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

[Oh man it SUPER does sound worse, and Erika lets out a snort in reply.]

Sure, of course. Word of advice, buddy, just-- just, like, if you wanna put a message out there to test something, think for like... ten seconds on how it's gonna read.

Or don't, and keep doing this, because I could use the entertainment.

[And there is a very sheepish laugh.] I'll uh....pass on the latter, thanks. I think I kinda look uncool enough already.

Aww, c'mon. Gotta do something for fun around here. [Like embarrassing yourself on the internet. Or watching teenagers embarrass themselves on the internet and laughing at them.]

'Least you can think of this as, like... a learning experience. On how to not look like yet another rando who just discovered online dating and assumes he's the first person ever to think of talking himself up on his profile.

Glad someone's entertained.

Never heard of online dating but I guess it's something from your world so I'll take your word for it.

Oh, man, you haven't? Okay, well, yeah, it super is a thing we have. There's like-- whole services that just exist to try and set people up on dates, and what you gotta know is that some people think they're some kinda pickup geniuses on there and it's weird and embarrassing for everyone.

[She's got some OPINIONS.]

[Service? Now that she's worded it like that..] So it's kind of like matchmaking but set up as a business of some sort? And what do these pickup geniuses say? [Time for this conversation to go even further down the toilet.]

Kinda like that, yeah. [Shortest explanation without explaining the Internet.]

Oohh, god, okay, well - I'm not gonna get too far into it because you're probably too young for me to be legally allowed to tell you some of that shit, but a lot of 'em like to make a real big deal of themselves. Or they make a real big deal of how much people don't wanna date 'em, then try to make that look good for themselves? Like-- there's a whole list, people will try all kindsa stuff.

[I AM NOT A KID!!!!!!!!!! But ok fine considering he grew up as a thief he can probably make a guess on what types of people some of them might be without knowing much about the internet or inquiring further.]

Basically you get a lot of losers and guys who don't know how to talk to girls? [UNLIKE HIM!!!!!! Luckily he's not arrogant enough not to learn that he kind of did end up looking like an idiot just now.]

Eeh, not me so much. At least not on the sites that let me block straight dudes from seeing I exist, I don't really check most of the others these days. [Because honestly, who has time for deleting that crap.]

But, broadly speaking: It's kind of a whole thing. Just for, like, most women who use that stuff at all.

[Okay, a few words he doesn't quite get words like 'block' or what exactly online is. But either way, it seems to be some form of matchmaking back in Erika's world. He's not sure exactly how it works, but...]

Well, either way. It seems all weird and I'm not sure I get all of it. Probably because I'd need to see something like that myself. However, if some is really looking for true love, why do they need all that that? Why not ask an expert?

[Like him. Sure, he's not dating because there's a girl back home he realises he truly wants to be with. Sure, he didn't know how to handle his feelings for Dagger and fucked up a lot as a result. Sure, once he gets back home he needs to be honest with her. BUT.....before meeting Dagger, Zidane did get two dates with one girl and three with another!!! That makes him an expert right????]

[Erika lets out a sharp bark of laughter.]

Okay, so-- first of all, did I ever say people were on these sites looking for true love? I mean, yeah, some people wanna get serious, but that's just... some.

Second, what the fuck do you mean an expert? [Her phrasing may be kind of harsh, but... honestly she just thinks it's really funny.]

H-hey, I did say 'some', didn't I?

[And oh boy she's laughing. He gets the feeling he's going to be even more embarrassed by the end of this entire conversation.]

Well, uh....[And now he's sounding less sure now that she's laughing.] if someone's been around a lot and uh....has the knowledge and experience of that sorta thing....and who wants to help out....[Yep he's really sure he's not going to get out of this conversation alive.]

[Oh holy shit this child. This poor, poor child.

Erika wouldn't call herself an expert on relationships, by any means; she's confident she's got to be more experienced than Zidane (for reasons that are growing by the minute), and she's confident in general that she knows what the fuck she's doing.

But she wouldn't call herself an expert, especially when it comes to other people's relationships, and there's a pretty simple reason for that.] Okay, well - they could give some advice here 'n there, I'll give you that. But, I'm gonna be honest, anyone who calls themself an expert on this kinda thing is probably fulla shit. Like, nine times outta ten.

And most people would rather chat with fifty or so randos for three sentences and hope one sticks than deal with that.

[Ouch. Erika might not have said it directly but Zidane is sure that she thinks he doesn’t count as the one out of ten people who isn’t full of shit, as she says.] ......Maaaaaan, you really don’t mince words.

Nope.

[She sounds pretty proud of that, even if it pretty frequently just means she's being a dick. But that's fine! It's fine.]

This shit's complicated, man. Not sure anyone actually totally understands it.

June Intro: Playing With Your Mind

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