TEST DRIVE 002

[phantasmods]

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.

Comments

[part_time_person]

[There's something he doesn't see every day. For a moment, he locks up, adrenaline slamming through him at the thought of another glasmpauki being here - it's a longshot, but it's not impossible, and when he was a little kid he used to pray one of his people would abduct him and take him back to the safety of their villages, away from the humans.

But no glasmpauki was ever that dark-haired and his hopes die before they're fully formed. The wind bursts into a gale briefly before dying out again as if nothing happened at all.]

Both would be nice. I think I should get out of the caves first, though, before the tide comes in.

[founderinglight]

I don't think it comes up enough to fully block us in, so there's no rush if you don't mind wet feet.

[Probably, also, they didn't tend to set themselves with a cheerful smile quite so easily. Not that the sudden gale went unnoticed - for one thing, it blew the blue scarf around the man's neck up into his face - but, at least, he doesn't seem inclined to comment on it.]

They're a bit twisty, however, so it might be better if I lead you out. Just give me a moment...

[He puts both hands on the chunk of green crystal in front of him and jimmies it a little. Come on, come loose already.]

[part_time_person]

I didn't know. But I can't swim very well, so I figured I should try not to hang around to find out just in case.

[Glasmpauki had a range of clicks when they were happy. Smiling was a human trick, and one Julian had never really mastered. Eventually he'd given up on trying. He tries to keep talking as if the wind thing didn't happen. He's gotten around a lot of awkward moments by talking right through them.]

Thank you. Are, um, are all crystals free for people to collect?

[founderinglight]

No, caution is definitely the safer policy.

[Says the man in a blatantly uncautious place wiggling a large and obviously magical crystal out of the wall. Come on...]

And I can't imagine why not, though taking too many might disrupt whatever passes for an ecosystem here. This is the largest one I've tried to take.

[And... There we go! just a little more wiggling to pull it free, but there's a sound of something mineral snapping and it definitely gives a bit more.]

[part_time_person]

That's what my mother always says. If only her students would listen more often. [He doesn't comment on the lack of caution going on here. He once dangled from the ceiling as a spider in front of a fire just to feel the heat, he has absolutely no room to talk.]

I won't take that many. Actually, right now I'm not going to take any at all. I don't know if the locals here are alright with that.

[founderinglight]

Not terribly many locals to object, and the androids certainly don't seem to mind. I'm reasonably sure at least some of them can be bribed with research samples, actually. Aha!

[The crystal finally comes free, a complex angled shape sliding into Izunia's arms. It's a bit bigger than his head, and he grins before rapping a knuckle on it.]

This ought to last a few experiments, at least.

[And then he lifts the crystal slightly and... it vanishes, in a flicker of blue lights. Izunia dusts his hands off as though he's done nothing particularly special.]

Now then - I know there's a stairway up to the top of the cliffs and an exit to the beach to the south, but I haven't fully explored what might lie to the northern side. Take your option as you please.

[part_time_person]

Androids?

[As a Star Trek fan, that's the best part of this place so far, and he raises his eyebrows, interested despite how surreal this entire day has been so far.

The trick with the vanishing crystal makes him blink rapidly. He really wants to know how that works, but he's not sure how to ask that without sounding stupid.]

If there's somewhere with people, I guess I should probably head there, wherever that is.

[founderinglight]

Yes, six of them. They're the native residents of this area - the rest of us are...

[He makes a gesture that manages to be both small and sweeping, before pulling his legs free of where they're holding him against the water crystal and dropping to the ground. The way he lands is practiced, fluid, easy.]

Well, we found ourselves here as suddenly as I imagine you did, a few weeks ago.

[part_time_person]

I was in my dorm room, and then I was here. I'm still not really sure how that happened. I was trying to sleep at the time, I didn't mess around with, uh, a teleporter, or something.

[He wonders if this not feeling real is due to his usual lack of feeling or if this would be weird to normal people, too. Julian's willing to bet on the latter.]

Is there no way to get back? My mom's going to be worried.

[founderinglight]

Yes, that's similar to the story for most of us.

[His own circumstances were a little more complicated, but there's no need to potentially disturb the boy by blatantly admitting to being dead.]

There's none at present, though the androids are working on developing one. Much of this reality is unstable, apparently, with obvious implications for those of us who fall through the cracks, so to speak.

[part_time_person]

I see. So what do we do in the meantime until this is fixed? Is there anything we can do? I don't mind getting a day off of college but my parents are probably already worried I haven't texted them back.

[founderinglight]

Depends on the person a bit. I've been doing a bit of magical research off and on, I know at least one person obtained some board games, Coriander doesn't seem to but live in the kitchens... There's a vegetable garden?

[Vague hand gesture.]

Right now, we're on an expedition to try and explore and stabilize this particular part of reality, and I imagine that will be a regular occurance. Other than that, we're mostly left to our own devices.

[part_time_person]

Does the vegetable garden have plants from other worlds or realities? I'm a botany major, I might be able to make myself useful there.

An expedition? How does that work?

[founderinglight]

I would presume so - certainly relative to me, I've encountered a couple kinds of berries and some squash I'm not familiar with. But I'm not the most well-versed in botany myself; I'm a politician, magitek theorist, and swordsman by trade, in some form of order.

[Also a king but hey that's not particularly relevant at the moment.]

The stabilizers the androids have only work in a localized area, so someone has to come out and actually place them. Actually, if you give me a moment, this might not be a bad location...

[part_time_person]

That's interesting. Most species of squash wouldn't grow well in an oceanic climate. Though if the rest of reality is haywire, I guess it makes sense the plants would be a little off, too.

[Yes, this really is what he's focusing on. He's kind of a dork.]

Can I help?

[founderinglight]

They've converted most of the lower level into a greenhouse of sorts, I imagine the whole thing's climate controlled.

[No that's okay! He'll fit in just fine with the station's developing culture of talking about everything but your problems.

Izunia makes a vague, slightly dismissive wave.]

I've no real need of it, the stabilizers aren't that large and I've got quite a bit of experience fiddling with magitek. They're pretty straightforward things.

[Though the device he pulls out from - wherever the crystal was sent to, presumably, the same sparkle of blue light occurs - looks not entirely unlike a model virus, with four legs attached to the end of a thin cylinder.]

[part_time_person]

That sounds great. We have a greenhouse on campus by the Botanical Sciences building, but the seniors usually monopolize it for their projects.

[If Julian focuses on the one thing here he can actually help out with, then he doesn't have to think about all the ways this could go sideways. At least his therapist isn't here to tell him that's 'avoidant behavior'.]

I don't know what magitek is, so you're right, I probably can't help.

[Because what even is that thing.]

[founderinglight]

Magical technology, various sorts. I believe this one just uses the technological aspect to automate the magical process, but don't quote me on that.

[He unfolds the legs and... sticks the stabilizer to a reasonably protected section of wall, where the wind won't blow it loose.]

I do hope they're waterproof, but I would assume...

[part_time_person]

If magitek is like regular technology, water won't be the problem - salt is highly corrosive, so anything placed this close to ocean water will probably require maintenance.

[He had a Marine Biology major for a roommate freshman year. Julian may not know about magic, but he now knows more than he ever wanted to about the ocean. If he'd known he was going to end up here he might have paid more attention outside of which shiny fish were possible pets and how things got broken, but alas.]

[founderinglight]

I'd hope the androids planned for that, too. They've lived here for a century or so, apparently.

[Stabilizer solidly embedded in the wall, Izunia taps a few buttons along the side of the body to activate it. There's a small whirring noise, barely audible over the wind.]

And that should do it - it's supposed to take around an hour to properly self-calibrate, but there's no point in our sticking around for that.

[part_time_person]

I didn't realize androids lived that long. Who built them?

[If he knew literally anything about magic, this might be interesting, but he's a botanist, not a... magitechnician, or whatever the term would be. The nuances of what's happening are a bit lost on him.]

So I take it we can leave, then?

[founderinglight]

I mean, there's not any reason for them to not. Magitek can last quite a while with proper maintenance, at least on Eos, and there's no reason why you'd create something intelligent that can't self-maintain... Or maintain each other, in this case, since there's six of them.

[He shrugs and straightens away from the stabilizer, beckoning Julian to follow. Yep, let's get out of here.]

The human who originally lived in this world - they're not around presently, something about protective stasis. Would you like to go up to the lighthouse ruins, or out to the beach?

[part_time_person]

Makes sense. It's good they have each other, so they don't get lonely.

[Julian follows, footsteps remarkably soundless on the cavern floor, sparing the stabilizer one last glance before they move on.]

Wherever is closer, I guess. I don't really know if there's a place here I should be going.

[founderinglight]

Beach, then. Far fewer stairs.

[And he'll lead the way in that direction because he has a fewly good sense of what's where.]

Not used to being unsupervised, then, I take it?

[part_time_person]

More like I don't get around nature much. If this were a city I would be confident in my sense of direction, but here, I don't trust myself not to get lost.

[He shrugs, following at an unconcerned pace. His city upbringing hadn't lent itself to many moments out in nature outside of the park, and caves were wholly unfamiliar - at least visually. On an instinctual level, this was the sort of environment his people were supposed to live in, according to folklore and myth, albeit not by the sea.]

I don't think we have seaside caves like this back in Washington at all, actually...