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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Of a sort. I've done quite a bit of travelling back where I'm from.

[ when he asks how long she's been in the city, she looks a bit sheepish. ]

Not very long - a few days. I'm still adjusting to how everything is. It's been quite a shock.

It certainly is. I'm in the same boat, metaphorically speaking.

[he takes his communicator out of the breast pocket of his jacket - he hasn't been able to bring himself to actually strap it to his arm yet]

These things are particularly intriguing. I've never seen technology so advanced ...

[he'll take another sip of that tea, though, and nibble at a cookie before making a quiet, pleased sound. yep. cookies are, indeed, as good as the tea]

Those ships that fly through space might as well be boats.

[ just an observation, if nothing else. when he mentions advanced technology, she nods after a moment. ]

This kind of technology has already been lost to my people. The empire that created it before fell to ruin - so it's interesting to see it, how it may have been before. We've recreated some things with our own technology and magic, but that thing --

[ she indicates the communicator. ]

Is entirely new. I'm used to a linkpearl - a small item you wear like an earring, that transmits voice. It doesn't have any other capabilities, like that one.

They certainly are, in a manner of speaking, you're quite right.

[he listens to her intently, captivated by the thought of a society which achieved certain heights of invention, only to backslide. he can't help drawing a haphazard comparison to the Roman empire, even though he knows it's not a complete match. correlations are human nature, after all.]

And I'm used to pocket recorders. They just barely started making portable telephones available in my world, but they're expensive, and I saw no reason to complicate my life with one. This thing is going to take some getting used to, to be sure. ... I'm at least glad I'm not the only one.

[he takes a long drink of the tea, now that it's cooled enough not to burn his mouth so much]

Interesting decorations we have on these cookies. I think I've just eaten something's ear.

[sorry, Commander Gare-Bear.]

[ alas, a scholar of their lost past she is not. he'd have better luck talking to her brother about the technology, though she knows a fair bit more than the average citizen of eorzea.

she's no idea what a pocket recorder or phone is, but she can deduced well enough. she smiles a bit. ]

It seems we can be the odd people out; I noted many of the other moon blessed seemed to take to the device quite easily.

[ but ah, commander gare-bare. she gives a little laugh, almost a giggle. ]

Were you the type of child who ate the ears off of his animal crackers, then?

[ she lifts a recreation of the pretty girl the queen is pretending to be, snapping it in half and dipping it in her tea. ]

It's good to not be the only one with difficulties. But! At the same time, I'm sure there's bound to be at least one or two people around here friendly enough to help us figure it out.

[that laugh is endearing, and he grins at her, the grin turning into a laugh of his own as she bifurcates the queen's avatar]

I sorted them by whatever native habitats they had in common, actually. Then I ate them in alphabetical order.

[he was a strange child.]

Agreed. I'm sure someone will be able to help us sort it out.

[ a strange child he might have been, but the answer makes her smile all the same. nibbling on the other half of the queen's cracker, she speaks again. ]

I was more the type to make them fight each other, and the loser became the first snack... I did it with my brother's crackers as well, too.

[ she stole them. ]

But onto the device - I've at least figured out the map function a bit.

[ she pokes at the device until it displays her a 3d holographic map, which she spins with a little smug look. her location is where its centered, a red blip. ]

[he laughs a bit more at the anecdote - it's very telling as to certain aspects of her personality, and he makes silent note of it. he was about to ask how she decided who won, when she pulls up the map.]

Oh, it spins? That's amazing. I've never seen anything like it...

[he reaches tentatively into the holograph and pokes the blip, watching the way the projection lines warp and twist around the curves of his hand and wrist before leaving it alone and leaning in to look at the device itself more closely]

How did you manipulate it like that?

[ she watches as well, curious. admittedly, she's watched other people play with tech that looks like this before - she's just never done it herself.

when he asks how she manipulated it, she gives a light shrug. ]

I've seen people use very old contraptions back home just by touching. This wouldn't respond to me at first, but it seems to respond to specific gestures. Like -

[ she waves her hand to the right, sending the map turning. then she raises her other hand and puts two fingers together, pulling them apart and making it zoom in on her dot. ]

- so. Admittedly, I picked that last one up watching others.

[his jaw legitimately drops at the pinch-zoom, even though he recovers quickly]

That's fascinating! Responding to gestures when you aren't even touching the device itself...! Boy, this little gadget really is something. I can't wait to find out what else it can do. I've seen other people using it like a camera, too ... all of that, in this one little thing, smaller than a stack of index cards.

[he shakes his head, regarding it with wonder, but still hasn't forgotten his tea. he takes another drink, not wanting it to go cold while they're both learning. not only that, but whatever particular ingredient in the tea that makes people alert is starting to kick in. every detail of the map seems to grow sharper the longer he looks at it]

It makes you wonder what else this place has in store for us, doesn't it?

[ she laughs again, but this time it's to tap a button to close the map. she reaches for her own tea when he takes a drink of his - finishing hers up. don't ask which cup she's on. it's best if no one knows.

when he asks, she tilts her head a little bit. ]

Have you had a chance to examine the assigned living spaces? They have similar projections - screens you can pick out designs for the room, and couches that turn into beds with the press of a button.

[ okay maybe that last one might be less amazing to dale, but it's amazing to alisaie. ]

Aside from that... I've heard tell of these moonblessings, and I'm not sure what to make of them. You can end up with simply an extra set of ears or something like a full on transformation of your body.

I stopped long enough to see where my room was, and I took a brief nap after some exploration and a very nice lunch of a fish sandwich, but I haven't really looked at the projections or explored what any of the buttons do. It seems like I've got plenty to keep me busy.

[he's seen reclining lounge chairs and futons, sure, but none that were so automatic. he's looking forward to the experience. any sort of new thing is exciting to him, really. even the disturbing stuff]

I've heard of them, as well. I can't say I've ever heard of anyone actually transforming, outside of pulp fiction novels, the kind of stuff they make B-reel horror movies out of. So I'm not really sure what to make of it either. I still feel like myself. Nothing out of the ordinary.

[ she's glad fish sandwiches are universal.

she focuses more on the second part of what he's saying, though. such as what a pulp fiction is - the term garners some confusion crossing her face. ]

I feel like myself as well, to be sure. But I'd rather pre-empt any strange transformations. Though, I suppose, if it happens we'll simply have to deal with the matter as it crops up.

[ she doesn't look like she enjoys that thought, though. ]

Definitely not an ideal situation.

[he looks like he absolutely agrees with her on that front. but the tea and cookies take a little of the edge off it, and he munches for a moment as he looks around the gardens, thinking]

I wonder if there's some sort of public library or other repository of knowledge where we could find out more. First-hand accounts, for instance...

I'm almost certain there must be a library of some sort. Even with devices such as these, they cannot possibly contain every single piece of information. Some things simply don't convert.

[ see: the allagan tomestones they had to reverse engineer ways to read the data inside, the books that had yet to be translated to their own tomestones.

she eats some more cookies. sugar will help, right? once she's chewed through some of them: ]

Nothing for that but to start asking around about it, I suppose. We aren't the only moonblessed either, for that matter.

Local knowledge! Exactly.

[he snaps his fingers and points at her with a smile, quite pleased]

We'll figure things out. If so many other folks have acclimated to this planet, I see no reason why you and I can't either.

It's the acclimation that worries me, honestly.

[ but that's neither here nor there. it'd be hard to explain that she's already been spirited away once, in, well, spirit, and the concern was the link between her body and her soul getting so disparate she could not return. she frets that what if there is something similar in work here, where she won't be able to return to eorzea?

of course, she already knows she was here before, at one point. so that may be a moot worry. instead, she plasters a little smile on. ]

We'll have to keep in touch, then, to share notes. Ah - there's supposed to be a way to share a contact via these devices - I've only done it the once....

[ she's poking at her communicator. how did thancred tell her how it worked again ... ? ]

Really? Hmm.

[he presses one of the buttons, and watches the screen light up]

It seems not unlike a computer, only without a mouse or keyboard. I wonder --

[it's a leap of intuitive logic, but he pokes at one of the icons and watches it spring open as an application]

-- Aha! Each of these little icons is a program with a specific purpose. Which means at least one of them must be for messages. This one looks like it stores photos - I seem to have already accumulated one of the inside of my pocket.

[he chuckles]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

▶ TDM .011

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i saw you got in congrats!!

Thank you! Do you want to make this game canon?

I'm down for it! Alisaie will love having someone to bug about tech

\o/

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