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

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...
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 07:02 pm (UTC)(link)
[...Huh. Good to know.]

At least I'm not the only one just showing up here.
motherfucking_ghost: (a: man my missions really suck)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 07:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, shit, you're new? Fuuuuuck, man, I'm sorry. Then this is gonna suck.
bloodyashes: ([F] You saw NOTHIN)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 07:34 pm (UTC)(link)
It's not the first time I've suddenly found myself in another world. Just get it over with.

[Give him the spiel, Church.

Church is absolutely not a person who should be giving the newbie spiel.]
motherfucking_ghost: (Default)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 07:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, yeah? You, too? God, isn't it the fucking worst? I thought, y'know, after the first time, maybe this is it, maybe I'll just have to live and die here and just fucking deal with it. The second time, at least that was deliberate! Deliberate and consensual! That was gonna be home-home. And then this third time? I'm so done with it.
bloodyashes: ([F] You saw NOTHIN)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 07:47 pm (UTC)(link)
I'll take a deserted city over an apparently-never-inhabited-before-that island that's somehow both tropical and on the border of falling below freezing.

[This presumably explains the warm clothes and the bundle of a pretty warm looking blanket on the top of his pack... Though maybe not why he still seems perfectly comfortable and hasn't taken most of it off. Kid's in at least two layers and it's all black and dark grey?]
motherfucking_ghost: (a: man my missions really suck)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 07:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Hm...I mean...there is indoor plumbing, and that's always a plus...
bloodyashes: ([F] Sorry about him)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 08:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I'll take anywhere I don't have to set a campfire any time I want to eat something more substantial than a mango.
motherfucking_ghost: (Default)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 08:14 pm (UTC)(link)
But it wasn't just you...was it?
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 08:17 pm (UTC)(link)
No, there were... maybe forty of us. And a god or two.

[But fuck gods, really, says his tone of voice and the way it's an afterthought.]

Haven't run into anyone I know here, though.

[Running into an alternate Ardyn does not count.]
motherfucking_ghost: (Default)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 08:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Did you have to kill each other for someone's entertainment?
bloodyashes: ([F] Sorry about him)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 08:27 pm (UTC)(link)
...No, it was mostly just trying to survive.

[In more mundane, less murder-happy ways.

It is possibly telling, though, that Asch doesn't look as, you know, deeply disturbed by the concept as a normal person would.]
motherfucking_ghost: (Default)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 08:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Lucky son of a bitch.
bloodyashes: ([D] Transformation)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 08:37 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd take murder over having most of my worst memories played for everyone to see.

[That wasn't fun to relive.]
motherfucking_ghost: (you're way too sure of yourself)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 08:47 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd take that over forgetting all of my worst memories and then having to remember them all over again.
bloodyashes: ([F] Sorry about him)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 08:49 pm (UTC)(link)
...Point.

[That one does kind of suck, he'll give you that.]
motherfucking_ghost: (Default)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Let's just agree that interdimensional travel is bullshit and leave it at that, no matter the circumstances.
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 09:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Still better than being dead.

[Oh hey, look, it's a bench? He's gonna sit on the bench.]

...Want a mango?
motherfucking_ghost: (ain't that something)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 09:23 pm (UTC)(link)
...Sure.

[Thanks, friendo?]

Anyway, sup. I'm Leonard Lucis Caelum. You can call me Church.
bloodyashes: ([D] Transformation)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 09:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Asch. No last name.

[He doesn't show any internal skipping-a-beat the name makes him do, though that might be because his face is halfway in his bag.

Here. A mango.]
motherfucking_ghost: (ain't that something)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 09:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Ouch. Thanks. You want a drink? I got some drinks.
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I've still got plenty of water, but thanks.

[Another thing that's easier to come by than it was on the islands.]
motherfucking_ghost: (Default)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Got an assortment. Water, yeah, but some soda, coffee, boozes--you want booze? I got access to like a whole bar full of stuff.
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 09:57 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know what the first one is and I don't drink the other two.

[Seriously? He doesn't look that old, Church, why are you enabling a teenage drinking habit.]
motherfucking_ghost: (ain't that something)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2018-07-13 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)
You don't have soda? Carbonated sugary drink. Caffeinated, typically.
bloodyashes: ([F] You saw NOTHIN)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-13 10:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Never heard of it.

[Water's fine anyway.]

(no subject)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost - 2018-07-14 00:24 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] bloodyashes - 2018-07-14 00:42 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost - 2018-07-14 00:50 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] bloodyashes - 2018-07-14 01:11 (UTC) - Expand