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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.
dubiouslychthonic: (you did not just say that)

1

[personal profile] dubiouslychthonic 2018-04-22 06:20 am (UTC)(link)
[Although in the months since she first arrived through a rift, Jetshard has gotten fewer bad responses out of humans than she might have expected, she's still cautious about approaching new ones. She's not entirely sure whether the girl's words are a warning or a challenge, and she pauses near the edge of the clearing and briefly lifts both hands to shoulder-height in a gesture that's as much a demonstration of nonaggression in trolls as it is in humans - hands that are the same slate-grey as the rest of her visible skin, with carefully trimmed orange nails, but which otherwise are similar enough in appearance to a human's, and empty.]

I didn't mean to startle you.
nojohnyouare: Dismissive. (you're my head)

[personal profile] nojohnyouare 2018-04-22 06:23 am (UTC)(link)
[Mai's probably seen an alien like her before, what with all the court and press appearances (not that she ends up speaking at many of them, it's Mai), so she's not too surprised to see a grey person with horns. She looks Jetshard over and nods.]

It's fine. Do you live here.
dubiouslychthonic: (sorry were you still talking)

[personal profile] dubiouslychthonic 2018-04-22 11:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Not here specifically - there's a research station a few hours travel to the east. It's not much, but it's better than living rough until someone can figure out how to reverse the magic that brought us here.
nojohnyouare: Wary and angry. (and would you leave me)

[personal profile] nojohnyouare 2018-04-23 04:18 am (UTC)(link)
Junpei said it was magic, too. I can try with that. Though magic... I think it works differently across worlds. So things people are used to might not apply.
dubiouslychthonic: (distracted)

[personal profile] dubiouslychthonic 2018-04-23 04:43 am (UTC)(link)
I'm probably not the one to talk theory with, honestly. I'm a doctor, not a wizard. [She shrugs. As far as she knows, the world she comes from doesn't even have magic of its own, but that certainly hadn't prevented her from stumbling into this world.] It'll take us - the team from the station - a couple of days to plant the devices to stabilize this area and keep anyone else from coming through the fissure here. If you want to come back with us when we're done, you should.
nojohnyouare: Leaning against a swing set. (and what fades away)

[personal profile] nojohnyouare 2018-04-23 05:06 am (UTC)(link)
[Mai nods.] So that's where everyone lives. I've heard this was an accident. The only ways I know to move across worlds are intentional.