lifeaftr | November Intro: Red Sun Rises Like an Early Warning

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.

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.

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

[ Nice. Good going, Karin. Excellent way to make a good first impression. The Hero Club would have your head if they could see you now. ]

Oh, and you're gonna leave to where, exactly?

[ Karin gives a huge, long-suffering groan and takes off after her. She messed up, yes, but that doesn't mean she's just going to let this kid go wandering off all by herself. ]

This place isn't safe right now. We've gotta get off the island otherwise we're all gonna end up right back in the sea.

[ Sachiko leers over her shoulder with her good eye, then turns to face the inland again. ]

You think I didn't feel it? I'm going to higher ground, naturally.

[ No questions AT ALL about where or why she's here. It was almost as if she was bluntly ignoring them for the priority of getting to safer ground. She's a very deliberate little girl, apparently, but not enough to ask for directions, her fake/real/fake reason being she doesn't want this girl to realize she's undead. ]

If I waste time talking, it's just going to sink faster.

[ This!!! Kid!!!! ]

Yeah and it's gonna sink with you still on it if you get lost wandering around in the woods like an idiot because you wouldn't take directions from someone who actually knows what they're doing!

[ She's helping. This is helping. ]

We've gotta get to a mana pool and get to the islets so just -- just follow me, alright? Then you can go do whatever you want!

[ Sachiko growls at the insult-- she doesn't sound like she takes guff from humans well. But she had a point, there was a countdown timer to death and if she only crawled ashore onto the islets hours after the rising sea, her personality would be all the more up to question. ]

F... fine! But I didn't ask for your help, just remember that!

[ It's spoken as childishly as it sounds. ]

I never said you did!

[ It's like looking into a mirror. A bratty, loudmouth mirror with messy hair. In anyone else this might trigger some level of self reflection but this is Karin Miyoshi we're dealing with here so we should maybe not put too much hope in that. ]

You're just going the wrong way! It's this way.

[ And off she marches, in what she's... fairly sure is the right direction to the mana pool. She's not going to waste time fretting over it now. ]

[ Silently, Sachiko takes after her and where she thinks the destination is, but just a little bit behind her. It's kind of haunting? Dead child with long bangs and having trouble walking because the ocean played kickball with you. She's acting tired, hungry, and "failing" to hide that she looks scared, an errant tear here or there... ]

Will there be food? A bed? A TV? ... A p-phone?

[ Faking the ignorance can get her pretty far as long as she plays it well. ]

Food and a bed, yeah. TV and a phone... we're still kinda working on that.

[ Of course, she has no idea where she's taking Sachiko once they actually hit the islets. She's said the girl could go and do whatever she liked once they arrived but now she's half a mind to take her back to the hut where Luna and Mira can deal with her.

And any other time, she would. But in the aftermath of everything that happened down in the caverns, she's not really sure if it's fair to drag another homeless waif back to dump into their laps.

Come on, Karin. You can handle a scared kid by yourself, right? ]

... you're thinking you wanna call your folks, right?

[ It's not much, but she's audibly making an effort to soften her tone a bit as she goes marching along. ]

I would want to let them know where I am... that I'm okay. But a mouse told me time stopped back home, is that true? That sounds so ridiculous...

[ In truth: Already bought it and understands, just needs to keep up that little ignorant girl act. The people reacting to her here are... strange. She's clearly dead, right? She's very visibly the walking dead. And yet everyone politely averts their eyes to such things and treats her as a sweet little dumpling.

No one's even asked. 'Hey, are you dead?'

It's strange. ]

Oh, so you met the musketeer guy, huh? Yeah, get used to that. There's a couple people on this island who are kind of...

[ She pauses and makes a vague hand gesture that's probably supposed to mean 'weird as hell' but after getting yelled at like before, she's putting in a little more effort to be tactful and refrains from actually saying it. ]

But yeah, that's looking like that's how it shakes out. So long as you're here, time just kind of stops back home. So we got told, I mean. So even if you're here for a while, it's not like you just up and disappeared back home. Soon as you go back, you'll just end up straight back where you came from.

[ ... apparently, anyway. ]

[ For the briefest flash, a cruel grin crosses her face when she's sure Karin isn't looking. She could ruin this place like a little vacation then head back home to Heavenly Host as a nice reprieve. ]

That's a relief... that means mommy and daddy won't be worrying. I'll be doing my best to help from here on out, too...

[ Wait. What could she possibly help with on an abandoned island? ]

What are you guys trying to do?

Survive, for the most part.

[ Okay, cool, way to make that sound totally ominous. Time to verbally backspace and try that again. ]

I mean, it's not like that part's the big struggle or anything? We've got food and places to sleep and it's not ideal or anything, but we're not in any danger. We just don't really have any big goals right now.

November Intro: Red Sun Rises Like an Early Warning

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