April Intro: Better Get to Digging

[lifeaftr_mods]

INTRO LOG: APRIL

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

Waking up to the gentle proddings of what appears to be very curious, sentient trees isn't the worst wake up call LifeAftr has to offer. For our newest arrivals, however, it may be a tad…odd.

Situated in the valley between two mountains, Elower is a scenic village filled with the friendly Roaka, tree-like beings that are rather peaceable and happy to assist those who have just arrived. I'’s a peaceful location for one to start their adventures - though, unfortunately, it doesn't stay peaceful for long.

Cahypdo: You'll Bury Me Low
Those who have explored the new island of Cahypdo in the last month will undoubtedly recall the series of quakes that shook the island throughout March. With the arrival of LifeAftr's newest adventurers comes Cahypdo's largest tremor to date, striking without warning and more than enough force to throw even the steadiest and sturdiest of your number to the ground. With a low rumble, the mountains heaped on either side of the island will start to shed an abundance of slag and debris, pouring down their slopes. Anyone who's scaling those peaks risks being flung bodily off them when the outpouring of shale comes roaring down those mountains, and anyone at the mountain bases risks being crushed beneath.

As one might expect, unsuspecting newcomers aren't all that have been shaken up. Though protected by netting and retaining walls, the cliffs around and above the village of Elower can only take so much pressure before giving way - a threshold that has been crossed entirely. With a sound like thunder, rocks fall.

Everyone dies? Only if you don't act quickly. Roaka housing is sturdy in build, enough to protect a decidedly less sturdy body from all but the heaviest of boulders. Hiding inside any of their village constructs built into the sides of the mountains will certainly save you from taking a new weight onto your shoulders. They will not, however, save you from being buried alive.

For those who become trapped inside any of those abodes, your options appear limited. Work to free yourself, or wait for help to arrive. Though, speaking of help, those outside may think to offer the Roaka a helping hand in getting their trapped people - and yours, at that - a few breaths of fresh air.

Before you suffocate.

Cahypdo: Stay Acting Brave
Such seismic activity will also stir up the local wildlife, of course. Those unfortunate enough to come across them will recognize the restless shark-dragon hybrids, hydrac, now prowling across the shorelines, while the wickedly fanged wabbits will also be far more frequent, traveling in larger numbers in the jungle and at the bases of the mountains. Taking care to avoid them would be wise - though another creature may make that venture much more difficult.

Lorbies have been unlocked in the bestiary! A strange mix between owl and serpent, the recent quake has clearly startled these usually reclusive creatures into the open. Alone, a lorby is a rather skittish animal, prone to hiding from most perceived threats. Useless for food due to the toxicity of their flesh, lorbies do have the potential to be tamed...but this comes with its own risks.

A lorby may be prone to flight rather than fight when encountered solo, but in groups, these feathery critters are far more hostile. A defensive lorby emits a piercing cry alone, but a group is an almost ear-piercing experience, capable of rendering the unfortunate unstable on their feet at best, and unconscious at worst. For the days that follow the severe earthquake that so rocked everyone's foundations, any hope for silence is lost in the infrequent bursts of almighty screeching by colonies of lorbies who have so rudely had their homes overturned and disturbed.

While the lorby is omnivorous, it may not think to take a bite at anything so much larger than them. That doesn't mean that conflict with these fluffy creatures won't attract something much more willing to take advantage of the fact that you may or may not have been reduced to a prone sack of meat. If something else does arrive, you best hope that it's a friendly face.

If you're interested in keeping a lorby for your own, bear LifeAftr's companion limit in mind - two per character, and no more. The lorby is omnivorous and can survive off of most odds and ends: insects, fruits, berries, critters it can dig up in the sand, and more. However, the process of trying to tame a lorby is not always successful. We recommend use of a d10, with the following guidelines:

Rolling a 10: Critical success! This lorby will love and adore you, and may even feel comfortable enough to drape itself along your neck like a beautiful, furry scarf, churring softly all the way.
Rolling 7-9: This lorby will prove high-strung and timid, even if safely befriended, and will take several weeks to warm up to you. But once it does, it's yours!
Rolling 2-6: Failure. The lorby enters a state of distress and starts screaming. Hope you brought earplugs, or you'll be snoozing for several long hours for your efforts.
Rolling a 1: Critical failure. Not only does the lorby start screaming, but its panic attracts a colony of its friends, and they all start screaming too.

Bear in mind that these are only guidelines; you are free to predetermine successes or failures as you'd like, presuming your character can sustain the companion! Our discord channel has a room for dice-rolls, if you prefer.

---

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 )

Comments

Bakura | New arrival! | OTA

[shiromadoushi]

[A]

Waking up in a new place with no idea how he'd gotten there was honestly so normal for Bakura that he almost didn't notice that he had actually been asleep this time.

What he did notice, however, much to his delight, was the sentient trees that had woken him. His entire face lit up, grin so large his face almost couldn't contain it as his eyes all but sparkeled.

"Aaaaa! So cool!" Scrambling to his feet, he looked up, a small, amazed sound escaping as he took in the full height and majesty of the Roaka in front of him.

Wherever this place was? Was awesome.


[B]

Fanboying over Treebeard and friends the Roaka over, Bakura was going through his bookbag and checking out how water damaged the contents are. With a bit of concern, he pulled out one of his notebooks, carefully removing the band holding it closed before opening the pages.

"Just the edges... thank goodness!" he sighed, shoulders going slack. "Just a little sunlight and it should be fine!" he beamed, shifting to carefully set it out next to him before going to the next one. "Glad I didn't write in these in pen!" he laughed, shaking his head.


[C]

The first step of any adventure when there wasn't a starting town tavern-- Mapping! Notebooks properly dried and pencil sharpened, he's carefully filling in the graph paper squares as he walks, face a mask of concentration as he balances the hard backed book in the hook of his arm.

Complicating this setup is the duel bag set up; the usual newbie knapsack hanging off one shoulder while his blue "Jaunt supply kit" backpack hangs off the other.

It's not the best balancing act, but so far, he's managing it. For the moment.

A

[motherfucking_ghost]

"That's...an interesting response to the situation." One of the better ones, really. Church weaved between giant tree person legs. Oh, sure, he's already grown used to the weirdness of the locals and the weirdness of people around him.........mostly. But man if it didn't itch at the back of his head how alien these things are. And alien is bad. They don't look like Blarg or Junior, though, so they're okay.

"Your first time here? Or...your first time here?" On the island or in this multidimensional fuckscape.

[shiromadoushi]

Bakura looked over, still grinning like a fool. "First time in this world!" he confirmed with a nod as he got to his feet. "Been to a few others beforehand!"

He paused, blinking a few times. "Aaa-- I shouldn't be just saying that..." he remembered before looking back over. "...Unless you're also a Traveler?"

In which case, it was totally okay that he'd just broken that 4th wall there! ...Though was it really the 4th wall when it was other worlds? There had to be a better term for it somewhere. 4th vail?

...but he was going to get distracted again if he pondered that right now.

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Nah, not, uh, like that? But you'll find people that are waaaay more used to hopping around through, I dunno, time and space than me, so you're apparently in good company." Church jabbed a thumb over to the tree people. The treeple. "These guys are good, though, so I guess nerding out over them won't be too weird. They'd never seen anyone else on their island before we stumbled on in, apparently, so I guess the feeling's pretty mutual."

[shiromadoushi]

"Another in-between place, then?" Bakura asked, head tilting curiously before he looked back up at the trent-like beings. "Heeeeh, a first contact encounter? So cool!"

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Kinda! It's a waaaay better close encounters of the Roaka-kind than the other aliens I know of. ...Which I guess isn't surprising since...I guess...we're kind of the aliens. Interdimensional aliens. Shit." Sure is a weird thing to realize! We don't have time to unpack that right now. "But yeah, I guess according to the rabbit, it's kind of in-between? Depends on how much you trust an animal dream island god."

[shiromadoushi]

"Aa! So that's what that was? Just like back in Liminal space then! Makes me really wonder how many of these places there are...." he mused, though the thoughtful affect didn't last long.

"And the actually-living-in-outer-space aliens I've met so far have all been really cool! One of my best friends is one!"

[motherfucking_ghost]

"We were at war with the only alien species I know of. Back home, I mean. Soooo it's a bit weird! Bit weird. I mean, yeah, the war's over, but it's a pretty tentative thing as far as I know. But hey, good for you, making friends with what lives out there."

[shiromadoushi]

"At war with them?" Bakura repeated curiously. "Heeeeh, does that mean your world's in space already? That's really cool! We've only been to the moon, back home. And the only other world anyone there knows about isn't really another world so much as it's sort of like an attached astral plane sort of thing. I think..."

He really hadn't been able to figure out how that whole Gateway to the Afterlife thing the other Yuugi had used worked, other than the whole needing the God cards and the Pharaoh's name to open it thing. Was it just what it said on the tin? Was that really just the afterlife? But then why had everyone else wanted to open it so badly? What else was behind that door? Because it couldn't have just been dead people, just allowing dead people back into the world wouldn't have given anybody power, and even if the Ring Spirit had managed to resurrect whomever that mummy had been in the end--

...he was getting distracted again.

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Oh yeah, colony worlds, spaceships, high-tech space marine armor," with a knock on his helmeted head, "repeating laser rifles, jetpacks, the works."

Hold on a second.

"Did you say astral plane? ...The place sad single middle-aged ladies marry fictional characters?"

[shiromadoushi]

Bakura rubbed the back of his neck with a small laugh. "It's the best way I can think of to describe it, really! Like where your soul goes when it's not part of your body or put in anything else! I haven't gotten to really look into it too much since everything sort of crumbled when the door to it was shut and we had to get out of there really fast or we would have wound up buried alive too, but..." he trailed off before shrugging.

"When I was there it was kinda like being suuuper detached from everything? Like I could see everybody but they were really far away, and then Amane-chan showed up and yelled at me that I wasn't supposed to be dead yet and then got sucked back in my body and woke up and it was all back to normal."

Relatively speaking.

"Couldn't really get a good look when the other Yuugi-kun went through the door either... he had a lot of people waiting for him there, though! So he likely wasn't there too long, since they could show him how to get to the other side and all that."

[motherfucking_ghost]

"...You sure did just say a lot of words, the majority of which seem barely coherent when strung together."

Door. Dead. Weird afterlife-y place where some schmucks got their souls ripped to??? "Besides, when my soul isn't part of my body, it just gets to wander around places."

He attempted to demonstrate, making a few unfortunate grunting noises and looking like he's really putting effort into it. But the miracle never happen. "Wait wait wait, I swear this never happens, I can usually just--hnnnnnnnngh!"

[shiromadoushi]

Wait til he gets started talking about card games, that rambling will seem almost normal in comparison

Bakura blinked, peering curiously. "... Not working?" he asked, stating the obvious.

[motherfucking_ghost]

"...Fuck. Guess not. Maybe falling through a dimension portal or whatever fucked with me a bit."

[shiromadoushi]

"Could just be that it doesn't translate, outside of your homeworld. Like if there was another layer that your soul could step out into back there, but it doesn't exist here, you might not be able to do it just because the step you'd use to step out just isn't there."

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Dude, it's not that deep, I'm just a ghost." Well, a holographic projection of an AI, but he still likes the ghost thing better. This surely won't get him into any trouble down the line or anything. "I should be able to just - go."

[shiromadoushi]

"Heeeeh, you are?!"

Hello, Mr. Ghost, you now have Bakura's full and undivided attention.

"So like a real version of Possessed Armor then? Aaaaa, that's so cool!!"

[motherfucking_ghost]

"...Basically, yeah!" Not incorrect, actually. It only moves cuz he's in it, so. Fingerguns! Play it smooth. "Anyone ever tell you you're kind of a weird kid?" Failed step one.

[shiromadoushi]

"Aaa--" Bakura rubbed the back of his neck with a laugh. "More creepy than weird, really!" he admitted, still all cheer.

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Yeah, I could see that. I'll stick with weird for now, though. You like a nerd or a pagan or a nerdy pagan or something?"

[shiromadoushi]

Bakura blinked a few times. "Pagan?" he repeated curiously. "Isn't that something to do with religious pantheons? Druids and things like that?"

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Yyyyeah? Or, I dunno, are you wiccan? Or you're just weird. I'd suggest maybe goth, but you're..." Decidedly not that goth at all.

[shiromadoushi]

"Aa! You mean like that?" Bakura laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. "No, no, nothing like that! I just really like occult stuff!" he grinned, utterly oblivious to the absolute tonal dissonance of those words coming so cheerfully from a fluffy haired teen in the preppiest of outfits.

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Well, so long as you're not raising the dead or casting magic missile into the darkness or doing creepy blood rituals in the middle of the night or literally any other time, then 's all cool."

[shiromadoushi]

"Casting Magic Missile at the Darkness is sort of like trying to shine a flashlight into the Void. Really, all you do is draw aggro onto yourself, totally not worth it," Bakura nerded nodded.

"Besides. If you really want to attack the Darkness, you should really be using Holy or something like that."