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The Mods of LifeAftr ([personal profile] lifeaftr_mods) wrote in [community profile] aftr_ooc2018-05-11 09:46 pm
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Exploration Event: Neverwere

EXPLORATION EVENT: NEVERWERE

By now, the news of the strange vines that frequent the island of Ziziphus will have doubtless begun to circulate in earnest. What initially may have seemed to be ordinary flora that one would expect to frequent a vegetation-rich island like this one will turn out to be something...rather different.

As you'll soon learn.

The Answer Lies With You

Come May 15th, the purpose of these vines will rapidly and unexpectedly become clear. Their examination of the travelers upon their turf will cease, and the forests and hills of Ziziphus will abruptly come alive.
Countless vines will writhe free of the soil and grass, of the bracken and undergrowth. They are, simply put, everywhere - a veritable network of rootlike appendages wound throughout every inch of the island itself - and today they're making their move. They seek to ensnare and coil around anyone and everyone in their path, winding around their arms and legs and pinioning them with remarkable alacrity. Those who are particularly agile may be able to fight their way free...but it's equally likely that they'll be overwhelmed by sheer, incredible numbers. For every vine that's lopped off, burned, or otherwise destroyed, three more spring forth in its place. Everyone on Ziziphus at the time of the 15th will be targeted.

They won't stop until they've wrapped around you entirely. And then...and then...?

Then, you'll start to feel incredibly, peculiarly drowsy. You can't seem to keep yourself from closing your eyes...
And All Your Dreams Are Still As New

Eventually, you wake, and when you do, it is to the most perfect world imaginable. Perhaps it's the world you belong to, having reached a point of peace, no matter how unrealistic. The changes can be as vast and all-encompassing as necessary, or as small as on one, key absence. The villain never existed in the first place. A character never died. A war never occurred, allowing the kingdom to flourish and thrive. Maybe it's a different world entirely - a blissful, ideal paradise, that white-picket fence you always dreamed about, a perfectly suburban house with two-point-five kids and a couple big dogs, just for kicks. No matter the world you're envisioning, there's only one limitation:

This is a world in which your character is earnestly and completely happy, no matter what shifts must take place in order to achieve it. This is a world in which your character has nothing to worry about, a perfect fantasy taken to its logical extreme. They are as successful as they want to be, with the home and family they always imagined.

When coming up with your character's ideal world, consider the following points:
[ ♆ ] If based on their canon, this world may be considered an AU. Conflicts have either already been triumphed over, or never occurred, leaving your character to reap the benefits of peace that come afterwards. What changes need to be made to ensure this blissful peace are entirely up to you. Ideally, your character has achieved everything that they wished to achieve. If they wanted to be a leader, find a cure for an illness, or stop a world destroying event, they have done so.

[ ♆ ] While these fantasy worlds can be based on your character's canon, they do not have to be. The only stipulation is that they must be something your character would feasibly consider their perfect world.

[ ♆ ] Other characters within LifeAftr will most certainly drop into your character's dream world at some point. For close CR, what is their role now? Are you a family? How do others fit in?

[ ♆ ] The mods have worked on a template to help people compose their world, with examples down below!
Of course, characters are hardly restricted to their own dreams. Much the same as the dreams characters would be exposed to during a normal sleep cycle, dreams that seem to expand over years can take place in a fraction of a second. Entire histories can be compounded down to mere minutes.

Additionally, the characters are connected through the very vines that have induced this fantasy, and will allow them to traverse each other's dreams. This crossing over may be purely accidental, or it may be a willful desire to see someone you know. The bottom line is that the more dreams your character takes part in, the more aware they may become that everything is not quite as it seems.

As the event progresses, those who are not on Ziziphus will not be immune. The dreamworld of Mu, bolstered by the intricate network of self-contained fantasies that have abruptly taken up residence in its landscapes, will seek to pull in anyone who falls asleep and trap them under the same spell. Hope you have some coffee on hand, or some other method of stimulating yourself so that you don't doze off, because you very well may not wake if you do.
And Happiness Is What You Need So Bad
As mentioned above, characters' best chances of escaping the vines is to regain awareness that what they’re seeing (and living) is false. There are multiple things that characters may pick up indicating this falsehood, and we encourage people to be creative!

For those who would like a few ideas, discrepancies may show themselves in the following manner:
[ ♆ ] The more dreams your character partakes in, the more confused their roles and identities in these worlds may become. They may assume the role of a soldier in a world that has no need for such things, or identify someone as family in a dream that they are not.

[ ♆ ] While the composer of a dream may have memories of someone close in their canon residing in this world, characters from LifeAftr cannot have memories of someone they've never met before. A large discrepancy could occur if, for example, a close family member does not recognize the name of your character’s life partner.

[ ♆ ] Clocks and numbers. One of the largest indications of dreams is often the inability to read time and numbers. Your character may have a watch, or attempt to read a train timetable, only to find they cannot.

[ ♆ ] A total lack of conflict, no matter how unrealistic, may give away the false nature of these worlds. For example, even little things like running out of food or needing to do an undesirable chore will never come to pass...ever.
The more your character can decouple themself from this false reality, the lesser the hold of the vines that keep them entrapped. As more gaps in the fabricated narrative appear, the fantasy world will start to decay - perhaps in a very visceral, physical sense, or perhaps in a more abstract sense - and flickers of reality will begin to creep in: the strong stench of rot, the sensation of being bound up in vines, the heavy sense of fatigue that weighs you into the ground. If you can rouse yourself from this dream utterly, the vines will not fight to keep you. You can claw yourself free without any barrier, save the extreme lethargy that will accompany waking.

It seems that the vines didn't expect you to be able to wake at all.
What Fun It All Would Be

Naturally, there's more at stake than some fun little dreams where no one wants for anything. As circumstances would have it, the vines that keep your characters trapped in their fantastical delusions are slowly sapping them of life, as evidenced by the incredible exhaustion that sets in, should you free yourself. The instant the vines put you under, they have begun to feed upon you, and your capacity to sustain them can only last so long. Likewise, those who are caught in Mu's pull will risk death the longer they are under - if not by malnutrition and dehydration, then by being slowly drained of life by whatever has commandeered the land of Mu.
Once trapped, characters have four days to free themselves through their own skill and cunning, or to be freed by an intervening party that forcibly wakes them or cuts them out of the vines' thrall. During that period, they will grow progressively weaker. For example, a character freed on the first day may only need a couple hours of recovery time. A character freed on the very last day may need a full day to shake off the soporific effects of the vines.

Those who die in the grip of those fantasy realms without being woken will suffer a death, and will need to submit the occurrence to our Deaths page. Their death penalties will not be reduced and must be endured for the entire period.
What Next?

On the third day of this onslaught, the Storyteller will attempt to contact those that are still conscious and free of the vines' influence - it will take them some time to reach those still awake without risking them being sucked into the fantastical vortex that has been made of Mu.

From there, questions will be answered...and a solution will be presented for those still awake to exact it.

Lastly, we would like to thank Michelle, player of our resident Mira, Akechi, and Noctis, for proposing this plot!
Event Timeline
[ ♆ ] May 15th: The vines make their move, ensnaring characters in ideal fantasy worlds
[ ♆ ] May 17th: The Storyteller will make contact with those they can, as well as issue information and a potential solution
[ ♆ ] May 18th: Those that have not freed themselves from the vines or from Mu will suffer a death
LOGSOOCSTORIESMAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )
hyperlit: (you don't know what you ask traveler)

THE DRIFTER

[personal profile] hyperlit 2018-05-12 07:02 am (UTC)(link)
Character name: The Drifter
Character canon: Hyper Light Drifter

Briefly explain what their ideal world is like - how has it changed? Their world isn't being poisoned by an Immortal Cell, and therefore none of the enemies in the north, south, east, or west ever rose to power. The civilizations present in Buried Time are peaceful and happy. The Drifter's race isn't subject to any fantasy racism. The Titans never emerged to ravage the world, and thus their bodies were never salvaged and used in the labs of the south.

Briefly explain your character's role in this world: The Drifter lives in Central with the Guardian. They suffer no terminal illness. They never lost use of their voice, though they're still largely nonverbal and prefer to communicate via text or sign language. They're less prone to fatigue, regularly engaging in recreational games of things like soccer purely for the fun and thrill of it.

Other roles characters might assume in this world: Other people who live in Central! This means NPCs fellow villagers - swordmasters, dashmasters, techmasters, gunsmiths, vendors for food and potions, busking musicians, merchants, gardeners, and so on. Maybe you LIVE with the Drifter too!! There's also a kid that plays soccer, whom the Drifter loves going toe to toe with c:

Potential discrepancies others may pick up: Perhaps the biggest one is the fact that the Drifter is still the Drifter, but they don't...drift. Without the hunt for a cure or fragments of a long-dead history to retrieve, their purpose has been rendered obsolete. The wanderlust and need to search for something still nags at them, but it's seemingly sourceless and they can't say why. Their pious nature seems strangely out of place, too, seeing as they've never embarked on a mission on any god's behalf. Most of the people in Central are...animal-type people in design (they resemble otters, raccoons, lizards, etc.) so anyone who looks distinctly...not like that will probably strike the Drifter as odd. The lack of disdain and cruelty for the blue-skinned people, for anyone familiar with that part of the Drifter's history, will be equally bizarre.
Edited 2018-05-12 07:02 (UTC)
hyperlit: (◈ ᴀ ɴᴀʀʀᴏᴡ ᴘᴀᴛʜ ᴛʀᴀᴠᴇʟᴇᴅ)

PLOT COMMENT

[personal profile] hyperlit 2018-05-12 07:03 am (UTC)(link)
yadda yadda don't reply here
catpiper: (don't buy nuggets from amazon)

[personal profile] catpiper 2018-05-12 02:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Ren harasses Driftybean on a daily basis to play hide and seek?? She teams up with soccer kid to get them out of the house to come play with them!!
hyperlit: (until the piss runs down my thighs)

[personal profile] hyperlit 2018-05-12 03:42 pm (UTC)(link)
YES PLEASE!!! just this. this cute human child that the drifter loves VERY MUCH!!!
catpiper: (rather not gamble on an afterlife)

[personal profile] catpiper 2018-05-12 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)
SHE LOVES THEM BACK AND THEY'RE GONNA PLAY ALL DAY!! ALL!! DAY!!! LONG!!
lightlessfuture: (i heard a nostalgic song) (Default)

[personal profile] lightlessfuture 2018-05-12 04:44 pm (UTC)(link)
the knight's gonna humor the drifter for a while because they're clearly happy here but they're gonna get more unsettled about being in the role they're in the longer they're in it (probably a fellow drifter in this case, they might be a roomie??) so SORRY BUD, THEY CARE MORE ABOUT DISENTANGLING YOU FROM THE DREAM SO YOU DON'T LIKE DIE IN REAL LIFE

Also they're gonna look a little different. Still unable to talk though.
hyperlit: (◈ ᴏᴠᴇʀᴡʜᴇʟᴍɪɴɢ ᴡᴏɴᴅᴇʀs ᴀɴᴅ ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ)

[personal profile] hyperlit 2018-05-12 05:57 pm (UTC)(link)
OMG YES A FELLOW DRIFTER GOD i love this so much they can absolutely be a roomie

they can absolutely help get the drifter out tho THANK YOU FRIEND !!!!