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

[While Crowley can technically revive the dead, it's not the sort of thing he goes around doing often, except on the occasional duck who's death he was responsible for in the first place.]

Mortal souls, gotta see how many can be claimed for Hell, keep 'em out of Heaven, that sort of business.

[This isn't the type of thing he'd normally discuss, but a) he's in a different world and b) Kravitz is a reaper, not some mortal who's going to have an existential crisis knowing there's a big possibility they're destined for Hell.]

The warning's appreciated, even if you're lying there.

[It's not like he isn't used to assumptions about his nature. Aziraphale still does it, and they've known each other for millennia.]

[Oh. Oh, that makes more sense. He's still a little bit in recovery mood from what he's sure was some kind of misstep, so of course he doesn't just drop the subject like a sensible goddamn person.]

Oh, that's not how death works. I mean-- in my plane. In uh, some planes. Only I and my Lady are responsible for well, you know, managing the souls of the dead. But that makes more sense.

[It does not make sense. With no reference for Christianity, it makes no goddamn sense. But it sounds like that's just how it goes there. Is this why so few people know of the Raven Queen? Well now he just has more questions.]

[There's a bitter twist to his thoughts as he wonders what it must feel like for Kravitz to refer to his god so simply, so easily. My Lady, as though he could just stroll up and have a conversation with her. Crowley's never been jealous of angels, because he knows that the Almighty ignores them with the same ease She ignores demons, ignores him.

But maybe it's not like that everywhere.]

Must keep things simple, only one place to go. The big boss on our end decided to split 'em all up, the ones that behave go to Heaven, spend eternity doing... whatever the fuck they do up there for humans. The shitty ones go to Hell, to be tortured.

[Easy enough to explain. Harder to keep the judgement out of his voice; clearly he thinks this system is, how do you say, fucking stupid.]

[Much easier to go have a talk with a goddess when there's only one agent, y'know. Or specifically, one agent and a lot of gods. Bit of a numbers swap, there. But he hums in response, giving a subdued nod with a face that says he's interested, but also trying to figure out how not to have the next words out of his mouth be 'well that's idiotic'.]

Hm. Well that's... fascinating. Er, I mean, everyone goes to the same place as long as they have not committed crimes against my Goddess. Should they try to escape death, assist another in doing so, or break the cardinal rules of the natural order, it's my job to bring them in and to the Stockade. So I suppose we have some form of punishment, though... not quite the staff.

[It sounds like what Michael was talking about, honestly. Maybe this is just how a lot of other worlds work. He kind of wishes Lup and Taako had more ideas about how the celestials looked on their hundred year journey- he'd be fascinated to see if the same deities and systems were present, or where it changed.]

I imagine it would be complex taking care of an eternity of souls. But, perhaps that's why there's only one of me and an... implied many of you all?

[It's fine, they're on the same page re: the idiotic part of all this. There's a reason Crowley got thrown out of Heaven, he's never been good at falling in with the party line, and that didn't immediately change once he was a demon.]

Don't think God or Satan care that much about the natural order, but magic isn't much of a thing back home, might have something to do with it.

[There's no necromancers, no vampires, nothing undead running around to subvert life and death. He supposes that'd be Death's domain, anyway, and that's not a train of thought he wants to go down.]

Ten million. Give or take.

[So, you know. A lot.]

Oh.

[Ten million. Oh. OKAY, SURE, ALRIGHT. He has a couple of blinks to try and reorient himself into this conversation, because it just seems like So Much.]

Well, that's. Yes, uhm, magic is quite a thing where I work. I don't deal directly in the typical dead.

The universe wasn't going to make itself, was it? God needed the labor.

[Funny way to put it, really, but he feels like that helps explain the sheer number of angels & demons, namely because originally, it was just about 20 million angels.]

Seems you've got your work cut out for you, hm?

[I mean, to be fair, he can assume it does take a lot of work to make a universe. He's old but not that old-- most of the gods aren't even that ancient. It's always difficult to think of just one running the entire show.]

Well, yes, but I'm quite good at it. When I'm not, uhm, trapped in pocket dimensions.

[He waits for a moment or two of silence, like he's trying to think of some way to justify that.]

I'm usually much less alive than this. It makes it much easier.

[Nailed it.]

August Intro: These Days Are Feeling Dark

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