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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jules snorts. He has no idea who Hajime is, but he's really not surprised he's worse than the guy.

"I'm worse than all but one person in the entire Ichidian Universe, so says an oh so joyful poll done about me. I take the silver medal to a self proclaimed emperor who basically committed genocide against most of his population and imprisoned the entire Caronese people with his homicidal lunacy. With all of my assholeishness I just couldn't beat that. I certainly couldn't win a poll on anything decent, but I'm not even good enough to win first place in a poll of shitheads. Darn."

With how often the pair had fought (and that Tachibana had insisted that Hajime had to be sealed) it would have been an easy assumption to see the pair as enemies. That they had somehow become all but brothers....

At the litany of misdeeds, Tachibana couldn't help but stare in utter shock. That-- what? Even having dealt with the discovery that a man he had looked up to was planning on the wholesale extermination of all human life... it had been a very impersonal ending of the world Tennouji had gleefully boasted about. He was... fairly sure Tennouji had never directly dirtied his hands in that way.

Hearing that someone else had... and that somehow, this was the only thing worse than... whatever it is that Jules had done....

It takes him a moment to overcome the shock enough to ask; "The hell did you even do to be on that sort of list....?"

"I had the audacity to be born and not die the instant I entered the world."

He says it entirely matter-of-factly. There's no joking tone in his voice at all. The most that's there is a hint of dry sarcasm. The problem is, however, Jules isn't really being sarcastic. For all intents and purposes, that's the legitimate reason he's so hated. Sure, there are other reasons involved in the matter as well, but generally speaking they can all boil down to that one point.

Tachibana blinked. Then blinked again.

"...that's it? Just-- you existed?" He blinked once more, utterly baffled. That... that couldn't be the reason... could it?

Unless...

There's a moment where memory overtakes him, a montage of moments of him staring down at Hajime from behind his Rouzer.

'Jokers existence... will destroy everything!'

He looked to the side, pressing his lips together. ...was it something like Hajime's existence? Someone who's very presence threatened the world's safety...

Those images flash though Jules as well, and he bursts out laughing. At the same time the thought nearly guts him. If only it had been something like that. A reason like that he could understand. But no. It had never been something understandable.

"Minsid hell, I wish. That would at least explain why I was so hated. Nobody ever tried to kill me for any reason so noble."

And people were constantly trying to kill him. His first clear realization of that was when he'd been five years old, and it hadn't stopped since.

Tachibana's discomfort visibly grew as he looked away. "Stop commenting on my thoughts like I'm saying them aloud, damnit," he returned, though there was no bite behind the words, just discomfort and frustration.

"The hell reason did they have, then? Or even pretend to have?!"

Jules' expression flickers as he's dragged away from the deep abyss of his past to face the guilt of what he'd unintentionally done.

"My apologies. I didn't realize, which I know isn't an excuse. I will try to recognize the difference in the future."

He looks away, debating how much he really wants to say. There are many reasons why people hated him. His entire bloodline was corrupted and tainted by evil deeds and behaviors. He's partaken in his far share of them, though admittedly most of his actions had been caused by being trapped in a hard place with no way out. When you're fighting for you life sometimes there aren't any good choices, and you have to taken priority over anything or anyone else.

"Nearly everyone judges on first glance without needing to know anything about the real person they're judging. They think they already know. I was judged for being a hybrid even when people didn't know my name. Once they did, well, then I was judged much worse."

There's an echo of guilty cringing as Jules responds. He hadn't meant to make the other man feel bad he just-- The hell did psychic abilities have to exist?

He looked back over, as Jules explained. "...Hybrid...?" he repeated. From a world where there were more than one dominant species?

There is no "dominant" species where Jules is from. The Ichidian Universe has a huge number of species. Even within the human race there are different specialty branches, though admittedly the Trisani had been nearly wiped out.

"Half human, half Andarion. I couldn't pass as full Andarion until recently when I became stralen."

He gestures at his glowing red eyes, which probably doesn't explain a whole heck of a lot. Naturally his eyes were a mix of human hazel with the Andarion red rim. They told both races he was unnatural.

There were a few proper nouns in that that Tachibana had no idea the specifics of, but could make a rough guess.

"The two are similar enough that just the eyes are enough to mask it...?"

"No. My eyes are my only distinctly human trait, so masking them allows me to pass as full Andarion. It's a lot harder to pass as fully human. My size alone is a dead giveaway. As are the claws and fangs."

Then there's the fact that culturally both races are incredibly different. Jules knows enough about human culture to pass as a human in that sense if he needs to though.

...it did say something about how danged used to people who just looked... different Tachibana was that he had almost stopped noticing those things. (when two of your good friends were a drow and a CAST, and you yourself had spent time as multiple different humanoid species... ~~Really, if it weren't for the skin tone, Jules could have passed as Stonefolk.~~) So it was with a touch of awkwardness that he nodded.

"Enough similarities that you would pass for just an altered human, in some places."

"Altered?"

He knows what that word means by definition, but not exactly how it should be applied to this situation. What, exactly, is altering humans? And why?

"Someone who's taken on an aspect of something else." He'd seen at least one other person already who looked like a fusion of human and... something else.

Jules is so flabbergasted by that that he doesn't know how to respond for a while.

"Titana rael. Why would anyone want to do that? I get hell for it when it wasn't even my minsid choice!"

"I don't know," Tachibana answered honestly. "I don't even know if they did have a choice." After all, it wasn't as if he had chosen to keep anything from Galen, and yet....

"Sometimes I seriously don't understand humans. Not that I understand Androkyn any better at times."

Generally speaking all beings could be jerks and make decisions that made absolutely no sense in Jules' mind.

A small, faint huff of amusement escapes Tachibana as yet again, he can't help but think of Hajime making the same general observation. "Most humans don't even understand other humans," he half shrugged. "Or even ourselves, sometimes."

He was very much a prime example there. If he understood why he did half the things he did...

... no, he likely still would have made the exact same choices and mistakes.

"That at least I do understand. Not saying I make good choices, because I don't, generally speaking, but I understand why I make the decisions I make and act the way I act at least."

Nobody else really did, but he also understands that. Unless someone lived his life they wouldn't get it. Most people don't even believe him when he tries to explain it.

"Better man than me, in that regard," Tachibana replied, self deprecatingly. The knee jerk responses, the idiotic naivety, the endless trusting of people who in retrospect were clearly untrustworthy...

He had spent far more time simply blaming himself for his failures than he had trying to understand why, even after more than 12 years, he still was the same idiot he had been since the Battle Fight had restarted. Easier to just take responsibility for his actions and do what he could to repair the damage they had done then to deal with his inner demons.

..even if that very thing had lead to him falling inside of his own mind and needing to be rescued from himself by his friends.

"Not a man, but I get the idea. Not that it's true. Pretty sure there are only a small handful of people you could consider me better than, and those beings set the bar pretty low for "good.""

They would pretty much all be included within his family too, with an odd exception here or there. Jules hadn't faced his own demons of his own will for the most part. It was about the only way he'd even stood a chance of surviving.

Look, if Tachibana can stubbornly insist that Joker, the Undead that exists only to cause the world's destruction, can be human and thus a man, you're getting pulled into that umbrella as well, Mr "my name is a weapon."

A small huff of amusement escaped Tachibana at that, as he shook his head. "I may not be a good judge of character, but that Garren isn't afraid of you and already considers you a friend means that you can't be that bad," he countered.

Edited 2019-04-21 22:27 (UTC)

Except Jules isn't human. He's Andarion, and Andarions don't take well to being called human. It's a pretty high insult. And his name is not a weapon! He's named after a Andarion legend of goddess created warriors known as the Dagger Ixur.

"Because Garren is smart enough not to poke a lorina."

Jules is decent enough until someone sets him off. Then it's over.

Tachibana blinked once, even as Garren made a small pleased sound. "A lorina?" he repeated curiously.

"Ah. Sorry. It's an Andarion wild animal. Big cat. Very protective of it's territory. Basically if you leave a lorina alone, it'll watch you calmly but not do you any harm. Poke it and draw it's full attention though and you'll die, usually painfully. Lorinas are vicious."

Jules pretty much works the same way. He won't attack someone that leaves him be, but once someone targets him it's over. He won't stop until they're done for, and he's pretty brutal himself.

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