lifeaftr | April Intro: The Flower Ripens in its Place

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April Intro: The Flower Ripens in its Place

INTRO LOG: APRIL

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

A9: Sow the Seed
Unbeknownst to new arrivals, the archipelago of LifeAftr has recently seen the appearance of a new island, as chosen via voting - and they have been unceremoniously placed there instead of upon Ensō, where most newcomers would typically appear. It's probably for the best that the island of Ziziphus is so outwardly peaceful.

There are worse places to find yourself, all things considered. The mana pool glimmers with a greenish light, the stone ring containing that peculiar fluid set firmly into the earth. The surrounding land fits neatly into that general aesthetic: rippling fields stirred by the occasional crisp breeze alternate between amber-golden and rich, verdant green in coloration, and irregular patches of color signify the presence of a great deal of flowers of all sorts.

It's a peaceful scene.

We're sure you're all about to make it go horribly wrong.

B9: Reap the Harvest
For the unluckier, or the more adventurous, something far less tranquil awaits. Perhaps you woke up on this particular map square instead, or you saw fit to journey a little farther, just to see what might happen. In any case, you'll quickly discover that this may not have been the best idea, when an ordinary grassy mound abruptly detaches itself from the ground, hauls itself upright on bristling legs, and starts scuttling near.

SPINDLANKS have now been unlocked in the bestiary.
What might initially appear to be a leafy hillock will very quickly prove to be something far more...mobile, if you get close enough. That clump of grass and red ferns will abruptly hoist itself up on six vine-like tendrils, crawling for its prey like a very large, mossy spider. While it's fully capable of swiping at its foes with its massive, leafy arms, the spindlank's favored method of dispatching its prey is simply to scuttle forth until it's positioned directly above you and drop down. If its weight does not crush you and choking on the clods of earth doesn't smother you, don't worry; the spindlank intends to eat you alive with a set of fleshy jaws set deep in its center, buried somewhere in its underbelly.

For despite their appearance, spindlanks are very much carnivorous. Their size can vary from anywhere between six and ten feet tall when their appendages unfurl entirely. They are, in essence, very large plants, and thus can be easily dealt with, if you can burn them.

Just try not to get overwhelmed.

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

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 )

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He looked around, it did look like it would be a risk, the fire spreading. But he just squeezes Tim's hand in an attempt to be reassuring. They will figure a way to stop that happening.

"No." He shook his head, "But we could try and draw it to the ocean." He waved, there was lots of water he just didn't have any way to transport it.

A faint pressure around his hand. Kid's trying to help, he'll give him that, but touch is seldom a good thing as far as Tim's concerned. Still, he can't just rip himself free and expect that to go over well. Not considering what that might do.

And placing the burden of Tim's errors on the shoulders of someone else has never been a wise decision.

It's his mistake. The least he can do is own it.

He nods, shaking his head once more.

"Yeah. Okay." He unlatches his spear from its loop on his pack and offers it out. "I can...it's just in case it tries to take a swing - pole weapons are good for keeping distance."

Shion takes the spear, letting go of Tim's hand. He has used a spear before, been trained in it and so it only takes a moment for him to find the balance points, a moment to once again re-orientate his mind to the fact he is smaller, his arms shorter.

"Okay." He glanced at the burning plant. "You draw it's attention, I'll make sure it doesn't get too close to you and we will get it to the ocean."

They could do this. Breathing, focus. He wouldn't let anything happen to Tim.

“Yeah. Yeah, you got it.” Atta kid, he almost says, but catches himself. He’s not that far gone. Not yet.

So he digs a slingshot out of his bag, stuffs a stone into the pouch, and starts spinning it overhead, faster, faster, until the pebble arcs overhead in a high parabola and slams the burning, enraged thing in its middle. It rears up like a tarantula, skittering toward the source of the attack.

“That’s it, asshole,” Tim calls, moving rapidly back. “On me!”

Shion nodded and stood next to Tim, eyes on the burning plant as Tim began to spin the stone. He moved back with him, keeping pace as the plant began moving towards them. He kept the spear out in front of them ready to protect Tim from any burning tendrils that wanted to fly in his direction.

The ocean wasn't too far away, he swung out at a burning limb that got too close, batting it away from Tim. Luckily he was quick enough the staff did not catch fire.

Here’s hoping salt water doesn’t make them stronger, right? Logic would dictate that it’s fresh water they’d have to worry most about, but logic is kind of a hit and miss deal around here, he’s learned. The spindlank bunches up like a massive cat about to pounce. He roots himself to the spot, counting down, waiting for the last possible second -

It lunges, and Tim throws himself flat into the grass. The spindlank’s trajectory carries it over his head and with a loud splash, into the water.

Shion ducks as well, his heart hammering as he watches it leap over Tim's head and breathing a sigh of relief as it missed him and splashed into the water. He jumped to his feet, glancing at the monster to make sure it wasn't coming back out of the water now that it was no longer on fire.

He then looks at Tim, a once over checking he has no obvious injuries. "Well done."

Tim straightens with a rush of tired breath, brushing crumbs of soil from the knees of his jeans. Thank fuck the thing doesn’t seem to take to salt water; it’s floundering desperately in place, but its struggles grows progressively weaker, until it’s splashing feebly in the shallows.

He runs at his forehead with the back of one hand, smearing away smoke and sweat.

“Christ,” he mutters. “You okay, buddy?”

"Yeah..." He was fine, unharmed and relieved that Tim seemed unharmed as well. He watched the plant as it floundered for a moment and then turned back to Tim.

"Are you?" Being physically unharmed didn't mean the same thing as being okay, Tim seemed calmer, more present than he had been when Shion first found him but still.

"Yeah," he says, without really taking any time to actually check and ensure that there's genuine truth to pack behind the sentiment. He blows out a rush of breath. The smoke is thick in his lungs, and he starts to cough.

Goddamnit.

It's not a fit. It's just a means of clearing his throat, thumping a fist once over his chest and straightening up once more.

"Guess those things burn pretty good, huh?"

Shion hovered looking worried as Tim started to cough but when he straightened and stopped he looked relieved. His own throat feels scratchy and raw and he tries to swallow to ease it.

"Yeah..." He nodded, "They do."

He looked back to where it was floundering. "It's a strange monster, I've never seen one that looks just like a plant before." There had been many many monsters in the Tower. "Not a plant that could walk anyways. I've seen plants that acted like plants but tried to eat you but they are limited in movement at least. Ones that could get up and walk, that's different." His mouth snapped shut, he was babbling. Tim didn't need his babbling.

The tickle in his throat doesn't fade. He scrapes the bottle out from his pocket, shakes out a white capsule into his palm, and dry-swallows. That's never a good idea, in theory; it's gonna sit in him like a lead weight for the rest of the day and leave his chest feeling raw and scratched-over, but he's done it enough times to know what to expect.

Better safe than sorry.

He studies the thing from a distance, brow furrowed, watching its struggles grow ever weaker until it finally lays still, smoking slightly in the shallows.

"We had killer plants back on Ensō," he says. "But yeah, they were rooted to the ground too. I guess that's not the case here."

"I haven't ran into any of those." Luckily. But it was good to know. Killer plants on Ensō too. He looked at Tim with worry. He still didn't know what Tim took medication for and he still thinks its probably rude to ask? Personal privacy was something Shion had had to learn after leaving No.6 and he was still unsure on lines sometimes.

"Do..." He blinked, "Do you need to head back? I can walk you back to the mana pool if you need."

Like Tim really needed Shion's help. Like Shion would be able to do anything to help him.

Probably best. Lungblossoms were hell enough without the added threat of violently realistic hallucinations those toxic spores induced. He hasn’t forgotten, and he sure as hell doesn’t plan to head back to the area anytime soon. His own head’s too adept at spinning him hyperrealistic delusions as it is.

He shakes his head, as much to reorient himself as it is to answer Shion’s query. He’s had worse. They both know that.

“Do you?”

He shook his head. It was okay. Monsters were fine. Scary yes, a reminder that he really needed to get stronger, to be able to help himself when he was attacked. But walking plants didn't wake the lurking monsters in Shion's head. He wasn't injured. He could stay. He was more worried about Tim, but he knew Tim was stronger than him, could deal with things better than Shion could.

"Have you found anything else here?" Something that didn't try and attack them? Food or plants that could be used for medicine.

He shakes his head, one side of his mouth pinching in the only visible display of his exhausted resignation. He hasn't done much in the vein of actual exploring just yet, but it's gonna take more than a couple walking plants to put him off.

Might have more to do with his warped sense of survivalist instinct.

"Haven't gotten much of a chance to look around yet," he says. "Maybe when those things aren't trying to eat people alive."

Shion nodded, it was hard to explore whilst simultaneously fighting to survive. But it was possible, often it was necessary. He looked around in case there were any more of the weird walking plant monsters. "Did you see where it came from?"

It might have a nest, they might just be wanderers. He wondered what other monsters were on this island. How they interacted with each other. This seemed to be a predator and one that seemed capable of attacking humans so what kind of large prey was it used to?

"Have you seen any animals?"

"Mostly from the ground, actually. Looked like a normal bush or something until it started walking around." That's not really enough to faze him these days. They don't look enough like people for that - tall, thin, and faceless, nearly imperceptible from the crop of woodland peppering the landscape. That would be sufficiently rattling.

Fortunately, that's not the case. HE shakes his head.

"Not unless you count...that," says Tim, jerking his chin at the smoldering mass half-sunk in the salt water. "This was the plant island I guess, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that plants are gonna be the most valuable resource."

Don't look at him. He voted for ore.

From the ground, looked like a bush. He would have to be careful, it seemed that the plants here could be so much more.

"I know. But that plant was trying to attack you, trying to eat us." Because it was a monster plant, yes. But plants that ate people. If it was natural, or as natural as a monster plant on a strange island could be then it had the biological traits of a carnivore. Or at least an omnivore. Which meant that it had such traits because meat was part of its environment.

"What did it eat before we got here? If it eats meat then there must be something for it to eat. Natural prey"

Not them. They were not prey.

Of course the other theory was that it wasn't natural at all, made or created like the monsters of the tower. But that asked questions of who, or what, created it and Shion was trying to keep his mind in once place.

“Good question,” Tim acquiesces with a nod. “No word on that yet, but chances are we’ll run into something at some point. If we’re lucky it might even be edible.”

Not that he minds subsisting off of fish and fruit and water from a mana pool, but a little variation is always nice. He imagines some would appreciate the change.

“The biggest problem is finding it without pissing off anything else that might wanna eat us.”

Fish and fruit and magical water is so much nicer than nutrient bars that Shion isn't complaining. But he figures more variance would be better for them.

He's not sure it matters. But still, people would probably appreciate meat. "We will have to be careful, we can't be sure these are the main predators and we can probably assume the others will be more like plants, so they will be harder to avoid."

“Pretty much.” That just about sums it up. One hand again drifts upward so Tim can massage his brow with the flat of his palm, eyes briefly lapsing shut as he tries not to sigh. Fuck this. He voted for metals and ores. He wanted things that might help build shit, not carnivorous plants trying to eat them all alive.

“Guess it’s back to mapmaking for us.” Christ. Haven’t needed to do that for a while, huh?

"Mapmaking... that's probably a good idea. Do you know how to make maps?"

The Tower didn't really need mapped. Just a list of what was on each floor. The floors that it was easy to get lost on... well no map would help you there.

He's seen maps of his city, plans of buildings. Never anything for somewhere like this though, without obvious landmarks.

"Nope," says Tim. "I just mooch off of other people's hard work."

It's said with just enough of a deprecating slant to imply that yes, he's aware that this makes him an objectively horrible person. Yes, he's aware that this makes him more of a burden than it does an asset. But all the self-awareness in the world doesn't change the fact that it's still a pretty miserable thing to pull on people, huh?

Probably, yeah.

Shion blinked at him. Because that wasn't right. He wouldn't call anything that Tim did mooching. But it seems Tim thinks he is doing something wrong by accepting that he can't be good at everything and that he needs help.

"You can't be good at everything. You can fight monsters, you go out of your way to help people. People have different skills."

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