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The Mods of LifeAftr ([personal profile] lifeaftr_mods) wrote in [community profile] aftr_ooc2018-11-08 08:51 pm
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New Island: Maati

NEW ISLAND: MAATI
The votes are in! And despite the abstracted nature of this round of voting, most characters elected to vote for the fourth option presented: the one represented by golden flames, a set of scales, and a number of shapes that resemble birds.

The newest addition to LifeAftr can be found on our Locations page. The Storyteller alert explorers on the night prior that the new island will be ready for exploration via the mana pools on November 10th.

Transportation
The Storyteller will manage to link Maati's mana pool with Ensō's. As they are still in a state of recovering from the havoc the fabric of Mu has played on your psyches, as well as the multiple resurrections they had to enact all at once, they do not - or rather, cannot - inform you of any specific dangers or things to watch out for on the island of Maati.

The mana pool is present on the E5 square, should the characters choose to arrive via that method. In addition, characters are free to sail there on their own, if they so choose.

The Storyteller does mention the name of the island, at least, in the initial dream.

MAATI has now been added to the Locations page.

Be the Power to Compel Me
The island itself is relatively bare, surrounded on all sides by cliffs. The cliffs are sheer, so much so that attempts to climb them will come with a high chance of failure unless characters invest a few stories into proper climbing gear. Those with powers of flight and teleportation will also be incapable of reaching the top until these areas have been explored...or otherwise made available to them.

This land lacks very many natural resources due to how rocky and desolate it appears to be. However, that does not mean that nothing can be uncovered in this area at all - old tools and equipment can be uncovered with enough searching, as though a great many struggles or battles were fought here, a long time ago.

However, from a distance, it can be discerned that Maati is a peculiarly shaped island: a seven-pointed star. While the center remains the only part of that land that can be initially charted, the different prongs of the star are each walled off with a large door, each bearing a different, glowing sigil. Those who remember the caves underneath Ensō might recall this occurrence as worryingly similar.
No matter how they are approached, the doors refuse to open; they will not yield to magic, to pleas, to prayers, or to brute force attack. Yet that doesn't mean they won't ever open. As for the rest, you'll just have to wait and see, won't you?

Won't You Liberate Me?
The avatar of Maati, similar to Harv, will make their presence known rather quickly. Their temple can be found at the island's center, and it will be fairly obvious when one draws close: some of the only green on Maati can be found there! Their temple is a fairly simple thing, built of iron and copper. Yet more copies of the same seven sigils that can be found on the doors are inlaid periodically across the exterior, carved from differently-colored variants of jasper. Twined about the metallic construct, woven neatly throughout the composition of the building, several chestnut trees rear out into the sky. And everywhere you look, the symbol of the eagle can be found - fanning wings, hooked beak, outspread talons - carved into the walls, in the form of simple ornaments mounted on ledges and peaks.
Maati's avatar will answer to a great many titles: Tyreg, Utag, the Iron Will, and others. For their part, they prefer Anbaki. Their shape is unsurprising to anyone who has so much as glanced at their temple. Anbaki takes the shape of a golden eagle, slightly larger than average, but despite the fearsome curve of their beak, they are surprisingly gentle.

Surprisingly gentle, we say, because Anbaki is the avatar of justice. And they might be able to explain those symbols mounted on all those doors, too...



As always, we'll have a thread for questions and comments, and we encourage you to make use of our Mod Contact page for private correspondence!
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[personal profile] tuskenlancer 2018-11-22 04:51 am (UTC)(link)
Player: Buttercup
Character/Username: Agent Connecticut/[personal profile] tuskenlancer
Prior to coming to LifeAftr, what is an aspect of your character that they struggled with - be it a shortcoming, a fear, a bad habit, or eccentricity? (NOTE: This does not necessarily mean something that is bad or inherently evil, but something that you, personally, believe is a roadblock to the development that you, personally, would like to explore.)

In canon, and later in Airlocked!, CT struggled with feelings of inadequacy and a lack of self-confidence. When we first see her in canon, it is after a failed mission - a failure that is her own fault. She wants more than anything to rise up in Freelancer’s rankings and get her name on the board of the top agents, but it seems that no matter how hard she tries, she’s never quite able to measure up.

Eventually, her concern regarding the legality and morality of the Director’s actions overtake her competitiveness and desire to prove herself within the Project, and she defects with stolen information to take it down, only to die in the attempt. When she is revived in Airlocked! and finds out what had happened, she finally gains some feeling of accomplishment - though she never lived to see it, it was her actions that provided the catalyst to the eventual downfall of the Director and the Project.

While she made friends in Airlocked! and eventually saw the end of yet another immoral project and happy endings for her friends, her feelings of inadequacy never entirely went away. She died again in Airlocked!, again sacrificing herself in an attempt to save her friends, but this time the result wasn’t the same, and she found out after the fact that the man she had tried to kill was as much a victim as the rest of the show’s captives, and her feelings of self-doubt began to reemerge.

What do they struggle with now? Is it the same as the above?

Without the pressure of either competition (as during Project Freelancer) or a clear enemy to fight against (as in Airlocked!), CT’s feelings of inadequacy have not taken the spotlight - there’s no way for her to prove herself, and so no opportunity to fail to do so. Instead, she’s been struggling with fear - the fear of remaining on the islands forever, separated from her fiance and her own “happy ending” with him.

Meeting Wash and Carolina again, after believing she would never see them again, has also introduced new fears and feelings of guilt. They were once her teammates, and her friends, before she defected from Project Freelancer and betrayed them. While it seems that neither of them hate her or want to kill her (as she feared when she first arrived), she still can’t entirely forget the weight of that betrayal.

Wash’s presence especially plagues CT with guilt. She left the Project before he was implanted with Epsilon, and consistently blames herself for not being there with him, or somehow saving him from the trauma that Epsilon introduced. Though she tries as hard as she can to make it up to him, she can’t forget or forgive herself for abandoning him to such a terrible fate, especially on the occasions when it so clearly still plagues him.

What personal demons, specifically, haunt your character from canon or from past game experiences?

During Airlocked!, CT fell in love with and subsequently left to live with Varric Tethras (Dragon Age). The night before she was brought to Airlocked!, he proposed and she said yes. Though she does love him and, given the choice, would return to him immediately, the separation is hard, as is suddenly being alone after what in the end was only a few months of being with him. Lonely and adrift without her fiance, and unsure of her standing with her teammate and onetime best friend Wash, CT emotionally latched on to Gladio, who reminded her strongly of Varric both physically and in terms of his personality. She’s been struggling ever since to build and maintain a friendship with Gladio without letting her (unwanted, by her) romantic feelings get in the way, while simultaneously feeling horribly guilty for betraying Varric, even though it’s unintentional and she would never act on it.

What is the type of person your character hopes to become?

More than anything, CT wants to be a strong and independent woman who don’t need no man. With every passing month, it seems more and more likely that she’ll never see Varric again, and she hates how much she misses him still. She also believes herself both weak and unfaithful for falling for Gladio, and would have cut herself off from him entirely if he hadn’t insisted that they still be friends and refused to give up on her. As grateful as she is for his friendship, a part of her still thinks that she’s weak for giving in to his pleas to keep spending time together, and thinks that if she was really worthy of Varric, if she was really strong, she would have stood her ground and kept away from Gladio.

She also wants to be strong enough to help Wash. She knows that she can’t undo what happened, or go back and be there for him when he’d really needed her, and she does still blame herself, to a large extent, for what happened with him and Epsilon. In the absence of being able to change the past, she wants to be there for him now and help him as much as she can, but she’s not always very successful at that, and she’s not always sure quite how she can help him.

What is the type of person you hope your character will become?

Someone who is at peace with who she is, is willing to admit that she does need people, and who is less likely to bottle up her feelings and more willing to ask for help when she needs it. Able to both forgive herself for the mistakes of the past and give herself permission to falter sometimes in the present.

Do any of the Seven Deadly Sins or Virtues stand out as applicable to your character? Why?

Pride - you can’t feel inadequate without feeling like you have something to prove. She tends to take on too much and judge herself too harshly (something that has been a constant throughout). Pride is what almost broke her friendship with Gladio and what continues to keep her from really opening up to anyone.

Diligence - In relation to pride, CT never stops fighting (sometimes to her detriment). Once she discovered that something was going on with the Project, she took great personal risks (and eventually died) trying to do what she felt she had to do and attempt to bring it down, even though it meant losing everything herself.

Kindness - CT sacrificed her life not once but twice for her friends, both times without them knowing what she was doing. She could easily have looked the other way, continued focusing on her place on the board, but she knew that what he was doing was wrong, and she couldn’t stand by and do nothing. Even when Tex and Carolina came to retrieve her suit (and in Tex’s case, to ultimately kill her), she made one last effort to help them see what was going on and save themselves before it was too late.