prismaticrap | ▶ TDM .013

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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.

▶ Welcome to the Jungle
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.

▶ Let’s Do the Time Warp Now
Lunatia | top

Time is relative, but the days do seem shorter — or longer — than usual. A minute passes like an hour. An hour passes like a minute. Everything appears to be moving along as normal, but the numbers and hands on clocks flicker and spin with an unusual and worrying slowness or quickness. Eventually you notice that the darkness of the night barely lasts long enough for you to fall asleep while the sun seems to glare down upon you for an eternity. The temporal shifts disorient your body, which now grows lethargic from being overworked and underslept. Soon, the temporal abnormalities reach a critical point…

B Due to the temporal distortions, Prismals and Moonblessed new and old feel their bodies sporadically transform in the strangest of ways. Your joints ache like they’ve carried a lifetime’s weight of misfortune and regret. Your voice turns high-pitched like a certain pair has yet to drop. You turn into a confused infant in one moment and the seasoned fighter you always wanted to be in the next. Your memories also shuffle around along with your apparent age, leaving you confused and unsettled. The transformations can occur and last for as long as the 11th, when everything turns back to normal without incident. That time your baby self peed in your pants? Never happened. Until then, moonlacing seems to stabilize the weird abnormalities.

▶ Starlight, Star Bright, First Star I See Tonight
Lunatia | top

The city’s landscape is not spared by the erratic flow of time. Buildings and streets continuously flicker between the beautiful and vibrant paradise it has become to the ruins of glory days long past. Your eyes may struggle to adjust as you try and convince yourself of what is real and what is not. High rise towers one moment will become wreckage the next, filled with technological debris and the echoing cries of the terrified, and the mighty wingspan of an unknown creature continues to hovers in the distance. The illusion will only last but a minute before you’re back in the present, going about your daily business. However, your trip from the future and back is far from over.

Soon, breaking news reports will inform the city about the sudden vanishing of certain celestial bodies in the sky. Though the moons remain where they should, the nights grow longer and darker as the stars in the sky start disappearing one by one until only the sun remains, eclipsed by some mysterious force. Lunar Scientia has already sent capable teams to investigate the abnormalities, so they ask the public to be patient as they wait for the reports. Until then, they have issued safety guidelines and measures to effectively light the city. The Caelus Tower appears to burn brighter than ever.

C For these dark hours, Lunar Scientia releases their latest Chroma-powered technology for Moonblessed use: star lanterns. When a star lantern is held by two Moonblessed, it absorbs newly generated Chroma from them, enabling it to light up the missing stars in the sky as you travel from place to place. The light’s color and intensity will depend on you and your partner’s bond, the spectrum ranging from a violet of hatred to a red full of love. Indifference, however, will not light the lantern at all. It also comes with a float function so that it can be released into the atmosphere without needing to carry it everywhere. Since the technology is limited in stock, Moonblessed may only have one star lantern in their possession.

One of the issued guidelines is to never walk through dark alleys alone even with the lanterns, as the crime rate has increased lately due to those taking advantage of the chaos. This is especially rampant in Level 3, at the mouth of the Lightless.

▶ Oh, They Just Can’t Wait to be King
Outside Lunatia, Port Sylvel | top

On the ides of the third month, an emergency broadcast appears from Captain Natela:

Captain Natela

Greetings, Prismals and Moonblessed.

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that Port Sylvel has been completely crystallized. The Moon Knights are currently recruiting willing explorers and scientists to investigate the cause. Investigations are still pending, but the outlook is grim. The only survivors were among the few we carried out of the city last month. The rest perished from the crystallization.

Our heart goes out to those affected by this plight. There is no cause for panic. There is no sign that the crystallization is spreading beyond Port Sylvel. We Moon Knights stand with the people of Prismatica, as we have done for centuries. We are not mere defenders of a city but protectors of a planet. We endeavor to find the cause of this tragedy and bring peace and justice to the lives it claimed. Until then, we ask for your cooperation. Stay calm and press onward.

Those who volunteer to participate in the expedition will be rewarded for their efforts. They will be assisted by experts from the Lunar Scientia as well as the bear Prismal and Moon Knight Fahrouk, who looks worse for wear after hearing the news.

Officer Fahrouk

Oh, Moonblessed. It's you. Yeah, Hala is doing good. Won the spelling bee! I think she might make the nationals. ... I… I don't think I ever told you. Port Sylvel was our hometown. My wife is buried there. We’d go there every spring. Hala loved picking the flowers there. Did you know that different flowers grow in Port Sylvel compared to Lunatia? Haaaah...

Moonblessed! I know you think I'm not cool enough to hang out with you, and all I do is ask for your help, but please let me go with you! Please… This is something I have to do as a soldier, a husband, and a father.

… What? You always thought I was cool?

Finding strength and resolve after the participants tell him he's supposed to assist them on their mission anyway, Fahrouk distributes LIFE suits to the participants as he briefs them on what they're about to do. He and the participating Moonblessed will then be transported via a large transport vessel.

Port Sylvel is hardly recognizable. What was once an idyllic coastal town is now a site of tragic beauty — crystal formations encase buildings and Prismals like jagged glass coffins, as if preserving life in its final moments. Readings from life detectors tell you that everyone in the crystal has passed on, but you and your fellow Moonblessed think you can still hear their cries of distress carried along by the wind, warning you about the Prideful King.

D Gigantic crystal lions flank the passage of the port city, their wings spread open and blue flames pouring forth from their mouths. You hear rumbling guttural noises, and if you approach them, their roars will escalate to warn you about proceeding any further. Beware: a single bite from these lions can easily tear through the LIFE suit and cause your body to crystallize quickly unless someone rushes in to moonlace with you to halt the effect. These lions are unlike the beasts you’ve fought before: their otherworldly strength is overwhelming, and nothing seems to wear them down. Destroying them seems pointless, as they quickly regenerate the minute they are obliterated.

Eventually, transmissions from the LIFE suits announce an order for escape. Buildings collapse and shatter in your wake, and the ground quakes violently as something awakens in the far distance...

▶ questions

If you have any questions regarding this test drive meme, please ask them in the Questions thread below.

WHO CAN POST? ▶ Test drive memes are for new characters only. Existing players may not post starter threads in the test drime meme. 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.!

IS THIS CANON? ▶ 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.

ANNIVERSARY ▶ Happy first anniversary, Prismatica! Thank you to all of you who have been with us since the beginning. We appreciate it immensely! Remember that we always welcome input and suggestions from players. This event is a little out of the ordinary because of our anniversary celebration.

OPT IN AND OUT ▶ For current players, please do not be alarmed! As always, you do not have to be affected as there are safe areas across Lunatia that remain as is.

AGING UP AND DOWN ▶ You have free reign over how long and how many times your character will be affected. If a character doesn’t have a canon appearance from the past or future, you are welcome to provide one of your own from imagination and use your own PB. You are allowed to speculate on how they’ll look, act, their potential future, and so on. All of these will be temporary to this event. The intensity of the effect is also up to you: whether it will only affect appearance alone and retain their current memories.

IMPORTANT ▶ As a reminder, writing sexual content with characters below 15 years old is a violation of the game's rules and potentially Dreamwidth’s ToS. Players caught doing this will be banned from the game.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Am I making excuses?

[ seimei is certainly making excuses—but hearing that monsters and enemies can drain his life source merely by touching makes him want to go even less. he can say no with conviction now, because trying to restore his strength after that would put him in a tight spot. ]

I don’t know if I could be persuaded. It sounds pretty scary.

It didn't sound like you had any intention to go in the first place.

[ Which is why he finds the show and excuses a bit annoying; Joonghyuk is the type of person that hates extraneous displays. Not wanting to go is enough of a reason, even if it's a poor one. Simple. ]

You can wait in the city, but it's not as safe as it seems.

[ His expression darkens as he thinks back on what's happened since he arrived, even just earlier this week. Rather than trying to scare Seimei, it's a genuine warning. ]

[ seimei can control the way his ears move, more or less. if he didn’t want to seem interested, he wouldn’t—but he doesn’t bother trying to hide the curious flick at joonghyuk’s warning. ]

There’s something here that would worry even you? Now I’m really scared.

[ his innocent human facade is rapidly slipping away, but he doesn’t feel like he needs it. ]

Ah, where should I go?

[ He cocks an eyebrow instead of scowl some more this time, letting the edging statement go. That's actually a good question which is why he can't ridicule it. While there are shelters here and there, they aren't disaster shelters.

Still: ]

Why are you asking me?

[ His own apartment complex isn't safe? If one's own home can't be a haven, he really has no idea. ]

[ grumpy, grumpy. seimei thinks it’s funny, in a way. this man is revealing himself before seimei with every new sentence, though seimei realizes he’s doing the same in response. ]

You seemed like you knew so much. Am I wrong?

[ He desperately wishes he knew "so much" about Prismatica. Then he wouldn't be so anxious all the time being in this foreign place. Still, he's calm and collected despite his fight or flight response being constantly on. ]

I arrived last month.

[ Usually, it's best to keep a low profile and not give away too much, but he doesn't see any cons to this. Seimei can't hurt him if he knows less than him. ]

But it's long enough to know the city isn't impenetrable. Their protocol is relying on their knights and the Moonblessed.

[ there seems to be a fairly regular influx of moonblessed. seimei isn’t sure why or how they come here, not any more than the prismals themselves are, but it is somewhat suspicious to him that so many of them keep coming.

the machinations of the moons, he supposes. ]

Only last month? We’re practically twins.

[ a beat. ]

I guess it’s fair to say that nowhere is really safe.

[ Joonghyuk gives the flattest of stares... Them? Twins? Out of all the things Seimei could say, it has to be worded like that. It's too friendly for him—also weird.

He doesn't say it, but please never say that to him ever again. ]

Yes. [ A good mindset, he thinks. ] You can consider the safest place to be among good company.

[ seimei wins because he didn’t get called out on it. a stare is not enough. ]

Hmm. I don’t have good company yet.

[ ah, now they’re getting to the heart of the conversation. seimei’s found his rhythm, and nothing is going to shake him. ]

Do you mind if we get to know each other?

[ Oh, someone that actually asks, even though Joonghyuk sees it more of an illusion of choice. Many have a hard time saying no... Then most tend to force themselves onto others, anyway. He stays quiet, looking down at him with an inquisitive yet sharp look. It's almost like he's searching for something—anything at all—to tell him Seimei's worth. ]

I do. [ He doesn't become acquainted with just anyone (only when he's forced to). ] What do you have to offer?

[ How can he use you? ]

I’ve never been on this side of that question.

[ he’ll admit that outright. it’s exhausting playing the nice guy now that he’s gotten a taste for being himself, and as long as his new friend here is receptive to his bad attitude, seimei will roll with it. ]

Let’s see… I’m a good conversationalist. Can’t you tell? [ his ears twitch as he remembers something. ] Ah, and I’ve never lost a game of rock-paper-scissors.

[ Joonghyuk can't deny that Seimei isn't a bad conversation partner, though not quite to his liking. However, he is knows that he's a particular person. Maybe other people would find Seimei pleasant.

Rock-paper-scissors. Really. ]

Are you trying to sell that as strategic planning rather than luck?

There is strategy to it.

[ now, seimei seems to be having a little fun. it’s as if the disaster in port sylvel never happened at all.

he slips his hand out of his pocket, his palm out and inviting a game. he doesn’t seem to have any ulterior motives besides just wanting to play rock-paper-scissors, but then, he doesn’t generally seem to be anything special at all. ]

Are you interested?

... I'm not interested in this type of game.

[ While there's a chance that Seimei is wasting his time, he has exhausted a lot of the possible leads to learning more about this universe already. There's not much to do except wait for opportunities to rise and see.

He's curious and has time to assess others. Pulling out his hand, he shows he's ready to play. Show him what you got, cat boy with four (possibly six) ears. ]

[ only four… for now. ]

You’re going to play? I’m excited.

[ seimei smiles, and studies joonghyuk’s face for a moment—maybe there really is strategy to it, or maybe he’s playing mind games. either way, once he’s made his decision, he chants along the rhythm, and tosses out his hand: paper. ]

[ RNG generator told me Joonghyuk instinctively picked rock. Frowning, he analyze what Seimei has done during the short amount of times aside from countdown with the trademark rock, paper, scissors.

Messing around?? Probably? ]

How do you find this exciting?

[ It's mostly luck. ]

You aren’t impressed? I told you I would win.

[ seimei waves with his paper-hand before sliding it back into his pocket. ]

Next, you probably would have played scissors… so on and so forth. It gets a little harder to win if we keep playing, so I’m going to hedge my bets until I know you better.

[ he is annoyingly smug for a guy who has only won one round of rock-paper-scissors against a complete stranger. he likely does this sort of thing often. ]

[ No... He is not impressed!! Please stop trying to persuade him that it's worthy of that. ]

I chose randomly.

[ So he wouldn't know if he would have played scissors until they're at that moment before throwing hands. Maybe instead of picking the three options, he would have pulled out his sword on him. Who knows?

Seimei is wise to turn in now. Joonghyuk will give him that. ]

How long do you think your luck will last?

I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. It isn’t luck.

[ seimei smiles. clearly, the game means something bigger in his mind, but he doesn’t readily give away what that is. it’s also possible that the game is just representative of the type of person that he is. ]

As I keep saying, it’s strategy. I don’t like leaving things to luck.

[ Seimei has kept him here longer than he anticipated, so he guesses it works in the other man's favor whether he likes it or not. One end of his lips twitches. ]

What's your name?

[ So he can avoid him in the future. ]

Can you please not ask me so disdainfully?

[ seimei knows he’s giving this guy a hard time. maybe he’s even starting to take pleasure in it. ]

[ Can he take pleasure in other things instead? Joonghyuk doesn't like that. Anyway, this isn't the first time someone has told him to speak politely. ]

No.

[ The answer is always the same. ]

You won’t get far in life like that.

[ seimei scolds him, but actually, he’s neither offended nor annoyed. it would take a lot more than this to get him to give up. ]

My name is Seimei. It’s only polite to give yours, too.

I'm still live.

[ That's all that matters! Seimei is an odd name for an odd cat boy and he debates on whether he should give him his real name or not. Should he dump this on someone else's shoulders? The person in mind to receive that baton also lives with him. Not ideal. ]

Yoo Joonghyuk. [ ... ] Don't think this means anything.

[ Like this is an invitation to bother him after this interaction. ]

I don’t get to call you my friend?

[ seimei will absolutely find a way to bother him after this interaction. he’s interesting, after all, and he seems powerful despite—or maybe because of—his restraint in not drawing his sword on seimei just yet. ]

Boo. I’ll have to try harder.

▶ TDM .013

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