lifeaftr | May Intro: We're Going Down, Down

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May Intro: We're Going Down, Down

INTRO LOG: MAY

Who: Everyone!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: May 4th and onward
Where: Ensō...and above
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Floating Islet: And Sugar, We're Going Down Swinging
While new arrivals may generally be expected at this time of the month, one factor that has continuously failed to maintain consistency is their point of arrival. And indeed, it appears that this month has once again exceeded even the Storyteller's expectations as to where arrivals may take their first steps on this world.

Those who were with us in February will most certainly remember the floating islands hovering far, far above the mainland. While they currently remain inaccessible, they are still steadily floating overhead, shifting appearance as if made of the clouds themselves. And so while waking up on top of the world may be a surprise, at the very least new arrivals will have a bird's eye view of Ensō to enjoy for a time...until they take notice of a rather sinking sensation.

In fact, that sensation would be the island itself, starting to sink out of the sky.

So that's nice.

On a crash course for the ground at F6, the Storyteller will eventually slow the island's progress to the ground below, though a rather profound impact is, simply put, inevitable. Characters with the ability of flight will find the island skimming low enough to reach on their own. Others may wish to utilize their resourcefulness to find an alternate means down.

Or, perhaps, you'll simply deal with whatever awaits you at the crash site.

F6 and Beyond: In An Earlier Round
Thankfully, the Storyteller's intervention will ensure that no one still on the not-so-floating island upon impact will escape with minor injuries at worst, the island itself crumbling to pieces and taking down more than a few thick trees. The pieces of the island will very quickly begin to blacken, crumbling underfoot as the floating island turns to dust. Anyone still aboard may wish to make a very quick departure.

The ripples of this impact, however, are far more significant than two pieces of land bumping up against one another.

Previously, visitors to the floating islands may have experienced some...oddities, during their time above the clouds. For the next few days, these oddities will spread across Ensō itself, leading to some rather awkward scenarios:

[ ♆ ] Some may find their weapons are... behaving oddly, though all are still functional. Weapons, in this instance, may also include fisticuffs, if the intent is to use your fists as a weapon.

[ ♆ ] Equally as irritating are those who find themselves coming down with a severe case of NPCitus: periods of time in which they find themselves incapable of saying more than one or two lines of the same, repetitive dialogue.

[ ♆ ] Equal parts nostalgic and irritating for some are the instances of lag (walking forwards, only to find oneself back where they started), Swimmer's Ear (incapable of movement unless swimming through the air), and clipping (suddenly stuck halfway through the nearest rock are all common, regrettable side-effects).

[ ♆ ] Other unfortunate side-effects may also transpire, as varied and wild as one's imagination.

Though many of these may be hindering or even dangerous in the right situations, they are, for the most part, passive. The Storyteller will assure anyone who asks that these oddities will disappear in the next few days.

You are free to create or utilize glitches you are particularly fond of, though keep in mind that any potential content warnings should be mentioned in your toplevel! You may peruse some of the past glitches here, or create your own along those lines! And a special thanks to our local Donn-mun, Jake (

venesection), for the first glitch on the list!

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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I. WE ALL FLOAT

Merle spends his first few moments on a falling island mourning his damaged Extreme Teen Bible. The ink on the pages, normally depicting fun teens doing teen things like dabbing and the water bottle challenge as well as various reasons Pan is dope and how extreme it is to connect with nature, has bled through and now mostly depicts the void and void accessories. There are teens with no faces. There are teens with too many faces. It's awful, and no teen will ever listen to Merle's efforts to connect them with Pan ever again.

That's when he realizes that the ground he's standing on is literally falling. Thinking quickly -- alright, not that quickly, but quick enough that he's not too late -- he grabs hold of the knapsack with his name on it and his Vroom Broom and shouts, "Hang Ten!" The broom responds as expected, kicking off the ground and into the air with Merle balancing on it like the world's most fucked up surfboard.

He just kind of floats in the air and waits for the islands to fall, watching it like a beautiful disaster. He's vaguely reminded of Phandalin, and sort of hopes there isn't anyone underneath those sky islands that's about to get a really upsetting morning. There probably is, though. That sucks.

II. PERPETUAL MOTION IS THE WORST SOLITAIRE VARIATION EVER INVENTED; PROVE ME WRONG

There are a few things wrong with the Solitaire variation Perpetual Motion. Sure, all it requires is a single deck. Sure, the rules are relatively easy to pick up, and it doesn't require too much skill to play.

The tableau has four columns, where four cards are dealt. If there are any cards of equal number or rank, the duplicates are moved to the leftmost pile containing that card rank. After that, four more cards are dealt. The new top cards are dealt with in the same fashion. This continues until all four cards that are dealt are of the same rank.

When all four dealt cards are the same rank, then they are discarded. When the stock of new cards runs out, all piles are picked up in order from the right and placed back in the stock, where the first four are dealt again.

In Perpetual Motion, cards are being dealt and redealt until all 52 cards are discarded. Almost half the time, this is impossible. You don't know if the game is winnable until about 50 rounds through the stock. On average, it takes over 100 rounds to complete the game on a win.

It's the biggest waste of fucking time ever invented, and Merle can think of no better way to make use of his repurposed, waterlogged chick tracts now that he's found himself underneath the ground.

He's floating, in the water below the ground. This makes no sense, because that's not how islands work, but there is a flat surface through which his head is poking out that is invisible to his eye at certain angles, but he can't pull himself back up through the ground because he can't touch or interact with it in any way with his body, but the cards certainly can, in a weird and unreliable way.

So, instead, it's Perpetual Motion with a makeshift deck of cards that could be missing a few, Merle doesn't know. He wasn't being very exacting when he reassigned certain pages of chick tracts to numbers and suits.

He'll probably have to eat or something like that eventually. He could just snack on the raw sack of rice he's got in his knapsack, so he's at least set for a little bit. But he's accepted this as his new lot in life. Sometimes, this is just how it is.

Kravitz is being possibly too careful as he walks through the messed up landscape, scythe already in hand. Of course, he was the one bullied into stepping into the landscape to figure out exactly what had happened, and while he is incredibly curious as to what the landscape is doing, exactly, this is not how he wanted to spend his day. He's keeping an eye on his surroundings, but he doesn't exactly know what- or who- he needs to be looking for here. But the movement catches his eye first, of an odd shuffling, a hand on the ground. He steps a bit closer to get a better look, and... those are hands. Coming out of the floor. Along with what seems to be part of a head that he might slightly recognize.

"... Merle?" Probably not the most comforting voice, but it certainly doesn't sound threatening. At least he's not a skeleton this time. "What are you doing?"

Oh, lord. Merle would recognize that accent anywhere. His first thought is that Kravitz has come to finish the job again, but he's comfortable enough in his new, below-the-world location keeping him safe from being carted off to the astral plane that he doesn't entirely freak out.

"Playing cards. It's a one person game, so, you know, you'd be welcome to join, but it's Solitaire."

Yeah, that should encourage him to wander off. Merle collects the tableau and replenishes the stock, dealing four more cards. Damn. He might not be winning this one.

Well, he's right about one thing, it is a one player game. However, that's strongly not the point here. Kravitz looks down at Merle with an unmistakable expression of why, squinting with palms outstretched.

"Why... why are you doing this. How are you even down there?" He takes a tentative step forward, looking around as if he, too, is just gonna t-pose and clip through the floor. "I'd ask why you're not worried about it, but that would be a fundamental misunderstanding of you, though I am a bit interested since you're not groveling."

"If I knew how I was down here, I wouldn't be down here, now would I? My toes are getting all prune-y."

He collects a new set of four 4s and discards them.

"Anyway, I figure, sometimes the world is gonna do weird shit, and if I complained every time it happened, I'd have a lot of complaining to do. I went to a plane, no joke, the favored pasttime was racing geese. Half the time they were trying to stop the geese biting the shit outta the audience."

And sometimes you clip through the floor and end up swimming in the ocean under the world. It just happens, Kravitz. Get used to it.

"...Are you gonna help me out?"

He just blinks, staring at the situation in front of him, mouth opening and closing. This. It. Hm. How does he deal with this?

He's just gonna go with the one thing he might be able to control here. "Yyyes. I would like to get you out, actually. Though I honestly don't know how. How did you get down there, exactly? If I stick my hand down there, am I also going to end up in... whatever this is?"

"I was just walking and, you know, then I was under the floor. Goes to show I ought to get more use out of the Vroom Broom, but it was starting to give me trouble by that point. Might need to take it in to take advantage of that warranty."

If Fantasy Costco is even reachable from this location. Or, like. In business, still. It was looking kind of Hunger-y last Merle saw it.

"Only one way to find out, my friend," Merle encourages Kravitz, reaching out grabby hands to help as much as he can in the process, which is admittedly a very limited amount.

As usual, he has absolutely no idea what words are coming out of Merle's mouth, but that certainly sounds like a call to action there at the end, so he's just going to go with it. He dispels the scythe, letting it go back to it's holding place at camp, and reaches an arm down to help pull Merle up.

Of course, that would be too easy. No, instead, his hand just gets stuck in the floor, and Kravitz is left bent over, half-kneeling, and madder than he was.

"Oh come on!" He puts a hand over the stuck arm, pulling, but nothing seems to happen. "This is-- this is a floor! Things shouldn't go through the floor!"

"You know, you'd think that, but this is definitely not my first weird floor rodeo." Although admittedly last time was a total illusion that he just failed to see through.

"At least this time my broom is safe," he says, pointing up and over to a broom that is propped up against a tree. It looks like a normal wooden broom. There's a nice knapsack with Merle's name on it next to it, though. So at least his stuff is safe.

"Hey, at least you can just chop your arm off and be fine. You know. It's probably for the best. Hey, maybe we should call Magnus."

Kravitz does look towards the broom, thinking about rising to Merle's challenge about weird floor stories and deciding against it. Instead, he goes back to trying to pull his arm out until the arm chopping joke comes along, and Kravitz takes the bait without realizing the joke.

"Respectfully, it was supposed to kill you, not just take your arm." He's always sort of been surprised Merle didn't hold a grudge for that, but he's not acting weird, so that's fine, he supposes. "And I can't just cut this off. I'm finding myself more solid than previously these days."

When it becomes apparent he's not getting that arm out, Kravitz huffs, careful not to let his other arm drop into it. "Okay. Well. That idea failed. I hesitate to ask, truly, but what now?"

Shepard has been doing her best to try and get people off the falling islands and all and all it's been... an interesting time. This time around though it looks like someone has a good handle on that situation and as she dodges the pieces of falling island, she calls up to the surfing witch? Up high.

"Hey you! Are you ok up there?"

Merle looks around for the source of the voice, before finally thinking to look down and seeing a woman far below. He shrugs at her, calling down.

"I'm fine, but you don't look so great. You should think about gettin' one of these."

Everyone deserves a Vroom Broom.

Okay, well, not everyone, but many people.

Shepard looks up incredulously.

"Getting what? A broom?"

He's probably some magic user... she should have known.

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May Intro: We're Going Down, Down

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