lifeaftr | 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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She blinks up at him as he jerks away the bag from her clutches, though she did manage to get ahold of his secondary Stone of Farspeech in the process. She plays with it in her fingers as she tries to place him in her memory.

"Ah!" She snaps. "The wingless raven!"

She moves to toss the Stone towards him with the intentions of him catching it. Unfortunately, this is about the same moment at which he summons his scythe from nothing, and she shrieks and ends up throwing the magical rock at him instead.

"Stop that! Doing awful things! Awful!!"

"Wingless--"

He gets cut off as soon as she screams, and immediately gets beaned directly in the face by his stone, letting out a hiss as his hand flies up to his face to rub at the mark. Gods, everything feels just a bit more real in this body, and he doesn't like it, not one bit. He shoots her a look, absolutely indignant.

"Why do you have to keep doing that? Why can't you just talk to me, even once?"

"Because you're very weird and you make things weird and it's weird!" she explains angrily, folding her arms as if that answers any possible questions he could have on the matter.

She looks back at him, searching, sort of getting that he's kind of upset here and she's probably contributed to that. The gears are turning. She finally sighs and sits down on the ground cross legged.

"Okay, talk. We can talk. Just be normal and we'll talk." See? She's being nice. Look at how much she sacrifices just to be nice.

Kravitz sighs, maybe too loudly as she stares him down, unable to know what he's supposed to do here. He's dealt with tough cases before, with people not liking him, but never this absolutely baffling display of thinking she's better than him and being horrified the next. He should just get all spooky and really show her who's boss, but he's down one skeleton face, so that's going to have to wait.

Thankfully, she relents even a little, and Kravitz shifts to sit as well, matching her posture.

"Okay. Fine. I'm not sure what normal is, but I'll do my best to make things comfortable." The best he can do is be polite in any way he knows how, so he holds out a hand her direction. "Let's... start over, as it were. My name's Kravitz. And yours?"

Myia narrows her eyes suspiciously at the proffered hand. She should probably shake it. Should she shake it? Does she want to shake it? She's being nice, right. She should shake it.

Okay. She reaches out after no small amount of deliberation and shakes his hand. Her skin is tough and chitinous, and her fingernails are painted gold. At the edges, the gold is already starting to flake, much like the paint on her various jewelry.

At least she finally has a name for the wingless raven.

"Myia. From Bugtown, in the Metropolis. Moved to Maahi. Certified fisher."

The fishing pole attached to her knapsack backs up that story.

His hands are soft, smooth skin that would almost make him seem delicate if it wasn't usually accompanied by a large blade. It's going to be odd, living in a body that continues to survive on the day-to-day, will show the affects of his life. But that's not important. At least he's making one whole connection, right here. The champion of social interactions, surely.

"It's nice to meet you, Myia. I've never heard of those places, but I'm getting the feeling neither of us are quite where we're from anymore." She's already screamed and yelled at him for less, so he sort of doesn't want to open on 'also I'm the grim reaper', so he's going to keep his mouth shut on that for now. "Did you just arrive as well?"

"Never heard of any other places than the Metropolis till I left it," she says. It doesn't surprise her this wingless raven's never heard of them. The world is much bigger than she once thought it was, when everything was the city -- so much so, was this lie that the city was all there was to the world, that the Metropolis never had any name of its own. It's only until she left and found Maahi that she started to have to differentiate it with a title.

"Just showed up here today, yeah. Yeah. Rabbit talked at me and then I was here. Said weird things."

Alright, they've got some commonality going here. Kravitz nods, especially at that last part. "I also had a dream about a rabbit creature. I had thought it some sort of hallucination or joke, but... it seems whatever they were saying was true."

Which he doesn't love, but again, things he can't do much about. "Did you remember if they said anything about a name? Or where we're located? If I could orient myself to a plane, I might have a better chance of finding how to escape."

"Nothing about names. Oh, they're the Storyteller. No other names for places. An ugly man with side burns said something like Enso. That's where the people live. Another island. Don't know this one."

After parting with this incredible wisdom, Myia pulls a Stone of Farspeech out of her knapsack.

"These are like walkie talkies. You're welcome. I'm very helpful."

He hums. Yes, very helpful. "I-- yes, I know. I know how Stones work. These are from my world. In fact, I'm a little surprised to see them here."

He moves the one she tossed at him earlier ahead, and then produces a second identical one from his pocket.

"Doesn't make sense that whoever runs this place would simply replicate them for my arrival. It makes me wonder how they got here."

"Probably someone stole them from you. You should guard your things better. Why I built my house on the side of a cliff."

Yes, Myia's new running theory is that Kravitz has an incredible amount of walkie talkie rocks hoarded in his probable mansion and they're all being stolen to be distributed to people in this other world. It only makes sense.

"Well, this Stone is now mine, so you can't have it back." She sticks her proboscis out and blows a raspberry.

Kravitz has lost track of this conversation completely, so he just rolls his eyes, beginning to pack up the things that ended up on the floor. "Fine, whatever, it's yours. I didn't give it to you, I don't manufacture them."

He doesn't even necessarily care about the items in here, seeing as they were just handed to him, but suddenly he's finding himself caring very much about whether she has them or not. "Didn't you show up with your own things? Aren't they enough for you?"

April Intro: The Flower Ripens in its Place

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject