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

[That would be putting it lightly.]

Most of us did, yeah. That island disappeared last month. I don't think anyone misses it.

[His reply earns a chortle from Carolina. She would question anyone who did miss it, unless it was for the fire aspect of it. Yet a nice little bonfire seems good enough without going overkill.]

Do islands ever re-appear?

[She'd never thought to ask that before.]

Sometimes, yeah. There's this one place...Monsun? It's come back before. It changed the last time it did, though. Got all...warped. We kind of had to fix it.

[He also kind of doesn't want to see Monsun ever again, thanks. But knowing this place, he doesn't expect that to last.]

[She's not entirely certain how you fix an island, but with this place, it's likely some detailed quest that involves a variety of stages... Or lots and lots of stories? That whole aspect is still something she finds odd, but she's also not someone who tends to speak about herself too much.]

I'll keep that in mind if another one returns.

Or just enjoy this one for now. You know. When there isn't a Box lurking around and scaring people for fun.

[He hasn't been doing any theft, so at least he hasn't had to deal with it. Yet.]

[A box?]

Right. Anyone or thing tries that on me, and it's the last thing that they try.

Let's just...get off this island. I don't think it's bothering people on Ensō, or the islets. Hopefully.

[Oh, good. The mana pool! Thank god.]

So, how many times has it gotten you?

[The casual turn of her helmet as she moves towards the pool.]

The Box? None. I haven't had to deal with it. I've just seen other people dealing with it, and I'm not about to shoot it until I know that shooting it is actually going to work and not just piss it off.

[Their ammo is less limited now, but still limited - and he doesn't want to chance that unless he has assurance that it'll work.]

No one has trapped it, I take it?

[Otherwise he would have mentioned that, right?]

Look, if you want to try dealing with the Clown Box, no one's stopping you. I just figured you'd probably wanna visit home, first.

["Home."]

[That's the first time he's called it that.]

[It's a curious look that is given his way, for a number of reasons.]

That can wait for later, as I assume it's not leaving this island.

[Unless they have jinxed it now, but as odd as this place may be, it does seem to have some rules. They might be extremely vague and run more on Caboose's mindset than someone with some common sense. Frustrating, at times, but not enough to pull her hair out every day.]

I guess we'll find out.

[It's quick work to take them from Io to the islets. And from there, to the place he might have accidentally called "home."]

[It's a little more lived in, now. But Ami is still clearly happy to see Carolina again, bounding up with a loud, felid purr of delight.]

See? Told you she missed you.

[It hasn't really changed too much, has it? Just the people living under the roof, it seems, a few things here and there. It's strange, how the image in her mind from what she would say just a few hours ago max is juxtaposed against what is right there before her eyes.

But her eyes are torn away when the feline comes, and Carolina does find herself giving a smile beneath her helmet.]

That certainly is a thunderous greeting.

[Hand reaching out to brush over the cat's head, scriching behind her ears.]

What d'you expect? It's been months.

[He runs a hand along her back, and she purrs even louder.]

She's had to deal with me, plus everyone here constantly not knowing how to talk about their feelings. Can you imagine that? It must've been miserable for her.

[Months and minutes.

There is a fond smile beneath her helmet, noting how she does react. It's fairly clear that she hasn't been left wanting that badly. Not like felines purr when they aren't happy, right? Or so Carolina would assume, having never had a pet cat of any breed.

Carolina turns, to drag her fingers beneath her chin, giving a few passes, before straightening again.]

Oh, I think you're selling yourself short.

This may come as a shock, but I'm actually way better at pissing off the people I live with than I am at actually talking to them.

[Two of those people are Church and Tex, who are generally prone to short tempers as it is, but Wash only ever seems to aggravate that.]

Hey. We've survived the Reds and the Blues...

[She's got your back, Wash! Just not in the house... From afar. Does that count? She'll likely hear any bloody murder if she can get a place on the same islet.]

I guess Tex and Church are both Blues. Or - Tex and...Alpha.

[There's still that jolt when he says it, that reminder: you're already talking to a Church.]

He...gets mad if you call him that, though. Word of warning.

[All things considered, Church works, as Carolina's distanced herself from that name anyway. Given what Wash has said, he likely won't even know of her association with it, and it's not like Carolina goes about mentioning it. Those eyes are all she really shares with her father now.]

Church it is.

You sure? I mean, I won't...

[He doesn't really know how to end that sentence, it turns out.]

I guess technically, it was your name first.

If you want to get technical about it...

[She got it from her father, and considering what happened with the AI and fragmenting it...]

It's not like we really use our real names anyway, David.

[That slight hum to her voice in response.]

...right.

[Don't think about how that little aside slipped out in the past few weeks.]

Couple people know that name now, by the way. Not my idea, trust me. We all got...aged down, and as it turns out, preadolescent versions of me didn't know that first names would start getting confidential.

[That's certainly suspicious, which is why her helmet does turn and settle on him.

And she had not been expecting that. Younger versions, and not shaved off five or ten years.]

... don't tell me you went introducing yourself to everyone?

[A short sigh, terse and frustrated.]

Not on purpose. But when people asked my name, I didn't really have a reason to say "sorry, classified," at age ten, did I?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject