April Intro: The Flower Ripens in its Place

[lifeaftr_mods]

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.

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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.

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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

[postictal]

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."

[savedbyasong]

"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.

[postictal]

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?”

[savedbyasong]

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.

[postictal]

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."

[savedbyasong]

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?"

[postictal]

"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.

[savedbyasong]

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.

[postictal]

“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.”

[savedbyasong]

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."

[postictal]

“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?

[savedbyasong]

"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.

[postictal]

"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.

[savedbyasong]

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."

[postictal]

"I set fire to things," he corrects wryly. "Not much of a fighter."

Unless you count a grown man sobbing as he stabs someone he doesn't want to fight, repeatedly, choking on his own vomit in a messy puddle on an abandoned school floor, as a fighter.

[savedbyasong]

"There's lots of way of fighting." Setting things on fire was one of them. But Shion suspects Tim has issues with this, with fighting, with... well with lots of things. So...

He shrugs off his knapsack and finds his notebook and a pencil. Writes:Manapool, looks around. "The sun sets in the West in my world so that's what I'm going to use for directions." It just occurred to him that... that might not be true on other worlds. The world of the Tower didn't exactly have a sun. The Tower had had an illusion of one and sometimes it didn't rise at all.

So if he's guessing the time of day right, and using where the sun is then they are East. East of manapool: walking plant monsters, dangerous

[postictal]

"That's probably wise. I dunno how directions work here, but I think just about everybody's got an east and west that goes with the sun." Unfortunately, trying to map this shit out is going to almost invariably mean putting himself in the line of fire for something worse than a couple large plant-monsters.

Still, better him than the kids here. Shion included.

"You gonna map out this entire place by yourself?" he says - largely a joke, but given his utterly straight-faced delivery, it might be hard to discern.

[savedbyasong]

Well that's good to know, that some things remained the same. It didn't really matter, as long as he explained to people that his directions and map were made with directions that relied on the sun rising in the East it would probably be fine.

He shrugged at the question. "I guess I could do. I've never made a map of a place like this before but if I start with directions and roughly where things are I can turn it into some kind of map. I'm not sure how big the island is so it might take a while. I think other people will help though, working together will probably be quicker."

[postictal]

"Yeah, well - don't go it alone. Like I said, we've got no clue what else might be around here." And Shion might not be totally useless in a fight, for all he knows, but he is just one guy - and not a superpowered one, at that. However old or young he might actually be, he has the physical body of a kid, and that's not about to do him any favors.

"Map's not worth your life, yeah?"

[savedbyasong]

Shion nodded, he probably should ask Aster to go exploring with him. Maybe Ceej as well. Ceej might actually know how to make maps. He knew a lot of useful things.

He's not sure if Aster knows how to make maps, it's never been something that has come up.

"I know." It is said with a small shrug. He knows now that death doesn't mean anything here. As false as it was in the Tower. "I promised Aster."

No dying. Not anymore.

[postictal]

“Good.” He has no idea what kind of intricacies of that promise entails, but he’s not sure it matters. He’s not the guy’s keeper. He helps if he can, when he can, and his version of help is far from ideal.

“Death isn’t fun around here. You gotta deal with...losing something or another for a bit. Memories, senses, stuff like that. Can really limit your chances of it not happening again.”

[savedbyasong]

"Death isn't fun anywhere." Necessary sometimes, unavoidable often, even preferable on occasion, there were worse fates. But never fun.

But the information was important, and worrying. Memories, losing memories. It had happened in the Tower but only when you died too much. Losing senses, he flipped to another page of his notebook and wrote a quick note.

"Does... I guess no one knows how we come back after death?" It had taken them years in the Tower to figure it out and here... whoever had brought them here, whoever had power over this world seemed to be very well hidden.

[postictal]

Well, that's all in your perspective. Tim wouldn't necessarily call it fun, but he wouldn't call it disagreeable either. It's a relief to get some real rest for once, in a manner of speaking. He got something like, what, six months of it? And he didn't even have to turn into a shadow to do it.

Not a bad deal.

"Storyteller brings you back," he says, shoulders lifting in a shrug. "Something about...we got stories to get back to when we head home. Kinda like making up for how much this place throws at us at any given time."

[savedbyasong]

"Stories to get back to..." So the Story Teller preserved them for that time. Interesting. Though it generated more questions than it answered. Shion frowned because he had questions but he wasn't sure Tim was the person to ask them of.

But Aster hadn't ever mentioned death not being real here and he wasn't sure she actually knew.

He was silent for a moment, flipping back to his pages on directions and filling out other information about the terrain that he could see.

[postictal]

"Either way," he adds, just in case that wasn't clear up until this point, because he knows more than a few people that kind of would like to meet their makers in the real-time sense, so to speak, "it's probably best to not go testing that out. It's not just a matter of getting brought back. Sometimes people come back, uh..."

He has to root around for the right word for a moment. He doesn't wanna say wrong, but that's the closest term he can find for it.

"Well, it's like I said. They don't come all the way back, at first. Not usually."