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

[Arguably it is one less thing to worry about, even if Carolina doesn't find the situation all that good anyway. But it means that she doesn't need to be concerned about the rest of their team. They're... safe enough at the moment back home, as safe as they can be. They do seem to have a knack for surviving anything.

She gives a nod, huffing out a breath before looking back up the route that he'd come down.]

We'll make due.

Picked a hell of a time to show up.

[And he proceeds to not elaborate on that at all, instead settling for trying to clear away the debris from the...loosely defined "ceiling" to allow them both to clamber out with a minimal assault to their dignity.]

[With a minimal assault to her dignity. Wash doesn't think he has any left to speak of.]

What can I say. I like to make an entrance.

[Although she's not actually too flashy most of the time, but sure, she can't deny that in the past, she has made one. That wayward tip of her head, voice wry for a moment.]

As do you.

[That soft camaraderie to her voice as her visor turns back upwards. She trusts him with her side, and that's not going to change. They've been through enough together that it's not even a question.]

Worth my grappling hook?

[Although he is in luck today. No crotch shots. He knows the surface though.]

[It's unfamiliar in its familiarity, which is a little fucked up to think - the fact that falling back to this easy camaraderie is an instinct he has to think twice on, after the months he's spent here. Something like sixty days is enough to pretty sincerely fuck with your capacity to adapt, provided that those sixty days are being spent with someone who's been dead for years, and has undergone some subtle but nonetheless noticeable personality shifts in between then and now.]

Maybe. What'd you show up here with?

[Time to explain how tech here works. Fun.]

Pistol, rifle, grappling hook.

[The lighter's not really something that she thinks would be much use in this situation, so she doesn't mention York's. Turning her mind to when she woke up, she furthers.]

Found a sack with a knife and matches.

[Because the soap likely wouldn't be useful nor what she assumes to be some sort of jerkied meat.]

Ammo?

[How limited are they? He's limited his firepower significantly, more than he'd like, but the plus to that is that he's not in any danger of running out unless he ends up needing to chew through his supply real fast.]

[Hopefully it won't come to that.]

[If's he's asking after that... Sounds like she might need to conserve what she has. It wouldn't be the first time where she has had limited supplies, and it likely won't be the last either.

Perhaps it's a good thing she got a knife, as small as it is.]

Two magazines for each.

[Yikes.]

We're not very well outfitted if it comes to a firefight.

[He digs his foot into one of the crumpled-metal walls, watches it cave inward and rain dusty powder and flower rot. Weaken the walls enough, and they'll probably have enough leverage to haul themselves out of the hole Wash has made out of the ceiling, like the graceful creature he is.]

Everything here is limited.

Is that something that we're going to need to be worried about?

[Unless the other side has weapons... Carolina's good enough with her fists or even various other weapons that don't require the use of bullets. But, she tips her head back towards Wash.]

No outposts or supply depots?

Nothing. Not even the outer colonies are this bad.

[Chorus, at least, had its fair share of powerful if archaic tech. Here, the most they've got is a mixture of gods and magic, neither of which Wash is one to put a great deal of stock in.]

These people don't even have radios.

So winging it.

[Not the first time, but also not exactly an ideal situation either. But, they'll make due. They always had, to various degrees of success, and if nothing else, they are survivors.

The lack of technology is quite surprising though. She will admit she has become used to it, and expects it, to a certain degree. A town, a city, something... Most planets tend to have something.]

Sounds like... a normal day.

[Wash hops backwards when his digging creates a small landslide, gravel and dust skidding downward enough to create a slippery incline. Still, it's enough to allow him the leverage to grab at the edges of the hole he made in falling in.]

[But he releases his grip immediately instead, and drops back to the floor.]

All right. At least there's that. You guys had bones down here?

[Yeah, Wash wants to see the bones. Show him the bones.]

We do.

[And she's making a small motion with her head, before shifting down a little ways. No doubt there is more, but she's placed the ones that she has found to her right. It's only a few steps, over some rubble, before Carolina bends.]

They seem to be all over.

That's not good.

[He draws closer to study them. They're old, sure, but they're bones. The first human remains anyone's found since ending up here.]

The thing that killed the people on this island was...some kind of sickness. Until now, we hadn't found any bodies. [It wasn't a good sign before. It sure as hell isn't a good sign now.]

The houses almost appear to be buried.

[A small twitch towards what Carolina would guess to be a wall. On purpose? A natural disaster? She would think it would take some effort to get things like this.]

How do you know about the sickness?

They left behind just enough for us to start piecing things together. Journal entries. Diaries.

[He doesn't sound remotely happy about it. But then, no one really sounds happy about this situation. It is admittedly not a great one to be in, and not a gentle transition from Retirement Island to this utter hell. He got lucky, he supposes, with the month he arrived, where the most exciting thing to happen was some rainbow fucking turtles.]

The most advanced things we've found are these datapad things, but none of them really work.

Paper or electronic format?

[Because the answer would go a ways to furthering where exactly she has now found herself. They do rely on technology a lot, from logs to communication to transportation.]

If they had data pads, they must have had some structure.

[Unless they were brought here and left by someone else?]

Both, though the former is more...common.

[This has got to be the most disorganized "welcome to hell" speech anyone's ever given, but to be fair, Wash only toyed with playing Mr. Exposition briefly and it was largely to a couple of idiot soldiers from a box canyon, one of which was actually an amnestic A.I. so fragmented and tortured that he'd forgotten who he was.]

There are buildings on the surface, but they're pretty old. Hundreds of years at least.

[She was afraid it would be that answer.

She supposes that she should be grateful that at least there is something, even if it might be lacking. Still not good, especially if it pertains to an illness on this island.]

So arguably no one has been here in a long time.

Not until we showed up.

[Oh, right. "We."]

This isn't the island most of us...live on, I think you could say. It showed up a month or two ago. Which doesn't make any sense, I know, but it makes about as much sense as us showing up here at all.

So. Not only do people show up here, but islands just show up one day, out of the blue?

[Because of course that would be the case. Why would anything be simple or normal? When is it ever? And, she can't even find herself getting really worked up over it after everything that she has been through. Annoyed, certainly, at just finding herself here. Confused. A little angry, but not punch everyone in the face angry. A part resigned?]

Usually the Storyteller tells us before islands show up.

[He, uh. Has not explained the Storyteller, has he?]

You...probably had a dream before coming here, right? Talking rabbit by a fire? Told you a lot about how this place works? [If not, then hey, Washington sounds crazy. Shocking, right?]

There was a talking rabbit.

[Although Carolina hadn't exactly know what to make of it. Animals that talked are not things that she's familiar with. She'd chalked it up to- well, she wasn't certain what to chalk it up to.]

Yeah, so that was...real. [Doesn't sound that much more plausible coming from him, now, does it?]

We all get the same dream when we show up here. That's the Storyteller. They say they're a god. Whatever they are, they're...powerful. Really powerful.

So you've seen this... white talking... god?

[Still not entirely certain that is what it seems to be...]

Rabbit again?

[That- just no. A small shake of her head.]

So it wants us to create stories...

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