prismaticrap | ▶ TDM .011

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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. After an hour or two of wandering through the crystal wilderness, a group of people find you worse for wear. They are the gallant Moon Knights from the planet of Prismatica. Because of the strange phenomena 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? — 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. You will then be escorted to the docks, and led onto a large transport vessel that makes frequent trips back and forth between the Iris moon and the planet. Faces onboard vary from both old and new Moonblessed as well as the local Prismals.

The next destination: Prismatica.

▶ There and Back Again
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 As a Remooning gift from the Lunar Scientia Headquarters, the dedicated team from the Amphoria Room has released their latest perfected technology: Amphoria Pods. These VR Pods, which can fit up to four people at a time, have been set up in the gaming hub within Level 1’s PrismaPlace. They allow users to upload sceneries of their world in order to create a realistic holographic landscape of their homes that others can access and play around with, granting everyone the means to relive past memories with their loved ones as well as interact with the bestiary of other worlds. The pods also use the same technology that enhanced the popular virtual game, League Match Action Online (LmaO), which means you’re liable to feel the chill of cold environments, the burning heat from boiling water, the hard slap of your ex-lover, or the biting sting of a stray wasp. All who use the Amphoria Pods for the first time this year will also receive a small amount of Chroma in case things get too real.

▶ God Save Us from the Queen
Level 1, PrismaPlace and Level 2, Greatmoon Groves | top

The first month of the year is packed with two of the most important winter events this season: Queen Elara’s birthday and the League Match Action Online (LmaO) PVP semi-finals. It just so happens that the Queen of Lunatia is also a huge LmaO fan. Coincidence? Definitely not! LmaO players and royal family fans alike can meet her at PrismaPlace, where she will be appearing in cosplay of her favorite hero, Ah-Kari, while holding a body pillow of Commander GareBear. You, too, can get an autograph or selfie with the birthday girl if you’re willing to fall in line! Her bodyguards will also be in LmaO cosplay, keeping the crowd under control during the long wait.

Queen Elara

Good day to you all! This may come as a surprise to our guests the Moonblessed, but I am a normal person despite my exalted position. Please do not think of me today as Queen Elara. Instead... my name is Ah-Kari, sorceress of the crystal! With my soul fan blades, through the darkness, I shall slice all who dare hurt my commander in twain!

But when she is not meeting and greeting...

Queen Elara

My comrades, we're going to make history today. We're going for a new record. Perhaps the highest kill counts or the fastest clear for this map — it matters not. We’ve practiced day and night for this tournament, so let us show everyone that we’re not to be taken lightly! Also, the livestream is going in the royal archive, so make your successors proud!!

... she will be furiously grinding her character and training her skills in LmaO in the hopes of qualifying for the finals. Spectators will see her bring her own team full of hapless palace attendants who are there to either serve as her practice match partners or provide support to the one-woman army that is Queen Elara.

PrismaPlace is packed with giant crowds, many of them also in cosplay. While the semi-finals are taking place, new and old LmaO players alike can participate in the game’s current campaign: players who form teams get an improved chance of spawning unique monsters as well as winning rare items and skins in those prized lootboxes! Teams can also try to clear the event’s story together, featuring an aerial battle fought on griffin-back, which is heavily inspired by the popular Lunatian epic, The Battle of Abraxas, a colorful and complex story about the conflict between two families fighting over the fictional land of griffins, Abraxas.

A Progression in the event requires acquiring a griffin mount and getting it ready for battle. You can lure a wild one to yourself with a special veggie pie on a fishing pole. Should the griffin reject the lure, your character will be caught in a wind gaol and can only break out with the help of other players. Should you succeed, raising the griffin is a tedious task that involves players training alongside their respective griffins, running laps with them, taking them to hunt monsters, and feeding them properly. Depending on their diet, the food you give them will affect the color of its plumage and their battle stats.

Or you can skip the hard work and simply moonlace with your teammates through all the progression bars and required materials to save time. Once finished, you’ll be able to battle one another through the thunderous aerial domain of Abraxas. Clearing the event will net you an event-exclusive skin inspired by the royal family’s shining celestial robes and a weapon skin of a body pillow with your favorite character, so do your best!

B In celebration of Queen Elara’s birthday, the office of the royal household is hosting a modest tea party in the Greatmoon Groves. Swiffy bots that are normally programmed to remind visitors to keep the groves clean are now playing a birthday jingle on repeat. For people who prefer to be away from the blinding neon lights and the thumping techno music of PrismaPlace, this is the ideal escape. Unlimited tea and cookies are being served!

The tea is a soft-colored lilac concoction made from Ehrysian tea leaves that are known to cause a huge spike of alertness and is popular to Moon Knights and office workers with long night shifts as well as gamers for those all-night grinding sessions. The assorted cookies have either Ah-Kari or Commander GareBear printed on them. In case it isn't obvious yet, both are the birthday girl’s favorite LmaO characters.

Any Moonblessed looking for extra income is welcome to be royal attendants for the day; the hours are paid by Demichroma. They must be properly dressed up as maids or butlers (outfits provided by the royal household) as they serve tables.

▶ Say Cheese
Level 3, Caihong | top

Meanwhile, Caihong is in the midst of Remooning festivities in celebration of the new year, and merriment usually lasts a fortnight, filled with fireworks in the sky. Upon entering the district, beautiful Prismals with rat ears and tails greet you with a Happy Remooning and eagerly tug you along to join in.

Those welcomed will receive a pack of multi-colored sparklers, mooncakes topped with cheese, and a glowing drink called Champagne Supernova, poured in a thin glass in your hand. If you are over eighteen, the rat Prismals will ask if you prefer your drink with a kick. If you say yes, then they will add flavorful ice that causes extreme intoxication and might leave you to be susceptible to all levels of suggestion. Saying no (or if you’re under 18) will simply leave it as a sweet drink.

A One of the party games being played by the locals is called Lucky Tail, which is basically pinning the tail on the holographic rat stand-in — with a twist, it must be played with a partner! Another participant will blindfold you, spin you around, then push you forward. The stand-in is located at the end of unsteady elevated platforms forming a maze, filled to the brim with distracting objects underneath. They’re long, they’re thick, and they’re vibrating furiously in an attempt to knock you off the platforms.

Your partner must guide you by voice to successfully navigate through the maze! The game is rigged with various mechanisms, so stepping on specific platforms will activate a number of traps against you or your partner: machines that may tickle, drop colorful slime, or cause the platform to repetitively spin, and who knows what else?

Should you manage to get through the obstacle course and pin the tail successfully, you and your partner will win copious amounts of Demichroma, courtesy of Buwan from Buwan’s Stop.

B Another attraction is a fun magic glamour booth known for its face or body swap features. The booth staff, clad in their festive rat paraphernalia, will encourage you and your friends to take aesthetic shots using an illusion generator. The effects last an hour. Photographed images can be instantly uploaded and shared in Prismagram. New year, new you! Why not take the chance to celebrate this momentous occasion in a unique fashion? It’s all in good humor.

There are two buttons to press: (A) CUSTOM or (B) RANDOM. Pressing A will allow participants to customize their desired effects. Pressing B will cause the illusion magic to randomly rearrange participants in questionable positions, new outfits (or lack thereof), and you may even come out of the booth looking like your best friend or your worst rival. The possibilities are endless!

▶ 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.

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[If he notices the other man's discomfort, he gives no outward sign of it. Applies himself only to the question being asked, the conversation he's more than happy to indulge in. Even here, worlds from home, he remains the same sociable sort he's always been.

All the more reason, if anything, to make new acquaintances.

Julian shrugs his broad shoulders, smile turning - this time - a little wry.]

Oh, all kinds of ways. A submissive needed permission from a dominant if one was to spend any money, certain areas were off limit, too, unless properly accompanied by one of the ruling class. One was...ah, that is, one had to allow oneself to be more or less owned by a dominant if one wanted to live anywhere but the underside of the city, an insalubrious place stricken by poverty and poor housing. Jobs were limited too, with submissives expected to take only low-ranking positions, treated somewhat - really - like a child. And there were, that is to say, sexual obligations.

[Something he hadn't minded over-much; quite the opposite, really. It had provided him with the chance to indulge his darker inclinations, and on a purely surface-level at least, he'd appeared the model submissive citizen, but--]

There were ways around it, though. Not without risk. But I was hardly going to give up practicing medicine for those in need of it just because someone told me I wasn't allowed.

[And the people of that dilapidated subterranean landscape in which the less fortunate had been cast-- they needed someone like him, someone with his particular skill set, more than anyone he could think of.]

[ ...sexual obligations. Slave-whores, denied their freedom and the dignity of control over their own bodies, the sketch of their form. The fog of Lan Wangji's cold indifference dispels in small, tentative degrees, the stiff lines of his shoulders breaking, arms shuddering slightly at his side.

He regroups, approaching the man before him with barely residual restraint, as if the stranger were one of the curious but forgiving bunny that Lan Wangji adopted from their fluffy ranks. This man might need no fond caretaker, but he has suffered, by his own word, enough to deserve protection the likes of which even Lan Wangji can offer. ]

You are safer here.

[ Not safe by anything but tender estimate, but still an improvement on his previous circumstances. A — guest of the city is afforded at least the base freedoms of an animal, restricted only by his cage.

Lan Wangji nods, this time in perfunctory greeting: ]

Name? Healer.

[Safer, he says, and there's just the flicker-flash of a moment when Julian wonders whether that's what he really wants. Hopes, at any rate, that safety doesn't translate to inertia, lack of adventure, a dearth of excitement.

Perish the thought.

But there's no time to dwell on that really, nor a chance to adequately respond, because then the other man is asking his question and quite abruptly, Julian's one visible eye infinitesimally widens. The look that crosses his face in that moment, it's perfectly dramatic, though coloured by honest regret.]

Oh, my dear, I do apologise. Whatever happened to manners, eh? I may just have spent six months or more in the land of the debauched, but that's no excuse for rudeness. Doctor Julian Devorak, at your service.

[And he sketches an elaborate bow, coat flung out behind him in a flourish.]

[ A foreign name, no doubt hailing beyond mountains and sea. Cartography studies and the rare roll of parchments have left Lan Wangji a little learned stranger to the foreigners and their habits. He has been introduced, in a matter of weeks, to more that is unknown than familiar. They should aim, perhaps, to send all men of age in travel, so they might learn themselves and the world at the same time.

...though something about the exotic, animate appearance of the good doctor suggests he might not be the average sample of strangers and their character. ]

Wangji of clan Lan.

[ For the little that will speak to a man bereft of knowledge of the sects. Still, his birth right.

Hands clasped before him, the bow in greeting is tender and short-lived. ]

Well met. [ At least, under circumstance of captivity. ] Doctors are never unneeded.

Wangji of clan Lan.

[It's no clan he's ever heard of, and there's one forgetful moment when he searches his mind and his vast knowledge of the world and it's places for the land this man is likely to hail from--

--then recollection comes up on him quickly, the knowledge that any similarities in this man's appearance and naming practices and the people of his own world are just that. Similarities. In a place like this, just like in Duplicity, chances of them hailing from the same world are slim at best.

So he lets it go, nods instead. Flashes his bright-angled smile-- dashing and friendly, all at once.]

It's a pleasure to meet you, then. Always good to get busy making new acquaintances in a strange place, in my experience. And um, well you're probably right. I knew I wanted to be a doctor from the moment I learned what one was, and I'll admit it's a profession that has always served me well. Kept me alive during some tight spots, hah!

[That one time the ship he'd been travelling aboard had been captured by pirates, for example. He may well have gone the way of the rest of the crew if it wasn't for the fact that a doctor is always useful to have around.]

But um, what about you? What did you do, before you found yourself unceremoniously dumped into a strange new world?

[ Too much smile (form). Too little grit (substance).

Men who are learned enough to become crafty in the way of manners typically misuse this skill to pervert diplomacy. Of all those who practice gallantry of the word as efficiently as that of the spirit, Wangji only knows of his brother Xichen to do it in good faith. The rest are struck with temptation and weakness, with the courtly propensity to exaggerate their love of one thing, the drama of another.

All the same, and here Wangji rediscovers the decency to collect himself — the good doctor might simply be the exception of a slowly coalescing rule. Far from Wangji to determine a man's nature based off passing encounter. Not anymore. ]

Exorcised otherworldly disruptions.

[ A pleasant way to sum travels without purpose, hermitage without cause — only to rid, here and there, grateful villagers of troubles that might well have hardly deepened their sorrows enough to justify Wangji's brand of cleansing. He brought more bad luck than he extinguished, to many.

Some things are not meant to change. ]

Fewer agitated spirits here.

Exorcised...otherworldly...disruptions.

[The words fall slowly from his tongue, thoughtful, as he tries to parse the specific meaning behind them. It could mean a number of things, based on his own experiences--

--but then comes that final line, and there's the perceptible widening of his eye, a quick look of something uncertain, something nervous.]

Do you mean ah, do you mean ghosts?

[Ghosts. Why does it have to be ghosts?]

And when you say fewer here...would it be considered overly optimistic to translate that to no ghosts at all? Though um, I imagine if there are, that would make you quite the friend to have on hand.

[ ...ghosts. What a provincial perspective. Lan Wangji's eyes widen in brief, glimmering increments that betray less of his interest than his consternation: yes, ghosts, but, more academically, which is to say, if they investigated the semantics and their sensibilities, then —

No. The doctor would still be asking about ghosts, and Wanjgi's mouth would still rest lightly, depressingly agape, to know his clan's mission reduced so fundamentally. Ghosts. ]

More time needed to determine.

[ There's a... dearth of spiritual activity here so far that challenges Lan Wangji's work discipline to sad points of stupor and idleness, this much is true — but perhaps he has only stumbled on a calm season, a peace brokered by snow storm and the deceiving calm before the year's turn.

He holds the faith yet in balance between the living and their dead, in spirits that need their guidance. ]

Hmmm.

[He seems wary and uncertain then, as though half expecting some spectral figure to manifest between them as they speak. He resists the urge to cast a backward glance over his shoulder, thinks fleetingly of his ex, a magician much more knowledgeable of these things than he and likely to laugh his cruel bright laugh in the face of Julian's evident concern.

He swipes a gloved hand back through his hair, sends auburn curls tumbling senselessly into his high-boned face. Huffs out an uneasy laugh.]

Well. Time will tell, I suppose. Though ah, I rather hope it doesn't.

[Spirits can mean assorted things, and he's met more than a few, encountered plenty of strangeness, beings that exist between worlds, or twisted worlds of their own, in places where tree roots move and grasp as though with a life of their own, where the sky is stained with red.

Best not to think about it, now.]

I suppose that means you've had to find some other way to fill your time, eh?

[ He has filled his time with intruders and nuisance, with Wei Wuxian's infinite talent for mischief beyond the average man's ken. With truths he should not know, destinies he should not face, battles that were not his to begin, let alone end.

He has done none of the atonement owned, and all of the sins that earned it. Yes, he has filled his time. But they are gentlemen, or at the very least — doctor and acquaintance, and so they must politely migrate away from the oceanic depths of an honest answer, and into the safe certainty of platitudes.

Wangji, for his part, starts the play with a nod. Yes, he has filled his time. No, it suits neither of them to focus excessively on his — distractions.

Besides, there is a plainer question, revealed in the twitch of the healing master's body, the eradicative brush of his hand on his forehead. Fright. No, the far bitterer drain of marrow-deep dread. ]

How many spirits have you encountered?

[ Before, when the trauma was born, the instinct to beware ghosts first nurtured. ]

[The question throws him, just a little. Leaves him shifting from booted foot to booted foot, expression pulling tight. These matters are no big secret, not to him, but speaking of them...it's a reminder of things left undone, in a world left behind. One he's less and less sure, every day, that he'll ever see again.

He takes a breath, blows it out slow.]

Oh, ah, a few. Things I've seen on my travels, not all of them I really know how to explain. Depends, I suppose, on how you want to define spirits. There's uh, there's the ghost of a Count roaming about, unwanted, back at the palace in Vesuvia. Looking for a way to come back to life, trapped between worlds, as it were. I was trying to find a way to stop his return before um...

[He shrugs, spreads his hands as though to indicate this new world, and implicit in that, the one he'd been thrown into before it. Destiny, interrupted.]

And then there's...well. Not sure if you'd call him a spirit exactly but ah, more of an entity. From another realm. The Hanged Man.

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▶ TDM .011

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