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

[ She nods. There's no way to know if they can trust them, if they're even here - she doesn't know who Wash might have met, why they're here, anything.

But what's the alternative? Treating the whole world as hostile, trusting no one else?

"Can we maybe trust him, then? Or should I be watching your back from here on out?"

"You don't even know if you can trust me."

She squeezes her eyes shut, grateful that her helmet is hiding her face as the tears slip down her cheeks, and takes a deep breath. ]

Yeah. We will.

So...explore the...jungle, I guess, see who we can find?

That'd be my first move.

[It would be, because there's still a lotta goddamn ground to cover, metaphorical and otherwise, but where else are they supposed to start? Start with the amount of context he has to recover here, because one year is easier to summarize than several.]

[There's no graceful way to go about it.]

How much do you know? About what happened after Tex killed you?

[ Ah.

She turns and starts walking, because if they've decided to explore and look for other...prisoners, survivors, whatever, they might as well go ahead and start doing that. And because it gives her an extra few seconds to stall before she has to answer him. ]

I know everything Church knew. The Alpha.

And. [ Goddammit. ] At least some of what the Counselor knew.

The Counselor?

[It takes a palpable effort to keep following her, his head lowering with an intensity that betrays the fact that his eyes have narrowed to electric blue slits behind the duraplex visoring.]

He was there? Him and - Alpha?

Church. He hates being called Alpha.

[ Shouldn't Wash, of all people, know that?

She nods and keeps walking, purposefully ignoring his incredulity. If she has to hold his hand through every revelation she has to throw at him, they'll be here all day. ]

Both of them. The Counselor was working for them.

Yeah, well, there's more than one Church. Kinda makes it hard to differentiate if you're calling all three of them -

[Fuck, does she know about Epsilon? Alpha wouldn't, right? The Counselor - the Counselor might. Depending on what he feels like sharing. There was never any telling what he wanted, what he was thinking, but the fact that he was in line with people like that?]

[Color him completely fucking unfloored by that revelation, at least.]

Why am I not surprised.

I know.

[ About how stupidly complicated it can get trying to differentiate one Church from another...and about Epsilon. About the implantation. It's why she hadn't been surprised or confused when she'd found Wash in that dream, ready to rip his own brains out if it would just stop the voices. Heartbroken, terrified, angry - but not surprised.

Her mouth twists up in a bitter smile, and she snorts. ]

He got away with it, in the end. Threw everyone else under the fucking bus and saved his own skin.

[ As usual. ]

[The durafoam cupping his jaw isn't enough to soften the eggshell-crack of molars clenching, the swollen bubble of outrage that he always thinks has burned out, always thinks has finally smoothed itself over, but never has and does, because nothing about his history can ever be fucking simple, can it, it's always got to rear its goddamned head when he least expects it and when he least needs it and it's not that he doesn't deserve it, but - ]

[But.]

You know we got him in the end. The Director.

[Thought she'd like to know.]

[ CT smiles grimly under her helmet. ]

I know.

[ The Counselor had escaped, and CT - being dead at the time - hadn't been able to do much to stop him. She'd have been first in line to bring him to justice if there was any chance of doing so. But as it was, she'd found something even better than justice, or revenge. She'd found friends. A new life, in a place where neither Airlocked nor Freelancer could touch her.

And they'd brought the Project down, in the end. The Project, and the Director with it. That helps. ]

I'm glad. Even if...

[ Even if she hadn't been alive to see it. ]

Even if your pals ended up being no better?

[That - that was just cruelty, uncalled for and uncommitted; a snipe, the product of lingering bitterness over a sharkfaced demoman who nearly tore Carolina apart over a years-old vendetta. Feels like half the people they run into these days have got some bone to pick with Freelancer, no matter they try to take what they did and restructure it into something worthwhile.]

[She threw in with people who ended up willing to spark a civil war for monetary gain, years down the line. Or, more specifically, for an old fucking vendetta.]

[ She doesn't know that part.

She doesn't know what had happened with the Insurrection - or "Insurrection" - after she'd died. Doesn't know about anyone's grudge against Carolina. Neither Church nor the Counselor had had that information to share with her.

But she does know about the nuke in the scrapyard. The "present" that the Insurrection had left for Project Freelancer. She'd been shocked, angry, terrified when she'd found out, because she'd never wanted that, had never meant for her friends - or the people who had once been her friends, before she'd turned traitor on them - to suffer. To die. She'd been sick with guilt and fear, not knowing if the bomb had found its target, if any or all of them had been caught in the blast.

She goes silent at Wash's bitter - and well-deserved - question, staring shamefacedly down at the ground for a long moment. When she does speak, it's quiet, still heavy with guilt and regret. ]

I didn't know they were gonna try to hurt anyone, Wash.

I swear. I didn't know.

What made them any better than what we did?

[He's heard it before. Heard it before, trusted it before, and gotten a knife in the back for the trouble. Gotten a bullet in the chest. Two in the spine. Enough shrapnel in his gut to assemble a warthog.]

[If it were only years prior, he would've called it the end of that. Stop. Don't act like that matters. You think intention has anything to do with it? You think any of us meant for anything that happened to actually happen?]

[Instead, it goes like this:]

[You were the first domino to fall; the linchpin that took apart Freelancer. Just not in the way you thought.]

Is that why you joined in the first place? To be their eyes on the inside? Were you always going to -

[To leave everyone else behind?]

[ Fuck this. She jerks her helmet off roughly, hair a mess as she scrubs away the tears blurring her vision. She resolutely keeps her gaze forward, not looking at Wash.

This is what she had been afraid of. The blame. The accusations. She'd betrayed him, abandoned him, broken every promise she'd ever made. And does it matter if she'd had good intentions? If she'd been trying to do the right thing?

She shakes her head, momentarily unable to speak past the lump in her throat. ]

Of course it's why.

[ What does he think? He knows she'd been feeding intel about Freelancer to the Insurrection. He knows why she'd left.

Doesn't he? ]

I had to.

I tried to tell you, but -

[ "Wake the fuck up, Wash."

He hadn't listened. ]

Wasn't awake just yet. I know.

[Wised up too late. He wakes up, and the Project's gone. The Dakotas have absconded with North's fragment in tow. York is M.I.A. Carolina officially declared dead. Maine, worse. Agent Texas, rogue and at large. Their number of active operatives have been practically halved in the time that he was in medical, someone else's digital soul streaming through his veins.]

[None of them came back for him.]

[Maybe they all figured he was dead. Or better off in the Project's hands. Maybe they decided he was too crazy to be worth saving.]

[Can't say they'd be wrong.]

I'm not saying that what you did wasn't right. [Not when he finally woke the fuck up.] But if you know how the Project ended, then you know you wouldn't have been alone in doing it. It self-destructed from the inside out because too many of us -

[His smile is so skewed beneath his helmet that it hurts.]

Too many of us woke the fuck up.

[ And some of them had been dead themselves.

She'd been horrified when Church had told her what had happened to Wash. The only reason she'd been able to bear the guilt - she'd left him there, and then that had happened - was that it had all been years ago by the time Church told her, and not only because they'd been dragged forward in time. Church had known a post-Epsilon Wash, one who was bent but not broken, who'd survived the horror of memory and come out mostly intact on the other side.

Mostly.

She shoots a glance at him at last, quick and uncertain, eyes still rimmed with red. What is he getting at? ]

I know how it ended.

But...

[ She shakes her head. It's so hard to explain. ]

I couldn't - I didn't know who might have listened, and who...wouldn't.

[ It's why she'd left the files behind for Tex, rather than confronting her with the truth beforehand. After all, she'd tried to persuade Tex and Carolina, at the end, and gotten nothing but an axe in the chest for it. They hadn't been awake yet, either. Hadn't been ready to listen. ]

And someone had to...I had to get the files out. To get them to someone outside the Project, so they could get them to the right people. Someone who could go after the Director, who could stop him, who...

It was too risky to do anything else, Wash. It was the only way.

There was no right person. We kept thinking there was. Tell the UNSC. Tell someone.

[Charon Industries worked its way to the uppermost echelons of that hierarchy, and from there, they could pull all the strings they needed to. Bury Freelancer, if they wanted.]

[Or gut it. Reap the reward. Seize its tech, its scrap, all the pieces he recovered over the years, and remake them into something to be put to use.]

Well, I tried that. And then I sold Epsilon out to the UNSC just so I could get out of the mess he and his friends left me in.

[So, hey. C.T. has that going for her; she never wavered. Never faltered. Eventually, he hit his limit. The nadir of his capacity to give a shit. Emotional asystole. Was willing to hilt a knife in the back of the people who couldn't do one simple fucking thing and turn in the last remaining A.I. fragment, the one containing the memories of torture unethical and cruel, in to the people who could do something about it.]

[Those same people ended up being the reason that A.I. fragment had to deconstruct to save the lives of everyone on that ship.]

[So, in a roundabout, fucked up kind of way, Wash succeeded.]

[He turned Epsilon in.]

[How funny is that.]

His friends?

[ There's a lot he's not saying, she can tell, and she can't even begin to guess what half of it is, much less what she's supposed to do with it all.

So she focuses on the obvious, for the moment. The easiest thing to address, if the most unbelievable. ]

Epsilon had friends?

Edited 2018-06-13 00:38 (UTC)

[God. He officially hates having to explain this. He waves one hand, as if applying some kind of physical shape to the words would make them more articulate.]

Church's friends. I guess they either couldn't tell the difference between the Alpha and just a fragment, or they figured that was the best they were gonna get after the E.M.P. - [After I guilted Church into his own death.] - and I don't know how they all worked that out or decided that he was just gonna be their new Church, okay?

They were supposed to turn him in. He was supposed to be proof that would get the Director burned, once and for all. It was literally the only instruction I gave them besides "run for your lives," and they couldn't even do that.

[ She stops in her tracks, forgetting to watch her back, forgetting that they're supposed to be looking for anyone else, forgetting her guilt and tears and uncertainty. ]

Epsilon...replaced Church?

He joined blue team?

For about a minute, sure. Then he went into a memory unit for god knows how long and got packed away by the authorities, and I joined the blue team.

[Confused yet? DON'T WORRY WASH WAS TOO, and a part of him still is!!]

Look, if you know Church, then you know his team has a tendency to...complicate things.

So things got complicated.

[ Things got complicated. It's a nicer way of saying things got fucked to hell and back. Which is par for the course, for both of them, but.

But she's still processing some of what he'd said.

After the E.M.P.

They figured that was the best they were gonna get.

He was just gonna be their new Church. ]

Wash.

Wash, what happened to Church?

C.T.

[Wash sounds...]

[He sounds tired.]

[He sounds fucking tired because he's the latest in a long string of leaders of the blue team who have a mortality rate that's really only eclipsed by the Freelancer mortality rate, and Washington's survivability has clashed with both those statistics more times than he can count.]

[He sounds fucking tired because the second version of Church wasn't his friend to grieve even if he knew his synaptic patternings better than Church himself did in the moments he charged the thing that used to be a friend he wouldn't allow himself to grieve, but the third iteration of Church was important to everyone in both the abstract and the immediate, and it wasn't - ]

[Fair.]

[It wasn't fucking fair for any of them.]

I've known about three Churches.

And they're all gone.

[ Her heart sinks as soon as he says her name, because she knows. She knows nothing good can follow that.

He sounds tired. As if he's been through hell and back. Seen too much shit, been let down by the world one too many times. Is fucking sick of it all.

CT's seen too much shit, too. But she hasn't struggled for years and years like Wash has. She's seen her friends die, but she's seen them come back, too.

It's all still fresh enough for her to still be angry instead of just worn down.

She steps closer, eyes never leaving the faceplate of his helmet. She wants to hear it. ]

What happened to him?

Which one?

[She's inches from him, and she can't tell if he's still looking at her, but there's nowhere else for him to look. Just the smudges of tears that she's stopped needing to fight.]

The one I guilted into dying for our cause? The one who used my pistol to blow his brains out? Or the one that fragmented himself so that his friends would have half a chance in hell?

Which one, Connie?

You know which one -

[ The one they were just talking about. The only one she cares about. She cuts herself off, tears threatening again, and just glares fiercely at him. ]

He was my friend. Wash. Do you realize that? He was my friend!

[ And she'd always had very, very few of those. ]

What did you do to him?

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