July Event: Riding the Wave

[lifeaftr_mods]

JULY EVENT: RIDING THE WAVE

Who: Everyone!
What: The Jormun reappear to allow some transformative fun...and potentially some underwater exploration as well
When: July 10th and onward
Where: Ensō and the ocean floor around it
Warnings: Potential (and fully optional) body/transformation horror may arise when undergoing shifts from land-based to sea-based shapes, and vice versa. Otherwise, tag as you go!

I'll See You on the Other Side
The Jormun resurfaced to greet their old allies on July 8th, bringing with them the offer to explore the ocean floor alongside them. They're not the only old friend that's made a return, however. The kaleidoshells, placid, rainbow-tinted creatures reminiscent of sea turtles, have also made their way to Ensō's shores for their nesting season. For much of the month of July, you'll have to tread carefully around mounds of sand hiding delicate heaps of kaleidoshell eggs. Those of you uninterested in sea exploration can remain on the surface, if you like - the kaleidoshells can make for a stunning sight if you're glimpsing them for the first time as their shells throw off vibrant rainbow swirls of light reflected into the ocean waters.

Predators are always keen to feast on easy prey, and kaleidoshell eggs are no exception. If you feel like protecting them from any hungry slypers or pterax, you'll find that some of the Jormun are happy to stick on the surface with you and assist. They'll even lend you a schlacknorkcvic, which is the Jormun equivalent of a simple driftwood training staff, to help keep any thieving creatures away from the nests of kaleidoshell eggs - though they recommend that you do so peacefully, if possible.

Get Carried Away
Or you can brave the sea waters with the Jormun, instead. With the help of the sne'akleriad pendant, your new, aquatic shape will allow you to navigate the waters just as easily as they. Whether you intend to make use of this new skill to go roaming about and explore some of Ensō's uncharted ocean squares, take a look at that underwater structure that's been sighted before, or just have a joyous time beneath the waves with your new scaly, tentacled, flippered, or be-gilled form, the choice is yours.

---

In the meantime, the following links may prove handy:

[ ♆ ] OOC Event Info and Plotting Post
[ ♆ ] Underwater City Exploration Page
[ ♆ ] Jormun NPC Information
[ ♆ ] Ensō's Locations Page

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] July 8th: The Jormun and the kaleidoshells return to Ensō's shores
[ ♆ ] July 10th: Underwater exploration begins
[ ♆ ] July 17th: Part Two of our second year anniversary Test Drive Meme goes up
[ ♆ ] July 20th: Monthly Storytelling occurs
[ ♆ ] July 22nd: The final island in this voting round appears
[ ♆ ] July 25th: The Jormun return to their home beneath the waves

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[hyperlit]

The Drifter glances down at the compass, watching the needle spin idly without any particular focus. Utterly useless, then.

dangerous?

They've never heard of a compass being dangerousbefore. The most one could do to hurt someone else with one, in their experience, is throw it at them. The object seems quite broken, and therefore rather useless.

Perhaps it could be repaired?

[sonsofhorus]

"Powerful magnetism can be," he replies, moving away again to take one more look around the room. "For machines, at least. It affects our minds. I'm not overly worried about a little thing like that, but if it turns into some magic item I'd like to know."

He pauses at the tiny glint of a reflection behind a bit of fallen stone, and coils around for a closer look. "But hopefully it's something somebody can end up getting some use out of. This isn't, though. Just a broken bottle. Think we can consider this room cleared."

[hyperlit]

seems broken

But they make a mental note to double-check to ensure it isn't acting up in any obvious ways, every so often. They tuck it away in the folds of their cloak, for the moment.

Time to move to another part of the building. Hopefully something soon will start revealing some answers.

out of place
like everything else

[sonsofhorus]

"That's for sure. Even the city itself. But then, so are we."

In one smooth movement he swims for the next doorway, as low as he can manage without scraping his exterior on the rocks and wreckage, tilting his head up just enough to still get a good sweep of the next space ahead of them. Peeking just past the frame to find three paths waiting for them next, he immediately grumbles.

"B'sodding hallways." Good ambush points. "I'd usually try to check all three before I start rummaging, but this time, if it's the worst case scenario, you're armed. Your call."

[hyperlit]

may still be useful

They're not the sort to simply give up, even if the going isn't proving particularly lucrative. Little fragments of history, no matter how seemingly useless, aren't nothing. They're still important. They still tell some sort of story.

can leave
but will remain

Which is to say, they won't force him to stay if he doesn't want to. But the Drifter is nothing if not thorough in their explorations.

[sonsofhorus]

His face slowly turns left, then right, in a rough approximation of shaking his head once, and his voice is quiet but firm. "No...I may need to stay out of your way in a fight, but I'm not going to ditch you down here. That's not how I do things."

Not without a good deal more argument, and never lightly.

"I only mean that I won't insist we check all three routes for trouble before we stop and dig for any more salvage, if you're comfortable still focusing one room at a time. If something ambushes us I have to leave the fighting to you anyway, so it's only fair I let you make that call."

[hyperlit]

The Drifter holds up their blade with considerably more confidence than they should probably be displaying, considering how little experience they have wielding it in the face of so much water resistance.

can handle it

They are a creature of combat. They don't expect it to be a problem, regardless of whether they unearth the fight or the fight comes to them.

Besides, salvage is more interesting.

continue?

[sonsofhorus]

"Continue," he rumbles in agreement, and then adds "Let's go right. That should still be along the outer wall, might be the safest choice this time."

Even if it does come down, at least there would hopefully be only open water on the far side instead of even more rooms to potentially join the collapse. He remains low to the ground, leaving as much room in the narrower space as possible in the event Drifter needs to use that blade; the right turn leads to a smallish, square room marked with a still-surprisingly-legible sign: ante-room.

No signs of metal fixtures in this one. Once they've checked for hostiles Horatio shifts a small, claw-like tool out from his faceplate and busies himself carefully tugging aside some bits of thoroughly rotten wood that might have once been furniture. Larger rocks are a bit much for him in this changed form, but a chair leg is manageable.

[hyperlit]

Safe isn't the expectation for situations such as these. The Drifter follows with several swift, powerful pumps of their tail, unfurling into the smaller room. The sign marks this as the...ante-room. The building is surprisingly intact. Good in terms of potential information. Bad in terms of maneuverability.

building is in good condition
better than possessions

The wood here is all rotting, furniture included. It looks as though it was certainly built above sea level, but at some point or another, ended up on the ocean floor instead.

large

[sonsofhorus]

He always tries to keep the sprite in view, and pauses in his digging to properly focus on the new messages. "It is in better shape, though I don't know if I'd trust the mortar to hold up against a solid hit. I'm not really clear on what saltwater would do to it long-term."

There doesn't seem to be anything noteworthy beneath the pieces of this chair, besides a bit of old book cover that hadn't survived the fallen weight. He moves on to the body of a small, broken-legged table, nudging some loose debris off it before carefully taking the corner in his "jaws" and lifting the decaying square of wood just enough to shift it aside.

"Huh. A handle without a cup...no sign of the rest of it. Looks really well-made, though. The design might mean something, but I don't think I should be the one to pick it up." If he had his normal hands he'd be fine, but porcelain tends to be a fragile material.

[hyperlit]

The Drifter regards the cup curiously, circling closer. The tacit suggestion is enough for them to reach down to pick it up and hold it so that both of them can get a better look at it. It looks like something just as out of place as the books, as every other odd and end they've uncovered here. Why would a teacup be brought into a bathhouse?

Why would books?

They turn it slowly in a steady, continuous revolution.

design not familiar
incredible it has lasted so long

[sonsofhorus]

Though he wouldn't know enough of other islands yet to hope to recognize anything of significance, he still peers closely at the trinket as Drifter turns it over. It's the same sort of pack-rat curiosity that leads him to scoop up things like the shopping lists of people long dead, bearing the names of supplies he doesn't recognize.

"Yeah, no kidding. I know some ceramics can be used inside armor plating-" Such as the hull of the HORUS, with its old familiar copper and micro-sandwich ceramics. "-but even then, it breaks. And this doesn't exactly look armor-grade."

In all this mess and rubble even this surviving piece really should have been reduced to unidentifiable shards by now. Or at least lost some of its fine design work.

[hyperlit]

has not been here long

That's the takeaway. It's the only logical explanation - everything else here has degraded to such significance that it's fair to say it's been here for some time. But this particular trinket has remained alarmingly intact.

Perhaps it was planted. Perhaps it was dropped. Whatever the reason, the Drifter finds its current state to be highly suspect. In the context of everything else, its quality is glaring.

They can recognize it. They've always been rather good at that sort of thing. They've had to, to distinguish which corpses in an old ruin are newest, and therefore which might have salvageable goods.

The Drifter looks up, very deliberately, to Horatio.

not as long as the rest

[sonsofhorus]

In Horatio's reality, meanwhile, every possible salvageable good is already years old - reclaimed and recycled over and over and over again, until the sand and the rain or general wear and tear brings it to an unusable end. He briefly considers the possibility that it was made of some deceptively sturdy form of the material that exists here, but figures this is probably a fantasy.

The other thought that occurs to him is one they share: there was someone responsible, in whose care it was kept safe for a time.

"If that's true, somebody must have brought it. But who brings a thing like this all this way just to hide it and take off? Maybe it is important. Or was, to someone."

[hyperlit]

dropped
lost

Someone brought it here, perhaps. If that's the case...

perhaps
not the first ones here

Which doesn't seem possible. The Jormun stayed away from this place for a reason, and there has been no sign of any other living creature. Who else could have strayed this deep, and why? It's more likely that it was dropped, or discarded from above, surely.

It still doesn't answer who might have managed to get it all the way out here.

[sonsofhorus]

He revises his theory of the unknown actor's behavior accordingly, considers the result, and finds it reasonable.

"Could be, yes. Actually, if it was an accident..." Come to think of it, what had he said in a previous room? Like someone running through with their bag open and just never looked back. His processor mulls all this over.

"Or even if it wasn't an accident. Wouldn't there have to have been multiple people before us? If that porcelain's newer than the rest, and if someone carrying things explains how the books got to such a weird place too...it wouldn't make much sense to be at the same time. Seems they would have brought non-waterproofed books someplace already under water."

Which could happen, he supposes, but that's still terrible.

[hyperlit]

too many pieces
nothing connects

Most ruins, most bits and pieces of old civilization, they have a story that can be derived from the remains. Here, toppled furniture and cracks in the edifice that suggests an altercation or a massive physical shift. Here, a body splayed and crumbled away, not as old as the rest of its surroundings, which indicates that others have crossed this way before after the building's fall.

There is always a narrative, and one that makes relative sense.

Nothing here makes sense at all. There are too many variables, and none of them add up.

[sonsofhorus]

"Not a single thing," he mutters in agreement, and hovers off to finish checking what he can of the room for any further evidence or usable material.

If it were the unchanging Dunes, he thinks as he picks through more broken furniture, more than one scavenger passing through an area over time would hardly be worthy of note - except to curse his luck at being beaten to something useful. But here? What went on in here?

"I would say it's at least a good sign we haven't found any remains of these people, however many there might have been, but that's no guarantee. You see anything else?"

[hyperlit]

They're about to respond to the negative, sweeping the area one final time, but a peculiar shape poking out from the rest of the debris catches their eye. They swim closer, picking it out from the wreckage.

It's a cage. Small, crumpled, and clearly in just as poor a condition as almost everything else down here, but nonetheless - one final piece of a very abstract puzzle.

also old
broken

[sonsofhorus]

At their sudden movement in place of an answer he sets aside another bit of ruined wood-scrap and raises himself to better observe, watching with interest. But once the item is pulled into view, he can tell at once, even from here, that its metal and mechanisms are in absolutely terrible shape.

A pity.

"Looks that way...shame about the rust. At a glance I'd say it's too far gone to restore. Is that as weird a thing to find here as the others? It wouldn't have any use anywhere where I came from, unless you wanted to take a really tiny robot prisoner."

[hyperlit]

does not match surroundings either

The Drifter's quiet confirmation comes with the closest they get to a furrowed brow - a pinching of the strip of bluish skin between helmet and cowl. Yes. Like everything else they've thus far discovered, this little cage is very much out of place.

may have contained pet
or possessions
cannot know

[sonsofhorus]

"I guess if there was ever any evidence of what was in there, the water would have taken it." The peculiarities of organic material, large amounts of water, and a generally thriving ecosystem are really murder on work like this. It is becoming a wonder that anything lasts at all.

"Well, if there's no figuring that out for now either, then I'm ready to sweep the next room when you are - whether we get any answers or just more questions."

[hyperlit]

ok

The Drifter turns the cage briefly over in their hands. It's too awkwardly shaped to be stowed away in their cloak, which they continue to wear, even underwater. In the end, they simply hold onto it with one hand while keeping their sword out in the other.

ready

They don't expect answers. But they're ready regardless.