lifeaftr | May Intro: I'll Be Scrolling Through Your Shrine

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May Intro: I'll Be Scrolling Through Your Shrine

INTRO LOG: MAY

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: May 4th and onward
Where: Ensō
Warnings: Mark as needed!

With potentially odd dreams connecting you to people you've never met, in addition to the dream-lecture only recently received from a horned rabbit, LifeAftr surely doesn't need to try to be disconcerting upon arrival - and yet, it somehow continues to go the extra mile. While new arrivals will find themselves upon the now (mostly) safe shores of Ensō, there is one, small problem with where, precisely, they've happened to appear.

Chamber of Glyphs: It Was Written On Your Wall
Within the temple of the Storyteller, one may find a very special room. Betwixt the reality of waking and dreams, the Chamber of Glyphs appears to hold many unique features that allow it to appear wherever one may seek it, both in waking and sleep.

It is not, however, a good room to arrive within. Those seeking out the newest members of LifeAftr's adventuring party - and those who are simply looking to draw - will be greeted, upon entering the Chamber of Glyphs, with the most alarming sight. The small pile of backpacks, unattended, might be the first thing you notice, as well as the fact that they all seem to be adorned with names of those you might not know. Or the names of those that you do, but haven't seen in some time. Perhaps you met them in a dream...

And those of you who are newly arrived, you'll be able to see them searching. Unable to break the barrier between you with sound, you might feel the urge to wave your hands for attention, attracting searching eyes to the walls. Walls that you are now a part of. Hopefully this reduction to the second dimension is only temporary.

Those who took part in April's Test Drive Meme may have the benefit of familiarity, for what is etched onto the walls of the Chamber are never lacking life, regardless of the matter used to draw, paint, or sketch those contents.

With maneuverability somewhat akin to a sidescroller - always left or right, up and down, but never outward - the variety of scenes, animals, places, objects, and more are simply all the more to your advantage. Leap to the vantage point necessary to be noticed, as your fellow adventurers may be able to help you out of this predicament with a simple offer of their hand to tug you off the wall. It's an easy solution to your predicament, at least! All they need to do is take your hand to free you from your two-dimensional containment.

If it proves more difficult...well, at the least they know you're there to point out thanks to a very tired Storyteller, who will be certain to let anyone in the vicinity know that you're in need of help within the Chamber of Glyphs, before one of the many, many monsters that have been scribbled onto stone lay claim to you instead.

What kind of monsters, you ask? All of them, of course.

Ensō: Rain Hell
But maybe you don't wake up written on the walls! Maybe you're just relieved to get unstuck from those walls and need a breath of fresh air. Or maybe you don't have any reason to go poking around in search of new arrivals at all. That does not mean, however, that you won't be encountering a new arrival of your own in the interim.

The sky is clouded over and gray, despite the sun overhead and the generally warm weather. The nights are filmed over with a screen of pale dust. This has little to do with the forecast and more to do with the volcanic eruption that occurred just a few weeks prior, on another island in the archipelago. You don't need to worry about the nature of the ash still drifting on the wind currents - aside from the more standard obstruction of sight and airways, it is, at this point, more or less perfectly ordinary. Though if you've got some fragile lungs, you might want to stay out of it as much as possible.

More important is the creature that the hazy cast of ash and dust has coaxed out of hiding. Perhaps you've heard of it in folklore: resplendent with dark gray, furry wings, and glistening red eyes. Or, perhaps, you're less fortunate, and you've no cultural experience regarding the strange monster known colloquially only as...Mothman.

At over seven feet tall and with a wingspan of about fifteen feet, the Mothman makes for far more fearsome a sight than it does a threat. For all intents and purposes, despite the devilish red of its glowing eyes and its large, hairy stature, the Mothman is ultimately quite harmless. It does, however, tend to inspire paranoia in fear in the hearts and minds of those it encounters. And this smokescreen in the air has created the perfect environment for it to hunt.

It doesn't want your flesh, or your bones, or anything so base. It only wants your mind, in a sense; your fear and whatever primal terror it may ignite by preying on your paranoia. It will stalk you, rustling the leaves behind you, snapping twigs to your left, allowing you a glimpse of bright crimson eyes before dispersing into the surrounding, ashy murk. The good news is that once it has you scared, it has no intention of sticking around - and its wings makes it incredibly fast, when it wants to be. Anyone who attempts to attack it directly will discover just how speedy it can be, assuming that the air from its wingbeats don't end up pinning you flat to the ground from the sheer force.

The Mothman can be killed, most likely...but there are a lot of you, and only one cryptid for an entire island. It's not likely to want to stay in one place if it feels it's outnumbered, or that it's about to be attacked by someone who isn't so easily stricken by the fear and suspicion it endeavors to ignite. Those who wish to escape it can at least take heart in the fact that the Mothman abhors open spaces, largely preferring the sanctuary of woodland and greenery; all one has to do is reach Ensō's shores to be largely safe from its influence.

Though you could try killing it too, of course. If you wanted.

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

i. chamber of glyphs (cw: there will probably be ptsd symptoms in this one yall)

[Klaus thinks that maybe, when someone named the concept of "claustrophobia", they may not have had this exact scenario in mind. But right now? He kind of almost misses the motel room closet.

Duct tape bondage included, actually.

The one benefit of not having his mouth taped shut, though, is that Klaus can at least attempt to drown out the feeling of his brain screaming at top volume (he needs to get out, he needs to breathe, he needs to excise the image of a stone slab against the pitch dark and sobbing and anger and twisting and bleeding and shaking) by using his inability to shut up ever as an anchor to focus on.]

Whose, uh, fine home is this? Gotta say, the decor is to die for, wouldn't be out of place in a catalog, honest.

[Yep, just. Keep talking to yourself, clamber onto this ledge, how are these bowling shoes still so slippery when they're two dimensional, how does that make sense, what is friction doing right now.

Klaus trips a few times in his ascent, but he makes it. Not gracefully, but it's done.

He takes a shaky breath and squints out of the wall. He thinks he sees movement...]

HEY! FIVE! I don't want to call any names, but if that's you, you really FUCKED ME OVER on this one!

[Because obviously this is just, you know, what happens when you get teleported into a wall, probably.

Fortunately for Five or anyone who was just mistaken for him, none of Klaus' yelling can actually be heard outside of the wall. Just a silently shouting little painting desperate for attention.]

ii. closed to ben

[Well, okay, that was, uh, great. Klaus is feeling really fine and dandy after all that. If he's breathing a little heavier than normal, that's probably his (and everyone's) imagination.

He's collected the knapsack with his name on it. It's been a while since he's had to backpack literally all of his belongings, mostly because his backpacks kept getting stolen. He really wishes he did shove that burrito in his pants or something, then at least he'd have more than this... pity rock candy, which he's currently picking at like it might be the last meal for a while. He's practiced at that sort of thing.

And there's a... little jug-thing that's decided to follow after him. It has the intelligence of a Roomba, or so Klaus guesses having never met a Roomba, only it's got the basic makeup of an urn or something. The major difference being that it has legs and also is very, very attached to him.

Which is nice, because he's used to being followed anyway. It's comforting, in a way. At least, when it comes down to it, this little urn thing loves him.]

I am the worst at naming things. Why couldn't you just come with a name prepackaged in? Like a Beanie Baby.

[This is extremely important and not totally a deflection from what Klaus is actually doing: double-checking all the leftover knapsacks' names stitched onto them. If there's any trace of a "Hargreeves" or a number or something, he needs to find it. He is not doing... whatever this is alone.

And Ben hasn't shown his beautiful face, which is only a little distressing.]

What about... Delilah. No, terrible. Just not evocative at all.

[The Hotpot doesn't seem that worried about the naming process, as it follows Klaus dutifully, stopping only when he stops to squint at a bag in the dark, patiently waiting for him to finish before continuing on.]

Wait, wait, wait. Perfect name incoming: Urnest.

[Klaus glances back at the pot, grinning at it like an idiot, while it just sits, unaffected. That sort of seems like acceptance, in a way. In the way that every other identical non-reaction seemed like rejection. It's amazing how humans can just see what they want to see in objects.

Ironically, at the same time, this particular human seems to have not noticed what he's been looking for from the next bag over: his brother's name clearly emblazoned into the front.]

iii. ensō

[The ash in the air is only slightly familiar, in the sense that it reminds Klaus very much, simultaneously, of 1. the moments before he jumped through time and space to arrive here, while the world was being destroyed by giant flaming moon rocks, and 2. hotboxing in his ex's bathroom. He does not remember which ex it was, which is probably a good thing, honestly. He'd rather it be a nebulous memory of a thing that happened and was somewhat enjoyable, rather than the most likely alternatives.

However, the former is starting to overtake the latter, because this smoke and ash doesn't have any good side effects. Really, all it's doing is giving him a smoker's cough, and somehow making him wish he had a cigarette despite the fact he's choking slightly, and brains are just weird, aren't they.

Thankfully, seems like there's life here outside of the weird little chamber full of cave drawings. Klaus spots someone and walks toward them, one arm over his nose and mouth and the other hailing them down. It's hard to see that many details with the leftovers of a wildfire or whatever in the air, so he's not that... discerning about who he's gonna walk up to.]

Hey, this is going to sound completely insane, but you wouldn't have to have any spare smokes would you? I'm — ["not picky," he's about to say. And then remembers he's supposed to be, ugh, sober now. He sighs before he finishes the sentence.] — partial to the nicotine variety. Not that I'd... rule anything out.

[Okay, it's a compromise. Be proud of him.]

Edited 2019-05-04 07:18 (UTC)

[Ben's been looking for Klaus for what seems like forever, but has probably been like ten minutes. Maybe? He's got a really bad grasp of time, having been dead for long enough that time's lost all meaning and he doesn't even know exactly how long he's been dead. Klaus doesn't tell Ben when the year changes, so Ben only ever knows that it's a new year when he manages to see the date on a newspaper or something. He doesn't actually remember what year he died, at this point, so he couldn't calculate even if he did have a better grasp of what year it is.

It doesn't matter. He can actually see Klaus now and some kind of. Ben actually doesn't know what the thing following Klaus around is, but it's fine. He can just - oh. Ben's vaguely aware that he's alive? At least he assumes the dream they had happened? But he hasn't fully grasped the consequences of being alive, so it hasn't occured to him that he can't just. Peel himself out of the wall, as usual. Because he's alive, and that's a ghost power.

So he does the next best thing, waving his arms around and trying to get Klaus' attention. He's also yelling, but given the limitations of his newfound 2D form it's just a lot of mouth movement with no sound.]

[All this makes Klaus sound like a way more negligent brother than he is. Klaus also doesn't remember what year Ben died, okay. And often has trouble with keeping track of the date. Just for very, very different reasons.

It's just difficult when even the ghost that follows you everywhere isn't always completely visible because you're blitzed out of your mind in a stranger's basement or something. He can't always keep him updated on what day of the fucking week it is. Think about Klaus' needs before you slander his good name.

Anyway, diligent and dutiful brother that he is, Klaus is currently distracting himself by tickling Urnest's "chin". It seems unfazed, but not averse to it? Klaus is loving this. It's like having a pet with none of the commitment, because Urnest doesn't need to eat or poop or anything. It's a fucking big ol' ceramic jar. It's the best.

The distraction can't last forever, unfortunately. Klaus sees a sudden motion out of the corner of his eye. He yelps and stumbles away, thankfully not falling completely over, but he definitely trips over Urnest slightly.

Urnest is unharmed. Still a jar.]

Holy— Oh, thank God, it's just a ghost.

[Funney joke, tell another.]

Ugh. Don't worry, I'm here to free you, very heroically. I think. If this... still works.

[He remembers the dream too, but... Was it real? It seemed. Weird. But in a way that meant it could've either been Not A Dream or Definitely A Dream, of the "you're about to wake up with a hangover" variety.

Hesitantly, he reaches his hand out to grab Ben's flat one...]

[Ok. To be fair, part of the reason Ben has trouble with time is that sometimes Ben just. Fades? Out? He gets bored when Klaus is sleeping or too strung out to interact and entertain him so he just goes. Elsewhere? And sometimes that's like sleeping and then he wakes up and Klaus has a new, different boyfriend and Ben doesn't know if it's been one of those weeks where Klaus just gets a new partner every night or it's been three weeks and Klaus broke up with someone.

Keeping time by the person Klaus is dating is like keeping time by whatever movie Allison is in. Sometimes it seems like she's in every movie on the billboards and sometimes Ben worries about her because it seems like she's not doing anything and Ben's only ever been able to find Klaus reliably so he can't just check if she's okay. It's too far away.

He manages to find Diego and Vanya sometimes, so he knows they're. Well, none of them are okay but he knows that they're trying. That's better than nothing. Which is what Klaus is currently doing, from Ben's perspective.

Eventually, though, Klaus notices him and . . . of course. Ben crosses his arms and just levels Klaus with a look. Get better jokes.

He does reach out though and let Klaus pull him from the wall. It feels weird, like when he fades in and out of presence as a ghost. He's not a ghost anymore, though, and it's still weird to breathe. He used to pretend to breathe, but it wasn't the same thing.]

You need better jokes. [He just wants to make sure Klaus knows that.] Urnest?

[It's a bad name, Klaus.]

[In summary: both of these idiots have a tenuous grasp of reality at the best of times. They cannot be considered reliable narrators in regards to their own lives in any respect. They never know what's going on and Klaus thinks it's just very sexy of them to be like that.

But, yeah, even without the added effect of... pulling a person into the third dimension, Klaus is still kind of struck speechless for about half a second at the mere concept of Ben having warm hands. It's still most likely Five's power, honestly, because... Klaus doesn't want to handle the idea that he might have upgraded from seeing ghosts to manifesting ghosts to reviving ghosts. He'd rather go back to numbing himself if the other option was having to deal with bringing random people to life uncontrollably. What if he trips over Andrew Jackson's grave the wrong way. What if.

But, well, he doesn't have to think too hard about that, so he doesn't. For now, it's just Ben being the anomaly as per the ush', which Klaus is somewhat comfortable with.

Somewhat, because he's also kind of not letting go of Ben's hand yet, kind of flinging it around in a haphazard gesturing as he talks.]

Look at you. All solid and shit. You're remembering your breathing lessons, right? In and out, like a person.

[We're ignoring the insults to Klaus' genius because they don't need to be addressed, thanks. Klaus knows he's hilarious.]

klaus hargreeves ( mostly ota )

ii.

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i. PTSD symptoms??? DON'T MIND IF I DO!!!

oh well in that case

:)!!!

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