![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
☆ TDM: MARCH
- Welcome to
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
aefenglom's test drive! All threads can be considered game canon, should you choose to do so; regardless of if you pick specific threads to remain canon to the game, the prompts and test drive itself will be. Aside from that, here are some quick reminders:• The Application Queue is open. Applications run on a rolling queue system. The application page is always open to submissions, and applications will be processed in order of submission. Verdicts will always go out by the final week of a month, though we can't promise an exact date -- we'll get to them as quickly as we can throughout the month! If your application is submitted during the last week of a month, it may be rolled into next month's batch of applications. The application page can be found here.With that taken care of...
• We have a brand new Game World Wiki created with the immense help of our Wiki Bards: Noa, Prince, Maruah and Ran. Thank you so much! It's still being updated, but most of the main game info is there for you in an easily searchable manner. All other info can still also be found through our Navigation page!
• If you have any questions about the game or the world, please refer to the FAQ page; if you still have questions, feel free to ask them! For questions specific to the test drive, please ask them on the appropriate thread.
• For the purposes of the test drive, your character will have access to all magics taught by the Coven if they're a Witch, and as much of their shifted form as you'd like if they're a Monster. Feel free to play around and experiment with each!
• Test drive threads can be used as samples for your applications!
• For current characters, TDM threads can be used for AC.
• And finally, since this is part of our event, characters already in-game ARE allowed to top-level on this post.
You feel like you're floating. Around you, colors and sounds and smells swirl as if trapped in a whirlpool, vibrancy and hue ever-shifting. The more you watch them, the less solid they are; they only become clear out of the corner of your eye. The area around you begins to feel more solid as well, until your feet are on the ground, the wind brushes playfully against your face -
and you know one thing, and one thing alone: this is a dream, and an incredibly realistic one at that.
The Calamity
The taste of magic in the air is electric on your tongue, supercharged, bright, a little tart and fizzy like popping candy. The settlement you find yourself in is unfamiliar to you, but you can tell it is bustling, beautiful, a center of culture and activity for its bygone era. The architecture blooms with elaborately carved flourishes, but you cannot shake the feeling of... otherworldliness that it brings to mind. (Perhaps you are a veteran of these dreams and remember a ship with similar embellishments from far away, that came bearing invaders, in a time long ago.) It is nearly impossible to tell what season you find yourself in - pockets of spring bloom with new life, right next to pockets of winter snowstorms; playful fall winds laden with leaves tug at your hair, and in some spots, it feels hot and muggy like the middle of summer. None of these patches of seasonal mayhem are very large, a few city blocks’ worth at most, and they all butt up against each other, tumultuous, fighting for real estate in a place where the magic bubbles freely up through the ground like a wellspring, uncontrolled. In a way, it seems like a wilder version of Aefenglom’s seasons always being opposite the season in the Wilde, similar but more widespread, more disharmonic.
The Calamity
The taste of magic in the air is electric on your tongue, supercharged, bright, a little tart and fizzy like popping candy. The settlement you find yourself in is unfamiliar to you, but you can tell it is bustling, beautiful, a center of culture and activity for its bygone era. The architecture blooms with elaborately carved flourishes, but you cannot shake the feeling of... otherworldliness that it brings to mind. (Perhaps you are a veteran of these dreams and remember a ship with similar embellishments from far away, that came bearing invaders, in a time long ago.) It is nearly impossible to tell what season you find yourself in - pockets of spring bloom with new life, right next to pockets of winter snowstorms; playful fall winds laden with leaves tug at your hair, and in some spots, it feels hot and muggy like the middle of summer. None of these patches of seasonal mayhem are very large, a few city blocks’ worth at most, and they all butt up against each other, tumultuous, fighting for real estate in a place where the magic bubbles freely up through the ground like a wellspring, uncontrolled. In a way, it seems like a wilder version of Aefenglom’s seasons always being opposite the season in the Wilde, similar but more widespread, more disharmonic.
 Fit to Burst The settlement is bustling and full of that otherworldly architecture, spirals and tendrils and vaguely floral embellishments, except... If you look closer, you can see that only a few of the buildings are really made that way. An illusion covers the rest, purely cosmetic, a glamour; it's a shimmering image laid over reality until you look beneath it at the squat, simple houses made by mortal hands out of rough hewn wood or bricks of packed mud. The people are just as disparate as the buildings beneath it all - glittering-eyed Fae, taller, more elongated and insectoid than those seen around Aefenglom, though many of them use glamours to appear more fantastical and beautiful; humans teeming with magic, who use it freely for anything and everything; other bipedal Monsters with rougher, more bestial features than longtime residents might be used to, more in tune with their natural abilities. It wouldn't be a bad idea to explore your new surroundings, though you're likely to garner attention. Unless the world you come from is a more medieval time period, your clothing, perhaps even your hair or other aspects of your appearance are likely to stand out. What will make you stand out even more, though, is not drawing on your abundant new magical powers, or strong new Monster abilities. That shop there requires flight to get up to the second story front door. That home down the street can only be unlocked with a burst of flame. Torches when it grows dark? No, don’t be ridiculous, you can't light your own way? Your hair looks hideous, darling, why haven’t you put on a glamour? Reluctance to use these abilities abundantly and freely garners frowns of scrutiny and disapproval from those natives around you. "We're free here under the Fae folk. They've taught us so much, we never go hungry, we’re never beaten down by the weather." Their words hold truth - their twisted-trunk trees are bursting with fruit, their haphazardly laid out crops flourish in a matter of days rather than a season, rain and snow can be directed at will with just an application of the wild, free magic bubbling up from the ground in rivers. There is a hierarchy in this settlement. The Fae are above all, and can often be found partying into the night with sweet wine and hallucinogenic mushrooms, teaching humans and Monsters to harness their natural talents and the magic of the land by day. Their attitudes are condescending toward these lesser beings they’ve granted their favor to (including you, now, and aren’t you just the most interesting, darling little things?), delighting in spreading their knowledge. The humans and Monsters still seem awestruck by their benevolent masters - a word they mean in the sense of 'teachers' - accepting their gifts, using their magic, and none of them will so much as whisper a complaint. Not when it’s safe here. Not when all is well. It's more than they can say for the lands outside of their paradise, even if things do happen here that the Fae do not like to hear them speak of. Gain the trust of the natives, and you might hear rumors, whispers of a rotting pox hitting other communities far from here, or first hand accounts of how so-and-so witnessed another death just last week, a human woman blew up in town, and some of the Monsters, they been goin’ right bestial. Shh, shh, you didn’t hear it from them! (Don’t let the Fae catch you gossiping. They might just take you and the native both aside, whisper in your ears, let the magic wind its way around your brain until you don't remember any longer what you were talking about or even who you are, where you come from. You were having a good time though, right?) You can try to leave the settlement, to explore the woods that surround it, but you’re likely to be noticed and warned: "You should stay here, make sure you don’t run into any of the unfriendly locals - they don't care for our masters." |
 The Emergence Time passes strangely in a dream. It might feel like a handful of hours, or even a few days, before a change can be felt all throughout the strange, unsettling paradise. If you’ve had a recent brush with it in the waking world, you might recognize the signature of it - the Cwyld. Something in the air feels very wrong, like a chill in the middle of summer, a sudden warm wind in winter; the plant life beneath your very feet begins to blacken in color, with near-indiscernible white lines marring their surfaces, and no matter who you are, no matter the pride you may take in your courage, a shiver raises every hair on your body without fail: Something wicked this way comes. The wellspring of magical energy flowing like a river beneath your feet takes on a new feeling when you try to draw from it, a dark and heavy sensation, oily and creeping. Reaching for the magic, it feels as though you're reaching into hollow darkness, dried up and consumed, and the disparate plants of different seasons, growing alongside each other, begin to bulge grotesquely and burst, splattering an unknown black substance over anything unfortunate enough to be in the splash zone. Possibly even you. Don't pass under the fruit trees. The infection has seeped into the overtapped leyline, and it bleeds through the settlement quickly, much quicker than it seems to move in the current-day waking world. The plant life, with their roots dug deep into the earth, are only the first casualty, as it spreads rapidly to the animals, and then the natives, blackening and tainting everything it touches. The village is thrown into chaos. Fae and any who seem to have Dragon in them are the first to show signs of infection, blackened veins visible under paling skin and white film growing over the eyes. Bodies grow brittle and twisted the more it spreads and settles in. Humans with an abundance of magic are the next to lose themselves to it, quickly followed by other Monsters. While in the waking world, infection spreads more slowly, here, it can be almost instantaneous, the process of becoming a Shade, losing all sense of self. They have no resistance to the Cwyld, and in this dream, neither do you. You're just as susceptible to the infection, and some may find themselves succumbing to the infection spreading to the heart and pumping itself through their veins. Becoming a Shade is a painful experience, a painful existence, as the life is snuffed out of you and your body keeps going. In this dream, you might be lucky (or unlucky) enough to keep your wits about you, to remain sentient and somewhat yourself - or you might become one of the mindless, violent many whose only directive is to spread the Cwyld to everything that lives, including your fellow dreamers. Even if you do stay aware of yourself, it is hard to resist the pull of the Cwyld on your mind, urging you to spread and infect, to leave nothing whole and living. Before your eyes, the settlement begins to die. You can't help anyone who is already infected, even if you know healing spells that work in the waking world, unless you're willing to put them out of their misery before they become a Shade corrupted beyond all assistance. You might be busier trying to save your fellow Mirrorbound, though, as they try to avoid that fate themselves or fall prey to it in front of you. And while the earth and plants and people around them turn black and fall to ruin, any of the Fae who managed to remain untainted simply flee, running from the settlement without stopping to help anyone in need, not even the students who so looked up to them. Note: Becoming a Shade in this prompt is optional, and Mirrorbound Shades may keep their minds or not at player discretion! Infection will not carry over out of the dream. Dying in the dream will put your character back at the edge of the village, uninfected and alive again, to witness the rest of its downfall. |
 Light It Up Help comes in an unexpected, unwanted form. Those unfriendly locals the residents of this village spoke of previously appear through the morning mists, shrouded in clumsy protections like masks and gloves, and practical, non-flashy spells. The group is made up of grim-faced humans and Monsters, a surprisingly cohesive unit of people who look out for each other as they make their way through the woods with torches held aloft. They are hardier than those indulged, magic-glutted folks who suffer now. These newcomers are dressed more practically, for working land or fighting battles, but they, too, have humans among them who can harness their magic. Their witches keep their torches lit, and work closely with their Monsters, helping each other in a way that will not feel unfamiliar. They've come today, they'll say if you get a chance to speak with them, however briefly (they're a little busy to answer too many questions), to try and stop this blight on the land before it can reach their village, some miles to the south. They've seen it before, though never this severe. This Cwyld will spread and spread, until there is nothing left. Best to burn it all down before its tendrils creep too far, before its roots dig too deep. They fight and destroy the Shades however they can, showing no mercy, though their spells are crude and simple, and their Monsters use their natural forms without any showy abilities, depending on claws and teeth and strength to do their jobs. Working together, with simple weapons in their hands, they are formidable. Even if you kept your mind, kept your speech, they will not let you live if you were infected - and may not let you live even if you weren’t infected, just to be safe. You may join them, if you wish, help them burn down the blackened trees or even Shades that were once people - or you may fight them, but they won't relent. They burn the whole settlement down, leaving wide patches of scorched earth like blackened scars on the land. It’s the only way, they say, from their limited experience. Everything must return to the earth. As the settlement goes up in flames fully, they retreat, only remaining long enough to ensure the fire stays where it needs to stay, and will not spread to uninfected forest. For those of you who were completely uninfected and may have thus been spared, they are still unwelcoming and will not allow you to travel back to their own village with them, threatening with swords and flames any who are too insistent. They aren't too keen to talk, but you may get a few answers out of them, the basics - some of their parents originally lived here, learned magic from the Fae, though when they saw the dangers, they left, believing that such power should be used more sparingly, more responsibly. Against the Fae, if at all possible, and against their destructive ways. It was just a matter of time, they thought, until calamity struck, and lo. You just saw what happens, what that much magic can call down in divine retribution. How magic itself fights back against the excesses of those who would abuse it. |
no subject
She seems like a tough motherfucker, given her very brusque approach to bleeding out so far, and he appreciates that. There's something kind of inexplicably comforting about it. As such, he's become increasingly less worried about her keeling over on him—both as he gets the measure of her and as he feels the spell start to take. (It seems to work as expected, which is a relief. It still feels wrong, which ought to worry him. But he'll unpack that all later, when there's time for it.)
So, his air of very carefully maintained calm kind of eases off a bit to something a little less manufactured. He shakes his head, when she fishes for a mending spell. Nope. He's a paladin, not a cleric, regretfully. And he hasn't been around this weird-ass dream long enough to realize that maybe that doesn't matter so much here.
Helpfully, if a little distracted by what he's doing—]
You might just want to finish the job. Open it up some more, make it a whole thing.
[Crop top! Abs-out is more of a monk look, though, huh. (Or is it just a Beau look, what does he know.) She could pull it off, surely.
This is probably not a serious suggestion. Given the messy slash in her tunic and his current low perspective crouched at her navel, he does very politely keep his eyes locked on what he's doing rather than try to look up at her when he says it. (Just, y'know. In case.) He peels his bloody fingers away from the slash in her side and frowns at the progress made on that front. Bleeding seems to have stopped, even if it's not quite healed through yet.
And, a little belatedly—]
It's Fjord. [His name.] And yourself?
no subject
Nice name. Thanks for the healing, Fjord. The name's Lup.
[Like "loop". Her red cloak is picked up off of the ground and she lifts it to inspect it, brushing some of the dust off of it. There's a blue patch on the breast of it, emblazoned with four letters: IPRE. Unimportant, really.
She shrugs it back on, and picks up the umbrella. It's a gaudy thing, made of bright colors and a hook at the handle which she loops (ha) around her wrist.]
Say, you didn't happen to see any other elves out there did you? Specifically any ones that look exactly like me?
no subject
With less bleeding to take up his attention, he finally gets a load of that umbrella while Lup dresses. As he rocks back on his heels to stand, it gets a puzzled little look. He'd thought, when she'd had it in her hands out in the fray, that it was a weapon. On closer inspection, it definitely is...not. (It does ping some inane memory of Jester painting a parasol into existence for a particular mutual friend. Is she a drow? The sun is still out, out there, if not for much longer. But she doesn't much look like one. Doesn't sound like she's come from the Dynasty, either.)]
Lup? [Repeated absently, as if to test out the sound of it and memorize it while he casts about the house they'd sheltered in for something to wipe the blood off his hands with. He settles on a frankly hideously pattered scarf of some fine fairy silk. (Molly would have loved it.)]
I'm afraid not. [Honestly it's all kind of...running together, the last few days. But he's pretty sure she's the first person he could confidently peg as an elf at all, around here. He looks like he's about to continue, (probably to say as much,) but he stops. Pauses in his scrubbing the blood from his hands and looks back at her quizzically.] When you say exactly like you—
[Like...exactly, exactly, or.]
no subject
It's a twin brother sort of situation. What were you thinking? [She gives him a sidelong grin, like maybe Fjord's imagined up some kind of clone scenario. She can't really blame him. She's seen a lot of weird shit over her life and a lot of it has happened since she arrived on this new planet. Alas, it's much more mundane than that.]
Like me, but shorter hair and in a giant, dorky wizard hat. Pretty hard to miss.
[Said with a small, fond sort of laugh. Ah well, she's sure Taako will show up eventually. Fjord is wiping off his hands and it reminds her of the mess on her own, which she wipes off on the tattered remains of her tunic, meanwhile eying the big guy. There's no fantasy racism in her world so there's nothing to worry about there, mostly she's interested in what he's all about. He's definitely the type that's seen his share of weird battle if he's taking all of this in stride.]
So before you ask, I have no idea what is going on. Some kind of shared dream, but, personally? [she pats her side] Shit feels pretty real out there.
no subject
...I understand. [The brother thing, obviously. Not...the dream thing. Not really, anyway, he's kind of just been...going with it. Gotten him through all his weird visions in the past. (Eventually. If not always entirely unscathed.)
He cants his head at her frank assessment of the situation, gives her a considering look and an arched brow. He's unarmed, for his part, at least visibly. But given the well-used armor he's wearing over and under his very cool captain-y coat, a familiarity with some weird battle is a good assumption. Taking it all in stride mostly works because he's learned it's the thing to do when he's feeling out of his depth—fake it til you make it, deal with the most immediate problem, figure things out from there.]
You're that sure I'm not just some— [He gestures widely with the now-bloodstained scarf crumpled in his hands,] —figment of your imagination?
[It's some parts ironic, some parts sincere. He's not arguing, just curious. Weird shit has mostly been something that happened to him, not something he understands on an academic level. She seems a wizardly type herself, even sans the dorky hat. Even if she's admitted she doesn't know what's going on, he's interested in her take on the matter.]
no subject
No. I mean, the pirate thing you have going on is pretty badass so if it is my imagination: I have impeccable taste.
[He'd probably have a lot more unnecessary goofy details if it was up to her though.
But her expression goes serious and she frowns. Despite her earlier claims, she has a few really damn good ideas. The problem is that it's all familiar but wrong in all the ways that it shouldn't be. When something has been a pattern for nearly one hundred years, suddenly having that pattern broken is jarring and makes her unsure in a way she hasn't been in a long time.]
It's not just a dream, it's more- Actually, how much do you know about alternate realities?
[Just going to lay that one out there for you, bud.]
no subject
But for levity, it's short lived. He sees Lup sober up and waits her out patiently while she mulls over her answer. Pensively winds the scarf up in his hands, as if to give them something to do until she starts easing him into big stuff.
Well, he did ask. Delicately—]
I'm aware of the, uh. Possibility?
[Maybe? Not just a different planes thing, but a branching path to their timelines entirely. Something like that. It's a Dunamancy thing, or that's the loose association he attaches to it. (The strange space in the interior of the Beacon. That floor of the Nine-Sided tower, calling back to it.)]
Unfortunately my understanding of the particulars is...limited.
[ Wizard stuff. He's just a sailor, y'know.]
no subject
That's good enough. [Just didn't want to be responsible for blowing his mind too much.
A pause and she sucks in a breath, weighing her words. It's not exactly a Prime Directive sort of deal, and she's not going to treat Fjord like he's some backwater bumpkin, but she doesn't want to muddy the waters too much with bad information. That's not going to help anyone. Man, she wishes Barry was here. He was more the explain complex concepts in an easy way sort of nerd.]
So alternate realities definitely exist. Been to a few. It's kind of a long story.
[It's a pretty good story! But she's trying to be brief and relevant.]
But I've never just woken up on the ground like this. And my magic feels weird here. That's never happened before.
no subject
Yes, I had noticed that, myself. [His magic. There's something strange about it. Even before the land had gone black and the creep of corruption had seeped into the air and into his spellwork. It's disconcerting—particularly given he's become used to his own power coming through his oaths and his connection to the Wildmother.] I must admit, it's been real fucking unsettling.
[Nice that it's still working, and all. But shit messing with his magic in his dreams hasn't ever really panned out for him very well. But back up a bit.]
You said you've experienced this sort of thing before?
[Not the magic, but the visiting.]
no subject
Her mouth presses into a thin line that nearly curls up into a smile, and she crosses her arms.]
Yeah, I like to do a little sightseeing, you know? Have a few timeshares in some other worlds. Summers in Tesseralia are out of this world.
[She's being facetious, running her mouth.]
So this isn't the world that you're from either, right?
no subject
...Anyway. He shakes his head grimly, gives the darkening forest out the window a grimace. Hard to tell if it's a good sign or a bad one that it's gotten a little quieter out there.]
I'm not gonna lie, kind of a relief it isn't, right now.
[Selfishly, maybe, but there's enough very pressing weirdness on their plate back home already without dealing with...whatever this is. Even the corruption in the Savalierwood—the closest thing he can compare it to—isn't this aggressive.
Hopefully, though it sounds like he can guess at the answer—]
I don't suppose you could sightsee us over to Exandria instead?
[She did say her magic was fucked up. But, y'know. Worth asking.]
no subject
Sorry. Would if I could. [She doesn't mention that her previous world-hopping wasn't exactly a purposeful choice on her part either. Unnecessary details to muck up the waters.
Gaze flits over to the window, where the noise has quieted down. Whether that means that the corruption has been defeated or that it's winning, she's not sure.
Forcing a cavalier grin, she hoists the umbrella up and rests it on one shoulder
transistor style.]But I think I have enough juice to get the hell out of dodge. No promises that things will be much better 200 feet from here but... I think this place is done for.
[You up for a little Dimension Door, Fjord?]