phantasmemes | TEST DRIVE 005

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!test drive

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...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Huh?

[Why does he feel like he's just been put on the spot...? The smile might look a little more menacing than nice, but... give him a break, he's never had to pose for a picture before.

Actually, the smile he has when he sees the photo is much more natural of an expression.]

Incredible... I thought the process would be more involved than that.

The older ones certainly are - originally photos were taken with film cameras, and then the film had to be developed with chemicals to capture the image. But digital is as simple as that.

[Though some purists insist on film anyway. Izunia swipes his finger to the side and - that's Astolfo, that's his cat, that's Astolfo playing with his cat - through a few more pictures.]

They also didn't have touchscreens until quite recently, at least on Eos.

That's miles ahead of anything I know of. We don't have anything coming even close to this back on Desolation.

[...

Yes, really.

Apparently.]

[... You know his planet is named 'Dawn' he ain't got shit of a room to talk.]

The technology level at the station - our usual home base - is well ahead of anything I'm familiar with, myself.

[He slides the phone back into his Armiger non-chalantly.]

I'm more familiar with the magical end of things by a longshot.

Something to get used to. Well. I'll adapt.

[Their home base. Hm.]

How many are staying at that station?

Hm, maybe fifty? Discounting the android natives - artificially created mechanical people - and our handful of pets.

[More than Eizen is probably used to after so long aboard ship, anyway.]

Plus however many appear here that we bring back. There's not really elsewhere to go at the moment.

[He opens his mouth, because you can't just casually drop the artifical mechanical people bomb like that, but decides against it because... You know what? He'll deal with that later.

He takes another drink from that bottle.]

That's crowded. Seems like a lot of people to fit into one place.

But I guess when it's the space you got, you make do.

[Honestly, Eizen, that's not even the weirdest people in residence.]

The station's large enough but it's starting to come close to capacity. Though a few people have vanished back through the rifts they came from - we were almost at sixty at one point.

...Mostly human, before you ask, though a large portion have some sort of magical or other supernatural talent. The rest are quite the odd assortment including another android of sorts, several demons, a spirit or two, and a talking cat.

[Really, it's a List.]

Izunia, by the way.

[See, most of those he barely even blinks at, but demons... Not that he's a stranger to living with daemons, but...]

And that... works?

[Usually people have Problems with that.]

...Eizen.

Pleasure.

[You should always know someone's name when you settle in to drink with them, right?

And oh hey look a bench, let's sit on the bench rather than trying to drink standing up. It's kinda rusty but hey, beggars can't be choosers.]

It works well enough. Once people adjust to the idea of other worlds, I think most everyone understands that people from other worlds won't be the same as them. There's been a few kerfuffles, but nothing major and it's mostly due to someone pushing on some unknown element of another's history that goes badly. I wouldn't even say most of them are intentional.

It's still a strange assortment of people to live together. I'm surprised it's working out so well. Guess when you've got everyone united in some way...

[Like a crew.]

Fifty people or so. [He leans back. Then he pulls out his coin and starts flipping it.] That's an awful lot of potential for trouble.

It is. But even the most disruptive don't want to be the start of serious trouble - there's enough tensions alone between myself and my brother's family to start a full feud otherwise, nevermind the rest of the group.

[He takes a drink, and it won't be long before Eizen notices him fidgeting with something in turn - it seems to be a deck of thin metal cards?

Look, it seemed fitting. Now they just need someone with dice.]

Ah, family drama. There's always a lot of that going around no matter where I go, it seems.

[Eizen glances at those cards a moment. Metal cards. Not what people might usually use for playing, but he knows what he's looking at here.]

...You use throwing cards, huh?

I use a little of everything - these are just far better for fidgeting than a rapier or a greatsword.

[He flips over the top card, revealing an image of what seems to be a man save for the impressive assymmetrical horns coming from his head, surrounded by flame. Izunia frowns at it thoughtfully before flipping it back into the deck.]

Magic in my world is a family gift, and ours largely takes the form of light magic and weaponry. Each member of the main line had a weapon that particularly resounded with them enough to be passed on to further generations. My collection has nothing on my brother's, actually.

[He shuffles the cards and, after a moment, flips the top one again - likely coming as no surprise to Eizen, it's the same card.]

So those cards, too... They've been around a long time?

[Interest... increasing...

And of course he's not the least bit surprised that the card is the same again. It's not a deck he's familiar with and he doesn't know the meaning...]

...Is this one of those decks where the cards have special meaning?

[But he can just about guess, honestly.]

Yes, they're somewhere in the vicinity of nine hundred and fifty years old.

[As to the second question, he just nods, and flips the card back over to Eizen can see it clearly.]

Ifrit, the Infernian, the Pyreburner. One of the gods of our world - we've six, and the deck has a suit of ten and a face card for each. Ifrit was once a patron of humanity, a god of fire who provided warmth and light to the civilization of Solheim... Until they angered him with a lack of devotion, and he turned against them, hungry for revenge and destruction. And that was the Astral War, and his blood shed upon the ground was the beginning of the disease known as the Starscourge - or so the story goes. The Astral War was real enough, at any rate, as was the Scourge, but I've my questions about exactly what it was that made him become the first daemon, myself.

...

[...He... He wants to see that deck so badly.]

That's quite the history. Gods and daemons... Things aren't always so different between worlds, I suppose. That... Starscourge? Sounds like some nasty business. Some form of plague?

[. . .]

...Would you mind if I took a look at that deck?

Yes. Malarial, technically, but twisted with dark magic and a divine grudge - those who die of it become daemons, or at least our version of them.

[He folds the card back into the deck before offering it over.]

Mind the edges.

[Most of the cards are, in fact, just pips - swords for Bahamut, crowns for Shiva, wands for Ramuh, waves for Leviathan, meteors for Titan and flames for Ifrit. But the face cards, such as they are, have full illustrations, one for each god.]

A disease that turns people into daemons. An actual disease like that... [That's... so dumb. That's dumb and he hates it.] More of a curse than an illness.

[But he takes the deck and he does mind the edges. In fact, he's extremely careful with it, so the fact that it still manages to cut through his glove seems... almost ludicrous. And yet, that is exactly what happens.

Though Eizen barely cares to notice, far too busy staring at the cards, going through them one by one.]

Remarkable...

Both is true - it certainly does cause severe fever, weakness, and hallucinations just like the mundane strains. The distinguishing trait is that it also turns one's blood a true black.

[Izunia would know. He watches Eizen page through the cards with some interest.]

They belonged to one of my favorite descendants.

Well. That's distinctive. Not so much like daemonblight in anything but its end result, although I suppose it's only that end that truly matters.

[He's just about hyperfocused on the cards now. He doesn't know anything about the styles of art and the history of it in Izunia's world, but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate this anyway.]

They're very impressive... Such a high quality, serving as both a useful weapon as well as a striking depiction of every god. Every illustration carefully made, but you can feel the heart of an artist shining through. [He's... so excited...] They're fine work, indeed.

[That's cool Izunia is perfectly happy to talk about those instead of the Starscourge.]

They wound up as the iconic version for some two centuries after... Though most folk never knew that they were also a Royal Arm in themselves.

As they should. Art like this deserves a long life. [As they speak, Eizen starts shuffling the deck himself.] I guess most people would just see cards and nothing else. But with all that history behind them...

What sort of person was it? Your descendant who used these?

A very tenacious young woman. [A small smile.] Not that that's not true of most of the family, of course, but there are very few who were possessed of the determination to take on part of the magical burden of the throne in addition to the more mundane aspects for the sake of other members of the family.

Tenacity's a good trait to have. And tenacious women especially are not to be underestimated. I can see why you'd like her.

[Shuffle... shuffle... And he pulls a card. What else, but the same again? Not a shred of surprise on Eizen's face, of course.]

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fuck I can't remember what I named her oops

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