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...
redmeguca: (Default)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-18 12:00 am (UTC)(link)
Then think about your other motivations. The world isn't black and white, right and wrong. There isn't always a "right" answer. You can't be a hero twenty-four/seven.
zweihandler: (i'm gay and i love swords)

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-18 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
Right, cool.

So space rocks fall and a bunch of people die, and all the animals get jacked up on space rocks and the humans are like "oh shit, this is bad, actually". But then it turns out a bunch of the humans got jacked up on space rocks too, and that's how Synchronics happened.

You with me so far?
bloodyashes: (Default)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
No, military. Oracle Knights Special Operations.

[And royalty before that but heyyyyy we don't talk about that.]
zweihandler: (how do you kill a sword?)

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-18 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
That's pretty stabbable. No way to get them up to a solid ten?

[ it is genuinely impossible to tell if she's fucking with him or not ]
bloodyashes: ([F] Sorry about him)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 12:11 am (UTC)(link)
[It's probably a good thing he didn't, since mention of the Founder King would send this in a negative direction pretty fucking immediately.]

I was sick of formal introductions by the time I was twelve.

[Turning the skewers over again, they're almost done!]
theosophomoric: (while millions of lambs)

[personal profile] theosophomoric 2018-07-18 12:11 am (UTC)(link)
[Sonja follows suit with her own package, though she proceeds to gesture with the half-eaten pocky stick as she speaks.]

I'm never quite sure where there will or won't be parallels between worlds. Little things seem to line up more reliably than, you know. Major metaphysical events.
bloodyashes: (Default)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
Never heard of it.

[Beat, wherein Asch takes a chunk of meat off one of the skewers with his teeth, chews and swallows it.]

Baticul, technically, which you've likewise probably never heard of.
class_struggle: (Default)

[personal profile] class_struggle 2018-07-18 12:13 am (UTC)(link)
Creo Lux.

[With those words and a snap of his fingers, a blue-white, smokeless, heatless flames springs from his fingertips. There's a ritual to it, a solemnity.]

You've seen me redirect fire. I can call it, use it as a weapon - I'm working on setting embers, making traps. In case we need it down here.

[This is is the serious tone of voice suggesting that this is sharing tactics, if it becomes necessary.]

Are most of your powers tied to weight and lightness? ...you make the hammer lighter on the swing and harder on the hit, don't you?
Edited (close italics is not close small) 2018-07-18 00:13 (UTC)
bloodyashes: (Default)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 12:14 am (UTC)(link)
[He... almost smiles, and waves it off.]

I've found plenty for now. There's no point in taking more than I can eat before it goes bad.
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 12:17 am (UTC)(link)
[Well, he's not exactly tall.]

If you've got healing artes or something of the like, that'd be a help. Otherwise, it's not the first time I've dealt with a burn, just one of the stupider ones.
class_struggle: (Default)

[personal profile] class_struggle 2018-07-18 12:18 am (UTC)(link)
A rescue. A camp near the coast. A wizard's laboratory in the city.

"Carving a path through the flame to their lost companions," he paraphrases, to see how much of it he has right.

"Although. If your elsewhere storage trick isn't what you'd call magic, what would you call it?"

After all, there are white wizards of his world who insist to this day that what they do is miraculous rather than magical... though when spirits benevolent and powerful enough to be called gods are involved, why not both.
einherjarista: (walking disaster)

[personal profile] einherjarista 2018-07-18 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
[ So these meteor...ites? Caused some power development of some sort. Probably similar to how Arendal had become a hot spot of spiritual activity thanks to Yggdrasil, but on a maybe larger scale. Yeah, she can get that. ]

I think so, yeah.
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-18 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
... Why am I getting life counseling from a kid?

[She just sighs.]
einherjarista: (walking disaster)

[personal profile] einherjarista 2018-07-18 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
Not terribly, as long as the einherjar do their job. [ SIGNE THAT'S YOUR JOB. ]
class_struggle: (Default)

[personal profile] class_struggle 2018-07-18 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
No nation I've heard of...

[but then, it wouldn't be. He's thinking out loud for both of their benefits.]

But then, this is no place either of us have been, is it, Ser Asch? Different arts, different buildings, different banners.
einherjarista: (distracted by nothing)

[personal profile] einherjarista 2018-07-18 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
....Ah.

Obviously. I should have tried a bar before a coffee shop. I think I need something to help me handle this information.

[ . . . . . .

She begins to pull a double-shot of espresso. ]
deicidii: (and i won't bow to you)

[personal profile] deicidii 2018-07-18 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
Truly, the spookiest.

[There's a pause as he looks at one of the packaged snacks he's shoving into his inventory, before tossing it towards Minato.]

Here, ghost guy, may this offering appease you or whatever.
nojohnyouare: Wary and angry. (and would you leave me)

[personal profile] nojohnyouare 2018-07-18 12:24 am (UTC)(link)
And... Probably irreversible, then. Sorry.
class_struggle: (Default)

[personal profile] class_struggle 2018-07-18 12:25 am (UTC)(link)
That's not likely. But it might be closer to your home than mine. I've never seen anywhere like this.

[He stoops to examine the rail, brush his hand against it.]

What is this place for, and why is it more ruined than the surface?
deicidii: (that once knew love)

[personal profile] deicidii 2018-07-18 12:25 am (UTC)(link)
[... that is so cool.]

Just wanted to make sure. Do you know how long stuff's been like this? [Abandoned, he means.] It seems pretty recent...
einherjarista: (Default)

[personal profile] einherjarista 2018-07-18 12:28 am (UTC)(link)
But the important thing is that I'm stuck here.

Like, in this world, I guess. Until we figure out a way back. But also in these subway tunnels. Until the fire goes out.
einherjarista: (Default)

[personal profile] einherjarista 2018-07-18 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
...What? No, actually. An einherjar can defeat it and purify the soul.
hotshot_momma: (Default)

[personal profile] hotshot_momma 2018-07-18 12:30 am (UTC)(link)
[...okay that's fair. She raises her eyebrows at 'Artes,' though.]

I have a medkit in my pack and am decent at first aid, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean.
Edited (it keeps happening) 2018-07-18 01:01 (UTC)
dubiouslychthonic: (Skeptical)

[personal profile] dubiouslychthonic 2018-07-18 12:32 am (UTC)(link)
She nods at his paraphrase. Close enough.

The question, though... she shrugs.

"Computer assisted quantum-spacial folding," Jetshard replies easily. "Although don't ask me how it works, I'm a medic, not an engineer. My ability to troubleshoot the technology is pretty much limited to 'try turning it off and turning it on again.'"
redmeguca: (Default)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-18 12:33 am (UTC)(link)
Can't tell you the answer to your first question, but I know the second. Every morning the city up there gets reset.