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...
theosophomoric: (teeth still gleam from holy water)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-07-17 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
We'll be glad to have you, then, miss.

It'll be a bit before we head back to Keystone Station. I reckon we'll be taking a few days to stabilize as much of the city as we can manage, before we tackle the bit around the research station - Lodestone, the new one - where things have gone truly hell-to-bits.
fistsofchange: (Talkin')

[personal profile] fistsofchange 2018-07-17 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, no.

[She's fine with ghosts, apparently? Or things similar to ghosts. As long as it's just standing there, at least.]

Well, yes, originally. But not in this one. I've been on this planet for a few months now. Before then I was in a place called China, if you've heard of that.
nor_iron_bars: And in my soul am free (No that ain't your style)

[personal profile] nor_iron_bars 2018-07-17 12:17 am (UTC)(link)
Subway tunnels don't burn like the rest of it for some reason, so if you wanna hide out somewhere when night hits that's the place to do it.

[Does Asch even know what a subway system is, though?]
nojohnyouare: Pointing a sword at the viewer. (no light no light)

[personal profile] nojohnyouare 2018-07-17 12:17 am (UTC)(link)
We're investigating too. Sorry. ...I can answer. [She looks around the tunnels, eyes narrowing.] Monster?
nor_iron_bars: Alone that soar above (Keep doing what you're doing)

[personal profile] nor_iron_bars 2018-07-17 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
Well, fuck. You're saying these things reproduce by budding? Budding and... murder, I guess. Like the world's shittiest sponge.
redmeguca: (Default)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-17 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
I don't know exactly what I can help with, but I'll do what I can.
redmeguca: (The true me.)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-17 12:21 am (UTC)(link)
Not only that. If a Mahou Shoujo's Soul Gem goes completely black, they become a Witch. We're also the only things in my world that can fight them.
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

Re: Amethyst | Steven Universe

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-17 12:21 am (UTC)(link)
[At first startled, the man in Victorian clothes stares at the purple wolf with a blank expression on his face before shaking his head.]

If not for your strange color and your power of speech, I would hope you were Tobias playing a trick.

What are you then, instead?

[The cane appears in his hand, and he does not so much stand up as goes from sitting to standing between one moment and the next, with no in between phase.]
ax_iom: (I have my own reasons)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-17 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
[> Long red hair
> Oddly casual, so probably powerful
> tiny girl

Oh, god, it's a mini version of herself?]


... What are you talking about?
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-17 12:25 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, though I have never been. Spent most of my years in the East in Afganistan, that region.

[He taps the top of the cane with a finger.]

I am from England. My name is John Watson. How do you do?

[Quick, be polite because he doesn't know how interacting with normal people out of cases works]
redmeguca: (If you say so.)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-17 12:28 am (UTC)(link)
We've got a walking talking afterlife around here, goes by Kana. She's pretty nice, so it's not hard to get along with her.

[She takes out a pack of Pocky and starts munching on it.]
ax_iom: (This hidden war)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-17 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
The guy I was fighting.

[so, the giant conspiracy fucker.]
nor_iron_bars: Alone that soar above (Keep doing what you're doing)

[personal profile] nor_iron_bars 2018-07-17 12:30 am (UTC)(link)
Ohhhh-kay. And... how does that happen?

[As if being a magical girl wasn't already fucked up enough?]
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-17 12:31 am (UTC)(link)
Subway?

[Nope.]
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-17 12:32 am (UTC)(link)
... What?

[you've lost her. more than you already had.]

Start over again. What?
redmeguca: (The true me.)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-17 12:32 am (UTC)(link)
By either using too much magic, or giving in to despair. I'm pretty sure a dark Soul Gem makes your moods worse, too.
thinkingwithmahous: (Oh fuck)

[personal profile] thinkingwithmahous 2018-07-17 12:32 am (UTC)(link)
The guy from the Hand?
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-17 12:34 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah. Him. ... He... What was his name again?

[She's exhausted. Her mind is half-shut down. She wants nothing more than to just die and have peace. Memories are fuzzy. She can hardly remember...

She's burned out.]
redmeguca: (What're you gonna do about it?)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-17 12:35 am (UTC)(link)
I thought I was pretty clear. One of my friends is an afterlife in human form. What, you've never met one?

[Okay, now Kyoko's just messing with her.]
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-17 12:36 am (UTC)(link)
[hammer is more because it and despair are both crushing.]

... Are you drunk?
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-17 12:37 am (UTC)(link)
[She huffs, and hefts up her hammer.]

Get back. I can handle whatever it is fine.
thinkingwithmahous: (No wait I can explain!)

[personal profile] thinkingwithmahous 2018-07-17 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
And you listened to him!?

[Marco looks incredulously at her.]
ax_iom: (I have my own reasons)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-17 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
[She just... reaches out. And. Grabs Kyouko's face to smush her cheeks a bit.]

Listen, kid, I am way too tired for this.
nor_iron_bars: Enjoy such liberty (Default)

[personal profile] nor_iron_bars 2018-07-17 12:39 am (UTC)(link)
[And Jail is also crushing. On Lily. Like the useless lesbian she is.]

Not this time. Which kinda sucks, but this place is gonna be on fire in a little while, so being too smashed to walk straight ain't exactly the best plan. ...oh, right. Fun fact: this city has some weird-ass phoenix bullshit going on where every night it catches fire and then restores itself in the morning.

Wanna help me loot it first?
nojohnyouare: Standing and holding her sword. (they're all around me)

[personal profile] nojohnyouare 2018-07-17 12:42 am (UTC)(link)
Don't worry.

[Mai immediately and recklessly dashes toward the movement, where a fire dog emerges, growling. She swings her sword at it to try and scare it off.]