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

Madeline Curie / Black Witch | OC

[blackestwitch]

[ Basic character: In a world where magical children fighting monsters is well-known, it ends up the entire thing is orchestrated by older mages in order to harness the magic energy from the kids to further their own powers and ambitions. Maddie is a girl who was born blind, shunned by her family, and winds up with a magical companion in Zelnothoglys, or Zel for short. Zel reveals the charade to Maddie after they bond and Maddie breaks the mages' control over her familiar, going off the magical grid in the process.

Madeline is completely blind, but Zel acts as a guide companion. As a magical girl, she creates areas around her where the rules of reality are altered. ]


ONE

[ What somebody finds is a girl - maybe fifteen years old - wandering the woods alone. She has on a white T-shirt with the words SURELY NOT EVERYBODY WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING and a red flannel shirt over that, open. More notably, there's a cat peeking out from a red and black backpack on her back, seeming yo look where the girl is walking. She is walking very slowly - carefully - as if unsure where to put her feet.

Alone might not be the optimal word choice, though. There are.... shapes. Almost human, but not quite - translucent, made up of squares and triangles stacked atop one another to make something resembling a man. But it makes no noises as it moves, and so the girl doesn't seem to notice it, or them, however many there are or might be. The cat glances at them from time to time, but doesn't seem to pay them any mind.

Maybe pointing them out to her would help. Or. Helping the girl? She seems very unsure about some things. ]


TWO

Why does it sound like the trees are moving?

[ There's a girl taking a break in the forest, a backpack set by her side and a cat with six... eight... ten? legs curled up in her lap. The trees, normally too shy to wander around where people could see them, had realized this girl does not react to anything, and so were much braver than when others were around. They pause, though, when the girl speaks. ]

They are. [ The voice is quiet, but lower - the voice of an older man, probably. The cat shifts in her lap. ] Just ignore them.


THREE

[ Now, what you encounter isn't a normal-seeming teenage girl. Now she's dressed in an ornate and frilly dress of grays and blacks, with a long black ribbon tied around her eyes. And the forest around her isn't... normal, either. It's like a fissure has appeared within the fissure, creating an area where things don't make sense within this area where things don't make sense.

The trees, once normal trees, albeit their strange color, are now stark white, and... two-dimensional. They're made of paper, swaying in the breeze. The bushes seem to be cardboard cutouts. The leaves all around are gone, replaced with strings of confetti in various fall colors. ]

Are you sure that...?

[ From the ground nearby, a many-legged cat licks it paw. But rather than answer, it seems to turn toward the outside observer who entered the scene. What, never seen an eight-legged cat before? ]

TWO

[fistsofchange]

I don't THINK they're gonna hurt anyone.

[Lin appears. She sounds concerned for the little blind girl. Even if she has a very strange cat looking out for her, this is no place to just sit down and relax.]

Are you alright out here?

[blackestwitch]

[ Almost - but not quite - as soon as Bai Lin makes her presence known, the cat in the girl's lap seems to curl up, extra legs disappearing into fur. What weird cat? Nothing but an ordinary cat here. ]

You don't sound like a moving tree. [ Maddie turns her head toward the source of the voice, but her eyes don't look towards it. ] Are you lost? Because I am.

[fistsofchange]

I'm-

[A brief pause, as Lin stared at the cat. Maybe she had imagined it...?]

...I'm definitely not a tree. Unfortunately I'm also super lost.

[blackestwitch]

Do you at least know where we're lost? Because I also have no idea on that one.

I don't know a lot of things, as a general warning.

[fistsofchange]

Spooky forest.

Not a very useful answer, I know. One minute I was cleaning up mob bosses in New Hong Kong, the next I was face first in the dirt here.

[blackestwitch]

[ Mob bosses. In New Hong Kong.

You know what, let's set that aside for now. That's too weird to delve into right away. ]

It's somewhat useful. Now I know the forest is spooky.

You haven't seen any signs around or anything? You know, with a name. Or maybe "Ranger Shack This Way"? I think rangers have shacks.

[fistsofchange]

That'd be pretty convenient wouldn't it?

No, just creepy mist people and moving trees.

[blackestwitch]

. . . . Mist people?

[fistsofchange]

Mist people. You haven't seen any of those?

[Open mouth, insert foot.]

One

[allknowledgegoodknowledge]

[Eclipsa isn't particularly one to help people in danger but she's not so rude as to ignore someone either. That just wouldn't be polite.]

Enjoying a stroll through the woods, my dear?

[blackestwitch]

[ As soon as this lady comes into the cat's sight (or slightly after she speaks), the cat sinks down into the girl's backpack as the girl herself turns slightly toward the source of the voice. ]

It's a little hard for me to enjoy. I'm more of a city girl, see. [ She's not looking at Eclipsa, just turned toward her. She's not really looking at anything. The fact that her eyes are a clouded gray might hint as to why. ]

[allknowledgegoodknowledge]

[Hey blind teen magical girls can enjoy forests too.]

Nothing wrong with that. The hustle and bustle of the city can be just as delightful.

[blackestwitch]

I agree. It's a hustle and bustle I'm a lot more accustom to.

And so, I ask. Do you know how to get to a city from here?

[allknowledgegoodknowledge]

I'm afraid not, dear. This whole place is a rather large question-mark shaped mystery for myself as well.

I suppose we could move towards a random direction and hope for the best.

[blackestwitch]

Well. It's got to be better than wandering around by myself. [ With her cat.

Who slooowly peers out of the open bookbag on Maddie's back. If she's gonna be walking he needs to guide her y'know. ]

[allknowledgegoodknowledge]

There's something to be said for company in strange and mysterious places.

[She simply twirls her umbrella, watching this animal out of the corner of her eye.] I don't suppose you have anything worth stealing?

[Welp.]

[blackestwitch]

I have some notes. They're in braille, so odds are you can't read them.

I can't really do much to stop you if you decide you want them. But my cat might bite.

[ The cat seems to lean up as if to whisper into the girl's ear, and she begins to make her way forward, slowly, feeling for the ground with her foot before each step. ]

three

[serrata]

[ Yuuri has not, in fact, seen an eight-legged cat before but to her credit, she doesn't look all that perturbed. There's a quick flicker of confusion but that seems to settle into something a bit more like embarrassment. Oh, has she caught this girl talking to... herself...? ]

Um, hello? I'm sorry, was I interrupting?

[blackestwitch]

[ The girl whips around at the sound of footsteps in the confetti, as well as the voice. She doesn't seem to be focuses on Yuui, exactly - not that it's easy to tell when she's blindfolded - but rather the general area. ]

Who - Who goes there?

[ Almost in response, the trees and bushes shift, moving in full as if they were only set pieces, blocking exits in the area. ]

[serrata]

[ Ah. Yikes. Good going, Yuuri. She stops in her tracks, already feeling the hairs on her neck starting to rise. It takes her a moment but she manages to swallow the knot her tongue suddenly ties itself into and she forces some measure of what she hopes is a reassuring tone into her voice. ]

Ah, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to spook you like that, I'm just trying to find my way out of here. I'm, um– I'm Yuuri Wakasa.

[blackestwitch]

. . . Ah. So you're lost as well.

[ She snaps her fingers, and the cat leaps up onto the magical girl's shoulders. ] What does she look like? [ The cat seems to. Speak? Softly into the girl's ear. Too low to overhear. Is it meowing or...? ]

...All right. [ And then, addressing Yuuri again. ] I'm called the Black Witch.

[serrata]

That's right.

[ She waits until the girl's done... conversing? yes, she'll go with conversing with her companion, hands folded neatly in front of her. It's not quite as overt as holding them aloft would be, but she still wants to send the general message that she's not a threat. ]

It's a shame we're having to meet in circumstances like this, but it's better than being alone, at least. Do you know how long you've been out here?

[blackestwitch]

[ The gesture is nice but the Black Witch can't see it. And if the cat does, he doesn't seem to comment on it. ]

I've been out here for about three hours, in this forest.

[ .... ] Do you know where this is?

[serrata]

I wish I did. If I had any idea, maybe I'd have a better idea of how we could get home.

[ There's a pause, while she mulls over what she's been able to glean so far, though. ]

Going by the kinds of trees and flowers, I think this is probably Earth, but I don't know if it's the Earth either of us came from. It's definitely somewhere else.