▶ TDM .009

[prismods]

Now whip it

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"Devo - Whip It (Video)" (Watch on YouTube)

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.

Comments

[consignation]

What, are my frown lines supposed to get lighter? Stuck with you for a brother? [ Jiang Cheng shoves back, feeling transported back to their younger days from the familiarity of this interaction alone. How long has it been? It rankles that Wei Wuxian already suspects, is already asking leading questions to place Jiang Cheng and has already placed him as somewhere in the future. Jiang Cheng knows his robes are telling, sect leaders proving to be show animals above all else even with the decline of the Jin clan, arguably the worst culprits in decadence and excess. If Jin Ling keeps up with that trend, Jin Guangyao won't be the last Jin to be thrown down the steps of Jinlin Terrace.

...but that's neither here nor there, since Jin Ling is neither here nor there and Wei Wuxian is here, asking about Jiang Cheng's past and his own future. That's his brother for you. Beyond stupid everywhere it counts and all too sharp in ways that will only hurt him. ] What's the last thing you remember? Was it getting blackout drunk and leaving me with the mess?

[ That should keep Wei Wuxian wondering for at least a short while, if he has to go over every single time he got blackout drunk in Jiang Cheng's presence. Enough time for Jiang Cheng to figure out what to tell him, he hopes, and what to keep. Things are going to be different this time. Jiang Cheng won't sit quietly in the dark anymore, lied to, protected, angry at all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. The cost was too steep the first time around. Never again.

Belatedly, too slow by far, he shakes his arm out of Wei Wuxian's grasp. ]

[resurging]

[ it's a triumph every time wei wuxian's physical affections are received well by those he means to express his love to. shijie, gentle soul that she is, accepts his hugs sparingly, as decorum insists they be respectable; uncle jiang, meanwhile, kept his affections well-balanced between fondness and propriety, careful to never offend his wife or ignore his son while. madam yu was out of the question; wei wuxian would sooner prefer to kneel in the ancestral halls than seek motherly affections from the mistress of the jiang estate.

jiang cheng is the only one wei wuxian could ever truly embrace, and he did so often, as many times as he could get away with it, always needy with his affections but generous with it too. ]

I'm perfectly sober, Jiang Cheng, mind yourself! And when have I ever been so drunk to forget how your face looks? There's something different about you, and it's not just the clothes you're wearing.

[ he has half a mind to raise his arm and let it come to rest on jiang cheng's shoulder, to pretend to mull over the many possibilities that this city presents. time paradoxes, alternate universes, these fantasies seem to be true in this place - for jiang cheng to have fallen victim to them from wei wuxian's perspective is typical of wei wuxian's luck thus far. whether or not this situation is fortunate or not will have to bear out in its own time.

wei wuxian finally settles on holding his brother by the arm instead, wei wuxian's hand coming to rest over the braces folded over jiang cheng's sleeve. his touch is assured, firm in its certainty that it's welcome. Move his hand and wei wuxian will find somewhere else to touch, like a persistent burr. ]

We were at the Phoenix Mountain cave. Well, outside of it - you'd come to our rescue, you and that peacock Jin Zixuan. That's what I last remember.

Jiang Cheng, you're dodging me.

[consignation]

[ Does the furrow of Jiang Cheng's brow deepen with the mention of Jin Zixuan, or is that just Wei Wuxian's imagination? It can get hard to tell, considering the general depressing state of Jiang Cheng's face. The quick return of Wei Wuxian's touch is tolerated only because Jiang Cheng is all too familiar with how this will go should he continue to resist, especially here where he has to hold his tongue about the years of death and distance between them.

He'll keep shrugging Wei Wuxian off and Wei Wuxian will somehow become that much more affixed to him until his brother has an arm around his shoulder and is putting the entirety of his not-negligible weight on Jiang Cheng's shoulders, whining about Jiang Cheng's attitude all the while.

So he allows it, lips thinning as he glares off to the side, looking anywhere but Wei Wuxian's face. ]

Phoenix Mountain was years ago. That's just what I needed. You, but even less mature than I remember. [ He rolls his eyes, trying to muster the appropriate amount of exasperation to sell this, but he's never been the actor Wei Wuxian is.

All those years, and Jiang Cheng never suspected a thing. None of them did. How did they fail him so badly?

Huffing out his irritation, he shoves his arm into Wei Wuxian's chest, only realizing after he's done it that Phoenix Mountain is also when Wei Wuxian took that brand to the chest. He doesn't seem injured, but maybe that spot is still sore—

He studies the look on Wei Wuxian's face, tense, then goes on. ]

...it's not like you'll understand what I'm talking about even if I spelled it out for you. But don't worry, you're still alive. Still a pain in my ass. What else is there?

[resurging]

Another timeslip... Ah! Is everyone really from a point in time ahead of mine? Am I suffering from memory loss?

[he sways, he swings, he exaggerates the turn of his head as he exclaims each question dramatically, masking his slowly-growing apprehension with theatrics. it's worked before. it should work now, because wei wuxian's intelligence has always been proclaimed to the world as that of the academic, of the genius in his practical application of the cultivating arts. people don't say "ah, that wei wuxian, he's a wily one." they don't say, "mind your words around wei wuxian."

wei wuxian isn't so soft-nosed. he isn't always so oblivious to the world.

jiang cheng's arm collides with wei wuxian's chest and he gasps; his brother is correct in his assumptions about the healed brand on his chest. the memory of it is still fresh in wei wuxian's mind - the smell of his own flesh burning, the white-hot pain lancing through his body, the shock and subsequent overwhelming pain disturbing his curated gracelessness.

he slaps the other's shoulder lightly.]

Careful! [he cautions as he rubs soft circles over the scar; the healers here had taken care of the burn, but not the mark it's left behind.] It's still sore, you know? It's not like you have a gentle touch, either...

Anyway, enough of that. What's the future like, then? Do we beat back the Wens? Do we win?