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phantasmemes2018-03-01 07:08 am
phantasmods) wrote in 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.
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.
no subject
[Oh but it is so true. Not simply fascinating - more than that. His soul is very bright, pure, laced with stories and importance...and, her instincts pointed out, still in his body...
An excellent mark for abstraction, and for a New Sequence.]
I should like to get to learn more of this magitek from your world, perhaps, when the time permits. But, perhaps I should return the favor and speak a little of my own experience as we go?
[She picks up a scale, rolling it between her fingers.]
no subject
Oh, yeah, if you want! That seems fair, I wouldn't want to be that guy doing all the talking. You sure you're up to it, though?
[Easy to please and quick to compassion.]
I know I didn't want to talk about myself much when I just got here. Too much to adjust to, you know? So it's okay if you just want help finding a place to sit down and get your head around everything.
no subject
She gives him a nod.]
I suppose I'm just used to strange things happening, myself, with where I come from. Law is softer there, more malleable. More...forgiving.
[She pauses.]
A little like this place, even if I don't understand the Law here as fully. My being here is enough to inform me of that much.
no subject
[He tilts his head to one side, like a bird or an attentive, but confused dog.]
What do you mean by that? I haven't heard about any laws here. I mean, it's pretty much just a ton of crazy, uninhabited beaches so far, not much in the way of government and stuff.
no subject
Ah, I suppose you wouldn't have. The Law is a very sensitive subject in my world, after all. A tricky thing to meddle in, and an even trickier thing to master without consequences.
[She leans down and takes up another scale.]
But, I may be getting a little ahead of myself. Silly of myself to talk so carelessly - I do apologize.
[She certainly sounds genuine enough.
She is not. Your curiosity is necessary.]I reside in a place called Fallen London, though it is not where I am from. If you haven't heard of it, then you are almost certainly not from a world that should be known to one like me.
no subject
[He can't say it sounds friendly, either. The name of the city is ominous enough, but the way she says "one like me" is enough to make his skin prickle a little. A whole world that isn't supposed to be known by one like her...]
Um. If it's okay to ask, what exactly makes it... "fallen"? ...Was it attacked?
no subject
[She does laugh a little, at that. A reassuring action, to show it isn't so awful!]
A deal was made for love, and as always a city was the price of that deal. So it was taken down from the Surface of the Earth, into the Neath below as a Fallen City, with the changes that come with that. Just like those before it!
This time it was the city of London, so now, it is called Fallen London. That's all.
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.
no subject
[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...
no subject
[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.
no subject
You're from. Where?
no subject
[She sighs wistfully once more. She hardly seems like she intends to harm him, like this.]
Does that surprise you?
no subject
[It is surprising. He is surprised.]
You don't. Um. Seem the type. [Though the type never does, does it? He swallows.] And it's not the sort of thing people really say, usually.
no subject
[Such bemusing innocence.]
I have no reason to hide where I'm from, or what I am. Not back home, and certainly not here.
[Oh the sun does still burn, but it does not Judge here.]
I take it citizens of Hell where you come from are less accommodating towards humans? How miserable they must be.
no subject
[Should he arm himself? He wants to, but he's not sure that's a good idea, when she hasn't made a move to hurt him. Not yet.]
We do have daemons. And stuff. And they're... Um. Not nice, to put it lightly.
no subject
[He is clearly wary. Allow her to allay those worries.]
I see. They sound utterly droll; they probably don't enjoy opera, do they?
no subject
[Final Fantasy XV is a fun game about four dudes on a road trip.]
no subject
[
She is not mindless, the Dawn set her all free]I am very sorry to hear that your world's devils are so cruel and...boring. I cannot imagine a worse fate.
no subject
[It's a cautious question, because he knows, now, not all Eos's daemons are like that. Some of them smile and laugh and sing-song their words because what do they have to worry about, when the finest things in life are before them to break like kids' toys?]
no subject
[She pauses, as if reluctant.]
We also perform abstraction for those willing. Others call it selling your soul, as if we're doing something wrong, but it's all very legal and formal, you see. One hardly needs to keep a soul down there anyways.
[s h r u g]
We've certainly done fine without them.
no subject
[He shifts back again, one hand guarding his heart, like losing his soul is a very real threat he can all too easily imagine.]
Wh-what do you mean, people don't need souls down there? Don't they stop being people without them?
no subject
Even without your soul, you would still be you. You don't turn into anything else, or melt into a puddle, or burst into fire or any of that other nonsense. Indeed most people find there's very little difference between having their soul and not having it! Some even feel better without it and all I have abstracted have no regrets divorcing from it.
[A bemused chuckle.]
Where I come from is funny in that way. No one Judges a human without a soul, so its much easier to unburden oneself from having one. If you ever did have one.
no subject
I--!
[And then stops abruptly. Of course I have a soul! is what he wants to say, but.
But what if he doesn't?
Self-doubt comes back to him with all its crushing weight. Noct and the others said it was fine, that where he came from doesn't mean anything, that he was one of them, no matter what--so it wouldn't matter, right? He's with them, always.
Except they're not here right now.
Prompto sinks back on his heels, bites the inside of his lip, and shakes his head.]
I don't--I don't understand. What's all that stuff about judging, or... how would not having a soul feel better?
no subject
Some Powers in my universe...they look down on those without souls, those who do not fit into their designs to the letter. Burn them with the light of their Law. To those Powers, those like us are wrong, against their Sequence, their will, and Are-Not. They would say that they shouldn't exist.
[Her hands clasp around her umbrella, just a little. As if she is parting a deep secret to a comrade-in-arms.]
But there is nothing really wrong with them, save that they do not have souls. Souls...have power, but it is a power bent to the Law of their Sequence, you see. Those with souls have a burden towards obeying that Law...they have no choice but to do so. Having a soul chains you to a purpose you may not, in fact, wish to further.
Those without souls do not have power in their Sequence...but, they have a measure of freedom that is feared. Oh, there are plenty who still have souls who look for freedom, also. Who look for an alternative. Some do, but many don't. They cannot help but be chained, in some way.
[She closes her eyes beneath her sunglasses.]
Tell me. Have you ever looked up to the sky, to the very stars, and wondered why they are so cold and silent to you?
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