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

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[Sans's attention is pulled away from the dog when Papyrus starts using bone magic. Again, just a feeling, but a familiar one. Skeletons and bone magic go together, so maybe it's not that surprising, but--the pattern--

Wait, right, the dog. The dog is giving him a look. ...Is this dog trying to extort him? Sans kind of appreciates the ingenuity? But there is only one kind of food Sans is carrying on him: (monster) ketchup. Do dogs like ketchup? Sans holds up the bottle. He will absolutely squirt ketchup into this dog's mouth, that's a normal thing to do.]

[The dog looks slowly between the ketchup bottle and Sans face. He's kidding, right? Does that look like something a dog can chew on and be too busy eating to bother alerting its person? It'll try a squirt, but it's not at all convinced.

...Mostly because its knowledge of the world is partly based on Papyrus' ideas of how things work, from before the amnesia. The sight of that condiment bottle goes paw in paw with flashes of bar visits, overlaid by feelings of agitation. Maybe it's just that Papyrus doesn't care for ketchup, and the dog will. They've already discovered other differences of opinion between them! But, somehow, it suspects this offering isn't what it's looking for. It opens its mouth, but watches him.

Back in the clearing, Papyrus hasn't yet noticed the dog's disappearance, preoccupied with messing around with the bones. Trying to levitate the oddball bone hasn't worked out, though he quickly discovers he can summon it to himself in about the same way. It pops to his hand instead of floating in a pattern, what convenience! He tosses it and pops it back to him a couple times, throwing it with increasing flourish each time.]

[This dog is really distracting him from watching Papyrus practice. There are a lot of flourishes to the way Papyrus moves that he would otherwise be focusing on here! Sans still tries to watch even with the dog, but eventually he gives a sort of "this is all I've got" shrug in the dog's direction and squirts the ketchup into the dog's mouth. Beggars can't be choosers, even if they are dogs.]

[Beggers may not be choosers, but they can be coughers. The dog's face scrunches up the moment ketchup hits its tongue, not sure what to make of this much salt and sugar at once, and it coughs a couple times.

Papyrus pauses what he's doing - prodding the blue bones through his weapon, watching how they float through like ghosts - when he notices the sound. He looks up with narrowed eyesockets, glancing around the area, but doesn't yet focus on Sans' location. He's too busy looking at the ground, where the small dog might be.]

Hey, are you okay? Are you choking on a bone???

[That was one time, the affronted dog's expression says. But it makes no move to rush out of the greenery, nor bark a warning about Sans being here. Instead, it grabs a mouthful of grass and starts chewing.]

[And then the dog had to go and make noise anyway! Man, extortion is too expensive for too little profit. Sans leaves the dog to its grass-chewing--he pops out of existence, leaving only mist where he was, and reappears in a different patch of brush. It's a little closer to Papyrus than the old one, and a different angle.]

[With that change in location, Sans narrowly misses Papyrus' search for the dog. Ketchup didn't buy the dog's genuine silence, it's true, but it did at least get Sans a chance to pop out of sight by the time Papyrus finds the right bushes. The sound of chewing is enough to alert him but not enough to alarm, so he never remembers he could just see what the dog sees, with a twist of effort.]

Okay, not choking... But what's that in your mouth? Is.... Oh my god, is that grass bleeding??

[Hanging out and watching a chef do their thing was an informative experience about how much blood animals can have in them, but it was a little light on the details of what does and doesn't have red blood cells. The mix of green and red stains on the dog's mouth aren't helping with that.]

[Well, that's not a reaction Sans was expecting. Sans isn't actually sure how the familiar bond works--he can't remember, what a surprise--so he's not sure what kind of information Papyrus might get from the dog. He's left watching. Mostly, he wishes he'd had more time to see that bone magic. Sans is sure that was familiar. Maybe if he'd seen more of the patterns... Sans mimics one of Papyrus's motions from earlier, wondering if that would be enough to trigger something. It doesn't give him any new memories. It does send three white bones clipping through the underbrush, which was not really something Sans was planning for.]

[It isn't all a skeleton lecturing a dog and trying - with mixed results - to pry stained greenery from its mouth. The bond lets them communicate to a degree, enough for Papyrus to get the sense that it's just grass, leave off, beyond the body language.

But his memories are as fragmented as any other skeleton's, and the dog is only so helpful in clarifying how it works. He only learned about seeing through its eyes by accident, not a hint. And that, of all things, seems the most familiar. Dealing with someone who keeps secrets, the ongoing frustrations of a dog who hides things away...

The rush of bones through the bushes distracts him, and Papyrus jumps - literally - to the wrong conclusion.]

And now those bones are flying around on their own!! Spit that out, and help me catch them!

[If anything was going to get the dog up, it's being invited to go catching bones. The dog scampers off after the three bones, while Papyrus veers in the other direction to head off any more flying around.]

[Shit. Sans is suddenly, alarmingly aware of something: it would not be a good look for Sans at all if those two touched those things. The fastest option would be to put them away, but, as always when Sans has been thinking about how to use his magic, the specifics elude him. He needs to stop thinking about it, but he really can't not think about it right now.

Okay, different idea: Sans whips his left arm through the air and the bones follow along, turning sharp and quick. It's keep away now, but Sans can't focus on teleporting while he's doing this, so if Papyrus is heading his way...]

[Oh, the dog is into this. What seemed like an easy catch has turned into a keepaway game, and it gives chase, leaping and failing to grab to grab any bones on its first couple tries (it bounces less with precision and more with enthusiasm).

Papyrus meanwhile stays on task, pushing into the brush to search for other bones out of place. Checking the ground as he goes, something instinctive warning against getting tripped by them, but mostly he's checking the height those bones emerged at. And there might not be any more floating around, but... there are bones to find here, aren't there? He startles at the sight of Sans.]

Oh! I didn't see you there! Or... expect to, that dog is a terrible lookout. [He grumbles this with a glance backwards; the dog pays no heed, busy continuing to fail to hurt itself on the flying attacks.] Uh, have you seen any bones fly through here..?

Uh. [Sans sounds just a little distracted, because he is. He really needs to get rid of those things. He thinks of his accidentally levitating Venus and his sending magic missiles into the sky for Sayori and swings his left arm up. The bones rocket up into the sky. Goodbye, bones.]

[...]

Looks like they flew away.

[Well, the dog is less about that. It spends the next minutes yipping impotently at the sky, as if the bones will come back if it asks nicely - or demands fiercely.

Papyrus glances back that way at the noise, and finally remembers he can glance through the dog's eyes. He does so - just long enough to see the bones' skyward retreat.]

Looks like! Well, that's handled, I guess. So much for catching them... [He's not sure where to get more of them, is there a secretive bones salesperson he hasn't encountered around the boardwalk somewhere?]

Have you seen any others around here??

Just the ones you were usin'. [Sans is pretty relieved to have avoided any particularly boneheaded results from his own magic use, but now that he can think about it more, he's not sure how long he's been able to do that bone thing.] You put on a pretty flashy show.

[Hopefully that's a good enough explanation for why Sans happens to be hanging around here at the moment.]

You think so?

[Thoughts of responsibility - like making sure nobody gets injured via collisions with bones - fly from his skull at the compliment. Papyrus grins and poses a little bit, angling himself just so that his scarf catches an errant breeze.]

Good eye! I'm practicing... to put on an even flashier one!

[Good thing Papyrus seems pretty easy to distract.] Oh yeah? Oh the beach, or are you gonna find a stage first?

[The boardwalk seems too crowded for flying bones.]

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prelude {{ Log 01.

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cw; papyrus learned about bloody meat at some point

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