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 thought I wouldn't either, but...

[Yeah, that might've been a bad choice of conversation topic. Now he's just thinking about the fact that this is her mom he's talking about and, yeah. Okay.]

Anyway. Stick around long enough, you'll probably run into one of them if they stop by.

But now you've an idea what they were like.

[Little thugs? It is the picture of them, but smaller, that Carolina has. Same in every other way, which she knows isn't realistic.]

Honestly not certain if that's a good or bad thing either.

It complicates things. And our lives are complicated enough.

[Who likes complications?]

At least they're normal-sized now. All three of them. Or...I guess Maine's size is normal. For Maine.

At least you don't need to keep an eye out in case someone burns something down, or eats something strange, or starts a war with something that can't be fought against.

[Or dinosaurs, or... Yes, that list can go on and on and on. And on.

And yet, she has kind of gotten used to their antics. It's a different sort here, anyway, complicated in a completely different manner.]

... was he a tall kid?

[Because she has to know now.]

I mean, there's plenty of that here anyway. [People being fucking stupid is a multiversal constant, apparently. The unique brand of idiocy exhibited by their own team just happens to be...particular in some respects.]

I met him when he was...I guess an adult?

[A teen, actually, but Maine was never really small, so he just looked like an adult to a preteen Wash.]

But, yeah. He was pretty much always just massive. Tallest guy in every room.

Yes, but picture Caboose and Sarge here. Or Donut. Tucker might keep it in his pants for five minutes.

[PICTURE IT, WASH. PICTURE IT.

Well, not Tucker with his pants, but what this place would be like. Then again, they do have a strange knack for getting things done despite all odds. Like, really bad odds in their favour where no one would think about getting on them.]

Hm. Guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I'm going to try not to.

[He is...honestly not sure how he'd handle any of the Blood Gulch crew showing up here, all right? Church is weird enough. The existence of Carolina and Tex and Church and Maine simultaneously feels like a violence in and of itself.]

Shouldn't be surprised?

[There is that throaty chortle from her, as yes, had someone turned the tables and been telling her that, they'd likely be sore for a week or two. She's happy in the knowledge that they are safe back home, or as safe as any of them can be. It's hit and miss some days.]

Mm. He's always been... a presence, you know? If he had been this scrawny little kid.

[It would have been odd.]

He's been trying to make a gym, last I checked. Not sure how he plans to do that, but that's...something I guess he's been doing.

[Wash doesn't know anything about putting buildings together from nothing, which is why he hasn't been very much help there. Not a carpenter, this guy.]

Lifting trees and running laps in the sand?

[Hell if she knows, but she also knows that changing pace hadn't come easy to Carolina. It's not like vacation or shore leave that been things that they had aimed for. Well, at least not Carolina. York had dragged her out some times, but she had preferred to focus her energy on training.]

Gives him something to focus on though. Can't really see him joining a band.

Joining a -

[Yeah, he's from before the months they spent on that island. This is news to him, and he stares at her.]

Excuse me?

They had no idea what they were getting in to when they accepted me as a singer.

[Is there a certain amount of smugness in her voice as she continues on as if it were just another day. If she thinks about it, she does recall that she technically comes from the farthest point, at least that she knows about, but given the company... But she does forget that Wash hasn't lived all of the antics.]

You sing.

[Oh Wash honey no.]

[He's trying to picture that and failing and that's probably for the best but also. Also. What the hell happened on that island.]

You must've been really bored in that place, huh?

[Oh, she doesn't sing, not by any means of the word, but she has found a calling, and that calling is making the Reds and Blues squirm. And how wonderfully they had squirmed... Once they had started to dig the hole, that hole had just kept getting bigger.]

Perhaps I'll show you one day.

[Maybe if she gets bored enough here and wants to torture him a little.]

Well. It was a serious change of pace.

I get you drunk enough, maybe.

[People actually can get drunk now. He hasn't, really. Not since C.T. Not one for that. But he's been tempted, at least once.]

And now you're in another one. Another...serious change of pace, anyway.

[That barked laugh, caught by surprise at that comment.]

Drink for drink, Wash, and we'll see who'll be singing.

[Not that she's actually much of a heavy weight anyway. A beer now and again is about all that Carolina tends to manage, and even that is by no means regular, even during retirement.]

Not quite so different than what we're used to. Different place. Different people.

Thank god no one's done island karaoke.

[People have done that, actually. He's just been lucky enough to not have been there to watch.]

Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is.

Second chances for some of them.

[That would be bad... Possibly really bad. Not that Carolina would likely participate anyway. One thing to mess around with Tucker and Grif, another to get this whole place on board with that.]

Mm. They deserve them. Second chances.

[How she of all people ended up with more than one chance... She'd say it was a cosmic joke.]

[Yeah, you and him both.]

Well, if we get them, why shouldn't they, right?

... it will be nice to actually see them again.

[Real, in the flesh, not some memory or nightmare or vision that is to torment her.]

Hopefully they'll be here soon. Or, uh...

[He could just. Call them. He keeps forgetting that's an option. Radio's fried, but now they have stones. Or...phones, technically.]

I guess I could call them, if you'd rather not wait. Or you could, actually.

[She could, couldn't she?

Yet there's something that halts her from doing so. It's not that she's scared, as there are few things that bring true fear to Carolina, but perhaps there is a bit of trepidation in her.

So much has changed.]

How'd they take your appearance?

Lots of questions, mostly. Tex was...she knew some of what happened. Church, a little less.

[A moment. He glances away, out into the waves.]

Maine doesn't know. About what happens to him. What happens with the Project.

[A small noise, acknowledging his words, but making no comment on it at least not yet. Someone, somewhere, is having a laugh at their expense.

Maine though.]

It's not like he was ever one to ask too many questions or pry too deeply.

[Give him a mission, point him in a direction, and off the man went.]

Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's just...

[How the hell do you bring that up to someone? How do you tell them that they're going to kill their entire team - and it won't even really be them doing it?]

I don't know how long it'll stay like that. Sooner or later, it's going to come up.

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