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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.
bulletnews: (let's make a correction)

[personal profile] bulletnews 2018-04-20 03:08 am (UTC)(link)
I wanted out of there just as much as you did, honestly. I even forgot this fog can't really manifest anything that can hurt you for a second.

[She'll remember next time.]

With things as they are, I can't just ignore these things like I usually would... especially not for someone that might be a youkai or something like that.
seafoamgreen: Feel and fight the reality (What loud uproar bursts from that door!)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-20 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Wait, what?!

[Guess who didn't even know the fog couldn't hurt you and thought you were in serious mortal danger.]

That... that whatever they are was somebody I fought back home, what do you mean the fog made them?
bulletnews: (i don't get it)

[personal profile] bulletnews 2018-04-20 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Pretty much what I said. If you actually fought someone like that, I'd expect nightmares about it later, and the fog in this forest makes parts of itself into the dreams of anyone that enters it.
seafoamgreen: No matter where I face (Nor turn them up to pray.)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-20 08:03 pm (UTC)(link)
[Her voice is very flat:]

No. There wouldn't be any.

[After all, dreams... nightmares... those are for the living. If you fight someone like that, there isn't going to be a later for you. At least, there shouldn't have been one, not for her.]

Is that... all this forest does? Or... can it do anything to the people inside it?

[Like, say... bring them back to life.]
bulletnews: (i don't get it)

[personal profile] bulletnews 2018-04-21 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
...Ah.

[There's only one explanation for that one. It wouldn't have manifested if she just couldn't dream, so as much as that kind of thing isn't supposed to happen... it had to have.]

I haven't seen anything beyond these harmless images, no. Whoever that was, they're not here. Which is very, very good.

And for the record there's more than a few people living at the station that have died, so it's going to work out for you some way or another.
seafoamgreen: Protect the light you believed in (Cannot choose but hear)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-21 02:31 am (UTC)(link)
[Maybe she should be upset at hearing it stated so bluntly, but Undyne was never very good at subtlety, so it's kind of a relief to just say it outright and stop dancing around the subject.]

If I'm really not gonna just go to dust again, then I think I'm more worried about what I left back home.

[She looks grim.]

Because if that was just my dream, then they're still out there, and I don't think they were planning to stop anytime soon.
bulletnews: (it's been a hard day's write)

[personal profile] bulletnews 2018-04-21 03:36 am (UTC)(link)
So you've got a severely murderous child on the loose back home... I'm not really sure if any of us can do anything about that, but it sounds like it'd make a great story if I survived meeting them.

[That reminds her of something, though:]

Ah, that's right, I haven't introduced myself. Aya Shameimaru, Gensokyo's fastest reporter.
seafoamgreen: You are not alone (It felt like a welcoming)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-21 03:47 am (UTC)(link)
Too many people haven't, already.

[She looks quietly, bitterly furious, remembering all the monsters they'd already lost. Some small part of her wonders if maybe they could come back, come here... it didn't seem likely, but if she had, maybe there was still some hope?]

I don't know if they even are a child, we never figured out much about them other than that they showed up and started killing.

[It'd only been a day ago, if that much, they hadn't exactly bothered wasting time.]

[She blinks at the introduction and then, understanding, holds out her hand for Aya to shake.]


Captain Undyne of the Royal Guard, sworn to King Asgore Dreemurr of the Underground. Nice to meet you, even if the rest of this isn't.
bulletnews: (well then what about this)

[personal profile] bulletnews 2018-04-21 04:01 am (UTC)(link)
It must be a different underground... I've almost never been there, thanks to the treaty with the surface, but they certainly don't have a king. Closest thing they have to a leader down there is a surly mind-reader that hangs out with her pets all day because she hates everyone else.

[She'll take that hand, though.]
seafoamgreen: Too much obsession is stupid (Red as a rose is she)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-21 04:29 am (UTC)(link)
A treaty?!

[Undyne looks baffled, although that doesn't stop her from giving Aya a firm handshake, one that thankfully manages not to be too finger-crushing given her strength and enthusiasm.]

It's gotta be different down there, yeah- nobody from our kingdom can even talk to anyone on the Surface, not with the Barrier still up. Humans come down through it, but that's pretty rare, and nobody goes up. Not yet, anyway.

[With... one notable exception, but that story's pretty depressing and today was already pretty emotionally fraught, so she's not in the mood to get into that part of monster history.]
bulletnews: (i don't get it)

[personal profile] bulletnews 2018-04-21 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
It's mostly home to youkai that even other youkai don't want to deal with. So the surface youkai and the underground youkai usually don't interfere with each other, unless there's an incident.

[There have been incidents, yes.]

I wonder what happened to make a barrier like that necessary... there's a barrier around Gensokyo, too, but it sounds like the one you're talking about isn't well-intentioned.
seafoamgreen: Break the last glass (This heart within me burns.)

[personal profile] seafoamgreen 2018-04-24 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
It wasn't!

[Undyne snaps out the answer, looking bitter. It seems Aya's touched a nerve.]

Nothing about the Barrier is necessary, it was just humans deciding to seal us all away after we lost the war. Monsters have been trapped down there for generations!
bulletnews: (no need to be so aggressive)

[personal profile] bulletnews 2018-04-26 02:15 am (UTC)(link)
Ah-

[well. She will take a very swift step back... and resolve to explain why she said what she did, so to minimize future misunderstandings and/or beatings.]

I meant to the humans that put it up. I realize this sounds strange, but the barrier around Gensokyo is actively necessary for it to exist...