lifeaftr | February Undercurrent: Behind the Curtain

February Undercurrent: Behind the Curtain

FEBRUARY UNDERCURRENT

Who: Everyone!
What: A sea of clouds in the moonlight...
When: February 3rd to February 15th
Where: The Floating Islands above Ensō
Warnings: Please mark anything as it comes up!

The Earth is Spinning

Far above all your heads, suspended impossibly over Ensō, there is a scattered collection of strange floating islands. Almost two years ago, adventurers had the opportunity to visit them when the heat of the phoenix-sun of LifeAftr burned away the clouds that shielded them. This time, it will be Water that gusts those clouds to the side - clouds are, after all, a form of water. Once more, these islands will become accessible. Just like before, all islands are accessible via mana pool - but those of you capable of flight will be able to reach them without needing those helping hands.

Additionally, the islands will be hanging very low over Ensō, casting noticeable shadows over much of the landmass, and parts of them will be trailing to the ground. Ladders, long tresses of ivy and vines, and ropes hang off the edges of these islands to brush against Ensō's floor, to make for easy climbing. You might also find that some of these trailing protrusions might take a more...active approach. If someone walks by, you might very well find yourself grabbed by these vines or ladders and more or less hoisted up to the floating islands, whether that was your intention or not. It's almost like they want you up there, for whatever reason.

This time, these islands will not be subject to the whims and desires of the islanders. The landscape will not shift to accommodate your memories and thoughts. This time, when travelers reach the islands, they will find that they have formed into four distinct locations. Each of the four islands are separate and more or less their own small patch of land, visible but quite isolated from all the rest.

Just like before, the mana pools will be more than slightly glitchy for the duration of this event - it is entirely possible that someone simply attempting to travel by them, or stay near them to rejuvenate their energies will find themselves whisked up into the landmasses hovering in the sky. It seems that these islands have an inherent effect on the mana pool network.

The Water will communicate to all adventurers in whatever way possible that they are strongly advised to visit the islands above, if they seek answers. Those who pass near bodies of water on any island will likely hear the Water's quiet urging to do just that. Though even if they don't listen, there's every chance that they might end up there anyway!

So what are the islands up here like, this go around? Funny you should ask...

The Island of Stone This first island is the biggest of the five, and also the most central. It is the one you are most likely to end up upon if you travel here by accident. Much of it is comprised of a terrain of earth and stone. The upper clouds frequently gust through the area, lending it a strange and otherworldly look.

Immediately behind the mana pool, travelers will see a large carving mounted on a stone dais. It appears to be in the shape of a bear, carved from oak wood. Its eyes are set with a pair of emeralds. Below it is written a name: ZEMJIN.

On this island, travelers will find what essentially amounts of a great deal of building blocks. Almost all of them are different types of earth and rock - from sandstone to fired clay to granite to obsidian to even some of your less common materials, such as iron or titanium or gold - and a great variety of sizes and shapes.

Each of these blocks defy ordinary size and weight restraints; as long as they remain on the island, virtually anyone can pick them up and move them around as you please, regardless of how much you should be capable of lifting. You can build tall structures of diamond or small huts from marble - the only limit is your imagination!

Well, that and reason. If any of your building materials fall off the island, they'll almost immediately dissipate into nothingness. However, there's nothing stopping you from building a bridge to another island...and that'd work, too.

The Island of Color This island is one of the most striking, as once one sets foot on it, they will note that it's almost entirely devoid of color. At least, all the solid parts of it are. The island hosts broad boulders, grassy meadows, beautiful trees...but they're all in shades of gray and white, save for the spot just behind the mana pool.

There, travelers will see a small statue mounted on a stone dais. It appears to be in the shape of a seal, a delicate shape made from expertly carved and polished sunstone. All around it, bright golden marigold flowers are in full bloom. Below it is written a name: JARUSKA.

Further inspection reveals that the island isn't entirely colorless. In fact, all over the island, one can find deep wells that look as though they might contain water. Instead, they contain color, in every shade imaginable. One simply has to lower the bucket into the well, concentrating on the color they'd like to see, and when hoisting it up, they'll find it filled to the brim with it. The wells are lined with buckets and primitive, oddly skeletal tools with which one can use to decorate this island to their heart's desire.

Fill in the empty outlines! Use inks and powders to breathe new life into this monochrome land! The entire space is your blank canvas, and you don't even have to indulge in conventionality - you can very well make the grass pink and the trees blue if you like.

The only real drawback is the capacity of these colors to stain. They're rather inconveniently bright and tend to glow, and only sustained scrubbing will remove them. The color tends to bleed into whatever you touch, if you don't do a thorough enough job of washing all that away, even if you depart this place.

What's more? You can use these colors to paint new structures into place. You can paint new trees, new flowers, new anything of any color you like. Such as, say...a bridge to another island.

The Island of Stars This island is among the most striking, and will probably be quite visible from a distance. Once one sets foot upon it, it'll be obvious why: the landscape here looks like an inverted night sky. The ground is a deep, swirled pool of blues and purples and blacks, stippled with bright pinpricks. It looks very much like you're standing on the night sky itself.

Immediately behind the mana pool, travelers will see a small statue mounted on a stone dais. It is in the shape of a turtle, an artfully crafted likeness made from the deep indigo blue of polished iolite. Thready blooms of red-and-green tillandsia sprout about it in colorful abandon. Below it is written a name: TSAMAYAR.

All around this island, twisting pathways, roads, and tunnels unravel in and around the starry landscape. Some are simplistic, and look like they are made of ordinary (if strangely celestial) gravel. Others are made of dark, paved stone. Still others look a little like they're cobbled with fancier materials, such as polished obsidian or marble.

And all over, you'll be able to find a vast collection of rather primitive but nonetheless fully functional bicycles, scooters, skateboards, and other forms of self-powered travel. And unlike any of the other islands, if you manage to get these vehicles off the island somehow, and back to Ensō fully intact? You can keep them.

It's no Rainbow Road, but it can make for a beautiful place to ride a bike, take a load off, and simply take in the sights. And, at some point, you might realize that you recognize some of the stars set into the ground. Maybe some of them are constellations you know. And what could that mean, exactly...?

The Island of Webs The final island is the most mysterious, and potentially the most off-putting. It's thick with mist and fog, and almost everything is dead and black, as though all of its color has been sapped away. Only this place doesn't have any colorful pools of ink and dyes to bring luster and life back to its scenery; it is simply bereft.

Immediately behind the mana pool, travelers will see a small statue mounted on a stone dais. It appears to be in the delicate likeness of a spider that has been carved from the rainbow blue-greens of labradorite. All around the statue, heavy twines of ivy have climbed up along the dais and threaded around the spider's legs. Below it is written a name: OSORU.

The most obvious and probably unnerving aspect of this island are the thick webs that hang from almost every surface. Almost everything is draped in limp, dead trailings of a whitish material that seems almost silklike. It isn't sticky; travelers can touch and handle it easily, to no ill effect. More unsettling is likely to be the buildings that can be found on this place - for they are all almost certainly ones that many of you will recognize.

The Storyteller's Temple. Chunks of the city of Ai'tuoh. A windmill from Nuidan. Parts of the sunken city of Tempide, and so many others. All structures that were found in LifeAftr in varying stages of ruin - now in pristine condition. They look as neat and tidy as if they were just constructed, though all are empty.

Perhaps even worse is the fact that those weblike strands seem to have a life of their own. As the days progress, they start to slither toward the island's very edge, straining to try and reach the other islands. You can help them, if you wish, by building or painting bridges between those islands and this one. Because, as it happens, this appears to be what this place wants more than anything - to draw all these separate pieces together, into one cohesive whole.

If you wish to fully uncover the secrets of this island, please let us know if you are interested in NPC interaction in the subject line of your top-level.

Your Eyes are Shining in the Glittering Light

Of course, there's a lot going on in the background as well. You're free to use this log as a catch-all for the duration of February's Undercurrent Event, as well as any of the other minor events listed on our Monthly Rundown post. And, of course, you are always free to create your own individual logs and posts as needed.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them over on the Questions header on our Monthly Rundown post!

February Timeline

[ ♆ ] February 1st: "Free Real Estate" begins and lasts until February 5th
[ ♆ ] February 3rd: "Behind the Curtain" begins and lasts until February 15th
[ ♆ ] February 6th: "No Yan is an Island" begins and lasts until February 12th
[ ♆ ] February 13th: "A Rainbow, Not a Painbow" begins and lasts until February 29th
[ ♆ ] February 16th: "The Sound Resounds" begins and lasts until February 27th

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Right...

But you mentioned the Storyteller remained a god. That they had more power. Is that the only reason they remained one?

Because they are not a memory. They are here in actuality.
One of the few who are.

Them and who else?

Which gods stayed?

"Stayed" is not the term I would use. "Left," perhaps. Abandoning a decaying world to form their own shadow of what it was. The effort was headed by the three in charge...Phantasos, Inuro, and Mnerim were the only three who truly desired it.

I see...

[ He takes a moment to think the words over. It's all interesting, of course. Had he and others not been brought here against their will and made to suffer through a chaos of almost unbelievable situations, he would be happy to sit here and chat for days. ]

So they are just...somewhere else? Out in their own made up world?

Of the three I mentioned? I believe it fair to say that Phantasos and Inuro are quite dead.

[They say this with very little emotion. It is matter-of-fact. If it distresses them to say this, it does not show.]

Oh.

[ Well, then.

We're onto fully dead gods now. Alright. ]

What exactly killed them?

The cataclysm that ripped the world asunder destroyed most of the pantheon. This I know and remember. I was there.

[They address this with just as little emotion as they did before, direct and to the point.]

But the other two...they died in the process of calling LifeAftr into being. The result of conflict with those gods that would oppose them, and the sacrifice of creating a memory of a world such as this one.

[ He listens very carefully, quiet. He has no idea how long they’ve been talking for, but it will be another while before he remembers to check.]

Are they the reason we’re all here, then?

[ Then he pauses, and poses a more concerning concept.]

Are we in danger by those who opposed them?

Phantasos is the reason you are here. It was Mu that was used to usher this current state of the world into being. Though Phantasos perished, their will persists. Mu believed, correctly, that Mnerim has grown lonely, and so it drew forth others to alleviate this.

[As for danger, well...]

That rather depends on which philosophy you oppose more.

[ Those are...a lot of names. A pantheon, as mentioned, and a lot of information all at once. He's keeping up as he can, but when they imply that they're here to keep a god company, it's hard not to feel...well, disposable. Not that that changes absolutely anything he was feeling before. ]

You mean to say we were taken out of our own worlds to...keep them company?

I believe that was the original intention. But this was raw emotion being filtered through something that was no longer truly alive, and no longer truly dead.

[ So, an undead lonely god. He's not sure that makes him feel all that better about it.

He falters on saying anything else. There's frustration there, sure, and a fair bit of confusion, but he doesn't really think there's much more that than be demanded of a memory- a ghost.

Plus, there's a lot to say about emotion and power and higher beings. ]

That's a bit... [ But he falters again. ]

Does Mu hold the answers for our escape, then?

In a manner of speaking. Mu was the gateway through which you entered. It can be the gateway through which you depart, as well.

How? [ That's the crux of it, isn't it? He doesn't hope for much of an answer on this, but he has to try. ]

It sensed loneliness. Even after their death, Phantasos has only ever wanted what is best for one of their dearest friends.

Mu is a land of dreams. It takes things and it forms them into reality. And yet, it cannot fabricate something from nothing...and so it borrowed from other worlds, instead.

[ He makes a bit of a face, taking a moment to think.

His first instinct is to accept the answer for what it is, go back and try to parse it with Crowley and other island residents. And he almost has the urge to just go then, but something keeps him there.

He only falters for a second, tone even.]

But that doesn't answer the question, does it?

It may have borrowed us, but how does it put us back?

If you are asking how you wish to return to your homes, I should think the answer would be obvious. You must unmake this world, so as to untether yourselves from it.

[ That...that's a concept. ]

We must...unmake it?

End it?

[ Oh good Lord, not this again. ]

Perhaps it would be a sort of end from your perspective. From mine, there has already been an end. As an analogy: a story that goes on forever without end is no story at all, and sooner or later, someone must close the book.

[The world is living on borrowed time as it is.]

[ He's been through a supposed End before. He was...against it.

Oh, how ironic.

For a long moment, he falters. He has to go back, tell Crowley, tell others. But- something keeps him from just running off. Because he's learned to ask.]

How do we know this is going to work?

I suppose you don't. You may trust that what I say is true...but you have plenty of reason not to. It comes down to what you are willing to risk, and which outcome is more desirable.

[ What they're willing to risk?

What do people have to risk anymore, if they don't belong here? Friendships, maybe. Whatever life they made here. Maybe their actual, literal life.

This isn't enough. But it's more than he expected. ]

...right. Yes--hum. [ He clears his throat, tense. ] Thank you, for answering my questions.

[The spider dips their body in something like a vague little bow.]

I hope the answers I had to give were to your satisfaction.

[ That's a bit of a tight smile, but it's not like he's going to blame the ghost of a dead spider.

He nods. ]

Yes. Thank you again.

I'll, hum...be going now.

[ And off he goes, with plenty of new information spinning around in his head, and not a lot of it very inspiring. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

February Undercurrent: Behind the Curtain

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