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.

---

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!

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[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."

[savedbyasong]

"I understand." He looked at Tim seriously and nodded, "I'm not going to experiment."

Not yet anyways. Hopefully not ever, there were other ways to get the information that he wanted to know. Knowing that memories were lost was enough to give him cause for caution, even if there hadn't been his promise to keep.

[postictal]

“Good.” He knows people who would, is all. Himself potentially included, depending on the circumstances.

He digs his cigarette tin from his pockets and rummages for a fresh light. He hasn’t had enough of smoke today, apparently. “You gonna head back soon?”

[savedbyasong]

"Probably soon." He smiled at Tim, he still wanted to look around a little more, start mapping the area. Or at least describing it. He watches Tim get out a cigarette.

"Are you?" He's still worried about him, doesn't really want to leave him on his own.

[postictal]

"Not yet." He glances out across the waves of rippling, shifting green-gold, at the innumerable hillocks lumped across the horizon, and wonders just how many of them may jerk to their feet and try to kill him if he gets too close.

"There might be more out here that needs scoping out." He shrugs, before adding ruefully, "I'll keep my distance from anything that looks suspicious."

[savedbyasong]

"Be careful." Shion smiled at him. He's pretty sure that Tim is more capable than he is but it doesn't mean he can't be worried about him.

"I'm sure I'll see you around." Even with an entire new island it wasn't exactly hard to find people, places that people frequented were not that numerable.

[postictal]

“Probably,” he agrees. Be careful. Well, he tries. Usually. He’s not really his own priority. Why would he be? He’s got a reason to stick around, even if it is largely a transient one, a stopgap until things...

Maybe things won’t really ever reach that point. Who can say?

He’s getting off topic.

“You watch yourself out there, yeah?”

[savedbyasong]

Shion just nodded and waved before heading off, notebook in hand, pausing now and again to study a flower.