July Intro: Upsy-Daisy!

[lifeaftr_mods]

INTRO LOG: JULY

Who: New arrivals, your lif᷆t̕i͗n᷅ģ f̧̞ͅr̡̦̃ḭ̅ͭe̩᷅̂n̟̣̤d̨̬̏, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr, and everyone makes a new friend!
When: July 5th and onward
Where: All over Ensō
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Like a Bat Out of Hell
At this stage, the appearance of new arrivals to Ensō's shores is hardly a surprise to anyone but the arrivals themselves. Whatever mysterious force is responsible seems to have taken a vaguely nostalgic route this month, depositing the new and unconscious across the shoreline of the beach closest to the tumbled stone bastion of the Storyteller's temple. At first, that seems to be all there is to it. The arrivals stir to the smell of salt and the summer sea air, and the cycle of questions, searching, and settling begins.

For about five minutes. Perhaps ten.

Almost like an afterthought, something else shows up, plummeting straight out of the sky and landing with a veritable explosion of water some hundred feet from the shore. A large, rectangular shape breaches the surface after a few moments, bobbing, cork-like, in the foam-crested waves before ever so slowly beginning to sink into those aquamarine depths. For those familiar with such objects, it makes for a rather odd sight. That most certainly was an elevator, or you can be...fairly sure it was?

Give it another minute, and you'll be certain. The elevator streaks out from the ocean like a creature possessed. Maybe, in those split seconds prior to its approach, you'll be able to note the elevator's distinct features: a disturbingly smiling face on its doors, and a set of teeth framing a very organic mouth.

Meet Upsy, your lifting friend. In case it wasn't obvious by now, Upsy is far from a conventional elevator by any standards. What's more, Upsy has not taken to LifeAftr as well as some others. Armed with the ability to move in any direction, the rogue contraption takes no prisoners - by which we mean, they take as many prisoners as possible. Upsy proceeds to swoop across the shoreline, combing the beach in the most haphazard and patternless path possible, scooping up anyone slow enough to be caught in their maw. Once you're caught up in their jaws, it comes down to the winds of fortune, in regards to wherever Upsy proceeds to spit out their cargo. While the journey itself will be rough and...sticky, it is not inherently dangerous.

Hopefully, the same can be said for wherever you end up Ensō hosts a great deal of predators, environmental hazards, and worse. Though you could always end up belched into the ocean. Hope you can swim!

When the Metal is Hot and the Engine is Hungry
Upsy’s reign of terror isn't restricted to mere adventurers. Those with livestock or animal companions may be in for a small shock or, perhaps more likely, a very large one, when flying elevator sucks up those cuddly critters with a grin and spirits them off into the great unknown.

Though your phoenix, chocobo, or tigerlily may not be where you saw them last, you can at least be assured that they are still on Ensō. All you need to do is round them up. And if this isn't good enough news, well...at least you don't keep bludrocs.

Whether you're out searching for an animal or not, be careful traversing Ensō for the next three days. If Upsy is empty, they'll most certainly snap you up. And if they aren't? You may find anything from birds to horses spat out at you.

The velocity of these organic projectiles tends to vary. Dramatically. Upsy's reign of terror will end on the evening of July 9th. At that point, the elevator will fly off to greener pastures...and our RNG spreadsheet for potential encounters in future. Sweet dreams.

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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.

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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!

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[counterblows]

You're right. You won't.

[Agent Washington: professionally paranoid, and generally a cryptic-ass motherfucker on top of it. The skeleton is talking quite cheerfully (entirely too cheerfully, with a disposition that he can't help but liken uncomfortably to Dr. Grey's), and even self-identifies as a...monster.]

["Fuck...you...monster."]

[Too many pieces of his head are sloppily out of place, and too much of him is sliding out of his ears.]

How'd you know I was human?

[fontofkindness]

[ Papyrus is blissfully oblivious to Wash's current state of mind, which could probably be generously described as 'not very good'. ]

Well, you see! Humans do not like it very much when skeletons like me and my brother walk around! They find it 'creepy'! Sometimes they even react with wanting to fight!

[ Which, honestly, Papyrus doesn't...have that much of a problem with. At least half the time, his answer to someone going "DO YOU WANNA GO" will be "SURE!" ]

Besides! If you were a monster, you wouldn't be surprised by me at all! So clearly, you must be a human!!

[ There's monsters, and there's humans. What else could there possibly be? So runs Papyrus' line of thought. ]

[counterblows]

[Boy does he sure not even know where to begin with this one.]

Those are the only two choices?

[He's a skeleton. He's a talking skeleton monster and he's acting like monster is its own species, which - is it? There's too much going on in this response alone and Wash is trying not to lose his goddamn mind over the fact that the skeleton is wearing clothes but seems...very wrong regardless. Probably because he hasn't seen a human skeleton since his days in Leonis Minoris.]

[Except this isn't, the way the skeleton sells, strictly speaking a "human" one.]

[fontofkindness]

[ Papyrus looks at Wash like he's the weird one, which might, frankly, feel unfair. ] What? Of course! There were two races, humans and monsters. Then they fought and monsters like us were forced underground! But!! Monsters and humans live on the Surface together now!! So there's no reason to be scared!! The war was a long time ago!!

[ He just nods and puts his hands on his hips, like this explains...anything...at all... ]

[counterblows]

Thanks for the history lesson.

[It’s more than slightly sarcastic, but it’s also an attempt to stall while he marshals his thoughts into something he can goddamn well articulate. In the face of a skeleton.]

[Hey, so, he hates this? Just as a note. He hates his life. This is not a new development, but he’s still going to denote it as circumstantially significant.]

Did this war have a...name? Anything like that?

[fontofkindness]

Well!! I'm always happy to help people who don't know about our history! Knowledge is power!! [ Unfortunately, Papyrus is one of those people who is absolutely impervious to sarcasm. Whether he's just that oblivious or he's deliberately ignoring it is a matter of opinion. ]

It was called the War of Humans and Monsters, of course!! [ What else could it possibly be called. Hope you weren't expecting anything familiar there, Wash. There is nothing. You are adrift in confusion and overly peppy skeletons. ]

[counterblows]

How specific.

[More sarcasm. This is just how he copes. Don't @ him.]

All right, well let's get this out of the way: your history bears pretty much no resemblance to mine, so I think it's safe to say we come from completely different...universes. [That little hesitation is the product of Wash, despite having a fair grasp of the technological side of things, having next to no vocabulary when it pertains to the theoretical science of alternate realities.]

[He does not need this.]