lifeaftr | July Intro: Dancing in the Dark

Entry tags:

July Intro: Dancing in the Dark

INTRO LOG: JULY

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: July 4th - July 10th
Where: Primarily Io, as well as Ensō
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Last month, the island of Io saw a massive overhaul, as Eleu reunited with their lost half, Zum, to take their rightful place as the island's Avatar of Fun. Eleu'zum is aware that Io will not be remaining in the archipelago for much longer, and thus have opted to go all out in the celebration of their rejuvenation.

New arrivals may awake at any of the locations listed below.

Waterslides: Don't Let Me Get Down
For this week only, the waterslides threading throughout the bathhouses of Io have been equipped with some special new features, namely the light-up water jets laid out across the outdoor areas, as well as diving boards placed at extreme heights for thrill seekers. Sure, you could just sit around and relax in the heated water, but where's the fun in that?

The supplies at the bathhouses have also been outfitted with wide varieties of inflatable tubes and pool toys, pool noodles, beach balls, dive toys, and squirt guns of every shape, size, and color. And yes, we really do mean every possible type you can imagine.

So have a blast, get soaked, shoot off of high-speed waterslides, or try and avoid the chaos to get a little relaxation time - the choice is yours. But enjoy the bathhouses and pools while you have access to them, before Io disappears.

Go-Karts: Don't Lie Me Down
That new go-kart track by the vineyard is in dire need of some test drivers. With corkscrew turns and twisting roads, those tracks look very much like they might be a tad hazardous, especially if your kart goes off-track...but don't fear! No matter how badly you spin out, you'll find that your kart will never leave the road, thus keeping spectators safe from any and all roadside dangers.

However, just because they're safe from you doesn't mean that you're safe from them. You've got plenty of items to use against your fellow racers, but you've got nothing to protect yourself against the turrets mounted at the sides of the tracks, placed for the enjoyment of spectators who feel like getting a little more participatory. The roadside turrets are capable of spitting all sorts of additional threats upon racers: banana peels, balls of fire, jets of water, and so on.

However, bear in mind that this feature is a two-way street; climb onto one of those turrets to target racers, and they'll find that they'll have no difficulty targeting you in retaliation.

Whether you're here to watch, here to race, here to make things difficult, or simply here to place bets and keep score, you've still got plenty of drinks to wash away the shame of defeat, or celebrate your first place victory.

Hedge Maze & Butterfly House: Back into the Easy Days
Newly mounted atop the tea gardens is a brand new butterfly house, hosting a spectacular abundance of gloriously colorful specimens. With jewel-bright wings and unusually bold dispositions, one will find that these butterflies are very, very easy to behold up close. They don't seem to mind visitors at all, and will happily flutter down to light on the hands, head, and shoulders of whoever draws near, assuming they don't swat them away. The butterfly house comes equipped with small dishes of sugar water to feed them, if you desire, though you could just as easily simply spend time here to relax and look out across the island. From up here, you have quite the spectacular view.

The tea gardens have also gained a rather grandiose hedge maze threaded around the tea trees. The paler pathways are for leisurely, scenic strolls, or playful games of who can reach the finish line first. The darker pathways, on the other hand, are for the more competitive, as well as the more daredevilish; those who take those pathways will quickly find themselves racing to reach the exit before some rather large bees catch up to them.

Despite their potentially fearsome appearance, these creatures are quite harmless, but there's still nothing quite like turning around and seeing that buzzing loudly after you. If they catch you, the bees will promptly burst into a large cloud of multicolored glitter that will coat you from head to toe. And if anyone has any experience with glitter, that can be quite a pain to get rid of. You'll probably be shaking it out of your hair and brushing it from your joints for weeks.

Rollercoaster & Carnival: Overlooking Trouble Gone Bad
The rollercoaster is the newest addition to the Honeycomb, and it's as much a thrill to behold as it is to ride. There are no lines, no tickets, and no entry fees; simply climb aboard! Once the cart is full, or if no further passengers enter, it will take off at breakneck speeds, twisting and loop-de-looping in a breathtaking series of physics-defying turns and arcs.

That's not all, however. The campsites on Io have also opted to make some slight alterations to celebrate the Avatar's return to form. Those large, colorful tents have gone from mere sites of sleeping and relaxation to a full-blown carnival. There are booths where you can play simple ring-toss games and the like, as well as stands for the acquisition of cotton candy, popcorn, and just about any snack you'd find typical of a carnival...as well as a few flavors that might seem a tad bit unconventional. But, hey - as long as it's here, why not sample what's free to eat? Even if you might run into seaweed ice cream, squid-ink sundaes, crab-cake kettle-corn, and many more besides, peppered among your more ordinary flavors.

A small collection of rides have also been provided, of course; what carnival would be fit without them? A carousel with cariborn- or beowolf-styled mounts might be a bit strange to behold at first, but it rides just as well as any other. A small ferris wheel allows you to oversee the sights of Io at the peak of its curve, while whirling teacups can make for a delightful if potentially nausea-inducing escapade.

The island of Io will be disappearing from the archipelago as of July 10th, so you'd better enjoy these additions while you can! For once, there will be no strings attached!

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

See you on the other slide-- one taker only please!

Roman took the explanation well, he thought. After being turned into a terrible monster and occasionally summoned against his will for the better part of a year, suddenly ending up at a camp fire with the Easter Bunny was easy enough to swallow. The Storyteller had told him that they were not the Easter Bunny but Roman was too amused by something infernal as himself chilling at a fire with something associated with God. He should have been listening to all the explanations a lot more closely toward the end. He was too busy enjoying his own stupid joke to notice the world dropping out from under him--again.

For a moment, Roman was in the void. Suddenly there was the roar of water and flashing lights. The Unlucky found himself jetting down a water slide, getting soaked and having no idea when any corkscrews or dips were coming. Naturally he yowled in terror all the way down because without seeing the rest of the Bath House park, it was easy to imagine himself ending up in a sewer or some endless pit.

Suddenly, he emerged into daylight, jettisoned out of the end of the slide like a dart from a gun. He skipped across the surface of the wave pool two, three times before roll-crashing right into--

YOU!

Seems Fair Enough

After his less than graceful entrance, Roman decided to get out of sight for a while. The population of this world was weird enough that he didn't bother with his human disguise right away. Eventually he found himself wandering between the carnival stalls. He's always loved the circus and fairs. Something was off though. It took him wandering past a ring toss game to realize nobody was running the stands. The food and prizes were all his for the taking! Roman looked around before clambering up onto one of the counters with a flap of his tiny wings and leaned forward to grab one of the big floppy hats he could win.

This went on for ages. One could bump into him anywhere, either looting the booths, riding the rides, or stuffing his face with funnel cake.

"That's cheating, you know."

Despite her words, there's a light tone to her voice, sounding like she's on the verge of laughter. The missing stall owners are probably taking a break and won't take too kindly if all their stuff is missing upon their return. It's also illegal, she's pretty sure. The bees haven't taken too kindly to people wandering off with their stuff lately.

"Do you know how to play this game? I could totally show you and you'll win that prize fair and square."

Edited 2019-07-06 01:32 (UTC)

Roman paused with his front-end halfway over the counter. He struggled to lift his head and look over his left wing to see who was talking to him. At first it had been a little hard to tell if he was actually about to be scolded, but when he saw the girl with her smile and her very very cool blue hair, he gave her a grin of his own.

"Oh, would ya?" He waved his tail toward the prize wall. "They just don't t-teach you rules in hell, don't'cha know."

Tim's threading his way through the stalls in search of some of the firework sheds that he hopes are still in here, when he runs smack bang into someone...new. Least, he's pretty sure he's new. He'd like to think he'd remember if he wasn't, but Tim's memory isn't exactly the greatest here.

"Woah, hey. Sorry." Back up, hands out. Take into account that this guy looks like he's in the middle of...ransacking one of the booths?

"...uh, you new?"

Roman stumbled and lost a couple of the colorful prizes he'd snagged--a water gun and one of those tubes that go WAAOUWWAAOOUWAAAOUUU when you sling them around. He swore under his breath and hunched his shoulders, ready to snap at whoever had bumped into him.

Luckily for Tim, he'd already started apologizing and that was like one of Roman's favorite things. Instead he wiped the surly look off his face and took stock of the guy. This was not a man that slept good.

"It's whatever. And yeah, I guess."

The rabbit had told him a few things about the world he'd been dunked head-first (very literally) into. Was it really so close-knit that he stuck out? He really hoped they weren't going to haze him. Roman unconsciously clenched his fist.

"You guess." Bad memory, or figure of speech? Probably the latter. Not everyone's got a head that's as scrambled as yours, Tim. Jesus. That's obvious from the get-go, usually, but this guy wasted no time in just getting right into it, huh? How long's he been here?

That's harder to say.

"You seem pretty okay with this."

Again, not necessarily new, but...noticeable.

He has been here for about an hour and a half. Tops.

Roman takes this cautious observation as praise, but after looking around at the cosmic amount of buillshit he's seen in the bleary hour he's been here, he can understsand Tim's hesitation. Roman drops the rest of the junk he's looted in order to get right up in Tim's bubble, slinging a bony arm around his shoulders and getting real close.

His breath smells like ash. Not smoke. Ash.

"I'm screamin' on the inside!"

This is officially more familiarity than Tim's generally okay with. He tenses at once, trying to flinch away from this guy's...everything. It's not hard to gauge that, between the rigidity of his stance and the rapid beat of his breath, he's not exactly a fan of this.

(Knife in his pocket. Lighter. Back pocket - another knife. He's not unarmed. He's not unprepared. He'd just really, really prefer to not have to use those on some new guy with no regard for personal space.)

"Great," he says, doing his best to try and squirm out from under the arm over his shoulders. "Glad to hear it."

When Tim starts wriggling, Roman lets him get away. He keeps grinning, the edges too wide, the creases under his eyes strained. Here he was trying to pretend nothing was wrong, like the Easter Bunny just didn't make his life worse and this guy has to come and wreck it.

"So what's your name? The Bunnyman decided we're in some kind of story. I wanna know everybody. We've got t-to be good for something."

"You mean the Storyteller?" Everyone's gotta nickname for them. At least he's not forcing Tim to remain uncomfortably close, which is a relief. His heart's a hammer. It's fine. All of it's fine. Nothing's wrong. Nothing's weird. The guy's smiling too much, but plenty of people do that. To cope, or whatever.

Just breathe.

Breathe, and answer the question.

"...Tim. Yours?"

Roman let his tail lash back and forth behind him. He felt like he was on top of this situation even in his clueless state.

"Roman. Nice to meet you, T-Tim." Roman bent down to start collecting his treasures again. "What were you doing when you got yanked away from home? Were you doing something important? There's gotta be something we got in c-common. I'm gonna figure it out and then blow this place. I got stuff to do."

"No. I wasn't." It's been so long since he's thought about where he came from, that the question catches him off guard, very visibly; his eyebrows lift and then scrunch downward in a frown. That's not really "home" anymore. It's just...a place he was, and now no longer is.

"Don't plan on going back, either."

Sorry, Roman. That's not one for the things we have in common column.

Roman notes that face journey that Tim goes on and turns his head so that he can look at the other man with one eye.

"Ooookay, cool." He snass his fingers and points a pair of finger-guns at Tim, carefully balancing his gotten gains in his elbows. "Touchy subject, got it! Enough about you, let's t-talk about me. I was doing something very important. I'm on a sort of spirit journey quest, I guess, and this place is a huge detour. Y'wanna help me out?"

Roman has known Tim for about ten minutes and is already on his bullshit.

The alternative here is saying no and leaving Roman to it, which might be a pretty bad idea when he doesn't even know what he's up to. Tim's expression closes off again as he sighs with the sound of someone wearily accepting that this is just their lot in life now. That's how he takes most things that come to him: with flat resignation and the assumption that he'll have to have a hand in fixing this later.

"Depends on what you mean by 'help'."

But he's also not stupid.

no subject

seems fair enough

no subject

fair enough

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

i.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject