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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...
Re: 2
"Eloi up top, Morlocks down here?" she mutters. Then, louder, "Hi. I'm Nir—I mean, I'm Harriet. You from around here?"
no subject
He offers his hand. There's the remains of healed first degree burns on the fingertips. "Alexander. I arrived a few days ago."
no subject
no subject
He stops to think. "I'd call my own tongue Trader's, or Mid-Caelii. And if we were in our own world I'd call the translation effect a Mystic enchantment?"
Said Mystic enchantment is particular about the capitalization.
"...My spells and yours work well enough here so the physics can't be that different," he concludes, shrugging. "But that may be the Fissures at work."
no subject
no subject
As long as he's down here, he puts his goggles on his scalp then puts his hand over his mouth, thinking.
"Folded and mutilated is more or less right," he says. "There are cracks in the fundament here - Fissures to other worlds. Some welcoming to Namers, which is where we came from; some not so much, such as the one that engulfs the city in elemental phoenix-fire every dusk."
no subject
There are in fact three hellhounds slinking out of the tunnel behind Alex.
no subject
And before anything else, he snarls, "Creo escutio ignis!" and opens his hand. Fire spills out and forms the rough shape of a shield over the bracer on his left arm.
Alex shifts backwards, ready to step in front of a blow meant for Harriet. "Can your disjunctions be used as a weapon?" he asks.
no subject
"Disjunction? As a weapon?" As Harriet speaks, she feeds a bit of her own stable essence into shinma Nirguna, charging her burn. Cosmic forces bend invisibly around her.
"Maybe." She flicks her fingers and the hellhounds become a cloud of embers and giblets. Small tremors shake the tunnel and dust and muck sift down from above. "I mean, I could slice something in half? But it's easier to blow shit up."
no subject
A messy kill, a wrinkle in time ironed out soon after by space? He’d call this archwizardry at home - beyond the reach of the most talented student in his class. Likely beyond Magister Levin. Again, he swears: “Shadowed power beneath!”
“Every loving God, Harriet, what manner of being was your sponsor?!”
no subject
"'Sponsor,'" Harriet muses. "That is…a really good word for it, actually, I never would have thought of it but you're right. My sponsor was Nirvahara, the Completion of Things, an aspect of shinma Nirguna temporarily sent into the universe of form. I…partly remember what it was like to be Nirvahara, to have it possessing me? So I can do some of the things it could, though it takes me more concentration, especially if I don't want collateral damage. Uh, who or what was your sponsor?"
no subject
He pinches the bridge of his nose, speaking slowly as the words come. "I haven't got a sponsor, not in the way you did; it's not a prerequisite to power, just a shortcut, a costly trade. My patron is just a man, though a powerful wizard and a good tutor. You, on the other hand, were possessed by a tutelary spirit that earned the title of The Completion Of Things..."
He shudders to think on it. "A black power of Below, but also a golden one of Above, I'd think. How on this Earth or any other did you play host to a god of such power?"
no subject
"That which does not suffer itself to be named made a host for Nirvahara when it passed through the Gateway of Sundraprisha. I would never have existed otherwise. I'm lucky I still exist now, it was a literal gift from the gods, or specifically Anpw, Judge of the Dead, in gratitude for helping Nirvahara save the universe." Harriet frowns. "I don't know whether it was costly. I…guess maybe a Harriet who hadn't played host to Nirvahara might be happier? In some ways? But it's not worth thinking about."
Zoë. A pang of regret suddenly strikes her. Zoë must think Harriet disappeared with Nirvahara after all. And Tomrys…
no subject
Her adventures are so far above his level it makes his head spin.
"...Let me see if I understand," he says, that knuckle straying to his lips again as he chews on these thoughts. "You were... the creation of a god clothed in false mortality... until you were granted the mortal life They pretended to, for your service to reality?"
Ow, his brain. And he thought that kicking a lich right in the phylactery was the most exciting his life could get.
no subject
"Close enough for government work," Harriet agrees. "I mean, the shinma aren't gods, but the technicalities are probably, as you said, for me to argue about with any handy cleric." She shrugs. "Though I suppose a wizard might be able to learn to bind and loose some of those forces? But I'm not the one to teach you. I don't remember the math, I just pull the levers and shit happens, so to speak."
She looks around. "I wonder whether there's anywhere to sit that isn't covered in filth? Or do you have one of those prestidigitation cantrips that can clean a ten by ten surface instantly?"
no subject
"All I can do right now is fire elementalism. I'm only a first-year at the Academy... and I had to catch up." He smirks. "Fire's a symbol, though, and I've room to grow into it."
no subject
"So you're an elementalist subclass?" Harriet says. "Cool. I mean, who the heck am I to sneer at someone trading versatility for power?"
It's clear from her voice that there's a joke Alex isn't in on. Or, at least, that Harriet thinks there is.
no subject
He sweeps his head, and his light, around. "I've heard murmurs of a base camp, of others spirited away from their homes by mischance earlier than we were... from the perspective of this plane. We should seek it out, and head up in the morning. I called it phoenix-fire for a reason - the city will be reborn come the dawn."
no subject
"'Reborn'?" Harriet asks. "And sure, let's search. Just—" Boom. "—keep an eye out for hellhounds."
no subject
“Come the morning, everything burned away will be back, good as new.”
He pauses.
“Anything not alive enough to be killed by the fire.”
no subject
"Hhhhhhuh." Harriet doesn't really know what to think of Alex's assertion, though she doesn't question it.
"Let's get moving, then," she says. "You take point."
no subject
“With you throwing your implosives over my shoulder?” Alex rolls his eyes and agrees. “Just take care where you point them, then.”
He sweeps his light over the caves. “Just as well. Had to delve a bit in the practicals - I can find my way through tunnels.”
no subject
"It's line of sight," Harriet says. "Doesn't pass through intervening space. I just pick something to detonate. Won't be you, unless you get weird." She falls in behind him, methodically checking her surroundings for hellhounds or other sources of excitement.