January Intro: I Know the Winter's Getting Colder

[lifeaftr_mods]

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.

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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

[daydreamy]

Yeah! Or, um, we were friends when we got here but now we're dating.

[ She looks so gleeful. So gleeful. You can practically see the stars and hearts dancing around her head. ]

[postictal]

[Friends, he’d said, as if it weren’t painfully evident that there’s some high school delirium-level giddiness at play here. No wonder the two are something of a matched set.]

You had the time to iron that out between everything else? [Meaning he’s swung past “wearily confused about whether or not he actually gives a shit” and slammed straight into “impressed despite himself, but probably not for the reason anyone would assume he would be.”]

[daydreamy]

Yeah! It actually didn’t take that long. [ she seems so blithely happy about it… ] Or honestly, it was more like we’d kind of ironed most of it out already but we just needed to make sure we were on the same page!

[ it took kyouko kougami upwards of two weeks to realize she and her girlfriend were, in fact, dating. This is your magical heroine, Lifeaftr. ]

[postictal]

[Unfortunately for all parties, Tim Wright is the least equipped to hand out relationship advice ever based on the fact that he’s sunoly never bothered, or plans to.]

What, like - like that you both figured it out and told each other, or...?

[He doesn’t go here man he’s got no clue how this works.]

[daydreamy]

Kiiiiiind of? Um, it's more like I figured it out and confessed to her and then I sort of didn't realize that meant we were dating now. Because we hadn't actually been on a date or like, officially talked about it?

[ she at least looks embarrassed about it so perhaps that's progress ]

[postictal]

[Look, he might not even go here but that still earns a confused stare, because he's under the vague impression that confessions usually lead to things being more official? Isn't that...prime, dramatic, romantic material?]

Is this, uh...typical where you're from?

[daydreamy]

... you mean dating in general or me being a huge doofus about it?

[ Just clarifying! ]

[postictal]

Yes, [says Tim, in the wry deadpan that's the closest thing he gets to effecting an actual sense of humor that he'll never purport to possess but nonetheless certainly does, if this conversation is any indication.]

To both.

[daydreamy]

Dating is pretty much everywhere! Like basically anyone's world, I guess? But being such a huge dummy about it is definitely just a me thing. Trademark, Kyouko Kougami!

[ is that really what you want your brand to be, Kyouko ]

But we got it all worked out in the end! Mostly 'cause Yuka-chan's got such a good head on her shoulders, honestly.

[postictal]

Well, I’ll give you that much. About - Yuka, I mean. [He’s not going to call a kid a dummy. He might be an atrocity to god and humanity at large, but he is not entirely one hundred percent an asshole all the time, he’d like to think.]

She’s a good kid. Seems like she’s doing her best to be prepared and everything.

[daydreamy]

Yeah... she's working really hard.

[ The brightness of her smile dims, just a tad. ]

To be honest, I'm actually a little worried about her.

[postictal]

Think she might be overworking herself?

[That’d be his guess. Granted, there are ways to step around that exhaustion here, courtesy of the mana pools, but over-reliance on them can never be a good thing.]

[daydreamy]

Uuuugghhhhh.

[ That's probably a yes. Kyouko flops back, arms spread wide and just lays there while she talks. So rude, Miss Kougami. ]

She's running around trying to get everything done but if she doesn't take a break sooner or later, she's gonna just crash, right? But it's kind of impossible to just make her sit down and chill out when she's got something on the brain.

[postictal]

Does she...know that this is more of a marathon than a sprint?

[He can be patient. He learned the importance of patience, when he had nothing to do to pass the time but stare at walls and wonder when the door would open next. When even sleeping was out of the question, because he'd only manage an hour or two before erupting awake again, screams dying on his tongue.]

[But when people end up in places like these for the first time, there's the notion that they can get out of it. That this is little more than a temporary setback in a much grander scheme, and not just where you're stuck.]

[...]

[But isn't he guilty of the very same thing?]