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phantasmemes2018-07-12 11:56 pm
phantasmods) wrote in 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...
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...
no subject
... Might as well. Please, do.
no subject
[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?
no subject
[She sighs. She doesn't like sharing her powers, but...]
... My powers are based around the manifestation of emotion. Normally they manifest as a staff and beam attacks. Right now, it's a bit different.
But what all I can do is a secret, so don't share this with anyone.
no subject
Oh.
Five preserve her.
His face falls in understanding.]
None will hear of this from me. On my life, my art, my tools, I swear it.
[As he says "my tools," he lays his hand on top of his hammer, and the rune on it glows gold-red.]
...We should find somewhere safe to camp. There's been a ruin, loot and traps. It would my our luck to find monsters too.
no subject
[She nods, hefting her own hammer.]
Your powers should make setting a campfire easy enough. All I can do is break things, though.
no subject
[...for once, the single icon I've got is adequate.]
And some must break clean before they're reforged.
no subject
no subject
[He thinks for a second, then frowns, drawing a potion. Teal, vivid. Uncorks it, drinks it.]
As long as I'm taking this, are you hurt or Breath-less? I'm an alchemist's 'prentice, practically speaking, and can brew regenerative draughts.
no subject
Thanks, but I'm okay. I'm pretty durable... Physically, anyway.
[don't ask about emotionally
... also she could honestly probably use something to dispel the emotional magic mindfuck she got but she doesn't even realize that was magic.]
no subject
Shame he's not skilled in psychic magic, just elemental.]
As you like. When we need it [not if] I've my practice kit - I was on a well-needed summer vacation before winding up here, and I've no shortage of reagents.
no subject
What else can you make?
no subject
And while you meant brewing, if we can get enough good metal and a forge, I haven't forgotten how to smith.
no subject
Can you make some kind of potion that could put out the fire up there, and keep it out for a while?
no subject
It's a good thought, though.
no subject
[She sighs.]
My powers... aren't reliable enough to try to help. So we're not suited to rescue missions here.
no subject
...I guess I'll be brewing aether tinctures tonight, then. If I have enough moonflower.
no subject
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Too much of it makes your head swim, to say nothing of the liver, but in small doses you can wield magic for longer.
ignore that last tag im dumb
[She's concerned.]
Is there any magical energy in the air here?
was wondering
[It's a lot like the bends, actually.]
The fires above prove it - I saw the magic in the air spark, though I couldn't see it without that. And the geomancy in the architecture - they've diverted ley lines throughout the city, somehow. Cthonic magic's not my forte, so I couldn't say what they did.
i misread things
Re: i misread things
...no. Not well informed, exactly. I just pay attention in class, and my studies. There's libraries about magic I don't know: I've seen them.
no subject
... It's not a nice laugh.]
You must come from a nice place, huh... If people write down and record their magic. If there's any way to learn other than figuring it out as you go.
no subject
...and nods, acknowledging the truth of it.]
That's fair to say. I and those of my world would account me exceedingly fortunate to have a place in the Heroes Academy.
Even other hedge-witches or pocket evokers or lay priests learn the craft from their mothers or fathers or temples, which is it's own fortune.
I cannot imagine your misfortune to live in a world in which you had no teachers but your own intuition. You've either been unlucky or terribly wronged. That's undeniable.
no subject
Both, I think.
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