▶ TDM .001

[prismods]

Cybernetic dream, something like you've never seen

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"Michael Sembello - Automatic Man (original music video)" (Watch on YouTube)

▶ 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 discover the many mysteries of planet Prismatica!

TDM OVERFLOW can be found here!

Comments

[fractaljesus]

[No matter how hard Gilgamesh looks at the cube, he won't see anything apart from the shifting fractal designs of its surface. The man on the floor, on the other hand, is gleaning plenty of information just from staring at it--or rather, from the mental link between himself and the box-like object relaying information directly to his brain.]

Kado. [He answers, but does not yet elaborate on what "Kado" is. Kado, on the other hand, apparently has other plans apart from just getting stared at, and floats (almost playfully) over to Gilgamesh when he expresses curiosity in it, letting him get a closer look as it spins happily in midair. Or at least it seems that way, because the thing acts as an extension of the man in white's will, so he's in perfect control of its every action.]

Kado is a boundary unit and transforming mechanism that is used to analyze, edit, and relay information. [Among other things, but that's the expedited explanation.] I was having it run analysis on the crystalline structures found outside this vehicle.

[tactically]

[He watches as the little cube flits about. It's... quaint. He kind of wants one? If this man were the more flowery Grand Caster that he so reminds him of, he might've demanded to know how to go about getting his own. But he is not, so he will show some restraint.

Anyway, with the incineration of humanity safely avoided, it was probably a little less important now, but he was still curious. Something like this could still be useful.]

What did it find?

[He's curious how it works here, too, but that's more important. He also wants to know more about this world they've been dragged into.]

[fractaljesus]

[You know what? Had he the capacity to produce more, he actually might have given one to Gilgamesh if he asked. The problem then is two-fold. The most obvious is that he cannot create more of them lacking access to the full-sized unit, since he requires its processors to translate it into a format compatible with three-dimensional space. The second problem is that even if he had more of them to throw around, Gilgamesh wouldn't have any idea how to actually operate the thing. But I digress.]

The structure and composition is highly specialized. Factors that contribute to forming them such as gravity, atmospheric pressure, and %#^*@^%[The word he says here is in no known language, and is impossible to transliterate into verbal sounds] are impossible to reproduce under conditions found on Earth. [Or even within the same universe, but he leaves that part out.]

[tactically]

[That's okay. He will make one his treasure somehow, someday, for all the treasures in the world (even this one?!) are his...!

Either way, Gilgamesh listens to his words, at least as best as he can. He understands the most important part with little trouble.]

I see. Not surprising, but interesting nonetheless. [There could be a number of reasons for why that might be the case, after all.] Are you saying you've never seen anything like it, then?

[Since he mentions Earth, he wonders if that's where he's from, or simply what he's most familiar with. In either case, there's still the possibility he might know of somewhere where these things are similar.]

[fractaljesus]

[Not at all from Earth, but that seems to be a good point of reference whenever he's speaking to a human... or someone who at least appears to be human.]

That is correct--the structures are unique. [The small Kado cube hovers in front of Gilgamesh's chest before a small fragment of crystal emerges from its surface and drops into his lap. The information is already saved and recorded within it; zaShunina no longer needs the shard itself, so Gilgamesh is free to have it if he wants. And then the cube shrinks rapidly before vanishing from sight altogether. Sorry if you were intending to swipe it.]

I am Yaha-kui zaShunina. [He finally introduces himself, though he doesn't expect the name to mean anything to anyone not from the world he'd previously been visiting.

By the way, that faint fruity smell that's been present since the transport picked them up? It's been gradually getting stronger. But that's nothing to worry about, surely.]

[tactically]

[Nothing to worry about at all!!

Fortunately, Gilgamesh is definitely more interested in the shard than the whimsical cube's escape. He picks up the shard and spares the cube only a glance when it seems to disappear, then looks back at the shard in his hand. Its exact composition is certainly beyond him, but even he can tell that there's something different about it.

When the man introduces himself, Gilgamesh's first thought is that he didn't ask. However, the man has been helpful, and he appreciates the willingness to cooperate and share what knowledge he has, so he decides to return the favor.]

Gilgamesh. [He doesn't recognize zaShunina's name or even where it might come from, so he skips the rest of the introduction, figuring it won't mean anything to him, either. He also just kind of doesn't care? He is slowly (unwillingly) losing the ability to give a heck, honestly.] I'm curious. What are your intentions in this world?

[If he was going to be studying it, then he might want to know what he learns.]

[fractaljesus]

[On the contrary, Yaha-kui zaShunina does know the meaning behind the name, though he has no way to determine whether or not it's merely a namesake. He's read a lot of books in his time on Earth.]

My intentions are to collect information about this location. I will make a decision once fewer factors are unknown. [He's got a few ideas of what he wants to do, but he'll need more information before he can formulate a plan. To act in haste would only work against him.

...Huh, that's peculiar. Some of his internal mental processes are sluggish. Not to worry, he'll just partition those parts of his mind until he can diagnose the problem.]

Is that a sufficient answer?