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

[You can sound boastful, Asch doesn't look terribly impressed. Probably because.]

So can she. Though I'm not sure why, even for a member of the Intelligence Division, heels are just a stupid decision...

You can't fight monsters if you're not cute.

[Unless you're like. A Dragoon, or something.]

...Tell that to Largo the Black Lion.

[The name won't mean jack shit to Lance, of course, but the thought seems to put Asch in a slightly better mood.]

[Shockingly, the name does mean something to Lance. He looks surprised, even! Hearing that.

But then his shoulders relax, because it...must be a different Black Lion. The Lions don't have names.

(If they did, it would probably be more alien than Largo.]

Well, not everyone can be cute. For those of us that are, though, why not go the extra mile?

[He's honestly not even going to ask at this point.]

I don't think I've ever called someone in a shirt like that cute in my life.

[He could take that as insulting, or he can ignore any implications of that to wink at Asch.]

What would you go for, then? Pretty? Handsome? Sexy?

'Immodest,' if I have to be polite.

[Which sure seems a good word for you all around, Lance.]

You can be rude.

[He can take it.]

But I do look good, don't I?

[It's...hard to tell if he's being serious or not. Is he? Who knows.]

'Exhibitionistic,' then.

[Not even skipping a beat there.]

Yeah, that works.

[Wink and a finger gun.]

Only with the right person, of course.

Score and Order...

[He's not even going to look up after that facepalm. Even so... Where's that music coming from?]

[He feels bad, but the reaction is- it's not unexpected, but it still gets a chuckle coming from him.

The music is strange, though.]

Is that...music?

[wat

He looks around, trying to find the source.]

...Yeah, it does that.

[And so when we come out of this not recognizing each other like the faceblind idiots we currently are, at least there will be that.]

What...does that?

[That's not actually an acceptable answer in this situation!]

Some kind of abnormal reaction in the localized Seventh Fonons that responds to the environment around me. It's mostly tuned to my frequency but I don't have complete control over it.

[Beat.]

If all of that means nothing to you then just call it 'magic' and be done with it.

[Nailed it.]

[Heeee does not know what any of those things are, but he also feels like "magic" is super simplifying things.]

You could have just said it's coming from you, dude.

[He looks amused, at least.]

That also doesn't sound like magic.

It's not, but apparently no one else's world even has that aspect of particle physics.

[Asch, it's absolutely magic. Just... Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it isn't magic.]

The third time someone looked at me cross-eyed as I tried to explain, I gave up.

Different world, different physics makes perfect sense to me.

[He's seen some shit that shouldn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. He's experienced alien tech that's basically magic and alien magic that's magic.

So different particle physics? Seems on brand with the world.]

But I probably wouldn't understand it if you tried to explain it. I never did great at physics.

There's a particular kind of energy particle that's aspected to sound and it reacts really strongly to me, is the short version.

[He's a magic music man!]

And fonons here seem to work just fine, it's just that no one's heard of them.

So you make your own theme music?

[A magic music man! And that's totally how it works, right?]

They sound pretty cool - music physics, that is. Might even be something I could understand.

I'm not sure - it might be more that me being here allows the music to play. It's hard to tell where the 'sound' part of the Seventh Fonon ends and where the 'memory' aspect begins. I don't really have control over what plays, just whether other people can hear it or not.

Huh. Still pretty cool, though. Your own personal soundtrack! It's like being in a movie.

Though it probably gets annoying after a while...

The first week was awful, before I learned to turn it off. It didn't even stop when I slept, it just did lullabies and that kind of thing.

How did you get any sleep at all?

I've slept through worse. Screaming monsters outside a tent, airship engines rattling...

(no subject)

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