lifeaftr | August Intro: These Days Are Feeling Dark

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August Intro: These Days Are Feeling Dark

INTRO LOG: AUGUST

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: August 4th and onward
Where: Primarily Nastrandir
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Our lucky new adventurers join the archipelago on a new chapter of our journey, with the new island of Nastrandir playing host to their arrival. With the events of last month leaving many questions in those more settled in LifeAftr, all will find they soon have…other things to think about.

New arrivals may awake at either of the locations listed below. Or they may wander!

A4: Show Me Distraction
In comparison to the warm welcome characters experienced on Io, the land of Nastrindir is not at all promising. The strip of coast hosting the mana pool is a scoop of rock and cliff, and rather unforgiving. To the east, however, it looks as though nearby wetlands leave the horizon lost in a foggy haze. The mana pool is generally a comforting, reliable constant on any island...generally. There looks to be something wrong with this one. The rocks surrounding it are blackened, various spots across their surface almost glass-like under the summer sun. After a brief inspection, most will probably gather that the pool has been set on fire in times past.

More annoying still is the tampering that's occured within the pool. The pool is partially obstructed, due to a blockage of tumbled rocks and boulders that seem to have fallen from the surrounding rocky landscape and toppled into the raised plinth. The choking of the mana water will make return trips to Ensō…inconvenient, to say the least. The rocks are an annoyance that will need to be removed before anyone will be travelling anywhere.

Also of note are the old statues that stand at opposing sides of the mana pool. In their prime, they may have towered a good fifteen or twenty feet tall. Now, however, one has been tipped onto its side, and there are large, crumbled chunks taken out of the other. Both look blackened, much like the mana pool, as though they were also set on fire at some point in their history. Whatever they may have meant to depict has been lost to time...but the parts of them that have survived look to represent smooth, rounded coils of something or another.

It might feel, to the particularly wary or those prone to paranoia, like these statues are watching you. Like they're representative of something else that might have its eye on you, even now.

Or they might not! It could be all in your head. What's way more important is the local flora in the vicinity. The parts of the land that have soil are currently host to some delightful plants that are known, colloquially, as candyplants. And, yes - they're exactly what they sound like.

Candyplants are odd plants that are not unlike a melon vine, except that their fruits take the form of giant candies. The candyfruit is quite edible, though much higher in sugar content than your more bog standard varieties of fruits and vegetables. The variation in the shapes and sizes and flavors is tremendous - some are shaped like fruit, and will have a very similar taste to the fruit they represent. The only exceptions are the ones that look rather like overgrown candy corn, which taste like...marshmallows, for some reason. But they still taste sweet, and they're still full of some of the nutrients you'd expect to find in ordinary fruit!

While candyplants are somewhat less sugary than their real candy equivalents, it's still not recommended that you gorge on them overmuch. They're probably pretty bad for your teeth, if you have any. Candyplants do keep for quite some time, though - particularly if dried, packed in jars, or otherwise preserved.

Candyplants grow in temperate areas near quantities of fresh water - which Nastrandir has in abundance. Most of them grow in shaded, open areas along the ground, like melons; plants that bear smaller candyfruits may instead behave like grapes and other climbing vines, especially when they would be otherwise crowded out by other ground plants. The plants and fruits are quite harmless, though the sweet, sugary smell that tends to linger around areas of rampant growth during hot weather can cause one hell of migraine.

B4: Snakes Are Biting at My Heels
Those who arrive a little ways away from the mana pool or find themselves daring enough to start exploring will end up on the B4 square, which is closer to the swampy environment more characteristic of Nastrandir's inland. The further east one progresses, the wetter and softer the ground underfoot will get, until you're slogging thigh-deep in freshwater algae and muck. It's pretty dirty work, but it's probably more advisable that you go roaming into the wetlands rather than sticking around in the rockier regions. - especially because those regions happen to be occupied.

That feeling of paranoia that may or may not have settled on the back of your neck on A4 will turn out to be justified. Flickers of motion in the corner of your eye, the sensation of something watching you, the clattering of pebbles and rocks sliding down the sloping inclines on Nastrandir's craggy landscape - all signs indicative that something else frequents this region.

And something does. Something large, scaly, and very hungry.

Rocobra have now been unlocked in the bestiary!

The spiny protrusions on this creature's long, sinuous body will make it quite difficult to distinguish from its surroundings; these beasts tend to disguise themselves as the surrounding mountain rock where they live. Mild chameleonic properties allow this predator to blend almost seamlessly in with a rocky environment of almost any texture and color. And, given the size of them, it's very possible you won't realize that you're stuck in one's coils until it's too late.

With thick, scaly hides, large jaws, and venomous teeth, the rocobra is deadly fast despite its significant bulk. Even at their smallest, the rocobra is often as thick as a tree trunk in girth, and can range from thirty to sixty feet in length. Rocobra specialize in draping themselves in a circle, concealing themselves among their surroundings, and waiting for unsuspecting prey to wander somewhere in their coils before drawing tight around them to constrict them into a slow and painful death, so they might be devoured.

The good news is that rocobra only ever hunt and live in solitude; it is highly unlikely you'll find more than one in any one area. Most cannot spit venom, but can deal a paralyzing strike with massive fangs that are just as likely to impale you as they are to poison you. The good news is that they do have a weakness, and that weakness is numbers - when there is more than one target for the rocobra to focus on, it can get hopelessly confused over who it should be striking first, and can be easily distracted and led along by a well-coordinated team or pair. It's advised that you strike it at the mouth, if possible, as those scales can be awfully hard to penetrate.

While the danger rocobra present is very real, that doesn't mean they're completely useless. Rocobra can potentially be harvested for venom, meat, or their tough, scaly hides.

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

[The #struggle of being someone from a technologically-advanced universe, only to end up in this absolute hellhole of a backwater dimension is a recognizable one. One fully-armored, fully-armed Agent Washington overhears what sounds like someone trying to radio for help, and starts moving to intercept. The vague hope that it might be someone he knows is - well, it's something he's not sure he'd ever label as a hope.]

[Turns out he doesn't have to turn over the question too much. It's not anyone from home, he's pretty sure. It's a young woman he doesn't know.]

I'm not sure "kidnapping" is the right word for it.

[Here's a guy in full power armor. Don't worry, he's friendly. Or...non-hostile. It'd be a stretch to call Wash "friendly" under almost any circumstances.]

[The struggle is real, my friend. To go from a space-faring culture to... this is hard.

Everything here is foreign, even more so than the different landscapes of the Brisingr system's planets. What she really, really wants is to be back on Ragna with the rest of her group and the Delta Squad and Xaos. She needs to yell at Lady M and give the finger to all of Windermere. Especially that silly little prince, the Wind Singer, who let himself be used by everyone around him.

~~Not that she has much room to talk, but at least she's been helping people, instead of letting them be hurt.~~

And when she gets her hands on that Wind Knight with the red hair, she's going to slap him too.

This rage is new and she's pretty sure that her fans back home wouldn't even believe her possible of such intensely ugly feelings, but she's only human, right? The voice of a stranger has her on her toes and her hands are up to fight back if she has to before she can even think about it.]

Then what do you think is the right word?

[She doesn't care about the semantics of things. She's not on Ragna, where she should be. It's against her will. It's obviously a kidnapping.]

[In a bad mood, understandably. Wash's answer is prompt, wry, and tired; if her attitude is getting to him, it doesn't show. It's probable that he's used to it by now. Used to it, and used to dealing with people who are decidedly more on the difficult side of things. He is one of those people, most days.]

Interdimensional displacement, maybe.

[Do you really expect her to be happy about being brought to a world with no tech? Her clothes, that she is in fact wearing, don't even work properly.]

That just sounds like 'kidnapped by unknown forces', honestly. It doesn't make it more palatable. It's like offering a rotten apple when you wanted shrimp kabobs.

Fine. Kidnapped by unknown forces. Look, your radio's busted. I'll just go ahead and say that now.

[He knows it's busted because his was busted when he arrived, and it still is.]

[She snorts indelicately at this agreement with her phrasing.

She never said she was especially mature, after all.]

Yes, I guess my tech nails are probably useless, since they aren't even generating any sort of static. No doubt they were shorted out by all the water in this world's atmosphere.

[Which is irritating, considering Ragna is a world that's pretty much nothing but water and she's never had anything like this happening.]

I don't suppose the words U.N. Spacy mean anything to you, do they?

[Tech nails. She...okay. Fuck it. Fine. It's the future. She's from the future. People can put whatever technology they want wherever they want.]

Yeah, water's a problem here. Some stuff still works, or you can get it repaired, but it's a pain.

...and, no. They don't. UNSC doesn't mean anything to you either, does it?

[Yep, she's from the future, but it's her present and this is some ancient, stupid land, obviously.

Besides, it's easy to hide communication devices in nail decals, right?]

If I've been "displaced" through dimensions, I doubt any repair is going to help reach anyone I know.

[At the confirmation of his ignorance, Mikumo lets out a huffy sigh before shaking her head.]

No, not really. If it's a Sol System thing, it's not prevalent in the Brisingr System.

Uh, yeah. It's pretty prevalent in the Sol System.

[Earth is where the UNSC formed, after all. That other name, though, that doesn't ring any bells.]

Can't say that I've heard of the...Brisingr System.

[She's never met anyone from the Sol System and she takes a moment to take in his outfit.]

We're several light years away from Sol, but we follow the laws of the dictates of the UN Spacy, like everyone else. Of course, with Xaos in charge mostly, Lady M is our liaison between our system and the Sol system.

[She shrugs a bit.]

Besides, its formal name is the Brisingr Globular System.

[Yeah, that's about where the similarities run out.]

I pretty much tracked "Sol," and nothing else, so I think you can safely say we're from two different universes, and not just two different parts of the galaxy.

[Well, yeah, aliens change things, right?]

Alternate universes. That's the stuff of story books.

[She looks around and lets out a dry laugh.]

I suppose I should consider it since we're here.

Trust me. The sooner you get over how weird it sounds, the better. Magic isn't a thing where I come from either, but you learn to adjust. You kind of have to.

[Not that Wash would call himself a skeptic, but he was not on board to just go about believing in shit like magic until this place happened along.]

I guess I've lived through worse.

[Her entire life is pretty much weird. She should be used to it.]

Magic is just unexplained science. Or so I've heard.

Like I said, just learn to adjust.

[He sounds too fucking tired to contest the finer points of magic and whether or not it exists right now. He doesn't even know that much about it. Let someone else who actually has a horse in that race bother with it, okay? Yeah. He'll do that.]

There's hardly anything here to adjust to.

[She's not going to fight with anyone about anything. There's nothing to really deal with, aside from being ripped from everyone and everything she knows.]

All I see is some old forest and dirt and...nothing else.

You had a dream just before waking up here, right? A big rabbit told you all about what to expect?

[Everyone gets the dream prior to waking up here. So far, he hasn't met a single person who hasn't.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

August Intro: These Days Are Feeling Dark

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