lifeaftr | January Intro: I Know the Winter's Getting Colder

INTRO LOG: JANUARY

Who: Everyone!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: January 5th and onward
Where: Chol and surrounding waters
Warnings: Mark as needed!

The Overview: New Lands
New arrivals will not be waking in the typical hub of activity; instead, they will find themselves coming to on the small island of Chol. While the island's fringes are little more than an unforgiving spread of craggy, canyon-like rock and coastal cliffs, the island dips down to form a fertile divot of edenic woodland in its center. The people living there will even be helpful and polite to you, should you inquire after them.

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!

Icebreaker: This is the Winter of Our Youth
Unless you're someone with a fondness for the cold, you'll undoubtedly be waking with more than a slight chill in your bones. The appearance of the island of Chol has signaled a coming event of great import in LifeAftr, and unfortunately, the signs of that event's approach have already been set in motion. The temperature has begun to drop as the sun's rays begin to die, faster and faster, leading to an impressive cold snap in the ocean waters - particularly those surrounding Chol.

It is for that reason that you won't be waking on Chol, per se. Instead, you'll be waking on a thick crust of ice that's mantled itself over the ocean waters, freezing solid enough to bear your weight...for the most part.

The ice won't hold forever; it isn't meant to. If you happen to be particularly vivacious in your waking, or especially active in general, thick cracks will start to spiderweb out from underneath those impacts with low, warning chunks and wrenches of fracturing ice. Better hurry to land soon, unless you care to take a little dip into those freezing cold ocean waters.

Mainland: When We Pick Over the Past
Should you make it to the land of Chol, braving the iced-over waters surrounding its craggy shores, you'll encounter something at least as startling - the people who have elected to set up a rudimentary encampment upon its lands. While a bit on the scalier side, the Jormun are nonetheless allied to you land-dwellers, and will welcome you to the island.

Most will be preoccupied with preparations for an approaching siege, but many will comment idly that the cold is a sign of the coming battle. Some may point you to their leader, known to most as Munin, but others will venture hospitality based on the actions of those land-dwellers that came before you, who were successful in allying themselves to this sea-dwelling people.

Those who might have braved the cold a little too fiercely will quickly be offered some rather rough blankets - perhaps more on par with burlap sacks in terms of texture - as well as a hot brew that the Jormun call brrkshavak. Heated to a boil just prior to being served, the drink will be more than adequate in warming your weary bones, though it bodes mentioning that it is both scalding hot and made with a fleshy kind of undersea herb that is akin to crushed chili pepper in taste.

It'll warm you up, all right.

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

On the list of things that Gabe expects to run into in places like this, a tree man is not one of them. Granted, he's seen some...stuff in his first month here alone, and adjusting to things like having a flesh-and-blood body turned out to only be a fraction of that.

Fish-people one day. Tree-people on another.

Gabe does what is perfectly reasonable for someone to do in this case.

Namely, that is grab the nearest vine that looks like it belongs to the tree-man's body and pull, just to see what might happen.

Well... how reasonable that choice is might be open to debate. It's a debate he'll get to have in a few seconds, in fact!

Epsilon was aware of Gabe, but he wasn't expecting something like that. He sinks his roots into the ground on reflex when his conversation with the tree is interrupted, tightening his vine around the trunk for balance--

But the woody vine Gabe's grabbing suddenly wraps back around his wrists and grabs him back.

It didn't hurt to have his vines pulled any more than it does a human to have an arm pulled; in fact, it doesn't hurt at all, because his body doesn't contain bones that can be dislocated, or muscles that can be wrenched.

But the look on his face when he turns around is somewhere between 'betrayed' and 'disappointed.'

It's clear that Gabe wasn't exactly expecting that.

Granted, he's grown steadily use to regular solidity as concept applied to him, instead of simply to everyone else, but that doesn't mean he's used to having that door swing open to be passed through on a whim. He isn't invisible anymore. He isn't an invisible boy, who can effect change and watch the disaster unfurl from the sidelines.

The not-so-invisible boy gets a twining of vines around his wrists in a fierce, unyielding grip. He starts struggling at once, expression screwing up in an abrupt transition from "curious mischief" to "utter outrage."

"Let go," he says, and promptly begins to kick at the roots of the tree-person, as if that might make him any more likely to regard Gabe as less of a threat or irritant.

..... okay, Epsilon is not a fan of this treatment. He has a great deal of experience with tantrums and meltdowns, but this is a little much.

"Sorry," he says, and he means it, though it's not clear if he's addressing the tree, or Gabe, or both--because as he says it, he relinquishes his remaining contact with his new friend and instead turns his vines entirely on Gabe to wrap him in a manner not unlike a snake in a bid to lift him bodily off the ground.

"....but no."

...no? No. He's saying no. He - no one says no to him. The vines start to crawl around him with increased vigor, coiling around his body and picking him up, and Gabe's childish fury gets about thirty seconds of transitional processing, his features blanking out in utter shock as to how quickly things stopped being in a vein of his control, before he realizes that there's a name for the hot, crawling prickle under his skin. He felt it only once before, when Mom let herself be wheeled in and strapped to a bed and have electrodes affixed to her temples and he knew that she was going to let him slip away forever, and he wanted to hold onto her and never let her go. He remembers this. He remembers it, now.

It's fear.

"Let go!" It's pitching louder, angrier, and now - far more terrified. "You can't hold me! No one can hold me!"

Epsilon's expression remains firm, his brows knitting slightly as he listens to the change in Gabe's voice. He doesn't like being frightening--he doesn't like the fact that he represents something dangerous, that he, no matter what he does, will always be a threat. The fact that Gabe is terrified is not new to him either as a monster or as a robot, but it doesn't sit well.

However--

"I'm not going to hurt you," he says. His voice is quiet. "You're safe. I cannot hurt you. But I'm not letting you go. Not until you've calmed down."

Not going to hurt him? That's - that's stupid. Nothing can hurt him. He's old as time and forever young and impossible to destroy. Nothing can get rid of him, not forever.

"Nothing can hurt me," Gabe fires back, angrily, and to prove it, he tries kicking out again. "I'm older than time. I'm a perfect stranger. No one leaves me behind!"

Which is exactly why he's throwing a tantrum, like an angry two-year-old.

Nothing can hurt him.

...no. That's untrue. Epsilon doesn't need to know anything about this young man to know that much. Even if he were, somehow, physically invulnerable, he's clearly afraid, and fear is painful. So in that sense, Epsilon is hurting him. But--

"Older than time...?" Epsilon's expression has darkened a little, but he lets confusion creep into his face and voice. His hold on Gabe doesn't slacken, however. Gabe can kick all he wants, but he's too far away from any part of Epsilon to hit him, or at least he is if Gabe hasn't been secretly training to be part of the Rockettes.

Ten metric tons of denial and a severe lack of a wake up call will make a pissy poltergeist-turned-seeming-adult say just about anything, it’s true. He’s been manhandled before, sure, thanks to Keith, but not to this extent - and not to the point where he can’t even get s purchase or a foothold or anything. Why are so many people apparently bigger and strong than he is? It isn’t fair.

“You have no idea what I am! What I could do to you - ”

Except his struggles are getting him decidedly nowhere.

“Let me -go!”

"I don't think you've told me what you are," Epsilon offers by means of reproach. "But I don't think there's very much you can do to me like this."

Epsilon would find this entire thing comical if he hadn't been hoping for Gabe to cool down once he realised he couldn't actually force Epsilon to do what he wants. It's very easy to keep him talking, though, since Gabe is apparently more than willing to use information defensively.

“I’m more than memory. I’m - I’m - “

...solid. Flesh and bone. Oh god, he’s flesh and bone and he’s constrained by his own newfound ability to exist in the physical space. What once was a cause for celebration now strikes him as a bitterly double-edged sword. Just as he can affect the world, so can it affect him.

He needs to...to get out of this. Somehow.

“You can’t do this to me.” It sounds less petulant now and more incredulous that this is happening to him at all.

Edited 2018-01-09 23:25 (UTC)

January Intro: I Know the Winter's Getting Colder

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