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

"Temporary connections to other worlds... that's pretty incredible." He can hardly imagine actually being able to move from world to world like that at will, rather than just... you know, waiting for one to drag him in from wherever he'd just gotten used to being.

Ginko nods slowly. "Pogemon, huh. Did they travel back and forth, or just stay with their human partners once they'd moved over?"

The "at will" part was a bit debatable, but there was a lot more agency involved, once you had learned how to protal.

"It really was," Tachibana agreed with a hint of a wistful smile. "And some of the worlds themselves.." he trailed off, shaking his head. "Coming back to yourself after having lived as a centaur who picked a fight with a god, only to take his place, or even as something so ridiculous as a being the lead singer of band made up of your teammates from home..." he trailed off with a faint chuckle.

"And the Pogemon, once bonded, stayed with their partners. Mostly in the human world, sometimes visiting back into the Pogemon world. From what I could tell, the human world was a bit more developed than the Pogemon world, so it wasn't unlike moving to the city after graduation, for most of them."

"So - correct me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like people moving between these worlds were sort of... inserted into particular 'roles' or personas within those worlds." He doesn't know if that sounds more or less disorienting than just being plunged into an unknown world, fully yourself, unknown to anyone there and left to make your own way, for better or worse.

Even if you get turned into a monster after a month.

Ginko cannot say that he has any kind of perspective on what graduating has to do with things, given his total lack of any kind of formal education, but getting used to a city is, uh... a little more familiar. Though he couldn't say if the difference between the human and Pogemon worlds was more like that between the towns of Ryslig, or between Ryslig and his Japan - and he doubts that Tachibana is going to know enough about Ryslig to answer that.

...Actually, come to think of it. "What was your home world like?"

"Some of us, yeah," Tachibana nodded, as did Garren, who also then began to sign rapidly, pointing between himself and his Slammer and making quick gestures.

"If there was a world I wound up living another life Garren would be there as well, often as my son," Tachibana translated, the pog nodding happily once more. "Other times we'd just take on the form of the people of that world, so we wouldn't stick out as much."

"As for back home..." He trailed off just a moment, a deep worry settling into his expression before he shook his head. "It's a fairly standard Earth variety, from what I've noticed talking with everyone else. The year was 2015 when I left. No long distance space travel yet, standard mix of nations, technology and science focused with the supernatural being rare and magic mostly in the realm of fantasy. The major deviation that no other world seems to have being the Undead and the Battle Fight that determined that Humanity would be the dominant species on Earth. Other worlds seem to have creatures categorized as undead, but nothing that actually seems to be anything like the ones I know."

There was a slight pause and wry smile. "Not that many people back home knew that Undead existed, even after the Fight being restarted and the world nearly ending. More of them do now, thanks to Kotaro's book, but with the Fight suspended...." He trailed off with another, distant expression, this one deeply tired as well as worried.

Garren looked up at his Slammer with concern, recognizing the cloud of melancholic worries that Tachibana was sliding into. Toddling over, he gently tugged at his Slammer's pant leg, trying to pull him back to the present before the flashbacks had too deep of a hold on him.

Ginko gives a brief, wry laugh - short enough to be almost unnoticeable. Yeah, a lot of that sure does sound "standard", from what he's heard - which also means it's far in the future as compared to his own world.

He lets Tachibana finish explaining, though, and gives a brief nod as he finishes up. Looks like Tachibana could benefit from being distracted from his own thoughts, anyway, so: "I have heard of a lot of places like that - though not my own. I was originally from an Earth, too, but it was, ah... 1873 last time I was there. Makes it a little hard to gauge how its nations and technology line up, since most people from different versions of Earth seem to come from later ones. Our major distinction otherwise seemed to be the existence of mushi, but we were in a similar boat as far as them not even being common knowledge."

Tachibana blinked, eyebrows raised in interest. "Mushi?" he repeated, curiously.

April Intro: Better Get to Digging

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Short tag, but here, Ginko, have an opening to get your nerd on~ :3