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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
A glance over to Sync tells her clearly to buy some time while he's casting, so as she knocks the first dog away, more of those flames shimmer over her mask. The mask, however, isn't in place for long as it turns into fire and swirls above her, reforming as some sort of bird.]
Jatayu!
[The bird screeches as it casts a Marakunda, weakening the dogs for whatever Sync's got in store for them... as well as her own strikes, as she slashes at another one.]
no subject
O storm cloud, those thy blade... [The lightning above him changes shape, forming itself into a sword] ...Thunder Blade!
[The lightning sword crashes down, aimed roughly at the centre of the pack so that the area of effect around the arte will catch as many of them as he can with searing lightning. No matter where Akira ends up however, the arte doesn't touch her, merely felt as static passing her by]
no subject
... Cool.
The arte does take care of most of the dogs, a couple near the rear of the pack turning tail and running off, but leaving some of the rest in the front. Akira just grins as she switches Personas again--then summons.]
Mothman!
[Might as well keep rolling with the electricity, Akira thinks. And so something shaped like a friend appears, blasting the rest of the stragglers with a Mazionga--the skill easily finishing off the ones that had already been damaged by Thunder Blade.]
Heh, no problem at all...
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Not bad. You've got some nice skills.
[Sync's impressed despite himself. It's always nice to know when people you're fighting with are capable of holding their own]
no subject
[She pushes her mask up to rest on her head, then grins. Akira is definitely impressed. The power this guy's packing... wow.]
Gotta say, what you did was pretty badass.
no subject
[Sync might heavily lean on his wind artes. Which includes the lightning ones thanks to Auldrant's odd elemental system]
no subject
[All these different magic systems... how exciting.]
Don't I know it about lightning though...
[Thank goodness for Metaverse-induced sturdiness, she has probably taken the brunt of a number of electric skills that would leave a lot of regular people badly hurt.]
no subject
[The basics of them. Maybe fonons are unique to Auldrant, with how the planet was formed. Wouldn't surprise him, at this point. Things are too weird, Sync is already starting to reform his ideas of what should and shouldn't be]
Had a lot of unfortunate experience with it?
[Don't mind him, he's going to examine the dogs while they talk. He's curious to see if there's any real change to them or if their mutations were entirely magic instability]
no subject
[She's going to pull out her water bottle from earlier to take another drink from it in the meantime.
The sparks running down their fur are still there, even though the dogs themselves are dead... the mutation is seemingly permanent.]
Enough to know I prefer not being on the receiving end of it. Shift around your elemental weaknesses constantly and something's gonna nail you in one eventually. I'm just lucky that I can take that kind of punishment better as a Persona-user than an ordinary human would...
no subject
[The words come easily to him, and it's almost relaxing to remember the training he did to understand artes and how to use them. As he finishes looking over the dogs, he stands up again and stretches briefly]
Ouch. [He can sympathise. Sync might as well be considered wind-aligned as far as elements go, but he's been hit by a few lightning artes before. None of them were fun] What's a Persona?
no subject
[It's easy enough to understand, and she files that information away for reference.]
Versatility comes at a cost... [She shrugs.] Those things I summoned are called Personas. They're kind of like... well, I guess they're best described as aspects of one's self given form, a name, and power. Most Persona-users only have one at a time, but a Wildcard--that's what I am--can switch between several.
no subject
[Also somewhat unnerving. Aspects of the user's self? Sync has no doubt in what one from him would be like. Hatred given form.
Despite that, he's still curious. It makes Akira, as she says, versatile. A versatile ally is a powerful one, as Sync himself knows] You end up a Wildcard by chance, or was it something you learned?
no subject
Chance as far as I know. It's not like anyone really goes in looking to become a Persona-user either, it just kinda... happens under the right circumstances. I still remember my awakening like it was just yesterday...
[Parts of her wishes she didn't--she doesn't like remembering Kamoshida's Palace at all if she can help it. But... the rush of power when she first summoned Arsene... for the first time in a long while, she didn't feel helpless... the thought's still just as exhilarating as it was back then.]
no subject
[He shakes his head, since he doesn't have enough of a frame of reference to say for certain and recognises that]
A good memory?
[That question is more curious than it ought to be. Sync doesn't have much experience with good memories. He has neutral ones at best. It makes him wonder, what it'd be like to have actual good memories, to think back on and not regret or wonder over in some way]
no subject
['Show the strength of thy will to ascertain all on thine own, though thou be chained to Hell itself'...]
... Would you like to see my very first Persona?
no subject
[For a moment, Sync almost seems wistful. That does sound like a good memory. It makes him think of the times he first got artes working, but even then that memory was tempered by Van constantly telling him to do better, learn more. He had no time to celebrate what he'd learned.
He shakes the memory off, before considering the question and nodding. His curiosity makes him want to. A little bit of it could almost be considered child-like] Sure.
no subject
She closes her eyes as the mask shimmers with--and then disappears into--that blue fire, swirling as it coalesces into a figure behind her. Arsene unfurls and stretches his wings, his devious grin blazing more intensely for a few moments.]
This is Arsene.
no subject
Arsene, huh. That's quite the Persona.
[Even not knowing what this particular one could do (though from the name he wanted to think of fire, but wasn't going to assume), it was still impressive to be able to call a being forth like that]
no subject
[God, had it really just been five months, including her time here? It felt even longer.]
When it comes to elements, his specialty... well, the actual name is Curse, but it's basically darkness...
no subject
[Status ailments, and the like. But still, he's all the more impressed. Sync doesn't do much with the dark element, he's better with the four main elements]
no subject
[Above and behind her, Arsene seems to snort slightly. Someone doesn't care much for Bless, apparently.]
The others I'm used to working with are fire, ice, electricity, wind, nuclear, and psychic. Not sure why those last two qualify as elements, to tell you the truth, but I guess they exist.
[A pause.]
Well, and then there's what's called Almighty. It's rare, but there's nothing out there that has a resistance to it. There's a couple that drain life force or spiritual power from an enemy... Stuff that weakens an enemy like making them dizzy or confused tend to be their own thing, but a couple Almighty skills can raise susceptibility to that sort of thing.
no subject
That's the oddest set of elements I've ever heard of. Auldrant just has darkness, earth, wind, water, fire, light, and sound. Lightning is an advanced form of wind.
[He tilts his head a little, thinking on that last element Akira mentioned] Almighty sounds similar to the Seventh. Sound tends to have the strongest of artes, which almost nothing is resistant to. It can completely break down matter, when controlled correctly when two or more people who can use it are around one another.
no subject
The one you're used to definitely sounds like it makes more sense. I could give ice a pass as the logical extension to water, but I'm not sure where earth screwed off to in the systems Personas use.
[
It fucked off when Philemon did, that's what happenedHer eyebrows shoot up a little at the description of the Seventh fonon though. Completely break down matter? Holy shit.]
That... sounds pretty terrifying. I'm assuming something that powerful has nasty drawbacks if you're not careful...
no subject
[Personas do have an odd element system, Sync will agree with that. He nods at her words]
If not controlled, it'll just obliterate everything, including yourself. Or possibly just teleport you half-way across the planet and make you pass out for a few hours in a monster infested region. It's not something people use lightly, Seventh is mostly used for healing.
[Unless you're a certain pair of redheads anyway, then you give your teammate heart attacks by using them for arbitrary reasons or in your mystic artes]
no subject
She listens as he talks, eyebrows shooting up the whole while. Even Arsene lifts a clawed hand to his mouth, almost looking concerned... Or as concerned as he can manage.]
With effects like those, I should hope it isn't. Then again, something like that used for healing... somehow isn't all that surprising.
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