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aftr_ooc2017-07-04 10:46 pm
lifeaftr_mods) wrote in aftr_ooc2017-07-04 10:46 pm
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TEST DRIVE MEME ( 001 )
Test Drive Meme #1
Hello, and welcome to our very first test drive! We’re pleased that you’re expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.
Remember that Reserves will open on July 17th and that Applications will open on July 24th, in preparation for the game’s official opening on August 3rd!
But first, two important notes!
Remember that Reserves will open on July 17th and that Applications will open on July 24th, in preparation for the game’s official opening on August 3rd!
1. The island of Mu exists apart from the real world and possesses a dream-like quality that characters are innately aware of from the moment they appear on its shores. No need to panic or fret. Dreams are odd things, after all - and anything can happen in them. Why would anyone question where their mind chooses to wander in its sleep?
2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but can be accepted as game canon as well. In fact, certain choices your character makes in Mu have the potential to bear in-game consequences.
Shipwrecked
The white sand of the beach ridges the island’s edge, even if the clear water soon becomes murky the further out you look across the horizon until the turquoise gleam of the tide disappears in a coil of surrounding fog. Indeed, your best prospects may very well be to strike out among the trees or the crags looming out over the foam-capped waves. There’s lumber to be found and made from the palm-like trees, potentially fruit or edible tubers of some kind if you forage about some. The further you travel, however, the more of your surroundings will reveal themselves in a steady unspooling of curiosities.
One corner of Mu’s current construct drops away into a sheer cliff, initially too dangerous to brave for all but the more daredevilish, but if one starts to scan the sharp rocks below, you might catch sight of what appears to be sodden planks of wood - a wreckage tossed up against the rocks. And a little further...a bobbing, shattered wreck of a lifeboat’s remains, potentially bearing supplies that might yet be salvageable.
Fashion what you can from the wood and stone around you or scavenge from the ruin of the land, if you like. But you can’t simply stand around and wait forever. It’s going to get dark sometime - and if a creature of unknown terror doesn’t catch you, the elements surely will.
Storytime
There’s a sense of camaraderie in this cove, you think. As the sun hangs low over the horizon, the world cast into orange hues, long shadows dispersed by roaring fires that dot across the beach.
That’s right, folks: it’s storytime.
There’s no one to preside over this meeting of the minds in Mu. Call it a vague recreation of things to come, if you like, some vaguely fatidic dreamlike state where you may find yourself drawn to the heat and company that awaits you by the fire. And from there, compelled to default to that old instinct that most of intelligent civilization has revered since they were advanced enough to paint geometric shapes on cave walls.
You tell a story.
Perhaps it’s a tragedy, a tale of woe and of personal loss. Perhaps it’s the sort of thing you’d break out after a few rounds of your alcoholic beverage of choice, clapping hands to your knees as you try to bite back your mirth long enough to spill the punchline. Perhaps it’s an adventure of some sort, some unbelievable rendition of your past exploits. The only common thread to be had, as those gathered around the fire share their tales, is the fundamental rule of a ritualistic sharing of stories such as this: its truth.
But how one chooses to define "truth" is, in its own way, another story entirely...
Dance, Sucker, Dance!
The beat of your heart in your chest is difficult to ignore. It judders with a pulsing, rhythmic quality. If you’re one of those that lacks a heart, the beat is still omnipresent and all-encompassing, until your entire body is unwittingly bobbing in time to a metronomic tune that seems ingrained into your very soul. It’s inescapable. You can’t seem to move unless it’s in time to the rhythm that’s now singing in every atom of your being.
But rest assured, you’re not alone in this musical curse. Everything, from the swaying trees to the waves against the beach, jumps in time to the music. And so do the monsters approaching you, that - wait a minute.
Monsters?
Oh, yes. Did we mention those?
It seems you’ve encountered the wrath of the Boogieman, who curses you to only dance to his infernal beat. If you wish to best him, you’ll have to either evade or destroy the blobs of greenish slime that serve as his minions, all in time to the hard beat of the tune in your head. Clear the radius of his curse or risk an open confrontation, if you dare. Don’t worry if you look foolish; chances are anyone else caught in the Boogieman’s thrall feels just the same.
Mu isn’t pulling any punches to start with. It is a flighty creation, after all, and seems to revel in displacing people into new and uncomfortable situations.
( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )
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I'm not very good at lying either.
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[Muffet isn't human and won't pretend to be- it wouldn't be all that believable if she tried. But she's spent enough time around them running her business and living on the Surface that she's picked up a few things here and there, even if she doesn't actually know who Aristotle is, specifically. Although, perhaps it was rude of her to assume the young lady was human? She certainly looks it, but this has been a very strange place- perhaps sometimes you can't tell...]
Still, I won't tell you how to live- doubtless you've got more experience with your life than I do.
Perhaps you can turn that into a strength? If you're bad at lying, think of something very interesting you remember, and tell us about it with your honest and accurate nature.
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[ She folds her hands on her lap. Talking about the past was bittersweet. She didn't regret what brought her to this point, but she finds herself dwelling all the same. There were so many things she wanted to do. The hum of destiny pulls at her still.
And there was one person . . . one person she would give anything to see again. ]
I'm glad people can talk about their lives. Bring them as stories. I just don't know if I can.
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What about you?
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People tend to prefer stories about warriors to those about bakers, I think. I enjoy running my business, but somehow I don't see the time I almost burned a cake ever becoming the stuff of epic poetry.
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It may not be as epic as some of the others, but I'm sure it would still be interesting.
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That's very sweet of you to say, dearie. When it comes to stories, I think most of what I can recall is either old history or older fairytales.
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[ Well. Until they became alarmingly real to her. ]
So I kinda maybe made up a fairytale. Oops?
[She closes her eyes and recites slowly, with the air of someone carefully reaching into the back shelves of their mind and dusting off old memories.]
This is a story I was told when I was still just a hatchling, and the one who told me heard it when she was just as young, and on backwards, so no one is alive now who can say whether it was false or true.
But even if we don't know what is true, we can know what is said:
They say that once there was a village by a river. The river was calm and gentle in the fall, but it was wild and raging every spring. When it raged, it could smash houses and drown men, but it left behind rich mud and fertile soil once it passed.
The villagers were farmers, and could not afford to leave behind their only source of income, nor build farther away from the danger. Everyone spent their lives trying to stay above the water, building higher and higher...
Except for one who lived beneath it.
In the river lived a little water spider- small and swift enough to dash across the top of the water, deft and delicate enough to spin silk around bubbles of air, and take them down under the water to breathe.
She rarely spoke to her neighbors above the water, being easily overlooked, but one day she was out walking and heard a woman weeping. Curious, she approached and saw one of the village girls sitting on the riverbank, crying bitterly.
"Why do you cry into the river?" she asked. "Surely, it is the last place in need of water."
"It is near spring," the girl sobbed. "This river is too hungry, too cruel- the spring before it took my brother. The spring before that one, it took my father. And still, we will go even hungrier than these waters if we leave, so I wait for this spring, knowing in my heart it will take me."
The spider was surprised to find herself sympathetic to the girl- she had thought herself solitary by nature, but something about her made her wish to give her comfort.
So she resolved to tame what had always been wild.
"Listen to me," the spider told her. "I can keep the waters from ever again taking anything you do not choose to offer- but you and all your village must cast into the waters whatever I ask of you."
The girl was suspicious and confused, but she agreed. What did she have to lose? The rest of the village was less thrilled to find that she had bargained on their behalf, but they too were tired of feeding the hungry waters, and agreed to try.
The next morning, a voice whispered from the river:
"Take the heaviest thing in your possession, and cast it into the river."
Puzzled but hopeful, the villagers obeyed. They gave up to the waters large tables and old stones and one very big box. No one saw the spider that night.
Again, the next morning, she whispered from the waters:
"Take the longest thing in your possession, and cast it into the river."
Again, the villagers obeyed. They gave up to the waters dusty brooms and rusty pitchforks and one very spindly lamp.
Still, the spider did not appear.
Finally, on the third morning, she whispered from the waters:
"Take the widest thing in your possession, and cast it into the river."
Once more, the villagers obeyed.
All but one.
One man refused to trust the spider. "Why does she not appear, and speak to us in person? I tell you that this girl is a thief. She is like a spider, for she has spun you all a story, weaving her lies to rob you of your possessions, that she may swim down and steal them in the night."
He refused to give up anything that was his own to the waters. The villagers went home that night troubled.
The next morning, spring began.
The villagers heard the rushing and the rumbling that always came before an angry river, a warning that gave them enough time to dread but not enough to run.
But the water did not come for them.
Astonished, they rushed outside and saw the untamable waters tamed. The spider had woven together all their belongings, weaving in and out and around them with her own silk to form a massive wall, hoisted up to bar the river's passage.
It did not seek to bar the river entirely. Rather, it had carefully-positioned gaps, made to let the water through in safe places and guide it to where it would not do harm.
But there was one gap that should not have been there.
On the inside curve of the wall, a spot that could have been blocked by something wide risked to let the water through to the village.
And it that spot, threads twined and knotted around all eight of her limbs, was the spider, holding it closed by strength alone.
By nightfall, the water had all come through safely. The villagers, finally daring to approach the woven wall, rushed over to the water spider and found her drowned and dead.
All wept, until quietly the girl who had listened to the spider approached her body. She cried not, for she had given her tears to the waters, and would not ask for them back.
Softly, she turned the spider's body over in her hands... and found, tied against her chest, a bundle of spider eggs.
The girl declared that she would take her friend's children into her household, and raise them well. She grew to be a woman stronger than many and wiser than most, and all her children made the village very proud, whether they walked on two legs or many more.
[Finally, Muffet takes a deep breath and looks at Pyrrha again, smiling softly.]
And while none who know the truth of this are living now, it is said that they were all happy while they lived.
The end.
oh wow <3
That was lovely. Thank you.
Thank you :D
I can't vouch for the story's historical accuracy, but it's nice to think that my people got along well with humans once.
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[ Pyrrha fights the Grimm because she has to. Because that's her calling, but there's no rage or anger motivating her to do so. ]
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Maybe. But I like to think those stories are alive too.
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[ Pyrrha doesn't know what she'd do if she was forgotten. A meaningless footnote. ]
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Another way one could say that is that what is loved, lives. Some stories are more famous than others- but very few are not loved, by someone, somewhere.
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I don't think anyone knew me well enough for that.
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[ She was famous though Pyrrha knows fame can come and go at a moment's notice. Loving Jaune had been easy even though she had kept that part to herself. Her friends had cared for her and she never doubted that.
But right now, she doesn't know. All she knows is that her life is over. ]
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[Muffet reaches out gently, not touching her, just one hand held out as an offer, should she choose to take it. She has no idea what this girl's been through, but it's easy to see that something is hurting her on a deep level.]
Whatever else has happened, it is not happening now. Whatever else will happen, it is not happening now. Right now, you are sitting here, and you have time.
Take the time you need. Nothing's resting on your shoulders right now, not just yet. You don't need to come to an answer right away- you can rest for a bit, and think things over. It will come in time.
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Yes. It'll come to me.
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If you want, we can just sit and listen to the fire for a while. There's something restful in a warm night, looking at the stars.
[She doesn't know this girl, and she's always been more the type to look out for friends and family, ignoring the rest of the world... but they've all washed up on this island together. If they don't help each other, who will? It's not much, but hopefully it'll be something to start with, whatever she's struggling with.]
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[ Her smile is tentative and looks close to cracking, but Pyrrha holds herself together. ]
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