AC DECEMBER 2018

[phantasmods]

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT'S ACTIVITY CHECK.

Activity Check for November 7th-December 6th, 2018 is complete!

Ready to get spending? The Points Usage page is here. You can check your point totals (by journal name) on the Taken sheet.

As a small reminder, you only get the 10 points made-a-post bonus for open posts! Closed posts still count for regular comment points, however.

AC Warning;

-> blackestwitch
-> class_struggle
-> giltfoil
-> hurt_comforting
-> ohwhenyouloveit
-> shatteredeclipse
-> stormkingofshepherds

Characters who haven't met the five comment minimum for AC (and aren't on hiatus) will be listed here. If you're given an AC warning, you have one week (changed!!!) to either get activity or talk with a moderator. People on AC warning will be required to specifically submit activity to the comment header below; the mods aren't going to go looking for you.

Characters who joined the game in the last month are exempt from AC Warning, as are those who have been or are on hiatus for more than two weeks.

TEST DRIVE - BELLMARE MOUNTAINS

[phantasmods]

Hello and welcome to Phantasmal Rift's Test Drive Meme!

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 takes place in the Bellmare Mountain range, a chilly environment even when it's not locked in the dead of winter. Considering that November is just starting to bite - or is it, with the Fissure's time-displacement effect in place? - that makes for an extremely chilly reception for all of the new arrivals. If you're a person at risk of frostbite, you'd better hunker down in one of the scattered mountain cabins or find someone with extra snow gear, and quick.

Once you're a bit more warmed up, exploration of the area will reveal that it's largely abandoned, but there's still some evidence of past human habitation. Old chair lifts stand guard over untouched ski slopes, the remains of what was once a resort, and a handful of hiking paths twist back and forth through the mountain forests, the snow melting off them due to the magical crystals in the gravel that lines the paths.

LET IT SNOW

Chances are that, upon arriving, you find yourself outside in the snowfall. Hopefully you weren't from somewhere too terribly warm, but chances are that unless you were specifically in a cold environment before, you're going to be feeling the chill now. (Unless, of course, you're not human and don't get bothered by the cold. That happens.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of paths scattered around that are warm enough to keep the snow melted off of them - it shouldn't be that hard to stumble across one. The question then becomes, which way to shelter and civilization? You'll have to take a bit of a gamble, but it's almost certainly better than staying where you are and freezing.

LOCKED IN

How fortunate, then, that you were able to find shelter against the cold - at least for the time being. The wooden cabin is the exact opposite of luxury, but there's a bed and wood to make a fire in the fireplace, so you can't ask for terribly much else. Especially once night falls - or when the snow outside begins to fall in more than flurries - it's far better to be outside than in. Even if you can't figure out how to start the fire, the dimly glowing crystals that serve as fire starter will at least keep your hands warm.

Of course, with only a limited amount of shelter to go around in these mountain trails, it's fairly inevitable that you would have to share with someone... Hope they're friendly, otherwise this place is going to get awkward fast.

FROSTY THE - OH, MAN!

And if you're still running around outside, sooner or later you're almost certain to run into a deep patch of snow that rises up to meet you. These giant snowmen, ten feet tall and aggressive, stand up in response to anything that isn't the local wildlife approaching - and their goal is quite simple. Better watch out, because these guys are your own personal avalanche, seeking to bury you under themselves until either the cold or the weight saps the life out of you.

One's dangerous, but it's not uncommon to find them in groups of 3-5, either, which is where things start getting to be a problem. Luckily, it's possible to melt them down to nothing, or just blast them apart with pure force - the scattered snow won't rise again, at least not any time soon.

DUNGEON SIGN-UPS - BELLMARE MOUNTAINS

[phantasmods]

LET THE SIGN-UPS BEGIN.

BELLMARE MOUNTAINS

Buried deep in the mountains to the north of Keystone, the Bellmare Mountains are a chilly region at the height of summer, the high altitude sapping warmth out of the air. Those with keen eyes will probably have noticed that the mountains are, in fact, perpetually snowcapped in the distance, unlike the lower mountains that are home to the Telovia Mines further south. The alpine heights are mostly evergreen forests, with wide tracts visible from the air that have been cleared in the snow, and the occasional wires of a chairlift visible above the height of the trees. Once upon, this region was home to a profitable tourist resort - hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter.

The area of Bellmare narrowed down by the androids based upon the descriptions given by those who encountered the Entity (tm) is in the depths of a Fissure (because of course it is) - a Fissure that is, in fact, one of the largest, spanning over a huge amount of that end of the mountains and suspected to be responsible for the perpetual ice and snow. Though the androids will outfit everyone with stabilizers as usual, they note that there's no expectation to get the entire region stabilized - indeed, there's not nearly enough stabilizers to do so. Just get done what you can and find your main objective out there, guys.

The areas for part 1 of the Bellmare Mountains are primarily the forest and the open-air slopes. The former is prone to deep snowbanks with pits around the bases of trees, and is littered with old cabins (perfect for spending a night in!) and magically warmed footpaths that trail up and down the mountains. The slopes, meanwhile, are covered in fresh, even snow, untouched except for the tracks of the local wild animals (who don't seem much inclined to venture out from the safety of the trees if they can help it). Old resort equipment, in reasonably good repair, stands guard over many of these wide open areas, chair-lifts dangling and clanking in the faint breeze.

DUNGEON-WIDE EFFECTS

The major effect of this dungeon is one that characters won't feel while they're inside it - time within the Fissure is slowed down significantly. While characters will only be in the dungeon for ten days from their perspective, a little under five times that will pass outside. While they enter in mid-November, they'll be exiting to the beginning of January - sorry about those Christmas plans!

This effect is visible at the borders of the Fissure, where the snow inside falls so much more slowly than the snow outside - and, depending on the time of day, you might even see a stark difference with night on one side and day on the other! The days within the Bellmare Fissure are still 24 perceived hours, regardless of the time outside. The only clue you'll have to the actual date once you move beyond the borders of this very large Fissure is the network devices from the Station - as they're constantly trying to sync to the time back at Keystone, the clocks on them are going to glitch terribly.

Also, while not a magical effect, it's worth noting that Bellmare is, indeed, a high mountain range in the depths of winter - it's snowy. It's cold. The air is thin, and chances of avalanches exist. Best bring plenty of things to keep you warm.

LOOT

Characters obtain one piece of loot for signing up for the dungeon and an additional roll per 15 comments on the dungeon log. Additionally, characters can receive a bonus loot roll for tagging someone new on the Test Drive! Please also note that comment based loot is capped at eight rolls, making for a total of up to ten pieces of loot that each character can gain.

Newcomers who participate in the dungeon can also receive loot for comments made to the dungeon log after they've been accepted, in addition to their entry loot attached to their acceptance notices. This loot can be found under the sign-ups header at the conclusion of the dungeon, in a comment with their journal name as the subject line.

Please note: Because Bellmare is an extra-long dungeon OOCly, we'll be rolling loot at the very conclusion of the dungeon in January! Please enjoy this opportunity to stuff the heck out of your pockets, especially with a temporarily increased loot cap!

IC LENGTH

The IC length of the dungeon will be ten days, starting on November 15th ICly. However, for the duration of the dungeon, characters will note that their Station-based phones and network devices seem to be having some kind of time glitch (as described above) and therefore aren't wholly accurate as a way of recording the passage of time. Characters will exit the dungeon into the afternoon of January 6th, catching the game up with the OOC calendar.

MID-DUNGEON EVENT

Get ready for a doozy of a mid-dungeon event... Because there's an entire second part of the dungeon coming to you at a later date! After some time exploring and making their way up the mountain, characters will enter into a high alpine valley that was once the seat of the Bellmare Mountain Resort. Exactly what will they find there...?

Please look forward to it.

SIGN-UP FORM

<b>Player name:</b><br /><b>Character name + Journal</b>:<br />

EVERYTHING ELSE:

Life Will Change: The long-awaited World Changes system is now live! Due to the slightly different rules from normal points grants, these High Budget requests have their own page. This also makes it easier for those looking through to see what's been added to the setting, either recently or on a permanent basis, without having to wade through pages of regular points requests.

And now, the weather;

Due to the weirdness of time accompanying this dungeon, dungeon weather is reflected based upon days of the expedition, rather than based upon the calendar. If you'd like to know the weather back as Keystone during this period, please contact a mod.

11/6-8: Rainy, steady drizzle.
11/9-10: Overcast, with both occasional sunbreaks and spotty rain.
11/11-11/13: Clear, temperatures dropping.
11/14: Clear morning; afternoon brings with it tiny hailstones (roughly the size of peas) for an hour or two before turning to rain.
11/15/Expedition day 1: Keystone has cloudy skies. Up in the mountains, the rain that fell on Keystone the day before has become gently falling snow that continues into the night.
Day 2-3: Clear with occasional clouds.
Day 4-5: Steady snow, starting slow in the morning of Day 4 and increasing until night on Day 5. Night on Day 5 is suspiciously clear.
Day 6: Blizzard. In addition to the heavy snowfall, there are periodic bursts of icy rain and gusty winds, blowing both the snow still in the air and the new-fallen powder up and making it nearly impossible to see on the slopes or in other regions where there's little in the way of tree cover to serve as a wind block.
Day 7: The winds decrease, but snowfall remains heavy enough to make vision difficult.
Day 8: Light snowfall.
Day 9: Patchy clouds and sunlight; occasional scatterings of snowfall and frozen rain.
Day 10: Clear skies. As good a chance to return to Keystone as you're likely to get for some time, before the worst of winter locks you in the mountains for who knows how long.