August Intro: All Will Fade and Petrify

[lifeaftr_mods]

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 )

Comments

[shogis]

That's alright. I'm just grateful that we have somewhere to stay.

[ honestly after waking up where she did, everything else sounds exponentially nicer ]

What was it like during your first month?

[postictal]

Most of us slept in the temple.

[It's offhand, like it's not really a big deal. Which, to him, it wasn't. It was still better than sleeping in his car.]

I'm pretty sure the Storyteller only bothered to get us houses to try and get us off their turf.

[shogis]

Well, it worked out in your favor in the end, didn't it?

[ she gives him a small smile. ]

Um... Tim-san, if I may ask... How long have you been here, exactly?

[postictal]

[He stops - has to think about it. That's the thing about him and time, see. It's got this infuriating fucking habit of not syncing up with him very well at all. He's lost time, he knows he has, but people have helpfully been keeping track of the time for him.]

[They arrived in August. Since then...]

[He sweeps his hair out of his face - getting long again, because cutting it is generally the last thing on his mind.]

I think today makes it a year.

[shogis]

[ her stomach drops. ]

A...a year?

[ her voice is quivering, her eyes are wide, and she just looks incredibly uneasy, now. ]

[postictal]

Not counting the time I spent somewhere else? Yeah.

[Not counting the time he spent dead, apparently, adrift in some empty, timeless void until such a time that he washed up on these shores.]

I guess longer than that, if you count the Castle.

[shogis]

This is...

[ god. she's metaphorically scrubbing her face. ]

Concerning, to say the least. I'm sorry that you've been stuck here for so long...

[postictal]

Don't be.

[It's better than where he was. Where he was happened to be Alabama, and no one really wants to live in Alabama.]

It's not always bad.

[shogis]

Is it...really?

[ life in the wilderness sounds pretty bad to her, but... ]

[postictal]

We all look out for each other. More or less.

[He says "more or less" because, yeah, not everyone does. Some people are a little too focused on their own shit to bother being productive.]

[shogis]

That's good. I'm happy to hear that there's a supportive community here. Still... I'd like to find a way home.

[ as horrible as it was. ]

[postictal]

Can't help you there. Sometimes people disappear, but we don't know if they actually go home.

[They're not exactly around to confirm it. Yeah, that's probably fucking terrifying to people who aren't Tim, who's just so emotionally deadened to all this shit that it feels like nothing really touches him anymore.]

[shogis]

...I spoke to Nari earlier. She told me a friend of mine--Akira Kurusu--was once here, but...when we talked, it was as if he'd never left.

[postictal]

Don't think I knew him.

[Not a surprise; Tim considers himself a recluse, which isn't precisely entirely true.]

Time...works kind of weird in places like this. You get used to it.

[shogis]

He's very kind and patient... Kurusu-san is my best friend. Maybe you would have liked him.

[ and that he was here and she didn't even know about it makes her worry. so much. she's glad he's safe now, but what did he have to endure while he was here? ]

I suppose I'm trying to say that if he was able to return home, then it may be a good sign that the others who've left have also returned home safely, too.

[postictal]

That's the hope, I guess.

[But he doesn't confirm it, nor does he deny it. Everyone believes comforting lies when it suits them. You lie, when you have you, and some people lie more often and more egregiously than others.]

Sometimes people come back.

[shogis]

Mm...

[ don't like that. especially if akira's involved... ]

Is there any sort of pattern behind the disappearances and those who are chosen to come back? Or is it completely random?

[postictal]

Well, they usually come back without their memories of...here.

[It happened with Clem. With Asriel. It's happened with others, he knows, and at this point it's one of the few things he suspects would shake him to his fucking core, depending on who it was.]

[It's one of those things, you know. Impossible to know what'd be better or worse: to have them come back without any idea of who he was, or to never have them come back at all.]

[shogis]

[ hifumi folds her arms across her chest, eyes downcast. how strange... as a girl of logic and reasoning, even she can't quite wrap her head around why that may be. ]

I see. I'm...sorry that I can't offer an analysis of the situation...

[postictal]

No one here has any idea what's going on about ninety percent of the time, so I'd say you fit right in.

[Thanks, Tim. That's a real esteem booster.]

[shogis]

I...suppose so...

[ real uplifting!!! she frowns deeper, because well. she doesn't want to fit in like that... ]

Anyway, thank you for your help, Tim-san. I'll be sure to use the flare gun in an emergency; I appreciate it.

[postictal]

[He's really only marginally better at cheering people up than Jay was, whose idea of a compliment was "you're not trying to shoot me right now at this exact minute, so I guess that makes you a stand-up guy until I change my mind about you later." He's good at this.]

You can give any of us a...rock-call if you need it too, I guess.

[shogis]

[ ...what is marble hornets even ]

Ah, yes--the...rock. I spoke to Keith-san on it while I was underground.

[ she's still really confused over how the rock works, but she's just going to accept it for what it is and try not to question it too much. ]

It was quite an experience.

[postictal]

You don't have phones where you come from, or...?

[He still has his Castle-issued phone, useless as it is. Hasn't bothered to do anything with it, either, considering that it wouldn't connect with anything even if he could get it working again. But he's learned not to make assumptions as to other peoples' tech levels.]

[shogis]

No, we do, so it's not that. It's just...this sort of thing coming from a rock is quite strange. But...I suppose I'll have to get used to it.

[ she's not exactly super attached to her phone, so it's not a big deal if she never gets it back during her stay here. ]