping you don't eat them. They even have some helpful pamphlets to share with you. "How To Deal With Changes", "Alternatives to Human Flesh", "What to Expect When You're Expecting (to turn into a monster)" are all on the more informative end of the scale. There's even some detailing certain monsters, and the changes they go through. Some of these seem to have been passed down from one monster to the next.

Among these however, are some... not so helpful ones. "Bunnyipyips And You", "Axe Thief Axehounds," and "So you're becoming a Fur Bearing Trout" among others. Sometimes they have marks on them from previous readers saying they're lies, or pointing out good "jokes."

Then there are the people who aren't happy to see you at all. Glares and silent, judging stares if you're lucky, torches and pitchforks attempting to drive you out of the town if you're not. You may need a friend to help you.

SCENARIO THREE

"Seek us out," the voice whispers in your head, and before you have time to question it you've found yourself in someplace entirely alien.

Maybe it's the Fog God's ghostly town of Dyster, where exultant followers dance around bonfires and sing their praises to the skies above. Maybe it's the Fourth God's arcade, with small robots wheeling about amidst the lights and colors of old pinball machines.

Only one thing is certain: you are not alone, in this sacred place.

SCENARIO FOUR

The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.

Comments

[hevenly]

[ Hm. Angela regards the old man in the beach. He seems so resigned to death. Visually, he reminds her of Odin, but he is nothing like her birth father in demeanor. Which, honestly, is a point in his favor. ]

There would be no point. The dead do not stay dead, here. You would suffer for naught.

[ She extends a hand to pull him to his feet. ]

I may as well walk you to town.

[getthatbread]

[The dead don't stay dead? Where in God's name has he washed up?

He looks up at Angela, shocked once again, but this time with hope.]

Then -- he will return to life?

[oh valjean you sweet summer child that's not how this works.]

Where am I? What sort of place is this?

[He -- oh he is very weak. Not so weak as he was half an hour ago, when he thought he would die without seeing Cosette again, but it is still an effort to bring his legs underneath him. Though he is reluctant to accept a hand up, if he is to stand and not remain on the beach waiting for someone else with a gun to come along, he must. He places a hand, cool to the touch but with the living-coolness that comes with old veins and illness rather than anything supernatural, in Angela's, and he reaches his feet.]

[hevenly]

[ Angela looks over at the crumpled body of the impaled man, face scrunched up in disgust, as though she smells something awful. ]

Oh, no. He will die. [ Bleeding out on the sand, what a way to go. She shows no sign of remorse, however. ] The human population of this realm are as mortal as any human. It is those of us who have been brought here to suffer who are revived, again and again in an unending cycle.

[ Fuck the Fog God. ]

[getthatbread]

[The face of Jean Valjean falls, the flash of momentary hope giving way to grief.

This place! This strange place, where women have the features of bulls and some men die but he, Jean Valjean, will not! He understands almost nothing about this place yet, and has only this woman's word to go on, but if she's right, then...]

Then he might have killed me, and no harm would have been done.

[He's not angry; what's done is done. But he is deeply, immediately by the loss of life, even though that life had definitely been waving a shotgun in his face not even a minute ago. This man was killed for his sake.]

cw: talk of suicidal ideation

[hevenly]

[ The older man's words trigger something in Angela. A grief reminiscent of one she herself has felt, long ago. After Sera died, how many dangerous situations did she throw herself into headlong, hoping it would be the thing to kill her and reunite her with her lost love? She cannot say what makes the man so resigned to death, but... The feeling is familiar and yet not. ]

You may not have remained dead, but the death would hurt all the same. We are spared death, not pain.