lifeaftr | August Intro: All Will Fade and Petrify

August Intro: All Will Fade and Petrify

INTRO LOG: AUGUST

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: August 4th and onward
Where: Primarily Umui, though Ensō is also likely
Warnings: Mark as needed!

New Arrivals: Bury Me Alive
When you wake, it's initially to darkness: musty, stuffy, and dense. Your eyes may take some time to adjust, but when they do, something will rapidly become apparent - namely, the fact that you're underground.

Exploring your surroundings will reveal a few more unnerving discoveries. Take, for example, the fact that you're currently trapped in what appears to be a number of buried houses, walls and ceilings compressed against one another thanks to time and pressure. The walls may have held up the weight of the soil above your head for a time, but it'd likely be best not to hold out hope that they'll continue to last. Your supply of air down here is rather limited, after all.

Unfortunately for you, it's not merely earth that separates you from the surface. It's also flowers in rich abundance - an untold, innumerable weight of dead and decaying plant matter, twined around the ancient bones strewn underground along with your sweet self, pressing down from above, peeking through the cracks in the metallic folds of whatever material once comprised these buildings' ceilings, walls, and floors.

Whether it's a mass tomb or something more sinister, you'd better figure a way out, and quickly. If you didn't show up with a shovel or some means of teleporting yourself out, you may very well need to resign yourself to digging your way out or making a lot of noise to attract someone who can, before this becomes a more dedicated grave.

Everyone Else: All Will Change and Calcify
As for the rest of you, well...if you're anywhere near the regions of G5, you might hear the sounds of a not-insignificant number of people finding themselves displaced underground, and requiring your imminent assistance in getting out. Perhaps you'll recognize the place. It is, after all, very well marked. They'll probably be properly grateful if you mind offering the help, and hey - it's a welcome break from the eerie, ever-present silence that clouds almost the entirety of Umui. As long as you don't mind digging around that old cenotaph half-buried in the flowers and scraping through sheets of metal, a lot of flowers, and...oh, yes. The first bones you'd be finding since arriving here.

If you've been hanging around the laboratory near the island mana pool, on the other hand, you'll definitely be getting a break from the silence - namely in the form of ARUM-25, whom a number of you have been devoted to repairing since their discovery, learning that a great deal of their systems have come back online, right around the time that the newest arrivals are properly unearthed.

Including their diagnostic systems.

The warning, repeated shrills will undoubtedly be heard by anyone who passes:

ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED
ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED
ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED
ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED
ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED

And that's probably fine. Right?

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

Just someone who spent over a year with a guy named Leonard L. Church, and meeting a few peeps who had similar armor to yours. Mostly a guy named Tucker, an idiot named Caboose, and the fellow kidnap victim in a very long and complicated story, CT. Abbreviation for Connecticut.

[Though if she has to be honest, Tucker and Caboose weren't so bad once she found their buttons.]

I don't know who you are, but I will tell you that Leonard L. Church is a complete dick, and I'm sorry y'all had to deal with him. CT ain't so bad, if jumpy. And I am totes jealous you guys live in space. After a year there I kinda miss it even if being planet side is nice again.

[Leonard Church.

One would think that it would be easy enough to know who that is, but for a moment, Carolina does pause. Of course, as she continues to speak, she's going to assume that she means Alpha. Tucker and Caboose she knows. It is the last name again that stills her. CT. Connie. Connecticut.

The problem with her words are that both Alpha and CT are gone, which puts her on an even higher alert.

Given her words, Carolina can only assume that she's been listening to Caboose's stories, which tend to gloss around the truth and literally not make sense. There's nothing to be jealous about when it comes to the shit show of her life.]

Tucker and Caboose. Where are they?

[The other two... Carolina's not certain what's going on there, so for now she'll focus on the rest of her team mates.]

[Alpha indeed, a name they called him to piss him off. Church was easy to make mad in the end.]

Fuck if I know. Last I saw them they were chillin on a newly dubbed Earth, having the time of their lives. Tucker probably got super lucky with my friend Queenie, Caboose....... well, it's Caboose.

[A shrug. Nari ran off with her girlfriend for a vacation/diplomacy mission before arriving here. Who knows where anyone is.]

CT might know more. She's around here somewhere.

[And she is making about as much sense as Caboose. If Carolina is meant to understand or have any of those words make sense, they aren't. They'd been on their moon, and not Earth, nor does Carolina know any Queenie.]

Right. CT.

[And if her voice sounds dubious, it's because CT can't be around. At least not the woman she knew. Maybe someone else had taken her armor again, but even that doesn't make sense. Carolina's been cleaning up Freelancer messes ever since she had left the Director.]

And let me guess. You've no idea where around here she is either.

Oh, I do. She's running around with a guy named after my favorite state.

[Sorry CT.] Now, this may sound like a fucking mind trip, but like, time doesn't exactly act right here. It's wonky as all get out. See, I'm from the year 2017, got taken to the year 6972, and who knows what year this place is running on. I don't know if you know, but Church was dead, brought back, and man that body they stuck him in was way too good for a dude like that. Kinda hoping he never shows up here because I owe him a stabbing or two or three.

[That stiffness again, fingers twitching at her side although she is surprisingly still otherwise.]

And what state is your favourite?

[Not that Carolina is quite certain whether she is going to believe her words or not, but she does seem to know something. Enough for Carolina to keep asking questions anyway and not just dismiss her.

But, now it's just getting a little weird. It sounds like something that Caboose would say when he doesn't understand the situation, because it sounds like she is talking about some sort of time-travel or- or Carolina had no idea.]

At least you acknowledge that what you're saying is sounding farfetched.

Washington. The only state that's captured my heart, and I miss it.

[Nari turns around in place as she nods. It's a very farfetched story. The full version of it was worse, but if Carolina ever needs corroboration, that was a thing here.]

Of course I have no full evidence to prove what I say is true other then having my girlfriend and my friend who were there with us tell you about it. And you can ask CT, too. This place has taken people from different times, dimensions, entire universes... You might meet someone here you know, but they might not be from the same timeline or even fragment of dimension. My best friend lived in a world with dragons and didn't know who I was, and one day she woke up and remembered things from when we were in the same place together. So.... this place is fucked up, will fuck with your head, and we're all trying not to die on a regular basis.

[She stores that little bit of information within, whether for later questioning or just to search out herself.

As for CT, well, considering the last time Carolina saw her was with Tex when they went to go get her armor... She's probably not someone that CT wants to see, and Carolina can't really blame her. True, she might have gone about things in a way that wasn't exactly beneficial, but Carolina hadn't wanted to see her dead. She'd learned the truth far before Carolina had.]

How exactly does it mess around with your head- or just the whole different times spiel?

.... the first week I was here people literally were glitching like in video games. This is after we fell out of the sky on breaking islands. The glitching thing made me think I was trapped in virtual reality again, but t'wasn't so. It was real and apparently normal for this place.

[It was awful. Sherlock Holmes game glitch for a week did not make interactions fun when she was the equivalent to an unwilling stalker.]

Other shit has happened, like dream hopping, killing gods, people dying and coming back... I swear, survival is the easiest part of all this. Everything else is like living in an extreme episode of Naked and Afraid except we're allowed to keep our clothes on.

[Carolina has a bit of a hard time picturing that, although it's not exactly surprising. To actually think about it in terms of real life and not on some screen... Even for her after everything that she has seen, that's a bit of a stretch.]

So basically expect the unexpected.

Yes, and expect the unexpected to try and kill you before it explains anything.

[If you get lucky enough to come back for an explanation.]

[There's nothing really new with that sentiment. People and organizations have been trying to kill her for some time now. Nothing about that has changed. It's only recently in their retirement that the only threats she has to worry about are candles burning down buildings, magical mushrooms and dinosaurs.]

Any other tips about this place?

Yes. Find a place to sleep, because you don't want to be out in the open at night. Also, don't get mad at the dude running the Denny.

[Because she has and it's literally because of the "'s".]

What's out in the open at night?

[Because it is clear that there has to be something out there besides bugs. Unless she really doesn't like bugs. Personally, Carolina has roughed it more than once in her life.]

Uh. Is he easy to get mad at?

Creatures one would think only existed in a D&D manual and bad SyFy movies.

[Like ghost sharks...]

Yes. He named the place Denny, not Denny's. I am very offended by that.

[Which doesn't exactly mean too much to her. Sure, getting a few decent hours of sleep is better than staying up all night, even if she is up most nights anyway.]

And they just ignore any residences?

[Because, okay, with everything else here, for all Carolina knows, that makes sense.]

Is his name Denny, or he just doesn't like apostrophes?

As far as I know? Yes. No one's died in their home just yet.... or they don't talk about it.

[The islands they have houses on are about 80% safe most of the time. Maybe a little more or a little less.]

No, I think his name is Tim. And the reason is likely because it's the only one. Still makes me mad. I will be the first to admit I am petty as fuck about some things, and this one of those thing.

[That... Made no sense. Dead don't talk, unless one's trying to say that an Ouija board is legitimate, and Carolina is going to stand by the fact that they're not.]

You say that like it is supposed to make sense.

[That dryness to her voice.

Then again, Carolina doesn't like being in the dark and there is a lot that she needs to catch up on, it seems.]

... could always just add the s yourself.

... the dead come back here. Somehow. Like this world's twisted version of a saving throw.

[It's... weird. She doesn't like it.]

I could. Might be a lot nicer than me wanting to burn the whole place down. Would make less people mad, maybe.

Not to point out the obvious... But are you certain they're actually dead?

[... people may or may not have been buried alive in the past.]

Yes. I am a medic and was the de facto coroner in the place I was with Church in. I know dead-dead. But I know there's strange shit in the universe, and have witnessed dead people coming to life through the use of nanites after confirming myself that there was no way they would ever draw a breath again. Except here's it's divine intervention.

If you want to believe that.

[Now... she's just starting to question it all.

Vitals can be messed with. Healing packs? Dead are dead. She knows that. Every day of her life, she knows that.]

I don't waste time believing. I would rather prove it and know, and after the dudes and dudettes here killed a god... kinda hard to disprove that they don't exist. I've tried. I am an atheist, but this place is definitely run by "higher" beings who seem keen on keeping us alive as pawns in some kind of messed up game of Don't Starve or something.

[It's annoying, but at the same time, really exciting.]

Higher beings could just be a race that has different abilities than we do.

[She has run across aliens. They... okay, they wouldn't be mistaken for higher ups, but the possibility exists.]

See, that's what I though, since me ex-girlfriend could have easily been labeled a "higher being" with some of the shit she pulled, but it's not so with these guys. She was a straight up alien. These guys feel.......... vastly different. Like. Looking at them you can tell you''ll never be able to fully understand what they are.

[And for someone who wants to understand everything, it's very, very frustrating.]

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