SUMMER TEST DRIVE
Welcome to the test drive and thank you for your interest in The Village. This test drive is not game canon but will allow players the opportunity to experiment with game mechanics, the setting, and the flexibility of choice allowed by this game. The following prompts are examples of typical situations characters might face in the game. At least one thread from the TDM is required as part of the game's application process.

Prospective players are welcome to play with any of the established locations within Mathias.

The final round of applications will be processed in August.

( Recommended listening: ♫ )

UNTO OBLIVION
Summer has arrived in Mathias. The days are warm, the nights are cool, and much of the autumn debris has cleared from around town. Only a few stray leaves and fallen branches remain, their crisp colors at odds with the new season. It's something that may cause some to wonder, while others may not even notice the oddity.

New arrivals wake in the lush forest, with its winding paths twisting back on themselves as they branch in either direction. It isn't safe to stray from the path, some ominous feeling pushing you to not venture beyond what you can clearly see, but there is nothing impeding movement along those winding paths that cut through the seemingly infinite trees. Continue stumbling in one direction and you'll reach the small town, coming out near the mishmash of quaint houses that nestle beside crumbling ruins that once were homes. But choose the other and you'll seem to wander on forever, lost in an ocean of green leaves and speckles of sunlight that taunt you with a freedom you haven't yet attained. Suddenly, there seems to be a clearing up ahead—

And then nothing. The earth opens up before you in a ravine so deep that the bottom cannot be seen. The other side can be seen, tantalizingly out of reach, and there is the sense that safety is just beyond if only you could get there. But with that sensation is also the knowledge that if you stay here, you will die. The edge seems unsteady, like getting too close would set it crumbling and send you tumbling into that dark endless nothing that waits below...

TO SEE AND BE SEEN
Standing at the center of Mathias, the Town Hall is a modest two-story building that would be welcoming if not for the faded sign, chipped paint, and deafening silence within its empty halls. It's a typical government building, with a reception desk at the front and rows of identical offices within, the names half faded from each door. But what catches the attention is a large bulletin board on the main wall beside the reception desk, once meant to hold flyers or announcements for the community.

What it holds now is decidedly different. All across the board are push-pins with scraps of torn paper clinging to them, large ones and small, bits of writing visible at the frayed edges of a few. There on the floor are the formerly ordered scraps of paper, now ripped and crumpled and scattered in all directions. In an array of handwriting styles: requests for supplies should anyone find them, pieces of information shared in the hopes of someone understanding the strange symbols and mathematical equations, notes about those missing or recently deceased.

And with the papers ripped away from the board, what was once hidden is now fully visible: An eye. A strange, ornate eye with three lobes, painted in still-wet red. And upon close examination, a keen eye will realize that the paint is actually blood, perhaps even human.

The longer someone stands there, the more it will feel like they are being watched, even studied, with great interest. It's a sensation that lingers and stays with them even when they exit the building.

NOT AS IT SEEMS
From the outside, Baneberry Hall seems like your ordinary rich person's house, spawling and bigger than it has any right to be, but one would be mistaken to assume anything of the sort. Even the baneberries that cover the back lawn leading to the forest treeline are deceptive: harmless in appearance but fatal to any foolish enough to eat them.

The building is decaying from within. The rooms have begun to rot, from the parlors and libraries still done up in grand and expensive style to the bedrooms that have locks on the doors and bars on the windows. There are restraints in some of those bedrooms, while others are bereft of sharp objects. In the hall closets, there are identical sets of white pajamas of all sizes, and the offices have locked cabinets full of a rainbow of sedatives. The names on doors and in logbook lists are all smudged beyond legibility, and any paperwork has been water-damaged and weathered, leaving no indication of who may have been kept in those bedrooms or why. But within each room, there is an item that is familiar to one of the unfortunate souls now wandering its halls...

A beloved book, a handwritten letter from a loved one, a medal earned through years of service. As caked in dust and grime as anything else, each item is placed in its room as if it belongs there, as if it might have been there for years. But it couldn't have been. None of them have any memory of being here before, and that unnerving sense of familiarity is just their mind playing tricks on them.

Isn't it?