prismaticrap | ▶ TDM .009

Entry tags:

You awaken amidst the darkness with only a faint light to greet you. Your body is hemmed in by shards of crystals, gently sparkling and possibly pricking your skin. The surrounding landscape is dyed in the pinks and purples of the dusk filled with crystals protruding from the ground, some as large as a skyscraper. Even the few shy moon creatures you find in the wild have strange crystal growths on their hides. This is far from home— perhaps a dream? You pinch your skin and slap your cheeks, yet nothing seems to do the trick. Searching for answers yields nothing but an endless expanse of purple dust as far as the eye can see. You have four options: one, panic; two, soil yourself; three, admire it all then soil yourself; or four, go into survival mode. Eventually, you’ll realize that you’re not alone.

After a day or two of living off the crystal wilderness, a group of people find you worse for wear. They are the gallant Moon Knights from the planet of Prismatica. After the strange phenomenon during the past months when scientists observed the sudden appearance of rainbow crystals in the sky, the government has been feverishly combing through the moon for more Moonblessed to be rescued. You’ll eventually be brought into Iris’s moon government center.

You all may have your usual inquiries — Where are we? Who are you? What's going on? Why did I inhale all those permanent markers in the third grade? — and the Prismals are almost too eager to answer. They tell you about their world and about the first appearance of the Moonblessed as the medical staff give you an examination to make sure you’re not carrying any viruses or biological hazards. If you react violently, you may be restrained and nerfed with a specialized neurotransmitting gun that releases a numbing agent through the top of your spine. Once the examinations are over, you’re informed that you will be provided accommodations on their planet during your stay.

While waiting for transport to be prepared, you may freely roam around the government center. Eventually you’re called back from exploring, escorted to the docks, and led onto a large transport vessel that makes frequent trips back and forth between the moons and the planet. Faces onboard vary from both old and new Moonblessed as well as the local Prismals. The next destination: Prismatica.

▶ Whip It Good
Iris Moon, Government Center (Arrival) and Planet Prismatica, City of Lunatia | top

Welcome to Prismatica’s hub, Lunatia, the city of your dreams! A bustling metropolis lush with bright lights, vibrant colors, luxuriant plant life, and all the conveniences of technology absent from your own world… It seems like paradise to all the uninitiated. After a quick tour of the city, new arrivals can find themselves getting cozy in their new homes.

A Settle in your new home at Level 2 to find new roommates and say hello to your neighbors! City officials will give you directions to the designated districts across Level 2 and instruct you to pick out a unit. Each apartment complex has a different aesthetic, some may look cozy, some stylish, and some bizarre. The free accommodations have a basic living space that can only fit two or three people at most in one unit.

Starter Chromaspace furnishings are provided which can be controlled with the touch of a built-in panel. Examples are color-changing curtains, transforming sofa beds, cabinets turning into tables, etc. Customizing your apartment or moving out will have to wait until you earn more chroma. Until then, why don’t you check out your new neighborhood or explore the city levels? Maybe your new roommates or neighbors can give you a “hand” with allowance for dinner.

B At the Crystarium Moonports is a new family restaurant called Grapplebears, here to serve your favorite dishes from all around the galaxy at affordable prices! The menu ranges from the atomically hot and spicy Chamakshalan curry rice, delectable dragonsaur steak served with mashed space-tatoes, to the sweet and creamy Lunatian milkshakes that bring all the boys to the yard, all prepared by their handsome and huggable bear crew.

As you might have noticed, the restaurant staff is a ragtag group with members from planets unknown to both Prismals and Moonblessed. The waiters and waitresses in particular are tall, muscular, leather-clad bears who take your order by whipping you with a special riding crop that compels you to bark out your order — but only if you ask to be, of course! They might induce you to reveal other unrelated interests so make sure you’re not thinking about anything embarrassing!

If you chat up the staff or customers, you learn more about the restaurant’s origins. The bears say their planets* were also wiped by the Calamity hundreds of years ago, and life for them has been difficult for them since then…

*Further information about these planets is unavailable at this time.

▶ Night of the Living Dummy
City of Lunatia | top

The last vestiges of Geistnacht have officially passed and the first chilly autumn breeze ushers in the new season. The city is awash in giant piles of browning leaves that decorate every walkway.

A To deal with the mass collection of fallen leaves, many buildings across the city have been retrofitted with a new disposal system to help clean up. A sprawling network of automated vacuum tubes around the city will efficiently suck all those pesky leaves right up. While children love playing inside and using them to “teleport” around Lunatia, they have also been known to spontaneously suck up anyone who’s not too careful. You may find yourself falling on some hapless bystander on their afternoon walk, or crammed in a tube with your new neighbors. Lunar Scientia officials warn everyone to be careful of where you walk, else you might need to crawl your way to sweet freedom.

B A pop-up shop in Level 1 is attracting much of the locals' attention, run by a peddler who speaks in a low, elongated hiss and wears a hood over his face. He assures you that his face is of no consequence. What is more important is his selection of wares! In contrast to his cloaked, enigmatic appearance, his travel cart is a Barbie pink explosion of frills, hearts, glitter. He will tell all visitors he comes from the Valley of the Crimson Serpents, which Prismals and older Moonblessed arrivals find odd. Wasn’t the Sanguis moon uninhabitable?

Among the peddler’s wares are adorable, wide-eyed and heavily perfumed dolls in all sorts of clothes a child dreaming of rainbows and tea parties could ever ask for. Hug and squeeze a doll, and you will be greeted by a pre-recorded voice telling you how they’re your bestest friend ever. It’s like they were made for lovin’ you! But if you look away for one moment, you can almost swear you hear a snake’s hiss, its long tongue licking the shell of your ear… The next time you see the doll, its body will be in a slightly different position or location. Is it… following you? Fortunately, a minimal amount of moonlacing will make it leave you alone. You can wait it out too, but why would you?

Destroy a doll and it will later reappear wherever you are when you least expect it, good as new, but leaking from their porcelain heads is a strange pink, glitter-covered liquid. The peddler calls it the “love juice” giving the doll an extra dose of affection for you.

▶ Bird is the Word
Level 2, Greatmoon Groves | top

As autumn paints Lunatia with its golden hues, pumpkin decorations and desserts are now in vogue. This is thanks to Chroma-infused pumpkin seeds, which allow them to rapidly grow in all sorts of sizes, shapes, and colors. The Moonblessed are invited to visit one of the largest pumpkin patches in the city housed within the Greatmoon Groves, where they can enjoy the sight of oversized, colorful neon and sparkling semi-phallic pumpkins, expertly carved to greet you with their buck-toothed smiles.

A The pumpkin patch is full of toddler-sized creatures called hugbugs. When they are not tending to the pumpkins, they follow the Moonblessed around, requesting hugs and treats in exchange for their obedience.

Reward them and they will do simple errands for you and give you compliments. They will also be your personal hype men, talking up your strengths, talents, and physical assets to all those special someones you’re trying to impress. Once you earn their trust, they will be your friends for life!

Ignore them, hurt them, or bully them, and they will cry and place a curse upon you, reducing your self-esteem to nothing and magically forcing you to cry along with them. The effects of the curse may last for up to a week if you’re not careful! But how could you do such a thing? The hugbugs are sensitive and want somebody to love.

B If you manage to survive your encounter with the hugbugs, you are welcome to join in on the Prismal knitting group and enjoy creating your own fanciful scarf made of Galadrian thread, which is known for its bright, golden sheen and aromatic properties. Give it to a friend or wear it yourself, and you will notice a strange ability to attract animals and insects of all kinds. Live out your Disney Princess fantasy! Or a Hitchcockian nightmare. It’s all a matter of perspective as a whole flock of honking birds comes bounding towards you.

▶ Questions
If you have any questions regarding this test drive meme, please ask them in the Questions thread below.

▶ As a reminder, test drive memes are for new characters only. However, current players are more than welcome to use these prompts for their own posts in the IC communities, personal inboxes, catch-all posts, etc.!
▶ As our test drive memes are game canon, feel free to keep any threads that happen here as canon for your character should they be accepted.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ By midday, the haze that's usurped the better part of his senses has thickened and coalesced into stupor. No one man stands to gain from displacing a clan scion. On a fair count, Lan Zhan's death might benefit a rival. His torture could titillate an enemy. His capture might serve a thief and his crippling could spare a new general of the burden of illustrating strength.

But to remove him from one place and set him upon another is... the showmanship of a new cultivator who has mastered the portals, at best. A bizarre, but cruelly efficient strategy to distract him, otherwise. He walks the land gently, trying his head, now and then, for wound or fever. No surface. No result. Were he given to sophisticated discipline, he might become a travelling monk.

And then, there is the inevitable crossing of paths: an idyllic setting, an empty road, the quiet scent of raw greenery, all disrupted by the usual contrivance. Wei Ying of the Jiang stumbles forward, trailed after by —

Lan Zhan is the faster hand, sword cutting air in a long arch that submits the tip and edge of the blade to the creature's consideration. Fall back.

It doesn't. Sense and retreat go hand in hand, and the animal appears deprived and frenzied. Hungering, perhaps, for how it clings to the rim of Wei Ying's robes. Beggarly. Foolish, but innocent.

Lan Zhan's brows rise as incredulously as the decorum and circumstances will allow (little; late). The line deepens as the creature starts to climb his sword instead of threatening surrender, waddling up in a precarious rise that defies gravity and expectation.

It's coming. Cooing. Making all the inappropriate overtures of an animal that learned to control its affections from children, whores or Wei Ying. Bichen should not suffer the indignity. It bears the weight. ]

Cursed?

[ He whispers to the side, because what little proficiency Wei Ying has reserved for etiquette has been diverted to cultivation. If he knows nothing else, after walking the creature for many steps, he will have felt this.

There will come a day, Lan Zhan supposes, when he does not greet Wei Ying of the Jiang by unsheathing a sword in his honour. One. Fine. Day. ]

[the air rings with the sound of a sword being unsheathed, the blade whispering viciously against tempered steel as it's drawn, and wei ying spins away, on instinct, body moving faster than even his own mind. he moves with practiced grace - he rights himself, hair thrown in slight disarray as he does, while the sleeves of his robes take their time to settle.

he recognizes the sword first, and then its master, and the man's name surfaces up clear and certain as an undisturbed lake.

lan zhan.

lan zhan, lang wangji, the young master lan - and in his hands is bichen, held proud and true.

wei ying's heart stops, and then it skips a beat.]

Lan Zhan! [he exclaims, righting himself and forgetting all decorum as he rushes forward, picking up the small creature perched upon bichen and mindfully setting it aside. wei ying steps into lan zhan's space, his eyes bright and wide and overjoyed, a hand hovering in the space between them.

how wei ying has wanted to see him again. how often has wei ying thought of him, if he persists, if he has survived the treachery of the wens and reclaimed his clan's name and estate in the months since they've parted ways.

he can't blame lan zhan for having left without saying a word. family comes first, and so duty to one's blood-sworn comes first. the cloud recesses were invaded, the lan name defamed as much as its estate has been burned down. wei ying would have done much worse, and much sooner, in his place. wei ying can't blame lan zhan for not saying goodbye.

honour alone keeps lan zhan from dispensing with decorum and wrapping his arms around the other, to hold him close that he could feel the other's heartbeat against his own.

they are friends. even if just by wei ying's own insistence. friends do not greet each other the way lovers do. and yet wei ying cannot resist - he clutches the other by the shoulder, firm and unrelenting, as wei ying struggles to keep his feelings in check.

concern and elation war with one another in the space between his tongue and his heart; wei ying chokes on it. he doesn't know where to begin.]

Not cursed, Lan Zhan, [wei ying answers the question instead, lest he say something else.] Just attracted to my grace and charm.

Where have you been?

Edited 2019-11-10 12:06 (UTC)

[ Bichen bows first. Lan Zhan's head follows, the nod slow and waning, back of his neck a chalk-scratched bow.

It rights. He rights, spines to limbs to careless footing, each part remembering the whole. His brother would lament his lack of composure. His uncle would never have foreseen it. And then there is Wei Ying, the darting darkness of his wear, a gluttony of sound. Too much of him and his creature, too little known.

Not cursed, then. He spares the animal a parting glance, nodding again — this time, in proper greeting. If Wei Ying has accepted it, so too must Lan Zhan, if only because he is a guest disturbing the peace of their companionship.

The hand on his shoulder asks too much of him. He presses at his temple again, calling forth patience, if not strength. A muted pulse. ]

I do not know.

[ Lost, he supposes. Found. Too much of the day swirls in a disjointed string of absent cause and lacklustre effect. Palm outward, he raises a hand, summoning space and distance — less to exile Wei Ying, than to bide himself time. There is much here unanswered, but sun, warmth and shade never misguide them. ]

We are too south-bound.

[ To go, at least, by the elements, this is their direction. If they're to travel back to Cloud Recesses, they'll have to correct north-wise. He starts them gently. ]

Come.

Lan Zhan.

[ so much weight in two syllables. so many questions cushioned into each name, all kept unsaid as etiquette demands, though wei ying longs to free himself from it and damn himself to impropriety if it means knowing where they stand.

does he even have such a claim? he and lan zhan have an association that wei ying cannot put to simple terms. are they friends? their actions towards each other betray such a word; wei ying would sooner easily ascribe it to nie huaisang. they're not brothers in arms, not the way he is with jiang cheng; wei ying's feelings are too intense, too sanguine for the melancholic nature that lan zhan possesses. are they merely acquaintances? associates by unavoidable circumstance?

for the second time in a day, wei ying reaches for lan zhan, finding purchase on the man's wrist and holding tight. ]

Lan Zhan, stay here with me for a moment. [ I want to look at you. I want to see you as you are, whole and alive.

wei ying has desires, uncountable and unnameable in the light of day. ]

How's your leg?

[ The air shifts, light breeze of careless road deepening into start of coming storm. He feels it beneath skin, even if no rain might pass.

Or maybe it's simple metaphor, and Wei Ying's question stabs have learned to hit too deep. (Fool of a boy. Never did stay still.) ]

It will serve.

[ For Wei Ying's purposes, if not Lan Zhan's own. Mobility was never under threat, but the leg has earned respite. He knows the gamble: strain early, recovery will compromise and the rot of long sickness will take seed. He cannot strand himself with congee on a mattress while the moon above lessens and swells.

The hand that holds his wrist can give way. He starts the long-chronicled process of staring it into submission. ]

What must a guest know?

[ Of this place, their circumstances, Wei Ying's seeming hesitation. Everything is the answer and demand of a scholar, but they are gentlemen and warriors — action precipitates learning. Scraps of learning will do, so long as they stay alive. Bone and marrow.

They are — visitors, he supposes, transposed in parts of the world Lan Zhan has shamefully failed to walk before. Whatever customs the clan who holds the grounds keeps, they are indebted to obey them, or risk the penalties due. ]

[ it will serve. injured, then. lan zhan communicates in understatements, in small increments of truth that paint only a corner of the full picture. in this case, the picture is his health, and lan zhan's brush strokes are ever finer than usual.

wei ying frowns in concern, then curates his expression into something less grim. now is not the time to force the issue of self-care; there's likely time for it later, when they're settled and confirmed safe from the elements, whatever they may be in this strange place.

and so wei ying relays what he's come to learn, small scraps of information pieced together from various conversations that have been had with a number of strangers. wei ying is confused still, but it stalls his curiosity none at all - if anything, his hunger for answers deepen, carving itself deep into the lining of his skin like knives.

he draws lan zhan aside, his grip unrelenting for now. if they're to have this conversation, they'll have it with some illusion of privacy. ]

We're in a city called Lunatia. Where it is I cannot say, but I've been assured that its place is among the stars. They have great ships that can cross the skies, and they practice a kind of cultivation called moonlacing - I've yet to understand the principles behind it, but I'm confident I can learn.

Lan Zhan, I was told that—

[ that there is another, here, by his own name, as well as lan zhan's. wei wuxian doesn't understand it, doesn't pretend to at all. should he mention it now? ]

Never mind it. I'll tell you later when I know more, and for certain.

What about you? Have you met anyone of note?

Only you.

[ He answers the first tidal wave of questions, drowning in implication: there is too much here unknown to his eyes and his ears. Worse, because he is in the habit of reconnaissance, to Wei Ying's. Their position is compromised, their journey tattered. Their reputations, no doubt, unlikely to earn them reprieve or passage. The end line of his immediate calculations don't favour them.

They will have to do.

Drawn aside, he spares a moment to evaluate: first, his surroundings, for urgent danger that fails to distinguish itself. Then, Wei Ying, for the treacherous signs of wound, poor health or fever — or deception, the other cloak he wears as well as the robes of the Jiang.

Wei Ying often speaks in riddles, only for the answers to crystallise as truths the sects would wish hidden. ]

Lunatia.

[ He tries the word, sour on his tongue. Later, he will investigate it for traces of familiarity — a historical mention he might have first neglected, a small note in the scrambling scrawl of fairy tales. Anything.

No matter, now. His grip joins the bird bones of Wei Ying's wrist. ]

What were you told?

[ Never mind is no dismissal any man who has known Wei Ying for the better part of an hour would afford to entertain. Never mind is shorthand for, Do not mind now, but pay doubly later, like an inn keeper sweetening the offer of his wine. ]

[wei ying's body language is a country all its own; the slouch of his shoulders, the cant of his head, the furrow of his brow and the moue of his mouth, all of it form a cartograph of the man's emotions and thoughts. everything is spelled out, elucidated, illustrated by every movement that wei ying commits to.

the day will come when this language will be muted, its tongue eviscerated from wei ying's body by three months of physical and psychological trauma. in the resulting chaos of wei ying's future return, lan zhan will find himself communicating with a man who's a refracted image of who he once was, hardened and cracked and mended together not with gold but with steel.

but that day has yet to come, and so wei ying tells lan zhan what he thinks with effortless physical grace.

things aren't what they seem to be, lan zhan. things aren't quite right.

lan zhan's firm grip on his wrist is a comfort that wei ying is grateful for. it's a gift, unasked for, yet given freely - like a rare bird sighted after a vicious storm, lan zhan's touch brings wei ying a newfound hope.]

You can be so demanding, do you know that? [wei ying exaggerates a sigh, though there's no firm intention behind it; it's a token gesture, an act expected of someone well-known for being in his cups as much as he's known for his wit and ability.] I still haven't confirmed the veracity of it, so don't take my word for fact just yet.

I met someone from the Gusu Lan. No claims, Lan Zhan - he has the robes and the headband, and his cultivation energy is strong. He speaks with intimate knowledge. Lan Sizhui. He says he's from sixteen years into our future, and that's already a marvel - can you imagine the level of cultivation needed to succeed in that? Not to mention the research! Understanding the innate workings of time would change cultivation everywhere—

[he cuts himself off at that, before he spirals into narrating his inner thoughts like a scholar lost in the pages of a comprehensive tome. wei ying turns his hand, shifts so that he's holding lan zhan's wrist in return. there's a twinkle to wei ying's eyes, a kind of light that lan zhan would be familiar with.]

Lan Zhan. Do you wanna look into it?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

▶ TDM .009

handling this hot bird mess

this is not how we treat our hugbug child!!!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject