TEST DRIVE 003

[phantasmods]

Hello, and welcome to the third 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 takes place in the Fissure known as Amesta Forest - a forest filled with silver mist and shrouded in eternal twilight, where your dreams become real! For a certain limited definition of real. This is significantly less awesome than it sounds. On the bright side, anyone within the mists will find themselves with no need to sleep, as though trapped in the same spring evening as the rest of the forest.

OPTION ONE: DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

This first option might happen to you just about anywhere. From the swirls of silver mist comes a shape - or perhaps more than one shape? Who knows, it's your dream -

Well, probably. It could also be someone else's.

Those who stay too long in any one part of the mist will find their subconscious minds influencing it into shapes - the exact sort of things that appear in their dreams. As with their real dreams, the details are sometimes strange - too much detail, or not enough, depending on where your focus is. The character who 'created' the dream specter will instantly understand what it's supposed to be, but other viewers might have some difficulty with it.

Fortunately for those of you prone to violent nightmares, these dream figures are incapable of doing harm - any blows struck by them simply leave behind the dampness of walking through thick mist. A hard enough blow will similarly disperse them - or, in most cases, you can simply move quickly and leave them behind.

OPTION TWO: THE MOVEMENTS OF THE TREES

A forest filled with mist is honestly a kind of spooky place, isn't it?

Well, it's about to get spookier, when you notice that there's a tree... somewhere there wasn't a tree, before. Or maybe it's that you were looking around and realized that a tree wasn't there here there was one before, instead leaving behind only a round, torn-up patch of earth from where the roots were buried.

Either way, there's only one conclusion to be drawn - the trees are moving.

Those who pay close attention will soon realize that it's only one kind of tree that moves - an absolutely unfamiliar kind, with mist-silver bark and thin, almost translucent leaves in large handlike shapes. They aren't very tall, and their branches split low to the ground, the structure something like a less crooked Japanese maple. The Wanderwoods seem prone to following specific people, usually only moving when out of sight, though you might catch them shuffling along if you have quick reflexes for looking over your shoulder.

What do they want? Well, nothing, really. They're just attracted to sapient beings and, especially, the way the mist forms into their dreams. So while they won't do anything in particular to the characters themselves, anyone with a dream-form hanging around them might find that manifestation suddenly papered in thin, grabbing leaves... and swallowed up.

OPTION THREE: WHAT NOW IS FOUND?

Not all of the forest is trapped in eternal spring. One part of it is held in exactly the opposite - a brilliantly colored autumn morning, just before dawn, with the trees overhead colored in brilliant reds and oranges. Leaves drift down in a slow breeze, and pile up in random places among the trees (which never seem to run out of leaves to drop), and silver pools of water gather at the bases of the trees and in any other depressions, their surfaces perfectly still mirrors.

The mist is quite a bit thinner here, too, which allows you to see... What is that familiar shape in the distance, between the trees?

While dream manifestations are uncommon in the region of Fall's Heart, it's not only dreams that manifest here. Instead, characters will see the figures of those they've lost - instantly recognizable, but unreachable and nearly impossible to catch, running through the trees heedless of how you call after them. It's impossible to catch up to them by mundane means, and those who use supernatural means to do so -

- will find that, at their touch, the vision crumbles into silvery mist-water, forming another of those perfect, reflective pools at their feet.

Comments

[misanthropicprinciple]

Oh, Mai. Uh, good question. Apparently, an asshole dream forest in another world.

[You know. That's normal.]

[nojohnyouare]

...What.

[This face.]

Psychic thing?

[misanthropicprinciple]

Not any kind of psychic thing I'm familiar with. Everyone I've found so far who acted like they knew anything insinuated it was more of a magic thing, which you know isn't my department.

[nojohnyouare]

[Mai frowns, not in the least because that means it's her department, and she still doesn't have the answers.]

Dreams are important. And sometimes you can use them to see reality. But I haven't heard of something like this yet. There are rumours of people travelling between worlds when they save enough people... But that's on purpose.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Well, we already know plenty about getting to other worlds through no intent of our own. But the people already here unanimously claim it's an accident.

[(x)(x)(x) Doubt.]

[nojohnyouare]

[nod] Strange accident. Something must have caused this. Even if the place is unstable and acting on its own now. Something always starts it.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Yeah. Especially since I'm running into so many of us here.

[It's almost a capital U "Us." The "Us" that went through hell together. Airlocked "Us."]

...So far, it's been a lot of Fantasy Sweet alums, even.

[nojohnyouare]

So... Something we have in common. At the very least, it could have brought us to the cracks we fell through. Supposedly.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Yeah. I know I grab onto patterns that aren't always there, but this many of us all at once? That's too dramatic to ignore.

[nojohnyouare]

Maybe... Travelling all at once? Because we have been.

[misanthropicprinciple]

That could make sense. We've already cycled through so many different worlds, we might be... uh, I don't know, fastened kind of loosely in the fabric of space and time? I don't know enough about actual time travel to say.

[nojohnyouare]

...Maybe. The answer should be somewhere. Though it might take a while to find.

[which sucks if you're used to solving mysteries in the space of a day while horribly traumatized.]

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Did you mean: Junpei's entire life?]

Damn it, I hate waiting.

[nojohnyouare]

...

[There's a long pause before Mai nods again.]

Have you seen it yet? Where they live.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Not yet. ...Kind of want to see if anyone else turns up.

[Church. Finn. Nari. Maybe even Jane or Max Caulfield.]

[nojohnyouare]

Probably. There are a lot. ...I wonder. What's happening back there.

[misanthropicprinciple]

...Like I told Arianna, no one's going to be alone back there. They'll be looking out for one another, and looking for us.

[nojohnyouare]

Mm. They wouldn't give in. Not now. And if time has just stopped... Then we'll make it back regardless.

...Did you see anything strange.

[misanthropicprinciple]

I saw an anteater run by a couple minutes ago.

[nojohnyouare]

[Mai turns her head in a split second, eyes focused on Junpei.]

Anteater-san?

[misanthropicprinciple]

Human-sized, stuffed with fluff? Yeah. Uh, though it's probably a dream, Mai.

[nojohnyouare]

...Oh.

[She relaxes a little with what's probably a frown.]

Not a real one. ...A stuffed anteater-san as big as a person. I saw it, too. Rolling. So I can't catch it? If it's a dream.

[misanthropicprinciple]

I don't think so. It's just... one of those kinds of dreams.

[nojohnyouare]

[Mai deflates a bit more. She grips her sword tightly at her side.]

...Sayuri tried to give me one. I don't know what they did with it when they took us both to the hospital. Probably threw it out. Because of the blood.

[misanthropicprinciple]

Probably. Sorry, Mai.

[He thinks about it, then gently suggests:]

Maybe, with all this random world-hopping, you'll see her again and give her a stuffed animal this time. What do you think?