The Mods of LifeAftr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lifeaftr_mods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
aftr_ooc2017-07-04 10:46 pm
lifeaftr_mods) wrote in aftr_ooc2017-07-04 10:46 pm
Entry tags:
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 )
Shiro Fujimoto | Blue Exorcist
Shipwrecked
[There were quite a few unexpected surprises in this weird place, the most obvious ones being 'holy shit I'm alive' and 'holy shit my body isn't broken beyond repair'. That had been quite the shock to wake up to, because he had definitely been expecting to end up in Hell.
Well, this still could have been Hell, but it didn't look like it so far. Unless this was one of those 'trapped in your own personal Hell' kind of deals and Shiro hadn't yet found the thing that made this hellish for him. He decided to not wait around for some demons with pitchforks to show up and taunt him, though, and instead focused on the act of surviving. Because, even if he was dead, his body still apparently needed food and rest.
That's fine. Shiro can make this work.
On that particular day, Shiro can be found raiding the shipwreck for supplies. Anything he finds in there is bound to be better than what he had managed to come up with on his own, or so he thinks. But when he sees a person approaching, he decides to give them a fair warning:]
Hey there! I don't mind sharing, but you're gonna have to do your fair share of the work.
[There are exactly three people in the world that are allowed to mooch off of Shiro's kindness, and none of them are there. At least, they shouldn't have been. If they were, Shiro would have been very upset.]
Storytime
[OH BOY STORIES
At least this is something Shiro can do. He's told bedtime stories for years, making up stories comes easily to him. Shiro sits on a log and waits for his turn, and when it finally comes up he grins and rubs his hands together in preparation.]
Alright kids, take your pick: adventure, comedy, or romance?
[He is so ready for this.]
Storytime
Romance......
[ said Marcille, eyeing the old man (was he old? It was so hard to estimate human ages) with no small amount of visible trepidation. ]
no subject
Romance it is!
Once upon a time there was a young girl who lived in an herbal shop. It had been in the family for many generations, so many that it was difficult to count. The girl was happy to live there, tending to the plants and helping her mother with the customers that visited day in and day out. It was a secluded life for her- she never left the grounds of the shop, not even once- but she was happy. All of the visitors had great stories to tell, and she learned so much about the outside world from the tales she heard. She never had any reason to want for something more.
But then one day, a regular customer brought his son with him to the shop. You see, the boy was from a family of doctors, and he was at that age to begin his own training. That meant learning where to buy all of the ingredients for his medicines, which meant traveling with his father to that very herbal shop. And as soon as that girl saw that boy for the first time, she knew things were going to change. Because in that instant, she fell head-over-heels in love with him.
[Okay, he's exaggerating that part just a little bit, but Shiemi's reaction to seeing Yukio for the first time had been absolutely hilarious and made for a great story.
He pauses there for a moment, clearly not done with his story but still wanting to gauge Marcille's reaction to it.]
no subject
That's a rough position to be in. I mean, you can't favor one customer over the others, or people will question your professionalism.
At least she didn't fall for an adventurer... but her parents should've seen it coming. Especially if she only ever saw customers anyway. Who else was she going to fall in love with?
...Oh, maybe that was the plan? Since their businesses overlap, maybe it was all a plot to pool their resources!
[ Parents were crafty things, man. ]
no subject
Maybe! It's hard to know for sure. Maybe the shop owner and the doctor conspired to make them meet under favorable circumstances.
[They did not, Shiro actually hadn't expected the two of them to go all doe-eyed like they had. Though honestly, there were far worse girls Yukio could have crushed on, so he was okay with this.]
But in any case, the boy and the girl were fast friends, and every time the boy came in to the shop to buy ingredients he always took extra time to talk with the girl. It was a fine arrangement, given how frequently the doctor and his son had to stop in for ingredients, but it only worked for so long.
Many years later, when the girl and boy had grown into young adults, the boy came to the shop with some bad news. He had to go away for his work, and he didn't know how long he would be gone, or if he would even be able to come back at all. He didn't want to leave the girl, he loved her just as much as she loved him, but there were people who needed a doctor and he had to answer their call.
So on his last visit to the store, he asked the girl to marry him and come away with him. That way they could be together, no matter where they went. The girl was overjoyed at the proposal, and she was almost ready to accept, but just before she spoke the words a glimmer of light caught her eye. It was one of the many bottles of ingredients that were kept in the store, the store that would be hers one day, when her mother became too old to work. If she accepted that proposal, then she would be with the man she loved, but she would never be able to go back to her home again.
Instead of accepting, the girl went out to the gardens and picked some mint leaves, which she wrapped carefully in a bundle and gave to the boy. 'I cannot go with you,' she said, 'but take these, and think of me any time you are lonely.'
The boy was sad, but he accepted the bundle, and he left.
[He's still not quite done with the story, since it doesn't have the happy ending yet, but he pauses again to see her reaction. And also to think of an actual happy ending to this, because now he's getting into the territory of 'things that haven't actually happened'.]
no subject
[ Marcille made a face. Not that she particularly claimed to be an expert on human romances, but they were pretty big on that love at first sight thing, as she recalled. Probably they were going to rebound and the boy was going to come back (happy ending), or he was going to die out on some quest or other and the girl would be left holding the emotional bill (less happy ending). ]
Hey, did you skip something? Like the significance of the mint? Wouldn't rosemary have been better, since it represents rememberance?
no subject
[There's a reason he chose mint in this story, after all.]
Months pass, and months turn into years. The girl eventually inherits the shop from her mother, and she continues to serve her regular visitors. But in all that time, not once did she see that boy she had fallen in love with.
Then one summer day, the girl was out in her gardens, picking various herbs and seeds to put up for sale in her shop. As she stopped by the mint plants, she picked a leaf and inhaled the scent, letting her thoughts drift to the memories of that boy. She missed him dearly, and she wished that she could see him again, just one more time.
"I'm here," a familiar voice called, and the girl could've sworn that she had imagined that voice. But when she opened her eyes, she saw the boy- now an accomplished doctor- standing there in her garden. And in his hands was the bundle of mint she had given him all those years ago.
[And there's the ending there, a much happier one than 'they never saw each other again.' It's a little plain, kinda predictable, but Shiro isn't exactly that creative of a person. He tried his best though.]
no subject
At least he hadn't ended up dead somehow from not using the gift. ]
Hold it, pops! That's not the end of it, is there? I mean, that's a whole lot of time skipped between mint-gifting and mint-reception!
'I'm here'? What kind of line is that? And didn't he remember to write all that time? Maybe she should've broken a pot of mint over his head and jogged his memory!
no subject
[It is absolutely full of plot holes and not that great. He's used to telling stories to literal children who don't notice them.]
And you try thinking of something great to say after a reunion like that. People get dumbstruck all the time.
no subject
[ Marcille put her hand to her face, rubbing at her temple. ]
Arrrgh, fine. I've got a story, too. Once upon a time, there was an idiot ranger who decided he was hungry in the middle of a magical dungeon. So he had a bright idea: waltz into some magical paintings and eat the food there.
It didn't work and he almost died, even thought I clearly warned him it was a bad idea. The end!
no subject
[His tone is light and amused as he says that, though.]
no subject
[ She grabbed a long stick and poked at the edge of the bonfire. ]
And we ended up wasting a bunch of time we could have spent getting to the next level down. Honestly!
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
Storytime (casually flies in here late)
Even so. They don't quite appreciate the phrase, wrinkling their nose at the last option provided. Chara wouldn't speak up at all; except if they don't, they may wind up stuck listening to a tale of a love that triumphs over all.]
Adventure, if you please.
[If you sneak romance into it anyway, they're leaving.]
no subject
Adventure, hmm? Well I know just the thing.
Many years ago, there was a young man who hunted ghosts. Well, 'hunted' probably isn't the best word, because he didn't exactly go out killing ghosts or anything. More like, he would find places where ghosts were causing problems, and he would try to figure out why the ghosts were being disruptive. Usually it involved unfinished business, and the ghosts were happy to have a hand in being put to rest. But occasionally, the ghosts causing trouble had more insidious plans.
So this man, he went to a snowy village, chasing rumors of an ashura. Those are kinda like ghosts, but with a bit more power than a usual ghost, so they can be a bit of a headache to deal with. Especially when they decide to cause mischief. But when he tracked down the source of the trouble, he found that it wasn't an ashura, but rather a wild little girl, one that had clearly been raised by wolves or something. She was definitely a troublemaker, but she seemed to take a liking to the young man, so he decided to take care of her for a bit. After all, it wasn't right for a little kid to go running around in the woods with nobody to look after her.
But it wasn't that simple. See, the girl had been alone in the forest for a reason: a powerful spirit had laid claim to her, and intended to make her his bride when she was old enough. Now this girl was like 6, so this obviously wouldn't do at all.
So the young man, he told the spirit "let her travel with me, so that she may learn more about the world and come back to you as a smart bride." Of course, he had no intentions of giving the girl back to this spirit. He just wanted to get her far away from him. And it worked: the spirit agreed, but told the girl to return before her thirtieth birthday.
[He pauses for a moment, gauging Chara's reaction. Are they interested by it?]
no subject
Interesting topic for a story to start with, however. Chara rests their head on folded arms, smiling at the mention of ghosts and Ashura-- which likely isn't the response such things are supposed to garner.
The name is very charming, what can they say?]
Undoubtedly putting a crimp in the man's plans. What sort of loophole did he come across, or was her fate truly sealed?
no subject
He found a very simple one, actually! The reason for the deadline was that, if she had not married him by the time she was 30, she was free to go. Of course, nobody mentioned that to the girl, the man had to find that out on his own much later. But once he knew that, he came up with a plan.
The spirit was very powerful and had a large kingdom that he controlled, but the man was able to take the girl well outside of that kingdom. And with her far away from that spirit's reach, he couldn't demand that she be returned! So all they had to do was wander the world well outside of that spirit's land, and she would be safe.
And that pair, they had quite a few adventures together. The man took her in as a student and trained her in how to help spirits and ghosts, and she became an excellent ghost hunter, just like him. They spent many years traveling the world, taking care of ghosts and making it safe for the living. And when the man eventually died, just a little bit before the girl's 30th birthday, he told her something very, very, very important.
[He leans in a little, like it is a huge secret he is about to tell.
"Live."
no subject
interested. In the protagonist. In the girl, led away from a life that was not her own, out into a wider world full of potential. To learn, to hunt ghosts. What isn't said leaves plenty of room for their own imagination to take flight, pondering the many adventures the two may have gone through.
And then he dies. Which is the only ending one can expect, really.]
...Did she?
You never mentioned if she was aware of the loophole in the agreement with the spirit.
shipwrecked!
[ Testament walks so he isn't standing behind the human and lightly kicks aside some pieces of the wreck, half-heartedly. He's not looking for treasure, but perhaps something that would be able to tell him where on a map this island, Enzo is, exactly. ]
no subject
Alright, more supplies for me then.
/slides in here
no subject
After I tell it, you gotta tell me how you got those things.
no subject
That's right! After you tell me the story, I'll tell you about these!
no subject
[Now he has to come up with a good story, crap. And his love life is shit, he doesn't have very many good stories to draw upon.
Well, there's ONE happy ending he knows of.]
Once there was a naive young man who was too afraid to speak out against his father. He didn't always agree with what his father said, but he would always silently obey. He didn't want to be kicked out of the home, and he didn't want to lose his position as 'son of the mayor', because this was a long time ago when towns were ruled over by families instead of being elected. He thought he could endure it until his father died, and that everything would be alright.
But one day, many people in his town began to fall ill. His pregnant wife was among those who were sick, and the man wanted to call for a doctor. His father, however, thought that the illness was a result of a demon poisoning the town, and that if everyone prayed enough the demon would go away. He refused to call for a doctor, and the son didn't dare go against his father's wishes. So he prayed, and he prayed, and he prayed.
Then one day, a doctor happened to come by the town completely on accident. He needed a place to stay for the night, but the mayor wanted to kick him out. Instead, the son let the doctor hide in an unused house for the night, but told him to leave at first light. He warned the doctor of the strange illness that had befallen the townspeople, and told him that he would get sick too if he stayed too long.
The doctor insisted on staying and helping the sick people, but the man told him that he shouldn't, and that the mayor wouldn't accept a doctor's help. When the doctor asked why, the man said that his father's word was law, and that he wouldn't dare damage his reputation by speaking out against him. So the doctor told him 'you can't move forward if you're afraid of getting your hands dirty'.
The doctor ended up sneaking away and treating the sick people anyway, but he was eventually caught. The mayor wanted to punish the doctor, but the man took one look at his now-healthy wife and realized that he had been wrong all along, that his reputation didn't mean anything if the people he loved were dead because of it. So the man rescued the doctor and helped him escape, saying 'a little dirt doesn't bother me, because at least it's not coming from my wife's grave'.
So, there you have it! Love conquers all, yada yada.
kuroshitsuji spoilers for the entire green witch arc. this is literally an ic history section.
He probably wasn't the mayor.]
That wasn't a very good romance story. It certainly wasn't good enough to earn the payment you asked for.
I'll tell you a story now, and see what you think afterwards. [There's a point to his story, and it isn't "love conquers all".]
There was a witch who was lord of a village. Her village was cut off from all the world around it by a vast, cursed forest poisoned by a choking miasma and guarded by werewolves. When anyone made it through the forest, the laws of the village required that they be turned away.
However, one day a group of strangers arrived in the village, late in the day. Had the lord turned them away, they would have been unable to make it out of the forest before night fell. Besides, there were no men allowed in the village except the lord's butler, and one of the strangers was a boy only two years older than the lord's age. [She's a romantic at heart, okay.]
... That very night, the werewolves attacked a villager, as punishment for the lord allowing the strangers to spend the night in her manor. [She looks guilty at that, enough that it's really probably not a secret that she was the lord in this story and still feels the weight of what happened.]
You see, the first Green Witch had run away into the forest during the witch hunts, and had formed a contract with the werewolves. She gave up her legs and began to work on a spell to create the miasma that the werewolves needed to survive, and the werewolves agreed not to attack the villagers. But allowing strangers into the village stretched the bounds of the contract.
Late that night, the boy and one of his companions snuck out of the witch's manor and into the forest on a mission of their own. They had come to the village to try and discover its secrets. They saw a werewolf and were cursed by it. Their skin blistered and their eyes and noses bled and the boy was driven mad. The curse was one that would kill any who were touched by it, unless the witch saved them.
Of course she did. [Of course she did.]
The werewolves kept attacking the villagers, despite every spell and ceremony that the witch employed to protect them. But the outsiders could not leave yet, for the boy was gravely ill, and the witch did not want to see him die. But neither did she wish to see more of her villagers injured or killed by the werewolves.
So she agreed to send the outsiders away, though it gave her great pain. The witch worked with all her might to complete the magic spell that would satisfy the werewolves and calm their anger. Unbeknownst to her, while she labored on her magic, the boy had recovered his mind and had begun to form a plan of his own. He knew that the lord's greatest desire was to see, for just a moment, the outside world, and that night he arrived at her window and offered to carry her away.
It was so romantic. [She adds, as a dreamy aside.
But now, the story gets serious, the magic fades and the history of the entire world changes.]
The boy led her underground, far below her manor. She was confused, for she had thought he was taking her to the outside world. But below her village were tunnels and pipes and large tanks full of mysterious substances. In one large room, the boy and the witch encountered a gathering of werewolves, and the boy tore off one of the werewolves' faces to reveal that they were simply men wearing masks.
There were no werewolves, no curses, and no witch.
The lord of the village had been deceived her whole life into believing she was creating a magical miasma to protect her village when instead she was developing a deadly gas for the army of the country to use against their enemies. For her whole life, everyone around her had known this, and had lied to her in order to keep her from the truth, in order to keep her in isolation so that she could focus her keen mind towards completing their project.
The boy took her away from that place, running with her into the forest where he offered her a choice. With a gun pressed against her head, he asked her what she wanted to do. Did she want to go to the outside world, where people would use her intellect and curiosity for their own ends, or did she want to simply die right there? [Sieglinde's gaze is distant, fixed on the fire as she remembers that night.]
She wanted to die. She had caused so much suffering in the world, and the gas she had created would cause so much more.
But then the boy spoke again. He said, "I thought that if you were able to create the ultimate poison, maybe you would also be able to create the ultimate medicine. It would be like magic."
Then again he asked her if she wanted to die to run away from the pain she had caused, or if she wanted to live and accept the challenge of helping the world.
[She nods, firm, and looks up at the man before her.]
So she said she wanted to live, and the boy took her by the hand and led her out of the forest to his homeland. [There's a lot more in the middle of that sentence, a lot that happened between a forest in Germany and a house in England, but all the terror and death of that night is irrelevant to the story.]
She went to tea with Queen Victoria, and accepted a job working for the British government, designing inventions that could help people in need and protect the country from invaders. [Another firm nod. There, that's the full story.]
So, there you have it! [She says, deliberately copying the priest's tone and posture as he delivered his final line.] Strangers who shouldn't be in towns save the day, yada yada.