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

[demonicmiracle]

A long way away from here.

[There's a lot of truth in that, although maybe he's speaking a bit more broadly than is strictly necessary. He doesn't need to get too philosophical about his origins, not without a good amount of alcohol on hand.]

I don't think we're gonna get out the way we came down, might be another way, though. Could be smart to stick together.

[While he usually takes no issue with being alone, he isn't stupid. It never hurts to have a little back up, or canon fodder, though he's less inclined towards the latter.]

[barberian]

(Yasha can respect being vague, so she doesn't press; she had meant where in here had he come from, but that hardly seems to matter either. They're both here now, and neither of them know how to get out. So it would be smart, to stick together.

Doesn't make her any more keen on it, though.)

Okay, (she concedes, and starts to walk in the same direction he had been pursuing before she had stopped him. It's good, to get moving. It's cold enough that it feels a little like they are underwater.)

I... don't recognise any part of this place. I thought I had seen all of the islands already.

[demonicmiracle]

[Despite being a snake sometimes, Crowley isn't actually cold blooded; that would be kind of stupid when he's man-shaped, and anyway, angels and demons are fairly resistant to extremes in temperatures. Hellfire not included, for the former. But he feels the chill down here in his bones, that worries him more than the rest of this place does, so far. It has to be drenched in some kind of magic, to do that to him.

He falls into step with Yasha, movements still loose and easy, despite his unease. The day he stops sauntering around like he's on a runway is the day he'll die.]

Can't say I've seen much of any islands, I was in London a couple days ago.

[Has it been that long? Time is sort of weird for him anyway, but he remembers this crumbling islands and a strange pool, then that even weirder city above. It feels like it's been days, at least.]

Name's Crowley, have you got one?

[A name, he means.]

[barberian]

Never heard of it.

(He certainly is... ambling along, isn't he? It might seem unnecessary to Yasha if she didn't have Mollymauk Tealeaf for a best friend. Sometimes it just be like that.

She's silent after that despite his question, weighing up the idea of him, the wings that she had seen. Yasha does not trust easily, but she's paused for long enough that giving a fake name would probably seem quite obvious, so eventually she shrugs a shoulder.)

Yasha. You... had wings, before.

(May as well get to the heart of things.)

[demonicmiracle]

[What's a name, anyway? Crowley was Crawly was something else long before that, but it burned away like the white from his feathers.

So he's not bothered by the time she takes to answer, nor does he seem particularly bothered by the question.]

Did I?

[There have never been explicit directions from Hell to keep his nature a secret and that matters even less these days. Less so again now that he's in this strange place.

With an air of "oh, why not", Crowley looks at Yasha over the tops of his glasses, tugging them down slightly with a finger and angling his head enough that she'll be able to see his serpentine eyes. He winks.]

Fat lot of good they did me, hm? They're supposed to actually work, but this place seems to have put a damper on things.

[barberian]

Yes.

(He's not going to fool her, she knows what she saw. When he turns his strange eyes toward her she blinks, leaning away from him- he can't know this of course, but a little whisper of Uk'otoa sounds in her head. First the Stormlord and now this? Is he going to do something to remind her of the Traveler next?)

Are you sure it's this place? (She hasn't noticed anything out of the ordinary aside from not recognising where she currently is.)

[demonicmiracle]

[That's about the reaction he was expecting; he doesn't have eyes like he does because they're meant to be nice and reassuring.]

It's this whole... [He spreads his hands, gestures around them and back up above.] All of this. It takes a lot of work to keep me in one place if I don't wanna be there.

[He hasn't dragged on the full weight of his power yet, but he shouldn't need to, not for a simple movement between locations. Time, now that takes more effort, but he's never had much difficultly with space.]