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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Alright, it doesn't sound overtly creepy. The Stranger's creatures had definitely sounded creepy for the most part. Or maybe they just hadn't cared about pretending by the time they'd had him imprisoned.

The sound of movement catches his attention before he can dive too far down the rabbit hole of paranoia and he watches the little creature bouncing with every appearance of excitement. It's only a moment before a man emerges into the clearing. He looks human at least although first appearances can be deceiving.

"It... was scared. I think."

Garren nodded, starting to sign rapidly.

"...Something following you?" Tachibana repeated, blinking before looking up at...

...no, that definitely was not Jules, even if they looked as if they could be siblings. If there had been something stalking about, Jules would have been screaming his head off in terror, rather than just looking a bit on edge.

"Did you see what it was?"

Jon looks back at the man, watches the interaction between him and the... puppet. He's going to go with that for now. It has the least bad connotations of anything in that area at the moment.

"No. I haven't seen it. I think it just likes scaring people."

Tachibana nodded with a faint frown. "Hopefully it sticks to just that...." he half muttered, shaking his head with a small sigh.

Not that there had been to many things so far that had been any sort of real threat, but it wasn't as if he had been there long enough to tell if that was normal or not.

"Hopefully," Jon agrees, taking another cursory look around the clearing in case anything did emerge.

"It could have attacked by now, so either it's waiting for something, or attacking isn't it's goal."

Tachibana nodded in agreement, almost absentmindedly crouching down so that Garren could climb up into his arms and scramble to his usual perch on his Slammer's shoulders.

"Neither of which is ideal. But better than it attacking outright," he reflected before pausing with a frown. The building paranoia and unease... A direct attack would be easier to deal with. As things were now...

"...are you able to defend yourself, if it does decide to attack?"

He watches the puppet climb up the man's shoulders, curious about it still, but holding off on the questions for now. Maybe later when something isn't hunting him.

At that question, he considers. "Maybe? Probably not. I'll be fine."

Or he won't. And there will be one less monster around.

Tachibana raised an eyebrow. "...good at making an exit?" he guessed. Or just... someone who didn't care what happened to them?

...or...

He frowned slightly before pushing the thought aside.

He might be able to extract a statement, and that would buy him some time, although he doesn't relish the thought. He gives a weak smile. "Just lucky. Sometimes."

A small huff of something bordering amusement escaped at that. "Lucky, huh?" Tachibana repeated with a slightly wry tone. That was a "don't want to get into it" statement if he'd ever heard one.

"Let's not give that luck a test and get the hell out of here before whatever's out there changes its mind."

"Yes. Lucky."

Because 'I'm an Avatar of an entity that feeds on fear and may not actually be able to die anymore' probably won't go down well. It hadn't gone down well with the people he worked with and they already knew a lot of it.

"I think that might be wise. Do you know which way to go?"

With two of Tachibana's best friends being unable to die and his own blood carrying a different sort of immortal curse, he might be well surprised by the response. But that was another story for another time...

"Back that way," Tachibana nodded to the direction he had come from, starting to walk. "The coastline will give us a better vantage for seeing anything if it does decide to follow. Plus, if any of those weird birds are still around, they'll likely go after it, giving away its position."

Just having a solid direction helps. He doesn't know this place well enough yet. For all he knows it's endless dust and ash. It wouldn't have surprised him if it was.

"Weird birds?" he asks curiously.

"When I arrived the first time, there were these... constructs, of sorts. Birds made out of paper that function as some sort of warning system, according to those who tried to explain it. Since I was new, they didn't recognize me and attacked until someone marked me with a sort of ink that they recognized. Garren didn't have that sort of problem when we showed up the second time, however, so I assume that they've adjusted the system's programing not to go after new arrivals."

How curious. He sort of wants to see those now. They sound fascinating. Reminds him that he'd once been interested in things for their own sake, not because he needed information to avoid dying horribly.

"I hope so if we're heading that way. I'd rather not have more things hunting me than is strictly necessary."

"I'd think 'hunting' is too strong a word for what they do. It's more like the reactions of an immune system-- responding if something is there, but not exactly going out of it's way to look for things that aren't, if it's working properly," Tachibana explained. "And definitely on the level of a nuisance than anything serious."

"Do you know who made them? Or- are they natural somehow?" It isn't the most pressing information, but he wants to know and his restraint is not great.

"Sorry. I tend to get carried away."

"No, they're definitely created," Tachibana confirmed with a hint of a smile, his posture relaxing. "Talking to people who've been here longer, apparently the Storyteller -- that rabbit like creature you might remember dreaming about -- created them as protection against things from the ocean. Other than speculation about what in specific it was made for, that's about all I was able to uncover. With the library being new, and there being nothing even close to a laboratory around, my usual routes for research are fairly limited," he half apologized.

"Yes, I remember," Jon says with a note of deep suspicion in his voice. The Storyteller. Something able to get into his dreams like that, when his dreams are the domain of the Beholding... well, either it's powerful enough to do that, or the Beholding has a nasty sense of humour.

"Things from the ocean? That sounds ominous."

"A little bit, yeah," Tachibana agreed. "But considering that temporary connections to different islands will appear at fairly regular intervals, it's quite likely at least a few of them have contained things that could be seen as threatening."

"Wonderful," Jon mutters. How long is it going to take before the first attempt on his life? Or, god forbid, the first kidnapping.

"Are these connections to the islands temporary because of physical barriers? Or is this a case of more supernatural influence?"

"They're connected by portals. There was a similar similar set up the last place I was, only with parallel realities and other worlds rather than just single islands. There's something that makes a connection between the two places, but that connection only is able to hold for a limited time."

And so far, there hadn't been any ovelays, or even need for them with the connected islands. Or even really much at all, compared to what Tachibana was used to.

"So far, the two I've experienced have been fairly passive. Neither was any more developed that this place, and only one seemed to have any significant local population. There were some issues caused by cultural exchange and lack of understanding, but nothing that wasn't easily resolved."

Interesting. Parallel realities are something that he's seen evidence of but not at such a scale. Small things, like the coffin, or the shipping crate. Not entire islands.

"Local population? Were they human? Or were they something Other?"

"They were a race of tree-people," Tachibana explained. "I don't think they had encountered any other sentient species before our arrival."

Tree people. He isn't sure if they count as Other in the way that he understands it. What power would sentient trees serve? Buried? He'll chalk it up to something that needs more research before coming to conclusions.

"Sounds like a very difficult thing to navigate."

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/a rare icon where he's his actual age

Re: /a rare icon where he's his actual age

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