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

"I mean I don't know a lot about it."

Yes, Gobbet, very comforting. Assert that you know more than the stranger and then admit you hardly know anything.

"Just that there's this long standing cycle where the sun dies, shadow monsters try to kill it for a week, and then it's reborn and everyone goes back to what they were doing before." Gobbet shrugs, leaning back on her heels with her arms across her chest. "The Jormun here made a tradition out of defending it. A lot of us have decided to back them up, since we'd rather not live in eternal darkness and cold."

"That... is fucking horrifying." She's just saying. "Wait, how long have you people been here if you know all that? Like, you said proof, so I'm assuming you're not just taking their word for it."

"I can respect not trusting everyone you meet, but sometimes you gotta roll with the punches and see where it takes you. But our proof is that these iced over waters and snowy islands? Normally, they're tropical." To punctuate this, she breathes out and a cloud of condensed breath appears. The universal sign of 'it's too fucking cold outside'. "It matches up with what they've told us. Shit's going to get colder and darker until the sun dies completely. Then we wait a week and everything goes back to normal."

"As for how long we've been here? I've been here about three months, I think. There were people here before me, but I don't know how long. You should find a purple spider lady named Muffet, she's been here for a while herself."

"...Alright. Sounds like pretty good evidence, yeah." She huffs, and pulls her jacket a little tighter around herself.

Honestly, it is kind of good to have some kind of evidence that everyone here is not necessarily getting themselves indebted to fae or becoming easy prey for vampires, even if the evidence itself is pretty distressing.

She raises an eyebrow slightly, tilting her head. "...Purple spider lady. At least she sounds easy to spot.

"Yeah, she'll probably give you food and be unfailingly polite about everything. She's pretty cool."

Gobbet relaxes somewhat. This person isn't so bad, just bristled by her arrival. Not everyone embraces the island life as quickly as she did, she can respect that.

"I take it you've had some kind of experience with fish-folk in the past; you seemed personally offended by them being here."

"Huh. Sounds like it...?" She's clearly not totally convinced, but she guesses she'll just have to find out for herself.

Erika makes a humming noise and sort of wobbles one hand back and forth. "Not direct experience, just-- second-hand info. Besides which, I dunno how it is here or where you people are from, but, uh. Last I checked, mers are just another kind of vampire, and there are like... three entire vampires out there who would give someone food just to be nice."

"Huh. Back home, vampirism is just a viral disease with no known cure. It's kind of a magical disease, which makes it sort of a curse? Point is, they don't look like fish." Gobbet shrugs. "Besides, things work differently from our home worlds out here. It's kind of like a pocket dimension with its own rules, you know?"

"...Vampirism is a magic disease? Seriously?" Listen, she knows that could well be how it is where Gobbet's from, but it doesn't stop it from sounding super incorrect to Erika.

"Guess so." Like... another plane, maybe. That's the best way she can think of it for the moment. "And I guess we just gotta get used to it, huh?"

She's a little bitter about that.

"The way I see it? We either let these islands kill us or we fight until we find a way home." Gobbet yawns, stretching. It's not really a boredom or tiredness yawn, just a space filler. "And when we die we tend to wake up a few days later with minor side effects, so. I mean granted I don't know how many times that works before you die for good? I only died once."

She seems extremely nonchalant about dying. She's had some time to process it, and it wasn't so bad. Except it was the worst and shattered her worldview for a while and she's still afraid of caves but it wasn't that bad.

"Y'know what. Fighting sounds like a plan to me."

Then she tilts her head, frowning. "Minor side effects? Like what? Like, ignoring that that is a fucking insane thing to say happens after you die, what kind of side effects qualify as 'minor' here."

"Yeah I guess it is pretty crazy, to be fair." Gobbet shrugs. "I lost the ability to use my magic, other people lose things that are important to them, too. Senses, memories, etcetera. Plus there's the psychological bullshit associated with dying but coming back to life. Like am I still the same person? Am I a copy now? If you can't die for real here then how important is survival to begin with? Stuff like that."

It wasn't pleasant, that's for sure. It had left her shaken, since survival has always been her number one priority. Without the true threat of death, what was her primary focus going to be now? She dismisses the thoughts firmly, not willing to think about it.

"I wouldn't recommend it."

Okay, well that is... a lot. "Yeah, uh, doesn't sound like it." Also, after all that existential crisis talk - "Are you, like... okay...?"

She doesn't sound super worried, exactly, just... confused? Honestly how the hell does she process this.

January Intro: I Know the Winter's Getting Colder

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