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

Carnivac | Transformers (IDW)

[anarchia]

Dream A Little Dream

[A wolf sits in the woods. What surrounds him in the mist is a mess of contorting animal shapes, splitting from both flesh and mechanical. There is something like a rabbit, then a dog, a bear, a tarantula.

Directly before him lies a mechanical body, the side of it's head scraped off and showing wires underneath, but bleeding as if it were organic.

He sits, staring and silent, watching the body. Is he contemplating, or paralyzed? He isn't so sure himself.]

The Movements Of Trees

[Carnivac had been keeping a sharp, suspicious, eye on his surroundings from the get-go. Noticing the trees moving, he freezes in place to observe. Though he appears calm, an involuntary twitch in his ear signals his preparedness to go at any moment.]

I hadn't realized the plantlife would be something else to be wary of.

Movement of Trees

[newlawtolight]

You must be new to dreams like this?

[Hello.]

[anarchia]

Dreams?

[He tilts his head, he doesn't quite understand.]

I'm new to vegetation like this.

[newlawtolight]

Yes, this place is a dream. And these are dream-trees. Not quite real, but real enough.

[anarchia]

[The brief memory of a similar place surfaces in his mind.]

Great.

[Said with the tone of someone who is incredibly exhausted.]

Are you the host of this dream? Or merely passing through?

[newlawtolight]

Just passing through. This is not the dream of anyone that I have encountered so far, either.

[anarchia]

[He's far from put at ease, preferring to be on-edge to a suitable degree.

Still, knowing that someone is casually strolling through such a place does well to convince him that escape won't be a complete nightmare.]

You appear to know a lot about this place.

[Not an accusation, an observation.]

Where did you come from?

[newlawtolight]

I'm used to dream worlds. They were once a home of a kind, if you will.

But, this is not the dream world I know of. And the place I come from is not my true home, but the station trying to fix these tears in its world.

[anarchia]

Then you should have no issues in showing me the way out of here.

[Because there's not a chance that he'll allow himself to get stuck in this place. Realms like this have no good impact on the mind, and he doesn't want to end up like that.]

If this is not a dream you know, nor one your station explained to you- just who's is it?

I'm dreaming of a white doggo

[photoshooter]

[No. No no no no. Prompto doesn't have a problem with animals, not even the more frightening shapes he sees in the mist, that lumbering four-legged mammal or the spider-limbed form. Not even the wolf, as strange as it is to see all alone and fixed on that body, gives him much pause. No, what scares him is the body--that fusion of machinery and life. For a second in his eyes, it's bleeding a black too oily, too reflective to be natural.

Prompto knows what a wolf is. They have those on Eos, there's a patch on his jacket featuring them. But he's so much less afraid of wolves than he is of that.]

Hey. H-hey, buddy. [He whistles, low and nervous.] You--you shouldn't get too close to that. It could be dangerous.

[anarchia]

[The voice snaps Carnivac from whatever daze he was in, and he instantly turns to the source. Forcing himself to look at that body was painful enough, but he finds tearing his gaze away from it was just as much so.

He gets to his feet, and takes a moment, gathering his words.]

There's no reason to fear the dead, unless you're prone to superstition.

[photoshooter]

Uhh.

[okAY, that's a talking wolf?? UM?]

Well--I mean-- [???????????????????] --that's. Not always true? There could be... Sorry, are you, like, a magic wolf or something?

[anarchia]

[Hey, don’t talk to a wolf if you don’t want it to talk back.]

Wouldn’t a skeptic magical wolf be a little...contradictory?

[He looks unamused, however unamused a wolf could possibly look..]

[photoshooter]

[Honestly, Prompto's used to getting that kind of look. Though not from wolves.]

You could be skeptical of things that aren't magic. Do wolves normally talk where you're from?

[anarchia]

[Ah.

Hm.

Carnivac doesn’t immediately know how to answer this. Perhaps this man isn’t an Earth human, with asking where he’s from as if that world is foreign to him. Perhaps, also, he had already seen through his attempted disguise- not that he hadn’t exposed himself enough already- and was simply cutting to the chase.

After a moment, he arrives at a middle ground.]

They don’t where you’re from?

[photoshooter]

No animals talk where I'm from. Except some daemons, and they're... not animals, exactly. Not the ones that talk, anyway.

[He looks over Carnivac once more and shakes his head.]

But you're not a daemon. And... [More uncertainly, he looks at the nightmare corpse again, tensing at the blood seeping through wires.] ...I don't think that is, either? But I still... I-I don't know. Is it even real?

[anarchia]

[Carnivac’s gaze wanders to the corpse again, and something in his eyes dulls.

He solemnly shakes his head.]

It isn’t. It can’t be.

[He looks to Prompto again, a small fear in his heart that the longer he looks at the body the more real it may become.]

I don’t know what a daemon is, but I assure you that isn’t one.

[photoshooter]

...Will it be okay if we leave it alone? I...

[He fumbles with the words a moment, then sighs.]

I don't like looking at it, but it's kind of sad, isn't it? To just leave it.

[anarchia]

[He sighs with a weight of regret.]

Yes, it would.

[The first time he’d seen it, the real deal, he’d had no other option than to abandon his friend where he lay.

Maybe now, though it was just an illusion, it was a chance to rectify that mistake.]

What do you have in mind?

[photoshooter]

Well... [Prompto looks around. There isn't much around but mist and trees, huh?]

I guess our only option's burial, right? I guess I can find a stick...

[anarchia]

[A burial was woefully conventional, but it was what he would've been afforded had the circumstances been different. Another gravestone among the many, another sacrifice in the name of someone who would never honor it.

The thought repulses him, but Stakeout died a Wrecker, and a Wrecker burial he would give him.]

Of course. [He gives him a nod.] I'll...kick up some dirt. [That's what dogs do, right.]

[photoshooter]

[That's what dogs do. Prompto moves off to look for something to dig with.]

What do you think we should use as a marker? What do we put on it?

[anarchia]

[He's totally nailing this whole dog thing.]

We could use a branch. There's a lot of them about. [Dig dig dig.] His name would be a good place to start. I'm not sure what else we could fit on there.

[photoshooter]

[Ah. "Him." Not "it."]

Uhhh, there's probably a knife in the Armiger I can borrow so we can carve his name in, sure. ...What's his name?

[anarchia]

...Stakeout.

[He hesitates in saying it, though he doesn't know why he does.]

An appropriate name. [He laughs, dryly.] For a cop who stuck it out until the bitter end.