lifeaftr | 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

Given that Horatio's life has been primarily living in a wasteland with his still-armless offspring for company, it takes about a second and a half too long for his processor to dig up what he's supposed to do with this. But he does find it, and after that fleeting delay his hand - though sturdy and weathered, clearly designed for clever work instead of combat - briefly grasps the offered one.

"Horatio Nullbuilt, version five." There are other names he might use now, but that's something to think about another time. "I won't complain about someone going around fixing things, if that really is what he's doing. I believe in that myself."

Though he doesn't breathe, he nonetheless makes a sound like a sigh. "Guess I'll be doing it here, too. At least for however long all this takes."

He doesn't ask--yet--about the 'version five' business. If the guy's an honest to god robot, then, yeah, y'know what, why haven't more inorganics gone through versions of themselves?

(That would make Church, what, version 3? Version...13? Depends on where he places after Alpha.)

"Always plenty of projects for fixers." Church isn't one. Though he feels like he's really going to have to get himself a side gig or two to start staving off boredom, when Weird Island Shit isn't going down. To feel useful. "Still personally on the fence about what exactly the rabbit's doing, but eh. Hasn't hurt me yet, and that's more than I can say for some other wacky shenanigans afoot. But. You're new. There's a party. There are inevitably gonna be more new people just as lost as you. Let's maybe just relax and get acclimated first."

Fittingly enough, Horatio is himself opting not to ask why someone wouldn't give a fabrinymic and version number upon introducing themselves. Maybe robots just don't do that here! Or maybe Church just doesn't want to acknowledge his builder. People have their reasons for things, he figures.

"I'm not really someone who parties," he says, though not harshly, and it might be one of the greatest understatements of all of his lives. "Especially not now. I've just walked a long way."

Which is leaving out a great many other reasons he is not overly inclined to have a good time tonight, but that one is the simplest. People do indeed have their reasons.

"But I guess it wouldn't kill me to get my bearings and wait for daylight - and for that firework business to stop." A pause. "It is going to stop, isn't it?"

"Oh yeah. I mean...I don't know if it's going to go on all night long, that would suck for people who have to sleep, but it'll at least be done by morning."

Oh! But if Horatio's a robot type guy full of tech-- "Did the rabbit tell you you have to take a rest by the mana pools to recharge? It's this...weird watery stuff that we use to magically travel between islands, and that makes me sound like I've lost my mind because magic isn't real where I'm from, but it sure is here."

Horatio's entire concept of sleep is a voluntary act of power conservation, mostly to be engaged in when one doesn't really need to be burning full energy levels late at night or when waiting out inclement weather. But he definitely wouldn't want that racket going off during his bedtime reading, so it's close enough to making sense.

Speaking of energy levels and the matter of things making (or not making) sense: "Oh. Right. He did say something like that, and I won't say it didn't sound crazy. That machines can just...sit by a pond, and recharge. Not even a charging cable. And then travel by pond - that actually works?"

Obviously people are recharging somehow or Church wouldn't be talking to him, but magic water really does just sound like some kind of prank.

"I genuinely don't know how. You throw in a flower, say a name of an island or a place or just think really hard about where you wanna go--and so long as there's a mana pool on the other side, there you are. And recharges electronics. Through...magic? I guess?"

He's seen magic at work here, but he's still skeptical of it. But hey, islands don't just drift around aimlessly in and out of distance, either. And people don't just have god-dreams. Or suddenly turn different ages.

"However it works, it works."

"Hnh. I can honestly say I never thought I'd find myself wanting to take apart a pool to see how it works, but here we are." He says it with the kind of tired wryness that normally accompanies a roll of the eyes - but of course his optic lenses weren't made with sarcasm in mind, so he only shakes his head once afterwards, dismissively.

"So it works then, okay. Any malfunctions I should know about? 'Don't use it when it looks a certain way or it'll blow up in your faceplate' kinds of things."

Horatio's accustomed to the world having a certain level of poorly-maintained hazardousness. It's just one of those basic facts, like gravity. Or acid rain.

"Eh, not that I've been told or encountered myself. I'm sure something fucked up will happen to make it go berserk or something, but hopefully not anytime soon." Hey, he's not exactly an optimist, okay? Weirder shit's already happened.

"You'll get used to it. I don't know if that's good or concerning, though."

June Intro: Playing With Your Mind

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject