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cursedcontent2022-08-20 11:49 am
cursedmods) wrote in cursedcontent2022-08-20 11:49 am
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TEST DRIVE MEME #1
TEST DRIVE MEME #1
A Blood Offering
You wake up cozy in bed at the Saturn Motel. As you observe the room you may realize that it looks a little dated. Or, perhaps from your point of view the lamp and TV are wildly futuristic. Or, like Goldilocks, it may seem just right: close to the world you just left behind. Either way, you just had a very strange dream (see the arrival scenario) and now you're here. And you're not alone: there's a bed next to yours and someone else is waking up just like you are.Roller Rink
You can chat for a while if you like, but if you try to leave you'll find the door is firmly locked and no amount of kicking, punching, or hitting it with an object will do you any good. Instead, there's a letter on the nightstand which reads:
"Good morning and welcome to your new home!
You may be wondering why you're trapped in this room. Fear not, the door will open easily if you offer a bit of blood. More than a few drops but not enough to be a serious wound. A handprint's worth will do, let's say, and it only needs to come from one of you.
I'll let you sort that out yourselves. See you on the other side.
Sincerely,
The Mayor"
And indeed, a handprint's worth of blood pressed against the door will unlock it and let you out into the world. Do you volunteer your own blood? Do you take it from the other person by force? It's up to you! But there's no food in here, so you better figure it out eventually.
As a celebration of your new lives here (and an apology for the whole blood offering thing - they were just testing something out, really) the Mayor has invited everyone to the Crazy Eight Roller Rink for a private, after-hours party.Mallrats
Attendance isn't mandatory, but it is heavily encouraged so that you can meet your fellow Cursed and know who's in on the whole secret. It'll help you down the line at some point if your Curse gets out of control and you need someone to wrangle you.
As a reward, everyone who shows up and completes at least one lap around the roller rink (you must be wearing skates, but you can crawl the lap if you can't get the hang of them) will receive a free walkman with a mystery tape inside. The color, style, and mystery tape your character gets are up to you.
Everyone loves the mall! Right? Right! And this group of newcomers is lucky enough to be here for the White Pines Mall Grand Opening celebration! Feel free to walk around the mall and partake in sales galore, check out the attractions, or just get to know the layout of the place.Extra Info
The Mayor has given everyone a gift card for $100 that can be used anywhere in the mall as long as they attend the Grand Opening.
They also strongly suggest that you familiarize yourself with the mall and its layout, just in case you ever get stuck there for a while and have to compete with others for food and resources. But that probably won't happen.
The test drive meme and the IC intro log will have the same prompts, and threads between two accepted characters can count as game canon.
The first prompt is flexible: technically you're supposed to be with one other person, but if you want to do larger groups that's fine.
Rooms at the Saturn Motel initially contain two beds for the prompt, but upon leaving and returning characters will find that they all have their own rooms with one bed. If you want a roommate, someone better be ready to sleep on the floor or snuggle up! The room doesn't have to look exactly like the reference image as long as it's not too fancy and suitably dated.
no subject
[ Deely pulls her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them so she can rest her chin on her knees. She blinks at him, owlish and a little presumptuous. ]
So this has to be a Stanford Prison Experiment type thing, right? Like, trap two people in a room and leave a note telling them to— [ She cuts off, abruptly, as she suddenly becomes aware of the blood on one of his hands. ] Oh, I see you already got the party started.
no subject
Apparently. I woke up and it was bleeding.
[ A pause. ]
If this isn't dream and everything here is real, it could be too easy to get out. I wake up and already have blood on my hand. Something else could be on other side of this door.
[ Like someone waiting to drag them off, a decidedly Soviet fear ingrained in his very DNA. The wall outlets here look American, but that doesn't mean that they're not in some culture or era where that's very much something that their captors can do—already, they're probably being watched. ]
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[ A good point worth verbalizing, she reckons. But also, wait a second. ]
Your hand was bleeding when you woke up? Is that, like, a normal thing for you?
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He starts to get up, pulling his shirt from behind his belt and withdrawing the firearm tucked into the front of his dark navy work pants. A revolver, pretty much anyone could guess, though the specifics—Soviet Nagant M1895 double action officer's model, NKVD issue, awarded 1937—might be harder to guess at with the year and five-pointed star engraved into the frame partly obscured by his bloody hand. ]
I am going to check the peephole. You should stay back.
no subject
What the fuck—
[ Deely's heart jumps into her throat, but before she's even aware of that feeling she's scrambled all the way off her bed to hide between it and the other one, her head peeking up over the mattress, eyes wide. ]
Is that a fucking gun? [ Her voice shifts to an awkward squeak towards the end, which she will absolutely laugh about later, but right now it feels incredibly necessary to transmit the fact that she definitely almost shat herself. ]
no subject
[ Finally, some semblance of self-preservation or anything other than passive acceptance of their situation, even though her panic seems more appropriate for a situation in which one is pointed at her, not between her and whatever is on the other side of that door. She should be reassured, especially seeing as he's in a first responder's uniform—the first he's worn that instills confidence as opposed to fear. ]
I am not going to shoot you. Just stay back in case I have to shoot someone. And cover your ears. This is loud.
[ Hopefully, though, he won't need to discharge it. There's no telling how difficult it may be to get ammunition here, and a gunshot without a Bramit device affixed to the barrel of the thing is going to get attention. The last thing he wants, here or anywhere. ]
no subject
Well, then what the fuck are you gonna shoot? It's a door! You gonna, what, incapacitate its hinges?
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[ He debates whether to go into explaining the idea that sometimes, one might open the door and find danger waiting for them, to try and indirectly convey some of what banging on a door at night meant in his world, but he's distracted by the sensation of a trickle of blood beginning to run down his wrist. It's not stopping, even though he applied pressure for a good 5 minutes and it's had more than enough time to clot. Uncertainty churns at his core: he'd know by now if he were a hemophiliac, and that's the sort of thing that tends to stay in particularly inbred circles of the bourgeoisie, but it's not normal to keep bleeding and bleeding and bleeding like this. He needs to get to a store, find some styptic powder or something. Vasiliy stares for a moment, then wipes it off on his pants leg and angles the weapon downwards. ]
We do not know if it is safe here. Keep your voice down. Hysteria will not help us.
no subject
I'm sorry, hysteria? [ She's immediately hissing at him now in barely more than a whisper. Sure, it makes sense to be keeping her voice down, but in the defence of Deely from about a minute ago, the stranger she's locked in a room with just produced a gun. ] What are you, some sort of plague doctor? Are you gonna diagnose me with wandering womb syndrome and prescribe a thousand leeches? And what, actually, the fuck is up with your hand, by the way?
no subject
Vasiliy gestures to the entirety of his outfit with the hand that isn't bleeding: the star of life patch, the scissors in one of the velcro pockets on his thighs, the tactical shoes... the embroidered letters on his chest: EMT. ]
Calm down. I am EMT. Emergency Medical Technician. From 2018. ...And I do not know what is happening to my hand. I woke up and it was bleeding, but pressure isn't helping. I think this Mayor did it so that we have blood for door.
no subject
Two points. Number one, anyone could get that uniform. Maybe you killed a real EMT and stole it. Number two, why would the Mayor lock us in here, tell us we have to give blood to get out, and then pre-bloodificate your hand so you don't even have to prick a finger? Like, what's the point in trapping us in here at all if the solution's already literally in your hands? That's not very Saw trappy.
[ God, she feels so smart right now. ]
And actually, point number three: what the hell d'you mean, you're from 2018? That sounds exactly like what someone who isn't actually from 2018 would say.
[ It's 2022, as far as she's aware. She'll get to that in a second, maybe. God, this guy is so weird. ]
no subject
But this is just suspicion. He's speaking English, so it's not like she can pick up the discrepancy between what he says and how he says it. Still—he needs to stamp out this train of thought on her part, carefully, without seeming too emphatic. ]
It was November 2018 when I went to bed last night. Point number two, he could make my hand bleed if he wants us to go outside and get captured or hurt. This letter, it could be distraction.
no subject
That November 2018 thing still doesn't sit right with her, the same way it wouldn't if someone ever approached her on the street and asked what year it was. Time traveller-type shtick, for sure. It doesn't matter how dated this motel is, the fact that she may have travelled in time hasn't even crossed her mind. Plenty of motels still look this godawful, she knows for a fact. But he's foreign, Russian or at least Eastern European; maybe it's just a common thing where he's from to announce what year it is in any given conversation.
More to the point: it was not November 2018 when Deely went to bed last night. She will have to deal with this in due course.
In any case, now she's decided for herself that he isn't about to whirl the gun around and start taking potshots at her, Deely cautiously straightens up, her hands in fists at her sides like she's about to punch a bullet out of the air if he changes his mind. ]
So are you gonna open the door or what?
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He doesn't linger long on the thought: there are more important issues at hand, such as what lies on the other side of that door. Not that he plans on opening it with her standing right there, fully exposed. She's a stranger, but he doesn't want to see her get shot. As far as he's aware, other people don't bounce back from fatal gunshot wounds like he did. ]
Get against that wall. [ Vasiliy gestures with the tissue-wrapped hand holding the gun, indicating the wall between the side of the bathroom and the nearer of the two beds. A blind spot for someone coming in from the motel room's one door, and the corner will protect her if whoever may be waiting for them is armed. ]
no subject