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

She knows...too much of what happened.

[With him. With her. With Epsilon. And then there's Church, who he doesn't even know how to get into. She never met the Alpha. She never had to contend with that.]

[God, where does he even begin.]

She was somewhere else before she ended up here. Same way C.T. was.

... and that is where she learned whatever she learned?

[Because she is going to take it in stride now, trying to not think about that too hard. CT at least had been a stepping block. Otherwise, Carolina would be a lot less composed than she otherwise would be. It's still a lot of information, and she is curious as to what Texas knows.]

Yeah. Some kind of ship called the Moira, though I don't know the extent of it. The important thing to keep in mind is that I guess she's human now.

[Which is more confusing than Church's decided one to one transfer.]

And...all that entails.

... human human?

[And not... Well, Carolina doesn't know. She knows now why Tex had been kept apart, knew what her father had been doing, but... CT had been one thing. Texas, human, is completely another.

Of course there might be a small spark to wonder how well she would do now in a sparring match, but it's not a thought that she's going to engage in.]

As far as I know. I don't think she was always. She's not...she still runs herself like she's used to being in a body that's way more resilient.

[Tex pushing herself past her limit. That's just a Church trait, apparently, and god but he hates that he had that thought. It feels wrong to have had it at all - for it to be coming from him.]

Either way, she's definitely human now.

That- [Okay, that is going to take some getting used to, no matter what else is going on. It's more the image of Tex that Carolina has now juxtaposed with what she had known of her, and what she appears to be. They hadn't always gotten along, by any means of that word, and she knows that part of it was her fault.]

That must be interesting.

[Which is not at all where her first 'that' had been going, but it works. Right? Her helmet may settle on Wash, wondering, but he had managed to survive with the Reds and the Blues, even if she had seen him all but flail and make completely frustrated noises.]

That's one word for it.

[Where does he even start? He's not explaining this nearly well enough, and he has no idea where to begin explaining Church. Fuck - Epsilon is still a fresh wound. For all the time that's passed for him, it doesn't feel like enough to process. Maybe because he hasn't allowed himself to.]

That's not it, either.

Wash...

[She's never been one to ease her way in to the water. No, Carolina would rather jump in all at once, get that shock, and move on. How worse could it get? Well, she could think of several different scenarios right then and there, but they only grow more ridiculous. She'd like to thank the Reds and the Blues, as they have been the ones having her in strange places. Pet dinosaurs? Taking on gravity? How much worse would it actually be.]

What else?

Sorry. Sorry. I just don't -

[Fuck, and he thought Maine was hard to explain this shit to. It all emerges in a rush, unbroken - trying to get it out in the open before he can lose his nerve.]

You know the Alpha. You know that's where all the A.I., the fragments, that's where they came from. The original. That's who's here too. He has...some idea of who he is, but not really anyone else, and he definitely doesn't remember much of Freelancer.

Alright.

[It's what she finally does say after a lengthy pause, although arguably it is still processing. Just what the heck has happened since she apparently left, even though she has no fricken recollection of it.

She'd be rubbing her face, but she's still suited up, and instead drops her hand back, fingers twitching slightly.]

Okay. Maine. Tex. Alpha... Human body, or not?

[Alpha. She knows that it's not like the Alpha asked for any of it, but just knowing what she does now, what her father did... Like Epsilon- and here she stills, not breathing until the pressure pounds against her chest and she is forced to take air in- but not. So very not.]

Not. It's...some robot, I think one that they scraped together back in Blood Gulch. I'm not sure if he can jump, either.

[Knowing this place, probably not. He has an even worse deal of it than Wash himself does, since at least he can shed the armor if it gets to be too much. Not so with Church. He's stuck there, and he doesn't even want to think about what might happen if he dies. What that might mean.]

[It's a noise that escapes her, part laugh, part who the hell knew what, because not even Carolina can explain this situation. It's like the start of some joke, but she has no idea what the punch line is to it. She's not certain she wants to know it anyway.]

Okay. Human Texas. Robotic Alpha. Pre-Meta Maine. Anything else to add to the mix?

I think that about covers it.

[That's all the hard bits out of the way. She makes it easy. Accepts it and moves on. He hadn't realized how badly he was missing that until it's happened, and then...god. What a difference it makes.]

...it's good to have you back, Carolina.

[A dog Lopez. Tucker's son. Carolina half expects something else to be thrown in to the mix, but when Wash consents to it being all, her shoulders drop a little in acceptance. Good.]

I'd never leave you behind again Wash, if I had any choice at all in the matter.

[Even if she had no choice, she'd still fight tooth and nail.

She... just hadn't known that she had, which is more than a little troubling.]

No. I know you wouldn't. I didn't think it was...

[Again. That's right, because they have a track record with each other now. Not saying goodbye, of course. Hating goodbyes.]

I know this place just messes with people. Takes them away and puts them back. That's not your fault.

[She'd been blind all those years ago, hadn't stopped to give a backwards glance. No, she'd been a dog that had broken it's master's chain, and now wanted to tear that master limb from limb. Now it's different, she's different, they're different. He's more family to her than her own ever was. Blood doesn't always equal relationships.]

Maybe, but I still don't like it.

Look, it's...not as bad as it could be.

[She could be like C.T., whose ultimate fate Wash can't ever really know. He hopes she went back to the life she clearly, clearly loved so much more than the one she had here, and not back to being a nameless, long-dead specter all but abandoned along the avenues of memory.]

[He hopes.]

At least you came back, right?

[They both know what awaits her at home... One of her last memories of CT was going on the mission with Tex. Things had gone too far and Carolina had never wanted her to die. All she had wanted was to get the armour back.]

There is that. What were you doing anyway? Partying?

[A soft tone of teasing in her voice.]

I just give off that vibe, don't I?

[He's mostly been spending his time on Io drinking and trying not to think of Illinois, but to each their own, right?]

Well, Maine wants to build a gym. So that's where we're at now.

After that beard Wash, I just knew you were going to go rogue...

[Hint of a smile that seeps through in to her words.]

Built it here, or you're just looking for supplies?

[He has gotten a bit scruffy underneath his helmet, even if he hasn't actively undergone any beard-growing endeavors. Yet.]

Looking for supplies, mostly. I mean...you know him. He's happiest when he has something to do. I think he likes it here, though.

[She understands that. Trying to adjust to a more sedate lifestyle had been a challenge, although it hadn't exactly been the most leisurely of retirements either. It does bring a smile to her face though, as despite everything, they are memories (stupid memories, she would argue) that will stay with her.]

A purpose. I'm glad to hear that though. ... Tex and Alpha? Are they settling?

Sort of. They're...kind of weird around each other, if I'm honest.

[That is the simplest way of putting it, and it also doesn't fully cover just how...fucking...weird things with them are. Just, fundamentally.]

I guess that's what I should've expected. Considering who they are.

[She supposes that it is better than... well, it could be a lot different, especially considering who they are.

She nods, understanding, or at least as much as she can. Her relationship had been the strongest with Epsilon. Eta and Iota she had barely functioned with. The others had all been limited to lacking.]

I almost think you're a glutton for antics.

Antics are a glutton for me. [It takes him two seconds to realize that this was the worst possible way to phrase that.]

...I mean that I don't go looking for this shit. It just happens, and then I have to clean it up, all right? You know how it is.

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