aftr_ooc | 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!

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.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Sieglinde listens intently, expression becoming more serious as the story goes on. It's a familiar tale, in that there are many parallels to one she's lived. She doesn't know if it's a story from this man's culture, or one he's lived himself. If he's lived it himself, there's no way to know what role he played.

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.

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 001 )

kuroshitsuji spoilers for the entire green witch arc. this is literally an ic history section.