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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.
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
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.
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.
no subject
Don't tell me what to do, [ rrrrr— ] I could just— [ her fingers curl and claw in the direction of his belly, because she is thinking about using your guts as a whip!!!! but you know what? she just bats the air in his direction with another bah!. asa wins. she's not looking. just following, but yoru is storming as she does. ] Why?!
no subject
Turning his back on her again is even harder than before, but at least he's not embarrassed. He's just afraid. Afraid of her, afraid of the chittering noise that's become so quiet he has to strain to hear it, afraid of everything he doesn't know. ]
If you look, that's how they get into you.
[ Head down. Eyes on the trail. Keep walking. ]
I didn't mean to tell you what to do. I'm sorry. But please - [ He doesn't even know her. He's scared of her. He still- ] - I'm asking. I don't want to walk out of here alone.
[ I don't want to have to leave you. ]
no subject
meanwhile, asa’s heart pangs deeply, and she goes quiet from her attempt at emotional distance through rationality. it goes through her like an arrow. a loneliness she was so deathly afraid of exposing that this boy shows to her in a moment of desperation, it has to be. i don’t want to walk out of here alone.
yoru gives her other half of consciousness a pointed, nasty look. are you serious?! she says without making herself known verbally. asa stays quiet when she sees a little bit of herself, but the courage she’d never have. she’s softer. yoru feels the same way, rolls her eyes upwards, and relents with an exaggerated sigh outward. ]
Fine, what-have-you— Just keep walking.
no subject
He never wants anybody to get hurt. The other side of I don't want to walk out of here alone is I won't leave you behind. The sound of her shoes on the dirt is a steady counterpoint to whatever's in the forest, and he wants to keep hearing it.
Until the strange sound, and all other noise in the woods besides what they're making, cuts out like somebody hit the pause button. Yoshiki almost stumbles as his shoulder jerk upward, but he manages to avoid it. ]
Jus' - just keep walking.
[ He echoes back to her, like a mantra, like a ward against whatever's stalking them. ]
Just keep walking. [ Another voice repeats, like an animal mimicking a human, and a hideous chill ripples down Yoshiki's back. ] Keep walking.
no subject
[ not at yoshiki, it is what she says to the thing. goatman. she wants to skin it alive and make good use of its horns— but she follows asa's lead, and the boy's, and instead, snarls profanities at the entity following them. this should be terrifying, asa knows she's feeling a great unease that only feels half dulled by yoru's anger.
she picks up the pace, anyway, and storms ahead of yoshiki. she may be angry, but she's feeling unwell, too. thanks, asa. and if yoshiki couldn't go any faster— yoru has had enough of his sluggishness, takes one of his wrists by force and pulls him along into a dash. ]
Move it, boy, you're slow!
[ —wait, why is she helping?! ]
no subject
It's apparently not a lesson this girl ever picked up, but now that they've started they can't stop. After momentarily dragging behind her, he leans into the sprint, keeping pace with her thanks to having been tugged along like this before.
Flashes of those moments spill through his thoughts as they careen forward, the film of ozone in the air plastered all the way down his throat. He swears he can hear a third set of footprints behind them, and that awful, chattering noise is picking up again - ]
She said shut up!
[ Maybe not the best use of breath, but - solidarity, or something. ]
no subject
if this wasn't a battle she could win, then yoru was booking it. and when she sees the clearing, more light through dense foilage— you bet scrawny ass she's launching the boy into the clearing like a harpoon. ]
cw: blood, doppelganger
He cries out when he hits the ground, something sharp and splintered biting into his knee. He can tell it's bleeding before he finishes scrambling back up to his feet, his pant leg tacking to the injury.
He stands up facing the wrong way and holding a stick. It's not even a good stick. He is horribly, deeply aware of how fragile he is, body and mind and soul, compared to any thing that might be chasing them.
Behind the girl, the thing meets his eyes. They're perfect mirrors of Yoshiki's own, like all of it is, except for the wide, inhuman grin plastered over its (his) face. ]
no subject
the right thing that yoru sees is the goatman. she flashes her eyes with the same sharpness as the eerie grin before her, and huffs loud, prideful: ]
There you are, pest. [ she needs a weapon. it's going to suck because everything she has on hand is not particularly important to asa, but this should be a slice of cake, anyway. ] Now I can gut you and take your horns for trophy.
[ a warm up! now things are more to her tastes! except— ]
Boy. The true boy, [ she beckons! ] bestow me your pants, posthaste.
[ and just then asa fucking dies in limbo— but that's the point!!!!! ]
no subject
Waking up some place he didn't expect to be? Not the first time. Strange girls who are more than they seem? Yoshiki can wrap his mind around that. Horrors in the woods that take your face? Unfortunately, he knows all too much about them. Being asked for his pants by a girl he just met? That's new.
But there has to be a reason she's asking, and so, after only a moment's incomprehension, Yoshiki drops his stick and scrabbles at his belt. It's an awkward, clumsy struggle to get his pants off over his shoes, and he thinks about how stupid a way this would be to die, and he's glad he wore boxers today, and his cheeks must be as red as his bleeding knee as he wads up his pants and tosses them to her underhand.
The thing stands at the edge of the clearing, still grinning, its shoulders heaving silently like some awful parody of laughter. ]
no subject
she catches his slacks in a swipe and feels pretty good about what asa’s feeling, so better try it out on this horrific laughing fool. ]
A poor boy’s Pumpgun Pants!
[ and behold: the pants legs flip and twist, fold into something solid in her hands, until the form and nozzle that takes place is a pump action rifle. with only one bullet for ammo.
not the strongest of the bunch, but she could deal with that.
now it’s time to approach, pump, load and— eventually, kablam. wetness, splattering, and the sickening thud of a body that goes flying. ]
cw: vomiting
The sight that follows the firing is even worse. He's seen some awful things in the world, but none of them have been quite like watching a body (his body) get ripped apart in such a sudden red burst. He stares at the space where the body was before it flew backwards, and he doesn't know if the thin haze he sees in the air is even real or not.
He doesn't know how much of any of this is real. That girl just made a gun out of his pants and shot something shaped like a human being, and he's lost in a foreign forest, and he can't keep pretending to himself that the strangeness of her eyes is a trick of the light or a pair of fancy contacts. He doesn't even know what 'real' means for this, or if it matters, and he's standing out in the woods with his pants off and a bloody knee and his hands over his ears and he hates this, he hates this he hates this -
Yoshiki makes a small, inarticulate, choking sound, doubles over, and throws up. It's a pitiful wrenching, the contents of his half-digested breakfast splattering onto the grass. ]
cw: gore description
that's horrible to think about, and what's worse is the realization that she feels a little jealous to consider: he's not used to any of this. yoru sees asa's hanging head, and now that the one-use weapon is useless, she tosses it away as the fabric comes undone. not into pants, but shreds. ]
T'ch. Wuss.
[ to asa, not yoshiki, but it's hard to tell. who would she be talking, to, anyway? but the next time the girl walks anywhere near him, she barely looks at him, keeps her head down,
and offers a thin sweatshirt from her school bag, without a word. she feels stupid, but at the same time, it feels no less an obligation to offer something to at the very least cover up.
yuko taught her. ]
no subject
He doesn't look at the girl when she hands him her sweatshirt, just takes it with shaking hands. Shame soaks him all the way through, like fever-sweat, as he loops it around his waist and ties it to hide as much of him as he can. He tries not to sniffle as he breathes, but his nose is all stopped up from his head hanging down, so some is inevitable. ]
Thank you.
[ He says it so quietly, barely threading through the ringing in his ears. His knee throbs with his racing heartbeat, and he's still trembling as he raises his head and blinks behind his lank hair. ]
...do you still wanna go to school?
no subject
shame. that's the right word. only a lifted hand could hide away the face that spares him no attention. if he didn't speak, she could've pretended he didn't exist. just apparition. just a bad daydream. ]
I, um. [ her tendency to follow the rules still urges her to go to school, because this was just another day in the life of a devil-ridden world, but a voice whispers to her. it wasn't yoru. it was someone before yoru. i wish . . . i had lived a little more selfishly. ] I need to, [ she waves her hand to look for the word, ] change. Clothes.
[ she doesn't feel like going right now. ]
no subject
[ Yoshiki should've thought of that. Of course they can't go to school like this. In fact, Yoshiki can't go to school at all, because he goes to school on the other side of the ocean.
He drops his fuzzy eyes to his hands. He wants to smooth down the arms of the sweatshirt draped over his crotch to see if he can hide more of his pale thighs. He wants to forget he has a body completely. He wants to wake up in his bed and forget all of this. ]
Yeah. 'Course. Me too. I'll...give you your shirt back at school.
[ Belatedly, he realizes he should ask how she did all that. That's what a normal person would do. They'd want to know, not ever thinking that there are some things a person is better off not. ]
Let's go.
[ Yoshiki turns towards the continuation of the trail on the other side of the clearing and sets off, blood trickling down to his sock and staining the white rust-red. ]