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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[ Oh.

Lobelia looks at the blindfold, following the line up her slim arms and to Nier's sunken, dark eyes, and his smug little smile twitches with a hint of recognition. Of course, they do 'know' each other, in some sense, as fellow pactbearers... though as relationships go, it is a little more complex than sharing the same goal. They all have their own approaches, their own personal desires for how things should be. In some ways, even if they were once working towards the same end, it also put them at odds with each other.

All in the past, of course, now that they're skyfarers. But how can he ever resist being her partner, in those circumstances? ]

Non, non. If you fall, it'd obligate losing, and there's nothing appealing about that. It's far more enjoyable to win.

[ He offers his hand. But if she thinks he's offering to do it for her... ]

Shall I help you put that on? Your hands look shaky. It'd be bothersome if you didn't tie a tight enough knot, since you can't afford to adjust it in the middle of your course du labyrinthe.

[ fuckin lol nope ]

[ Whether it's for the better or worse, Nier has never been the most friendly person out there - The amount of people that she trust can simply be counted with one human hand and (un)surprisingly, the fellow pactbearers never even come close to it. Let alone someone like motherfucking Lobelia. ~~Not that she has any horse in this race~~ Nier just gives him the Eyes™ - the very usual droopy, weary, doubtful stare that she has always given to literally anyone... Though perhaps there's a very little radiance of disgust in her eyes if he squints hard enough. ]

...It's you.

[ Suddenly though, continuing the game seems to be less of an interesting stuff here for Nier. As much as she dislike, or at best think neutrally of the others from her group, he's her biggest lead for knowing about more stuff about Death. So for now, she's just going to him the disinterested stare.

Him being a grade A+ weird af asshole. Her being a walking murdercat... Yep, business as usual in the Evoker group, ladies and gentlemen. ]

...I'll do it. On one condition. Your card. Show it to me.

[ There's no need to beat around the bush with him, right? He'd know what she's talking about. ]

[ The hostility is to no surprise to him at all, and were it just that, it'd be no matter; when it comes to other people's charged emotions, he's virtually imperturbable. But it's the question that really takes him aback.

His card? Why would she need to see such a thing?

There's any number of possibilities — seeking proof of identity is most obvious, if she has some reason to doubt it's really him. But what if it wasn't about him at all? Could she have somehow managed to lose her card? At home, they would always have found their way back to them. Or perhaps it was stolen? Given away in a moment of foolishness? Perhaps something about it altered or changed, and she needs to compare? ]

What a strange thing to ask. You haven't shown interest in The Tower before. Or any other pactbearer's primal beast. [ The question is blatant, left to dangle there. But, after a pause, Lobelia seems to relent, and he fishes into his heavy coat to bring the card out, trapped between middle and index finger. On the card's face, the visage of the monstrous Tower looms large and eerie, giving off a sense of a powerful presence. The Tower is here with him, indisputably.

He flips it face up in presentation, but it's her expression he's watching closely. ]

[ Frankly, these kind of distances between them work just fine with Nier - Strictly professional, if not with slightly animosity underlying beneath it. She did have some doubt about Lobelia actually willing to show his card when she asked him due to the nature of the pactbearers and their primal beasts, but as he seemed to be at least willing to do that... That works the best.

Nier eyes him, silently, thoughtfully, mainly right at the card and the sudden change of atmosphere around him. Though Nier is incapable to get the full grasp of the summoned being, it's clear that his primal beast is by his side and this... makes things complicated. As obviously shown from the way Nier's pupil dilate in shock at this. To make it even clearer that she's undergoing something mentally, Nier also immediately grabs her hair with one hand in seemingly, frustration. ]

...Yours are here... How... Why...?

[ In return, Nier grabs her own card from her robe's pocket, the one and only The Death, and flips it face up just like Lobelia did earlier. The difference is, while the aura of strong magic does soon emanate from her tarot card and still possess the dangerous vibe, it's considerably weaker especially when compared to Lobelia, which soon turns obvious as Nier herself name it down- ]

...Death... She's not here...! I CAN'T FEEL HER NOR I AM ABLE TO SPEAK WITH HER-! Why... How is this possible? Did she abandon me...? Am I not good enough...!? Tell me, how is this even POSSIBLE-!?

[ -That The Death, is no more. Or at least her physical form, considering the 'blessing' of the primal beast is still intact as it still gives Nier the magic prowess and capacity and the capability of, while not immortal anymore, regenerate pretty fast from the death door.

On one hand though, losing Death might be the push Nier has always needed to step out into shaping herself into a better self. On the other hand, it happened too fast for her to take and being the paranoid girl she has always been, it's relatively impossible for her to just keep the matter down anymore. She knows that Lobelia is probably the least helpful person out there, but right now, the only one who could give her the explanation is probably him. Not even the captain of Grandcypher would be able to. ]

[ Lobelia looks on as she deteriorates, cool and dispassionate, eyeing the card she presents to him without remark. For someone with his aural leanings, her screams cut through him in a way that's almost a little pleasurable, a wrenching emotional pain that's almost (but not quite) as satisfying as a physical one.

Ah, what poignant suffering.

Sure enough, he can tell from her card alone that the overpowering presence of Death has been somehow depleted, existing only in the dregs and wisps that linger with Nier. He puts his card back into the safety of his inner pocket, as though such a disappearance could be contagious.

Well, well. Can a pactbearer still call themselves a pactbearer if their primal beast is gone?

His voice is light and airy. ] I've heard that, rather often, people tend to lose things on arrival in this place. Things they had on their person before they came here. Often things of great power.

Of course, I'm as surprised as you are that they can take away our primal beasts... beings to whom we've been celestially bound. Their power ought to be great enough to defy such a thing, but perhaps there are forces at work that are even greater than their own?

Ah, what a tragédie! It looks like I've simply been lucky, and you have not.

[ He shrugs, like an asshole. ]

... However, it doesn't look like she's completely disconnected from you. [ He cants his head quizzically, and with the boldness and familiarity only another pactbearer could express, he reaches out with a fingertip to lightly brush the surface of her card. Unsolicited card touches. He can feel the unfamiliar pressure there, the strength of Death still thrumming like a pulse, proof of life, even if it's only a shadow of itself. How different she feels from The Tower. How different their bond feels, even with its familiarity. He smiles thinly. ]

Isn't that interesting? Even at a distance this great, her power traverses the stars and finds you here. The loyalty of those entities is truly commendable, isn't it.

Perhaps she isn't as far as you think.

[ If she weren't undergoing this big mental breakdown, Nier would have immediately attempted to make the situation here into a total battlefield by, let's say, throwing some magic blast or something at Lobelia without paying single attention to the effect and destruction it'd create simply due to how he delivered his line. But for the better of the situation, the lack of Death around seems to put hold into prompting Nier to go that far.

Though she's in shock - visibly, Nier does actually listen and take notes of Lobelia's short yet somehow fulfilling explanation. Once she heard him til he finished his last line, Nier's once dilated eyes seems to return to their normal state as she shifts a bit, hugging her own body as her lips open and barely audible words seemingly slip out in between them. ]

That's right... That's right... Death wouldn't leave me just like that. She loves me just as much as I love her. She's still here... I just can't see her... [ Unsurprisingly, such unhealthy, toxic positivism is the way Nier ends up comforting herself. Though she has been scarred even before The Death made its appearance, the presences of Death had become a big factor in her life as the most important pillar that kept her going. The trust between her, the pactbearer, and The Death went so deep that it'd become unthinkable that if by choice, either of them would leave each other.

...Or...

Nier's eyes widen again at the realization of the possibility and immediately, the Erune turns to the other pactbearer as she grabs the hem of Lobelia's robe's sleeves. Hard, tight, and full of desperation - Perhaps way too hard especially with comparison to what her actually pale, frail figure's would normally be able to. ]

T-Tell me... Our world... It's destroyed, right? It's no more, right? Those Prismals told me so and they didn't lie to me, right? Did The World actually managed to...?

[ Though they're discussing quite the heavy topic and she's asking the equally destructive stuff, in a drastic turns of event, Nier's eyes actually looks bright and hopeful! The combination of words that would have been impossible to be put right next to Nier's name. It's as if she's not talking as Nier, the pactbearer of The Death and instead, talking as Nier, the young Erune who has always craved for acceptance and finally found the path she's been looking for since forever. ]

[ Lobelia regards her as she works through her agony, all those emotions spilling out openly, unbounded, swinging from despair and back around to desperate joy. He doesn't really feel one way or another about her plight, but the open, raw outburst of feeling is interesting to watch, after spending so much time in the restrained company of the people of Lunatia. She really doesn't hold anything back. It'd be commendable if it didn't inconvenience him.

Lobelia will do as he pleases without inhibition in order to be happy... But Nier is like a hollowed-out void, a vacuum. Without restraint, she can only wallow in her own abject misery.

Her tight, almost unnaturally strong grip keeps his hands in place, but he doesn't struggle or fight her off. Looming over her at his full height, he just looks down from her face to her hands, his nose crinkling slightly. So, even the Prismals tried to placate her with whatever thing they could come up with. She really is that troublesome.

What little happiness she feels now is based on deceit. ]

Who's to say? I'm sure the Prismals would know best, don't you?

[ It's the most ambiguous answer he can give. He has no reason at all to be charitable to her, but the affectation is just as convenient as honesty.

He turns his wrists to find her hands with his own, closing his fingers over the knuckles. The faint tingle of chroma generation has a pleasant and soothing property, creating a relaxing warmth between them. Her fingers feel pathetically dainty and crushable. Deceptive.

He can relate to her enthusiasm about the world's annihilation. It may have been stripped away from him by his defeat at the hands of the Captain, but it certainly doesn't stop him enjoying the notion, imagining how things could have been. He doesn't mind how things turned out for him... But it's a Sound that, one day, he'd still love to hear. Surely there can be nothing greater than the end of the world, the ultimate form of destruction.

He adds, somewhat cryptically: ]

It'll be harder to go on without Death beside you... But here you are, still alive. Hah — I would have expected you to be done for, at least.

Maybe fate isn't finished with either of us. I was chosen by The Tower for my exceptional qualities, after all... and here I am, chosen again. It must be because of my brilliance, non?

If we were put in one world to destroy it, what do you imagine our purpose is in another?

[ One day, someone else will come through from their world, and she'll realise it still exists. How spectacularly will she crumble, then?

What a thrilling Sound it'll make. ]

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▶ TDM .011

Oh no it's more Cheese A

Today's weather forecast: Disaster with a chance of chaos

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