memebrook | September 2023 TDM

SEPTEMBER 2023 TDM

You wake up completely alone in an unfamiliar place. The forest around you is awash in the pleasant warmth of late summer. Any time-telling devices have stopped working and nothing looks familiar. But the visitors center has maps and information on the area, and with a bit of looking around you find the name of a nearby town: Ashbrook.

Welcome to Ashbrook's very first TDM. Take a look at our navigation page to get started, or skip right to the prompts below! TDM threads may be kept as game canon.

While Ashbrook is an invite-only game, you do not need an invite to play on the TDM.

Please direct any TDM-specific questions you may have here.

Of Monster and Men

What:

Lost in the woods with friends and 'friends'

When:

Throughout September

Warnings:

Stalking, paranoia, violence, being lost in the woods

With summer nearing its end and school already begun, it seems as if every teen's got a story to tell.

One of them that's pretty popular starts off like any other. Couple of kids go into the woods, one of them goes missing, and gets found later on — but they're not right, it's not them; the rest of the story goes as it goes and the group ends up dying or scared half to it by the week's end, tormented by the Goatman. The story has its variations depending on the person telling it. Sometimes there's a creature staring from the treeline; or unexplainable, not quite human voices calling from outside the campfire's light. No matter what the creature is hard to identify, and you can only really catch it by spotting oddities in the way it mimics its victims.

The stories aren't just stories, though. In any other town they might be, but in Ashbrook, they're warnings. You're cutting through the woods after class, or heading back to the car at the end of a camping trip, or maybe you're even a new arrival stumbling your way home. No matter what, there's an odd scent, sharp and metallic, that's following you around. It disappears when you think about it; maybe it's the mind playing its tricks after hearing the stories, or the stress of being somewhere unfamiliar?

But when you glance at your companion they're suddenly gone; look away and back and they're suddenly there again. It can happen a few times and it does. You try not to think about it, but it nags at the back of your mind — how well do you really know the person beside you? Are you sure they're safe? Are you sure they're really them? You decide to press on, sure you're imagining things.

Until you discover the eviscerated body of the person you've been traveling with.

You hear footsteps behind you.

TL;DR

There's a Goatman that's said to roam the woods and slip unnoticed into groups, disguising itself as someone else. You won't ever catch it taking someone, just the mangled corpses it leaves behind.
The Goatman has an acrid scent to it, metallic like blood in the back of your throat, but it doesn't linger enough to tell who it's coming from.
The Goatman can take on the face of anyone at all. Identifying it is tricky, but possible — but it requires you the know the person it replaced well enough to spot the oddities.
The Goatman will also play dead while disguised as a member of a group, in hopes of inspiring paranoia in its victims.
Characters can experience visceral, gruesome deaths in this prompt, due either to the Goatman or to the paranoia of their traveling companions.

Ghost on the Shore

What:

An encounter on a foggy night

When:

Evenings in September

Warnings:

Drowning, compulsive behavior

As summer turns to autumn, fog from the rivers rolls steadily over the town in the early evenings, and only dissipates in the morning's rays. Visibility is low, but it's perfect if you want to go for a quiet evening stroll or pre-dawn jog. It's just you out there — you and one other person.

You don't know if they were there a second ago. And maybe it's just the cover of the fog making it hard to see but... they seem familiar. You feel drawn to follow the path they take. No matter how hard you try they don't slow or respond to yelling, and you never catch up. You eventually find yourself at the river's edge, one foot ahead of the other as you've seemingly started to tread the depths of it. You can't see the person you were following but you're certain they've gone into the water. You just need to follow them, and never mind how cold and swift the river runs.

But maybe that didn't happen. Maybe you thought you heard someone calling your name and snapped out of it. Your first instinct may be to get out of there and away from whatever had you hypnotized in the first place, but then you see it: someone else still chasing after a phantom.

If your first instinct isn't to help, as a decent person should, there's something like a soft voice as the wind caresses your ear, pleading for you not to let them near the water, not to let them sink... and you move, for whatever good enough reason your mind conjures, to help those who have yet to wake.

TL;DR

Characters see a familiar face on foggy knights. They're driven to follow them, because who wouldn't want to see an old friend or even enemy?
Unfortunately, characters will never reach that person. They can walk all they want, run or sprint, but the other will remain both unresponsive and just out of reach.
Eventually, the phantom will attempt to lead their victim into the river, where they will likely drown if not rescued.
Characters can be snapped out of this trance by a whisper on the wind they can't quite identify. Those that are will be compelled to seek out and help anyone still in a trance. Just don't wait too long, or you'll find the other party willingly taking a dive six feet under.

Toil and Trouble

What:

It's time to learn magic!

When:

Weekends in September

Warnings:

None

A more welcoming rumor is about the Witch of the Woods. The teens describe her as a stern but beautiful woman who's willing to teach anyone who comes seeks her out. Bring her a suitable offering and knock three times on her door in the middle of the night, and she'll answer to teach you what she knows of the supernatural and magic.

... Thankfully, no one has to find out how wrong that is right now. There are flyers, decorated childishly with bat and cauldron stickers, inviting the reader to the "Witch's Retreat". These flyers seem to appear when a Visitor glances away for a second to pick something up, or gently drift down right into their hands. Even the most skeptical, scoff-likely of Visitors will find their interest piqued in the days before it, mind drifting back to the promise of help in their unusual situation.

The retreat itself is headed by a middle-aged woman, who's narrowed gaze inspects the people who've come before she grumbles something under her breath and waves her hand.

"Look in the tree holes for your books and pick a partner to pair with — they aren't the kinds of things you'd want to test on your own. First rule: Always have a third hand. Second: Don't do it in public if you can help it. Final: Don't even try skipping ahead, because they won't answer you."

Whatever that means. It's time to learn magic.

The Witch — if pressed, she'll begrudgingly allow the students to address her as 'Ms. Spinner' — will force characters together with a surprisingly powerful shove of her hand if she passes and you aren't already paired with someone too, so don't think you can get out of this little exercise by going solo! You can't. As far as the promised spirituality goes... listen to the voice within, find your inner peace, and the rest'll come naturally. The Witch isn't too pressed for you whelps to understand off the bat, though she won't leave you out on a limb either.

TL;DR

The characters — Visitors, as they're referred — are able to learn basic level magic with the help of the Witch.
Pair up and practice. This is essential to the process, and the Witch will force unpaired individuals to partner up.
Anything higher level magic won't come to the character; it may feel like there's a kind of blockage, even to those who're used to magic themselves.
The Witch isn't open to questions about the town in particular (are you here to gossip or learn?) and won't answer anything about it, so stay on task if you want answers to your questions.

A Day In The Life

New Visitors may wake up in the woods, but that's not where they're going to be spending all of their time. They have homes, jobs, work, entire lives they need to attend to. They'd better get to it!

A Visitor will be instinctively drawn towards both their home and job; they will always know how to navigate the former, and may find the tasks they perform at the latter suspiciously easy. Outside of that, their life will be incredibly normal for the first few days. No one will acknowledge the strangeness in the woods, and a Visitor's insistence that they're not from around here will be treated like a joke.

And then suddenly it's weird again. They wake up one day and realize they have a different job, perhaps even a different home. They will lose any instinctive understanding they may have had of their old job and gain similar understanding of their new job. Visitors will retain all of their memories of their previous job, but if they bring it up to the townsfolk none of them will have any idea what they're talking about.

TL;DR

This prompt is meant to allow players an opportunity to experiment with the role mechanic, without forcing them to retcon their threads if they receive a markedly different role after applying.
Retconning is, of course, still an option - but if you want to give your character another bit of existential confusion, this is the prompt for you.

OOC Notes

If your character dies... While characters may die during the TDM, these deaths do not count towards a character's death count. If a character dies, they will vanish the instant they lose consciousness. The dead character will reappear safely back at the nearest visitors center, and both they and any witnesses will have only a hazy recollection of the event.

If a character TDMs but doesn't app... You have the option of having your character remember these characters. ICly, characters that TDM but do not apply will simply vanish without a trace under mysterious circumstances.

If you have any questions, please direct them here. Enjoy your new life.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Arrival

His Grace, His Excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes [1] opens his eyes and finds himself staring at some very unfamiliar treetops. The ground beneath him is hard-packed dirt, and something rocklike is digging into his right shoulderblade. He can hear the sound of buzzing insects and, quite possible, the faint tinkle of a bubbling brook.

Vimes is sure he’s not supposed to be here.

Now, this wouldn’t be the first time he had woken up, flat on his back with no memory of how he got there. But one, that usually involved greasy gutters and a gritty Ankh-Morpork night, and two, that’s not the sort of thing that happens to him anymore, thanks. He shuts his eyes tight, willing this dream—because it has to be a dream, right?—to end.

Why did it have to be a forest? Not that Vimes has anything against fuzzy animals. He just prefers them cooked well-done on a plate with some chips on the side. Not that he minds trees, but he likes them much better after they’ve been turned into useful things like houses, and paper, and crossbows. He just has to hope that if he lies here long enough, it all go away.

A bumblebee lands on his nose.

Vimes sits bolt-upright with a yelp that echoes through the forest. “Who did that?”

[1] Blackboard Monitor if you're feeling cheeky.

Monsters and Men

“The Goatman. So he’s…half goat, half man? Which half is which—no, wait, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.”

Regardless of whatever stupid job this place has given him, Sam Vimes will always be a copper, and so when he hears that kids are disappearing, he goes to investigate. So far, this has mostly involved eyeballing surly teens hanging around the Flying Saucer Cafe and trying to get them to tell him what’s going on. They eyeball him right back—that’s the trouble with teens, they’re champion eyeballers—but they’re easily bribable with milkshakes, and that’s how Vimes learns about this mystery creature stalking the woods.

“No, no, no, wait,” he’s saying. “I’ve heard this one before. There was a story out of Lancre about some farmer’s cows getting maimed by some monster, but it turned out to be nothing.” [2]

“If you don’t believe us, then why don’t you go see for yourself?” says Surly Teen #1.

“Yeah, why are you hanging around us, anyway? You some kind of pervert?” adds his companion.

With a groan, Vimes stands up and stalks to the door. Maybe he will go see for himself.

“Hey, aren’t you going to pay for these!” one of the kids calls after him.

[2] Was it a hoax meant to scare the populace? No, not at all. Francis Chisolm just turned out to be a godsawful butcher.

Teenagers are champion eyeballers, and the one leaning in a blind spot by the door of the Flying Saucer Café is no exception. Even with his baseball cap pulled down and his head canted at an oblique, nonchalant angle, he manages to be in a good position to get a look at the face of the man with so many questions about the rumor in the forest.

It's not really any of his business. He doesn't think he'll be able to warn him away from going into the woods, and Yoshiki doesn't know anything that could help him out. He doesn't think this stranger will be able to help him, either, and even if he was, what's knowing what he looks like going to do for Yoshiki if he's not going to ask him for anything?

Nothing. But here he is all the same, committed to a bad idea before he could think better of it.

He should be able to get away with it. Most adults barely give teenagers a first look, let alone a second one, and the other teens inside probably turned the man off of any looks at all.

Satisfied with his logic, Yoshiki glances, then turns as though he heard someone calling him and is trying to see where they are. Once he's 'spotted' them, he pushes off the wall and starts a casual walk away. It's as easy as that.

Yoshiki gets about five paces before he feels a heavy clap on his shoulder.

The grip isn’t painful, exactly, but it definitely implies that the wielder, if pressed, could grab the poor kid by the shirt, throw him to the ground, and confess his most embarrassing secrets. It’s a grip that says there are two ways this could go, and you really aren’t going to like option two.

“Going somewhere?”

"Hh," Yoshiki says, intelligently. He pairs this witty remark with the kind of full body electric stiffening that suggests that if Vimes' hand wasn't so effectively grounding his shoulder, Yoshiki might have successfully jumped halfway out of his skin.

As it is, he's stuck. He hasn't had this kind of heavy hand placed on his shoulder in a long time, and never with such horrible depth of practice lurking behind it, but his stomach remembers how to twist up and lurch at getting caught doing something he's not supposed to have been doing.

"No," he says, more coherently, "Just- walking around."

If he stares directly ahead and doesn't move a muscle, maybe it'll throw the man off. Guilty people struggle and try to get away, so it stand to reason innocent ones don't. Doesn't it?

Guilty people do all kinds of things. Sometimes they run, and sometimes they freeze. Sometimes they plead innocent and sometimes they confess everything on the spot. This isn't because guilty people are unusually complex or unpredictable individuals.

It's because everyone--absolutely everyone--is guilty of something.

"Just walking around," Vimes drawls. He doesn't remove his hand. "And I guess your 'wandering around' just happened to take you close enough to eavesdrop on my conversations, is that it?"

Yoshiki feels guilty for everything he does. That and the authority wafting off this man like smoke in the light of an interrogation room conspire against him to turn the twist in his stomach into a full-blown snare.

"I- I wasn't-" He stammers, pointlessly. He's been caught. His shoulders curl in as he tucks his chin down, his heart rate spiking.

"I heard what you were talking about," he admits, lamely, "I didn't know you didn't want anybody listening. I just wanted- I-"

Don't look. Don't listen. That's how to stay safe. He broke the rules, and someone noticed. He wraps an arm around himself to hook onto his elbow.

"I won't do it again," he says, which makes sense, "please don't tell anyone," he says after, which doesn't.

The forest was familiar in a different way, though his memories of it weren't all pleasant. Still, it was soothing in its own way when nothing felt familiar, yet also kept him alert. He needed both of that right now, to avoid feeling too secure in an unfamiliar world in case it wasn't what he thought it was.

Finding a man lying down wasn't in his plans, less so when he bolts upright and yells out of nowhere, startling Elvis and making him nearly trip. He leans heavily on the cane he found instead, steadying himself before he stands a bit more upright.

He looks down at the startled man with a pleasant smile.

"My apologies. Were you resting? I did not mean to intrude in your space."

September 2023 TDM

Sam Vimes | Discworld

Monsters and Men

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Arrival