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

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?

I don't know.

[ She hears the click of Wash's rifle as he lifts it up into position, and she pulls out her own knife, wishing she had a gun of her own.

She can't see anyone else, but anything could be hiding in this jungle. A jungle that definitely hadn't been there a moment ago. ]

Did you do anything? Did you -

[ But what could he have done? ]

I picked a flower, and I dropped it.

[What the hell kind of world did they end up in, just now? He catches the glint of the blade in the sunlight, unconsciously reaches down to unclamp his M6D from the mag-strip at his hip and pass it to her, handle-first.]

If that has any correlation with ending up here instead of an island that looked like it was falling apart on the spot, I've got no idea.

[ She takes the magnum with wordless gratitude, taking a moment to stare at her knife before slipping it back into its holster. It's not her old combat knife. It's the knife Varric had given her, jewel-studded gold handle and all. She's kept it close by her side since the day he'd given it to her, so it shouldn't be too surprising that she has it now...

Except what the hell is it doing in the holster of her armor? How is she wearing her armor in the first place, when she hasn't so much as touched it since they arrived in Kirkwall? How had it, and she, and the knife, all ended up here?

She swallows, looking around the dense jungle. Fucking flowers. If it's the flower again that had brought them here... ]

So what? We just start tearing up plants and see where it gets us?

We could.

[This is hardly an optimal position to initiate a genuine interrogation, but his grip on his rifle is firm and familiar, and he pivots slightly to regard her profile in his periphery.]

But we're not an island that's sinking anymore, so I think maybe you could start explaining some shit.

[ Oh. She doesn't turn to look at him in return, just keeps her gaze out on the horizon. Maybe they're alone here, and they can let their guard down a little bit. Maybe not.

But the question - the implied question - is fair enough. She probably would've demanded answers from Wash a lot sooner, had their positions been reversed. ]

I can't explain how we got here. [ Just in case he gets any ideas. She doesn't know everything. But...still. There's a lot, and she knows it. ]

Where do you want me to start?

[He figured as much, considering how startled she was to end up here at all. But now? Now they can get to the meat of the issue, so he's going to start with, in his mind, the most obvious:]

Were you ever really dead?

[Donut should've counted as dead, and wasn't. Carolina was dead, until she wasn't. Church has been dead, officially and unofficially and in as many capacities as he can imagine, more times than Wash himself can count.]

[Some people come back from death, and some, apparently, are never meant to. Up until now, he'd assumed that Connie - that C.T. was always one for the latter.]

Yes.

[ It's easier, now, to say it. To accept it. She'd died, despite everything, despite all her efforts to get out. All the promises of...of something like justice. Of a better life.

She hadn't made it out. She'd started the push to take down Freelancer, set the pieces in place for its eventual demise, but she'd paid for it with her life.

And then she'd come back. ]

Tex killed me. Just like they told you.

[ She assumes. ]

[But she's not an A.I. fragment, to be backed up and uploaded elsewhere. She's not the Alpha's living gestalt memories gelling into being over a period of inching years, piggybacking off of someone else's electricity and neural patterns.]

And you...what? Just came back?

[He's well aware that he hasn't quite earned that level of incredulity. Not when it's, technically speaking, happened before.]

[But he'd stopped thinking he'd see anyone from his days at Project Freelancer, aside from the unflagging constant of Carolina, years ago. To hold onto hope otherwise would've been entirely too cruel.]

Not by choice. [ Though she would have chosen to come back, if it had been her decision to make. She hadn't wanted to die. Hadn't been ready so soon. ] Someone brought me back.

[ Now she looks at him, a sideways glance through the angry glare of her helmet. ]

You know, Wash. I told you.

The dream, right?

[She remembers, and so does he. Remembers screaming, remembers evoking people who weren't really him. Leonard Church, Leonard Church, variations thereupon, byproducts of Church flowering outward in infinite fluctuations on the same damn theme.]

[Meaning she remembers him acting like someone he isn't, and never was.]

You didn't mention you were getting married. [There's just no earthly way to make that sentence sound hostile; it emerges too baffled to be anything else.]

[ She looks away again, and there's a long pause before she speaks again. However they'd gotten off the island, wherever they'd ended up, they're still alone. There's still no Varric.

And - if he'd ever been there at all - she can't imagine he'd stopped to pick any flowers as the ground crumbled beneath his feet. ]

Well, I was.

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