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

1. Mana Pool

[The rocky, unforgiving coastline that the mana pool sits next to is as different from the soft white sand beaches of Ragna as Mikumo is from someone like Bogue Con-Vaart of Windermere. It reminds her a bit of being on... Voldor, what with all the plant life around her. She reaches up to make sure she doesn't have cat ears on her head or the stripes on her face that she wore on that planet.

When she can't find them, she puts her hand in front of her face and speaks directly into her nails.]

Delta Flight, are you there? Major Johnson? [No response is coming in and the long-haired woman frowns.] Kaname? Is anyone around?

[Annoyed, Mikumo gives up and tries to activate the holographic projections of her battle outfit. Walking around with nude colored clothes isn't exactly her idea of a good time, but she's still covered. Not... that that bothers her either. She's walked around Ragna (where she's rather well-known) in the buff, and her current clothes cover everything just fine. Except, the thing doesn't power up any more than her tech nails. Or her microphone.

Nothing is working and she can't reach her group or any part of Xaos. This is bad. This is really bad. Where the hell is she that none of her tech is responding? It's the best tech in the damn system. She hasn't noticed the pack with her name on it yet.

Looking around, she sees the statues, the pool, the rocks and the swamp ahead, and none of it is familiar. None. Of. It.]

Have I been kidnapped again? I'd rather this not become a pattern.

2. Statues

[Because Mikumo is a grown up, she goes and stands in front of the creepy statues everywhere and stares down at them with a scowl.]

What are you looking at? I normally charge for that, you know.

[She doesn't, but it's something she's heard Makina say before and it seems appropriate.]

3. Candyplants

[After she's tired of playing chicken with the statues everywhere, Mikumo sighs heavily. Her stomach has started growling loudly and she can't really remember the last time she had anything to eat.]

Before I was captured?

[Her voice is a bit of a bitter mutter as she moves towards the patches of flora away from the coast. The bright colors of the flowers remind her of...jackfruit?]

Please be edible!

[She's not wasting time as she pulls the plants up and starts chomping on it like she hasn't eaten in ages. Don't judge her.]

4. Wildcard

[Wanna fight the giant snake? Wanna have the idol help you do something? I'm down. Hit me up on plurk at

makochan or on discord at makotosagara#9497 for plotting times!]

[It's not a surprise to see new faces dotting the island as she ambles along. It's par the course anymore and the arrival of a new land tends to signify new people as well.

But watching them never gets old.

And watch she does, from her little section in the candyflower grove, as she pulls different looking 'fruits' from the vine to shove straight into her bag. All it took was a single bite of this weird stuff for her to just decide, yes, she's going to hoard it. As much as she can. ]

It tastes very good-it's okay. You can eat it.

[Mikumo pauses in her very disgraceful attempt to shove as much of the sweet plants into her mouth. They taste like jackfruit and pineapples and a few other fruits that she can't place. But they're good and she's starving.

However, she's also used to a certain public image and being caught like this is embarrassing. ~~If she was naked, that would be fine, but not this.~~ Taking a moment to chew what's in her mouth, Mikumo then stuffs more of the plants into the sack she eventually found with her name on it down by the mana pool.]

They're not half bad. [Certainly nothing like the strict diet that Lady M made her keep or the sea spiders that Reina and Makina gave her on Windermere.] What're you doing here?

I'm playing and eating.

[It's probably all too obvious she's not here to do any real work or assist. There's a lot of manual labor required to clean out the mana pool and areas further out are too dangerous, so-

Here she is.]

When you're done playing and eating, I can show you how to get back to Enso.

[Mikumo bristles at this child talking to her like this. How indignant!]

I'm not—

[But it takes too much to be angry at a child when she's too hungry and worried to be much of a diva. Just yet.]

What do you mean, back to Enso? I arrived here at the place with the creepy statues and the burned stones.

[She doesn't understand why Mikumo's getting frustrated. They're all essentially eating and playing here. Unless she's one of those people who wants to fight creatures too, but Ren's not gonna give her the intel on that if she doesn't have to. No fighting, please.]

The other island isn't 'creepy'-that's our home. That's where we live. This one won't be here forever, so that's why you need to know that kind of thing.

[No, she would rather not fight at all. At least not with any creatures. Actually, no, scratch that. She just wants to go home.]

What do you mean that it won't be here forever? Does the water come and swallow up all the lands without trying?

Mikumo Guynemer ♫ OTA

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