lifeaftr | October Intro: Louder than Sirens, Louder than Bells

INTRO LOG: OCTOBER

Who: Everyone!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: October 3rd
Where: Ensō
Warnings: Mark as needed!

The Beach: For All the Rest
The shores of Ensō are far from the tranquil, almost idyllic tropical backdrop that they should be. And so it is that while you fish, or perhaps as you go about your daily business on the islets, the first thing you will note is the persistent sound hammering at the back of your skull.

A drumming.

And it's growing louder.

The source of the drumming will, like it or not, soon become apparent. At the fringes of the trees, wielding slings and hollow, wooden pistols, is a group of large and very displeased simians who have every intent of claiming this spot of beach - yes, traveler, this spot of beach you're standing on right now! - for their own, and by any means necessary.

And they certainly don't look interested in diplomacy.

If you came armed, you might be in luck, because this conflict will require your steady hand in its resolution. If you did not...well, you may be better suited to run, or risk capture at the hands of warriors skilled, cunning, and incredibly vicious. Laugh at their monkey business all you like; they are ingenious fighters and, what's more, they're just as good at killing as they are at capture.

For the uninitiated, this particular brand of chaos doesn't usually sweep across the entire island the way it has. But those who have been here for some time will recognize the monkeys in question, and might even recognize this for what it is: revenge.

Group I: The Squeakquel
Looks like your monkeying around last month has landed you and everyone else in a spot of trouble. The monkeys in question certainly weren't happy to be confronted with others on their lands, nor are they willing to share their territory. While you may have triumphed last time you confronted them, the apes have been planning their revenge in the meantime.

Some of you were unlucky enough to become targets. Overnight, a great deal of them silently invaded the islets. Their blow-dart guns are equipped with a fairly powerful sedative that is more than capable of knocking most living creatures out - and those that were immune were simply snatched up, gagged, and bundled away.

However, it seems that some of their prisoners didn't suit their purposes, for one way or another, and thus weren't retrieved with the intention of long-term capture. Which is why a number of you will awaken in regions of the island that you've already explored.

...the really, really dangerous ones.

Whether it's a Center of Gravity, a parade of centipuppies, a contingent of Lungblossoms, a Fustercluck, or something else entirely, one thing is certain: the monkeys wanted you out of their way.

So get ready to fight for your life.

Group II: Ape Escape
If you're not one of the slightly luckier newcomers that materializes on the shore, then you're one of the unlucky ones that's managed to materialize square in the middle of the jungle. Or rather, in the middle of one of the denser, more populated parts of the jungle. The abodes woven into the canopy are crude, built of mud and sticks, but they're nonetheless sturdy.

And, as an important note - they are also swarming with monkeys. Snarling, baying, armed monkeys. Perhaps they'd be more hostile toward an interloper...if you weren't already in a cage, along with several others.

Fortunately for the newbies, they've all got something the monkeys didn't anticipate, aside from the element of surprise. Most prisoners don't arrive with knapsacks full of newly-acquired gear, and it's a good thing, too - you may very well need it, and the help of the new arrivals, to escape this place. You could always wait for the cavalry to come, but are you really willing to take that risk?

Group III: Pot Luck
As for you, you terribly fortunate third group?

You'll find yourselves suspended in wooden cages as well, though this time, to the hot curtain of whitish steam clouding your vision. It smells an awful lot like smoke down there. An awful lot like something...burning? Unlike your fellows over in the second group, these cages aren't simply a means of containing you, no. These cages are currently hanging over what might be the largest cast iron cauldron you've ever seen. All of this is, of course, for one simple reason:

Some species of monkeys are carnivores.

The acrid scent of smoke is already hot and rancid in your nostrils; the pyre beneath you has been lit, and the hungry flames are beginning to boil the water below quite eagerly. We'd suggest you hurry up in freeing yourself and your fellows - being boiled alive is not a particularly pleasant way to go. At least the monkeys weren't expecting quite so many main courses so soon, which allows you the element of surprise.

As a final note to those who participated in the Test Drive Meme, bear in mind that those threads, if all parties involved would like, can be game canon in the form of dream-like memories involving a place very much like this one, though the layout is considerably different.

All new arrivals will awake with knapsacks with their names stitched to the front. The contents of said knapsacks can be found below!

Feeling a tad adrift? Make sure to check the Locations Page, which has details regarding the starting areas and a handy map for those who feel better with a bird's eye view!

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

'Monster' is one of the names they'd called him when he was cast down, trapped in the Downside and cut off from the rest of the world. Different reality, somewhat similar circumstances. He'll be less prickly about the terminology once he understands where Sans is coming from.

The skeleton moves quickly, with the proper motivation - but so does the lungblossom. Oralech supposes finding food is as much a matter of life or death for it as not getting eaten is for them.

He lunges away from it, his jump carrying him well out of the reach of grasping vines and what he assumes is a gaping maw at the front of it. Demons are big, but just like skeletons and lungblossoms they can move a lot faster than one would first think. He glances back towards Sans.

Is he keeping up?

There's only so much a more diminutive skeleton can do to keep up with someone so tall -- Sans can't exploit shortcuts like he used to, teleporting now would just exhaust him even more than the act of running does. In short (ha ha), he's falling behind, losing progress by the necessity of dodging the occasional grasping vine.

Monsters like Sans, they don't have a sense of pride to preserve. So when Oralech looks back, he does something that, perhaps, nobody expects.

He puts out a hand, reaching. Like he just expects a stranger to tug him along -- or leave him behind to win a little extra time to escape -- either way, leaving the choice up to a guy he's only just met. What's it going to be? SPARE him or FLEE?

Oralech has something of a soft spot for people who need help. He's learned to dislike having his better nature taken advantage of, but much to his frustration the instinct to render aid is there all the same. Leaving Sans behind would guarantee his own escape, true, but then he'd have to live with the knowledge that he traded someone else's life for his own. He's not the type of person that can carry that sort of burden.

Pint-sized skeletons, though? That, he can carry. Dragging him, he suspects, is a recipe for a dislocated shoulder. Then he'd be the one stuck putting it back in the socket, and frankly he's not sure how a creature without ligaments is even walking around.

He pauses long enough to tuck Sans under one arm, mindful of where he plants his claws. Then they're off, long strides and heavy footsteps taking them away from the lungblossom. Somewhere behind them it lets out a low roar; they will not be sticking around long enough to find out what it signifies.

Soon enough they reach a clearing, the sounds of the lungblossom's pursuit having fallen silent. Oralech gently sets Sans down and then pulls his mask away from his face, breathing heavily. He's dressed for a cold night on a mountaintop, not a jog across a tropical island.

"That... should be far... enough."

To Sans's credit, he doesn't make carrying his slow, dumpy tailbone around difficult; maybe he's grateful he isn't slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, or that he brought him along at all, but the skeleton immediately assumes the position of 'limp and complacent' once secured under one arm.

Oralech lets him down easy as you please, and Sans is quick to chuckle, pretending to wipe sweat from the bony supraorbital ridges of his brow. No, wait, is that actually some kind of condensation there?

How the heck-- nah, it's probably jungle humidity. Skeletons don't sweat.

"Whew," he plops right onto the ground, even though it wasn't him doing all the heavy lifting. Or even much running. But he does add, after a moment of kneading his skull like he's nursing the start of a headache: "Thanks for the putting petal to the metal, frond. I really owe you one.

"...So that must'a been the unruly weed Muffet was talkin' about. Huh."

October Intro: Louder than Sirens, Louder than Bells

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