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

Then humor me and give me a reason to heal myself.

[He gives his hand a slight shake to emphasize the words.]

Because, unlike you, I'm fully willing to admit this hurts like bloody hell.

...

. . .

Fine. Don't expect me to heal you again.

I hadn't planned on asking. I didn't ask the first time, you may recall.

[After finally getting Ardyn's reluctant permission, Ignis releases the spell, sighing softly in relief as the pain fades back to a dull roar instead of a sharp screech. Even if the redhead won't admit it, Ignis hopes it does the same for him.]

It would be something, wouldn't it? If this blasted disease killed the god of this island as well.

[Ardyn didn't say anything to indicate whether it worked or not; it was hard to tell, truthfully. It didn't feel like Lunafreya's magic had, didn't send the daemons shrieking and recoiling like paper from a flame. And while it didn't seem to make anything much better, it also didn't feel worse.]

...another accident, he'll call it. And they'll all believe him, because they're gullible fools.

The Storyteller has quite won over Gladio, that's for certain.

[Ignis sighs, settling as comfortably as he can.]

I would like to trust, but even as emotional as I've been lately, my mind is still a logical one. We have no real reason to believe and plenty of experience to make us doubt.

[Plus, when he thinks back, Ignis realizes that there may have been some warning signs from the very beginning. The symbols in the crystal caves that blocked the Storyteller's power, for example.]

Our local god is either a very good actor or extremely inexperienced.

Oh, well I for one completely trust Gladio's judgment.

[The sarcasm was tangible.]

Gods lie to get humans to do what they want. It's just how they function.

[Ignis raises a shaky hand to his mouth to cover the smile Ardyn's comment draws to his lips. He shouldn't be so amused, but he is.]

He means well, but we both know that good intentions don't always lead where we want them to. There is a reason why I was chosen to balance him out.

[He has to pause then, choking back a cough with limited success. Once the fit passes, he frowns and holds his hand out, shaking bloodied yellow petals onto the ground.]

For once...

[His voice is much hoarser now thanks to the fit.]

...I am rather glad I can't see something.

[Because Ignis has a feeling he would find it much harder to be calm about all this if he could actually see the petals and blood he is coughing up instead of just knowing they're there.]

...You're not missing very much. Rather a sight to behold in one respect, but far from the most pleasant one.

Some spectacles are better left unseen.

[Ignis sighs, the sound torn between frustration and tiredness.]

What kind of mind thinks up something like this? Is it a punishment of some sort? Surely, it can't just be something that developed in nature.

After the sort of things we've seen, is there any doubt? I wager whatever god holds or held dominion over this island wished its people dealt with.

[Ignis sighs, letting his head tilt back tiredly.]

Why must mad gods always resort to plagues to 'punish' their people?

[First Ifrit and now whoever is responsible for this. It goes without saying that they both have had to deal with two plagues too many at this point.]

August Intro: All Will Fade and Petrify

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