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Phantasmal Rift Mods ([personal profile] phantasmods) wrote in [community profile] phantasmemes2018-03-01 07:08 am
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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 2018-03-12 09:01 am (UTC)(link)
They sound like giant chickens. Are there any here?

[He kind of wants to see one, even if he's not a big animal lover for the most part.]
founderinglight: ([sketchyplaceholder])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-03-12 10:27 pm (UTC)(link)
...Considering that we took the station's chickens for small chocobos, I imagine that to be fairly accurate, actually.

[But he shakes his head.]

I imagine if there were, I would have heard by now.

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-12 10:31 pm (UTC)(link)
So what kind of wildlife is here, then? Other than chickens and crabs, [he said, nodding to the crabs in the cavern, who looked more or less like crabs back home.] I haven't seen anything weird here so far except for an abnormal amount of crystals.
founderinglight: ([hold])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-03-12 10:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Mostly a typical variety of coastal creatures - seagulls, shellfish, and the like. Some sharks that I'm fairly sure must be magical in some way... So far as I know, the only livestock the Station keeps is the chickens and the beehive, but I could easily be mistaken on that front.

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-14 08:29 am (UTC)(link)
If the sharks are magical, do they have some kind of powers normal sharks don't? I'm sure the medical treatment at the Station is fine, but I'd rather not be bitten by a shark and test it out firsthand.
founderinglight: ([late with spacebucks])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-03-14 08:56 am (UTC)(link)
The most obvious thing is that they can swim in the sand as easily as in the water, though it wouldn't surprise me if they had a few more tricks. They don't typically come too far up the beach, however.

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-14 09:01 am (UTC)(link)
If they're magic, don't they have some kind of magic-related weakness to repel them? My mother is a professor of folklore, and there's usually something in most stories that works to keep magical creatures at bay.
founderinglight: ([hold])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-03-14 09:06 am (UTC)(link)
Well, they're not fond of being stabbed.

[Cheerfully, as though that was any kind of help.]

At least on Eos, folklore isn't exactly the most reliable method. If they've a weakness of that sort, it's obscure enough that no one knows of it.

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-17 03:58 am (UTC)(link)
What do you mean, folklore isn't a reliable method? I admit it's not exactly my field, but I was always under the impression that everything had some sort of weakness out of some odd cosmic sense of fairness.
founderinglight: ([late with spacebucks])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-03-17 07:45 am (UTC)(link)
Ah - unfortunately I haven't believed in any sort of cosmic sense of fairness in at least a couple hundred years.

[JUST SUPER CASUALLY THROWING THAT OUT THERE LIKE IT'S NOT A THING.]

[personal profile] part_time_person 2018-03-17 07:51 am (UTC)(link)
Neither have I, but I was trying to be optimistic.
founderinglight: (Default)

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-03-17 08:16 am (UTC)(link)
[There's a small shrug.]

I suppose I find it more optimistic, myself, to consider what I can do with my own hands, rather than entrusting in any element of the cosmos.