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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
He winced slightly at the words 'not entirely human'. Nothing major, and his expression is back to blank in no time, but it's obvious that hit a nerve.]
The numbers were never that close to even back home. Usually, I was the only one wherever I was. Which can be dangerous.
I don't want any trouble.
no subject
Especially one that's been living in hiding and fear, apparently. He's very familiar with a life spent playing human. Despite Kurama's confidence in his own abilities, he's still very aware that humans are dangerous creatures.
Though that wince hints that Julian is not necessarily comfortable with what he is even for his own sake... That's something Kurama definitely finds concerning. His expression is compassionate.]
I understand. After enough years, it simply becomes habit to conceal your true nature. Human society is not forgiving of differences even among their own. I'm sorry you've spent so long alone.
no subject
Kurama's gentle tone and compassionate expression are not what he expected. Julian doesn't know what to do with the casual acceptance, how he even feels about it, because he doesn't quite know, at this point, how to feel about his own mixed status.]
I have a human family, and they're pretty good at taking my differences in stride. Or at least they try to. And I'm half human, so part of my true nature is probably human. I think.
[It's clearly not something he's figured out yet.]
no subject
Though he's maybe a little envious that Julian's family knows who and what he really is? He pushes that feeling to the back of his mind, though.
His mother is the last thing he needs to be focusing on when he's trapped here.]
I'm sure you'll work it out, given time. It's never easy to be half of anything. I suppose I don't technically have a right to say that... but I do consider myself to be partly human by now, as well.
no subject
Julian's adoptive parents know. No one else does, but it's more than he could have had. In a way, it makes him feel guilty for still having problems. He should be happy, right? He has some people who care, that should be enough.]
So if you're only partly human, what's the rest of you?
[Not the most graceful way to put it, but he doesn't mean any offense by it. He's curious, more than anything. He was a small child the last time he met someone who wasn't human, and he's always wondered what it would be like to have a similar meeting that wasn't so brief and fleeting.]
no subject
Her happiness is the most important thing.]
I'm a kitsune. Ah... unless you've studied Japanese culture that won't make much sense to you... A demon fox, albeit one inhabiting a human body for the last seventeen years.
[No offense taken, and Kurama doesn't seem to have any qualms discussing his nature. It's not something he brings up on a whim, but he doesn't shy away from it when he has no reason to hide.]
no subject
I'm half glasmpauki. Unless you've studied Balkan and specifically Serbian folklore, that probably makes about as much sense to you as kitsune does to me. They're - I'm, I guess - shapeshifters who shift between spiders and almost-human forms. [Should he have stuck with 'they're'? Does he count? He shifts from foot to foot uncomfortably, turning the topic back to Kurama. Clearly, this is not a conversation he's used to having.]
I've seen some artwork of kitsune, but all I really know is that they have a lot of tails and can curse people. I think. I never studied up on it. I didn't know kitsune inhabited human bodies.
no subject
[He can shift shapes, so Kurama's guess would be that he counts well enough for most purposes? Kurama isn't going to press or point out the awkwardness, though. He's willing to let Julian keep the conversation in whatever areas are most comfortable for him.]
I can't actually curse people. Curses and illusions are fairly common abilities in my kind, it's true, but my own powers have always aligned to plants. As for the body, it's not typical behavior in the least, but a desperation tactic on my part to escape death.
It turned out better than I really had any right for it to.
no subject
I didn't know plants were a power kistune could have. I don't really know what's typical and what isn't for most nonhumans outside of what I've read about ones from my own home country.
So you became partly human when you tried to escape death? How does that work, exactly? [If there's anything roughly equivalent in Balkan folklore, he hasn't read about it, and that's really the upper limit of his knowledge about these things.]
no subject
[Zvezdan does not seem so bad?]
In all fairness, it's quite possible that they aren't where you came from. Most of the people here come from a variety of different worlds that operate by different rules. My powers are rare but very possible where I come from, but that doesn't necessarily mean kitsune can have them where you originated.
[The joys of the multiverse, Julian, let Kurama introduce you to them. They are many and varied and sometimes frustrating as hell.]
Essentially, I merged my soul with a human fetus before it developed one of its own. Morally gray at best, but I was a rather selfish person in those days. This body has become less human over the years, but my heart has become moreso.
no subject
[Zvezdan Krsmanović was his full birth name. It was enough to trip most people up, especially when said altogether. He had been happy to get a name easier for people to say - life was hard enough and he was unusual enough as it was without standing out even more.]
So it's possible that if there are glasmpauki where you're from, they have different abilities, too. That's kind of strange to think about.
[He looks remarkably unphased by the idea of taking over a body like that, but, well, if it was that or dying, it was probably a lighter shade of grey to take the option that resulted in someone staying alive. And while Julian had steered clear of religious discussions about the topic of babies and souls, if Kurama was right and it didn't have one yet, then it wasn't murder or anything quite like that.]
Do your parents know? That you're not human, I mean.
no subject
[The woes of non-native speakers. And granted, yes, that name is a bit of a mouthful. The important thing is that he's happy with the name he has, though.]
You'll be amazed by how quickly your bar for what is 'strange' rises once you're dealing with more worlds than your own.
[It's up in the air whether it was mercy for the soul of a child or a simple lack of even that much strength at the time. But it would certainly be the former as he is now.
Kurama's face falls at Julian's question, and he glances away, eyes distant.]
No... No, my family has no idea. At first, I was deeply in hiding and couldn't risk anyone knowing. By the time I was strong enough to defend myself... I just wanted to give my mother the happy, peaceful life she deserves.
no subject
[It helped that Albanian wasn't in the same language family as Serbian, and that everyone in Serbia was already fluent in both the Cyrllic and Roman alphabets. That kept him from being totally lost when he started trying to parse out English, but a 'normal' sounding name for the United States had done a lot to make him seem more approachable to the other kids, which he was grateful for. He was offputting on every other level, there was no need to add anything else to that.]
I have a fairly high bar for strange already, I think. Or at least, I do compared to most people I know back home.
[He tilts his head, trying to envision that family dynamic. His birth mother was the first person aware of what he was, and his adopted mother had been the first human he'd revealed himself as non-human to. Julian is still closer to his adopted mother than his father, more comfortable with letting her see his non-human habits and form than anyone else. She loves him unconditionally... but it's also true that knowing what he is has made her life much more stressful on a daily basis. She's always worried about him. Lately her hair's been coming in gray.]
I understand that, at least in theory. If I could give my parents peace of mind and happiness, I would.