thecrossinglogs | TEST DRIVE #1

Entry tags:

TEST DRIVE #1

TDM # 1

Welcome to The Cavern, wayward souls.
It's good to see you again.

The TDM is game canon and will be active NOV—JAN. For further details about the setting, please reference our current setting page. All the information there is fair game for this TDM.

arrival

— THE RIVER
The River is wide, black, and deep. It is so deep, and so dark, and so cold, that when you wake deep beneath its surface you may, for a moment, think that this is all there is. An abyss, a vacuum, a void. Nothingness in all directions.

It might even be what you expected, coming from wherever you were Before. The blackness, at least. Perhaps the cold. Maybe even the pain: all-encompassing, all-consuming. If a mortal wound brought you here, it might feel like it's being torn open anew, over and over again.

The current is simply slow, however, not non-existent. And you can swim. (Or, even if you can't, that's more of a procedural problem than anything: you don't need to breathe down here, it seems. Perhaps you don't need to breathe anymore at all.)

It hurts. It hurts so much. But if you can just concentrate long enough to pull yourself up onto the rocky shoreline, or even enough to get your head above the surface of the water, that pain will dissipate, almost as if it was never there at all. When you have the presence of mind to examine yourself, you'll find that you are actually hale and whole, with your body exactly as you expect it to be.

There are others in your same predicament. Maybe they can help you; maybe you can help them. You're all in this together, after all.

— THE CAVERN
Once you do finally pull yourself free from The River, you'll find that there was never any abyss at all. On the contrary, there's quite a lot to see — though your eyes might need a minute or two to adjust.

The Cavern yawns around you, the main chamber alone large enough to house a small town, and the ceiling too high to make out through the darkness. There's some light: you can see the eerie green glow of bioluminescent plants lining far-away walls, and tracing the underside of the land bridge that extends over The River. There are pinpricks up high on the cliffs above The River that are organized enough to suggest intervention, or at least planning.

There's something else, too — something orders of magnitude brighter than anything else in the chamber. Its glow is dim on this side of The River, and it's difficult to discern where exactly the light is coming from, just that it isn't coming from anywhere outside the cave. You feel as though you might be safer if you got closer, but maybe that's just because any light at all is comforting in a situation like this. If nothing else, you'd probably find whoever is holding it.

Either way, whether you follow the light or don't, there's plenty of time to be alone with your thoughts. Or to share them, if you're so inclined, with the others that are here with you, emerging one by one from the depths of The River.

Perhaps you've already accepted what's happened to you. Perhaps you need time, and it will take some discussion with the others to arrive at the one thing you all have in common. Perhaps even after that it's still too much, or you still aren't ready. However you get there, though, there's no way around it: you are dead.

If you have questions, The Ferryman is available to answer them.

KEEP TO THE LIGHT

— THE LANTERN
The source of the light is a lantern — specifically, it is The Ferryman's Lantern, an ornate metal lamp hanging from the end of a tall wooden staff. It's large, weathered from use, and despite how improbably far its glow casts — from the land bridge over The River, where The Ferryman is holding their vigil, up the cliffs above and into the subterranean city's many tunnels — it isn't so bright that it can't be comfortably looked at. The Lantern has an unmistakable aura of comfort and safety (maybe because of, or maybe in addition to, the light it casts), no matter how close or far you are from it.

It's only at the very far edges of the glow, where the last bits of light are swallowed by the darkness, that this sense of safety begins to fray. It's here that you can see them, prowling the boundary: wisps of something that you can barely see. Many somethings, in fact.

They can't cross into the light, it seems. All they can do is wait for you to leave it.

— THE SUBTERRANEAN CITY
Maybe you'd rather stay for now, though. There's plenty still to explore within The Lantern's shroud: to start with, the network of tunnels you can see built into the cliffs above The River.

The biggest hurdle is figuring out how to get into the city. You can spy the entrances, marked by dimly glowing torches set into the open mouths of tunnels, but they're so high up! Surely you're not meant to climb?

Well, yes and no. Some investigation reveals a series of wood-plank catwalks leading up to the lowest tunnel entrances, but it's a long climb. If you're feeling impatient (and brave), there's also a system of pulleys, ziplines, and simple rope elevators connecting the higher levels to the lower ones. The ropes have clearly been here a while, but they're probably safe, right? What's the worst that could happen, you die all over again?

(Too soon? We get it.)

There's plenty to see once you reach the city itself, even if there isn't much in way of a population. (Until now, at least!) The lamps and torches lining the walls are packed with the same bioluminescent plantlife that can be found elsewhere in the cavern, so there's no risk of them spontaneously going out. There are signs placed strategically throughout the tunnel system to point you toward major landmarks, using only simple iconography.

The city itself certainly appears lived in, even if it's currently empty; in fact, if you pay close attention to the signage and the decor, there appear to be layers of activity not unlike the rings of a very old tree. Older tapestries covered with newer ones with entirely different patterns; boxes of radically different table trinkets carefully stored in apartment closets, to make room for new ones on a shelf; evidence of the stone market stalls having multiple different usages, many of them apparently in sequence.

Some of those tapestries or trinkets might even be familiar to you, like they came from a culture of your homeworld. Strange, though, since you didn't arrive with anything similar on you. Where could they possibly have come from?

VENTURE IN THE DARK

— THE WRAITHS
The Cavern is big, and The Ferryman's Lantern only reaches so far. If you want to explore, you'll need to brave the darkness— and whatever else might be waiting out there for you.

You'll have some light, at least, even if it isn't much: the luminescent plants grow throughout the cave system, including its winding tunnels and cramped smaller chambers. As for whatever else might be lurking out there, well... without The Lantern, there's not much you can do to keep them at bay.

The Ferryman calls them "wraiths", if you were curious enough to ask beforehand. They're more what you might typically expect from the idea of a ghost: pale and insubstantial, like mist struggling to take and keep a shape.

And they certainly do have shapes; those shapes are just incomplete, sometimes blurry, like a pencil drawing that has smudged and faded over time. They have faces that seem to have been stretched too long or too wide; they have eyes with no color, unblinking, always staring back; some of them have mouths that never close, while others have no mouths at all; some of them have hands with wispy tendrils of grasping fingers; others' limbs seem to have lost their shape entirely.

There are dozens of them lingering just outside the boundary of The Lantern, and many more roaming throughout The Cavern. They do not speak, or otherwise make any sounds at all. They do not swarm, either, even when one of The Ferryman's souls crosses the boundary. They simply watch, and, seemingly at random, some will choose to follow you anywhere you go throughout The Cavern.

Annoying, maybe. Creepy, certainly. But that seems to be all. Just remember: The Lantern is the only thing that keeps the wraiths at bay. They can't hurt you, out in the darkness, but they will notice you, they will follow you, and they will remember you.

If your exploration takes you to the catacombs, you may find that your wraith shadows get lost just as easily as you in the tunnel system. Perhaps they get distracted? Or maybe they have some curiosity about the tunnels that outweighs their curiosity about you? Either way, it's possible to lose them for some amount of time there— but the wraiths aren't bound by petty things like physics the way you are. They will find you again eventually, either by floating through some wall, appearing at the dead-end of a tunnel, or even just waiting at the entrance for you to emerge again.

If, on the other hand, you find yourself stumbling upon the whispering pools, you'll discover that wraiths gather in droves there, circling the pools, sometimes trying in vain to press their faces to the water. The wraiths that followed you here seem to be the only exception; whatever the pools are saying, it's apparently not interesting enough to draw them away from you.

Aren't you lucky?

Image credits: 1, 2, 3 + stock imagery unless otherwise noted

code

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Hm. Mithrun stops walking in his tracks, peering around at the cavern rather than Nagito. He's so used to loss he hadn't noticed - but the feel of the air itself is different. When his mouth opens again, nothing understandable comes from it - the ancient language used for spells isn't one that is meant to be understood, though the meaning to grasp is something along the lines of asking for light.

He cuts off a few phrases in, satisfied nothing is going to happen. ]

This isn't a Dungeon. And I've lost something else. I see. [ Well. Nothing to do about that now. He turns more fully to Nagito, not having begun walking again as of yet. ]

What are you missing?

[Nagito stops, watching as he speaks something entirely unintelligible, which might not be too curious except that now Nagito is thinking about it and--what language was this person speaking before? Not Japanese, like Nagito is speaking. Not English, either--though Nagito's grasp of written English is much better than spoken English, he's sure he'd recognize it. And yet, they've been holding a conversation.]

Does my life count? [Nagito hasn't noticed any other losses as of yet, his particular memory being dismissed as the haze of death and his particular talent not something that it would even occur to him he could lose.] But, hey, do you know the language I'm speaking?

[ There's no reaction to the mention of death. Mithrun's died many times, so he doesn't take it as seriously as he perhaps should. Not disbelief, as he has no reason not to believe that, but rather a sort of practical dismissal of death as being a particularly important state of affairs.

Instead he watches Nagito's mouth and goes silent again as he considers. ]

Somewhat. It sounds more or less like one of the languages from the Eastern Archipelago. [ Fantasy Japan...while there's probably some slight differences in language it's safe to assume Japanese exists but is not...Japanese. ]

I wouldn't consider myself fluent, but I speak it passingly well. [ His head tips to the side. ] Though I'm not translating anything now. I see. A widespread translation spell?

[The Eastern Archipelago... Well, that could describe Japan, but surely you'd just refer to it as Japan. And now this person is talking about translation spells.] Like a magic spell? That's pretty farfetched, isn't it? [Now Nagito's tone finally dips into disbelief. And yet--this is all so strange, he can't fully dismiss it, can he?

(There's no proof he's somewhere real. This could all be fake.)]

No. [ It's not farfetched, he means. Mithrun can hardly demonstrate at the moment, though.

For the first time faint expression flickers: the slightest possible frown. ]

That's what I'm missing. It doesn't feel the same as an area suppression spell.

[Ah--his face changed. Nagito has been watching it as much as he can, except when he couldn't see it, and this is the first time he's seen it change at all. It's barely an expression, though. You could mistake it for some reflexive twitch.

Nagito thinks of a trip to an island. But this isn't the time for that.]

I think you've misunderstood me. If you're talking about magic--that sort of thing shouldn't exist.

[Not "doesn't", although that's what Nagito might mean under different circumstances.]

[ ...Right. People can't follow your internal train of thought. A million scoldings from his squad sound in his ears and Mithrun sighs and obligingly meets Nagito halfway to appease his unseen ghosts. ]

I haven't misunderstood. It was already clear to me that we were from different worlds or times. [ "Times" seems less likely but is an acknowledged possibility. ]

Really? You came to a conclusion like that already? [Something like that--it's an extraordinary conclusion. Nagito hasn't finished working through the tangled threads of the situation. He'd gotten to allowing that magic might be referencing something real in this circumstance, but to go that far...] Is something like that a situation you've dealt with before?

The answer is both no and yes. [ Another world, another dimension - it amounts to the same sort of improbibility, doesn't it? Apparently deciding to keep moving Mithrun sets off once more, still directionless. He speaks as he walks. ]

Dungeons... [ How to explain them to someone without even a child's understanding? Mithrun thinks back to his own childhood, over a century ago, and borrows what he can. ] To simplify a great deal, every Dungeon connects to a dimension outside our own...according to theory. That which comes from Dungeons does not exist in the world proper, though it can be removed from them. While I have no experience leaving the "filter" or "barrier" one could consider a Dungeon to be, the concept of alternate planes of existence is something I deal with in my day to day life.

[Nagito continues following along, contemplating the information he's been provided. It could all be a lie, of course. Or just wrong. But it might not be, and there's enough peculiarity in the circumstances of Nagito's being here at all to ensure he doesn't dismiss it.]

It sounds like you lead a much more interesting life than I do! I don't really get out much. [Not anymore, anyway.] I can't decide if being here is lucky or unlucky...

[ Interesting...is it? Maybe to other people who don't go into Dunegons and who crave that sort of thing: excitement, adventure, whatever other myriad reasons people have for facing death. ]

Does it matter what it is so long as it is?

Good luck and bad luck follow each other. [Nagito says that like it's a fundamental pillar of the universe. Of all universes, maybe.] If I know which this is, then I have a better idea of what's coming. Dying might throw things off, though.

[Because he isn't sure if that's good or bad luck either.]

[ Some sort of world view. Okay. ]

Would it help if I tripped you?

[ He's being so sincere about this, however blandly it's being said. ]

Ah, something like that wouldn't tip the scales much. [Nagito isn't unfamiliar with nudging his luck around the little bit he can, but he's not really supposed to do the sorts of things that requires anymore. (Anyway, he was wrong about a lot of things the last time he did that.)] And anyway, I might fall down a cliff or something!

[He says it cheerfully, though he also seems sincere about that theoretical situation.]

That's not really a concern. I could retrieve you.

[ Stranger Whose Name He Doesn't Know because he doesn't care enough to ask. It's fine, someday he'll figure it out. ]

I couldn't ask you to go out of your way for someone like me! [Nagito waves a hand dismissively.]

Someone like you? [ That phrase gets some more interest, however mild. It implies something, though Mithrun could be reading it wrong. ]

Someone as unimportant as me, I mean. I'm really nobody special. [Nobody worth saving from falling down a cliff, apparently.]

Why do you say that?

[ It wasn't a useful answer, so he's just asking for clarity, sounding nothing more than mildly confused. ]

I don't have any particularly useful skills and I'm a terrible conversationalist. Most of the time people don't want to be anywhere near me! I have a talent, but it's the worst of the worst. I'm sure you must be bored just talking to me this much. [Maybe he shouldn't bring up boredom. But he can't help but be curious about the answer.]

I don't get bored. [ Neither does he typically get interested outside of his singular focus, but decades of rehabilitation have taught him to keep moving even when he'd rather lie down and do nothing at all. ]

Nor do I particularly care about your skills or conversation. Or you. [ It's not said rudely or meanly - just absentminded fact. ]

None of that means I would not retrieve you if necessary.

[So, not the same attitude, then. Still interesting, though, with how plainly he states everything. Nagito certainly doesn't take any offense to anything he says; he's been told similar things in much worse ways.]

That's very kind of you! [As if saying you would not allow someone to lay possibly terribly injured at the bottom of a cliff is a unique quality.] Still, I think it's probably better not to tempt my luck until I know what kind of place we're in exactly.

[Nagito pauses only briefly.] Oh, I haven't introduced myself, have I? I'm Komaeda Nagito, former Super High School Level Lucky Student. If that means anything to you...? [Since maybe it doesn't, and that's really why he's introducing himself. He's been talking about his talent this whole time, but while he's sure talent must exist everywhere, he doesn't know if it's referred to the same way everywhere.]

Edited 2024-11-30 07:03 (UTC)

I'm not kind. [ Or he is, but it isn't something he's like to notice or acknowledge. The thoughtfully assessing gaze doesn't waver until it shifts away. He's leading them to a dead end wall, probably. ]

Captain Mithrun of the House of Kerensil. [ Generally he'd just say "Mithrun", but he recognizes a title and family name as having been given to him and meets Nagito at the same level in an absent sort of way. ]

I recognize a title when I hear one. I assume it refers to your talent, your philosophy, or both.

My talent, yes. Like I said, it's not a very good one, but it's still mine. [He doesn't know any other way to define himself. And that response says Mithrun definitely doesn't recognize Hope's Peak, which does add more weight to that different worlds idea.

But, as they've been talking and walking, Nagito can't help but notice...]

Ah, Mithrun-san? I think this is a dead end.

[ ...

It is. Mithrun calmly turns around to begin meandering elsewhere. The odds of them locating anything useful with him in the lead remains minimal. ]

How does a talent for luck work?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject