lifeaftr | March Intro: Let Loose Your Glow

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March Intro: Let Loose Your Glow

INTRO LOG: MARCH

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: March 4th and onward
Where: Ensō (and potentially Monsun)
Warnings: Mark as needed!

With a quiet month behind them, those on Ensō will be greeted by the new month with even more quiet days, weather only just beginning to take a turn for the immensely hot as summer begins to loom on the horizon. For our newcomers, this is also the scene in which they’ll find themselves waking; washed up on the island's shores, meeting interesting people, missing some key items, and gaining some new ones.

This peaceful time to greet one another and collect yourself won't last long, however. As the sun begins to rise into the sky, the quiet air will be disturbed by shrieks of surprise, dismay - and triumph. There is no new creature set to wipe out all life, no elevator from the sky, or clown box to chain. No. This month, the new arrivals have been set upon by Ensō's deadliest and most ruthless creatures.

Their fellow adventurers.

Ensō: Give Me One Drop
Last month, adventurers eagerly participated in the Storyteller's request to coat the island in protective ink, one of many steps the local god has been taking to keep Ensō, and its occupants, safer than they have. However, a great many variables to account for inevitably leads to something falling through the cracks - such as what to do when new arrivals arrive on these heavily protected shores.

Though they’ll have time to "automate" this process in the coming months, for now, the Storyteller once again humbly requests some assistance. Nothing harmful, of course, but...well, it does need to be done. In order for the new arrivals to be protected and not considered a threat by the local contingent of flocking, fluttering pages flying on the breeze, they'll need to come in contact with the base material that ties these protections together, and a lot of it. That base material being ink.

Which is where our more settled adventurers may step up to the plate. Though the purpose here is unstated, the return of the...equipment that was initially provided to paint the island sends a message all of its own: the Storyteller is happy for you to "assist" these new arrivals by any means necessary.

Welcome to LifeAtr, dear newcomers. Please excuse this very necessary, absolutely reasonable hazing. At the very least, all signs of ink on your personal items - and person, at that - will fade away within twenty-four hours.

And of course, the option to retaliate is yours for the taking, if you can find a bucket or water gun. There happen to be quite a few lying around on the beaches when you first wake - and they're all loaded, too.

Monsun and Ensō: As the Heavens Set Fire
Those of you who have been with us for some time may remember a time when a rather costly item request was involved in placing a mana pool on Monsun's western desert half, so as to bypass the verdant east. The mana pool in question seems to have been...lost, for the time being. It's not clear what happened to it.

Until now.

You see, Monsun didn't take kindly to you throwing its idea of balance out of balance. With the artificial placement of a mana pool on the western side of the island, it seems that hardly anyone would have any reason to visit the east, and that simply won't do. When the landscape shifted, the mana pool wasn't just lost - it was broken, its stone containment shattered, scattering its magical, greenish fluid to the sands.

It's just terribly unfortunate that it was some of Ziziphus's displaced population that were the ones who found that precious mana first. Ziziphus's creatures are most notable for being an even blend of plant and animal. Thus, they could soak up those juices by their roots...and flourish.

Have you yet encountered a rootwyrm - the plantlike dragon with entirely too many legs, bowed beneath the weight of its turtle shell and shelled in bark? Or perhaps you've had to contend with a plant beast, with its hissing lunge-attack and gaping, toothy maw. Several members of those innately hostile flora-fauna - the scrambling spindlanks, the shambling shrumal ogres - have had enough of you adventures crawling all over their territory, and are seeking to retaliate. It's not immediately clear how some of them managed to reach Ensō...but rest assured, several have.

Perhaps you'd be inclined to call these variants something catchy, like...a Rootwyrm +1, for example. Whatever the case, you can be assured that these "improved" variations are larger and stronger than their ordinary counterparts and tend to regenerate damage, having sustained the mana pool's "recharging" capabilities. And, because mana pools have multiple uses, they can also teleport - which would be how they've managed to reach Ensō, despite originating on Monsun. Thankfully, they're fairly distinctive and might be easy to avoid from a distance. They're larger and more vividly colored, for one, though they're also much more hostile by nature. It's likely they'll require a significant amount of teamwork to be successfully taken down, or at least driven back to Monsun.

Let that be a lesson in where you ask to set down your mana pools.

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

Yep.

[Wash's panic is a high, tight word, ground out between gritted teeth for half a second before the Plant Beast bulls forward and tries to topple him, and this time he doesn't plant himself in the ground but just rolls to one side and lets its momentum carry it past.]

[He shucks the spent mag, snaps his sidearm back to his thigh, and starts running.]

Run. Run. These things move quick but they telegraph where they're going to end up so if it starts winding back, you get the hell out of its way.

Sounds like fucking video game bullshit to me!

[Nerd. But running is a good idea. And if he lets Wash lead the way, well, it wouldn't be the first time. So far, place seems like a tropical paradise if paradise included giant rampaging plant monsters, which is shockingly not his idea of a good time.]

You've seen those things before?

[Oh my god. He doesn't waste time with a retort - that if it helps, what does it matter what kind of bullshit it is. It's amazing, how quickly he forgot that nearly every second of potential dead air between them was instead filled with furious, aimless quibbling.]

Yes, I've seen these things before. I've been here for months.

[That's around the time that the Plant Beast comes barreling back around at them. Wash only just manages to dive out of the way in time.]

What the--

[But he doesn't get to finish whatever expletive-filled rhetorical question he was about to shout. Wash manages to dive out, but Church's reaction time is leaving a little something to be desired, and boy is he ever glad for his armor-plated body. Maybe if it was a normal sized plant beast, it would've almost bounced off him. But this buddy's bigger, and down he goes.

Clearly the thing's trying to eat the nigh inedible, but it doesn't mean Church won't hold its stupid wide open toothy mouth at bay with his not-so-bare hands.]

I hate this place I hate this place I hate this place-

[Wash makes a mental note to invest in a flamethrower. There's nothing else to do but shoot at it and hope that this actually succeeds in distracting the thing, because he doesn't want to learn how edible power armor is. A few shots hit their mark, but there's no telling if they actually succeed in damaging it.]

[He spends months here refining his C.Q.C. to avoid wasting ammo, and within thirty seconds of bumping into Church he's already burning ammo faster than ever. Figures.]

[Burst-firing with the stock of his battle rifle braced against his shoulder is familiar. The shouting, not so much:]

At me, asshole! Come on! Let - go -

[Bullets rip into it, making a weird, mushy-crunchy sound. Not unlike firing right into a garden. Or a jungle.]

Watch it!

[He needs those hands, thanks. He wrenches said hands to drive the beasty to one side while it's pelted with ammo, and it seems to all but shake off its damage. Maybe a little disoriented, though? Can't be doing nothing to it, right? But Wash succeeds in distracting it, the bigger, potentially tastier threat. While Church scrambles back to his feet, the thing seems like it's about ready to charge up again. Just...a little lopsided.]

Go for its bullshit vine legs!

[Or what? he doesn't say. I'll kill you again?]

[Those jokes stopped being funny long before they actually met. Now that Wash knows the price of death here, especially, he's not keen on finding out what happens when Church gets killed again in these circumstances.]

I'm trying.

[It's not his aim that's sloppy, because unlike Church, Wash actually hits what he's aiming for ninety-nine percent of the time. Splitting his attention is just proving fucking difficult while he's trying to shoot for those...wiggly little legs that don't look like they should function as legs for something this big at all, but fuck it, what's logic in the face of a hungry flesh-eating plant monster.]

You keep running.

[And Wash will - distract it, right?]

[He owes you, right?]

Wha-

[But it's not a bad idea. He'll never (want to) admit it, but Wash is way more competent at this stuff than he is. Comes from being a highly specialized soldier in a fucked up group of super soldiers. If anyone can hold their own between them, it's definitely Wash, every time.

Plus, he likes living just fine. If...this is what you can call living.]

If I run into quicksand or off a sudden cliff or something, I'm blaming you, Agent Been Here For Months!

[And oh yes, he is absolutely going to ask about that. Later. Because Church does take off running. (Where, he doesn't know. Just not back toward the beach...he thinks.) Funny, leaving Wash behind shouldn't feel weird, but given...given everything, it does.

Well, if they both ended up in hell, at least they both definitely belong here.]

Don't run toward anything that looks like a sudden cliff and you'll be fine.

[Quicksand probably exists in the vicinity, but he sure hasn't run into it, and he doesn't have time to explain as much. He's clearly managed to flag its attention, by now, because between a running target and a threatening one, it seems to prefer the latter, and starts sweeping at him with a hiss.]

[He has two frags left, so he unclips one, braces himself for the Beast to come snarling at him again, and hucks it into the flared-open folds of its parted jaws.]

[Doesn't wait to see if the detonation kills it, or even slows it down. Just hurls himself out of the way of the blast radius, and starts running after Church.]

[Of course Church would have to show up while shit like this is happening. C.T. ended up on a crumbling island, Carolina got buried alive, Dylan was nearly trampled by a stampede - fucking figures with their track record, right?]

[There is so much--there is so much fucking jungle here. The planet had plenty of different environs, but not so much on the jungle. Like, a little? But mostly not that. Struggling through the underbrush sucks, especially when he's also trying to make sure he doesn't run into another one of those things, even manages to steer very clear of a...giant...giant mushroom troll thing? Listen, it's bright and it's big and he is not anywhere in the vicinity of fucking with that.

And then there's an explosion behind him and he has to look, has to look even if he probably won't see it, because if Wash got himself blow the fuck up over a plant, he's gonna...

...Can a ghost haunt another ghost? Don't think about it right now.]

[Wash is going at a flat-out sprint, eyes peeled for cobalt blue, for armor that looks like his because there's no one else here from home anymore so there's only one person that it can be and he almost runs smack into a shrumal ogre that's definitely far, far bigger than it's supposed to be, and scrambles back with a muffled mutter:]

Shit, shit, shit -

[He only has one frag left. Can't waste it on this thing, but he needs to get out of here and - ]

Church?

Here!

[Where 'here' is is...questionable. It's at least away from mushroom manplantmonster, so that's good? Thank god Wash didn't explode, anyway. He doesn't really want to stop running, but he does for ease of trying to be found, and where the hell is he?]

God damn it, this is why you don't split up--hey! Wash!

[This was a bad plan. It was a terrible plan. It was the best of the bad plans they had available to them (which wasn't really any), but it was still a terrible plan because they're now barreling through jungle undergrowth on the run from monsters and separated on top of it, and Wash's comm is fried so he just has to settle for shouting and hoping that he doesn't attract the attention of anything much worse.]

[Thankfully, Church tends to only have one volume in a crisis, and it's like a radio beacon. Wash zeroes in at once, snaps his battle rifle back onto his back, and hurdles a fallen tree in time to drop into a crouch and - there.]

At your nine o' clock.

[Jogging to catch up now, before anything tries following.]

[This would be a prime time to make a joke about time, or clocks, or AM or PM, under normal circumstances. But as this is a bad situation that is not at all normal circumstances, and he does know what the fuck that means thank you very much, he keeps any jokes to himself, for now.]

Did you blow it sky high or did it just spontaneously combust under your seriousness?

[Okay, jokes about nine o' clock, not, like, jokes as a whole.]

How the fuck is anyone alive on this dumbshit island paradise afterlife anyway with this stuff running around? Is there any place to go? Can we just make a fire and burn everything we see?

I don't think it's dead, if that's what you're asking. I don't know if anything can kill these things, but bullets aren't working so we're going to have to think of something else.

["We." As if there's a we here. Questions with no immediate answers, a teeming slurry of confused and confusing thoughts scrambling to make sense in his head, and no time to issue any of them.]

[For now, he can start with the immediate:]

This isn't an afterlife.

Bullshit.

[Well, isn't this a familiar dance of denial.] Only other explanation is like...did you drug me? Did you drug me up with something? Because I definitely had some Alice in Wonderland shit with a talking rabbit, and if that's not drug-induced I don't know what is.

[He peers at their surroundings, nothing trying to immediately kill them.] Do you know where we are? In relation to anything else here, not 'purgatory island' or whatever.

No I didn't -

[He's verging dangerously on sharply-pitched anger here, and he takes a moment, a very deliberate moment, to breathe that out and swallow it down and grit his teeth.]

This wasn't me. Do I honestly look like someone who could, or would pull off something like this?

I didn't say you're responsible for craphole island, did I fucking say that? No, I asked if you drugged me, which, I don't know how you could, but if anyone could, you could definitely pull it off!

Fine, I'll pick a direction and start walking until the next giant plant tries to eat us.

How would I drug a robot?

[Get a fucking lid on it, Washington. This isn't helping. Reorient, focus.]

We're on an island called Ensō. If I had to guess, I'd say we're in the jungle at the base of the mountain. There's a temple at the top that might be safe, but I'm not one hundred percent on that.

I don't know, maybe you fiddled with wires and got a reaction, I don't know anything except what Lucky the Rabbit told me before I woke up on a beach!

[He refuses to locate his chill, but at least mountain helps orient him some.]

Oh boy, spooky temple shit. Okay, fine, let's just go somewhere.

The Storyteller.

[Did he miss this? He doesn't think he missed this. For something to be missable it has to be something you wanted, and this is familiarity but several degrees to the left, on an axis askew, and it's difficult to track.]

[But at least he has a clear idea of where they're going.]

It's not even a spooky temple. It's just a normal - [wait. new thought occurring to him.] - when did you get here?

Unless it's a synagogue, I refuse to revise my description of a mountaintop temple on purgatory island. [it's not-]

What do you mean when did I get here--when did you get here, you said you were here for months! Which is bullshit. I just woke up on a beach, and maybe if I had someone serving me a mai tai in a lounge chair, I wouldn't have complained, and the sun hasn't set in the time I've been here.

Yeah, we're all...look. Church. What's the last thing you remember? From home.

[It's a question that heralds the sinking feeling in his guts, the nervous realization that he already knows the answer. Don't think of C.T.'s face, screwed up in dismay and outrage: he was my friend. Don't think of the Director, who he looked in the eye for the first time in years and tried not to murder on the spot.]

[Just think of the answers to the question, and the possible explanations that will make the most sense.]

From home?

[That's a funny way of putting it, even if it's legitimate. There's a long silence as Church marches his way through jungle thicket to mountain base, long enough that Wash will surely have figured out the answer in that time.

The last thing he remembers is a hell of a lot more complicated than he'd like. He remembers the disorganized remnants of someone's personality littering the place, like a background dumpster fire. The eager digital faces and cacophony of sing-song voices. Each of them reaching out to touch him like they wanted him to bless them. How familiar they all felt. How at home he felt. How complete.

Tex. Beta. Tex standing back and giving a small shake of her head and a sign. Like she didn't want this to happen but knew it would, eventually. Resignation, disappointment? Or just her normal reaction to all things Church. And a white light. Approaching. Slowly, so slowly.

Strictly speaking, Church doesn't need to breathe, but that's never stopped him from panting up a storm when running, or like now, sucking in a sharp breath as he tried to beat the last moments before waking up here back. Back back back, behind some kind of door, any kind of barricade, because if he thinks about Alpha we missed you Alpha too long he's pretty sure he's just going to start screaming.]

I remember you trying to kill us, Wash, what the fuck do you think I remember?

[Silence.]

[That in and of itself is answer enough, but he doesn't divert attention from whatever time it takes for Church to come up with the answer to that. He keeps an eye out on their six. He ensures there's nothing out to kill them on their way up the mountain, and nothing presents itself.]

[Swallows against the bundle of nerves and ice that knots up in the back of his skull.]

[Trying to kill us.]

[It's not even a little bit incorrect. And - us.]

[That tells him everything he needs.]

It's been years since then. For me.

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