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...
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 12:17 am (UTC)(link)
[Well, he's not exactly tall.]

If you've got healing artes or something of the like, that'd be a help. Otherwise, it's not the first time I've dealt with a burn, just one of the stupider ones.
hotshot_momma: (Default)

[personal profile] hotshot_momma 2018-07-18 12:30 am (UTC)(link)
[...okay that's fair. She raises her eyebrows at 'Artes,' though.]

I have a medkit in my pack and am decent at first aid, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean.
Edited (it keeps happening) 2018-07-18 01:01 (UTC)
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 02:37 am (UTC)(link)
No; a kind of accelerated healing where I come from.

[For right now he's just going to be very careful with the hand as he pulls a scrap of fabric out of his bag, pouring a little water onto it so he can at least wipe the ash and so forth away from the burn.]
hotshot_momma: (dangerous)

[personal profile] hotshot_momma 2018-07-18 05:55 am (UTC)(link)
Sufficiently advanced technology?

[He's probably never heard of Arthur C. Clarke. Ah well.]

Like the rifts. The shit causing the phoenixfire up above. You get briefed on that yet?
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 08:38 am (UTC)(link)
No. Most people I've run into are more inclined to call it magic.

[But it's not!!! But whatever, he doesn't have the energy to explain fonic artes in-depth to every walkby.]

Yeah, I did.
hotshot_momma: (:smile:)

[personal profile] hotshot_momma 2018-07-18 08:20 pm (UTC)(link)
That's looking more and more to be a decent explanation, by whatever name you called it.

My world had some spooky shit, some bleedthrough to subdimensions. Dreams, mostly. I fought most of it.

[And after a moment's hesitation... she offers her hand.]

Major Anna Lin, Treasure Island ANIMa Corps. I'm pretty sure five words of that don't matter here, but. Used to them.
bloodyashes: ([D] Hybrid)

[personal profile] bloodyashes 2018-07-18 09:29 pm (UTC)(link)
[Luckily, it's his left hand that's burned, so he can take the handshake easy. The grip is firm and callused.]

Asch. Formerly Oracle Knights Special Operations, but they just have to deal with my resignation.
hotshot_momma: (:))

[personal profile] hotshot_momma 2018-07-19 08:55 am (UTC)(link)
[As is hers. She nods at that, smirks.]

Brass getting you down back home?