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 )

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Safe? The Liberator seems willing to accept this. Maybe it wasn't just a dream. But if not... then what?

One unusual-looking person here, another two there... all replaced with a horde of people like herself, all pale and somber, perhaps hundreds or more, somber. Encircled by a ring of darkness, but not as if they are engulfed in it -- more that the viewer is drawing away, down a dark tunnel. A person lying on the ground, unmoving, with others piling stones over them, burying the body. Sadness.

Of course she knows there would have been no burial for herself, but the image of death is clear.

Less clear, and the source of a more immediate confusion, if how this all fits into the dream, the other dream of a white rabbit and a campfire. Are all people here different, people who have gone or should have been gone?

She points at the Drifter again, serious, questioningly, echoing the faces of the twin elves as well.

They can glean what little they can from the context, at least - from the sense of mourning, from the concept that this person belonged to a great civilization of those of a similar nature.

They've not the best idea how to go about mentally translating the intricacies of a world they do not wholly understand themself, either. They've not questioned the will of the god that dwells here, nor any other god.

In the end, they settle for focusing on a spectrum of varying faces - Ren, child-sized and silver-haired; Guzma, dark-eyed and irreverent; the Knight, horned and silent; a pair of children with striped sweaters. They join the elves to form a disparate crowd, before the image snaps to a tableau of several rafts rocking in the ocean waves, propelled slowly and steadily toward the shore, heralding the crowd of motley travelers that stumble out of them, one by one.

She frowns. It doesn't truly clarify much, but she gets the overall sentiment; a motley group of people of all shapes and colors, and though their origins may be unknown, they are all thrust into this world together.

Scratching the back of her head and appearing deep in thought... doesn't mean that those thoughts are private, by any means. Initial confusion and awe have, in light of this 'conversation', given way to a swirling mixture of curiosity, mild frustration, and concern and overlying that lingering hint sorrow and an odd resignation.

Where are the others, she wonders, picturing the field - her only view of the island so far - surrounded in a dark and murky fog, the faces she's been shown floating out there in the mist.

They're growing better at this, they think - even if they're not quite on the same level of clarity that their partner in mental conversation is, but they're learning, and that's the important thing. A mental divide turns into a far more articulate one - the grass-rippled bluffs of the island they're on now widens out to expose a second island, far more varied in texture. Spiked with ruins, pocked with strips of beach and dense jungle.

Ensō, they think with as much firmness as they can muster. If she cannot understand language in a textual sense, perhaps she can parse it in the ideological. The idea of assigning a label to something.

Ensō. That is where they dwell.

It's a kind of second-hand understanding; symbol and sound that doesn't mean much to her, but through the Drifter's experience of it, she can get a hint of the idea. Face scrunched up a little - why wouldn't you just picture the place as needed - she gives a kind of slow half-nod, a little dip of the head.

Another island, with still more greenery and life. And the hunting? The animals in her mind's eye aren't quite a match for anything familiar; a small deerlike creature, something else more like a rabbit. And how can she forget from that first, dreamlike maybe-not-dream: delicious fish on a stick.

Their mental picture of said animals is much more varied: hyena-like creatures with elongated bodies and far too many legs, a hybrid of a tiger and a shark dripping with water, turquoise-furred beasts that resemble caribou. Nothing that immediately resembles her mental images, but perhaps adjacent.

More mental screenshots are flicked through with more rapidity, information being funneled directly toward her with a minimum of context. A tigershark's pelt, scraped and dried and used as a rug. A large, serpentine creature with a sandy, scaly hide being carved into strips of meat to be cooked over an open flame. Animals that fly and screech and lay eggs that can be poached from nests, and then poached for real.

She doesn't quite lick her lips when thoughts of meat and eggs reach her, but it's close.

Still, she scrunches up her tiny nub nose a little and looks left to right, huffing a small sigh. Although it's not really a directed thought, her mental 'voice' is loud, and the feeling of disappointment and sadness returns alongside the image of all her people in a barren, rocky landscape. It's good to have found such a heavenly place, but without everyone else...

The Drifter more or less fires off a line of question marks, their head tilting to one side. Everyone else is vague enough to imply that she merely has people she knows, friends she must have made, and they have to order their thoughts to be directed forth in a relatively intelligible fashion: the sensation of not being bitterly alone, here, of having made friends in abundance despite all odds, warring with the idea that others from one's world have been known to manifest in the archipelago as well, on occasion.

Perhaps the impression she receives is confused and muddled as the Drifter is, but if she can parse it, perhaps that will be some consolation.

Clear as a muddy stream, but there's a hint of understanding. People, of some sort, from some unknown place and unknown past. Even if she's left some people behind... maybe they'll be okay now, without her. And maybe, as was the impression she had in that dream... there was still more to come and more stories to be told.

She points, hand half open still, off and away in the direction of Enso, echoing a less cohesive view of the jungle and ruins from the Drifter's mind. If there are others here... she'd like to meet them.

That, at least, is easy. The Drifter beckons with one hand - a universal gesture for follow me, though the impression of wanting her to follow probably shines through regardless - and starts haring off in the direction of the mana pool. The mechanism through which such a thing functions may be atypical in many respects, but at least it will be easily communicated by doing.

They will have to do their best.

April Intro: The Flower Ripens in its Place

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