lifeaftr | 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

Just what it sounds like.

[And just thinking about them makes Jon swear he can feel that itching. he reaches up idly to scratch at one of the round silvery scars on his neck. But no. No he is fine. He was given a clean bill of health by the ECDC and it has been years since then.

He tries not to think about how long Timothy Hodge had been infected without knowing it. He hopes it is the kind of thing that the Beholding would have known about if he was.]

If you say so.

[He says it with deep scepticism and he definitely intends to keep an eye on him for signs of infestation. Questioning him probably wouldn't help much. It was definitely possible for people to be infested without realising.]

It doesn't seem like the kind of place that offers public showers.

[Klaus is fully not prepared to have an extra set of eyes on him that isn't also related to him. Not the shadowy creature hidden somewhere around here and not Jon the apparently mild Englishman.

But he's also somewhat used to it, being who he is. It's a good thing he thrives on attention, even if it's a fine line he walks between satire and reality.]

See, now I was fully content to pretend that isn't the truth and just go to town under a waterfall. Now everyone has to suffer without me walking around fully on display.

[Honestly, not that it'll stop him, but he'll take any chance to see what the prim and proper types of the world think of him when he says the first crass thing that comes to his mind. He already doesn't have a filter, it's a problem.]

Really, the other islanders are going to be looking for someone to blame, and I'm not going to lie to them. I'm criminally honest. My tragic flaw.

[There are always more eyes with Jon. So many many eyes.]

Please feel free to not expose yourself. Not everyone shares your apparent proclivity for indecent exposure.

[Honestly, he reminds Jon of some of the people at university and Jon is at least 10 years too old to want to deal with that.]

I feel like Criminally and Honest don't particularly go together.

[The worst part is that Klaus isn't even much younger than Jon—this terrible personality is All Natural, if not exactly ethically sourced.]

You'd really be surprised.

[Which part of that is he responding to? Either. He makes an attempt at a deep breath, strained, punctuated by another cough.]

Probably not a smoker, are you. [I mean, he's just assuming, which is historically considered a bad idea in general, but.] Just my luck to get stuck on an island with a statistically unlikely but very healthy bunch of people.

No. I probably wouldn't.

[It's difficult to surprise him these days, and a discussion on semantics is certainly not one of those things that will.]

It depends on the situation. I've been trying to quit.

[When he's under stress he gets a craving for them. But he tries not to indulge as often as he might have once.]

[Klaus isn't tuned into Jon's specific frequency, so he doesn't get the full meaning of that at all. He just shrugs and moves on.]

Oh, for real? Me too.

[Wow, we couldn't tell.]

Wait, do you have any on you right now?

No. No I don't have any cigarettes.

[He keeps them in his desk drawer under piles of papers and those hadn't arrived with him. And this isn't the sort of situation that would make him want to smoke. Not anymore at least.]

Oh.

[He probably should've expected that!!! Still, what self-respecting ex-smoker doesn't keep a pack on them, jeez.

Meanwhile, all Klaus brought in with him is bowling shoes. And only because he was wearing them at the time. The thing is, they don't exactly clash with his choice in clothing, and they're not slippery Outside, so it's, fine? Probably.]

...Is the thing still here?

[He has other, more vital addictions that need feeding, than nicotine.

He glances over at the man again.]

How scared do you feel?

...That seems like a personal question.

[The answer is A Lot, All The Time, but he's also not going to tell a guy he just met that. He's not even going to tell his family that. That's on an extreme need to know basis, and the guy who needs to know is literally dead.]

Don't worry, I'm not actively pissing my pants right now.

I mean... how scared are you now, specifically, about whatever is stalking us?

[He isn't sure when he got used to being able to distinguish between fears, but he supposes it isn't unexpected. The Hunt tastes different to the Buried for example.]

Good to know.

I don't know? Middling? Is it weird I'm more scared about the concept than the actual thing?

[He certainly doesn't sound like he's shaking in his boots, but he has exactly two modes, and it's "expertly pretending everything is fine" and "actively having a breakdown".

And he hasn't seen a single ghost since he's arrived, so really he's doing great by his standards. Shame about the withdrawal symptoms, though.]

I don't even care if it kills me, I just don't want it looking at me.

Not particularly.

[He gets the impression that it wants them to be scared more than it wants them dead. Dead people can't feel fear.

...most dead people who are actually dead rather than having become something else can't feel fear. He resents having to add a caveat to that.]

You get used to it. To being watched.

May Intro: I'll Be Scrolling Through Your Shrine

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