phantasmemes | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I see. She must mean a great deal to you if she is here in this wood.

[She holds out a gloved hand.]

Ah, but my manners. I am Letitia Genesister. A pleasure to meet you.

[And he takes hers in a robotic one and shakes.]

Junpei Tenmyouji. Likewise.

[She is quite strong, but--oh.]

What a remarkable clockwork appendage.

[She looks up at him.]

Now, I must warn you, if you are not aware. This place may not merely be a dream world, but what they call fissures here. There is a Heart to these fissures, at least from my wan experience. This Heart must be destroyed.

Uh... what?

[He frowns.]

I need that explained a little less metaphorically. I'm more sci-fi than fantasy.

My apologies. In the last place similar to this that we encountered, there was a great beast that was at the center of the tear in the world. Once it was defeated, the land was reclaimed.

That beast was the Heart of the tear. It is possible this may be similar.

Ah, so like a final boss. All right, that checks out. Final confrontations are pretty standard. What kind of, uh, beast did you have to fight?

A seagull. A rather large one, at that.

...And killing that... fixed this fissure thing?

Indeed. Does that surprise you?

It's not the kind of logic I usually use to solve my problems, no. But then I'm not usually solving dream world fissure problems, either.

To be truthful, I don't think the previous tear was in a dream world. So quite possibly, what we find as the core might be even more interesting!

Well, here's hoping, I guess. Maybe we fight the Sandman. Challenge him to a duel of riddles.

Riddles?

Oh, that might be interesting. Do you enjoy riddles?

I'm more of a puzzles guy, but I'll take a stab at most things.

Oh. I think I might like you. Puzzles are quite lovely.

[She also likes your soul, but. One thing at a time.]

Do you enjoy ciphers?

[That makes him laugh, actually.]

I mean, context is everything, but sure. They're as much fun as anything else. Why do you ask?

I know plenty of people back home who enjoy de-crypting ciphers. To them, it's a Great Game. Perhaps when we get out of here I might indulge you in a few of those ciphers?

Jumpy.

[The little dream girl tugs at his shirt, but he only looks down at her, smiles a little, and pats her shoulder.]

Hey, it's all right. [Back up to Letitia:] You didn't bring them for yourself? I have my own puzzle set if you're worried about me entertaining myself, I wouldn't want to take your own fun away from you if you like that sort of thing.

Sadly, when I was brought here, I only had what I have on me now. But I'll figure something out. I usually do.

Ah, you meant out of here entirely, not out of this forest? I might deserve it, but I don't intend to go anywhere near hell anytime soon. You know how it is. Things to do, futures to protect.

Correct.

[She looks bemused.]

Though you needn't worry about Hell. Among other things, where we are is nowhere near my home.

Good to know. Do you know where we are, then? Not Japan, obviously, though I have to say I was assuming an alien planet.

There is currently not much to say. It is a little like what the Surface is like, near a beach. But this doesn't seem to be Earth, and if it is we know precious little of the differences, aside from these rips which seem to be endemic to it.

[Also no Neath.]

There aren't any natives to ask about it? Huh. That's creepier than it isn't.

Aside from the clockwork creatures, no.

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