May Intro: I'll Be Scrolling Through Your Shrine

[lifeaftr_mods]

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.

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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!

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[postictal]

You could say that.

[How long does he want to draw this out? Not very. In his experience, those kinds of things tend to bite you in the ass sooner rather than later. So he sighs.]

Alpha, right? I'm Tim.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Uh! [His hands clench into fists, and he fights the urge to leave, which would involve at least one toppled chair and probably some damage not otherwise specified. He's quiet for a long moment.]

No. Yes? Yes, but also--uh. Call me Church. I might have to talk into the rock and say something about that.

[postictal]

[Tim, for his credit, doesn't fight it. The child version of him said a hell of a lot of things that he wish he hadn't, and now he's gotta undo that damage or just let it lie, and...yeah. It's not great. But he can understand not wanting to bring that shit up.]

Church, all right. If you were introducing yourself like that all over, you might need to, yeah.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Y...yeah, I guess so. It's not a...I wasn't--it's a weird identity thing. Kinda real fucked up.

...Did uh...things get any less fucked up for you?

[postictal]

Depends on how you mean.

[He's not sure how best to broach that topic, other than to silently agree that real fucked up covers it pretty nicely.]

I mean, the good news is that I'm not usually an eleven-year-old, which makes me slightly less useless than your average eleven-year-old, which is nice. [Only slightly, though. He's not about to oversell this.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

No shit, you're all grown and running a whole-ass establishment. Docs ever diagnose you with a particular brand of crazy-itis, or did they name something after you?

[postictal]

[Boy, he sure was nicer when he was Alpha, wasn't he?]

I won't ask you about your name, and you don't need to ask me about my medical history. The only important thing to know is that it's handled. [He has entirely too many people out there who know the extent of said medical history already. He doesn't need more.]

But yeah. Place is technically...well, I started working on it, but I had help finishing it.

[motherfucking_ghost]

...Fair 'nuff. At least it's handled, aaand I'm glad. For that. For...little you who is now adult you.

How long did this place take you guys?

[postictal]

I'm usually an adult. [Usually. Except when the islands decide to say otherwise, apparently.]

Few months? There were setbacks, between new adventures happening every month or so. [There was also the time he got stabbed. That slowed him down significantly.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

Is this...oh, god. This sort of thing isn't common, is it?

[postictal]

Being a kid again was a first.

[For Tim, that's...unusual. He doesn't have a lot of firsts in his life anymore. That, and he has too many that he never expects to be fulfilled, in a way. Which is weird to think about.]

But yeah, shit just happening like that is common.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh. What if we just stay here? Like. On the house islands, anyway. Not even main island full of acid-spitting carnivore plants.

[postictal]

Well, there was the time monkeys abducted people straight out of their houses, so that's not a guarantee.

[Have you heard about the gun monkeys yet, Church? You can hear all about the gun monkeys.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

...What the fuck is wrong with this place?

[postictal]

[A tired shrug. Tim stopped being shocked by this shit long before he ended up here.]

I guess it was like this long before we got here. At least, the monkeys were here before we were.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Are...they...still around? Or did they all get shot?

[postictal]

They didn't get shot.

[Only a fraction of people here had coconut guns at that point in time, and few of them seemed to like using them. He can't blame them. The ammo was unwieldy and hard to reload.]

Butchered and burned alive, mostly. That compound place toward the island's south? That's where they used to live.

Might be a few stragglers still hanging around, but most of them are gone.

[motherfucking_ghost]

...I mean, crude, but, whatever works. Probably made good eats? Sometimes I realize I'm never more thankful for guns than when I need them most.

[postictal]

The only guns we had then were coconut guns, I think. Which are...exactly what they sound like.

[Tim, pop culturally illiterate as he has been for most of his life, does not associate that item with DK64, and never did. And now never will.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

Did you ply them with bananas, or could only the taste of flesh satisfy them? God. Now that's a horror movie plot right there. Man-eating organized monkeys. Like a horror-type Planet of the Apes.

[postictal]

Pretty much the latter, yeah. Some people were...I dunno if you've seen the giant pot? I think the elves have it now. But that used to be theirs.

[Some people sure were about to be boiled alive, which was their very first impression of the world of LifeAftr.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

...I can't say I've noticed a giant pot. Or--okay, when you say elves, are we talking Lord of the Rings type elves? Native wood elf sorta people? Just general people with pointier ears? I've seen...people who are definitely not human, so, I mean, elves at this point is about the least weird thing.

[postictal]

Lup and Taako. Elf twins. One sets things on fire and the other doesn't have any fashion sense. Sometimes they sell stuff by the temple.

[That's probably the worst summation of the pair of them ever, Tim.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

This place doesn't do anything by halves, does it? Island fulla weirdos.

[postictal]

Between the two of us, I don't think you have any room to talk.

[A robot computer guy and a mentally fucked chain-smoker? They're not the weirdest this place has to offer, but they're definitely nearer the tail ends of the bell curve.]