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. waking up to ash and dust

What the fuck.

[So, Church is Church. He knows that. (There's another name, too, just underneath. He is...less certain about that.) Church is a robot. He doesn't know that. And yet he doesn't at all, at least at first, try to take his armor off. Why would he? He's in a weird place. Doesn't know shit for shit. And it's pissing him off.]

What. the fuck. is going on.

[He seems to be addressing a tree. Hell yes he's noticed the glitches. The not-rightness of the world, the computer coding gone awry that is the physical place that he is, and there is nothing there. But there is. But there isn't. He's got his fingers set on a glitchy spot that seems to phase in and out of existence.]

Oh my god. We're in a shitty boogleg Matrix. Like just the stupidest floppy disk burned copy from a garage sale. Can't even get a beach right. If I don't see a non-glitchy lady in a red dress, I want a refund!

ii. I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust

[The...the people. The people are all ranges of adorable and anthropomorphic and yes, yes at some point he absolutely says something along the lines of 'Sonic fandom dream', but don't--let's just not ask. (He thumbs the little hedgehog charm on the bracelet he seems to be wearing. He doesn't remember this thing, but like the bracer, why take it off?)

There's not a whole lot, goods-wise, that really gets him going. Clothing just seems like a non-starter. Still hasn't taken off the armor and really doesn't seem to plan to. The food smells delicious, but he doesn't have any kind of appetite. (Or a mouth, but, he hasn't quite realized that yet, either.)

But the weapons? That feels important. He feels like he needs to be armed, even though he can't find a reason to hurt anyone here. So you can catch him...ugh, bartering, and by bartering we mean arguing with a poor boar-person over some bows and arrows.]

Does it look like I know how to sharpen a sword? No, I'm not gonna do your job for you, unless you're gonna teach me and pay me some cold hard cash. I just washed up on a beach programmed from the 90's, what, you want me to go out in the world, punch some enemies, come back with gold for better items? Like a main character on a quest?

Oh my god, I'm in a fucking RPG. [stop leaning on the 4th wall there buddy]

[But, the thing that improves his mood is the dancing. Not...not at first, mind, because the second he gets a wing guiding him along, he's grouchy and jumps the gun.] Is this a kidnapping? Help, help, I'm being accosted? Yeah, try that aga--oh. Oh? Huh. [People seem to want him to dance. And...he's...not great at it, doesn't put in a lot of effort at first, but he starts getting into it the longer it goes on. He's still not great, but now you've given him somewhere to be at the center of attention, so he's gonna lean into that, whooping and hollering and being mildly raunchy with his dancing and shaking his moneymaker.] Heheh, yeah, maybe I can make it rain this way!

[no please don't]

iii. I'm breathing in the chemicals

[So the freako rainstorm is a downer, but it doesn't last too long, and hey--he's waterproof! There's so much to fucking see, and occasionally he points to something in the distance--is that a gold wall? Or a hint of some menacing dark spines?] Whaaaat the fuck is that all about? [But nobody really gives him much in the way of answers.

Which, okay, that's fair. And everything's weird and people are either as lost as he is or they're funky animal people? And he's looking for an inn. There isn't an inn, and he realizes he still doesn't have money to pay for an inn, so...so somehow or another, he ends up back at the cabanas. Picks one. Frowns, or, he would be frowning, if he had a face, and he does not have a face, which he doesn't realize, but he doesn't take off his helmet. The frown is still palpable.]

Better than nothing, I guess. Really needs more blue. [...For...some reason.]

[Speaking of enemies to punch for gold in an RPG, the next shopper in line is a skeleton. He's stepped around to the side to examine the wares while waiting, what with Church monologuing and monopolizing the poor boar's time... He's hardly the sort of skeleton to interrupt a good ranting monologue, after all!

But with this latest pause in the monologue, he takes the chance to address the shopkeeper.]

Do you have any weapons... made out of bone? I'm looking for something sturdy! And cool-looking.

[So, the animal people, they're a thing, and it's kind of weird but he can...probably deal with it.

The skeleton is another thing altogether, and he just. Stares. For a while.]

...Wouldn't that be kind of like cannibalism? But without the eating? Just using...bones for--is that not weird for you?

Why would it be...? Hmm.

[Papyrus trails off with the question, genuinely considering it. It's one that genuinely hasn't occurred to him, at least in the time since waking up on a glitchy beach. Would the Papyrus with memories of a previous life think it's weird? Should he?]

I think... It's a natural fit for a skeleton! It's bones, I'm bones... We have so much in common. An easy, natural respect. More fitting than anyone else using them.

[Maybe it's a little weird.]

...........[One would not be too wrong about getting the impression of Church opening and closing his (nonexistent) mouth several times. The gears, they are working.

And eventually he just gives a helpless little gesture.] I guess that makes sense... [He just kind of hates admitting it!!!]

[The nuances of the body language are a little difficult for Papyrus to read, but the sense of dots building in the air is palpable. And when Church concedes the point, he snickers a triumphant laugh.]

Nyeh heh heh... Of course it does! But don't fear, you can use them too - as long as you buy your own. Bones are too cool to be exclusive.

[After all, if skeletons get to use bones due to being bones, then anybody with bones is entitled to them. He assumes that this guy, armored as he is, has bones in there somewhere... And one person - back when he woke up - suggested that moving skeletons might be the remains of dead humans. If humans lead to skeletons, and everyone else is shaped similarly, then it follows that everyone must have skeletons inside, right? It doesn't feel right, in that itchy way of things he suspects he doesn't remember, but it's hard to say for sure why. And if there's anybody without bones, well, maybe they can reserve the coolest bone weapons for the skeletons, but let everyone share in the rest.

The boar shopkeeper, for their part, is gathering up bone weapons for this latest customer's perusal. Equally loud, but no protests against the notion of paying for goods and services, so well worth the investment of a moment's time.]

You know...what, that's...I mean, sure, just--

[He still can't argue against it because bone weapons ARE kind of cool???] Thanks?

[This has at least distracted Church from arguing about what services he could perform to get much less bony weapons, which everyone in the area should be very thankful for.]

I'm not really like...opposed to getting some kind of actual job to actually pay for things, but I'm new here, just moved into the area, you could say, kinda want to get a feel for what the good and actual fuck is going on. Like. Do we even need weapons?

[Just because something inside him is reverberating with the answer of YES does not necessarily mean he's correct.]

[Papyrus' presence, baffling people into better behavior since 2XXX year of our dog.]

Well, I woke up with armor...

[He gestures at his forearm, where the bracer is partially tucked under his glove but still mostly on display. Metal, hugging the bones just enough that it's not coming off any time soon.]

And there's a really aggressive vending machine roaming around... Pretty vialent...

And! Somewhere around here! I heard there's a "Coliseum"... For fighting in! So I'm sure weapons can't hurt.

[To have, that is. Causing hurt is about the whole point of weapons.]

I think...I'm supposed to be armed. Or at least, wherever I came from! But I guess if people are just out here selling them...then maybe I--did you just try and make a pun? [It finally caught up to him.] Ugh.

But maybe I'm more made for metal. That feels right. No, no, not like a sword, like distance! Like a gun. Do you have guns? I'd like a gun. I think a gun would suit me. Or...or maybe a...bow, but a gun's better.

...

I have no idea what I'm good at.

[Tried and succeeded. The puns that catch you after the fact are the best sort, Papyrus is finding out, and he snickers while Church groans at it.]

It sounds to me... like you need to try a few out! Buy a weapon that feels right... Go practice some moves, see what works for you.... Because, you can tell, there'll be one that's right! And everyone will be impressed at your skills!

[Can Church feel the light of the projector against his face? Papyrus might be reading him right, but mostly he's reading his own reflection in that visor.]

...Yeah.

Yeah!

There's gotta be like a practice range or something around here, right? I could just try out a bunch of things! Borrow them for a while. I don't have to buy them if I don't like them, I can totally do that!

[Papyrus nods along enthusiastically. Monika already gave him a little insight into the fine and respected art of haggling, and while haranguing the shopkeeper into giving things away for free probably wasn't a winning strategy... Insisting on testing the wares just might do the trick!!!]

Yeah!!! Hey, [he addresses the boar,] do you know a good place for that? Testing weapons... Shooting at distant targets... We won't be long!

[...But, well, Papyrus rolled an 8. Even with his +1 Cha, the boar doesn't look on board with this plan. "If you want test them, and return them if you're unhappy - and they're undamaged," the boar insists, "then trade something as collateral." So, like a normal sale.]

Y'know what, I'm good for now. I'm pretty sure I don't need to arm up within a couple hours of showing up in god knows where god knows how as god knows who.

I'll come back another time. When I know better what the fuck is happening. Probably should figure that out first.

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spaghettimonster - 2020-07-18 16:34 (UTC) - Expand

Hmm... you think so?

[ There's a degree of quiet playfulness, somehow, just in the way she says that. Mira's arms are crossed, head tilted just slightly to the side, before she looks back up at him--with what seems to be some familiarity. Sure, the cabanas are... different, and it's very warm, and she's not sure how she's gonna be able to sleep but. You know.

It's fine. It's fine! ]

Maybe you could dye those curtains...?

Yeah, I'm gonna find some blueberries around here on weirdo island and mush them up, slather it all on the curtains. Then get charged by whoever runs this place for smearing blueberry juice on everything.

...Was kind of thinking there'd be beds available, but I guess like everything else around here, that's wishful thinking.

Well... you'll only get charged if you get caught. You can always say some mysterious blueberry bandit came along and did it... They can't prove otherwise, right?

[ She considers the cabana with a frown. ]

It's a shame there isn't. That couch doesn't look... uncomfortable, but it's definitely not ideal, especially for the taller people here....

It's ideal for sipping maitais and having cabana boys and girls come serve you an endless supply of them dressed in next to nothing.

Does not seem ideal for...anything else.

[ She turns a little pink in the face and clears her throat. ]

... It's better than nothing, at the very least. Maybe you could take it up with the manager?

Uh-huh. I don't have a clue which of the who knows how many animal-y denizens that could be.

...Oh. Oh wow, no, okay, I just realized any cabanapeople who could be scantily clad would also probably just be animals? And I'm not a furry.

[ Oh, she just realized that too. Oh no. ]

W-well, neither am I, so I believe you.

But I think I can turn into an animal now? Not, um-- like the animal-people here but.... [ She is just... trying very hard to veer away from this! Unfortunately, she sucks at it. ] It's strange, though... I couldn't do that before.

Wait, what? You can just straight up turn into an animal? What the fuck! What do you mean you couldn't do that before!

[ .... Huh. It's then that she realizes there's something going on here, and she gives him a bit of a funny look? Like she's confused that he doesn't know she couldn't. Dancers aren't usually known for turning into animals, and it's not like he didn't know back at the Bureau.... ]

Um, those bottles we drank? They had information on our abilities now that we're here. Turning into an animal is one of mine, apparently.

...What. You mean to say that the weird vending machine stalking people is like...telling people they can do weirdo magic shit?

Sort of.

[ Her eye finally catches the bracelet, and now she's thinking about how to approach that. Okay. First things first, she pulls a paper from her pocket--it's the one she'd peeled off the bottle, the one that lists all her new abilities. She holds it up for him to see. ]

... It's kind of gross, but that stuff in the bottles... it makes things a little clearer. And mine had this on it.

It's on the back of the label? Did anyone think that's a stupid place to put important information about how we're all RPG characters in some dipshit kid's old SNES?

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II - leaning on the fourth wall is dangerous and summons skeletons

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iii, fuck me up shawna

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