lifeaftr | April Intro: Better Get to Digging

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April Intro: Better Get to Digging

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 )

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"I...just told you." He's probably too stupid to follow this, isn't he? Yeah. He stares at the walls of equations that the kid is churning out at a frankly dead impressive rate, and sighs. Way outta his depth. In just about every respect.

"It's this whole other...other world. Place called LifeAftr. I don't know if you'd call it another planet or another dimension or what, but that's what it is. Did you dream this place before you got here?"

If the kid did - great. That's a convenient jumping off point for an explanation. If he didn't, then Tim just sounds dumb and borderline out of his mind, which is fine because he's like that anyway.

This time, Five actually pauses and lowers his pen to look up at Tim. Really get some quality eye contact in there that may even stand a chance at conveying how absolutely done with him Five is right now.

"Y'know, it's pretty amazing - I can actually feel myself getting dumber listening to you talk." But he's getting sidetracked, losing focus, headache still pulsing angrily right behind his eyes. He sighs in frustration and rubs his hands over his face.

Also, he did have a weird dream recently. But it didn't look anything like this lush little jungle.

"At least tell me there's somewhere to get a decent cup of coffee around here."

He's used to being called dumb. He's used to being stupid. He didn't graduate college, he knows that he's not that smart. He tells himself that it shouldn't sting. It shouldn't, when he's always reminding himself.

It still bites anyway.

"Yeah, so that's my notebook you're using. Just so you remember." He doesn't want to take it from the kid, but clearly manners aren't his priority here anyway.

"I don't know about decent, but we have coffee plants. It's definitely not your average Starbucks quality."

He got called dumb by a moody teen, have some self-respect, jesus. Five just snorts; it's not like Tim would get very far even if he did try to take it from him.

Far less amusing is what he hears next. Holy shit. He lets his hands drop from his face, staring up at Tim in utter outraged disbelief.

"You're shitting me, right? What is this place, some kind of hippie commune?! Do you wipe your asses with old newspaper, too?"

"If you had a phone or anything like that on you, it's gonna be broken by now. Anything real advanced tends to break down pretty quick. Call it water damage."

He shrugs, tiredly. "It sucks, but yeah. What you see is what you get. Welcome to learning how to rig up a shower."

That was Gladio's doing, actually, but Gladio's not here anymore, so...

Well, the showers still work, at least.

That helpful nugget of information, along with Tim's general appearance and the contents of his knapsack, finally form a pretty devastating picture in Five's mind. And what he hears isn't 'welcome to learning how to rig up a shower'.

In that moment he hears welcome back to living on scraps. Welcome back to drinking water you know might very well kill you, because it's the only water you've seen in days. Welcome back to curling up in a hole in the ground like the rats you've been hunting, absolutely convinced you'll freeze to death over night, and not all that put out at the prospect.

It had taken a lifetime to find the right equations to get back to his family and time. How long is it going to take, to get back to the right universe?

One might say Five looks like he's seen a ghost or several. Color draining from his face, his eyes widening just slightly. But the horror at having to do it all over again isn't gonna do anybody any good. So he manages to school his expression, sets his jaw, glances back down at the equations in his lap. Clear, immutable, the way home, if he keeps at it. He just has to. Keep at it.

"You said we. How many?"

Immediately, Tim kind of regrets putting it like that. It was reflex - facing nastiness with a barb or two of his own. But the effect on the kid is instantaneous, even if he handles it like a champ, slaps a fresh, determined veneer right over what must have been horror.

The most he can do is answer carefully, directly.

"It changes. I'd ballpark around sixty or seventy people total, but they come and go all the time. You were just in the latest...wave, I guess."

He's probably not being exacting enough in his terminology. Well, fine. He can't really fix that.

Sixty or seventy people, compared to a city of millions, a world of seven billion. "Jesus," he hisses to himself, appalled. But that's seventy more people than there were in the wasteland, so, fine. He can work with this. Whatever this is, he's just going to have to adapt.

He shuts the notebook decisively and tucks it away in his own knapsack, getting to his feet among Tim's strewn belongings. The sudden movement has him wincing and holding his side for a second. Right, forgot about those stitches.

"Where do new people go? Some sort of... orientation, census or something? Somebody in charge I can talk to?"

Tim sighs as the kid just...goes ahead and takes the notebook. He's weighing the likelihood that trying to get it back might be more trouble than it's worth. In the meantime, he just starts packing away his own shit back where it belongs.

Takes note of the way the sudden movement seems to jar something in the kid's side. Hurt, maybe. Or tired. Probably both.

"You had a dream before you ended up here. That's the closest to that you'll get." He shuts his pack, shoulders setting. "Could I get that back, actually? That notebook?"

"No, actually. I'm using it for something far more important than you, trust me." What was Tim gonna do with it, write down the location of a cool tree? He waves all that aside impatiently, fixated on the next in a series of increasingly unbelievable inconveniences.

"I'm not interested in talking to a rabbit. You're telling me this happens with some consistency, some predictability, and nobody thought to set up a system? You're just letting some idiots wander off into the woods to get eaten by wolves before they figure out how to survive?" He's thinking of a few idiots in particular here, unfortunately, which means he's getting a little heated about it.

"It used to belong to someone." His tone drops. "Someone who isn't here anymore and I don't have a lot left over from him, so I'd kind of like that back. I can get you a new one if you need it."

He wouldn't make this a thing if it was from anyone else, if it was any other object, but -

But it was Brian's.

It belonged to him. It's how he communicated. It was his paper and his pen and the thought that it might just be lost the same way Brian was, it's not a new sort of hurt but he's not about to relive it if he can help it. Not again.

"People have tried to. Nothing's stuck."

Congrats, Tim, for finding just about the only thing that has a chance of getting through Five's almost frantic temper and stirring something like sympathy in him. It's not something he's accustomed to feeling, but it's too familiar to deny, the clinging to a book as the last remnant of someone who's been utterly erased from your life. Someone you maybe didn't even know you loved until they were gone.

Five stops short in his rant, expression showing very little of how torn he is for a second. He just can't go without something to write, not right now. It's too important. He huffs out a little sound of frustration.

"Fine. I do need it, so get me another one and I'll give it back. That's a promise." That's the best he can do here. Which can probably be said of the entire conversation, actually. "I've got some people to find," he declares by way of some vague dismissal and turns away from Tim to head on in whatever direction he was originally going. How Tim intends to find him once he's got that notebook for him isn't really his problem.

"...fine."

He supposes that's the closest to a concession he's going to get. And like hell he's going to try and fight a kid over this. It's fortunate he has the stories to spare.

He's fully prepared to leave it at that, except for one thing, called out at the kid's back -

"I'm gonna need a name so I can call you when I do."

Calling seemed pretty off the table by the sound of things and it has Five pausing, turning back to narrow his eyes incredulously.

"You don't have showers but you've got phones?" If it turns out Tim's description of the level of development around here was nothing more than an amusing exaggeration, he will lose a limb for it.

"We have rocks." He digs his out of his pocket and holds it up. The tiny screen at least lends some kind of credence to the pronouncement. "Don't ask me how they work, 'cause I don't know. Something about magic, if you believe in that kind of thing. It's more like a walkie-talkie than a phone."

Rockie-talkie, as Connor likes to call it, and not for no reason.

"So. Do you have a name?"

Obviously he doesn't believe in that kind of thing, and he'd mostly ignored the strange rock when assessing the usefulness of his supplies. If anything, he'd briefly suspected it of being some kind of bug, considering the incredibly suspicious stitching on the backpack, and had considered destroying it right there. But then he'd decided to hold off until he knew more about this place. Tim has been pretty forthcoming with his answers, limited and infuriating as they may be, so what reason would he have to screw with him now?

He pulls out his own rock, brushing a thumb over the tiny display. "Can't say that I have," he answers Tim's question absentmindedly. Something that functions like a walkie-talkie, on every person? That could be incredibly useful.

"But Number Five usually does the job. So you can speak to anyone with this thing as long as you know their name?"

Number Five.

He doesn't say: your name is Number Five? He doesn't say: who names their kids after a number? He doesn't say: how many numbers are there? He doesn't say any of those things because Kidwun and Kittu wasn't even that long ago, in the context, and if the kid doesn't feel like he wants to divulge a real name, that's fine.

He assumes it's a cover. And he doesn't pry. He just answers the question.

"Yeah. It's that, or everyone at once, so make sure you know who you want to talk to. You need to reach me, just ask for Tim."

"I won't," he mutters, already distracted with the rock again and also a little uneasy about Tim's insistence on being blatantly helpful. Slow your roll there, lumberjack, he's gonna do just fine on his own.

He pockets the rock securely, knowing exactly who he's going to try calling with it. Away from prying eyes, of course. Then he meets Tim's eyes again, considering for a moment.

"But thanks." That one, believe it or not, was sincere. He turns around without waiting for a response and marches off with a faint limp.

Somehow, he doesn't doubt that. He knows too many viciously self-sufficient kids to think otherwise. The thanks comes as a shock, though. He blinks, once, but doesn't answer fast enough in kind.

Probably for the best.

Time to invest in a better notebook, he guesses.

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April Intro: Better Get to Digging

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