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

[lifeaftr_mods]

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 )

Comments

[counterblows]

[That's an easy one, at least. He nods, slowly.]

Yeah.

[They're operating off of two separate frames of reference - drastically separate. Removed across galaxies or something more, something so colossally beyond the realm of what he's equipped to conceptualize that he doesn't even want to fucking bother with it.]

I guess we come from...two different places. Two really, really different places.

[forwearemany]

Yes.

(Their headflaps shift, ripple, building consensus...

...It may be some time before they have the courage to suggest working together.)

[counterblows]

[The nice thing about the helmet: it evens the playing field. Wash narrows his eyes underneath the visor, but doesn’t comment immediately on the abrupt lack of resolution.]

[He’s going to have to build to this. All right, then.]

All right, well, let’s start this from the beginning. My name is Agent Washington. [His designation, if you want to be specific about it.]

[forwearemany]

Affirmative, Washington-Agent.

(Legion is weird about nemes.)

[counterblows]

[...close enough.]

Are you injured, Legion? [Don’t think he didn’t catch that divot in their back. Sure doesn’t look like an accident to him, either.]

[forwearemany]

(Their headflaps shift, ripple. Briefly, their gaze flicks to their right arm.)

Systems are functioning acceptably.

(They don't want to reveal the extent of their damage... even if it's really not much.)

[counterblows]

Acceptably. Maybe not optimally?

[Quickest way to make friends when you’re alone, lost, and have next to no immediate ties to anyone who could venture an assist? Start finding reasons to help.]

[He’s not the same guy who was always picked to meet with internals, and Felix’s endgame did a particular number on the potential for any immediate trust. But it is something. ]

[forwearemany]

This unit has suffered minor damage from saltwater. Functions affected are non critical.

(They look down at their right arm again. Funny thing is, it seems to move and work just fine.)

[counterblows]

Yeah, same here. My HUD was blowing up when I first woke up here, and now my comm's dead.

[Offering tidbits of information, an even exchange. See? Nothing here to worry about.]

You looked a little banged up on your back there, is all I'm saying.

[forwearemany]

(Their heaflaps lift, settle. It's not quite an expression of alarm. Surprise, maybe?

They look at the knife.)

Our allies betrayed us. The blood is ours.

(Yeah, they ended up stranded in this shithole armed only with the knife their friend used to fucking stab them to death.)

[counterblows]

[There's nothing to say to that.]

[Betrayal doesn't react well to sympathy, to patience, to anything but the cold realization metastasizing into the need for action, the need to do something, anything about the knife that someone else sunk into your back to the hilt.]

[Often metaphorical.]

[Often not.]

Are those..."allies" here?

[forwearemany]

...Shepard-Commander.

(She's here. She's not the same, but she's here. They saw her. She assisted them.

...They do not know what to think.)

[counterblows]

[So. That's the person who betrayed them, and she's also their Commander.]

[There's an old story there. A story about a Staff Sergeant who was nearly blown to pieces because a corporal beneath him had a better idea, and elected to fuck C.O.C. if it meant saving the lives of every poor doomed bastard in his unit.]

A threat? [He doesn't know the context.]

[But he knows how to buy his way into it.]

[forwearemany]

(In this case, it's more of someone faced with an awful choice deciding not to risk trying to save the machines, even though their Creators started this, even though the Geth never wanted to fight.)

...Uncertain.

(Shepard's behavior has ceased to be comprehensible, though they do not believe she would turn against fellow organics.)

[counterblows]

Hm.

[Paranoid, aggressive, and a little melodramatic. Felix had him down a little better than Wash cares to admit.]

Not fond of loose cannons myself. [Seeing as he is, on occasion, guilty of the same.]

[forwearemany]

Lack of reliability makes unit cohesion difficult.

(Legion doesn't like loose canons either.

Admittedly, being a douchebag to a.i. is unfortunately predictable behavior. Another reason they're so wary.)

[counterblows]

[They’re obviously robotic, obviously inorganic, but it’s difficult to say where the differences between Legion and, say, Lopez, begin. Even the A.I. fragments were recognizably personable - but then, their personality matrices were lifted from a flash clone of a human being.]

[He doesn’t think of Epsilon. Who was more than a copy, who was more than memory.]

It can have its advantages. [Speaking of which:]

Did you wake up on that...crumbling island too?

[forwearemany]

(Maybe there's less difference than you think.

Legion chatters, but doesn't comment further on the topic of loose cannons.)

Yes.

[counterblows]

How’d you get off it?

[Because it took some trying before he and C.T., god, Connecticut, alive, could figure out how exactly to get off of the place before it took them down with it.]

[forwearemany]

...Shepard-Commander.

(She betrayed them, then she saved their life. ...They're not sure what to think of all this.)

Her appearance is different.

[counterblows]

[So Wash has yet to encounter the concept of multiversal variation. This is gonna go great.]

So it...wasn't really her?

[forwearemany]

(They don't fully grasp it yet either, honestly.

They shake their head, or at least do something really similar.)

Her voice and mannerisms are the same. She recognized us.

[counterblows]

That doesn't make any sense.

[Except it does, in its own fucked up kind of way. Because Connecticut is here, and she has an entire history that's apparently transpired between her death and now - her death, which was on the goddamn report and he heard it from Carolina herself for fuck's sake.]

...but I guess we should start getting used to that.

[forwearemany]

Affirmative.

(They don't even know.)

Have you encountered anomalies?

[counterblows]

You could say that.

[Freelancer is still restricted material, still confidential for all intents and purposes, and he's not precisely eager to go ahead and commit to a free-fall of untangling that shit in real time so someone else can get the general picture of what the Project was like.]

[So he runs some censor bars over the specifics.]

Ran into someone who was dead. Only they weren't dead anymore, and they'd lived an entire life between then and now.