lifeaftr | December Intro: Pressure Building

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December Intro: Pressure Building

INTRO LOG: DECEMBER

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: December 4th and onward
Where: All over Ensō
Warnings: Mark as needed!

It begins on a mild autumn day, one where the breeze is gentle and the sky a deep, cloudless blue. Ensō is quiet as the adventurers that call it (if only temporarily) home begin to awaken and go about their daily business- for those who have been here long enough, this may consist of searching for those new arrivals, undoubtedly lost and likely confused. It is a normal day on Ensō. Then the water starts to rise.

Northern Beachfront: Let Me Get Off the Ground
For newcomers waking on the shoreline and those who have come to greet them, the rapid swelling of the ocean's surface will be immediately noticeable. Just a few, short miles from the shore, the water continues bulging upwards to terrifying heights, obscuring the sun and throwing warped shadows over the majority of Ensō's northern landscape. It towers there, wobbling, inexplicably retaining its shape even as it ripples, flowing, and sends great streams of saltwater streaming over the ocean's surface.

Though the sun is barely capable of piercing the immense mass, those with a keen eye will see...something moving within, coiled far above sea level. Some dark mass, too distorted by the water and the lack of light to solidify into any easily recognizable shape, nonetheless makes its presence felt regardless. All nearby will find themselves stricken with a growing sense of being watched by a gaze that pierces flesh and bone…one that is none too appreciative of what it sees.

Retaliation to this apparent threat is both vicious and immediate. Bursting from the trees and whipping through the air within a tornado of motion, thousands, then tens of thousands of ink-stained pages whip out from Ensō's jungle and across open water like a flock of ferocious birds, striking at the liquid mountain with unceasing fervor.

Now may not be the best time to gawk, adventurers. With this attack, the raised water will begin to collapse - and the giant waves resulting from the sudden upset will bear no mercy for anyone swept off their feet in the churning swells.

Storyteller's Temple and the Rest of Ensō: I See Your Corruption
Those seeking shelter and answers will find them limited in supply, if not entirely absent. For, you see, the mana pools on Ensō have ceased functioning, leaving characters stranded wherever they may be at the time the assault begins.

No safety can be found within the temple walls this day, with more and more black pages erupting from every door and window. Attempts to approach and even push through won't be harmful, or at least not intentionally - rather, the pages will force back anyone who attempts to come between them and their current objective. Those who may not get the message the first time may just find themselves flying quite a ways away.

The above will quickly become the least of anyone’s worries.

Those who remember the rebirth of the sun back in January will not doubt recall the creatures of the night faced during those darkest hours. As the waters around Ensō continue to churn in response to the offshore assault, large waves act as ferries for those precise beasts, clambering onto the shore in droves. Though the sun is obscured in many spaces, these shadowy creatures will always make for the treelines during daylight hours, seemingly sluggish at best under natural lighting.

Unfortunately, the Storyteller will be occupied for quite some time - and once night falls, those deadly beings will be on the hunt.

For the duration of the assault, the islets will remain relatively safe during daylight hours, so long as your character is capable of accessing a boat to travel there. Once night falls, however, they will be as dangerous as the mainland.

Both the shadowy creatures and the risen water will retreat on the morning of December 10th, leaving Ensō silent once more. The hovering pages, however, will continue circling the coastline for some time like great papery seabirds.

The doors to the Storyteller’s temple shall remain closed.

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 )

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[Foster blinks in their wake, just once--he may not be as slow on the uptake as he often claims, but there is a definite processing lag between Drifter's salvo and Drifter's departure and the time elapsed before Foster himself actually moves.

And--honestly?

That display, that right there, was so impressive that Foster can't even be mad about it, or even some kind of offended at the rejection. Drifter just proved just how wretched and paltry, how worthless Foster's pathetic offering was, and Foster is honoured to be on the receiving end of such a tremendous display!

Still... once he's done being momentarily thrilled, he does heed Drifter's word and fucking books it after them.]

[Thankfully, the sound of hooves is unmistakable - they can recognize that he is following. The next problem becomes one of where they might go, and their only idea is some sort of structure. The barns, or the temple, or even one of those shacks in the southern regions...whichever they end up first, honestly.]

[They're not averse to hiding, not when they know by experience that when lufkin coalesce like that, one requires at least three people to successfully take it down. It is not their usual strategy, but they're running low on ammo, now.]

[They flash a message into the air, and hope that Foster picks up on it - ]

LOOK FOR SAFETY

[Safety?

What's 'safety?' The more powerful the enemy, the fewer 'safe' options there are--not to mention that enclosed spaces are probably worse than open ones. Even Foster has noticed these things thrive in the absence of light. 'Absence.' Whatever.

He doesn't have a lot of stamina, not like the Drifter--a combination of poor diet and poor life choices have mostly bestowed upon him a bigger array of physical limitations. It's mostly the significantly more efficient natural movement of his taur body (as well as the equally but much more weirdly efficient digestive system of said body) that has him running at all.

Literally, in this case.

So he's not as tireless or as fast as the Drifter. Not that he minds dying! He would happily concede to that, bring torn to pieces by these shadow creatures, especially if it would facilitate the Drifter's escape.

But, in the interest of a more immediately practical solution, he has one idea:]

Can they fly?!

no

[There's only a marginal pause before they respond in turn, startled by the choice in question, by the nonlinear route that Foster must have taken to that conclusion - they can't say they understand it. He looks nothing like Ed, who has wings and therefore can fly. He doesn't look as though he'd be able to. Is he concerned, perhaps, that the lufkin will fly?]

[They look at him in a sidelong manner, head slightly tilted, the sole demonstration of their confusion.]

Okay!!

[Foster, gaining a small lead on the lufkin, sounds... extraordinarily upbeat. Breathless, but excited.

There is a particular rush to it--to running, on these legs, the impact of his hooves against the earth, the need to lean into it, down into the wind and his own path, the sense of propulsion.> It's why he ever asked to be this, to possess the power he felt in a horse while on one.

It's not exactly the speed that he's riding high on, though. The presence of greater eminence, of urgency and disorder and imminent painful death are what make this feeling electric, and he's thrilling in it.

He can do more, be more than this, or so he was promised, but he's never cared to try. Why would he? What for? Exhibitions of false power? A specious display to hide his deeply defective truth? No, no, no, no.

But in the remaining high from being smoked by the Drifter's demonstrated superiority, yet still invited to their plan and purpose... he can finally see it. Yes. This is the right time.

His tone rings out over the chaos with obvious delight.]

I've never done this before, so be ready to run if it goes wrong!!

[Hang on, Drifter. He's gonna need a minute to change.]

[It's clear only when he begins to change what it is he meant - and what any of his questions had to do with one another. The Drifter skids to an abrupt halt in a flurry of spraying dust and fluttering cloak. It's safe to say that, of all the possibilities available at a time, this was not on the table. This was not, in any way, on the table.]

[This new shape is massive, flight-capable, and - it looks nothing like him. Except, even in the half-dark, the longer they look at it, the more the shapes resolve into something that at least proves the similarity between the two. The ears, for one, large and furred. The...smile?]

[That might just be the general shape of its face.]

[Either way, they don't have the time to process their shock for any longer than a few moments. They allow for that, and then - move on.]

can fly?

[Changing is.... an entire experience unto itself. Unlike the magical development of his taur body (or the significantly more dramatic change that he underwent preceding that), this is... more like the shift from undeath to unlife, the excruciating narcotic exhiliration of absolute agony. This time, however, it has nothing to do with the soul and everything to do with the body.

He can feel in every detail his bones breaking apart or growing out, splitting into new shapes or swelling as his skin stretches almost too-tight over his frame, as his spine arches, his teeth dividing and organs dissolving, a kind of hyperexperienced phenomenon, reality embossed--

His forelegs disappear into his body entirely, his arms and the short digits on his paws stretching as he falls forward, an entire ribcage--no, an entire torso simply disappears into the other, larger one that is rapidly moving forward to meet his thickening neck. The bones in his face warp and pull, his eyes shifting across his face, his mouth gaping as it grows to accommodate the too-large tongue and teeth--

He's... drooling a little.

Technically, he is not any taller than he was before--but given that his entire head and back and tail are now at the nine-foot mark, equal parts blocky from bone and solid with what is apparently muscle, it's an entirely different effect from the long, bony caricature of a creature he was a couple minutes ago.

Unfortunately, as he's just discovered, he can't... speak.

He can, however, low like a cow. Which is what he does in attempting to speak.

He pauses, slightly befuddled, then opts for ducking his head and jerking it back up before turning his rectangular skull to the side, looking at Drifter out of one bright and eager bovine eye.]

[So, in this shape he's quite unable to speak. That much appears to be evident based on the cow-like noise he emits, which is...perhaps not ideal. They're not entirely sure what one is meant to do with this, except that the presence of large and heavy wings is a suggestion that this is what Foster meant, evidently, when he asked if the lufkin could fly.]

[He apparently can. This is a new development that they would be far more interested in exploring if they were not currently fleeing for their life, and has no idea what to do about this winged beast that is probably capable of saving himself, but the both of them?]

[Climbing onto any creature's back is not presently their instinct.]

[They gesture, inclining their chin to the sky.]

go
to safety

[They don't have time for a lot of miscommunication shenanigans. Foster's lead on the lufkin was marginal at best, and they have seconds before he's covered with a new swarm of them--a swarm which he could rather more effectively kaiju-trample his way through, definitely but one which he's pretty sure would make it harder for him to take flight.

If he actually can, of course. He's never tried!

But he didn't take this form for him, and he has no intention of 'going to safety' without the being whose survival he's opted to value. If it were up to him, he wouldn't have taken a retreat to begin with--

And he is, so eager to have their weight on his bare back, to be ridden like the base animal he is, to be used by such a superior being as the Drifter--!

He lifts his head defiantly and then whips around, wings half-folded, turning his back to them impatiently before crouching as low as he can without just lying prone. He's basically propping himself up with the ends of his wings.

Which gives him a very exciting view of the oncoming lufkin!

One way or another, it's looking like this is about to be the part of his night--but what kind of thrill it is really depends on whether Drifter actually takes the hint and climbs on.]

Edited 2019-01-19 08:36 (UTC)

[That's a far clearer suggestion of what he wants. Unfortunately, it's a tactic marred by uncertainty, having never ridden an animal in their life, much less a very clearly sentient one.]

[Perhaps it's for the best that the Drifter does not hesitate, even when they fail to understand something. To hope that they've interpreted this correctly would be a pointless endeavor, but there's no other reason that he would be waiting, unless this was what he wanted, so - they leap, lightly, and end up struggling to find some kind of purchase on a sprawling arrangement of limbs that does not really permit any such thing. It's all smooth meat and muscle.]

[They compensate by simply lying flat, and hoping that will be...sufficient.]

[Ideally, they would also be firing on the lufkin during the process of making their escape, but they're certain that taking the risk to stand up would be a potentially fatal one.]

[It's sufficient. More than, really--Foster only waits a half second between their finally going still and beginning to move himself. He has the presence of mind (ha) to try to keep his back relatively level as he rises off the ground and even starts forward--yes, forward, towards the lufkin rather than away. At first it's on all fours, the front half of "all fours" being the ends of his wings, but in a few short strides he has them up, his long, heavy tail counterbalancing him as he starts a jog that rapidly turns into a run, his wings spreading wider, then wider still as he and the front wave of shadowy shapes collide.

It's chaos.

Lufkin die under his running claws as he breaks through, swinging his heavy skull back and forth in the mayhem--he doesn't open his jaws, it doesn't occur to him at all to try, but there are ever more lufkin ready to swarm over their brethren, and he's beating his wings into them now, and honestly the short, smooth coat of bovine hair on his back is probably not helping Drifter stay on.

And then he's jumping, sort of.

'Jumping' is a terrible word for it as he never actually returns to the ground, and Drifter doesn't need to know that it's the third time in that interminable mess that he actually tried to take off--

He's airborne now, and he's beating his wings unnecessarily hard, a crooked, half-cocked attempt at stabilising them that is absolutely making it worse, but--

Okay, it's not clear if they're going up or going down. Drifter might want to hang on.]

[Hang on they do.]

[They've no metric with which to compare this experience - tossing, jostling, clinging frantically to something that does not allow for them to cling in any consistent way - except perhaps some of the platforms in the southern reaches of the world that dropped beneath the slightest touch. Timing had been critical, then, bolting across them before they lit in a pulse of crimson-pink and plummeted into the void beneath.]

[Except then, there had been at least a slight measure in control. The Drifter could choose when they intended to streak forward, and when they could stop, and they have no such power here. All they can do is rock frantically, trying to shift their weight to roll with the jolting, unbalanced ride so that they don't go sliding sidelong off Foster's broad back and go streaking toward the ground - ]

[Their heart squeezes painfully in their chest.]

[Their vision tints as the world tilts sideways.]

[They've not slid off his back, no.]

[They've just started to cough.]

[Well, the good news is that they're going down together.

The bad news is that they're going down.

It's less of a crash-landing and more of an outright crash, and they hit the ground hard, both of them, although Foster inevitably takes most of the impact.

In fact, he takes it way harder than he might have, because once he loses air, his only thought is about preserving the Drifter--so instead of flipping over, as gravity and momentum wanted, he takes the force of collision face-first, cracking his jaw shut and his snout into mud and stone, half-running and half-crashing to a stop a few metres from the lufkin themselves.]

[The impact jostles the Drifter harshly in place when Foster slams into the earth. It doesn't do their insides any favors, either; their shoulders start to tremble with the weight of the pressure closing around their lungs, compressing their throat. They can taste their own blood slicking the back of their throat, the roof of their mouth. They can't see through the fog of static in their brain.]

[The abruptness of the landing nearly knocks them clean from his back. Instead of fighting it, they let it happen, committing to the press and pull of gravity to land in the dirt, spitting stains of neon ichor into the dust.]

[Each cough jags like a ripcord coiled up along the back of their ribs, pulle taut.]

[Foster is aware of all of this--in pieces, anyway, his nostrils full of mud and blood and ripped-up grass, his mouth similarly full of the texture of grit and earth and the temperatures of cold rain and warm, sour blood.

But though his form is bestial, his thoughts are no less human--or inhuman--than they ever are, and his eyes are bright with the excitement of panic or the panic of excitement, the bitter bile in his lungs and gut that of hate--hate not for the Lufkin, or Drifter, or any circumstance except himself, the inevitable, catastrophic failure inherent in his trying, and having tried, exposed himself to be the disgusting waste he is. There is a special form of loathing reserved for that which is not merely worthless but worse.

And having revealed (or reveled in?) that loathsome nature, the Drifter is going to die if he doesn't do something, and so he does. He snatches them up in his jaws like a strangely delicate doll and turns to run.]

[Panic is a chalk-white shock to the very core of them. Once they register past the initial swoop of disorientation, once it becomes clear that they are being carried - instinct kicks in.]

[The Drifter is a fragile creature. Illness has rendered them incapable of sustaining more than a handful of powerful hits, reducing their constitution to something meager and easily exploited. Their strengths lie in moving too quickly for their foes to counter them, moving fast enough to avoid becoming trapped. Because in the vicious, combative world of Buried Time, for a being with as profoundly shrunken and pitiful health as the Drifter's, the one thing that is always true, that is axiom in all respects, is this:]

[One never, never, never lets themself be pinned.]

[The Drifter twists frantically, their blade shooting back to life. They're likely to score themself open on his teeth, but they consider that, at the moment, an acceptable risk.]

[Let go.]

[The good news is that like most large predators, Foster's teeth are not as sharp at the point as they would be if he were... say, the size of a housecat.

This is good news for a few reasons, though they are just as unyielding, just as solid and bruising as bone itself. But as the Drifter's blade slices Foster's lip, it's his blood that spills, and not the Drifter's. Instead of opening his jaws, though, the pain has the opposite effect on him, and Foster's teeth close ever so slightly tighter over the Drifter, the taste of his own blood in his mouth, hotter than the slimy warmth of his monstrous saliva.

But he's not stopping. Instead, the pain spurs him, urging him to greater speeds, and his coarse tongue moves beneath the Drifter's body--then pulls back, then pushes up again, as though swallowing, pressing them toward the roof of his mouth in what might be an attempt to secure his hold, and might just be response to the flow of blood into his mouth.

All of these events take place in seconds of time, though. Seconds during which Foster is increasingly close to ascension, gaining momentum, breathing hard, cold inhalation and hot exhalation both rushing wet around the Drifter's covered face--

You're welcome, vore fetishists.]

[Not to be deterred, the Drifter starts to struggle further. It's not the objectively revolting sensation of hot, horsish breath rushing slobberingly over the exposed parts of their skin, or even the pain of being compressed so heavily in one place. It's simply the sensation of being trapped, of being unable to escape, and they doubt that projecting it would come to any significant conclusion and so they take the most direct path imaginable, as always.]

[They start to slash at whatever free skin they can access, desperate, desolate, straining as fiercely as possible to be free. Driving their free palm up against the upper ridge of his lips, trying to press back, pry his jaws away. It's a pointless gesture, except in its intensity - that it might let him know that they. want. out.]

[Now.]

[Foster will tell anyone who stands still long enough that he is actually pretty fucking stupid, and if they keep standing there, he'll go on at length about exactly how stupid he is. Admittedly, his self-reported stupidity is greatly exaggerated. But he does suck at clues.

Drifter's blade slices up the side of his muzzle, splits his lip, and opens a bloody cut under his eye. Their hand shoves against his flews, lifting the flap of his mouth and exposing his gums to the open air.

And eventually he does get the hint. Drifter wants out.

The problem is, by the time he gets it, he's just about airborne--and then he is airborne, beating his wings hard--better, this time, slightly less desperately and slightly more in rhythm, and letting the Drifter go is, as far as he's aware no longer an option. They succeeded in getting him to part his jaws just slightly, blood and rain pooling in the hot, deep corners of his mouth, but he doesn't have time to haggle over options.

If he wants to fly, he needs to think. About flying.]

[Unfortunately, the Drifter interprets the slight loosening of his jaws as consent.]

[Or, rather, they want out so desperately and so painfully and so utterly that they no longer care if it's a long, ungainly plummet to earth that stretches between them and freedom from this venus flytrap of ghastly proportions. They no longer care at all if it's lufkin that await them below, or the possibility of bent and broken limbs, or worse.]

[They start to claw themself free, and, if nothing will stop them - ]

[Will more or less just launch themself straight out, and go tumbling back to earth.]

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December Intro: Pressure Building

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You had to wait for me to get a ref for this sorry

IT'S FINE LMAO

CW body horror transformation

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CW nsfw phrasing for sfw activities

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cw: emetophobia

CW self loathing

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CW ableism

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