imaginarylogs | 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

[There is every possibility that Michael does not have bones! He's got imitation bones, though, which is a viscerally gross feeling for a cosmic invertebrate.

Just at the moment, though, he doesn't entirely know what to make of that particular feeling, so he dismisses it.]

Oh! [He reaches up to run a hand over his hair. He's quite sure he knew he had it, but - he can't see it.] I...don't know what I look like. That's weird.

Oh my god? [What a startling thought. Sure, there's a lot of not remembering going on, but that too? And then it dawns on him:]

...I don't either. Wow! But I expect to? There must be some way to see ourselves...

Mirrors...?

[But this doesn't seem like a very mirror-heavy environment.]

Or...very clear water? [...] A camera? Do any of us have cameras?

A camera...

[Papyrus checks his outfit for pockets hiding cameras from sight - no dice - then peers around their surroundings. Unclear and moving, glitchy water... Sand... Trees...]

No, there's nothing. Maybe... Somewhere that way!

[Up the slope towards the inland of the island, where the distant sounds of music originate, seems a lot more promising.]

[Well, it does sound like there's people that way...]

Yeah, maybe. Wanna go check it out?

Yeah! Let's go find our reflections! I want to know how different we look.

[There's still a little sliding around in the sand, since he twice over doesn't have muscle memory to lean on - no muscles, and no previous experiences in sand. But the beach is only so long, and soon enough sand gives way to grassy soil, and the view begins to include buildings in the distance.]

I doubt we look very similar. I do have skin.

[And...he doesn't think he has bones, if his visceral feelings about them are any indication? But he comes along anyhow; he does want to know what he looks like!]

You're just very bony. Which is good, I mean, it's be very weird if you only had skin on your face.

It would? I mean, yeah, it would! Faces already get lots of things. Mouths. Eyes.

[At least, going by what he sees on Michael, and what he feels in himself. It doesn't feel like there's any forgotten confidence in these truisms past these.]

They don't need a skin monopoly too!

[Well...sure, he guesses?]

Yeah! Exactly! Plus, you don't have ears, so that'd be weird.

Skinless ears... No, we can't have that!

[Unless they're ears of corn or something, in which case, husk away. But he doesn't start saying or even thinking such a reference, distracted as he suddenly is by the gleam of light reflecting nearby.

It's a large pane of glass framed in bamboo, the front of a vending machine. Transluscent as it is, there's only a faint reflection when Papyrus leans in to squint at it.]

Hmmm... This isn't much of a mirror. I can barely see my bones.

Oh!

[Well, if Papyrus can't make out much, Michael's surely nothing more than a generally humanoid blob - but he bounds over in interest anyway.]

No, you're right, it's terrible. [But he can see colors, at least! He raises a hand to run it thoughtfully through his hair - through, not over, because it's certainly not styled anymore after his beach adventure.] It's very white, isn't it?

[It's enough that Papyrus can make out the difference in his eyesockets to Michael's eyes, nasal cavity to nose, the way that lips change the appearance of a mouth far more than the faint creasing of his cheekbones.

But it's not enough detail to fascinate him, so he considers the white hair with a slow nod.]

It is! If I get hair like that, it would blend right in.

[That's right, old man, that hair's the same color as the skeleton. Maybe even a little paler, as there's some off-whiteness to his bones.]

Huh.

[Michael messes with his hair for a few more seconds, trying to get one of the longer bits in front of his face so he can look properly. None of it is anywhere near long enough for that. He gives up, and pushes it back into something approaching order.

This really isn't a proper reflection. But his hair seems to go nicely with the colors of his clothes. It pops.]

I like it!

That's good! Because you're probably stuck with it.

[It looks like it's stuck to Michael's head, even if it's soft and moving slightly in the breeze. But things like scissors, razors, or hair dye aren't coming to his mind, so it seems as permanent a feature as his own bones feel.

Really, Papyrus concludes as he pokes at his cheekbones, there's only the slightest give, and that mostly just on his face.]

Well, I could cut it.

[He says off-handedly, because he doesn't really want to. It's a good length, he thinks. Sidelong, he watches Papyrus prod at his own face.]

What do you think? [About his skull, he means, but you know, whatever.]

[He gives it another poke, and nods solemnly.]

There's no doubt about it, it's bone.

[Maybe Michael meant something like does he like his appearance, but he's avoiding that question. The same thing applies; to the best of his knowledge, he's stuck with this face. It's not that he dislikes it, he thinks. But if he were in charge of design, his eyesockets would be the same size.]

Well, sure, I could've told you that.

[He recognizes bone! This is different, of course, in that it appears to be able to magically move around without any muscles or tendons or all that - but it looks like bone!]

It's funny how attached your teeth look, though. Usually human teeth just pop right out! [they do not]

Oh my god??

[Michael that's a little horrifying. Papyrus recoils from the comment, a hand going to his mouth, and it takes a few seconds before he starts to recover.]

They... They don't feel like they're popping out...

I guess that settles it! Whatever skeleton I am, I'm not human.

Oh, yeah, see.

[He pries his own upper lip back to show his gums.]

Just give 'em a yank and they come out easy. Not really that solid in the skull.

prelude {{ Log 01.

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