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 )

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'Cause people come and go all the time, and sometimes they don't remember ever being here.

[He says it without any particular affectation, as though it doesn't matter very much to him. But he's always been an excellent liar.]

[Michael rolls his shoulders uncomfortably.]

.....well, human memories are very fragile...especially when you bring time and space into it.

Not just humans.

[He can name at least one monster this has happened to - multiple times, no less. But he's not about to split hairs.]

But who knows. I could be wrong.

[Michael shrugs.] You're the only mortal species I'm really familiar with.

[Maybe monsters and AI or whatever would be the same. Or maybe it's not real at all. He's just not interested in any more lost memories.]

There's nothing we could do about it now, anyway.

I'm sorry to hear that.

[The low twist to the words suggests that, despite his lingering panic, Tim has regained his sense of sarcastic wit. This isn't so impressive. That's usually the first emotion to return.]

But - yeah. Guess you're right.

Oh, you're more than enough for me.

[He can't even imagine trying to overhaul multiple afterlifes. Assuming there'd be separate ones - but it seems like there would be. God, he's not going to even try to figure out what passes for the afterlife in other worlds.

Passing the treeline, he moves down onto the beach. There has been a lot of this with him and Tim, huh?]

As far as I can tell, there's only one of them, and it sticks to the trees. You should be good out here.

[They've met all of twice, and this is getting to be a pattern. He doesn't like it.]

It'd be nice if that were true. [He doubts it's going to be that simple, but for now...for now, he just sighs and rubs the back of his neck, willing the hairs there to stop standing on end. Naturally, they don't do anything of the sort. There's no banishing his anxiety by sheer force of will, however preferable it would be to.]

Probably not that easy.

I'm trying to chase it away from people. It shouldn't be doing this.

[So far as Michael can tell, it's just for fun. At least if it were hunting them for food...that would be worse, but he could understand that. It wouldn't be a malicious thing.]

You can wh - are you sure?

[He feels like an idiot as soon as he says it. Yeah, he sounds pretty sure. Not everyone's as fucked in the head as you are, Tim. Normal people, people who don't devolve into coughing fits at inopportune times? They can probably handle it.]

[Michael flaps a hand, but he's smiling. Feels nice to hear people express concern about him.]

Oh, don't worry. I'm sure I'm worse than it is.

That's reassuring.

[And not really the kind of response he was expecting, but - yeah, this is fine. Probably.]

Thanks, I guess. For helping me. Again.

[Is it reassuring? Michael considers it for a moment.]

Sure. Don't worry about it.

You need me, you can find me at Denny. That's where I'm...usually at.

[Right. This part of the conversation. The part where he goes, hey, I kind of own Denny, sort of.]

Oh, yeah?

[Michael will be fucking star-struck.......well, maybe not that much]

I guess I run the place.

[Which is what makes it weird that Tim was technically stealing from his older self back then? Is it stealing if it's from yourself?]

The main proprietor, or whatever.

Oh! Really!

[Now that's interesting! And a little ironic too, but whatever.]

Why Denny's?

Denny.

[The correction is rote and automatic and completely devoid of any change in tone.]

'Cause, uh... [Because the meme kid he lives with suggested it and seemed to think it was funny, and there's very little they could ask of him that he wouldn't do.] 'Cause Denny's is a...what's the word? It's like time doesn't really pass. And time doesn't really pass here. So it's funny, I guess.

[Probably. For someone. Chara thought it was funny.]

[Michael waves an impatient hand - he really meant "why was Denny's the thing you chose to reference" - but then Tim gets along to answering that anyway.]

Static? [.....] Jeremy Bearimy?

[NAH NAH HE KIDS]

I've never been to one. Most of my time on Earth was spent in Australia, maybe they don't exist there. [they don't I researched this for you] But I did go to an American-themed restaurant in Sydney. It was a black hole of something.

Edited 2019-05-10 03:50 (UTC)

[Static. No. No thank you. Nothing about static, please.]

We, uh, have one of those here too. It's an actual black hole, though, so it's probably way less interesting. [And a hundred times more dangerous. And no one's figured out how to get rid of it yet, either.]

[He meant static as in unchanging, but yeah fair.....]

.....sorry, you have a what?

It's a black hole. Not...like, a real one, because the island would be gone, but it floats in the air and sucks everything in and it looks like a black hole, so that's something you gotta look out for.

[He sounds very nonplussed about this danger. Perks of becoming desensitized to this shit.]

[..........]

Okay. Sure, why not? Where is it?

Are you going to look at it, or walk into it?

[Both have happened, and he's not giving out that information until he knows that this isn't gonna be on his conscience, buddy.]

[uh, the fuck kind of question is that?]

Look at it. I've gotten away without being broken down into atoms this long.

Okay. Good.

[He just kind of has to take the guy's word for it, but fine. Fine. He will try and trust this.]

Little bit north of the compound. You're gonna hear it before you see it, so don't get too close.

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