November Intro: Red Sun Rises Like an Early Warning

[lifeaftr_mods]

INTRO LOG: NOVEMBER

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

The New Arrivals: Hold My Hand
When you wake, it will be to the lapping of waves, frothed with foam...pulling at your hair, your skin, your clothing. The sand is soft and wet beneath you, but it's several inches submerged. And the longer you stay here, the more obvious it will be that the water level of the ocean ringing this strip of island has begun to to rise, and not merely because the tide has started to come in.

And what's more? You can tell that something else about this entire situation is horribly, horribly wrong.

Perhaps you've lost some special power. Perhaps some piece of your memory is freshly and disconcertingly blank. Perhaps you've just discovered that one of your senses is missing, or that you've been rendered unable to speak, or you've been struck by a debilitating fatigue. Not only are you stranded in some unfamiliar place, stuck on a rapidly flooding beach, but you aren't even doing it in full possession of all your faculties.
For those who agreed to put themselves at a disadvantage for a stranger, these are your consequences. If you're unclear as to the handicap your character has been assigned, if any, please check your initial acceptance notice!

All new arrivals will additionally awake with knapsacks, their names stitched to the front. The contents of said knapsacks can also be found in your acceptance notices!

For All: It's a Long Way Down
The water isn't a problem for the newest arrivals, either. It seems that the waters all over Ensō have started to rise, slowly at first, and then with a steadily increasing rate. At first, you might be forgiven for assuming the tide must simply be unusually high, or maybe that the island's begun to sink. But the longer it endures, the more obvious it becomes that neither is the case.

The water has begun to rise. Something is wrong with the island itself, or the being living on it, and now there is nothing preventing the water's inexorable approach as it steadily washes over and over the mainland. In fact, if you listen closely, you might even be able to hear a peculiar sound tearing over the cold rush of the coastal wind; something akin to a desolate wailing.

Either get to high ground - and quickly - or find out what's causing this. But either way, we suggest you hurry...because there are a great deal of newly arrived, very disoriented folk on the beach that could really, really use your help.

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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.

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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!

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[postictal]

[Okay, so he has no idea who that is, and he isn't really in the state of mind to care, one way or another. The weary acceptance of the circumstances is - it's familiar. He'll give it that.]

Thanks, [he says, the word a dry pull,] but I'm gonna need you to work with me here. You hurt?

[Start simple. Start with something he can do. He doesn't see any immediate injuries, but water has a tendency to darken everything and make things indistinct.]

[yourattention]

Pretty sure nothing's actually bleeding or broken, if that's what you mean. It just feels like somebody replaced all my blood with lead.

[Slowly and inelegantly, Connor struggles into a sitting position as he talks. The water doesn't help, but at least he doesn't slip and end up lying in it again.]

I feel like I ran a mile and all I did was sit up.

[postictal]

[It's something. It's a marginal improvement. He'll take it, all things considered. Tim lifts his eyebrows faintly, unwilling to let slip that he's encouraged even by that minimal effort - mostly because he suspects that might be misconstrued as an invitation to lie right the fuck back down again.]

But you did it.

[Only then does he stick one hand out, palm up, in an offer of support.]

[yourattention]

Go me.

[He doesn't sound terribly enthused, but there's the barest suggestion of a smile on his face when he reaches out to take Tim's hand.

It's entirely possible that "But you did it." is the most encouraging thing anybody has ever said to Connor aside from that one time in middle school Alana Beck told him he wasn't stupid, he just learned things differently. That was different, though, a project partner trying to make him feel better by lying to him and not . . . for once, someone actually acknowledging he accomplished something, however insignificant.]

[postictal]

[ Whatever it was about his approach that cemented it, Tim’s not currently in a position to examine it at length. He can be a hard line of support, bracing feet against the soft sand to help Connor lever himself to his feet. That’s the extent of what he has in the other guy’s behalf so far. ]

If it means anything, people don’t usually show up here about ready to drown.

[yourattention]

[There's a lot of things Connor could say, but now that he's actually taken a look at where he is it's all kind of secondary. He already knew this wasn't the park where he'd started out, but he'd sort of assumed he'd made his way to a lake or something.

Instead, he stands. It requires more support than he'd like to admit, but he's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.]

So this isn't the afterlife for the sad fucks who committed suicide.

[It's not a question. He sort of remembers what the rabbit was telling him about stories: You are simply here to live it, perhaps. At the time, he assumed that was a cruel joke at his expense, but in retrospect it makes more sense that a supposed "god" was telling the truth.]

[postictal]

Unfortunately.

[Answeringly dry and unimpressed with the spread of sand and seawater, and also - more than a little guilty that he’s more than a little morbidly relieved at that moment. Real nice, Tim. Classy, having what you were idly speculating proved explicitly correct.]

Unless hell is full of carnivorous monkeys, anyway.

[yourattention]

Great. Whenever I thought about what movie I'd most want to be trapped in forever, my answer was always Planet of the Apes.

[He hates everything about this already, thanks.]

[postictal]

[He can take a pretty compelling guess as to what the narrative there might entail - but he'd have to guess. His pop cultural literacy is too underdeveloped to cover all but the most nascent of basics.]

Gotta say, the flooding is new. Should probably get ourselves to higher ground.

[Now that he's gone to all the effort of making sure the newbie doesn't drown, it just makes sense to see that to completion.]

[yourattention]

One sec.

[Connor picks up a waterlogged messenger bag that looks like it's seen better days, opens it, summarily dumps like a hundred soggy index cards onto the beach, and slings it over his shoulder.]

Okay. Lead the way.

[postictal]

[Uh-huh.]

[Tim's brow scrunches down in confusion, brief and apparent, but he puts it aside. He doesn't have time to question irregularities, and there's a hell of a lot more he needs to focus on. That they both do.]

Tim. [That's his only greeting as he hikes his knapsack a bit more firmly across one broad shoulder and starts sloshing his way across the beach.]

[yourattention]

Connor. CJ, if you're one of those people. [He pronounces it like "siege," rather than two letters.] Does this place have a name?

[If he sounds out of breath, it's because he elected to drag the knapsack with his name on it behind him. It wasn't like he was going to try and pick it up - it looked heavy.]

[postictal]

One of...? [He, uh, has no idea what that means either. For a minute he'd almost dared to venture for relief that he might be something approaching the same level as this guy, as Connor, but it's immediately become apparent that they're operating on separate frames of reference.]

[The guy's really working against the tide here too, which means an already heavy bag is gonna get even heavier with all the water weighing it down. Tim doubles back to grip one of the straps and heave it from the water, dripping, grimacing slightly at the extra weight.]

[He can take it. He's not good for much, but at least he's handy. Har har.]

Uh...I guess. Ensō, that rabbit jackass calls it. I think.

[yourattention]

[Sorry, Tim. You're talking to a Generation Z kid and his idea of dealing with reality healthily is to say a lot of memes, make a bunch of pop culture references, and then pray for the sweet release of death.]

I . . . kind of thought that was a hallucination. [Well. He's still not sure this isn't a hallucination. Or a very, very bad dream.] Rabbits don't get that big.

[postictal]

[He can at least appreciate the last item on that list.]

If it was, everyone else got it too. Rabbit kinda tends to show up in the flesh too. Or, uh...whatever "gods" call flesh, if they have it.

[yourattention]

Isn't the whole point of gods that they're . . .

[God, his family hasn't been Christian since his mom started picking up a religion of the year what's the right way to put it?]

. . . not mortal, I guess? All-present.

[He means omniscient, probably.]

[postictal]

No idea. They're only the second one I've met and they're not doing a real great job selling their species, as a rule.

[Sorry, did that sound bitter? That's because it was. The quickest way to higher ground, he knows, is through the temple. He starts steering them in that direction; at least he can try and locate a water pool that'll take them to the islets, assuming those are safe from the flooding, or the mountain, which has the best chance of making it through this.]

As in, they're kind of a dick. [Thanks, Tim, 'cause that needed clarifying.]

[yourattention]

Well, yeah. You have to be kind of an asshole to think flooding the earth to start humanity over is a good idea.

[Which is, from what he can tell, what's happening here so that scans. Gods are terrible. It's not enough that they're omnipotent and all-powerful, they need to feel appreciated.]

[postictal]

[That...huh.]

[That takes him a minute. Not necessarily because he doesn't understand the reference, but because he has to narrow down his reference pool to get at the one Connor's driving at in specificity. Setting aside that flooding appears to be the order of the day for now, there's also the little fact where he knows someone personally who once made it a central aim to do exactly that sort of start over on a mass scale.]

[A word of which they were very fond, but leaves him grimacing.]

Really hope that's not what's happening here. They just saved our asses last month. [Wouldn't make sense to wipe them off the map so soon after saving them. Right?]

[Hell if he knows anymore.]

[yourattention]

You can blame it on global warming if it makes you feel better - unless you like to pretend that doesn't exist.

[He's not here to judge people on their scientific views. That would require him to actually care what other people's scientific views are and that sounds like . . . effort and shit. He's currently actively not trying to die and that's about all the spoons he has.]

[postictal]

Global warming kinda only works if there's a globe. Far as I can tell, this "world" of ours here has two parts: the island that exists and the island that only sort of exists.

[They have names, he knows, but he hasn't bothered to learn either of them on the principle of it.]

You end up in any place kinda like this one before waking up here?

[yourattention]

No, but I had a dream where I got into a fight with both a kid and a bird. At least I think that's what happened. [So that's a yes, actually.] Anyway, everyone knows you can blame whatever you want on global warming and millennials. "Millenials are killing the soap industry." "Global warming causing island to mysteriously sink into ocean."

It doesn't matter if it's true or not.

[postictal]

[A kid and a bird. Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly narrow it down. They've got a whole mess of stab-happy kids here. Seems like the Storyteller has a knack for fostering a child army in the same vein as Ozuma. Hilarious.]

Next time someone decides to set up an island tabloid, I'll be sure to let them know. [There's a dryness to the tone that doesn't quite undercut the faint amusement there, veiled as it is. He adds the last bit casually, like it's no big, like he's not the least bit curious:]

Kid give you a name?

[yourattention]

I was a little busy to ask a name, but the shirt they were wearing was striped, which I thought was weird because . . . he always wore stripes.

[Connor says the last bit more quietly, without the flippancy he normally has.]

[postictal]

[Striped. Narrows it down to two, though the fight part kind of implies that it'd be Chara - "Kidwun," as far as this guy here is concerned. Gotta remember the kid's cover, even if the kid themself doesn't seem to always.]

[The shift in his demeanor as he says it is immediate enough for Tim to take notice, lifting one eyebrow.]

He?