lifeaftr | May Adventure: I Want to Go Where Everyone Goes

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May Adventure: I Want to Go Where Everyone Goes

NEW ISLAND: IO

Who: Everyone!
What: Io appears!
When: May 10th and onward
Where: Io
Warnings: The possibility of drug use and alcohol may come up. Otherwise, tag as you go!

Things Are Shaping Up to Be Pretty Odd
As of May 10th, the mana pools on Ensō and its islets will now allow for travel to Io. Though you could always opt for sailing, if you wanted. As we mentioned on the island's introductory post, no exploration is necessary! The island is small enough and easily traversed, and with a minimum of dangers, you have plenty of time to visit each of Io's six draws.

The temple is the easiest place to get in touch with the local avatar, though you can contact them just as easily by striking up a conversation with just about any honeybee you see in the vicinity. The lazy drone of them can be heard all over the island, though they're quite complacent, and not at all prone to disturbing adventurers. The temple itself is twined with grapevines and smothered with inlays of rubies, proud and sparkling. Inside, it smells of honey and wine, and seems to exhibit a naturally contented glow. Just outside, numerous fruit trees sprout all about the temple's courtyard, to be sampled at your leisure.

The bathhouses are located just south of the temple, and are prime locations for some rest and relaxation. Bathe, swim, take a spa day! There are innumerable rooms to do exactly that, and more space than be reasonably filled by some sixty-or-seventy people.

Or maybe you're interested in getting absolutely sloshed instead. The vineyard is perfect for that, located to Io's northeast on one of its long, tapering peninsulas. Rows upon rows of grapevines lead up to the crown jewel of the region: a proud winery with enough goods to satisfy even the most parched.

For those less keen on mind-altering substances, the tea gardens are a far safer bet. They practically emanate tranquility, with their soft paper lanterns, thickets of tea trees, and a tea room with a seemingly endless supply of every supplement to your drink that you could ask for. And if none of the teabags or tea leaves in there suit your preference, you're free to wander about the gardens yourself and sample whatever you like.

The Honeycomb at the island's heart is much more akin to a play structure or jungle gym than anything else, but its interlocking passageways and erratic, hexagonal architecture aren't for nothing. It's an ideal spot for play or exercise, if you're into that kind of thing - or for getting positively sick on honey sticks.

The campsites ensure that you don't truly have to depart from Io, if you don't want to. Tents full of chairs and cushions and blankets make it a wonderful place to spend the night if you're so inclined, and the lockers full of food and drink are assurances that you won't go hungry. And with all these massive bonfires and firework cannons, why would you ever want to leave?

Welcome to the island of Io! Please, enjoy your stay and make full use of this island's many faculties! For further information in regards to the island, or plotting, the following links may prove handy:

[ ♆ ] OOC info and introductory post
[ ♆ ] Io on the Locations page

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

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[She doesn't fight him as he takes the bottle away but the second one she moves out of his reach, giving him a pout.]

No, I can see color just fine, I just have never really had wine before. So I wasn't sure if the color coding was intention... intentional.

[A small slip up, but she's really only tipsy. This girl has had Ryncol, she can handle this.]

Hm. Well, I don't know shit about fancy alcohol, so I'll take your word for it.

[She looks at him then.]

Was there a dress code I missed? You look good.

[Look, he's making sure. If he's forcibly not on duty he isn't gonna sit here and worry about deaths! At the very least, people complimenting him (however innocuous) always takes him by surprise, so he doesn't protest at any slurring of her words. Instead, he just raises his eyebrows, a little surprised perk of his ears.]

Oh, uhm-- thank you. This isn't much, really, I just-- it's not required.

[That explained basically nothing, and his face is saying he knows that, and tries again.]

What I mean is, I don't often have an opportunity to dress how I'd like in our normal environment. Since it seems we're not under siege right now, I... decided to wear something familiar.

[The ears thing? Cute as hell. So fucking cute. Shepard almost says so but then remembers, hey, you're tipsy, don't make this weird.]

Not much? Damn, remind me to check you out if we ever have a fancy ball here.

[She's sure he'd be serving... looks? Is that what the kids say these days?]

So you used to wear tuxes? I guess that helped the whole reaper aesthetic, huh?

[She tries to keep the sense of disdain for the word "reaper" out of her voice. Different kind, Shepard.]

Edited (i am so tired i completely forgot html) 2019-07-26 20:42 (UTC)

[It's those elf bits! They gotta wiggle! At least he just chuckles at her... flattery? Is that it? He also has no idea about these "looks" the kids speak of.]

Well, it is the given uniform of my Lady. I didn't select it so much as she has a level of decorum I'm expected to uphold. You know, dressing for a funeral.

[So casual. Just, y'know, little death things.]

Though, to be fair, I'm not certain it helped more than set the tone in the first place. I don't know where the human custom of wearing black to memorials. Perhaps it was her calling card, as a form of worship for safe passage to the afterlife.

[His brain kind of catches up here and realizes she probably doesn't care. Kravitz shakes his head, gives a little waive of his wrist.]

Well uhm, regardless, it isn't at all possible here where I can actually feel heat, so that's right out for the time being.

[GOTTA WIGGLE!!!]

Dressing for a funeral, huh? That makes sense... I guess.

[She usually wears her Alliance blues to those sort of things. She's thankful for that honestly. Makes dressing herself easier.]

So what does she all encompass? Is she the de facto goddess of death? Or is there more nuance to it than that?

[She's genuinely curious. And luckily hasn't made an ass out of herself yet being tipsy and all.]

Did you not always feel heat?

[She, unthinkingly, reaches out and feels the skin on his hand. Smooth and warm. Very alive. She cocks her head to the side inquisitively.]

Well, death and the natural order. Her job is preserving the souls after death in their proper realm, and ensuring the dead stay properly dead, so--

[And then she touches him and it sounds a little bit like his mouth was a tunnel and his words were a six car pile-up. It summarily dissolves into something incomprehensible and he puts it back together in record time, but there's a solid second there of sounding like he was a vid shut off mid-scene.]

Er, well, here I find myself more mortal than I do in my typical service. I have an exemption from my Lady as an undead to serve Her will, so this is the first time I've been uh, 'physically' alive in a long while.

[At least he can just ramble about safe things and not like, leap off a cliff the second he has to remember his own physicality around Pretty People. Just let him fucking. Die. Okay.]

[He honestly sounds like his brain shortcircuited for a moment and she raises an eyebrow and smirks. God, if this man wasn't as gay as the day is long, she'd be on him like white on rice.]

Huh. Interesting. Is there a real risk of the dead coming back to life where you're from?

[Seeing as she's the only person she knows of who has died and then lived again and she was a rare science experiment, it's a strange thought to think of people coming back from the dead as a real threat to the natural order of things.]

[Attractive people scare him, okay. Even if he's not attracted, there's just. There's power there, okay, he can't handle it. Thankfully she's picked the one topic he does know how to have a discussion about, and scoffs at the line in a way that sounds like he's about to dish so hard he ruins someone's entire career.]

Oh, you have no idea. People mess with it constantly, as if anyone's ever gotten away with it in centuries. You would think someone would heed the warnings of my station.

[ITS NOT THE NATURAL ORDER, ITS RUDE TO HIM SPECIFICALLY]

[If there is one thing that Shepard is always ready for, it's gossip. Especially job-related gossip.]

That is... a very worrying prospect. Is the ability to raise the dead so easily accessible?

[Eat your heart out, Illusive Man. You should have just used dark magic.]

[He has SO MUCH job related salt. Kravitz hasn't had coworkers in a LOT of time, and not everything is appropriate to discuss with the Raven Queen. Or really, he doesn't want to bother her with his lamentations; she's accepted her station and the way of the world. He's just so fucking tired.]

I mean, it's not as if you can simply walk into the corner market and purchase a dead soul or anything. It's banned magic and typically very illegal, but-- well, this is the sort of thing people play with when they're trying to be immortal, you know. Outrunning death. It goes up to those kind of undead down to... well, occasionally children who don't think whatever they've found is real. Those are kind of fun, actually.

[People who are afraid of him are fun!! And kids he doesn't typically have to fight. He just gets to put on a fun ol' skeleton show with all the fire and smoke. Better than them getting into dark magic and having to be condemned to the Stockade, for sure.]

It's not-- constant, but I am also charged with ensuring those imprisoned souls who committed such acts do not escape. So I have plenty to do.

Mm. I see.

[It reminds her of the Illusive Man, again, not just in his attempts to bring her back but also in his attempts to create a better human. She shudders a bit. She can feel the warmth from the drink slowly leaving her now and she'd rather that not happen. So she brings one of the bottles still in her hands and takes a long, slow drink right then and there. When she's done she looks back to Kravitz curiously.]

Is that what that- that spooky place was? During everything with Bliss?

[When you've been doing this job as long as Kravitz has, you get to know when someone has their own demons on this sort of thing. The drink is telling that there is some kind of strangeness here, but not what it is-- not that he has to know. Call him curious. Besides, he has plenty to respond to as his plane is referred to as the "spooky place".]

It's not-- that's not a bad thing, you know. Mortals fear death, so of course it would appear harrowing to you.

[He LIKES his spooky castle, okay. Gosh.]

But the, uhm, that was the Astral Plane. I don't believe I took you to the Stockade itself. The rest were simply the proper dead.

[She pauses for a moment, listening to him. And then takes another quick shot of alcohol because. Whatever, her liver is basically pure metal now, she can handle anything.]

Did you or the Queen build it that way? Or was it influenced by peoples' fears of death?

[Her brow furrows a bit.]

So you just put all the souls into some kind of pool. Like some fucked up soul sludge.

[Please forgive her, she is trying to get really drunk.]

[He's kind of gathering that being drunk is the objective, and at this point nothing she could stay would be more forward than any words Taako has ever given him, so fuck it.]

Well I didn't, I haven't-- been around since the beginning, that is. This is simply how the plane has looked for the time I have been in her service. I assume it was created, in the beginning. And it isn't sludge, it's just the simple return of energy. The reuniting of life force to life force, as all energy must. It isn't designed to be gross or anything.

.....energy sludge.

[She can feel her brain blessedly turning to sludge as well the more and faster she drinks.]

Could you change what it looks like, if you wanted? Make it more friendly?

[Shepard pleASE,,,

He just squints towards her, like he's quickly losing patience with this entire ordeal.]

I... no? No. That is how my Goddess shaped the plane she rules. It doesn't need to be friendly. I assume that once you're in there with everyone else it can feel like whatever you want though, I mean-- you know, people don't tend to be opposed.

Guess they have more important things to worry about. Like being dead. Don't got time for... for aesthetics.

[Oh spirits, she's really feeling... the spirits lol.]

Mmm don't remember anything of when I was dead. Don't know if that means there isn't any place we go to back home or if I just didn' get ta go.

[She takes another quick swallow and, finding less than a few drops left, reaches for another bottle as she places the one she finished on the ground. All the while she tries to push the memory of Miranda reaching for her face as she "woke up" for the first time since dying.]

There are aesthetics. They simply aren't yours.

[he LIKES his spooky silver pool!! let him be spoopy!!!

Kravitz looks at her with the same sort of disappointed face, and once she's opened another bottle, he swipes it from the bar and takes a sip from it himself.]

This, however, sounds as if it's becoming a drowning of sorrows, and that is hardly befitting to our locale. This island is ruled by the god of celebration, not the one of regret.

[He looks towards her, his face gentle.]

I promise, when this is over, I will take you myself if you truly belong in the Astral Plane. You may rest. Alright?

[Shepard pauses at Kravtiz’s words. For a moment she’s confused, the alcohol muddling her senses and his meaning not sticking right away. But then it finally hits, helped with the gentle look on his face.]

Kravitz…

[She doesn’t quite know how to express her gratitude at his words. But it’s a calming feeling through her whole body. She hugs him tight then, working quite well not to spill anything on him.]

Thank you. That means- that means a lot.

[She knows she shouldn’t be happy for this sort of thing. After all, if she is brought back to save the world again and again, who is she to really rail against it? But to think that there might be an end, that it might be a guarantee? It’s more hope than she’s had in a long, long time.]

I just wish I could do something for you in return. Something that means that much.

[He isn't expecting the hug when it comes, nor the fondness or genuine care in her eyes. People?? Feeling emotions?? Well that just sounds fake. But he still gives her a little pat-pat, part awkward sibling hug and part actual attempts at being a Nice Person.]

Please, it-- it's no trouble. Do you ask civilians that you save for some form of repayment? Just don't bring anyone back from the dead of your own volition or power, and you'll be perfectly fine.

[He'd say don't do it period, but he also knows she was Dead Once Already and he doesn't want her to continue to blame herself for things she can't control.]

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May Adventure: I Want to Go Where Everyone Goes

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