phantasmods: (Default)
Phantasmal Rift Mods ([personal profile] phantasmods) wrote in [community profile] phantasmemes2018-03-01 07:08 am
Entry tags:

TEST DRIVE 002

Hello, and welcome to the second test drive for Phantasmal Rift!

Test drive threads are assumed to be game canon for accepted characters unless otherwise noted, so don't feel like you'll have to introduce yourself a second time to everyone you meet! As an added bonus, participation in the test drive comes with the chance to earn up to two items of loot for your trouble! Characters who are accepted can earn one item for having a top level, and one for tagging out to someone else's top level! Your SWEET LOOT will be included with your acceptance notice.

Additionally, characters currently in game can earn themselves a piece of bonus loot for the dungeon by tagging people's top-levels on the test drive! Existing characters get their bonus loot along with the rest of their loot at the conclusion of the dungeon.

This test drive is based in the Fissure nearest to the Station, same as last time! But this time you're coming at the shoreline from a bit of a different angle...

If you really want, though, you can reuse prompts from the first test drive! In particular, there's still landsharks around the new area of beach. Otherwise, here's three new prompts!

OPTION ONE: OCEAN BREEZE

The cavern you find yourself in smells of the sea... And looks like it, too. Large crystal formations, usually in blue or a light yellow-green, glow along the walls and ceiling of the cavern, providing more than enough light to see by. The whole place is damp and a little chilly, and occasional pools of water rise and fall with gentle waves - some outside tide flowing in through underground passages.

More chilling, though, is the wind that flows through the caves, never ever quite going still but varying wildly in intensity. In fact, characters will discover that they have some control over the intensity of the wind - or perhaps some lack of control, depending on their exact response to waking up in an unexpected place. Strong emotions of any sort make the wind stronger in turn; while calm leaves the wind gentle, panic will send it whipping around corners and drive already-distressed characters to take whatever shelter they can, lest they get blown into some cavern wall.

Other than the wind and the crystals, the caverns seem mostly normal for a place that's clearly underwater at least part of the time. The lower reaches of the caverns are full of barnacles, mussels, and other shellfish that await the rising of the tide for their survival, as well as the occasional crab (some of them surprisingly large, up to about the same of a man's head), and bits of seaweed catch on rocky corners.

OPTION TWO: SAY NYA

What's that sound? Is it... a cat?

... No, it's not. It's a meowing seagull, for some reason.

Except for their strange vocalizations (all feline in nature), the seagulls found outside around the cliffs and beaches are all reasonably normal. (Specifically, anyone familiar with the Gulf Coast on Earth will find that they look much like Laughing Gulls in their black-headed plumage.) They're normal-sized and not at all afraid of people...

In fact, they're so unafraid of people, that they'll come right up close to you and nick your stuff! And not just food, mind. Anything they can carry that isn't attached is fair game to be taken and winged up the cliffs to their roosts. Magpies have nothing on these guys.

Good luck chasing them down for whatever it is they've taken, or climbing up the cliffs to get it back. It belongs to the seacats now.

OPTION THREE: ALL THAT GLITTERS

This gravel beach is absolutely splendid in the sunlight, looking like someone shattered a thousand stained glass windows and left the wreckage to sparkle. Protected from the worst of the waves by some rocky outcrops in the distance, the water here is gentle and doesn't disturb the beach much.

Luckily, the glitter does not, in fact, come from glass. Close examination will reveal that the gravel of the beach contains an impressive number of fragments of some kind of hard scale - about a third, if one's going by volume. They vary in size from a large thumb-nail down to nothing, and most transparent in every color imaginable. They're quite hard, and more likely to break into fragments than they are to be ground down by the sand.

But what is it that these scales come from? The answer can be found only at night, when the sun's light disappears. Then, large reptilian-looking creatures - somewhere between snakes and fish - make their way out of the crannies hidden in the rocks around and across from the small beach. In many different colors, they glow beneath the waves, some internal light filtered through their skin and scales to make each appear a different color.

The serpents aren't violent, at least for now, but given that the largest of them is at least twenty feet long... Perhaps it's best not to hassle them.

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-04 06:14 am (UTC)(link)
You must have worked hard to get in. I don't know I would be cut out for that line of work, but it sounds interesting. [For other people. People who knew how to do normal life without it being exhausting.] I never heard of anything like that back home. I hope coming here doesn't throw your semester off. Or mine, for that matter.

I'm going to be a botanist. [He sat down on the rocks, nimbly folding his legs under himself, taking in the beach with the eyes of someone who clearly had limited experience with the ocean.] I've always been interested in plants.
photoshooter: (SMELL 📷 Is that Gladio?)

[personal profile] photoshooter 2018-03-04 06:20 am (UTC)(link)
[He opens his mouth and then closes it without saying anything. Those baby blues get awfully wide before he grimaces, trying to process any of that.]

That sounds. Um.

[Impossible, but that's not what he ought to say, here, that's not polite.]

Diiissssruptive? [Nailed it.] Do you guys really live underground? I-isn't that, I don't know, like, awful? Terrifying? I'm feeling claustrophobic just thinking about it.

[He shivers and rubs his arms.]
dontcallmedeku: (Did you see that?!)

[personal profile] dontcallmedeku 2018-03-04 06:22 am (UTC)(link)
That sounds really interesting. What kind of plants are your favorites?

[Body language was everything. It made up most of the communication between people. The way Julian looked at the beach was telling. Perhaps he never got to go and was from somewhere far from any beach. Maybe it told of a sheltered life. Maybe a fear of water. Whatever the case, he didn't have enough information. That's why they were here right now. That and whatever was causing all of this to occur.]

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-04 06:35 am (UTC)(link)
[He had heard botany was interesting about as often as he'd gotten good reactions to his half-human status: never. For a moment he looks at Izuku as if trying to figure out if he's serious.]

Cacti, succulents, edible flowers, and tree hybrids. I don't really find discussion of invasive plant species interesting, even though rationally I know it's important.

[Julian idly cracked his ankles in turn, mentally comparing the beach to the one his family had visited when he was growing up. The seagulls were the same, but the scant plant life wasn't the same on the beach as in the Pacific Northwest.]
dubiouslychthonic: (Skeptical)

[personal profile] dubiouslychthonic 2018-03-04 07:30 am (UTC)(link)
[She shrugs.] Well, so far as the locals have been able to determine, the fissure's only started producing people in addition to animals and inanimate objects in the past several weeks. We might still be able to figure out how to reverse the trip.

[Or at least, the people who understand a good deal more about magic and different universes than she does may be able to. Goddamn it, Jim, she's a doctor, not a quantum physicist.]

If you can get out into the open, it'll be easier to find you and bring you back to the station with us when we head back? Be careful if you go out onto the beach, though. When I came through a few weeks ago, there were some pretty nasty ambush predators lurking under the sand near the water line.

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-04 07:39 am (UTC)(link)
[He winces slightly at the emphasis she put on 'people'. That's interesting. Julian hadn't been entirely sure he qualified for that particular category.]

I don't know how to get out of here. Can you show me the way to the station? Please?

[His sense of direction isn't terrible once he's gotten the lay of the land, but here, he'd probably end up drowning in the caverns somehow, and then his mother would be furious. Forget physics and magic, she would bring him back through sheer parental disappointment and sad eyes.]
shiritai: (vi2001)

[personal profile] shiritai 2018-03-04 03:08 pm (UTC)(link)
[ So many strangers around here. It's very... well, strange. She tenses up a bit when he approaches and when she whips around it's with the sharp-eyed gaze of someone who's deciding if they need to pick a fight or not. But when she takes in the sight of him and realizes he's... probably not a threat, then her shoulders sag with relief. ]

... Yes. The last I remember before arriving here, I was on a train, returning to the the C.H. Postal Company. [ she sounds almost hopeful as she says so, like she's wanting someone to recognize it. ] I don't remember what could have happened to bring me here from the train, however. To start, there are no train tracks.
shiritai: (vi03007)

[personal profile] shiritai 2018-03-04 03:10 pm (UTC)(link)
[ There's a small burst of wind as Violet turns around and she just squints uncertainly at Noctis for a moment. He doesn't look familiar, but he was calling out and there doesn't seem to be anyone else around.

Rather than approach, Violet just lifts a hand and points to herself in an unvoiced question. You were yelling at her, right? ]

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-04 03:24 pm (UTC)(link)
[He's not terribly intimidating on the best days, but having arrived here with nothing on him but the clothes on his back and the contents of his pants pockets, Julian looks positively plain and forgettable compared to her. He blinks at her explanation, clearly not having expected that.]

I was in my dorm room at college, in Seattle. [Hopefully that name sparks some recognition in her, because he doesn't know what the C.H. Postal Company is, and it shows on his face.] I don't know how anyone would even get into my room to bring me here. The door was locked and I lived on the fourteenth floor, so it isn't like someone could come in through the window.

[He sounds confused, but more than that, there's an undercurrent of what he really wants to say: he wouldn't be worth kidnapping. He's a botany major, not... whatever she is that allows for her to dress that nicely on a daily basis.]
shiritai: (vi2040)

[personal profile] shiritai 2018-03-04 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)
[ It's hard to tell if she's even hearing the lecture she's getting or not, because she's too preoccupied with the brooch. As soon as it's back in her hands, she grips it tight and holds it to her chest.

Her heart's pounding. It's an unpleasant feeling and there's a sort of swoopy sensation in her stomach that she doesn't particularly like either. ]


... I am properly trained to attend to my own injuries. Such as a twisted ankle, or...

[ She sounds like she's trying to keep her voice steady but it's still shaking and the way she trails off make it obvious that she's deeply rattled. ]
shiritai: (vi03010)

[personal profile] shiritai 2018-03-04 03:58 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Oh-- right, she should be introducing herself, shouldn't she? It takes her a moment to work out if she should go with the full spiel she usually gives. But Prompto here isn't a client, he's just a stranger so an abbreviated introduction seems to be called for here.

Of course 'abbreviated' still means that Violet carefully spreads her skirts and curtseys to him, ignoring his offered hand. ]


Violet Evergarden. I've only just arrived.

[ And then she straightens up and folds her hands neatly in front of her. ]

Would you be able to tell me where I am, exactly?
newlawtolight: (an element)

[personal profile] newlawtolight 2018-03-04 04:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Of course.

It's not really so bad to live underground, though they say the Empire above hasn't quite recovered from losing its capital. But what's done is done, and most have gotten used to living in the Neath since the Fall.

[She looks wistful.]

There are many wonderful things to discover in the Neath. Even light, you know. For there is light there; you just have to know where to go looking.
newlawtolight: (Default)

[personal profile] newlawtolight 2018-03-04 06:01 pm (UTC)(link)
...Oh, you mean clowns in a literal sense.

[....well then.]

Rifts have appeared here, and the world is not quite what it should be. Dear young Prompto explained it to me.
Edited 2018-03-04 18:01 (UTC)
photoshooter: (PHONE 📷 Shit only two bars)

[personal profile] photoshooter 2018-03-04 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)
[Whoa. She's so proper. Prompto blinks and thinks to himself, she looks and acts the way Lady Lunafreya sounds over the radio.

Wait, question.]


Oh. Um. Right. [He looks around as if some signpost will helpfully clue him in.] This is... well, this is what they call a Fissure, which is like a... crack between worlds, apparently? And we're not far from a place called Keystone Station. It's safe there, they have food and beds and chickens and stuff. Um... yeah.

[Please don't ask him how far away that is from wherever it is she's supposed to be.]
photoshooter: (WONDER 📷 Kingdom Hearts is LIGHT)

[personal profile] photoshooter 2018-03-04 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Is there really?

[That's a little comforting, but still. The stifling weight of all that rock above, the tunnels and groaning of the earth, the knowledge that you're buried...

He shudders again and gulps.]


Is your world one of those places that don't have daemons, too? Because if you have to look for the light, I guess it must be pretty dark in most places down there, and so it wouldn't be enough to keep them at bay...
Edited 2018-03-04 19:22 (UTC)
newlawtolight: (the art of beauty)

[personal profile] newlawtolight 2018-03-04 07:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh yes. In the South...and in the West even better.

[She twirls her umbrella.]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by daemons. If you mean 'devils', of course there are those. Hell is where I come from, after all.

[Did she forget to mention that? Let us see how he takes this.]

If otherwise, I cannot say what you have exists in the Neath.
photoshooter: (INCREDULOUS 📷 Say wha?)

[personal profile] photoshooter 2018-03-04 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[He goes quiet at that. After a heavy silence, he takes one step back.]

You're from. Where?
newlawtolight: (cloying poisonous spirits)

[personal profile] newlawtolight 2018-03-04 09:17 pm (UTC)(link)
I am from Hell. I reside in Fallen London now, but I came after the Embassy was established.

[She sighs wistfully once more. She hardly seems like she intends to harm him, like this.]

Does that surprise you?
Edited 2018-03-04 21:18 (UTC)
foolishjustice: (Crow-Simple deduction.)

2

[personal profile] foolishjustice 2018-03-04 09:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[Some people might have been put off by that sort of sight, even terrified. Crow has seen much, much stranger in his life. And besides that, he tends to meet the unusual with curiosity rather than fear. Thus, the rusty red eyes that meet those unnaturally green ones seem intrigued, but friendly, rather than disturbed.]

Long enough. That must be a very useful ability.
dubiouslychthonic: (Smile)

[personal profile] dubiouslychthonic 2018-03-04 10:33 pm (UTC)(link)
That's about the shape of it.

[And Prompto might be excitable and more than a little impulsive, but in Jetshard's estimation he's got a pretty good head on his shoulders most of the time; she trusts his explanation was probably sufficient for the time being. No reason to endlessly dump the same information on the woman.]

The name's Jetshard, by the way.
newlawtolight: (operatic sights)

[personal profile] newlawtolight 2018-03-04 10:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Letitia Genesister.

[She holds her hand out, and naturally, her grip is like a vice if it is shaken.]

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-04 10:54 pm (UTC)(link)
[The green is gone in an instant of focus - he's gotten good at keeping the color consistent - but the look of confusion on his face lasts. There's a pause as he tries to figure out how to respond to the other guy's reaction.]

Less than you'd think. [He takes a breath, glancing around.] Did anyone else see?

[This is not off to a great start, but maybe he can mitigate the damage somewhat.]
foolishjustice: (May I help you?)

[personal profile] foolishjustice 2018-03-04 11:01 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not sure, these areas can make it difficult to tell what's really happening outside of a certain radius. You shouldn't need to be too worried about it, though. There are a number of people here with inhuman abilities.

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-04 11:08 pm (UTC)(link)
What do you mean, it's difficult to tell? [Then that question gets overridden by a wince at the word 'inhuman'. Julian takes a step back without realizing, looking away. He wants to ask questions, wants to know if they're just humans with abilities or if there are people like him who aren't fully human here, but he can't figure out a way to do so without digging himself in deeper.]

I had to be worried about it back home. People wouldn't have taken it well if they knew.
foolishjustice: (Crow-Ah...)

[personal profile] foolishjustice 2018-03-04 11:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Space is distorted, so it's difficult to tell if what you're seeing is really there or if it's simply a mirage.

[Oops...looks like he used a bad word there.]

I'm sorry if my choice of wording offended you. I can also understand being used to a need for secrecy...very few people back home know of my own powers, as well. And...even fewer know the full extent. But we have quite a variety here, and the supernatural seems to be more common than the mundane.

Page 6 of 24