lifeaftr | 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

I figure honesty's the best thing. The roofs do leak if you let repairs go. Not fun when it rains.

[He's had first hand experience with that.]

What are we talking here, log cabin, barabara, burdei, adobe, reed houses?

[He's lived in his fair share of different kinds of housing, before modern building techniques made life so much easier.]

Cob houses. The roofs are thatched, tend to get worn out in a hurry.

But as long as you don't slack on the upkeep, they stay pretty dry and warm.

Ugh, thatch. Never learned how to do that one, didn't seem worth it at the time, 'course it'd come back to bite me in the arse now.

[They were all the rage in the 1800s, but at that point Crowley was well past posing as anything other than the upper class.]

[Bucky snorts a laugh.]

You 'n me both. I can show you, if you'd like.

[Crowley idly rubs at his jaw, pushes his hand through his hair, mussing it up even more than it already is. He's never been very good at accepting proper help, not just asking for a bit of advice, but this is probably one of those situations where it's best to swallow his pride.]

Sure, I'd appreciate that. Suppose it's been a while since I've done some honest work, I'll have to hope it doesn't kill me.

[Crowley looks a little rough, in all that black, but he still looks like he has money, not like the kind of person who does manual labor.]

It shouldn't, unless you're deathly allergic to straw or something.

[That's clearly meant to be a joke, though.]

The homes are small enough it's not something that takes several days or anything like that, at least for the little ones, but it can take some getting used to.

I'm not allergic to much of anything.

[Holy items, obviously, but he doubts anyone's going to get their hands on that sort of thing around here, so he's probably fine.]

No one's thought of putting a proper roof on, have they?

Fair enough.

[The serum means he can't have allergies, even if he used to have them.]

You'd have to find the materials to do that. They don't grow on trees.

[And then he actually pauses.]

Though around here, maybe you'd fine them growing on trees. Hell if I know.

Thatch is easy enough to make, you just need to get enough of the plants to dry 'em out and make sure they stay dry before you're ready to use them for roofing.

Well, I mean — shingles, right? You can make those outta wood, that grows on trees.

[He's being just a tiny bit of a shit, but it's also a genuine thought. Although he's faintly aware that making shingles probably requires a certain type of wood, and tools. Crowley's starting to wish he'd paid more attention to what humans got up to back in the day, when they were making houses.]

I've got a feeling I'm gonna start missing the internet more than anything, bet wiki-how would be real helpful right now.

[The struggle.]

Shingles? I wouldn't know, I always rented.

[Speaking of being a shit, that is clearly a joke, but as soon as Crowley mentions the internet, his smile vanishes, from his face.]

What's the internet?

[There's a moment of confusion there, as if he's thinking who doesn't know what the internet is, before he recalls something that was said about dimensions and different worlds. Maybe this guy is from a place without the internet.]

You know, that's sort of a hard one to explain. It's an information network, at the base of it. You familiar with computers?

I've seen a computer.

[That counts for something, right?]

Any idea how they work at all, or am I starting from scratch here?

[He's willing to try explaining it, if only because he's... well, the serpent of Eden. Knowledge and understanding is sort of his thing.]

I know they're used to store data, and can be encrypted. That's about it, though.

August Intro: These Days Are Feeling Dark

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