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...
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-17 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
So do I. But killing is my only skill.

[she just sounds so resigned?]
ax_iom: (What do you want from me?)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-18 03:03 am (UTC)(link)
Only.

[She shrugs.]

I've been doing it for a long time. You get good at it. And not much else.
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-18 09:23 pm (UTC)(link)
I understand, I think.

[Not first hand, but close enough.]
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-18 10:54 pm (UTC)(link)
... If you do, I'm sorry.
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-19 02:17 am (UTC)(link)
A friend of mine lost everything when they stopped doing what they were built for.

It was... an event.
ax_iom: (What do you want from me?)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-19 04:17 am (UTC)(link)
"Built"?

[literally or metaphorically...]
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-19 06:00 pm (UTC)(link)
He was a creation of the Great Machine.

[Speak openly, John Watson: there are no angels here to reclaim those you love for spare parts.]
ax_iom: (What else was I good for?)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-19 06:15 pm (UTC)(link)
[She lets out a sigh.]

I have had a very long, very bad day. My patience is gone. Any more cryptic riddles in the place of answers and I am going to become very, very angry.
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-19 06:30 pm (UTC)(link)
[He takes the hint.]

The God-machine creates angels for its bidding. These angels fall, and become demons, when they make any choice at all.

[He sighs.]

This is as precise as I can be.

The world I found myself in when I died was not a sane one.
ax_iom: (This hidden war)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-19 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
[... she groans, but.]

Screw it. I killed a priest about half an hour ago. Gods and angels and demons are fine to have next, I guess. Can they come here?
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-20 01:21 am (UTC)(link)
I genuinely do not know. I doubt it, however.

[Where this is seems to be a different kind of alternate reality than the long chains of afterlives he has to contend with.]
ax_iom: (This hidden war)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-20 02:55 am (UTC)(link)
Good. If they ever do show up, I'll take them out.

[... it's said with absolute certainty that she can...]
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-20 09:58 pm (UTC)(link)
... Okay, it's been a long day, so just... bear with me for a minute. Was that the sarcastic, disbelieving 'good to know', or actually serious?
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-22 02:20 am (UTC)(link)
Utterly sincere.

I've learned to take people's estimations of their abilities at face value.

Except for Holmes's.

He is an idiot.

And I love him.
ax_iom: (I'm so much better by your side)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-22 06:17 am (UTC)(link)
[... okay, that gets a laugh. A tired one, more of a tiny giggle, but still a laugh.]

The kind who overestimates himself?
joyinastrangeplace: (Smirking)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-23 10:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Constantly. Demon or no, he can still overextend himself, and the body he inhabits is for the most part human.

[Laughter is good. Laughter means she's not as freaked out, or as likely to attack him.]
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-24 07:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Doesn't sound like much of a demon, does he?
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-24 08:55 pm (UTC)(link)
[Watson isn't sure how to answer. Does she expect him to be like the demons of human myth? It's possible, of course. Anything is possible, here.]
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-24 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
See, this is where your silence just confirms what I'm thinking.

[She's imagining an edgy child, honestly.]
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-24 11:35 pm (UTC)(link)
And what are you thinking?

[Where does he even begin? The glitches, the abrupt development of a moral problem with taking over the lives of others--it is more difficult to be a demon than an angel in his world, cut off from any support from the God-machine.]
ax_iom: (My penance)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-25 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
Someone with a big heart and a bigger mouth. Sounds more like a kid than a demon.
joyinastrangeplace: Jude Law as John Watson, holding a cane over his shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] joyinastrangeplace 2018-07-25 02:56 am (UTC)(link)
You see yourself in him, then?

[Holmes's age is a question mark: Sherlock Holmes the body is thirty some years old, but the angel? Who knows.]
ax_iom: (You took me out of play and now)

[personal profile] ax_iom 2018-07-25 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
Don't insult me like that.

[fuck u]

I was thinking of a friend.

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