TEST DRIVE 006

[phantasmods]

Hello and welcome to Phantasmal Rift's Test Drive Meme!

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 test drive takes place in the Telovia Mines, an extremely abandoned magical crystal mine and the town and infrastructure that one supported it. The tunnels are in reasonably good condition and would be reasonably navigable... Except for one thing.

ONE MINOR THING

The magical effects of the Fissure cause those within it to lose something when they arrive - for most people, it's a sense such as touch or hearing, but it's also possible to lose a more esoteric sense (such as your sense of balance or temperature, but NOT things like "sense of morals" or "sense of style"), the ability to speak, or the ability to recognize faces. As a general guideline, whatever characters lose should be non-supernatural in nature, and something they would have taken for granted as a part of their ability to function.

ODDS AND ENDS

Just because the mines are empty of people doesn't mean that they've gone still. While for the most part, the carts full of crystals remain in one place, the huge amount of magic has left more than a few of the miners' abandoned tools still going through their motions. Rusted pickaxes swing at the walls, and dead lanterns swing from the ceiling. Crystals occasionally free themselves from shards of rock to pile into bins, which then empty into already-overflowing mine carts.

As long as you leave them to their jobs, everything will be fine. If you try to stop the tools (and it is the tools themselves, for anyone who might be looking for ghosts) from doing their jobs, they'll chase you down until you leave their general vicinity.

Of course, the eternally working tools don't care much about the structural integrity of the mine tunnels...

THEY ALL PILE UP

...And so, inevitably, there are cave-ins.

Most of them are fairly minor, and you can see them (well, if you can see) enough to just work around them. Some of them are big enough that you're going to have to dig through them first, if you can.

And then there's the handful that block passages entirely. But don't panic! The tunnels are designed around the possibility of this happening - rather than coming to an end, the majority of them loop back around to the main arteries of the mine.

E... ventually...

But you and whoever is stuck with you on this side of the cave-in might be wandering for quite a while before you get there. Hopefully one of you still has a sense of direction, assuming either of you ever had one in the first place.

Comments

[fifthreplacement]

[He can handle the swearing. Sync's heard worse. Military barracks are great places to pick up swears]

Basically, yeah. There's androids who research these things that'll hopefully set up stabilisers sometime soon so that the loss of senses thing stops.

[dralchemist]

[Pointing at "androids".] What.

Ahndroids? The fuck are those?

[fifthreplacement]

Do you know what machines and/or robots are?

[Technology differences are a pain, so luckily Sync is kind of prepared for it, since he had no idea what they were either initially]

[dralchemist]

Yes and yes. Uhh... automatoes exist, but they're called "forgeborn" where I'm from. Usually and mostly clockwark humanoid shells powered by an arcanomatrix battery core.

Close enough?

[fifthreplacement]

Pretty much. Difference being that the androids are very much sentient, with their own personalities and such. They're a lot more advanced than many things I'm used to.

[dralchemist]

[Izzy shakes her head, careful not to whack Sync in the side of the face with one of her horns.]

Nothing new. Forgeborn are sentient on their own as well. Just a different term for the same thing, huh?

[fifthreplacement]

Well, you're more used to the idea than I was. Auldrant was fairly behind, in comparison to this place. Best it has is the giant landships. Machines were very uncommon.

[dralchemist]

Yeah? And yet, you've got this fancy text-caster enchanted... thing going on. That's way more advanced than anything I've seen.

[fifthreplacement]

The androids gave it to me, they give everyone some form of it so you can talk to other people over a network without having to have someone be physically present.

[He temporarily closes the blank post and scrolls through the old posts on the network to show what he means]

[dralchemist]

Wild. You think they'll hand me one to take a look at once we get up there--

[oh. Oh, wow. Izzy stops moving for a second to look through the network posts.] Gods damn... how many people are caught up in this thing?

[fifthreplacement]

[He goes back to the blank post to reply]

They give the new ones when we get back to the main station.

There's a fair amount of people here. I've met or seen over two dozen people so far, not sure the exact amount of people around.

[dralchemist]

Two... dozen people... all stolen from wherever and unceremoniously dumped out here?

How long has this been going on? [There was a weird string of disappearances going on back home, random people around the Dragon Empire being spirited away into nothingness... was this related?]

[fifthreplacement]

A couple of months now, I believe. On how this world does months anyway, which are short as anything. So awhile. Apparently the Fissure effects have exists for years, according to the androids, but it only just starting grabbing people from worlds.

[dralchemist]

Hmm... ok, I have to ask. Anybody else around here claiming to be from the Dragon Empire?

[Izzy stops again and flips back in her extensively used notebook, pulling out a map and unfolding it in front of Sync's eyes.] Any of these names familiar from conversation?

[fifthreplacement]

[He examines the map with a good deal of curiosity. Sync has always been a information person, after all. But as he does, he shakes his head, and eventually responds]

Not that I've experienced. Those who aren't human and don't look it aren't common here. Most people at least seem to be human in some way.

[dralchemist]

Oh. So no other dragonkin around, huh. Or half-orcs.

Hooray, I'm special. [And swiftly back to sarcasm. She folds the map back into the notebook and stashes it in her hip-slung bag, clinking against various glass bottles held within.]

Any idea how much longer to go?

[fifthreplacement]

You'd probably get along with the troll that's around.

We're nearly there.

[And they should indeed be nearly there, which is nice. Sync would like to be able to walk under his own power without falling over for awhile]

[dralchemist]

Why. A troll? Like, big dude, canniballistic, not the brightest, can shrug any damage off except fire, that kinda troll?

[Izzy narrows her eyes, half out of annoyance at the implication, and half out of the brighter light coming from the end of the main mine artery.]

[fifthreplacement]

Nah. Human height, grey skin, smart enough to be one of the two main medics in the station. Dry sense of humour.

[The light is good, and he can feel his balance coming back thanks to the stabilisers, so he pulls away from Izzy and tests it, then sighs in relief as they continue walking] Fissures suck...

[dralchemist]

[And getting closer also means that Izzy's sense of hearing is coming back, her ears perking up on autopilot as they start to pick up noise. She holds a hand up and snaps, listening to it echo down the mineshaft.] Halle-fuckin'-lujah.

Two things. One, hey, my name's Izzy and I just realized that I didn't tell you that earlier. And if you said your name, I definitely didn't get it. Two, that doesn't sound like any troll I've ever heard of, and now I'm actually intrigued. Three, are these, uh, Fissures always this bad?

Three things, sorry. I meant three things.

[fifthreplacement]

I never mentioned it. My name's Sync.

[He turns his headset off now that he doesn't need it] You'll probably find Jetshard pretty easily. If she's not here, you'll find her in the station infirmary pretty easy.

This is only the second Fissure I've been to, but from what I can tell, they are. Last one was stuck in a time loop - the city is was over set itself on fire every night, burning the whole surface area down, only to reset back to normal during the day.

[dralchemist]

"Sync", huh. That sure is a name. And "Jetshard", too. [just gonna gloss over the phoenixfire event, huh, izzy?]

Well, one way or another. It's nice to meet you, even if the circumstances aren't exactly the best. You seem at least relatively sane for being stuck in this situation.

[fifthreplacement]

It's not a name I chose. The guy who named me gave it to me for a reason. He was an asshole like that.

[Van was not good with names]

Being relatively sane was a requirement for the job I used to do, and it sounds boring to go insane. At least this way when actual interesting things happen, I can investigate them.

[dralchemist]

You know what, that's entirely fair on all accounts.

Except the "boring to go insane" bit, though I don't have any data points for or against it to say either way, so. [Now that she's actually in a place where she can rest, Izzy grabs the closest available thing to a seat and opens her pack, taking out a glass flask filled with some kind of clear liquid, uncorking it and taking a swig.]

[fifthreplacement]

I'm pretty sure it is, given I feel like I'm going insane here sometimes. There's so much downtime inbetween Fissures that it's boring as anything.

[He eyes the flask, but doesn't ask. Who is he to judge, on whatever it may be?] I guess this is the point where I ask what you actually are, since I've never seen a creature like you before.