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Phantasmal Rift Mods ([personal profile] phantasmods) wrote in [community profile] phantasmemes2018-04-12 11:09 pm
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TEST DRIVE 003

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.
theosophomoric: (tossed in a cell to feast with the fleas)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-20 12:01 am (UTC)(link)
[Or well that's one way to handle it, she guesses.

Sonja slips the gun back into its holster and straightens the cuff of her jacket over it, then walks over to offer a hand to help Undyne to her feet.]


Thanks for that. Are you hurt?
seafoamgreen: But I can't reach perfection (Of the Spirit that plagued us so)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-20 07:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[Undyne is starting to push herself up when the hand is offered. She looks at it warily for a moment, debating whether or not to trust a human, but decides that if this person wanted to hurt her she could've shot her in the back already and reaches out to pull herself up with a brief nod of thanks.]

[When Sonja asks if she's hurt, though, her eyes widen for a moment and she presses a hand to her chest as if expecting to find something there.]


I'm... fine?

[She sounds more confused about that fact than like she's answering the question. At a glance, the armor she's wearing is completely ruined, rent and dented like she's just come off a battlefield where she was on the losing side, but underneath it her body is visibly whole and uninjured.]

What was that, they couldn't do that before... Do you know what's going on here?
theosophomoric: (i've been misplaced in so many ways)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-20 10:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't understand the metaphysics of it just yet? I think th' whole area's some sort of paraoneiric anomaly. Dreams manifesting in an otherwise material place. Could be we're close to a Parabolic border crossing, but even then, this'd be strange.

[With the immediate crisis passed, Sonja allows herself to take closer stock of her rescuer - and despite the revelation that the child had been a dream figment, rescuer still seems apt, as Sonja does not at all trust that dreams cannot hurt her - and finds that she still has no idea what the woman is. She's more intrigued than perturbed by this, though. There's plenty of strange things in the Neath that Sonja has not encountered, and that goes double for the depths of the Unterzee.]
seafoamgreen: Too much obsession is stupid (Red as a rose is she)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-21 12:04 am (UTC)(link)
Uh.

[Undyne looks even more confused now, which is kind of impressive given how confused she was before. She's a guard captain, okay, her job is hitting things, she didn't major in weird magical science.]

Wait, you mean you think we're in some kind of dream? How?

[Undyne definitely doesn't look too bizarre compared to the kinds of things Sonja could have run into in the Neath- she's very close to human in shape, she even has hair. ...Which raises questions, given that the rest of her is clearly covered in fine blue scales, not skin, but given how much magic is involved in her species' biology it's probably safe to say she doesn't really count as fish or mammal.]
theosophomoric: (tossed in a cell to feast with the fleas)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-21 12:39 am (UTC)(link)
[Sonja sighs, brushing short - and, in a few places, slightly singed - curls out of her face and tucking the stray hair behind the band of the irrigo-stained goggles on her head as she admits -]

I don't understand how it's happening. Could be we're physically on the borderlands of some kind of dream-realm, but it sure don't look like any I'm familiar with, which I'd think rules that out except that it don't look like the Neath proper neither. If I didn't know better I'd say I'd gotten some kind of bad honey, but I ain't so far gone as to forget what I'd taken and I know I haven't been honey-sipping in a month and a half.
seafoamgreen: The nameless hero (Into that silent sea)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-21 02:35 am (UTC)(link)
Okay, I don't know where the Neath is, but last I knew I was in the Underground... fighting them.

[She gestures at where the fallen child was before they dissolved, not bothering to hide her unease.]

Not sure what honey has to do with it? But it's definitely not the kind of thing I could've fallen asleep during, I can tell you that much.
theosophomoric: (my head in a bag)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-21 05:15 am (UTC)(link)
Consuming Prisoner's Honey sends a person bodily into a dream for a short time - one of the safer ways of visiting Parabola, 'cept that it's addictive. I don't indulge often, and I certainly don't when I'm on a dig - last I knew where I was, I was working an archaeological expedition. Not exactly restful, either, even if it's not as bad as a battlefield. And I've never heard anyplace particular referred to as the Underground, so we seem to be on even footing there, at least.

[She, too, glances at where the child had been - although in her case, with a kind of mild curiosity rather than any real distress.] I've enough dreams of odd children I'd half thought they were one of mine, but if you recognize them specifically...?
seafoamgreen: No matter where I face (Nor turn them up to pray.)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-24 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[That raises more questions than it answers, but Undyne's got at least part of the message.]

I don't know where the heck Parabola is, but I'm definitely sure that we don't have weird dream honey back home.

[She nods grimly in answer to the question, and elaborates:]

No one in the Underground knew them until about a day ago, when they showed up and started killing. Anyone they could get to, everyone they could find, just trying to slaughter their way across the kingdom one by one. I went out and challenged them, we figured even if I lost I'd buy everyone time to evacuate...

[It feels weird to tell this to a human, but she's still more reassuring than that child was.]
theosophomoric: (and what will i know)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-26 02:00 am (UTC)(link)
Noble. [And stupid, but she endeavors to keep that out of her voice, and mostly succeeds. If she'd ever had any particular inclination toward heroism, life's long since stamped it out, but it's the kind of thing that she can sometimes appreciate in other people.]