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.

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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

[a_shadow]

"I'm fine," she lies. She takes a few slow breaths, slouching in her armor, letting its rigidness take over the function of remaining upright. She's two months into her recovery post-coma and here she is leaping over falling rocks and lifting people out of their homes with a rope. She needs to quit, she knows this, but she's just not going to be ready until she knows more residents have been saved.

Tex jerks awake after a while. "Mmmh," she grunts, and stretches a little, trying not to show that she'd fallen asleep. She doesn't even remember falling asleep, she was just...there. A little sidelong glance at Washington should make it clear that he isn't to mention it. "Where is the mana pool, exactly?" she says, as casually as she can.

[counterblows]

Yeah, it's pretty fucking obvious that she's not fine, but Wash is just as guilty of the same dismissal, the calm shrugging away of every issue that he's not acknowledging, so he's not about to push it.

"The one on this island? It's south, that way. Near the very bottom of the island." He points to the place where the mountain evens out to beach. Near the crags of the coastal rock, that's where the stone plinth that houses the precious water is nestled.

"It's like a liquid MRE." Perfect for soldiers like them, right?

[a_shadow]

She nods, looks that way for a long moment, then stands and replaces her helmet.

"I'm coming back," she says. "You don't have to wait."

She takes off then, leaving him with the saw and the rope.

[counterblows]

"Don't get lost," he says, but he mutters it in undertone, definitely not calling out for her to hear. He needs a break anyway, so he parks himself on the spot and yanks his helmet off in time to comb a hand through his hair, as if that'll make his terrible fucking helmet hair any better or easier to bear.

It doesn't. It still sticks up all over the place, awkwardly flattened in others, the same way it always has.

[a_shadow]

In the end, once she finds the place, she spends about a quarter of an hour at the pool, drinking the water and allowing it to recharge her armor. She feels better afterwards, at least somewhat. She's going to sleep heavily tonight, though, she can tell.

She returns to the place where Washington was 45 minutes later, all told.

[counterblows]

"Good thing you didn't say right back," says Wash, wryly, once he catches her silhouette. "Otherwise I might've started worrying."

Worrying about who, and what? Something that might've happened to her, or someone else?

He doesn't say.

"Feeling better?"

[a_shadow]

Tex is still approaching when he speaks, and she slows slightly when he addresses her.

He did wait.

But they had a strange relationship, no matter what universe they were in, it seemed. She hadn't expected this Washington to care enough.

"I'm good," she says, as if this is a matter of course. Of course she's good. What else would she be?

[counterblows]

The lack of a helmet grants him the courtesy of letting his stare linger a second or two longer than is typical. Then he jams it back over his head, sealing it back in place, and stands.

"All right, then. I guess it's back to work."

[a_shadow]

Why is he looking at her like that? She stares back for a moment before turning to grab the rope and the saw. She doesn't respond verbally in any way, just walks down the slop to the next house that might have people inside, and knocks on its roof.

No one seems to be in this one, she decides after multiple knocks. She moves on, picking her way among the rocks. What good would talking do now? she wonders. This Washington is strange to her. Why did he wait? Over half an hour of recharging, and he just waited.

She looks at him before knocking on the next roof, falters, and in the end, still doesn't speak.

[counterblows]

He doesn't offer any explanation, or justification. Tex doesn't speak, and neither does he. He just follows her along, because falling into step behind someone with enough assertion was always an instinct he couldn't entirely shake. Defer to Carolina. Defer to Tex. Defer to people who know what they're doing.

"Do you know who else is here?" he says at last, because it occurs to him that she might not just yet.

[a_shadow]

"No," she says. "I just knew about you. Though I did dream about Maine before I woke up here." Considering that she'd dreamt about Washington as well, that seems significant.

This next house has a resident who responds to her knocks and she begins cutting a hole in the roof.

[counterblows]

Maine.

He doesn't respond to that. What is there to say? He's dreamed about Maine, too, but he's dreamed about Maine even before then. He's seen him on the islands, though he knows that it wasn't really him; just a specter that his mind conjured up, when Mu decided to go haywire.

"I'm not talking about Maine," says Wash quietly. "I'm talking about Church."

He did the mental math. If she remembers the E.M.P., there'd only be one Church that's really Church, to her.

The Alpha.

[a_shadow]

The impulse to explode on him is tempting to give in to. She nearly drops the saw. The only reason she doesn't, really, is because it's sticking up out of a half-sawn hole. But her head whips up in his direction, and she stares at him, for a good long moment.

"You might have mentioned that an hour ago," she says.

[counterblows]

"Right, because I'd expect you to handle it so well? I don't know how soon you got here, or if you met him before now. Next time, you can think of the best way to bring that up."

There was no graceful way to segue into it, and that's just the bottom line.

[a_shadow]

"You could have asked," she says, starting to saw again with renewed vigor. "I'm all right, okay—I'm just annoyed it took you so long to say something."

[counterblows]

"I had to deal with explaining to him what happened after the E.M.P., so I'm a little sick of dropping bombshells," he fires right on back. "Hopefully the other me already covered that with you, because I'm not going over that again."

Church's anger, at least, is largely ineffectual - he couldn't hit the broad side of a parked Pelican. Tex's anger has been enough to lever an entire iceberg, and more, and he'd rather not get on the wrong side of it again.

[a_shadow]

"Washington," she mutters with a sigh. The sawn patch comes out of the roof and she lowers the rope. "That was the point. Do you even remember the conversation we had in that dream?"

Assuming it was correct that they even shared that dream.

[counterblows]

"I thought the point was that you weren't pissed at me to the point where you'd break my ribs again. Thanks, by the way." He kneels to help one of the Roaka climb their way out, grabbing at one branchlike arm with an outstretched hand and helping lever them upward.

"That was my main takeaway."

[a_shadow]

She sighs, standing back to allow space for the roaka to come onto the roof. "Yeah," she says. "Because I found out what happened afterwards. You don't have to..." She shakes her head slightly. "It's fine. All right?"

Another roaka waits in the space below the hole once Washington's done and this time Tex offers her hand.

[counterblows]

"You're already taking this better than Church did, then." Though it's hard to take things worse than that. Wash's explanation was also, for the record, not that great to begin with.

"How much do you know? About...after?"

[a_shadow]

"I've had more time to get used to the knowledge," she says, standing back after the residents of the home are rescued and setting her hands on her hips to stretch her shoulders back a bit.

"I know the guys didn't turn Epsilon in, and that you went to prison."

That sums it up, mainly.

"Look, I know it's weird how accepting and calm and everything I am about it. And I can't lie, it's partly because of the alien influence that was on me when I found out. But I just can't seem to see it in any way but sympathetically."

She doesn't tell anything more about that alien influence. How her animosity toward Washington had flipped on its head and turned to affection. How she had cried—actually cried—over his troubles. How they had started calling each other by their first names. She doesn't feel it makes much sense to someone who wasn't there. It hardly makes sense to her.

[counterblows]

He stares at her for a good half minute before he can muster a response to that.

It turns out to make more sense than he first thought.

"...no wonder you got along with them. The Reds and Blues." It...maybe it doesn't have to do with forgiveness. Just coming to terms with something, accepting that it was a shitty situation, and moving on instead of clinging to it unrelentingly? That was what had made them extraordinary, in some ways. They wouldn't dredge up years-long vendettas, not really. That wasn't their style.

[a_shadow]

Tex doesn't respond to that, just gives that little head-tilt that in armor indicates someone raising their eyebrow. Then she shrugs.

"Maybe you're right. I don't know."

[counterblows]

"They were the same way. You say you're sorry, and that's enough for them." That's...how it feels, anyway. Do they forgive him? He doesn't know. The Reds, at least, are...he's never really asked. It's hard to say if they'll ever be okay with what he did in his role in trying to re-obtain Epsilon, regardless of Donut's unexplained recovery.

It's just never come up.

[a_shadow]

"Well, there was more to it than that. I did crack his ribs, remember."

Though he'd been going out of his way to be a complete shit at the time.