lifeaftr | December Intro: Don't Come Home for Christmas

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December Intro: Don't Come Home for Christmas

INTRO LOG: DECEMBER

Who: Everyone!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: December 3rd and onward
Where: Monsun
Warnings: Mark as needed!

The Overview: Uncharted Waters
Stay alert, new adventurers; instead of the white-sand beaches of Enso, you will instead be coming to on one of two sides of the relatively uncharted lands of Monsun. Most of the information regarding this peculiar land can be found in the informational post linked, but as a quick-and-dirty rundown: Monsun's western side is a hot wasteland of a desert prone of disasters and mishaps, but will affect your character's emotional and psychological state in a positive sense, while its eastern side is a verdant forest filled with endless resources...as well as a tendency to bring out the absolute worst of your character.

To start with, all new arrivals will be showing up in one of two squares that characters uncovered last month! We are leaving it up to player discretion as to which side of the island your character arrives on, but bear in mind the psychological repercussions!

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

Monsun, C4: These Are Your Good Years
You wake to the hot sun steaming overhead, rapidly drying your clothes and belongings, waterlogged from washing upon this desolate shore. The heatwaves shimmer at your vision, distorting your view of the horizon. But if you really squint, it looks like there might be something dark green fringing that pipecleaner skyline, like a lush woodland awaits you on the other side of this desert nightmare. A mirage, maybe?

Whatever it is, you don't get very long to contemplate it. Beneath your feet, the ground has begun to shake as a many-headed horror erupts from the earth. Great streams of pale sand slough from its dry, scaly hide as multiple horned heads unfurl in a hissing inflorescence. The creature's eyes are all pale as grubs; it is quite blind. But that does not mean it cannot smell you.

Boasting both a thick hide and a chitinous coat of sandy-colored scales that blends them perfectly with their surroundings, Sand Hydras sleep several feet under the sand until they sense the vibrations of potential prey aboveground. While they are significantly smaller than their mythological counterparts - they can only span eight to twelve feet in length - Sand Hydras are cunning creatures nonetheless with a number of heads that can vary from one to as high as ten. Their weakness, on the other hand, is simple: water burns them like acid. It seems they may flourish only in any moisture-poor environment.

Assuming your character lasts that long, remember: as physically destructive as Monsun's west may be, your character's most admirable traits will be amplified to their fullest potential by the twenty-four hour mark.

Monsun, D3: Before You Bury Yourself Alive
Those waking on the eastern side of the island, on the other hand, will face a far more pleasing tableau. The temperature is perfect, the sun shines modestly through the canopy of deciduous greenery above your head, and the air is thick and sweet with the smell of fresh fruit.

That's right - within minutes of their arrival, your character will discover several plants laden with fresh wild blackberries.

Should that temptation arrest their attention, should they be vulnerable to the foibles of greed or hoarding or paranoia, your character may very well wish to keep this treat to themself. Or...perhaps not. Perhaps they'd much rather search out a fight, or try to steal someone else's supplies, or embark on a poorly-advised mission to swim out into Monsun's surrounding waters.

For that is, after all, the catch: as physically soothing as Monsun's east may be, your character's most hateful traits will be amplified to their fullest potential by the twenty-four hour mark.

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

Uh.

That was exactly the sort of buff that had the hydra practically cut in two before either of them could properly register what had happened. He'd stepped forward, swung, and encountered literally no resistance to his blade that his body could process as meaningful.

"...Huh."

Roy looked down at his sword, then back over at the girl.

"That.." He shook his head abruptly to clear it. "I appreciate it, but don't overexert yourself. I hear a lot of reports that magical powers are highly unreliable here."

That... was unusually effective. Such is the weird overlap of her magic and Roy's ruleset, probably.

"Everything's felt fine so far, but I'll keep that in mind, thanks." She relaxes her concentration, the boost fading. A few seconds was apparently all it needed. "Did you also wake up here with no explanation of what was going on?"

Well, Roy had incredible strength on his own. And then a Belt of Giant Strength adding its own augmentation. Her spell had quite literally put his physical strength on par with a great wyrm gold dragon.

The withdrawal of that sudden augmentation left him shuddering under the sudden fresh weight of his armor and gear -- but because that weight is still trivial to him, he adapted to it unconsciously in a moment once more, straightening up. "Actually, I've been in this world for a couple of months, and I did receive some instruction via dreams prior to actually awakening here. You didn't?"

"...Now that you mention it..." There was a dream, wasn't there? She had all but forgotten about it in the chaos of fighting hydras on the beach.

Recalling dreams in detail is always a murky proposition, but she thinks back. "I remember something about storytelling and creating new stories, but most of it was too vague to be of much use. They said something about 'mana pools,' so if I had to guess at what to do based on the dream, all I can think of would be to try and find one of those... does that make sense as a starting point?"

"Right." Where to begin. Roy swung his sword onto his shoulder, not willing to sheathe it quite yet when they had no certainty that danger had passed. "We're under the purview of a deity called the Storyteller, but for all reasonable intents we should be considered to be on our own here outside of certain transactions. The mana pools are used for transport, but we're all new to this specific island --" He gestured around to indicate Monsun as a whole. "--and to the best of my knowledge, we have not yet located a mana pool on this island. If we had, we could go back to more familiar land..."

"In other words, until we find a mana pool, we're stuck here. So... survive and explore?"

While being beset by hydras, in the desert. If only wilderness survival was covered in high school.

Hydras were the least of it, honestly. (And Roy didn't think the hydras were, uh, exactly challenging to her.)

"Survive. Explore. Catalog resources for the hopes of eventual transport and use. And figure out how to get across a lake, to reach a temple that likely has a god within it."

That makes sense, you'd want to keep thinking forwards and use your time here to expand what's available back on the other island, and-- wait.

"...What was that about a god?"

"That dream you had was from the Storyteller, the local god that has directly interacted with and taken an interest in us." Though the actual term 'god' had been under some dispute, Roy accepted that the Storyteller clearly had Divine Rank of some sort, which rendered the terminology debate pure semantics. "They told us that this island had its own god, which we were interested in meeting."

"That sounds like as good a place as any to start. Have you seen this lake? If it's not too big, it should be possible for at least some people to swim across..." Which leaves the question of those who can't, but it's arguably better than nothing.

"Wide enough and deep enough that none of us were willing to risk it -- particularly given that we have no idea what powers protect it or what might be lurking in the lake." Roy himself was probably entirely capable of swimming it, but at the risk of vastly overextending himself and likely serious trouble if anything opposed him. "We would ideally need to construct a raft or flotation device."

What might be lurking in it... fair enough. There's monsters buried in the sand, so why not in the water? That's a place where things are supposed to live.

"...I want to help. I don't know much about construction, but I can fight, and if it's necessary for building a raft I can take care of some heavy lifting."

"I don't know what we'd lift, but I appreciate the help. To be honest, the only idea I have at present is the walking cacti around here. They're plants, so they should float."

The alternative was hauling lumber across the river -- and quite aside from the perils of transit, that whole forest simply made his skin crawl. No doubt it was adventurers' paranoia, the sort that saw a trap in every chest and a mimic as every chest, but it was simply too good to be true.

"Walking cacti... all I've seen are the hydras. It sounds like this place isn't going to get boring anytime soon."

"Actually, once we get back to our, ah, home base, it gets kind of boring. A lot of efforts to survive, a lot of farming and building, and what adventure comes is usually in the form of catastrophe or disaster."

That reminded him, though. With no attack imminent, Roy swings his sword back into the straps on his armor, then slides his knapsack off one shoulder so he can start rummaging in it.

That reminds her that she still hasn't given her pack a proper inventory, either, so she sits down to do the same. Rice, some kind of fancy tool... is that alcohol?

"...Mine has a garden gnome in it."

"I've been adding to mine." With a slight smile, Roy tugged out a fairly unappealing chunk of walking cactus flesh, which he offered over to her. "Here. Not tasty, but nutrition and hydration both."

Yuka perks up at the sight of it, eagerly taking it. Fighting monsters in the desert is busy work.

"Oh, thanks! Where did you get this?"

"They're another kind of monster lurking around here. Walking cactus, is the best term we have for them. Exactly what they sound like,. They tend to be aggressive, so the ones I've had to put down, I've collected." Hoping all the while he wasn't committing some sort of genocide. Ideally they could find a way to just avoid the monsters.

Oh right, he mentioned something about walking cacti earlier. Sounds like a pain to fight, especially as a fist-fighter.

Eurgh, it tastes about as appetizing as it looks.

"Is monster hunting something you do for a living? You seem pretty comfortable with it, and I'm not sure what else you'd need a sword that big for."

"I'm an adventurer, so while it's not technically my profession, it's an integral part thereof." He left his knapsack open, just in case he needed to supply more to her. Plenty to offer. "Unfortunately, the sword is not reserved purely for monsters. There's more evil in the humanoid races than I particularly like, too."

That's troubling for Yuka to hear, being from a more upbeat genre than Roy. She's never hard to kill a living person, and isn't sure she could if she had to. Hopefully it won't come to that here, but it's a sobering thought.

"...I'm sorry for barging in on your fight unexpectedly earlier. I'm Yuka, thanks for the food and the answers."

"It's fine, no harm was done, and your help came in very handy. I probably would have gotten bitten a few times trying to take it down alone." Those bites wouldn't have amounted to much for him, in all fairness, but he really didn't mind skipping them. "I'm Roy Greenhilt. Happy to be of help, really... this place is something of a mess."

"I've actually never seen someone respond that strongly to my enhancement, I was really surprised. I wonder if it varies based on some factors I don't know about..."

She's only ever had two people to use it on before today, after all.

"If I had to guess, it was bolstering strength multiplicatively rather than additively. And I happen to not only be particularly strong, but I have a belt which enhance my strength further." Roy hooked a thumb into said belt to draw it to her attention.

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