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

Your -

[Wait, wait wait wait wait wait wait - ]

[He only takes a moment to register that - you were dead, when did that happen, why did that happen, who the hell are you talking about, why, how - before his reflexes catch up to carry him after her.]

[It's been said that you don't get to be leader of Blue Team without the ability to go falsetto with shock and frustration like a motherfucker.]

What?

[ She doesn't turn around, just keeps walking. ]

Come on! This island feels like it's falling apart. He could already be -

[ She cuts herself off abruptly, shaking her head violently. ]

Just help me find him!

When the hell did you get engaged?

[When the hell - hey, maybe there's his answer! Maybe this is what happens to Freelancers after they die, and this is where they atone for their crimes against humanity. The post-mission report, isn't that what it said? We're all going to pay for his crimes?]

[Some of us are already paying for them.]

[ That makes her stop, and it's a good thing she has her helmet on to hide her expression.

Unfortunately, it doesn't do much to disguise her voice, or the threat of barely-held back tears. ]

Last night, Wash.

He asked me last night. And I woke up here, alone, and now maybe I'll never see him again.

[He doesn't have the full story.]

[Last night meant, for him, an island where the sim troopers could finally rest, where they could dick around do whatever stupid shit they wanted and take a well-deserved break from fighting other people's battles and saving other people's planets. Last night meant, for him, years, literal years since Texas and Carolina reported a mission failure to the directive: Connecticut dead, but the armor lost.]

[There's too much missing between then and now, and too much context he doesn't have.]

[He has to fight it - the urge to spit up more questions, to allow for the incredulity to ramp his tone up several more high-pitched octaves.]

[Prioritize, agent. Focus.]

If he's here, then don't you think he'd wanna get off this island too?

[ He wouldn't leave without me is her first, instinctive response - and it's true, he wouldn't. If he know she was there. If he had half a chance of saving her.

But he doesn't know she's here, any more than she has any way of knowing if he's here or not. Maybe he isn't. Maybe he's back safe in their bed in Kirkwall, maybe he's still asleep and hasn't even realized she's missing. Maybe he is here and had done the smart thing and gotten his ass off the island the moment he could - Varric's always been good at taking care of himself.

Maybe not.

Her voice is strangled, clearly conflicted. ]

What if he's - hurt, or trapped, or -

[Do your best to account for the shift, Agent Washington: the fact that your long-dead, ex-Freelancer, Insurrectionist operative friend is not only alive, but engaged, and is panicking over someone that he's never even met.]

This - whoever he is, C.T. - do you trust him? Do you trust that he'd be able to look at this situation and figure out what needs doing?

[ She looks down at the ground, not quite sulking, but very close. ]

...yes.

All right.

[Don't think about the familiarity in it; the fact that the line of her shoulders and the bend of her neck feels the halation of the leaderboard's neon blue casting her into sharpened relief, post-mission.]

We need to get off this island before it sinks. If he's here, you're gonna have to trust that he'll be doing the same.

[ He's right. She knows he's right. It's not safe to stay here any longer, and Varric...He wouldn't want her to. He'd want her to save herself.

She looks back at the forest once more, yearning and unhappy. ]

Dammit!

[ She kicks at the sand, uselessly, watching it puff up around her foot before turning back to Wash, her posture tense and angry. ]

Come on, let's go.

[Ah.]

[And there's the part where he doesn't know where they're supposed to go, or how they're supposed to get off this damn island in the first place. Still, it'd be nice if there were some kind of option, because he's pretty sure this thing isn't going to last forever.]

You see anything that might look like a way out?

No.

[ The ground shakes again, but this time, a whole chunk of the beach nearby breaks off and falls into the sea. It's getting worse. ]

...We could swim.

[ She sounds doubtful. Their armor is watertight, but even if they don't sink right to the bottom, it's so heavy that actually swimming for any length of time would be almost impossible. She scans the horizon, looking for a possible destination. Where are they even going to go? ]

[Jesus christ. They need to figure a way off this place, and somehow he doubts swimming is gonna cut it. He take a moment to check, just to be sure - and any supply of intravenous rations he might've once had chimes empty. So they'd be completely adrift, without any guarantee that they'd find solid land, and...]

[And his eyes are drawn to the end of the peninsula, the rounded curve of a stone plinth nearly hidden by the fields of green-gold grass, emanating a faint cerulean glow.]

Well. That's the first sign of civilization I've seen since ending up here.

[ She follows his gaze. The stone doesn't look like much, but the way it's glowing...

She doesn't know what it might be. A communication relay? A ship? Whatever it is, it's powered, at any rate. Whether that'll help them or not is another question. ]

Let's check it out.

[ She's already heading for the end of the peninsula, stumbling a little as the ground shakes beneath her. ]

[Waking hard on an empty island, with nothing but a long-dead agent for company and a handful of dreams about flowers and memories winking in and out with an increasingly painful cling and drag like waves against a beach - not what you'd call an ideal fucking set of circumstances. He owes her a million questions and she probably owes him just as many, but instinct knows how to prioritize where they can't.]

[He starts hiking the incline alongside her, boots digging into the loosening earth. He's not real sure what he expects to find at the top, but a pool of greenish, glowing water probably wasn't in the top ten.]

[He tries not to look at the flowers growing in thick clumps of yellow and off-white. They draw his eye anyway.]

Let's hope these don't make anyone blind. [It'd be ridiculous to assume she would remember the same dream, wouldn't it?]

[ Her heart sinks as they get closer and she realizes what they're looking at. Not the lights of a ship or a console, something that can get them off this rock or put them in contact with someone else who can. Just a pool of water, glowing gently at the edge of the sand.

Her head snaps up at Wash's comment, and she stares at him. She'd suspected, when he'd mentioned flowers earlier, but... ]

The dream.

[ It isn't a question. And it isn't his dream or hers, but the. The same one. ]

[Was he in her head? Or was she in his? Which is preferable, fuck - can't say. He couldn't remember then but he can remember now, vividly, what it was for the Director's words to be leaking out of his mouth, for the Alpha to be screaming his way through the process of fracturing his digital soul, Wash's synapses his mouthpiece across years and years of scoured memory.]

[And she remembers.]

So either we're both crazy now, or there's something bigger going on.

[He says it offhand, simply. He's been crazy before. This isn't full-on fubar compared to what it could be. Shared dreams, failing psyches - been there and done that.]

[Kind of.]

[ CT's been through way too much to admit defeat that easily. She sets her jaw stubbornly. ]

I'm not crazy.

[ And he's not either...at least, not where this is concerned. She resists the urge to look around, as if hoping to catch sight of someone with a headset scrutinizing them from the bushes. ]

Someone's doing this to us.

[ Just like Airlocked. Just like Freelancer. ]

Like a talking rabbit that appears in dreams.

[He crouches in front of the flowers, studying them. Not vibrant enough to count as whatever the hell broke down his fabricated firewalls of years of conscious separation. Without thinking much of it, he picks one.]

Unless that one was just me. [He pauses, and might've even shrugged if he wasn't wearing full body-armor.] It might've been just me.

What?

[ She backs away reflexively when he crouches down next to the flowers, and looks back over her shoulder to see the island shaking itself apart.

She's understandably, she thinks, distracted from what he's saying. ]

Wash...we have to find a way out of here.

[There's something familiar in this - his sense of utter serenity as the world threatens to come apart beneath their feet. It's not quite apathy. It's not quite the barrier that he couldn't breach and, for a long time, had no inclination to. It's not the plain inability to care because everything that would allow him to has since been locked somewhere inaccessible to him.]

[It's more...acceptance.]

I know.

[He's freaking her out, probably. She's dead. She's dead, and shouldn't be here, but she is, and he's really gotta stop assuming people are dead when they keep coming back.]

Doesn't this seem familiar?

[ He's definitely freaking her out. He'd been the one so insistent that they had to leave, that they couldn't stay here and look for Varric, and now he wants to stand here and talk about dreams? ]

No.

[ It is a little bit like her dream. Kind of. (Hadn't there been a beach? The sound of the waves?) But even if it's familiar enough to mean something, it doesn't matter. They don't have time.

She casts a last, resentful look at the stupid glowing pool, then marches to the edge of the shore, looking into the waves. ]

Wash...I'm swimming.

[He glances at her, sharp and lateral, as if to question that course of action when he’s not really got any bettter plans himself - when that’s roughly the moment that he drops the flower and it lands in the clear liquid encased in the stone.]

[And then the world turns over.]

[Well, no.]

[They end up on Ensō, technically speaking, but it’s not like launching oneself forward with a teleportation grenade and it’s just disorienting enough for Wash to squawk in protest, hand immediately falling to his rifle in preparation to square up against a foe that doesn’t exist.]

[Congratulations, Wash. You figured out how mana pool travel works, completely by accident.]

[ She knows it's a long shot, but at this point, she honestly doesn't see any alternative. The ground could disappear from under their feet at any moment, and she's not going to die now falling into some stupid chasm. Wash...Wash will follow her, if she jumps in.

And that's just what she's about to do when the world turns upside down. CT braces herself, thinking it's another earthquake, and it takes her a moment to realize that the island is gone, the ocean is gone, and they're somewhere else. She looks around wildly, instinctively moving closer to Wash for security. ]

What the hell?

Fuck -

[Absent is the snapping gurgle of a teleportation grenade. Absent is anything he's come to associate with immediate displacement of self, willing or otherwise. He staggers on the spot, reeling, involuntarily falling into position with C.T. at his back, his BR55HB SR jerking upright to seek an enemy that doesn't exist.]

[They layout is entirely different. A stone temple, thick, jungle-like greenery - pretty drastic drop shift in, uh, geography.]

What just happened?

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