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

A: of dirt you’re made

[Asgore hasn’t made a great habit of coming to Umui; while he was initially excited to see the flowers, once their connection to the deaths of the previous inhabitants had become clear...well, it’s one thing with his garden at home. No need to recreate that here.

He comes quickly once he learns about the trapped people, though. His big paws are accustomed to some digging, and his claws are blunt but strong. Anyone coming from below can probably hear his deep voice rumbling up above:]

Easy, now. Do not speak. It is going to be all right - just breathe steadily.

[.....later in the day, when the easier-to-shift patches of soil are all dug up, one might see him occasionally summoning a bright red trident. The end without the tines can make a helpful lever for shifting the metal. But he seems uncomfortable with it, and it always vanishes when no longer of immediate use.]

B: and to dirt you will return

[Those unearthed will need further help, of course. Asgore’s brought his rather large bottle along, the one that once flowed and now just holds regular water, and he’ll offer it to anyone just out of the dirt.]

Excuse me. Would you like a drink?

[Alternately, if someone is visibly injured:]

Would you like some healing magic? It works well on most species I have encountered.

[Doesn't this guy make him feel short and scrawny. He's tall by human (skeleton) standards, not goat-lion-man standards.]

No, I'm fine. I wasn't one of them down there.

[He gestures towards where they were digging, though it's obvious what he's talking about. Fine is a lie. Fine is always a lie, when one's broken bones are duct taped together.]

[Asgore allows himself a quirk of the eyebrow, but that's all the skepticism he'll express. Knowing some skeletons doesn't mean that he knows this one's limits better than he does. Even if he...doesn't look well at all, actually.]

I am glad to hear it. Being trapped underground is difficult at the best of times. Would you...like some water, then?

[He's not sure if you work like a skeleton monster or if it would just spill out again, but it seems polite to ask.]

Eh, no, I don't get thirsty. Or hungry, before you even ask.

[Dead skeleton! It's the live skeleton's fault, making him emphasize the 'dead' part. Which sounds stupid any way you put it.]

Thanks anyway. [A big ol' grin!]

Of course.

[Well. Great job, Asgore.]

These poor people...I cannot imagine arriving in that way.

[It's the thought that counts!!]

Tell me about it. Did everyone get out okay?

I believe so. I have not seen anyone terribly injured, only a few scrapes.

[And of course if he thought anybody hadn't gotten out at all yet, he wouldn't be sitting here chatting.]

When I first came, it was out on the frozen ocean. But that was not so terrible - if I could get across without breaking through, I am sure no one else had much trouble.

[Ooh, are they sharing horrible arrival stories??

He's come to the point where he's not even going to ask how the hell the whole ocean froze over. Probably that was the week the sun went out.]

I came in when the flying demonic elevator was scooping people up. Barely took two steps on the beach before it came for me. Then it spat me right back out just to chase me down again, like a cat with a mouse.

Today's bunch still have it worse. You think it's getting meaner?

Ah, yes. I remember the elevator.

[Boy, was that a day that happened...]

Perhaps? That has seemed to be the trend...though I could not imagine why.

Don't ask me, I've been stuck here a month now and I still don't get why. We don't need to be put through all this just to tell them some stories. I could go on and on for years, I don't need new material.

[Worst. Vacation. Ever.]

I also have rather a lot to draw from.

[Though he mostly sounds tired when talking about it; it's a benefit of a long life that doesn't really offset the costs at all.]

Perhaps the Storyteller just prefers that the content be relevant to their own world.

Could be that stories from other worlds don't have the same power.

[So they're useless. And somehow, stories from a dead man aren't... unlike the real world.]

But they don't all have to be horror stories. They're making it hard to pick ones that aren't.

Maybe they are going through a phase.

[new theory: the storyteller is an edgy teen god]

[That gets a laugh out of him.]

Hah, right. We should track down their parents, get them to ground that kid for life.

[Asgore chuckles a little.]

Do you suppose they have them?

No idea. All I know is that the old myths always had gods with families.

August Intro: All Will Fade and Petrify

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