imaginarylogs | prelude {{ Log 01.

prelude {{ Log 01.

Island Prelude ; Log 01

Life's a beach—

You wake up on the beach.

Okay, scratch that: you wake up on a beach. Some beach, somewhere. You don't know where it is, much less why you're there. You can feel the warm sun and a light breeze on your skin, along with the insidious prickle of sand worming its way into your fantasy Nikes. You have no memory of being here — but then again, you might not have any memory of being anywhere else.

At least you're not alone. There are other people scattered along this beach, toes trailing in the surf as they brush sand out of their shirts or shake seaweed from their weapons. Each and every one of them has an unremovable bracer locked around their wrist. Maybe you should get up. Lend a helping hand, or ask for one. Maybe somebody else knows more about the situation than you do. Maybe somebody else knows where that music is coming from. Is there a beach party going on?

—& then you d̵̡̪̻̿̽͒i̸̟͓͍͌̾͐ë̸͖͇̪́̔͊.

There's only so far you get before noticing that something's wrong, though. Even if you've got no memories but your name, something in you knows that trees aren't supposed to look like that. They're not supposed to be so . . . low-res. Right?

But these trees, not to put too fine a point on it, kind of suck. Some of them, anyway. Every few trees has one patch that flickers in and out of existence like an old neon sign. Every couple rocks seems to have spasmed and frozen up in one large pixel blob. If you touch these glitched spaces, nothing happens to you, but it certainly doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like you're touching anything at all.

Looking back to the space you woke up, you might notice a pattern. The section of beach strewn with newly-conscious amnesiacs is exceptionally glitchy. There are a couple small patches of sky that seem to just be missing. And out at sea? There's way more of them out there.

If you're a strong swimmer, you might try swimming out toward the horizon. There's only so far you can go, though. After about half a mile, you hit some kind of resistance and blip back onto the beach. Watch the sea long enough, and you might see some boats making the same mistake — although they just end up closer to shore rather than beached, fortunately for them. Boats are expensive, and the barrier, whatever it is, seems to be doing its best not to damage them.

(Jaws Theme)

Walking up the beach towards the source of the music, you start to feel a little bit watched. Turn, and there's no one there. Just a quaint thatch-roofed vending machine with a strange cat face on the plate. Innocuous, though, and certainly nothing to worry about. So you keep going.

Except then you feel it again. And if you manage to pause in time, you'll hear this shuffling sound, like wood dragging through sand. Turn again, and the vending machine is right behind you. Like, right behind you. There's no way it moved fast enough to close that distance, and yet.

There are some options here. You can run — but it'll catch up. You can try to fight it — but you'll just hurt your hand (or other appendage). You can try to reason with it — but it's unrelenting. What it wants, as you'll soon discover, is to yeet a small bottle of dark, thick liquid at your face. It's also very insistent that you drink it. If you don't, it'll just fling another one at you, and keep flinging them, until you're crushed to death by vials or drink one, whichever comes first.

Everyone gets this treatment. The vending machine is never in two places at once, but its ubiquity might make it seems as though it is. When one inevitably breaks down and drinks the Kool-aid, it tastes just awful, but at least it's over and done with now. Surely this will never come up again.

This sparks joy

If you follow the music for long enough, you'll find yourself in easily one of the busiest places on the Island. The marketplace that spreads out before you is known as the Boardwalk, a fact that's easy to discover from any of the friendly locals. For most of you, these will be the first people you've encountered who didn't wash up on the beach alongside you. They're very fuzzy faces, too. The Animalians, a menagerie of anthropomorphic animals, almost all speak Common and seem pretty unfazed by the cluster of bewildered strangers. After all, new faces mean new customers!

There are a truly ridiculous number of things for sale on the Boardwalk. The predominant one is food, of course, and the smells hanging over the canvas tents and open-air stalls are positively mouth-watering. There are a wide variety of foods represented here. Maybe one or two of them will strike you as familiar, or trigger a memory? Pretty much all of them are delicious, though, so there's nothing to lose by digging in. Other goods include clothing, weaponry, art, and jewelry in a variety of styles. If you're lucky, you might find a tent that sells beautiful locally-made instruments — a Bard's dream!

Lack of coinage won't be too much of a handicap here. Barter is welcome, and should you not have enough to barter with, most sellers are happy to trade goods for services. It's highly likely that a newcomer or two will be found up to their elbows in dishes by the end of the night, or doing similar odd jobs for vendors.

Still, no one gets through an excursion to the Boardwalk without being swept into at least one dance. It comes out of nowhere: an Animalian's paw or claw on your elbow, a gentle nudge at the small of your back, and you're swept toward the gazebo, the source of the music that's been swelling all day and into the evening. It's joyous and captivating, the Animalians' love of dance infectious. Even buzzkills might be tempted to softshoe just a little.

What's this? What's this?

The Island seems to be sprouting miscellanea. Extremely distinctive weaponry stuck up a tree, books half-buried in sand or earth, clothing neatly folded or possibly being worn by an animal, or Animalian . . . At some point, it just becomes chaos. There's a great deal to recover, or to steal if that's more your bag. On the other hand, you might choose to be helpful and match belongings with their owners. You never know: a found item might help someone find the memory that goes along with it.

Just west of the Boardwalk, there's something else that might be familiar. At the center of a saltwater lake, easy to get to by rowboat, is a miniature island and swim-up bar. Each place is adorned by a menu listing strange and deja vu-inducing items, from nanchos to decaf espresso paradox. Some are helpful. Some are harmful. Some are just weird? He'll make you anything on the menu, but nothing more. Strangely, should you be overcome by the urge to ask the chef for something special and unique, he will gravely extend one of his tentacles and place a single, smooth, heart-shaped stone in your palm. The squid does not speak Common, but you understand an IOU when you're delicately, slimily handed one.

There's so much to explore here that, by the end of the day when you stumble back to the cabanas and attempt to sort out where you're going to collapse for the night, you haven't covered more than a sliver of it. There's tomorrow and the days after for looking around more, for stumbling across more of your belongings (or other people's), for discovering ruins and murals and memories. No matter how much time you take to fuss over sleeping arrangements, everyone ends up more or less in the same place: an open-air cabana, with the breeze blowing over them through the night and into the morning.

Everyone dreams — peacefully — of the moon.

OOC

Welcome, everyone, to the first Island log, our Prelude! While we will not be taking RNG requests during this log, we encourage you to stretch out, explore the space, and get your ~~sea~~ island legs. For questions pertaining to this log, go here. For general questions, head to the FAQ. For more places to explore in this first log, check out the Setting and NPC pages.

NAVIGATION ⯈

code bases by tricklet

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I... think so? I think I got it from... someone important. [The last bit seems to tumble out of his mouth, he's even surprised by himself as he says it, like he wasn't sure where that sentence was going until he finished it, but a part of him know that's right. Yes, received that from someone very important.]

[But, he sees no reason to deny Sans any of this information. He seems... nice?]

I don't remember who, though. Sorry, uh, Sans.

[From someone important. That girl? No, that's kind of a jump. What if it's just some popular shape for jewelry? He tucks the information away anyway.]

Sounds like you're havin' more trouble than just losing some stuff.

You're right, unfortunately. Outside of my name, I don't remember... well, anything. What I was doing before I got here, who I am, who I knew...

It's weird. Because there are things I do remember, but nothing that can connect to me.

What about you, Sans?

Edited 2020-07-13 03:26 (UTC)

[First, Sans wonders why Phoenix is just offering all this information up. Second, Sans wonders why he's being so paranoid about it. Third, Sans wonders why he feels like there's some internal conflict between trust and paranoia bubbling inside him.

Well, this guy offered up some info. Sans can at least say a few things.]

I might be havin' a few memory problems, too. That's pretty weird for a coincidence. [Sans doesn't think it's a coincidence.]

I've run into a couple other people who seem to be having the same problem, so I don't think it's a coincidence. I guess you'd be one of them now too, huh, Sans?

[It seems Phoenix, despite offering the information freely, is on the same track. This isn't a coincidence. It's happening to too many people.]

I don't know why we'd all need to have forgotten everything, though...

[Hm. Okay, one more thing, then, since this guy does seem like he wants to be genuinely helpful.

(And Sans keeps thinking about that picture, and the girl in it with that same charm.)]

You think it's okay to go around telling everyone this stuff? The more people you get, the more you start wonderin' if it was on purpose. [If someone did this to them.]

We aren't going to learn anything if we don't ask people what they know, are we?

[...It feels like that's something he's had to do before. Why does it feel like that?]

That's the only way we're going to get to the truth of what's going on, right?

[Sans gets the idea he prefers keeping his cards closer to his chest than Phoenix does.]

You ain't worried about getting fed a bunch of lies instead?

[As soon as Sans says that, the concept that someone could lie to Phoenix, the words are out of his mouth - the memory of someone saying them to him ringing crystal clear in his mind.]

Eliminate what's impossible. Whatever remains - that's the truth.

I... think someone gave me that advice at some point.

That's not bad advice. [Sans wishes he could remember some words of wisdom, or literally anything at all.] But in this case, you've gotta figure out how to figure out what's impossible, too, right? I got attacked by a vending machine earlier today.

[Sans doesn't like how little he knows about everything going on around him.]

Wait, you got attacked by a vending machine!?

I suppose that is... uh... usually impossible, yeah...

[He's suddenly feeling a lot less confident about that advice!]

It really wanted me to try one of the drinks. [He shrugs.] It was pretty gross, so it really needs to work on that formula.

Maybe it's just... really proud of it? [Phoenix you know how little sense that makes, right.]

I guess that's a good thing to watch out for. I haven't been accosted by any vending machines yet myself. [Give it time, Phoenix. Give it time.]

Keep an eye out, that thing moves faster than you'd think it could. [This conversation has gone from vaguely paranoid to ridiculous.]

Must be all the carbonation. A thing moving that fast has to have plenty of gas.

[Even amnesiac, Phoenix can't resist a pun.]

[That immediately gets a laugh out of Sans. This guy can't be that bad if he likes puns.]

Oh yeah, you can tell it's a regular gas guzzler.

Can't say I'd like to deal with it when it gets all shook up, either!

[Oh no. He can't stop. He legitimately can't. He's chuckling at Sans' jokes now.]

Yeah, that temper? Explosive.

[Any hope for a productive conversation is now gone.]

[Oh, that gets him a fit of giggles. Yeah, these two have found some common ground.]

You could even say they're the type to get real 'fizzed off!'

[Phoenix is going to get a bottle of mystery goo straight to the kidney for this one later. The fates have decided.]

It definitely popped off at me. [Sans probably deserves to get hit with more gross ink for all of this.]

Well, what did you expect telling them to 'can it'?

[This is going to go on for a while.]

I didn't know it was gonna be so pushy. But I probably should've guessed--it's not like it can do anything except push cans out.

[Well, not just cans, but you know.]

Well, it's not like it can get better on its own. It can only accept change from other people!

Someone's gonna have to teach it the right way. Give it the right change. [What is even happening.]

[Okay, okay, Phoenix has to concede. He's running out of jokes. Also he might be giggling too hard.]

Keeping up with you is hard, Sans. I wouldn't be surprised if you were a comedian before you came here!

prelude {{ Log 01.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)