lifeaftr | June Intro: Playing With Your Mind

June Intro: Playing With Your Mind

INTRO LOG: JUNE

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: June 4th and onward
Where: Primarily Io
Warnings: Mark as needed!

New travelers to our shores are in luck, in many ways - they are arriving on the decadent, raucous island of Io, where the local Avatar of Celebration resides. Here, you can bask in enjoyment of basics such as food and drink, as well as more extravagant affairs, such as sweeping bathhouses, sprawling campsites, rich tea gardens, and verdant vineyards.

Spinning Me Around and Around
If you are just arriving on Io, opening your eyes on the shores of LifeAftr for the very first time, it will be to...a potentially very rude awakening. More specifically, it will be to the sound of loud cracks and booms overhead.

You've arrived at Io's campsite, which has come fully stocked with all sorts of cooked meats, roasted vegetables, colorful tents, drinks of every sort, and, most importantly, fireworks. It seems Io is thrilled to welcome you to LifeAftr in the form of multi-colored starbursts, exploding out across the sky in flares of showering sparks. Particularly once the sun sets, the view will be spectacular.

If you go poking around in the containers and sheds where the fireworks are kept, you'll also find all manner of strange and exciting and potentially unfamiliar variants. You can find all kinds of handheld sparklers, in addition to steel wool fireworks, handheld firecrackers, confetti poppers, and little boxes of pop pop snappers for your general use and perusal.

The message here is clear: Io wants you to celebrate your arrival! So relax! Have fun! Make some noise! Watch some colors and explosions of light, and enjoy yourself!

And try not to set anything on fire.

Just Like a Carnival
It isn't all fun and games, however. Unfortunately, it's about to get a lot less fun around here...or a lot more, depending on who you ask.

After a month or so on Io, the local avatar, Eleu, has begun to notice that a great deal of little things are starting to go missing. Bottles of wine, tents, tea leaves...people seem to be lifting whatever they please from the island and bringing it with them back to Ensō. That won't do at all. For the next few days, if any of the bees buzzing lazily about the island catch you stealing, they will approach you and ask you to stop. They will not, however, take any definitive action to stop you - they can only warn you that what you are doing may disrupt things beyond Eleu's control.

Unfortunately, by now, it's already too late. Out of the corner of your eye, regardless of your place in things - whether you were complicit in island theft, whether you are newly arrived and therefore innocent, whether you only watched on the sidelines, or whether you were totally unaware - you'll start to see it. It will peek out from behind trees and the corners of buildings.

Smiling.

This...entity probably has a name. For the purposes of the games you've been playing with this island, however, you really only need to call it what it is: the Clown Box. Accompanied almost always by the tinkle of chimes and a soft, sinister chuckling, it is unclear how the Box manages to travel about, much less disappear if you try to approach.

For the first week or so of June, be prepared to find the Clown Box lingering all over Io, particularly near the mana pool. If it looks like you're going to try and lift something off the island, something that does not belong to you - the Clown Box may retaliate. This retaliation largely occurs in the form of a hand that appears to be gloved in silky, glittering material and colorfully polka-dotted cloth, slinking out to beckon at you, eerily. It seems unwilling or unable to actually hurt you directly, but it will grow incredibly persistent if you don't acknowledge it, and stop popping up all over Io with increasing frequency.

The Clown Box can be appeased by giving it a gift. What it's really after are perceived thieves: return something you have stolen, and the Box will vanish as quickly as it appeared. However, the Box is also not terribly discerning in what it is given, as long as it is something that did, at some point, belong to you. And, if you give it enough offerings, you might end up with a gift of your own. Those who give the Clown Box multiple offerings may receive any of the following:

[ ♆ ] Rubber Duck: These novelty toys don't seem to do anything in particular, other than be cute and colorful and utter happy little honks when squeezed. But there's a slight chance you might end up with a toy that seems...oddly relevant to your personal life. It might even be designed after you. Best not to question it. Just back away from the Clown Box, slowly, and be sure to thank it for the gift...

[ ♆ ] Snotgun: What appears to be an ordinary shotgun is anything but, as one will find out by firing it, it only shoots blobs of bright green acid capable of melting just about anything. So be careful not to aim it at any of your friends.

[ ♆ ] Silk Handkerchief: There's nothing particularly special about these tri-colored squares of cloth...except that no matter what you do to them, they will not stain, tear, or fade. They can be used to clean just about anything, or even serve as a delightful party trick.

[ ♆ ] A Very Shiny Nose: A bright red foam nose, easily attached to most human-shaped faces. All this thing does is inspire a general proclivity for causing mischief and trickery, though mostly of the light-hearted kind. However, the longer the nose is left in place, the more some pranks may skew toward the downright dangerous...

You are free to RNG any of the above rewards your character gets, or pick from the list above as you like! Bear in mind that the Clown Box is a stingy creature - it will not give more than one reward to any one person, though nothing is stopping you from trading others for any gifts they may have received.

The Clown Box will cease being quite so persistent in tailing characters by June 7th, but it won't go away completely. You can still catch glimpses of it from time to time, waiting, watching, giggling quietly to itself. Even if you try to attack it, enchant it, set it on fire, you'll find that these attacks are essentially useless; it will vanish before any of them connect, and when it returns, it will certainly be to menace you further.

It isn't doing anything other than scaring you, though.

Yet.

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

i. fireworks ; 'cause baby you're a plastic bag
[There's the fucking sparklers. He was looking for those.]

[The clamor overhead doesn't seem to bother Tim all that much, once he adjusts to it. The loud noises, the bangs, the explosions and crackles and fizzles of color, he could take or leave, but once he knows it's just fireworks, that's when it stops being a problem.]

[More importantly, Tim has a box of sparklers, and he's lighting them up with a soft hiss, holding them up into the surrounding dark.]

[He doesn't quite look happy, because he never does. But he looks...less tense, than usual.]

ii. clown box ; vomit in the ball pit
[At least it's not Mothman. That's really the only point he can say in this thing's favor.]

Seriously. Seriously, can you just - leave me alone?

[The Box leers at him from behind the exterior wall of one of the bathhouses, chuckling happily. Tim walks a bit faster to compensate, only to turn around and immediately come nose-to-nose with the thing. He hastily starts moving backward just in time to avoid the hand, gloved and glittering, that comes snaking out from the cloth-covered hole and beckons at him.]

I don't have anything for you. Okay?

[He did steal a few things, but no one can prove that. Someone tell him to give the damn thing something so he doesn't try setting it on fire next.]

So that's what those do.

[ Murmurs a deep voice from the aforementioned dark. ]

They seem to make a pretty poor torch.

[ Standing a good ten or so feet from Tim is a man on the taller side of average in what appears to be a leather breastplate, boots, and tights. In the dark and shades of grey, he looks human enough aside from the point to his ears and maybe a skin condition akin to vitiligo that makes the skin from his cheekbones down to his throat a paler color. A pop of the fireworks overhead or the sparkler being swung closer reveals the skin condition actually extends to being green as well.

The half-orc begins digging boxes upon boxes of sparklers out of the duffle-sized bag he has on his hip, tossing them in handfuls back towards the fireworks shed. ]

How'd you light that thing up?

[Tim jumps. Doesn't mean to, but instincts are a hard thing to shut down after years of jumping at every noise, shooting looks over his shoulder, scanning the horizon intermittently. Paranoia's an old hand that wraps around his spine and pulls him taut, time and time again.]

[While he can safely say the newcomer is unfamiliar in appearance, Tim recovers relatively quickly. Looks him up and down, and decides that - yeah, he doesn't know this guy, he's pretty sure. Doesn't look familiar.]

I've gotta lighter.

[He digs it out of his pocket, flicking it open with a quiet click.]

They're not really for lighting things. More for...fun, I guess.

[ Fjord hadn't meant to seem like he was sneaking around, per se. It's more that he forgot not everyone can see in the dark like him. So seeing this guy jump at his voice, he's mixed guilty and amused. He's not going to apologize, though, figuring the kinder move would be to not acknowledge the anxiety at all. ]

Might I borrow it?

[ He entreats the other man in a genteel sort of drawl, extending a lime green palm adorned with long, black nails between them. Simultaneously he offers the next box of sparklers he's pulled out of his bag to Tim with the other hand. ]

For more fun.

[ Fjord explains with a wry little smile. Hey, one man's trash and all... ]

Sure.

[He's lit up other people's smokes - or, more predominantly here, other people's fireworks - often enough to not think twice of it. The worst that happens is the guy keeps the lighter, or breaks it, which means Tim has to get another one. Big deal.]

[Or he sets something on fire. Which Tim also, darkly enough, would not mind.]

Just don't go sticking those things in anyone's eye or anything.

[ Granted permission, Fjord moves to take the lighter from Tim's had and swap in that box of sparklers. ]

Beg your pardon?

[ Which is Fjord's Polite Mode way of saying: What the fuck? He arches both brows. ]

Is that uh- a common concern among grown folks 'round these parts?

[ Kids, yeah, he could see ( ahah ) that. A little disturbed, but far from rattled, Fjord considers the lighter, opening and shutting the top and admiring the material with his thumb a moment. Opening it up, he runs his thumb over the striker, but doesn't seem to know what to do with it other than depress it as well as the button to no perceivable result. ]

Is there a command word?

Not really.

[Tim's just a latent arsonist with intrusive thoughts that occasionally present themselves in the form of warped instincts that no one else might very well relate to. No biggie.]

And...no. You just...you flick it on. With your thumb. [He mimes the act of flicking on a lighter. Command word. Is that a magic thing? Hell if Tim knows.]

You want me to...? [He gestures loosely at the lighter. He can turn it on for you, buddy. It's fine.]

[ Fortunately, Tim's not the first weirdo Fjord's ever come across. While he's a little wary about the fact he just handed a whole bunch of potential poking sticks to the dude, he's reasonably certain he can see and dodge one coming for his eye in time. So shit's cool.

He observes the other's gesticulation before he reconsiders the lighter. The proud part of him wants to keep trying on his own. The sociable part takes over. ]

Trade ya back.

[ He gives over the lighter and makes to take the box of sparklers back. Assuming he can, Fjord will take one of the little sticks out and hold the grainy fuse side towards Tim. ]

[It's short work to light one of the sparklers up and then hold it up at the middle, offering the bottom for Fjord to grasp. Still, he goes slow. Tries to make the process as clear as possible, so that it's apparent what he's doing.]

Like that. Most of them only go off for a few minutes, if that. Don't last very long, but they're nice to look at.

[And kids love them too, he's learned. Ren does, anyway. But she loves most things.]

tim wright | ota | i'll match your formatting

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