lifeaftr | June Intro: Let's Sea How Far We've Come

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June Intro: Let's Sea How Far We've Come

INTRO LOG: JUNE

Who: Everyone!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr as the island of Ziziphus begins to crumble
When: June 4th and onward
Where: Ziziphus and Ensō...and Monsun
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Ziziphus: At The Start Of The End Of The World
Since Bliss's destruction, the extensive root network they've threaded throughout every inch of the island of Ziziphus has begun to crumble. June 4th marks the beginning of the inevitable collapse of the island as it starts to sink into the sea...coincidentally coinciding with the arrival of LifeAftr's newest adventurers. Between the dead trees surrounding Bliss's empty husk, great cracks in the earth start to widen, the dead god's absent root system leaving vast gaps underground which simply cannot support the life above.

It almost sounds like thunder rupturing from the ground itself, wild tremors preceding each vicious boom until gaping chasms lay between venturing parties and the safety of the mana pool - only water waits below, for those unlucky enough to lose their footing.

And if the immense pull of mile wide chunks of landmass sinking beneath the waves isn't enough to suck you down, the heavy rain of debris from Ziziphus's rapidly destabilizing edges will certainly help. Want to avoid a watery grave? What you need to do is simple:

Escape.

Sorry, newbies. If you showed up on Ziziphus, you're in for a very athletic entrance to LifeAftr.

Monsun: Just Like Every Other Morning Before
Adventurers aren't the only creatures on Ziziphus attempting to outrun its collapse. Creatures great and small, from the largest spindlank to the smallest tigerlily will be heading south in an attempt to escape the worst of the quakes. Unlike offshore adventurers, however, these poor creatures don't have a mana pool waiting for them to escape through. Their extinction, it seems, is imminent.

Unless you have something to say about it.

Already exhausted from their attempts to get through to and then actively dispose of their fellow god, the Storyteller will break their traditional manner of communication to announce a potential solution to this problem with a single broadcast to the Stones of Far Speech in a strained, weary tone:

"The mana pools on Monsun are now open. If you are willing, save what you can."

True to their word, characters will discover that the island of Monsun will be accessible once more for a short period of time. From prey to predator, obstruction to catastrophe - multiple species of flora and fauna can still be preserved, should you choose to do so.

Be wary of the psychological effects of both sides of the island. Those who are new to our setting and wish to explore, the island of Monsun has a peculiar side effect to its stark divide: the eastern half is rich in resources, but brings out the very worst of you, while the western half is a tumultuous wasteland that accentuates your best qualities. More information on said island can be found on its entry on the Locations page, or its introductory info post.

Due to these efforts, the Storyteller will not be available for contact from the 4th to the 18th of June. Item Requests will also be unavailable at this time. They will, however, make a rather strained announcement to ensure all are aware that access to both Ziziphus and Monsun will cease on June 10th.

Ensō: I Wonder What It Means If It's Gone
The native fauna of Ziziphus aren't the only ones on the move, it seems. Those who wander the shores of Ensō will be delighted to witness the appearance of creatures akin to both turtles and dugongs drifting through the waters, gravitating around the island's eastern coast, rapidly gaining in numbers over the following days.

Kaleidoshells have been unlocked in the bestiary!

With spring close to ending in the archipelago, these peaceful creatures are looking to make good use of their natural nesting areas; hope you're open to sharing the beach for a little while. While a few braver individuals will make their way to the shores between C4 and D1 to begin digging nests, the vast majority won't be coming to shore quite yet.

They do, however, make a very fine sight around the waters of Ensō, especially in the evening. Luminescent, their rainbow patterns glow underwater, drifting mood lights for the increasingly warmer evening breeze.

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

Foster wasn't trying to pulverise anyone's organs--but then, from his perspective, this man had a choice. He just chose to keep hold of this... squirming plant creature rather than preserve himself. That isn't Foster's fault.

It does explain some of the confusion he's getting back, though.

"Not the kick," he supplies helpfully, studying Tim closely. He's standing over him, nine feet tall and only a foot away--his forelegs splayed slightly as he keeps Tim in his sights.

"This."

Edited (I forgot how old Tim was) 2018-06-04 03:44 (UTC)

"The fact that you're a horse man? I mean, that's fine, I guess." Tim has, as it stands, a very high threshold of tolerance for bullshit. Being hauled into a castle and told to fight a war between shadows and light, and then dragged to a bunch of islands and told to help the fickle storytelling god to stay in power, will tend to do that, even if his experiences at home hadn't already thoroughly desensitized him to pretty much anything that wasn't a very specific childhood fear.

Centaur, horse creature, whatever. He doesn't recognize him. Might be new. Might just have been around for a while, and Tim's paths haven't crossed with his just yet.

Does it matter?

"No."

Standing over Tim like this, he is the one in control right now, and he lifts his head slightly, looking down at the man briefly. He doesn't bother to hide the disparaging tone.

"This. The world crumbling around you, the very earth breaking beneath your feet as you hurry to... mmmmm. Collect? Salvage? No... to change the fate of those damned, the arbiter whose choice determines what lives and what dies...!"

Excitement leaks into his judgment as he shifts from low intensity to high--his eyes cast first up at the sky, then down on Tim as one set of claws buries itself in his own hair, the tips pricking his scalp. He bends down, bringing himself closer to Tim's level. Sort of.

He eyes the centaur warily - not hostile, not exactly bewildered, but mentally trying to pick apart what's just been thrown at him.

"It's...same shit as always, pal. I dunno what to tell you." Definitely a newbie, then. The fact that this kind of thing seems to arrest him, shocks him in some capacity, or at the very least excites him, that speaks volumes as to how new he must be at this. At least in theory. He might just be on a hell of a power high. Who knows?

"Maybe you're new here, but that's just kinda how this kind of thing goes. We show up, either we fuck things up or the Storyteller does, and then someone has to pick up the pieces when it all goes to hell."

When it all, predictably, goes to hell.

That is almost exactly what the Ringmaster does, and Foster laughs--loudly and without any actual expressed humour, but he throws his head back for it, like he actually wants Tim to believe he finds it funny. Maybe he actually does.

"New here?" He asks, but doesn't wait for an answer. "Yes."

It's almost exactly like what the Ringmaster does--only it's more like they arrive to a clusterfuck or cause it, and she eats whatever trouble is left over.

"Here... yes, but not new." He finishes with a thin and knowing smile.

"You should be less complacent about it." Just some advice.

New here. Suggesting that maybe he's been through something like this before. Wouldn't be the first time. Tim merely shrugs, adjusting his grip on the flowccus lamb so that it can no longer kick its way free. The creature has gone somewhat more docile than earlier - possibly distracted by the multicolored horse-man that's now conversing with the man holding it prisoner.

"Sure" he says, without any genuine commitment behind the sentiment. Complacency is unavoidable, as far as he's concerned. He has a limited amount of things he can commit any genuine emotional thrust to at any given time, and for now, he's elected to put all his chips in the baskets dangling off the arms of other people.

"Can we walk and talk? I kinda wanna get off this place before the earth literally cracks open some more."

The shrug helps, because Foster is not superb at emotions, or people, or caring--but Tim, that bland tone was not subtle.

"Mmmm." He doesn't sound interested in walking and talking at all. His eyes wander off to the side, towards the ocean--

Then he glances back. "I'll do you one better."

You and your prize.

He leans down, folding one foreleg beneath him, the other bent to hold him up in a sort of quadrupedal bow. His knapsack is over his humanoid back, but there's plenty of space where a horse would carry a rider. Mushrooms notwithstanding.

The message is clear: hop on.

He's...offering to give him a ride?

That seems, allegedly, like a better idea than just booking it and hoping that he can outrun the earthquakes literally tearing the island apart, but on the other hand -

On the other hand, he doesn't know this guy.

"Never ridden before, sorry," he says, rolling one shoulder. The flowccus bleats its discontent, and he quickly tightens his grip. "Not sure I could hang onto this little guy and you at the same time."

"....hm."

He wasn't asking, actually. But before anything can turn hostile (or just weird), the day......... continues as it has.

A distant booming is their warning. As if on cue, the island rumbles, the earth rippling--and a foot or so of what was once-solid ground on either side of the chasm crumbles into the sea. This includes the rock that was beneath his left hind. His foot slips, and his back end with it; his front half already down, he drops, falling onto his right side to roll away from the edge, back hooves flailing.

Tim manages to keep his footing, but the horse guy isn’t so lucky. He goes skidding backwards. Tim fumbles the plant-lamb in his arms, and it wrests itself free with a powerful kick to his chin that clicks his teeth painfully together. It scurries off with a triumphant bleat, and he stares after it with eyes watering for half a second before grunting his defeat and instead lurching forward to the centaur’s aid.

“Shit - hang on.” He’s probably not strong enough to haul someone who’s half horse back to safety, but damn if he isn’t going to try. He reaches to try and help the guy up. “We gotta move.”

Foster lifts his head to stare at the proffered hand, his flanks dusted with pollen and petals. His expression is neutral. Flat.

Then he smiles--wide, bright, eyes rising to meet Tim's.

"Oh... hahaha. No. No, no, no." He laughs, already scrambling for purchase, for his feet--and up onto his fore, his back legs splaying as he gathers them underneath himself.

He's taller than Tim immediately almost immediately.

"You don't want to... to touch me. You don't know where I've been."

Edited 2018-06-04 22:36 (UTC)

So the assist was all but pointless. Great, fine. He straightens, casting about for the flowccus, but it's long gone.

Priorities have shifted, then. From save what you can to make sure this guy at least makes it off Ziziphus safe. He doesn't know him, doesn't trust that smile, but maybe it's a perfectly normal smile for someone to have, given the circumstances. Tim isn't big on smiling; he's hardly an expert.

"Sure, and last month I was bleeding rot onto the fucking dirt. I don't care where you've been, pal. If we don't move, we're both gonna drown, or worse."

Tim seems to think this is a bad thing. But he has issues, as it happens, with the concept of drowning.

Foster, on the other hand, finds the concept of drowning incredibly attractive. There are very few ways to die that stand out, in the end. Drowning is one of them.

Maybe it's the water that attracts him.

Maybe it's the awareness, the progression from life to death.

Or maybe--

Well.

Tim mentioned rot. Rot, bleeding out of him into 'fucking dirt.' It's almost antagonistic, that visual, almost enough to get under his skin, where the rot really lies.

He's touched worse.

He laughs, like a bark.

"You want to leave without what you came for?"

Edited 2018-06-06 02:32 (UTC)

"What, the sheep? It's gone." He could chase it down, but between saving something that's decidedly not sapient and someone that very clearly is, he'll take the newbie. Someone's gotta make sure he doesn't legitimately drown, most likely.

Or at least show him the ropes of how shit here works. He might not be new at being dragged across universes, but a remote tropical island can be a hell of a thing to get used to.

"So yeah, I'd kinda rather get you somewhere safe."

"Oh." Foster sounds... disappointed.

"Me." Correction: disgusted.

"I have no interest in being safe."

He steps back from the ledge, and from Tim.

"...if you don't have time to catch your sheep, you don't have time to pick up garbage."

It's a helpful reminder, albeit one almost reproachful of his priorities.

Jesus fucking christ not another one.

"So can we debate the legitimacy of your fucking personhood later?" says Tim, landing somewhere between weary and just...done. Does anybody here have enough self-esteem to fill a thimble? Anyone at all? He's not even going to dignify that with a hypothetical answer, because Tim himself is generally aware of the fact that he's no fucking better, but at least he's trying to do something about it.

"If it makes you feel better, just pretend that you're helping me not have a stress-induced stroke in the next thirty minutes."

"I can spare you that stroke now, if you'll actually listen," Foster replies, but without any real hope of a positive response. People--all kinds, human and other--have an instinctive revulsion to the concept, a sort of natural fear of the disgusting that manifests as denial. He knows that.

But he also resents it.

"Do you want your sheep?"

He's not done here, Tim.

You should really straighten out your priorities.

"It's not mine. And seeing as I've got no idea where it's gone, I don't wanna waste time finding it."

Forgive him the short fuse; he's got a generally low tolerance for bullshit at the moment. Particularly when that bullshit manifests in the form of someone pretending they know his priorities better than he does.

He jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

"So. I'm gonna head to the way off this island. If you don't feel like leaving just yet, fine, but I'm gonna at least make sure you know how the mana pools work. Okay?"

"You just said you didn't want to waste time." Foster's tone is clipped now, impatience overriding his erratic need to attempt niceties. He shifts his weight, agitation adding restlessness. His clawtips bury in his hairline, his gaze moves off Tim and down to his hooves, into the flowers, out over the sea--

If nothing else, his body language is an open book, even if his expression isn't. Because he's still smiling reflexively, even while he sounds ready to...?

To...??

"I'm disposable, diseased garbage. I was born that way, to be stupid--born rotting, poison where I'm not rot, I'm not capable of... of learning!"

His laughter is abrupt and loud, but this time with actual humour--like that is, somehow, truly hilarious to him.

Edited 2018-06-08 09:22 (UTC)

"Oh, and you think I wasn't?" He shouldn't allow for this - for this shit to get to him, to crawl under his skin, but he barks it out before he can bite it back and it curls up under his skin like something sick and poisonous. Cursed from the cradle, cursed from the womb, leaking into everyone's lives and cracking open their skulls like geodes to the thing that would rip their minds apart, that thing without a face that wanted him alive and so refused to let him fade out with a fistful of meds when that should've been enough.

No.

He's not here to play this game. He's not here to play the game of who had it worse, because who wins? No one fucking wins.

So he breathes out.

"Like it or not, we're in this shit together. I'm choosing this, okay? I'm choosing to help, because I said I wanted to, and you don't get to decide whether I meant that or not. So come on."

Foster's laughter fades quickly.

"No, you're not. You just think you are. There is no choice without consequence--if there is no consequence, there is no commitment. Aversion, dislike is not the same thing as desire. You don't want to help. You want an easy way out."

If Tim stands his ground, he'll find Foster encroaching closer and closer upon his personal space.

"You want a painless choice."

Tim shifts back immediately. He's not fond, as it happens, of being touched. He's not fond of people intruding on his personal space.

And he's not fond of people assuming they know a damn thing about him.

"You've got no clue what I want, pal," he says flatly. "And I know damn well what consequences are. So like I said - you don't get to decide what I mean by it."

He's a living, walking knot of fucking consequence. He lives with it every day.

People thinking they know what he is, what he means, what he's going to be -

He's not one for it.

Foster, of course, was never going to touch Tim at all. That is one thing he and Foster have in common--maybe the only thing.

Maybe not.

Because Tim has made an assumption about Foster--the most egregiously wrong assumption he could make. One of worth, of personhood.

Is that what they mean by 'false equivalence?'

The thought is sudden enough that is startles him into laughing again.

"I'm not deciding." He stops advancing and turns his head to the side. His one visible eye moves to stay on Tim. He's smiling. "If you want something, then there is an assumption of... an assumption of risk."

His agitated claws find his hairline again; his tail switches at his ankles, one back hoof (or all three hoofed toes on one back foot) scraping the soil as he lifts and replaces it. He is still smiling.

"A choice that feels morally 'safe' at the expense of wasted time.... mmmm. Are you sure about that? Yes, of course you are... that's your problem. You think you have... time."

Isn't that always their problem? They can't conceive of the cost in time outweighing the cost to their ego, their guilt.

"Yeah, again - maybe quit thinking you've got any idea what I want here." He sounds...sour. Not angry, not upset, just tired. Can you blame him? His entire life has been people thinking they know what he wants, and doing everything they can to effect that without once asking him themselves.

No one ever asks.

Shouldn't have gotten used to people treating him like he's a person, huh? Spoiled him, it has.

"You don't know me, and I don't know you. And you have no idea how much time I have."

Asking Tim would require Foster to believe that Tim were not acting under the illusion of false beliefs.

Which he has already demonstrated to be the case.

So, no. He won't ask what Tim thinks. Tim thinks they're equals of some sort. Thinks that what he wants matters as much or more than why he wants it. Foster is having none of it.

"I know time is finite," he replies blandly. He isn't even speaking specifically of Tim--time as a concept is finite, to be lost in the end with all life and all Creation, subject to final oblivion by the nature of the Void.

He finds another smile in an infinite well of them--a smile of challenge and anticipation, his blue eyes bright behind their half-mast lids.

"If you're committed to wasting it, then prove it."

June Intro: Let's Sea How Far We've Come

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CW: suicidal ideation/fantasy

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CW: extreme, sudden self deprecation

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Wow @ that last tag, that's halfway a word salad

There’s a pun about parsing and parsley there but I’ll make no attempt to find it

All roads lead to Simon and Garfunkel

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