lifeaftr | 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

Tachibana paused, blinking. "...You think the land itself is alive?" he asked. "Or more of... whatever it is those paper birds are supposed to be warning about."

"I think this place is ruled and controlled by an incredibly powerful being that likes to toy with our lives."

Whether that's the Storyteller or not he can't say for sure, though he thinks the Storyteller is just a peon.

Tachibana looked down at the underside of his wrist, where his Mark was just barely visable, peeking out from under his watch band.

"Wouldn't surprise me if it were something like that. Last place... the ones in charge didn't seem to understand much at all about the people they brought in to be in their game."

There's a bit of a tired scowl as his thoughts drift to the utterly passive broken robotic mess that was the Hanged Man. It still irked him that it had claimed they were at all similar. Even at his worst, he had never given up that completely....

"If you're just a piece of a game you don't need to be understood very much. Just enough to be used and manipulated well."

He knows that from experience. Ever since his birth the most he's ever been is a piece in his grandmother's game. Used by one person and then the next, Jules had always been controlled and manipulated by other people. That's one of the reasons why being here is so abrasive for him. He'd just managed to escape the worst of it at home, and now here he is being thrown right back in again. Just because it's a different game doesn't make it any better.

A small huff of humorless amusement escaped. "The Arcana didn't even understand that much. Then again, I'm not even sure they understood how their own game worked, only the end result."

Tachibana's own history had seen him used time and time again by those he trusted... and even some he didn't. In the end, he had managed to turn the tables on those who were using him, ending their ambitions, even if at great cost. It was likely the only reason why his faith in others hadn't been eroded, despite everything he had survived.

Being betrayed and used by someone is bad enough. Having that betrayal come from someone you once trusted is even worse. Thankfully Jules hasn't had to experience that very much, granted it's not for a good reason. He simply never trusts anyone. Even from an early age he was very well aware that they were all out for blood.

"So this has happened to you before, huh?"

Where as Tachibana... was far too trusting for his own good. ~~Even when it was damned obvious the person he was working with was clearly a villian.~~

"In a way, yeah," Tachibana nodded. "Where I was before-- where Garren and I met-- was run by a group of Tarot-card themed beings called the Arcana." He paused briefly. "Thought I don't really know if 'run' is really the right word for it...."

Excess trust has definitely not been Jules' issue. Pretty much ever.

"Tarot card? The hell is that?"

While any normal person would probably at least have heard of those before, it's completely foreign to Jules. They certainly wouldn't exist on Andaria, and chances were there weren't even around in the remotest areas of Trisa either.

"It's a specialized set of cards used for fortune telling. Each card has a specific meaning or set of values attached to it. The Arcana are the face cards, with more overarching meanings than the numbered cards. I'd only really heard of them in passing, before arriving in Liminal."

There had been a much more specific set of cards his life had been tangled up in, after all.

"Fortune telling? Do people actually believe in that?"

There can't be that many people out there with real precognition like the Trisani, so this fortune telling thing has to be more guess work and scamming than anything else.

"Someone must, else they wouldn't keep coming up with more and more ways to do it," Tachibana reasoned.

"I would ask who would be that stupid, but I have a lot of evidence supporting the stupidity of both humans and Androkyn."

Most of that proof is for things much darker than fortune telling, but hey, it's still proof.

He was staring at living proof of its existence at that.

"It's part of the human mind to try and find patterns in chaos," Tachibana pointed out with a smile. "Look hard enough and you can make anything appear out of randomness. All it takes is for that random pattern to be right once, and you'll have a believer."

"Unless that person is a scientist and can't replicate the result," he added with a touch of cheak.

Jules crosses his arms over his chest.

"A pattern requires it to be correct more than once given the actual definition of pattern needs repetition to qualify."

"Confirmation bias and a small sample size takes care of that. "Most people outside of a lab aren't keeping careful records, after all."

He snorts.

"True. And they'll believe whatever the hell they want based on how they're told."

April Intro: Better Get to Digging

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/sneaks a tag in before work

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