TDM The First

[lethevale_mods]

You probably know how this works, but just in case, here's the idea:

1. You put the name of the character you're testing out in the subject line
2. You write a starter (or several!) in the comment, with the Lethevale AU of your character.
3. People respond with their characters. Threads occur. Friendships are made. The world is put to rights.
4. None of the threads in the Test Drive are game-canon.

Here are some prompts to start you off!

1. Seeking Shelter

You were riding along the mountain road when your horse, terrified by some dark shadow you couldn't see clearly, screamed and bolted, throwing you. Now you're caught in the middle of nowhere, in Lethe Wood, and the rain is getting heavier by the minute.

But what's that? A light? A house? Perhaps if you knock, they'll give you a bed for the night. It'll all look better in the morning...

 

 

2. The Beast! The Terrible Beast!

You took all the precautions. You carried a lantern, kept to the safer streets. Or maybe you didn't. Either way, you were attacked by something as big as a horse, with gleaming white teeth and a hideous howl.

When you run into another person, will you warn them? Will you ask them for a hiding place, or stand and fight? If all else fails, maybe you can use them as live bait...

 

3. Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

Lethevale isn't all monsters and storms. Mostly, but not all. Tonight, there's a party in the Black Swan - dancing, music, and of course, an open bar. Take the chance to get to know your neighbours, why don't you?

4. Pay No Attention To The Passage Behind The Curtain

The two of you were just wandering around Lethe Hall, when you leant on a candlestick, and... what's this? The bookshelf's opened? There's a hole in the wall now, and a spiral staircase leading down into the dark. You know, it's probably best to just leave well enough alone - but you have to admit, it's curious...

COMMS	GENERAL INFO	NEW PLAYERS	CURRENT PLAYERS
main writings ooc mods mod npcs	rules setting premise faq/mod contact gameplay	reserves taken latest tdm application au workshop	contact (locked) hiatus/drop calendar latest hmd lethevale

Comments

Boromir Wójcik Ectheliowski

[hobbitstho]

1. Seeking shelter:

He's a skilled rider, but it doesn't save him from the fall. Skill and luck mean he doesn't hit the dirt as hard as he could have, and not headfirst-- but when he gets to his feet it's with a shooting pain in one leg that says he shouldn't hike any mountain trails tonight. Not a break, he thinks, but it will want rest. And anything he might have used to ease his way is gone with the horse.

He curses his misfortune aloud, but the rain swallows the sound. And then he pulls his wide hat-brim down further and starts up the trail, favoring his bruised leg.

He's beginning to fear he'll have to sleep as best he can sodden under a tree when he sees the light in the distance. With a cry of relief he starts toward it, pushing over the uneven ground faster than he ought, and not caring what branches tear at his clothes.

But he pauses to compose himself before he knocks. Even though the beckoning warmth from within is so close as to be maddening, he straightens, and shakes the rain from his hat before he puts it back on, and beats what mud he can from his cloak. Let whoever answers the door know they are receiving a gentleman, and not a robber on the road or a soldier begging quarter.

He raises a fist and pounds on the door three times, and prays to God someone answers.

--

2. The Beast! The Terrible Beast!

It lurched out of an alley like out of a nightmare, and he lost precious fractions of a second staring at it, trying to force it to be something he recognizes. By the time he has the presence of mind to reach for his gun it is upon him, slamming him back into the stone wall behind him, burying horrible white teeth in his shoulder.

He manages to connect a fist with one of its eyes, and it gives a howl that he feels through every one of his bones and stumbles back away from him-- just long enough that he can fire off a wild shot and then take off running, back toward wider streets.

His mind races: There may be others on the street. He must drive them ahead of him, if he finds them. He must remain always between the townsfolk and the monster.

"Go! Go!" he shouts at whoever he sees, in a voice he used to make heard across the chaos of a mountain battlefield. The blood running down his arm, the pitch of his shoulders, and the pistol in his hand lend him urgency - to say nothing of the second furious howl that bursts from the alley behind him.

--

3. Pay No Attention To The Passage Behind The Curtain

"Aha!" He takes a hasty step back when the candlestick gives under his hand, but leans in as soon as he sees what result the action produced. It's equal parts trepidation and excitement.

"How curious," he says, and his voice echoes faintly in the darkness of the stairwell. He glances over his shoulder. "--We should fetch light. A torch, a lantern."

There seems to be no question that he intends to venture down, and that he assumes his companion will come with him.

2

[insufficientjewel]

It is the second howl that draws Francis' attention, sends him darting out into the street despite the danger. The shots make him think that this other man can handle himself against one wolf... or bear, or boar, or whatever that great, shaggy form is. But now?

He cannot bear to stay inside any longer. Against the protests of his host, he rushes out of the pub at the end of the street, snatching up a poker from the hearth as he does so. There is more valour than wisdom in the act, certainly; he is a scholar and not a warrior, and truthfully has little idea of what he can do besides act as a distraction. But perhaps a distraction will be enough.

As the creature lunges again at Boromir, Francis dives at it, swinging the poker like a bat with all the strength in his wiry body. A surprising amount of strength, judging by the sickening, wet thud as the hook of the poker pierces the beast's bloodshot eye and the bone beneath. Breathless, shocked at himself and at his own ferocity, he yanks the bloodied poker back with another thick squelch, staggering back a couple of steps, his eyes wide.

[hobbitstho]

The sound the beast makes as it goes down is terrible-- furious and wet-throated and horribly lingering. It struggles a few times to rise, though it lists to one side, the strength gone from half its body. It raises its head at Faramir and makes a sound that no bear or wolf or boar on the Earth has ever made--

--and Boromir shoots it in the back of the head in a shower of bone and blood.

The silence in its wake feels unnaturally loud. His ears still ring with its howl. He straightens painfully, breathing hard, and looks at the man with the poker.

"You ought to have stayed in safety," he says hoarsely. "I have not... I have never seen a beast like this." He looks back and forth, as though he fears another is waiting to spring from the shadows.

[insufficientjewel]

"Stayed in safety and watched as that same beast tore out a man's throat?" Francis' tone is firm, even a touch sarcastic, but there is a tremble to his hand as he lowers the poker by his side. He is not used to violence, nor does he quite know what to do with the shaky, dizzy feeling as the adrenaline begins to fade. There is blood on his shirt, on his hands, and something thick and viscous he doesn't want to think about too hard. "No. My body might have been spared by such caution, but my soul would surely be damned."

He follows the other man's eyes, this way and that, searching for any of the animal's companions. Once he is reassured that nothing draws too near, that no other howl splits the night, he drops the bloody poker with a clatter and moves to the other man's side, to offer some support. This close, even in the darkness, it is clear he has been affected by the fight: under the blood, his olive skin has taken on a greyish pallor, and he is trembling noticeably when he offers his arm.

"We should find somewhere to see to that wound," he says, quietly. "Do you stay nearby, sir?"

[hobbitstho]

As the adrenaline fades, Boromir begins to feel the pain in his shoulder, and the first wash of dizziness. It's not a deadly amount of blood, but it's not insignificant, either. He lets himself lean on the other man's arm, and notes how it trembles-- the man struck a great blow, but it was all courage that drove him, not experience.

"At the Rose & Thorn," he says. He'd been on his way there, taking a quicker, less well-lit path. "I have rooms there."

But he's doing what he's accustomed to do: Already thinking the next steps ahead, imagining from where the next threat might come. "But there must be an alarm." He takes an unsteady step and then another, less unsteady. "We must set a patrol. What if another comes? This one did not fear to enter the town. It did not fear me. The next victim might be unarmed. Can we be sure it was the only one of its kind?"

The thought that someone else should run afoul of a beast like this while he recovers in safety is one he can't bear. And, so long as they're both out in the street together, this man is under his direct protection.

[insufficientjewel]

"We cannot." Francis does not sound as though he's trying to humour the other man, nor to talk him down; his expression is grimly serious, and he frowns, looking down at the black mass of the beast in its bloody heap. "I do not doubt that the alarm is already being raised, but..."

But he understands the stranger's concern. It is not in his nature, either, to leave things to chance, to take any less than the fullest responsibility. If it were, he would not be out here in the first place. Passing a bloodied hand across his mouth, he considers a moment, and then nods. The other man is bigger and heavier than Francis himself, but still he tries to steer him on, gently but firmly.

"There must be a constable, a watchman." He nods, as if satisfied. "You should see to your injury, and it will take only one of us to pass on the word. I will go, and fetch a doctor as well, if I can. I do not trust that thing's teeth to be unpoisoned," he adds, grimly, looking back at the fallen beast.

[hobbitstho]

The steering is welcome, if he's honest. He forces himself to slow-- in another time he would have driven himself harder, pressed forward all the more stubbornly, but he cannot exhaust himself before the man beside him has found safety.

"You cannot go alone and unarmed," he says, with a shake of his head. "You struck a hell of a blow there-- if I may say so-- but I won't let you seek danger again for my sake."

Then what to do? A moment's peril, and he's already thinking as though he's posting defenses against a force of a hundred. Trying to command an imaginary army through a haze of pain against an enemy he doesn't even know is out there. He's not in command here.

He battles with himself a moment; and then he lets out a breath, and with it allows the stranger to take a little more of his weight. "...We'll go to the Rose & Thorn," he says. "As you said. We'll alert the innkeep. What messages must be sent can be sent from there."

He adds, as though convincing himself, "You're right. This is the constable's affair."

[insufficientjewel]

Francis stumbles a little, only a little, under the other man's weight. Tall as he is, it must be said that he is unused to being the smaller man, and though he is stronger than he looks, he is also still shaking from the fight.

He nods, pressing his lips together. "They will know better who to speak with," he agrees, and sounds all the more as though he is trying to convince himself. It is comforting to think that they may in good conscience take that easier way out; more comforting still to think that they have found a solution. Still, doubt lingers, a sense that he should be doing more than that. "Certainly, I am not long-enough established, and they are more than a touch mistrustful..."

Yes. Yes, it is best. Thus reassured, he nods again, more firmly, and turns the corner towards the Rose & Thorn.

"It is good of you," he ventures, after a moment, "to be so concerned for my safety. I am afraid you would be better-placed to look to your own, though."

1

[major_rawne]

Rawne managed to manipulate the owner of this small cottage into lending it to him for a few nights, so he could spend some time in blessed isolation, far away from any other human being. Avoiding questions and keeping the mask (half-hearted though it is) of being sociable was becoming tiresome.

He was absorbed in reading a book when the knock came, startling him badly enough that he dropped the book. He was tempted to ignore whoever it was outside, but even he couldn't leave anyone out in weather like this.

Sighing heavily, he gets up and opens the door. "What brings you out here, on a night like this?"

[hobbitstho]

He's taken aback by the tattoo on the man's face, enough that there's a half-second's pause before he remembers to bow courteously.

"My horse bolted," he said. "I was on the road to Lethevale-- but I fear the beast cannot be caught, and I cannot walk through the night."

He's too well-bred to enter without an invitation, and too proud to admit he's chilled to the bone and ready to sleep under a tree before he takes another step. "I ask your hospitality, sir."

[major_rawne]

He's gotten so used to his tattoo, he tends not to realize how strange it is. But any man looking for an Army officer won't be looking for a man with a barbaric tattoo on his face.

As much as he loathes the idea of company, he himself is too well-bred to turn away a man without a horse, in the middle of a storm.

"Be welcome to it," he says, stepping back and opening the door.

[hobbitstho]

The good thing about courtesy is that it doesn't have to be heartfelt. Boromir enters gladly, feeling overwhelming relief the moment the warmth of the interior floods over him. Praise God, there's even a fire, not just candlelight.

He hangs his hat and cloak from a hook by the door-- they'll soak the floor beneath them, but that can't be helped. Under them he's a tall, broad-built man, home recently enough from campaign that he still moves too much like a soldier, but with weariness in the set of his shoulders. The cloak was well soaked-through, but all his other clothes are in the saddlebags or following behind with the rest of the luggage.

He extends a hand to his host. "My name is Boromir Wójcik. If there's anything I can do to repay your kindness, sir, only name it; once I come to Lethevale, I'll be able to make arrangements." It's a name well-known in Poland and even to some out here-- an old and wealthy family.

[major_rawne]

Newcomer as he is, Rawne has heard of the Wójcik name. He shakes his hand. "Ibram Gaunt, at your service."

He recognizes the posture of a fellow soldier, as well. Rawne has lived in peacetime for longer than Boromir, no doubt, but he's not one of the men who go soft in the absence of war.

[hobbitstho]

Boromir recognizes something of that in him, maybe, or something in Boromir answers to it; anyway, there's something a little stronger than courtesy in his handshake.

He takes the liberty of sinking into one of the simple wood chairs, wincing as he stretches out his injured leg. "Do you see many travelers out this way, sir?" he asks his host, clearly assuming that he lives in this hut year-round.

[major_rawne]

"I have seen none save yourself, but I have only been here a short time," he says. He sits opposite Boromir and looks him over. "Are you injured?"

3.

[palinoias]

There is mostly trepidation on her face, though, as she looks back at the passageway that's opened up before them. Rebecca's gaze is drawn to the looming dark within and, try as she might deny it, she begins to grow as curious as her companion - though she still lifts a wary brow at his urging.

"You plan to go down there?" she asks, needlessly. He seems ready to do so. She casts her eyes around for fire and crosses to where other candles rest on a table. "A lantern would likely be better. There must be one around here." For now, a candle will have to do, which she goes to light on one of the very few lit ones in the hall. This she brings back to Boromir, squinting into the dark. "Can you see anything?"

[hobbitstho]

“A candle will do for now.” He holds it aloft when she brings it, squinting down into the darkness. In the meager light it appears the stairwell goes down at least a full floor, and likely deeper, to judge by the cool, damp smell that wafts up.

He’s smiling when he glances back at her. “When I was a boy, I was sure there must have been a hundred such passages in my father’s house,” he says. “I searched for hours and hours, but never found one. To my great disappointment.”

It’s clear he sees no great cause for caution. “Bring a second candle, so you can light your way,” he says, “and a few of the unlit tapers in case these should go out. Perhaps we’ll find a wine cellar that the master of house never discovered.”

1

[warrior_princess]

This is a peasant hut straight out of the old country - like something from a village at home - that had been long-abandoned when she found it as evening fell, but the walls and the door are still sound. She'd spent the twilight scrounging wood and working out how to unjam the door, then settled to sit by her small fire and half-doze til morning.

She's been hearing dogs fighting over meat. That's not even real and she knows it, but those thoughts come sometimes when she's alone. Rain and the crackle of the fire and those old memories mean she startles hearing the pounding on the door, startles and takes her sidearm from its place besides her. Still loaded.

Padding in her stockings to the door she wrenches it open - fast, no cracking it to peer uselessly out into the dark - and shows her sidearm so the firelight illuminates it. "Who goes there," she growls.

[hobbitstho]

He takes a hasty step back when the door swings open. Curse his luck--! His gun is gone with the saddlebags, though it likely matters little, when the powder would have been soaked through by now had he been carrying it.

Strange, to find a woman alone on the road. He can't quite make out her face with the firelight within directly behind her, and his eyes still too used to the dark. He puts his hands up before him-- then pauses, and removes his wide-brimmed hat. Trying to appear less of a threatening stranger.

"Only a stranded traveler," he says. "My name is Boromir Wójcik, and I seek only a place to wait out the rain."

[warrior_princess]

She keeps this gun on her person in an oilcloth-lined pouch, and good thing too. Lots of her rogues over the years have called Plourr paranoid, but the tendency has proved useful too many times to make an effort to change.

That's a familiar name delivered in a familiar voice. She does know him, she did have a generally good impression of the man, but her suspicion isn't satisfied. "The Hussar captain. You're a long way from your father's halls, Boromir. What brings you out here and afoot?"

A flash of lightning illuminates the landscape and her face, and after a couple of seconds thunder barks and growls. Plourr considers for a moment, then hisses out a breath between her teeth and steps back. She's seen people hit by lightning. "Fine. Come in and speak to me there. My sup, my wine, my hearth, such as they are."

He may or may not have picked up that while she doesn't act gently reared, sometimes she says things that are corruptions of classical terms, like the offer to share food and drink and lodgings with a guest.

[hobbitstho]

The flash of lightning illuminates the surprise on his face when he hears his name spoken back to him. And by the time the thunder fades, he understands who he's speaking to.

"...This night grows stranger and stranger," he says as he follows her in, still favoring his bruised leg.

Her 'sup, wine, and hearth' aren't much, but they look luxurious compared to his last few hours. He sheds his sopping cloak and finds a corner to drape it (he's hardly any drier underneath), and pauses to look her over, with a smile half-relieved and half-bemused and somehow also weary.

"I was on the road to Lethevale, to answer your question," he says. "My horse spooked at a shadow and left me afoot." That, a little rueful-- she knew him as a cavalryman, after all. "But I should ask the same of you, Estill. You're a long way from the Eastern front." Which was where they parted ways, however many years ago. (The past six months feel as long as the previous four years to him, sometimes.)

[warrior_princess]

It's cobwebby inside, littered with old broken furniture. The roof is leaking intermittently. Plourr's greatcoat is stretched out on the brick besides her fire, which is also serving to dry her boots.

"I'm not going by Estill anymore. It's Pol." For a good ten or fifteen years she'd given her name as various slices and slivers of her actual name, foolishly not thinking of the consequences of telling people to call her anything too reminiscent of Isplourrdacartha Kassen Estillo. Even Pol is a corruption of it, but it's something that could plausibly have origins that aren't the royal house of Eiattu. And she hates the thought of abandoning this, last, thing. "What am I always looking for? Money, grub, pretty boys and girls, spirits - I'm developing new skills, though. Thought I'd try a few months as a barkeep, and they need one."

He looks older. Well, obviously. But something's happened in the last however many years that's shaken his worldview. Perhaps not enough to make him dangerous. It seems too much of a transformation for him to have gone subtle and silver-tongued, to be able to come smiling and wait for her back to turn.

Plourr rifles one-handed through the coat and comes up with a flask that she offers, half full of a truly alarming spirit that might be some version of vodka and really shouldn't be shared without knowledge of what it is. "Warm up a touch. You look drowned."

[hobbitstho]

Boromir catches a whiff of that flask and is transported back in time with almost physical force. Another winding road, another fire, another cold night. ...A lot of cold nights. His soldiers had thought him too solemn, once, and he'd taught them otherwise drinking out of a flask like this-- though of course it was always easier to let go with someone not under his command.

He's spent the past six months back in a life where servants lay out his clothes for him in the early morning, where he hears Mass in his father's chapel every Sunday, where he drinks wine instead of whatever's been fermenting in someone's saddlebag for the past six weeks. He reaches for the flask.

It is warming, in that one swig feels like he's swallowed a hot poker. He coughs; his eyes water; he feels significantly more alive than he has in hours. Maybe months. "Hell," he says, with appreciation, and that's invigorating, too.

He lowers himself gingerly down onto the mostly-dry floor. The ends of his hair, grown long since his return, drip water and a little steam as he inches closer to the fire and stretches out his sore leg. "Medic to barkeep is a long journey," he says, looking up at her. "Can it be you're planning to settle down? Retire to the country?"

Maybe Estill-- Pol-- is running from someone. Maybe she just thinks she is. It wouldn't be unlike her, either way, he thinks.

1

[tactlesstantei]

The shelter, little more than a run down shack, was not Masumi’s. She had simply found the structure and decided to use it for shelter from the poor weather, though it seemed like she wasn’t the only one to stumble upon the shack now, judging by the knocking.

“You need shelter, too?” Masumi would be an odd sight, with her mismatched and rather low quality riding jacket and mens pants, the results of having to adapt for the sake of being able to travel on horseback easily. “I suppose you can come in, since it looks like it’s still raining out.”

She stepped aside there, revealing that the shack was quite dark aside from the single lantern keeping some sort of light in the place.

2 (also hello, someone is disguised as a guy)

[withoutswords]

Eona, to her later shame and anger, does not react at first. She is too stunned with astonishment, both at the sudden fury of the attack and at the sheer monstrousness of...whatever it is. She has never seen or even heard of the like, save in ghost stories of eldrich beasts beyond description.

By the time she moves it has already attacked, savaging a man on the street. He reacts well, punching it square in the face, which drives it off.

But it may return.

With a sharp gasp, Eona moves--but she disobeys the instruction, instead running towards the attacked stranger and reaching for the pistol kept in her coat pocket. When the beast leaps forth again, she stands, aims, and fires in one swift motion, hitting it in something like a shoulder.

It roars, rearing, and she fires again into its chest, praying that she will be successful and those years of target practice weren't for nothing.