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...
zweihandler: (The Rumor Come Out:)

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-21 03:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Huh.

That's fucked up.

[ THANKS ERINA, REALLY INSIGHTFUL ]
zweihandler: (all medieval weaponry is gay)

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-21 03:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Uh, no, that's what the cops do? Keep up, dude.

[ AND WE'RE BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH COPS ]
zweihandler: (but I will not hold back in combat)

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-21 03:12 pm (UTC)(link)
You tell me!

[ an unfortunate truth: Erina Estival doesn't actually know what psychoanalyzing entails, it's just a big word that sounded like it meant something ]
zweihandler: (i'm gay and i love swords)

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-21 03:22 pm (UTC)(link)
What goes on at night?

[ She sounds more curious than concerned or skeptical. ]
zweihandler: ("shes here to steal our girlfriends!")

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-21 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Lifting a dude, oh shit, whatever next.

[ Said totally deadpan. ]

You gonna just climb up on my back or what?
zweihandler: (all medieval weaponry is gay)

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-21 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
You've been here a month?

Fuck. I'm definitely gonna miss class.
have_hat_will_travel: (Wat)

[personal profile] have_hat_will_travel 2018-07-21 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
... I think we have something like that? But no, we don't need to do the traps thing, and I'm pretty sure you'll have a lot of people very angry at you if you do it.
zweihandler: ([makes sword swinging motions])

[personal profile] zweihandler 2018-07-21 03:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[ bold of you to assume Erina is cool enough to have ever attended a concert ]

Looks like a music festival? [ close enough ] That's probably what the big-ass stages are for, anyways.
daughterofthemark: (02F. Hazardous habitat)

[personal profile] daughterofthemark 2018-07-21 04:05 pm (UTC)(link)
But we don't have those!

[ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND THEY GO]
redmeguca: (The hell?)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-21 05:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Sacrifice? Sacrifice?! All their deaths were fucking pointless!

[Have an irate Magical Girl attacking you, transforming as she goes.]
moarlazersplz: (The Echo)

[personal profile] moarlazersplz 2018-07-21 05:09 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm mostly concerned because there are those back at my home who will likely get worried if I don't show up.

[A pause as she thinks about her usual adventuring habits and how okay, maybe she tends to drop off the face of Eorzea for months at a time, but she totally- No, she doesn't even regularly check in with her Free Company, much less her Grand Company.]

Well, they'll get worried if I don't show up within a few months, at least.

[Though who's to say what will happen with her connection to Hydaelyn.]
redmeguca: (If you say so.)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-21 05:11 pm (UTC)(link)
{Yup. We don't even get told that, so we go in thinking everything's fine.}
moarlazersplz: (Fairy time!)

[personal profile] moarlazersplz 2018-07-21 05:11 pm (UTC)(link)
The growing fire aether that's setting everything alight, and the city itself?

[That was her most recent and pressing experience, after all. Though at least the underground passageway here seems to be safe from the torrent of aether that she can still sense above them.]
moarlazersplz: (Happy Cat is happy!)

[personal profile] moarlazersplz 2018-07-21 05:15 pm (UTC)(link)
[Akira had been right - between the two of them, there aren't many dogs left, and the last of them go up in the flare from the laser that somehow seems to strike from above despite the fact that there is a still-very-solid roof above them.

Ruto holds her combat readiness for another moment, just in case there are reinforcements, and then tucks her book away and grins in satisfaction, turning to the girl.]


Nice job!

[Cue victory theme, even if it isn't actually audible here!]
moarlazersplz: (Happy Cat is happy!)

[personal profile] moarlazersplz 2018-07-21 05:17 pm (UTC)(link)
...

[Ruto's eyes are still wide as Astolfo puts the horn away, and she turns to him and blinks a few more times before grinning widely in delight.]

...that was amazing!

[Cue inaudible victory theme!]
nojohnyouare: Holding up her sword. (if i become my demons)

[personal profile] nojohnyouare 2018-07-21 05:47 pm (UTC)(link)
The city is in a time loop. Reliving its destruction. At night... Fire.

A lot of fire.
have_hat_will_travel: (Huh)

[personal profile] have_hat_will_travel 2018-07-21 05:56 pm (UTC)(link)
You... WOn't be alone there.

For now, the biggest thing we can do is work on stabilizing rifts...
shipoutofluck: (009)

[personal profile] shipoutofluck 2018-07-21 06:00 pm (UTC)(link)
You can't have "something like it", you either have one or you don't.

...I can let the traps go if I must. But I question if everyone truly understands the essence of what a base is.
riderofcharlemagne: (sumanai)

[personal profile] riderofcharlemagne 2018-07-21 06:18 pm (UTC)(link)
[He quickly moves to block her weapons with his own, acting entirely defensively for now.]

They don't have to be!
riderofcharlemagne: (you know what it is bitch)

[personal profile] riderofcharlemagne 2018-07-21 06:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you, thank you.

[He takes a bow, glad that someone seems to appreciate La Black Luna.]
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-21 06:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Right.

... Sorry. About earlier.
ax_iom: (Default)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-21 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Look, it's- It's fine.

[She looks at the rubble from where she collapsed it, and the rubble just starts levitating out the hole...]
theserpentsmiles: (Default)

[personal profile] theserpentsmiles 2018-07-21 06:44 pm (UTC)(link)
[It's not a high enough drop to bother tumbling so he just sticks a three-point landing. It only takes a moment to get back on his feet. Underground...got it. Basements and sewage systems? No, those probably still qualify as part of the city....something deeper. Caves? Or a subway, that would make sense.]

Lead the way. [They can suss out details of the situation once they're more or less safe.]
redmeguca: (The hell?)

[personal profile] redmeguca 2018-07-21 06:50 pm (UTC)(link)
The only point they had was teaching me that everyone I care about fucking dies! It's never going to be okay, so I don't pretend like it ever is!

[She's really good with that spear, quickly recovering from Astolfo's party and striking again.]
shipoutofluck: (001)

[personal profile] shipoutofluck 2018-07-21 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Sure. Regularly.

[He doesn't sound like he considers this a big deal at all.]