December Intro: Don't Come Home for Christmas

[lifeaftr_mods]

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.

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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

[unpurify]

No.

[But if he can't go beyond the rainbow, then...he can't. The Batter will continue, as always.]

[creditless]

I wasn't born with the same aggression as you, thinking killing something fixes it, like throwing out a broken toaster will ensure you'll still have something to toast your bread. I have no desire to kill you.

You are reborn. Accept it, deal with it, learn pain and grief and then you can appreciate joy and contentment as well.

cw continues

[unpurify]

[The Batter almost asks a certain question. A question that would give credit to Zacharie's claims of the purifier being his own man now and not a toy with ties to the deluge myth.

"But what if that's what I want?"

But he doesn't. Not in his conversation with Ren and not right now. Zacharie can probably make a good few educated guesses about his mindset if the merchant wants to, but that's on him. Instead the Batter has a simpler response.]

Okay.

1/2

[creditless]

Liar.

[ He summons Icarus once more, and points it towards the Batter. ]

You're practically yearning for this. Because then the conversation can be over and I won't have anything to do with you changing at all.

[ He stabs Icarus into the ground, where it fades away. ]

You have a want.

You've learned to want.

[ Zacharie laughs. ]

We have already gotten started.

[creditless]

You think you can make your debt up to me by dying? You died every time at the end! Dying is like candy to you. You reload a save and you try, try again.

The moral of the game is the puppeteer could have stopped you by turning the game OFF and they never did.

The game is OFF.
The Batter is now ON.

Where's your switch, now?

[unpurify]

[That seems to strike a cord in the Batter...but not in a good way. He's not looking at Zacharie anymore. Or at anything, really.]

It's not here. I'm not here.

[He's been feeling less and less real the more time passes here. The Batter didn't keep track of the time, did the bare minimum to keep himself alive and threw himself into everything because he wasn't meant to exist without a purpose. Without it...

Without it 'the Batter' was just a thing he watched outside of himself. The monster within the Batter was terrifying and powerful but only existed when others saw it. The man was just a shell to give himself shape, filled up with purity and nothing else. And thinking about it too hard made him feel like he needed to scrub his body clean again. Reborn, reanimated, try, try again.

He wanted permanence. He wanted to stop. Something was screaming within him but like always, it was all in his head.]

I'm not here.

[creditless]

[ Wordlessly, Zacharie reaches into his pocket to take out the music box. He winds it up, and it begins to play. Immediately, this is a tune the Batter should recognize from home. Something about the ambiance. It is a pocketed piece of their world.

It sounds discordant and awful to anyone else who hears it, but to them... ]

You're here.

You're a person.

Neither of these things destroy the fact that you are The Batter.

Nothing could erase you. Not really. You cannot curl up and die from starvation again and again and again. You cannot let boredom and loss decide whether you are alive or dead.

I do not hate you, le Batteur, but the only way to make you realize your reality is through pain, because pain is the only language you speak so far.

[unpurify]

[The music pierces the fog in his mind, silences the thoughts long enough that he can slowly breathe again. Everything that the Batter has expressed up until now seems to be vanishing under that blanket of nothingness once again, but it is also telling that he has to sit down.

His world was a world composed of pain and nothingness that spread to reality. He destroyed the slate because it was better to completely start over rather then try making something from the old.

And it wasn't that the Batter hadn't looked. He dug through the dirt and found escape was impossible. Pain was behind them and before them. So the only option was to send everything back to the Nothingness.

If you love something and know them at their best...you do not let them suffer at their worst. Never again.]

...I don't know how. I've never dealt with this before.

[creditless]

You must.

That's your next story, my dear Batter. It is conquering the unconquerable. It is sleeping to dream, it is building to work up a thirst, it is sowing plants so that you might not hunger.

It is learning pain... so that when it alleviates, you understand contentment and happiness, and you finally see what's over the rainbow. Why people chase them. Why their rarity is what makes them so coveted.

Batter, in truth, I have always felt... sorry for you.

[ He pauses. ]

You never got to retire like I did. You decided with finality to meet your own end. And now you're here, in an unfamiliar place, and have to start that quest without home to keep you safe.

From now on, this shack-- our project-- is Home. Think of it like that. This is the one place where beyond the door lies Zone 1, except if you cross the doorway. [ He sets the music box on a cut log serving as a table, so they can both use it. ] Then you go back into the island.

You've been given the gift of dreams, you know? You should sleep and really feel why a bed is so preferable to the ground. And dream, if you can.

[unpurify]

[The executioner will die last. That was just the way things had to be. The Batter would have no idea what the world would have been like if the Judge had bested him. If it would have stayed purified permanently or would life had been eventually restored?

It wouldn't matter in his case. There was no way that the Batter didn't know what would happen to him once the switch was flipped OFF. He was counting on it killing him. He was, after all, not convinced that he alone should be the only person to survive. The world and the Batter would fall together.

It's better like that.

But then the game changed. He had life breathed back into him by this place and brought here. Told that his story was beginning anew and let lose to do...whatever he pleased, apparently. Build things and break them. Live and die and come back to life again. Walk with others even if he choose to walk alone. Uniqueness surrounded him yet the Batter remained the same.

Much like the Queen and beautiful times long gone, the Batter held the purpose he was given by Hugo and the world with both hands and refused to let go. Without it felt like free-falling and made the fear he could feel blatantly obvious.

The Batter was scared to be himself, not the thing he was created for. Like Zacharie said, it didn't destroy him but it still felt like peeling his skin off and rubbing salt in the wounds.

'What comes next?'. He was never meant to answer that.

...but. But if the Batter thought of this place as Home, it made it a little easier. Regard it as a place to stay and not something to occasionally visit. The Batter was sure he didn't even know who else lived here either.

A place to sleep and dream. Again and again.]

...I have been dreaming since I arrived here.

[Storyteller induced ones aside, he did now. Shapes and darkness. Calling him back to a void that the Batter was sure he wouldn't come back from if he went.

He didn't dream of the Queen or Hugo. Not once.]

I don't know how to feel about them.