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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[A feather, dark and shining like a streak of oil in the sunlight. Like the birds of the northernmost regions, speckled with white and black as they were, bolts of greenish energy shooting out from their wings as they shrilled their arcane words. The Hierophant, tottering on a pair of yellow sticks for stilts, impressive and massive and fluttering until they sheared it all away with the cut of a blade, and exposed the charade for what it was.]

[The Raven Queen. An unfamiliar moniker. The Drifter shakes their head.]

black dog
a jackal

[Some worlds have one god and some, they have learned, have several. This does not disarm the validity of each deity's power.]

[He doesn't know any other gods of death, aside from her. It's possible she has acolytes, of course- lesser gods in tandem, operating under more specific circumstances than him. He is a bounty hunter and warden; he hunts down those who have already made mistakes, stops the world from ending as a result. Maybe this other god is in charge of stopping them before it gets to that point- or well, he'd like to hope as much.]

I see.

[He tucks the feather back into his pocket protectively. Maybe he can try to contact her again later. Maybe she'll know.]

Well. I suppose that doesn't technically fall under my jurisdiction. Though I really should have received some kind of briefing about you. It's not good to just have people running around that have died so many times without notifying me.

[Death bureaucracy, right?]

[“Lesser”? Excuse you.]

[The Drifter lifts their chin in quiet, firm defiance. Perhaps he has a job, but they had theirs, and their god saw to it that it would be carried out, no matter the cost. He has no right to assume jurisdiction over such a thing. They take their directions from deities - not over-glorified underlings.]

it was not your world
so it was not your business

[There, you see? Very simple.]

[Over glorified underlings, please. He is an aspect of her, a piece of her will shaped from a previously dead man. He knows his mission. It matters not where he is.]

It is becoming my business, if I am stuck here. Just because I may be far from my home doesn't mean I won't uphold the laws of the world.

[The tennants of life and death are important. But in certain situations, he is willing to be flexible. Regardless, he isn't swinging a weapon in their vicinity anymore, so that's an improvement.]

Regardless. Thank you for upholding an undoubtedly dangerous mission, if it lead to such strife.

laws of your world
not this one

[Death is as impermanent here as it was in the land of Buried Time. He has no jurisdiction here, as far as the Drifter is concerned; until a god on par with the jackal and the glittering white rhombus that haloed her pointed snout arrives to dictate otherwise, this is how it shall be.]

[The Drifter bows their head in acknowledgment regardless, however. There is no excuse to not be polite.]

[He rolls his eyes a little, but he's not going to continue fighting this. Not when he doesn't have any power here, either. But he truly doesn't have time to continue this, not when he needs to find a way out.]

Well I'm guessing there isn't a way to just conveniently leave this world to it's devices? Or at the very least, communicate with someone about the way this place works? There are plenty good reasons why people need to be able to die.

[They incline their head slightly; less in acquiescence than it is out of necessity. This person, whoever he is - they are not quite sure they like him. The baseline wariness with which they'd learned to regard most everyone in the vicinity has proven to be equal parts useless and outright rude, here...barring this instance.]

[They point, one dark-gloved hand, and extend one slightly claw-hooked finger in the direction of the mana pool.]

that is no longer your decision
ask the god

[Not his decision. Mm. We'll see. It may not be his direct choice, but he must have some sway, some influence. He can't see this keep happening and just stand by, not when people could die, not when they could suffer. It's not fair. It's not right.]

Well. I suppose I will. Thank you for your... assistance.

[He thinks about leaving it there, letting his stubbornness win, but he also stops and relents--]

Also, uhm, sorry for yelling at you. I was previously unaware of your connections and, uhm. Surprised.

[That is something the Batter admitted to difficulty with - understanding when to apologize, and how. Perhaps, like him, this man too struggles with locking himself behind a veil instead of allowing who he is to seep through in earnest. It would not surprise them, if that were the case. Those on holy missions quickly grow restrained by nature, if they were not already.]

[The Drifter was and still is among them. They incline their head, a respectful bow.]

it was not clear why i was selected
she passed me on when the task was done

[...until, then, they awoke here.]

[Who he is is a title and a mission. That's who he's been, at least. He has very few connections to the mortal world, and only one that has a true impact on him, so far. There's going to be a lot of learning to be a person again, in more respect than just the mortality.]

... I see. Well, uhm.

[... What does he say to this? His conversations with the dead have always been businesslike. He's a warden, not a leader. A judge, not just... some guy.

He looks at the Drifter for a few moments, like the gears are turning for what proper social interaction is in this day and age. Eventually, he resolves to just thrust his hand out to shake. That's... that's good protocol, right? Yes. Sure.]

I suppose introductions are in order all the same. I forget if I gave you my name, ah-- it's Kravitz.

[Kravitz. They make a note of that, because it seems polite to do so, and not necessarily because they they wish to. What initially promised to be a rocky meeting has subsided, somewhat, if only because they could essentially call his attention to the nature of another deity of death, who guided them on their mission.]

[If they'd not had that, would he pay them any mind at all? Or would they be an insignificant dot on his radar?]

[It's not clear to them which they would prefer, but it is clear that only one option exists in this narrative, and so they do not bother pursuing hypotheticals. They nod again.]

ok

[There are probably kinder and more graceful ways to accept an introduction. But they will admit it to themself, here and now: they have grown too used to the treatment of the people of these islands, who do not quail at the color of their skin. They have grown too accustomed to a polite or otherwise neutral treatment, where scorn and avoidance had once been the default.]

[Thus, they have grown complacent. They have no right to interpret this poorly when it is far from the most turbulent greeting they've received.]

new here

[This is not a question. It is obvious.]

[It's debatable. Kravitz does regret that he was wrong- he does strive to be right in his actions, whatever they may be. But he isn't sorry he was afraid. He isn't sorry for the conflict. It comes with his job. It has little to do with who this person is at all. There is him and precious few other Reapers, there are gods, and there are mortals. That's just how it works.

He nods, straightening up, answering it like a question whether it was or not.]

Uhm-- yes. I didn't wake up here very long ago. It's been... a bit of a surprise.

[To say the least. Most people who are undead for a thousand years don't just wake up alive. It's not that simple.]

It's been a bit turbulent recently. At first I thought this may have been a reaction to that, uhm, invasion, for lack of a better word. But now it seems I'm somewhere else entirely.

invasion

[The first victim of the invasion.]

[...no. He’s talking about something else. He must be. He is from a different world entirely, and the Immortal Cell never permeated other universes outside of its own. To their knowledge. Either way, they’re lacking context here.]

[It pays to make sure.]

what invasion

[He furrows his brow, the questions suddenly turning more serious. Honestly, he's happier to talk about it, if only because he doesn't have any idea what it was, exactly.]

I'm... I'm not sure what it was, exactly. One minute everything was fine, the next it simply... swept through. Like a flood of tar. It consumed everything in it's path, and it took all of my power not to be pulled under. I managed to barricade myself in the Stockade, but I cannot say how long that would hold, and I had no communication outside. It was just this... all consuming blackness, interspursed with bits of color.

[It was so recent, now, it still leaves him to shudder.]

That was... just before I came here. Truthfully, I thought at first this was simply what lay below it's surface. But this seems too... unlike it, whatever it was, for that.

[That certainly engenders a reaction. Their earlier pronouncements about the differences between worlds no longer seem to hold quite as much weight. A flood of tar. Something that obliterates all it sweeps over. Something oozing, and viscous, and dark...]

[The Drifter regards Kravitz with a newfound urgency.]

what color
any symbols

[If Judgment spread - if it spread to other parts of the universe, if it spreads to other worlds - who's to say that their sacrifice meant anything, anything at all?]

[Whose to say that others may not need to sacrifice themselves as well?]

[They're worried-- scared. Kravitz narrows his eyes, feeling the urgency in the situation all the same.]

I-- it was mostly black. But there were bits of... just squiggles, no discernible shape, in red, blue, and yellow. I'll be honest, I didn't look very hard at it. I was mostly trying not to drown.

[The time he spent under, clawing his way to the surface, having it threaten to choke him and fill his lungs... he hasn't been so afraid in a very, very long time.]

Is that... you sound like you know what it might be.

[Too many colors. None of them are bright pink, that bleeding toxicity, and the Drifter's disposition eases, very slightly. Perhaps there's some sort of variation across universes, but - ]

[But he is not sick, is he? One can smell it, leaking off the stricken and the ill like a curse.]

[They can recognize it in others. They've lived with it for long enough.]

not pink
corrupting the world

[It doesn't sound the same, but it pays to check.]

[He nods, trying to think if that at all resembled what he saw.]

I don't think it was corrupting so much as it was... consuming. Destroying what it swept across until it was engulfed.

[Worrying to know there's some other horrifying thing he's never heard of out there, though. But of course that's worrying.]

I'm not certain of it's origins, however, but... hopefully we can rule out it being the same thing.

[Consuming - not quite the same thing, no. The Immortal Cell did not merely seek to ravage the world; it wanted to possess it. It twisted its occupants and warped them into something that would not hesitate to lash out at those around them, inciting war, destruction, wanton violence.]

[Likely not the same thing, then. No.]

does not sound like it

[He sighs, not quite relief, but at least diffusing some tension from his shoulders.]

Well... good. I would hardly wish to see that return anywhere. Not to downplay what you went through, of course.

[If they thought it was similar, it can't have been easy. Especially with so many deaths, the origins of which he's trying to keep in mind to stop from having heart palpitations.]

inform should it return?

[They mean that in both directions, by the by, though their vagueness can be and often is easily misconstrued and misinterpreted. They will inform him should their nightmare return - and he should inform them, in the same way.]

[Here's hoping he deciphers that correctly.]

[Kravitz squints a bit, trying to piece that one together. It's phrased as a question, so...]

Uhm... yes. Yes, I'll tell you if I see it again. Though it might be less seeing and more happening, if previous encounters are anything to go by.

[That's not encouraging, Kravitz. He shifts the backpack on his back, moving the weight between his feet.]

Well. In that case, I supposed I should... try and find my way around this place a little more. Make sure I know what it looks like in the first place.

[A moment as they process that, quietly. Then, decisive, simple, to the point:]

ok

[They waste no further time, turning to set off at a brisk trot along the rolling slopes. Don't take offense to it, Kravitz; they are a drifter of few words by nature, and their laconic nature often comes across as blunt when they seldom mean it to.]

[Well, that was a bit-- abrupt, but fine. If the conversation is over, he supposes it just... was.

Kravitz stands for a few seconds, and then raises his hand in an equally awkward wave.]

Uhm-- goodbye, then!

[Now, to figure out how to contact that god...]

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April Intro: The Flower Ripens in its Place

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