A NEW WORLD COMING ( 024 )

[lifeaftr_mods]

A New World Coming

Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! 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.

In conjunction with our monthly Test Drive Meme, Reserves are now open! Applications will open on June 24th!

Two important notes:

1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which is always watching. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not panic. Do not

2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but are the game. You cannot choose who you are in this world. You cannot change fate. You cannot change fate. You cannot change fate.

In the meantime, feel free to refer to our usual rules regarding the TDM. All prompts are miniature versions of events that have transpired in the past. You may visit any of the links provided if you're interested in additional information.

And It's Just Around The Bend
The whole world is ending.

Beneath you, the first rays of a new sun slink across the ice-coated ground, sending whirls of steam curling up into the air. Everything will eventually be reborn to the way it was, much like the sun itself. At the very edges of the island, shadowy creatures that appear to have crept out of the darkest recesses of your mind mill about on the ocean shores, eager to avoid the burning eyes of the sun.

Of course, that's all happening a very, very long way down. Miles below you, in fact. The ground below is still cast in perpetual dark, while the sky itself is sunlit and dazzling.

As fingers of new light creep out across the horizon and ignite the air with a soft, daylit warmth, you find yourself sky high on one of many floating islands that shift and change within your presence. The landscape of these islands is extremely malleable, and not just in a general sense. Each island you make contact with will begin to "mold" itself to you, attempting to reformat its landscape to appear as a place that you desire to see again. Somewhere important. Somewhere comforting. A memory. While it cannot recreate people or exact circumstances, it can imitate landscapes and buildings, or make the nearest attempt to do so. "Attempt" being the operative word. With the rapid change of these islands comes one key weakness - their instability. If you stay too long in one place, the island will start to blacken and twist. No matter how hard it strained to recreate your memories before, those familiar places will start to curdle over, crumbling like sand beneath the weight of your desires...and the weight of you. Chunks of the land fall away, blistered black and simmering like fistfuls of embers, burned through with a dark volcanic corruption. The more people standing on one piece of land, the faster this change will occur, leaving you with very little time to enjoy the sights as you race ahead to the nearest mana pool, your only access to the ground below.

In short, you'd better run. Run, while there is still ground beneath your feet.

The world is ending around you - and if you're not fast enough, you'll end alongside it, namely by plunging a long, long way down earth. If the fall doesn't kill you, the hungry, burning eyes of the dark shadows lumped below very well may.

There's A New Voice Calling
The Trial of Orpheus is a very particular practice performed by one group of LifeAftr's inhabitants, residing on the draconian civilization settled on the island of Ai'tuoh. Enacted only upon those who break one of Ai'tuoh's many laws, it requires those convicted to pass into the Standing Water - a slumbering city of lost souls.

A city you've just arrived in.

The first thing you’ll likely feel is the crushing, biting, bone-deep chill, paired with the sensation of falling down some great, fathomless abyss. No jolt or sudden impact awaits you, however. Instead, your fall will slow, even out, as though your personal gravity is reorienting itself, and you’ll find yourself blinking awake in...Ai'tuoh.

Or rather, in a very strange version of it - what can only be described as a dark, colorless mirror of the city of Ai'tuoh. The buildings loom darkly overhead, their edges strangely irresolving, as though being peered at through ripples of water. If there is a way out, you don't know it. The means and direction are lost to you. But leave you must, for the longer you remain, the more tired you become. Thoughts begin to drift as you become lost to the ebbing waves of time; the longer you remain untethered, the more likely you are to succumb to an endless repose.

Your only hope is the connections you make with others. Be it emotional or physical, positive or negative, this journey requires you to remain part of a pair, talking, hand-holding, even carrying each other through the city as you seek out the means to escape. The pervading sense of exhaustion that grips your bones almost seems core to the city itself, and the longer you remain, the more that lethargy will sink into you. There will be nothing more tempting than simply lying down and closing your eyes...but you have to keep moving. Do you understand? You have to keep moving, because if you don't, there really won't be any saving you.

The most definitive way out is a bright strand of color that winds through the abyss, vibrant red and almost threadlike, gradually ascending upward into a glimmer of light. Find someone to connect to, hold onto that guiding thread tightly, and whatever you do, do not let go.

Or you risk sinking into that endless slumber, possibly for good.

You Can Hear It If You Try
Of course, if you'd prefer to relax within your dreams, the white-picketed community of Ziziphus may be precisely what you're looking for. An idyllic town located on a fairly remote island of LifeAftr, Ziziphus comes with all your modern amenities - electricity, cars, showers. Here, you can spend your evenings watching the television, tucking in your kids or playing drinking games with your roommates. And in the morning, it's time to meet the day, whether work, study, or housework awaits you. Why, it's the perfect picture of textbook suburbia, from the neat squares of well-manicured lawns to the incontrovertibly cheerful sound of the newspaper thwacking against the doorstep each morning.

Sorry - you've never had this job before? You don't have kids, or even want them? Of course you have, silly - you've been here for the last five years. You've gone to the same school since you became old enough to study. In fact...you've been living here your whole life.

Is that wrong? Of course it isn't. There's nothing wrong here. There's nothing wrong here. There's nothing wrong here.

Right? Ziziphus is no peaceful neighborhood, of course, but rather an island that traps its visitors in a dream that seeks to provide a constant state of euphoria. Hence, your tragic past is no more. You are no warrior, no hero. It's time for you to take up the role that suits the most ideal fantasy you have of a fulfilling life. A successful businessperson, a busy student, a completely normal individual in a completely normal life. There's nothing wrong here.

If you think too hard about this eerily cheerful life, about how you technically shouldn't even know what "electricity" is, or about any of the inconsistencies that run counter to the life you thought you had...well, don't think too hard about it. Don't think about the creeping scent of rot that swarms up into your nostrils should those awful thoughts ever cross your mind. Don't start asking questions, posing innocent queries to the perfect smiles perpetually stamped across the faces of your friends and neighbors and children who carry out their daily routines with all the soulless efficiency of wind-up toys. Don't start thinking about how, if you dwell too much on the uncanny nature of this neighborhood, it starts to feel like you can't...quite...breathe...

Oh, god. You have to get out of here. You - you have to not think about it. You have to not think about it, so don't. So don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it.

Everything, and everyone, is precisely as they should be.

---

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

Koko Himaa (OC) | Final Fantasy XIV

[intheirsteppes]

One foot...in front of the other... over and over again...
CW: Mentions of death and loss
[Koko was doomed from the start. Not only does she pray to the Dawn Father and the Dusk Mother, but she is one of the Chosen Many. Tainted of a Light so pervasive that she is marked by it. Is learned, dresses in black armor, her horns are pierced, and that sword holstered on her back is nearly as tall and blade as wide as she is. In short, she breaks about roughly twelve laws just by existing! ...and yes, the irony has not been lost upon her.

At least, it wouldn't be if she were aware and not simply waking up in Standing Water. She shudders involuntarily, trying to find some semblance of warmth. Violet eyes that glow faintly in the darkness due to her limbal rings blink at the.... familiarity of it all, despite herself. This almost feels like the Abyss the first few times she'd communed with it. The times she stared into the vast void from which her power sprung from before she set aside the rod for the sword. Yet the rippling of what's around her gives away the truth.]

...Never much cared for the ocean, myself. Or any large body of water for that matter. [The young warrior remarks with a sigh, looking about her. Trying to find a way to orient herself. The whispers in the back of her head like the flickering of a flame that calls her onward to the tiny speck of color in an otherwise colorless world. Just one more time. Put one foot in front of the other. But it's so far. It would be so easy not to. To linger until... she doesn't know.

Wasn't your answer to me then that you would keep moving on with this charade? Koko lowers her chin slightly as her brows knit together. The Voice is so quiet, she can barely... She closes her eyes. Listens to her own voice. Then move. She grits her teeth against the barely audible whisper within her own soul and turns to the person next to her. Her tone has a slight edge to it; a hint of something dark wishing to come out from the wings.]

I know not about you, but I'm not staying here. [Dream or not, she has a son to return to. Friends and a makeshift tribe to protect. New places to see that so many she has both witnessed dying and killed herself will not. Koko begins to move forward through the streets, humming some sort of lullaby in a different language. If nothing else than to soothe her nerves and keep herself awake if her unexpected company is not as talkative. Which is something, because she often is not.]

To the ends of the world...and back again...
[There are so many close to her chest. So many places she's been to, has seen and touched in some small way. What surprises her about this place, however, is what it changes to.

Xaela live with the heat of battle in their veins. Some more than most, and yet... to see the deserts of Thanalan again. To nearly feel the hot winds on her face and hear the rush against her horns as she turns to look into the cavern where she spent so many moons studying the secrets of black magic with three other beastmen brought together for this singular purpose...

How her heart aches to see them again. To sit in that cave again and pour over a tome and try to decipher it's once-thought-lost knowledge. She even takes a step closer toward the entrance when she feels the sand shift in an unnatural way beneath her feet. Her eyes widen as she jumps out of the way. Just in time, as the land gives.]

Fury's tits-! [It comes out without her even thinking about it and she'll kick herself about it when there's a small child around to hear.] Why am I not surprised?

[She looks around to see if there anyone nearby and inquires.] How in the seven hells do we get out of here?!

2

[littlemhigan]

[Theres a special sort of sound that feet make when they pound confidently across sand; a dull thud that betrays no shift of weight or weakness of footing. Its an effortless sound, but one that takes years of inurement to the desert to manage.

It heralds her coming from a ways off, if Koko can hear those footfalls over her own, but if she doesn't then surely she'll notice the gentle rapping of a fist against the armour of her left shoulder - a firm, stacatto pressure - right before Castor enters her periphery.]

Oh good, [she sighs as she faces Koko properly,] I'd hoped ye weren't my dreams playin' tricks on me again.

[intheirsteppes]

[If she weren't used to listening for footsteps and hiding as a youngling, she may not have noticed. Yet she has, and she just barely makes out the sound over her own and pauses briefly. It's a familiar kind of footfall and she turns her head just in time for the boop. A derisive snort escapes.]

Were that the case, then one would start wondering why you were thinking of me so. [A short laugh follows. Just another day in the life, t'would seem.] As if you would not dream up another of our friends, aye?

[It's a clear tease. She's allowed one after all the blasted adventures a certain SOMEONE kept pulling her along on. She spares a faint grin as she lightly bops her comrade's shoulder.] 'Tis good to see a familiar face.

[littlemhigan]

Now now, there's room in my busom for you as much as anyone. And, glad as I am that you're real, what fool wouldn't dream of so fair a face?

[ The presence of someone new warps the ground beneath their feet, sand and rock melting away to smooth, grey stone and packed-down snow. ]

We oughtn't linger here overlong; a Mana pool'l get us te safety well enough.

[intheirsteppes]

[Koko gives her friend a look over the top rim of her spectacles. Really, Castor? Flirting? Here and now? Though something within bristles slightly at the changing ground.]

...Indeed. Let us away. [Nope, her pale-as-a-corpse cheeks don't have any color whatsoever. What in the stars are you talking about.] Sure set myself up for that one.

[Let's just ignore that muttering and head for that manapool, shall we? ...Wherever it is in this ever-changing landscape.] Any idea as to where this "manapool" might be?

[littlemhigan]

I've an idea as te where it should be, aye, but dreams do what dreams'll do, an' I'ven't been here in person yet.

[ Castor scrunches her face up and turns in a circle to get her bearings - Sand and snow alternate in her footsteps. ]

I think it's this way; unless the landscape is foolin'.

[intheirsteppes]

Some idea is better than none at all.

[Her accent bleeds through, accidentally blending the last two words together as she tries not to laugh.]

T'is not as though the land is shifting between ice and sand the longer we're here.

[And she begins to head in the direction Castor points out. Even if they're wrong, at least they'll get lost together. Hopefully with less falling, however.]

[littlemhigan]

[ Once she sees Koko follow, Castor picks up her pace a little; unwilling to push how long the ground under their feet would tolerate remaining there. ]

Best it keep shifting between' em. 'S a long way to fall when it finally gives.

[ Snow and grey stone melt away to bare, red rock, marked with sediment and smelling of salt and the air turns dry and arid in Castor's wake though she doesn't seem to notice. ]

Damn thing, where is it?!