phantasmods: (Default)
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.
founderinglight: (Default)

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-04-15 06:34 am (UTC)(link)
Perhaps they know the mood is a pensive one.

[He turns around to face her properly, leaning against the gravestone. The moth, sensing opportunity, flutters up to land on a part of his back he can't reach.]

My apologies if I'm interrupting.
theosophomoric: (were we erased like common thieves?)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-15 06:49 am (UTC)(link)
Not at all.

[Even if the moths are not consuming her in this dream, they seem to like her anyway, fluttering softly at the lapel of the jacket of her brown woolen walking suit, perching in her hair alongside the wide-lensed goggles that she wears on top of her head. The lenses of the goggles are stained another of those impossible colors - irrigo, which the eye sees as a sort of purple when it can hold the idea of the color at all, for irrigo provokes forgetfulness.]

I've never been certain just how self-aware frost-moths are, t'be honest, but on the other hand I don't think these are real frost-moths.
founderinglight: ([sketchyplaceholder])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-04-16 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
Likely not. Just some dream fragment - I certainly haven't seen them anywhere else in the woods.

[He's seen plenty of strange things in his time, and so nothing particular about her appearance bothers him. Especially here.]
theosophomoric: (and voices sing)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-17 06:18 am (UTC)(link)
And I dream of them pretty near constant. [Probably more frequently than is strictly a good sign, but at least when she's dreaming of frost-moths she's not dreaming of voyaging North.]
founderinglight: ([hold])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-04-22 01:47 am (UTC)(link)
Well, they're a nicer sight than most of my dreams, to be sure. Even with the rest of it.

[He raps a knuckle on the headstone he's leaning on to make his point.]
theosophomoric: (and what will i know)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-22 03:51 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, but they're part and parcel with the rest of it.

[She carefully scoops one of the moths from her shoulder, holding it gently in cupped hands as she continues - more to the moth than Izunia.] Though I expect you'll have left yours back in the colonies, haven't you? I don't know why so many of you come back to London.
founderinglight: ([hold])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-04-22 04:44 am (UTC)(link)
I have no idea what or where any London is, frankly my dear. I imagine I'm from quite a bit further off than you're imagining.
theosophomoric: (were we erased like common thieves?)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-22 05:32 am (UTC)(link)
The Fifth City, former capitol of the British Empire, current host of the Echo Bazaar? On the shore of the Unterzee, north of the Iron Republic and west of Polythreme? [She isn't particularly concerned if none of these points of reference ring a bell for him, but she figures she'll list if off anyway.]

At any rate, they rarely manage to incubate properly in the city - too much adherence to surface ideals of vitality, I think, and too great a risk of poaching. Devils love the kind of soul that might go mothy.
founderinglight: ([sketchyplaceholder])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-04-29 07:32 am (UTC)(link)
[No bells nor whistles nor any kind of noisemaker at all.]

... I have far more questions than I did a few moments ago about the biology involved.
theosophomoric: (and voices sing)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-29 07:49 am (UTC)(link)
There's not a whole great deal of biology involved by the time it gets to this point. Theology might be closer to the mark. [She tosses the moth into the air, and smiles as it flutters off into the mist.]
founderinglight: ([late with spacebucks])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-04-30 06:25 am (UTC)(link)
Hardly the study of gods, either. Perhaps there's call for a new term.
theosophomoric: (i've been misplaced in so many ways)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-30 06:35 am (UTC)(link)
Mmm. It's often included under the auspices of theosophy in the Neath, although that also includes the spontaneous generation of sapience, which I'm not convinced is quite the same question as that of souls. Almost all of the soulless are still fully sapient, and honestly I think the ones who seem not to be are more mad than missing.
founderinglight: ([ppppp])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-04-30 06:51 am (UTC)(link)
[...There is a distinct pause from him at that, and then finally - ]

That is something that I and several others here will find severely concerning and uncomfortable. I had enough difficulty reassuring a friend of mine about the matter as it was.
theosophomoric: (my head in a bag)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-30 07:09 am (UTC)(link)
[HMMM. So there's been trouble on this front already, has there?] I assure you, sir, I'm no spirifer, and I don't trade in legal souls neither. Quite the opposite.
founderinglight: ([ppppp])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-04-30 08:02 am (UTC)(link)
There is, apparently, a woman here trying to buy such things.

[His voice is still seemingly polite enough, but in a way that makes no secret of his dislike.]

It caused my... It caused a great deal of distress.
theosophomoric: (and what will i know)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-04-30 07:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I imagine it just did. It's a nasty business. [She opens the latch of her bag and pulls out a slim brass case, from which in turn she offers him a piece of thick cream-colored paper, about three inches by an inch and a half, printed with an engraving of a cluster of mushrooms and the words "Sonja Klee" and slightly smaller, "Advocate." In the lower left corner, in careful tight handwriting, "Royal Bethlehem Hotel" has been added.] My card. If I'm about and she becomes more aggressive about it, please don't hesitate to inform me. I'll do what I can to help.
Edited (I'm so sorry for the repeat minor edits I can't type today apparently orz) 2018-04-30 19:46 (UTC)
founderinglight: ([hold])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-05-01 01:19 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, thank you.

[He takes the card and reads it, before vanishing it into thin air in a small flash.]

Though I imagine you'll need to update the address a bit. It's a pleasure to meet you, Sonja, please call me Izunia.
theosophomoric: (my head in a bag)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-05-01 10:24 pm (UTC)(link)
[Sonja can't spot what he's done with the card, but she assumes he's palmed it and paired that with some minor pyrotechnics, so she doesn't pay it much mind. She's not above a spot of legerdemain herself, and it doesn't do to gawk.]

Pleasure's mine, I'm sure. I assume there is somewhere to set up lodgings that's a bit more suitable than "next to that certain tree in the fog?"
founderinglight: ([hold])

[personal profile] founderinglight 2018-05-02 03:18 am (UTC)(link)
Yes - there's a research station a bit to the north of here with small apartments and a communal kitchen. It's a bit on the cramped side, but far better than the woods.