phantasmods: (Default)
Phantasmal Rift Mods ([personal profile] phantasmods) wrote in [community profile] phantasmemes2018-07-12 11:56 pm
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TEST DRIVE 005

Hello and welcome to the fifth 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 time, the Test Drive takes place in Incendia - a less-ruined-than-expected city that has been abandoned for over a century, due to the magical effects of the Fissure (unstable reality region) that have made it impossible to live in. What effects are these, you ask?

Well...

BY DAY

By day, the city is lovely, if oddly empty. The sun shines down, and magical lights along the sidewalk - the equivalent of power lines - flow energy throughout the city. It's possible to think that the little sparks you sometimes see at the corner of your vision are related. After all, there's a great deal of magic in the air...

But in spite of this, the city lies abandoned, for no immediately apparent reason. You might have found yourself in a wide-open shipping yard, where large metal containers levitate about, moving without any help or oversight from human hands. Be careful; these containers changing positions make it easy to get lost for quite a long time, since few of them have much in the way of identifying traits over than color. Didn't you already pass that arrangement of two red ones on top of a blue one before...?

Or perhaps you're in the massive park in the center of town, with its blatantly magical fountain (a half-dome of water just hanging in the air) and the tents of an abandoned festival. Two stages and a long line of street food booths stand empty - surely no one will mind if you use them for something, right?

Or perhaps you're just suddenly on the streets, among stalled-out taxis and cars that go nowhere and lack the familiar smell of gasoline. There's apartments and shops all around, with little gardens spilling out over balconies... Maybe if you go knock on some doors, you'll find people.

Wherever it is you are, surely there's got to be someone around who can tell you what's going on, right...?

BY DUSK

As night falls, rather than dropping the way you might expect, the temperature begins to rise. And then the sparks in the edges of your vision are very much more than simply at the edges of your vision. They catch first on the plants, the papers stuck to the now-lit magical streetlights, the trash cans... And then, increasingly so, on the buildings proper, the shops, the skyscrapers, the cars in the street.

Within half an hour, an inferno is starting to build, and it's clear that there's not going to be anywhere above ground safe from it. But fortunately, there's safety beneath the level of the streets - if you can make your way fast enough to an underground station.

BY NIGHT

In the remains of these subway tunnels, lit mostly by the dim glow of magical energy lines, you're at least safe from the inferno above. Unlike the aboveground parts of the city, however, the tunnels are in an obvious state of disrepair, with broken concrete, rot, and mildew. The stations might have once been clean, but they quite transparently are not now, and the tunnels themselves are as bad or worse.

Thankfully, no trains run anymore, so you're not at risk of being run down on the broken tracks. There's also not any full-on collapses blocking the way, and the tunnels seem well-enough made that there's probably not risk of a cave-in.

Less pleasantly, you aren't the only thing taking shelter in the tunnels from the firestorm above. And the magic of that flame has touched the feral dogs that rove the tunnels, turning them into barking, howling creatures of as much flame as flesh themselves. And then there's the occasional patch of mold, mildew, and slime in the darkest parts of the tunnels, where even the magical circuits have gone out, that moves to douse any light that comes near it...
darkcure: (005)

[personal profile] darkcure 2018-08-05 11:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Then... Couldn't you just swim back?
shipoutofluck: (048)

[personal profile] shipoutofluck 2018-08-05 11:52 pm (UTC)(link)
No, the mana is my own. I just channel it through this.

[...Hm.]

Your Master?
shipoutofluck: (048)

[personal profile] shipoutofluck 2018-08-05 11:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[He doesn't even blink at the pose. That sort of attitude is familiar.

Honestly, the whole spiel...]


...Did you practice that?
bloodyashes: ([F] Sorry about him)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-08-06 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
...Swimming out into the ocean with no land in sight, without familiar stars or anything to navigate by, is the kind of bad idea that gets people dead.

[He's not trying to be harsh about it, but. It's true.]
darkcure: (003)

[personal profile] darkcure 2018-08-06 12:54 am (UTC)(link)
Oh. I guess it would be.

[Things a twelve year old doesn't stop to consider.]

I got here through the ocean too, but... I started underwater, not on a beach. And, um, everyone was half fish.
bloodyashes: (The chibi has a map -)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-08-06 01:05 am (UTC)(link)
[It's okay, kid.

He raises his eyebrows, though.]


That's... different.
darkcure: (085)

[personal profile] darkcure 2018-08-06 01:13 am (UTC)(link)
It was... weird. Swimming like that was kind of fun, but...

I think I would've liked arriving entirely as myself more.
have_hat_will_travel: (Chibi Smile)

[personal profile] have_hat_will_travel 2018-08-06 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
Maybe. A few hundred times.
shipoutofluck: (032)

[personal profile] shipoutofluck 2018-08-06 02:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Three stars.
bloodyashes: ([F] You saw NOTHIN)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-08-06 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, that makes sense.

[Help he's exhausted his supply of how to talk to children.]
have_hat_will_travel: (Au)

[personal profile] have_hat_will_travel 2018-08-06 08:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Wait, you're used to judging introductory expositions like that?!
riderofcharlemagne: (you know what it is bitch)

[personal profile] riderofcharlemagne 2018-08-06 08:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, right.

[That's something that warrants explanation.]

I'm a Servant, a summoned spirit. To stay in this world I need a tether, and a supply of mana, and that would be my Master. Tall guy. Red hair. Two-thousand-or-so years old. The better looking of a set of twins.
shipoutofluck: (042)

[personal profile] shipoutofluck 2018-08-06 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I know some strange people.

You could stand to make it flashier.
darkcure: (003)

[personal profile] darkcure 2018-08-06 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
...

[time to start jumping to conclusions, immediately, because oops there's the shyness again]

I'm not bugging you, am I? Sorry.
have_hat_will_travel: (Huhwhat?)

[personal profile] have_hat_will_travel 2018-08-06 10:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I guess I could do some tricks with dancing lights or prestidigitation or something, but how much is too much?

Slightly less overstated might be better for getting the point across, especially when I'd rather save my big numbers for my bardic performance abilities...
dralchemist: (i'm only pretending to listen to you)

Isabella "Izzy" D'Oro | OC

[personal profile] dralchemist 2018-08-06 11:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[Day, Option 1: Out and/or About]

[Anywhere around the city, a sight a little out of the ordinary can be found. Namely, that of a blue-scaled dragonborn strolling around, alternating between taking pictures of everything or typing stuff down on her phone. She doesn't seem to be doing it so much in the touristy way, though; rather, it's more scholarly, like she's a wildlife photographer.

But she's focusing a lot on the cars and the architecture of the abandoned city, much more interested in the technology than anything else. And judging from the way her tail flits back and forth the whole time, the way she's mumbling to herself... she's excited.]


[Day, Option 2: If Nobody's Using Them...]

[Look. Izzy is a chef by trade.

There's a whole set of abandoned magitech food stalls. With ingredients just... available.

Who wouldn't take advantage of that? In this case, the dragonborn has co-opted a stand, working by herself to experiment with whatever foods are available to her, occasionally going out on little scavenging runs of other nearby stalls to create the most fusion cuisine possible. From her stall, the smell of grilled meats and veggies waft out, sure to attract somebody...]


[Night, comms (voice/video):]

So anyway, fuck this place. Thought it'd be just a cool interesting abandoned city, and hey, the food stalls were nice. But noooooooooooo, there just had to be a fucking. MAGICAL FIRESTORM that blew in from fucking nowhere and ruin my fun. Ass.

And this tunnel is shit, too. I've been in dungeons that were cleaner than this! Why is the topside so clean if nobody's there, but they couldn't do any basic dungeon maintenance?

[She's... gonna go on like this. For a while. Though it seems like she's going more for a voice recording rather than an actual conversation, even though it's being broadcast publicly. Probably just hit the wrong setting or something.

Since she's not being stealthy at all, she can also be found in person hunkered down in a station by the festival grounds, resting in a stairwell off the side of the main station vestibule. Come say hi!]
class_struggle: (ignorance can be remedied)

Night, comms

[personal profile] class_struggle 2018-08-07 12:02 am (UTC)(link)
Magical catastrophe. You're looking at an unstable part of the Incendia Ruin, it looks like. That firestorm is phoenixfire - quite deadly, but anything nonliving it hits is reborn come the morning. The sub-Ways were not so lucky, and the whole place has been dead within a grandfather's living memory.

I thought we had stabilized the place, though... mayhap Charm would know why it failed?
schrodingers_hat: (For fuck's sake)

Comms/Night

[personal profile] schrodingers_hat 2018-08-07 12:05 am (UTC)(link)
[Jotaro...actually stifles his first extremely rude instinct. For once.]

Do you have a point, or are you planning on just complaining about it all night?

[Yeah, that was the LESS rude option.]
dralchemist: (this is a bad excuse for a pate)

[personal profile] dralchemist 2018-08-07 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
Oh. Phoenixfire. That actually... no, wait, hold on, that doesn't make sense. Wouldn't it also cause the living to be reborn too if it's from a phoenix? I'm pretty sure that's their whole schtick.

[Hearing that second part, though, she narrows her eyes at the communicator. It takes her a good few seconds of silence to formulate her... elegant reply.]

I am so fucking done with traveling through memories. I did that once. I shouldn't have to deal with it again.
dralchemist: (frantic scribbling)

[personal profile] dralchemist 2018-08-07 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
By complaining about it out loud, it allows me to reconsolidate my thoughts in a more concrete manner. Let me complain long enough and I'll probably figure out a solution. Unless you have any brighter ideas.

[give rude, get rude back.]
von_uberwolf: (Werewolves aren't good at complicated)

Cooking prompt

[personal profile] von_uberwolf 2018-08-07 12:11 am (UTC)(link)
[A werewolf knows when someone is cooking something. They also know when it's worth eating.

Angua kind of wanders over in almost a trance, as if being led by her nose. When she gets to the food stall, she stops to actually look over the cooking food. At least she doesn't seem terribly surprised by someone blue and with scales?

She's obviously eyeing the cooking meat and trying not to drool, but she's also obviously trying to not look like she's eyeing the cooking meat and trying not to drool.]


This smells good...
class_struggle: (Default)

[personal profile] class_struggle 2018-08-07 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
I'm given to understand that phoenixfire does this for a phoenix, and for other creatures so adapted... as we are not. Maybe. I'm only a journeyman elementalist, anyway.

[He turns away, brow furrowed as someone mumbles behind him. Then he puts his hand on his chin, in thought, and nods.]

...ah. I have just been informed that the bulk of Incendia is stable, but not the whole of it. I'd say it's misfortune that landed you outside the stable areas, but given that it's the instability that pulls people in...
dralchemist: (i'm the best chef and you know it)

[personal profile] dralchemist 2018-08-07 12:14 am (UTC)(link)
[If this setting were just a touch more cartoony, Izzy probably would have seen Angua floating on the trails of steam by her nose. Close enough, really.

Right now, she's working on kabobs of some kind, skewers of cubed, marinated beef and sliced vegetables set over an open flame. A few finished examples are set off to the side on a metal platter, one of which is swiftly picked up and offered to the "customer".]


Yeah, I know. Shame to have all of these ingredients and equipment lying around and nobody to take advantage of it, right?
dralchemist: (can u not)

[personal profile] dralchemist 2018-08-07 12:17 am (UTC)(link)
...... ok, that makes sense. Point made and conceded. So then the solution would probably be to find whatever phoenix is producing said phoenixfire and... something something essence extraction something. Maybe just see if there are a few feathers lying about, or--

--or hold up, this place is named Incendia? The city that's constantly being set on fire. Is called "Incendia". [She looks like she's just realizing she's on a prank show or something.] That's the dumbest thing I've heard today.
schrodingers_hat: (Let me explain you a thing)

[personal profile] schrodingers_hat 2018-08-07 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
[Muttering something that sounds suspiciously like "For fuck's sake."]

We just need to figure out who's controlling the flames.

[And then punch them a bunch but he figured that went without saying as much as it went without saying that there was someone controlling the flames.]
Edited 2018-08-07 00:21 (UTC)