prismaticrap | ▶ TDM OVERFLOW .001

Cybernetic dream, something like you've never seen

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▶ Lisa Frank's LSD Fun House
anytime, anywhere on the moon Iris | top

Everything is darkness except for dim lights sparkling in the distance, a faint gleam that greets you as you start to unfurl from your dormant state. 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. Throat parched and skin dry and aching, you grope your body in alarm to make sure your possessions are still in place. 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 only rewards you with 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.

A ⬤ As you traverse the near-barren landscape, you feel something sting your skin. It's small and subtle at first, then you finally catch sight of it: an elegant, crystalline mosquito buzzing around from the corner of your eye. However, a pest is still a pest. After a while, marks near your welts begin to form strange patterns on your skin, mimicking ancient runes. Each rune has with it a particular side-effect that may hinder you on your journey:
✾ The Mark of the Enchanter: Hallucinations, hallucinations galore. Your character will see everything and anything their imagination can conjure and will have difficulty separating reality from fiction.
₪ The Mark of the Destroyer: Limbs start to cease their function, causing you to stumble or try and get around one-handed. Other certain body parts may be affected as well. Look at the bright side: you can stop worrying about jiggle physics and hiding your fear boner.
⍢ The Mark of the Sinner: Your hunger, your thirst, your fatigue and your desire are at an all-time high. Your impulses are rabid and uncontrollable. Maybe you experience only one of those symptoms. Maybe you experience them all. All you know is that you want relief now.

These effects will eventually clear up with a bit of accidental or purposeful physical contact with another person, making you wonder if there was anything wrong with you at all.

B ⬤ Hunger starts to gnaw at you vigorously. Perhaps you consider hunting the moon's creatures to sate your hunger. That's when you see it: a thick, meaty, juicy meal on legs. ~~No, we're not talking about Alex Louis Armstrong~~. A wild silver-white pegasus runs across the purple landscape, its hair billowing in the wind as its hooves smack loudly against the ground. Try and shoot it, and you may find your efforts curtailed by its legendary rage. Eyes aglow and wings beating up a storm, this pegasus is no dainty horse. Two thousand pounds of pure muscle swoop down and charge at you, all blades and ammunition deflecting off its impenetrable skin. Taming appears impossible; it will buck anyone away and leave a sizable horn- or hoof-shaped hole in them for their efforts. Hunting it, however, should be easier. Relatively.

C ⬤ Or you may decide that you'd like to take a drink in the prismatic waters. A small pond can be found just a few miles away from where you first awoke, but gazing into it reflects what appears to be a window into your own world. You see the faces of loved ones or at least someone very close and familiar to you gathered around your prone body, shaking it frantically as though to try and rouse you, yet your image lies frozen and unresponsive, not even a whisper of life running through you. Did you die in your world? Is this your afterlife? The questions start to pile up along with the gnawing dread that you may never return home again.

▶ Camp Nowhere
anytime, anywhere on the moon iris | top

Time moves strangely when you're trapped on a moon with no sun to guide you. Hours feel like days, and days feel like weeks. Travelling has rendered you weak and tired. Luckily, a few crystal formations in the shape of a cavern may offer you a small place refuge as you decide to nap. You notice a few artifacts left over from previous explorers.

D ⬤ A comm unit abandoned within the cavern will display the former owner's idol obsession. As you tap the buttons indiscriminately, a holographic screen will appear, and you will see a fabulous recorded concert featuring three bubbly young ladies in animal print, singing to you about something called Cordis, a cat, and a bag of gems. Does this make any sense to you? Probably not, but the beat is catchy. You may even find yourself tapping a foot along to it. Don’t worry. We know it’s plastic love.

E ⬤ There's a small cooler-like container of preserved powdered food bags labeled with only the word “Edible” that can be safely consumed. Although the powder tastes as bland as you’d expect, it’s oddly filling, sating either hunger or thirst. But who will be the first — and the bravest — to try eating them?

F ⬤ A strange, pointed instrument is among the effects found in the cavern. It's silver, long, and thin with a curved end and a light. When you grip it with warm hands, it seems to vibrate enthusiastically and comes in three settings indicated by a frowny face, a neutral face, and a happy face. What could it mean exactly? No one knows, but you can fiddle with it to your heart's desire. Just don't ask yourself where it's been before. You don't want to know.

▶ Interstellar Action Force Assemble
prisma, iris | top

Over a day has passed when a group of people find you worse for wear. Some are full of uncertainty and fear while some are full of curiosity and excitement. They claim that they are scientists from the planet Prismatica here to investigate the sudden appearances of rainbow crystals in the skies. That means you and the others they’ve located within the area. You are all a surprising find to them, and they are quick to load everyone in their transport vehicles for examination and questioning.

You all may have your usual inquiries — Where are we? Who are you? What's going on? Why are the pegasi so ill-tempered? — and the Prismals are almost too eager to answer. They do have questions on their own, so it’s only fair to trade. They tell you about their world as they poke and prod you, trying to understand what you are and how you came into their land. If they’re not trembling in fear, some of them may ask you odd and invasive questions in return, such as what the rate at which your body achieves thermoregulation is, how long your refractory period is, and if you would be willing to submit various kinds of body fluids to them. It's up to whether you wish to comply or protest.

G ⬤ If you react violently, you will be restrained and nerfed with a specialized neurotransmitting gun that releases a numbing agent through the top of your spine. They came prepared, so have fun with that! In any case, conscious or not, you’ll be brought into one of the transport vehicles. If you choose to peacefully cooperate, you’ll be provided any necessary first aid and a refreshing drink to help you recuperate after the rough time you had for the past few days. Each transport vehicle has a few small rooms to rest in, but due to the limited space, you’ll have to snuggle up with someone else on that bunk bed. Unfortunately, the moonshine fruit the ship is also carrying in its cargo has an extremely sweet smell that’s been permeating through certain areas of the ventilation system… Taking a whiff of it may inebriate you for the rest of the trip.

H ⬤ It’s a bumpy ride as terrain vehicles draw over various crystal formations until you see a large dome-like structure up ahead. Within its confines lies the seat of the Prismatica's government, Prisma. It’s a bureaucratic wet dream: skyscrapers practically touch the upper surface of the dome, windows glimmer with a prismatic sheen as daylight hits them, and small ships can be seen flying to and from its spaceport. The scientists, members of the Lunar Scientia, usher you into their facilities for tests. Arrivals are likely to twitch, tremble, and panic as Lunar Scientia fellows take and broadcast every embarrassing, unfiltered detail about you — height, weight, age, strange odors, estimated frequency of sexual activity —- to one another. These scientists will ask you politely to undress, too, but understand if you don't want to. They're especially fascinated by the readings of pure Chroma inside you, whispering among one another excitedly about the possibility of the new arrivals being a new moon species. What should they call them? Moonborne? Moonblessed?

I ⬤ At long last, the questions and physical examinations are done. They’ve decided to call the arrivals as the Moonblessed. They’ll take you under their care until they understand more about you. You're allowed a very refreshing hot shower and a warm meal for your efforts. Don’t worry, the meal was imported from their planet. “Planet?” you might ask, but you won’t need to wonder for too long. The ships are preparing for their next destination: the nearby planet Prismatica, where you will be dwelling for the time being. You're free to explore the government center until then.

▶ Wildcard
Lunatia, Prismatica | top

It only takes a couple hours for the ships to reach their home planet. The ships drop the characters off at the city of Lunatia, where they will be given their communication devices and a plastic card they can present to certain landlords at any residential district for their subsidized (read: absolutely free) lodging. Officials at Prisma instructed the newcomers to await further instructions from the government, but you have a lot of time to kill before then. Why not explore in the meantime? Learn the ins and outs of the world, get a job, transform under the full moon, and explore the many mysteries of planet Prismatica!

This is this TDM's overflow. Feel free to move your threads from there and continue tagging!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Frown ...]

Tends to be a dangerous business.

[Oops, is it?

That's what his expression conveys.]

Don't worry, darling, I wasn't doing the calibrating.

[He squinches up his nose at the endearment.]

Unsurprising.

I'm going to pretend you're not trying to be offensive. It's just not my wheelhouse.

[He actually does have a wheelhouse, he just -- kind of hates it, all right?]

Time travel requires delicacy, foresight, and a clear mind. It's almost no one's wheelhouse.

[His ears perk up, like a smug little cat.]

So, you're correct: I wasn't trying to be offensive.

[And that actually makes him laugh, something that's high-pitched and almost manic.]

Christ, don't tell that to Five. He'll get such an ego it'll tip over his tiny, teenage body.

I won't, then, should I ever meet him. The more powerful you are, the more you need to stay humble.

[BUT HE MUST BE A MAGE OF PRODIGIOUS SKILL!!]

Dragons oversee the timeways where I'm from. Even then, they sometimes make grievous mistakes.

[He is ... an assassin of prodigious skill? But that's probably not a thing to tell strangers about your brother.]

Dragons. Right, of course dragons.

I'm not sure why someone talking about time travel is incredulous over dragons.

[He taps one of his ears. It's springy.]

Especially when you're already talking to an elf.

For all I know, you could have just been gluing those on for show. Time travel and fantasy creatures are two entirely different topics.

[Where he's from, at least.]

I did also cast magic on you.

[He shakes his head.]

Anyway, you're clearly not a human of Azeroth, so it's pointless to go in circles like this. Put plainly, I'm an elf. A blood elf. I don't know what planet you're from or what planet this is, but I can speak for myself, at least. My name is Adrasteius.

[Klaus just rubs his neck, sighs.]

Well, shit. You've got a point, there.

[He puts both his hands behind his head .]

Blood elf. Adrasteius, right.

I'm Klaus, from Earth. Not quite so exciting.

[Adra is not the enigmatic, ethereal kind of elf, his general shimmery appearance aside.]

Earth, huh? Straightforward. Nothing wrong with that.

[Ethereal elves would probably get really annoying after a short period of time if they were anything like Lord of the Rings made them out to be, at least in Klaus' opinion.

He shrugs his shoulders easily.]

Mm. Guess not.

Humans are all over the place in Azeroth ... but if you think my ears are fake, I'm guessing your planet is just humans.

Yeah, that's right.

Which is, if you ask me, incredibly boring.

[Except that no, his life is never boring -- he kind of wishes it was, sometimes.]

I've never found humans boring. Trying, sometimes, but that's not unique to them.

[He furrows his eyebrows.]

My people are embroiled in a war with them and their allies, but ... I'm mostly a pacifist.

[It's a wonder that Klaus doesn't develop a visible twitch as soon as the elf mentions 'war', but he narrowly manages to avoid it. He does, however, let his hand slide to the chain around his neck, fingering the edge of it.]

A healer and a pacifist, huh? I guess that tracks. What's this war over?

[Something stupid, he presumes, like always.]

[Adra exhales through his teeth. He's too sharp eyed to miss Klaus fingering the chain.]

It's over a lot of things. Doesn't involve just us and them. In a practical sense, it boils down to resources. But our leaders keep the fire burning by trying to make it about ideology instead.

Either way, it's just senseless violence. Destruction and hatred without end.

[He leans on the staff in his hand, looking tired.]

I got pulled here from the dawn of a battle.

[It's not as if he stops the absent touching once he realizes he's doing it, anyway.

In fact, he pats in his pocket with his other hand suddenly, another burst of nervous energy, and pulls out a cigarette and lighter a moment later with some relief. At least that's still on him.

He lights one and takes a long drag before he offers one out to Adra, although he's fully expecting the other man to reject the offer.]

Well, good to know that war's still the same even between different races.

[Adrasteius waves him off, and turns his head to avoid the smoke, besides. AS PREDICTED.]

I take it you have some experience, too.

[He rubs his tattooed throat.]

I don't have to talk about it if it bothers you.

No, it's --

[Except that it's not 'fine', he's not going to pretend that it is, at least with this one thing in his life.

He takes another puff on the cigarette, at least blowing the smoke in the direction opposite to Adra.]

-- I asked, right?

[Adra touches his shoulder gently.]

You did, but old wounds can be difficult to predict. Body or soul.

Oh, they're not all that old.

[He's going to burn through this cigarette in record time, if they keep this up.]

So -- sure, subject change. Let's do that.

[Adra hums in his throat.]

Got any ideas?

(no subject)

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