phantasmemes | TEST DRIVE 006

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Talcott looks over to her, hand hovering over his knives but she doesn't look particularly threatening... yet. Mitsuru didn't look threatening either but he could wreck most of them.

"Something like that." Because that's not a vague or suspicious answer. "Have you seen any one else dressed like me?"

If he's the only one that ended up here from whatever portal they went through... that's going to be incredibly inconvenient.

In this case, looks do not deceive - Phi is not ready to throw down.

"Not even one."

But she could be and it's that logic that means his hand stays exactly where it is.

He nods, tries not to show how disappointing that knowledge is. "And... where is this place exactly?"

"An old mine shaft not far from Incendia. There used to be a little town on the surface called Telovia, but it's been a few decades since anyone lived there."

That's about as much as she can tell, but she likes to go in informed.

"If you don't recognize the names, it's because you may not be in the same universe you just were."

"Incendia... Telovia... No I don't but-" But that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

"Is this world Earth or are we elsewhere?" The fact that he has to ask says a lot about where he's coming from here.

"Definitely elsewhere. I happen to be from an Earth and the geography here isn't very much like it."

She's probably just going to drop all this probably-bad-news first to get it out of the way.

Well at least he doesn't have to worry about the books he hasn't gotten through for geography and history and all that.

"I'm not originally from Earth but that's where I was most recently. A lot of people seem to be from there so I thought..." He just shrugs a little.

"Your reasoning makes sense, so don't blame yourself for being wrong about it."

"Still it would be nice to have a frame of reference for this place..." It would make things a little easier if nothing else. Having a baseline to compare against. But that would be too easy.

"I don't mind so much, since I'm used to being dragged into situations with a few too many unknowns."

That has him tilting his head at her, surprised and curious.

"Do you mind me asking what kind of situations?"

"Oh don't tell me you also got locked in a secure building with a dozen or two other people and were encouraged to kill each other to get out."

Explicitly or implicitly, doesn't matter.

"It's kind of an unfortunately common experience around here."

For a moment he just stares at her. But then... Leon and Gonta both...

"There were closer to 30 of us, all 17 or under, and it was supposed to be a summer camp. At least, to outside observers."

For a moment she's just. Utterly silent as that first bit sinks in.

"...Shit. For all that Kirei was trying to do, he at least didn't grab all kids and teens."

"They needed kids for the ritual." He sighs a little, shrugs. He's used to it, it's just part of life.

"Rather, they needed fear for the ritual and kids are easier to scare."

"Did they try laughter first, if only to make sure it wouldn't work?"

It's very good alternative energy in emotional contexts.

"You know the saying you are what you eat?"

Of course she does, that one has seemed to be universal across worlds.

"If they used the ritual to feed this ancient deity scared kids then that's what it became, too childish and frightened to fight back or defend itself."

"They wouldn't have considered what we did, since Kirei manifested the literal evils of mankind and we managed to be friendly with it anyway."

"Kirei?" He tilts his head.

"Is that a person or an organization?"

"A man. Kirei Kotomine."

"One person responsible for your entire situation?" He can't hide his surprise at that.

"And a whole lot more besides, on account of somehow having manifested the sum total of all humanity's evil."

She doesn't understand magecraft.

"Some of us decided to try being friendly with it since we didn't know what it was at the time."

The sum of all evil... which only reminds him of the Scourge, of the Accursed.

"We had people that tried to make friends too... it, overall, probably worked better for us than you."

"Or so I'd assume most people would think, but it actually sort of worked?"

If nothing else, it got Kirei entertainingly mad at them.

"I don't exactly remember what happened, I was kind of recovering from being dead at the time."

"Recovering from being dead is... pretty disconcerting, I'll give you that."

The fact that it sort of worked was surprising. Maybe this Kirei wasn't as irrevocably horrible as she said then?

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