lifeaftr | 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

[ Jesus. She rolls her eyes in exasperation, unable to stop herself, and mutters mostly to herself. ]

Okay, drama queen.

[ And then she frowns, both in annoyance and in worry as she notices the black, unnatural blood trickling from around the flowers. ]

...is your blood...supposed to look like that?

[connie honey you have no idea the depths of ardyn's drama, if anything being in a murder reality show calmed him down]

Oh? And here I thought you claimed to know me. [A quiet laugh, exhausted but still carrying a trace of mockery.] You don't even know what I am, do you?

[ it's fine this is fine

Uneasiness stirs in her gut, and she frowns, but refuses to take the bait. ]

You're sick.

[ Her eyes flick up to his, silently pleading - don't be a jerk for once. ]

You need help. Let me - you shouldn't be out here -

I've been sick for two thousand years.

[There was something very cold in yellow eyes, the smile on his face nowhere near reaching them.]

I don't want your help.

[ What the fuck? He'd never said anything about that. He'd been fine, he -

She's visibly taken aback by the admission, wavering briefly, before her own expression hardens, brows drawing down as she levels her gaze at him. ]

I'm not leaving you out here to die.

Do you really think it would be the first time? I've died more times than I can count, what's one more?

[ She laughs bitterly, shaking her head. Don't talk to her about dying, Ardyn, she knows. ]

Do you even know what happens when you die here? Because I don't.

What if you don't come back this time?

I do, actually--as it happens, it's a mild inconvenience.

[Ardyn rolled his eyes, cold smirk still firmly in place.]

Quite honestly, I'd find it ideal were I not to come back.

[ Honestly, she's starting to agree with him. She studies him for a long moment, his cold, unfeeling gaze, his cruel smirk.

And then she thinks of her friend Ardyn, of how much he'd cared for everyone around him, and shakes her head stubbornly. ]

I'm not leaving you out here alone.

Please, just - at least let me take you home.

I'm not going anywhere.

You're so -

[ She cuts herself off with a strangled noise of frustration. Then she sets her jaw and picks up the helmet she'd let fall to the ground when she'd seen him, slamming it on with a pneumatic hiss.

She doesn't bother to turn off the voice modulator, and so when she speaks her voice is unrecognizable - deeper, more mechanical, and lacking in patience or pity. ]

Are you going to come with me, or am I going to have to make you come with me?

August Intro: All Will Fade and Petrify

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject