prelude {{ Log 01.

[imaginarymods]

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

Comments

Michael | OTA

[eudaimonikos]

a. if there's no one there, then there's no one there

[He wakes up looking at the sky, with the sound of the surf in his ears. He finds he likes that, which is not at all a bad way to begin.

His name is Michael. He knows that, like he knows how to pilot his body upright. Everything else is vague. Perhaps the lack of memory ought to be concerning, but it really isn't. This seems ordinary to him - he has a sense already that he is not like the other people he can see in the distance, when he stands up and looks around. Things like him do just spring into being, fully formed. There was a moment like this before, where he just suddenly existed. He could easily believe that these were his first moments of life right here, except for the nagging feeling that he's supposed to be...somewhere else. There's something important, something he's missing.

It's probably more important than admiring the view. But he still lingers for a while, and when he finally turns to walk down the beach in the direction he thinks he ought to go, he's moving slowly.

When he comes across someone else washed up on the beach, he just looks at them for a moment, as if sizing them up. It is, perhaps, rather unnerving. Internally, Michael knows that these aren't people like him - so are they important? He's not decided.]

Have you seen... [But he doesn't know what he's looking for.] ...anything that seems important?

b. ethical consumption???

[Having made his way to the market, Michael examines everything he passes with a curious eye. He knows the purpose of a lot of this, in a general sense - but it's all at a remove, like it really has nothing to do with him. He doesn't eat. He doesn't buy clothes, or trinkets. He's not...meant to, maybe, or else he's just above all of that.

This lasts until he sees a carved wooden puzzle in a stall, the sort of thing you need to slide and move and figure out how to disassemble. It's painted in pretty colors. It's even a little shiny!]

Oooh! [He picks it up, fiddling with it a little. He does not immediately figure out the trick to it at all.] Oh, this is interesting!

[He may be...starting to walk away without paying for that.]

c. serene and primal, undimensioned

[Trailing along after the other beach people seems like a good way to find the most interesting things on the island, so Michael's been keeping that up. Right now, he's headed west from the Boardwalk, to see whatever's drawing people down there.

But when he rounds a bend in the path and sees the enormous squid keeping shop at the swim-up bar, he lets out an involuntary yelp and ducks back behind a tree.

Safely hidden, he leans back against the trunk and presses a hand over his chest. His heart - which he's certain he shouldn't even have - is pounding! And his stomach feels bad? What is that about? Maybe he just doesn't like squids, but he can't quite imagine what he has against them that's this terrible. Is it just irrational?

No. Obviously he's right and squids are disgusting and awful. It's the humans who are wrong!

When he realizes that someone's seen him, he's a little embarrassed, enough so to stand up straight and sneer a little.]

I wouldn't drink anything from that.   

d. wildcard

(( Hit me up on plurk or discord! ))

B

[spacerock]

Wait! [Rose, who had been looking at everything with delight and curiosity, waves the man she sees walking away down. Luckily, she stands out in a crowd.] You have to give them something if you want to take something!

[She may have made the same mistake today.]

[eudaimonikos]

[Michael looks up at her, glances back at the merchant for a second, and turns back to her.]

Why?

[spacerock]

That's how it works! [But actually, she probably knows this. Hold on, give her a second.] Since they made it, you have to trade something for it!

[It is very possible this merchant didn't make it, exactly, but most of Rose's knowledge of this comes from her lost memories of watching people buy food.]

[eudaimonikos]

[What does he have? Does he have anything? Michael knows there's several separate components to his outfit - he could remove his tie or pocket square or something - but that would make the whole thing feel incomplete; he doesn't want to do that.]

Well, they didn't try to stop me. [Probably they can't!]

[spacerock]

It's still not yours until you buy it. [Rose doesn't seem upset, though--it seems completely normal to her that someone wouldn't understand how it works.] They worked hard to make it.

[eudaimonikos]

...okay?

[and that's his problem now?]

c

[motherfucking_ghost]

[There's a lot of weird shit on this Matrix island of mystery. Church gets that. Some of this stuff is real...feelings-inducing. So, maybe he won't exactly hold it against someone if they have to take five and sort their shit out, unless this guy's like Church in that he doesn't know what shit there is to even sort in the first place.

He glances past the trees to the bar with the giant squid. If he had a face, he would be making a face. He has yet to realize he doesn't have a face, but even if he did, his helmet's still on, so a face would still mean nothing. He makes one anyway, looking back at the sneering guy.]

Yeah, that's pretty fuckin' weird. I wouldn't say something like that to the animal people, though. Seems like it could come off kinda racist, and the last thing we need is to start a race war with squid people.

[eudaimonikos]

[Michael, who has forgotten the concept of empathy and is extremely sensitive about this for reasons he does not understand, folds his arms and glowers in the direction of the squid.]

Yeah, well, maybe they shouldn't be so disgusting.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Uh, wow, maybe it can't help the fact that it's a giant sentient squid any more than you can help being a human?

[eudaimonikos]

I'm not a human. Why doesn't it just go live with other squids?

[motherfucking_ghost]

[There's just enough weirdness going on that he isn't even going to try arguing 'you LOOK human' because who the fuck knows what that even means anymore.] Why don't you just go live with other not-humans, my dude? No one's making you go get sushi from the squid or anything.

[eudaimonikos]

I don't know that there's any other.....

[well here's the first stumbling block]

...things like me around. Seems like mostly humans, weird furries, and a skeleton. [He is, just for now, still sort of assuming Church is a human in a big metal suit. They wear things like that sometimes, yeah?]

a

[petsthedog]

[Michael stares him down, and Shinji stares back. Somehow, this isn't unsettling at all, as if being sized up by people who may or may not pose a threat is something he's used to. Except, he doesn't remember that? Hm.

When Michael finally addresses him, the resting bitch face lightens up a little...only to seem confused instead.]

Dunno. The trees are weird, I guess? And there's this dumb soda machine that follows you.

[Are those important? No clue. They're annoying, though, which counts about the same, as far as Shinji is concerned right now.]

[eudaimonikos]

[Ah. Is that it? Michael supposes they may be important things in general, but they don't sound like his important things. He can't imagine being that personally invested in a soda machine.]

Why does it follow you?

[petsthedog]

It wants to make you drink this gross juice. No clue why, but it's probably related to the crap stuck to our arms.

[Which he is SUPER suspicious of, btw.]

[eudaimonikos]

[Michael looks at his bracer, like it's a watch. He does not see how this relates to gross juice.]

Do you think so?

[petsthedog]

Seems to be the only things all of us got in common. Weird arm watches and a vending machine stalker.

[He shrugs.]

Or it's just a weirdass coincidence.

[But considering nobody seems to remember anything, coincidences are all there is to go on right now.]

[eudaimonikos]

I haven't seen the machine.

[But he does sort of agree that the bracers, at least, can't be coincidental. He raises his arm to look at his again.]

It doesn't seem like something I'd wear. But I guess I don't really know.

c

[usamin17]

[Nana, employing a very unique and original tactic of following people around in order to find places of interest, stops in her tracks when the guy she was tailing has a fright. After he notices her and points out what he saw, she takes a quick peek at the bar before jumping a little and hiding behind the tree as well.]

That thing IS pretty scary. It's hard to imagine something that looks like that could ever be friendly!

[She stops in order to rub her aching temples.]

Still, I could really go for a drink right now, couldn't you, Producer?

[She immediately feels that something she said was really weird. Not sure which part though...]

[eudaimonikos]

[.....]

What?

[usamin17]

[Oops?]

Oh, uh, sorry is it... do you think I'm not old enough to drink? I feel like I might be. I've done it before, at least. I think.

[eudaimonikos]

....do you have to be a special age to drink?

[he has no memory of this]

[usamin17]

Yeah, you do usually.

[Wait, how do people live that long then?]

Actually, I don't know? There's definitely an age that you need to be to go get drinks, but obviously babies have to drink before they grow into humans.

[Ah, maybe it's...]

Oh, maybe you just have to be a certain age in order to buy them, and younger people can only receive them from older people!

[eudaimonikos]

Oh, so we can weed out the weaker ones?

[michael NO]

I don't know if I feel old, but everyone says I am. So I'm probably fine. Dunno about you.