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?

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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.

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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!

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[lightlessfuture]

[ Oops. They didn't mean that as a character judgement; it was an assumption made on what facts they had. It's entirely likely that the spirits their new friend is familiar with just didn't like being disturbed.

They make a vaguely apologetic gesture, hanging their head. Or, at least, they hope it comes across that way.

Why? People seem to ask them that so much more, these days.

lonely not to be heard
lonely to be trapped forever
wanted to help them

To listen, to aid, to understand. To help them move on, those sad fragments of someone's last dream.

They are, as always, sensitive to the suffering of others.

ghosts you saw sound different too
cannot fight them ?

Knight no not everyone's a weird void child that can interact with supernatural nonsense like you. ]

[liveasmyself]

[Ray's easily mollified by the gesture--she smiles and shakes her head: no worries at all, little buddy.]

I couldn't. But if I held my breath in time, they couldn't see me; it would be like I wasn't even there.

[She sighs and looks up at the sky.]

That's so kind of you to take care of them like that. I'm sure they appreciated it. I never thought that maybe the ones I saw might be sad like that too... I suppose it wouldn't matter either way.

[So many people don't have anyone when they're lonely, and she knows that even one person can light up your entire world.]

[lightlessfuture]

[ Ghosts that can't see you if you hold your breath. Well...

...they can't say they know what that's like. In Hallownest, things always paid attention to them, whether they wanted it or not. It was a result of Radiance's terrible light.

good that you can avoid them
not everyone needs to fight

They'd willingly engaged in battle with such spirits, but it was a choice they made. But not everyone has such skills, or wants them.

Something comes to mind, though, at the mention of taking care of others. She's new, and things can be difficult to get used to here. They tap their sword against the ground for a moment, thinking.

you are new
can help
if you want
want to be friends ?

They like her, and to them making friendships is as simple as asking. They're not a very complicated person, in that regard. ]

[liveasmyself]

[Ray's mouth parts in surprise but soon she's smiling.

Not complicated is good. It's better when people are forthright about these things.]

Thank you! Yes, let's be friends. I'll--I'm new here, but I'll help you however I can.