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

Terezi Pyrope | Homestuck

[iustitia]

& then you d̵̡̪̻̿̽͒i̸̟͓͍͌̾͐ë̸͖͇̪́̔͊.
[Terezi may remember precious little except for her name, but even she knows trees aren't supposed to do... that.

What is that anyway? She can't tell what it is, and it certainly doesn't smell right. There's a strange spot in the midst of a blob of salad-y freshness that almost seems to flicker, the scent there one moment and gone the next. Even on the inhale! It doesn't make any sense.

Curiosity gets the better of her. Shimmying up one of the trees takes some effort, but it comes far more naturally to her than she expected. It's trivially easy to balance on one of the branches and tightrope-walk her way over to the offending patch of smell. Hunkering down, she takes a big, deep whiff, and just really gets her nose all up in the glitch.

Astonished, she sits back on her haunches, a look of utter confusion writ on her face. Like poetry, like music, summoned up from the wellspring of the collective unconscious, shimmering and bright like an ephemeral dream, Terezi says:]

What a conksuck piece of shit.

(Jaws Theme)
[Okay. She's. Hm. It appears Terezi's being stalked by a fucking vending machine.

It's always just at the edge of her nose, a little whiff of straw and bamboo here and there, and then it disappears, only to reappear closer to her. It's creepy. It's unnerving. It's like one of those stupid statues from Troll Dr. Who Gives A Fuck, always moving when she's not watching. She never thought she could desire a delightfully refreshing carbonated beverage less in her life (or as little of it as she can remember), but here she is! Very adamantly trying to avoid chugging one! She has upgraded from a "cat's first time in a harness walk" to a "sternly unsettled white person half-jog" and as she turns a corner, time and space have warped to place her face to sniffer with the fucking vending machine.

And then, as though entirely sick of her shit, it lobs a bottle right at her face.

Trolls are made of sterner stuff than humans. Dismemberments. Stabbings. You name it, they've survived it. But that doesn't stop Terezi from letting out an undignified yelp of pain and surprise. Excuse me? Excuse me?? Hello??? She kicks the bottle away from herself as she cradles her cheek -- only to get shot at yet again. And again. And again.

Oh god. It's out to get her. This vending machine wants her ended.

She takes off at a dead sprint, bobbing and weaving in a desperate attempt to dodge the hailfire of bottles.]

Help! HELP! I'M BEING OPPRESSED

Jaws Theme

[ribticklers]

[Sans has already gone through this, which is actually the same reason he's around to see it happen at all. After you get in a fight with a vending machine, you remember that vending machine. He appears near Terezi's sprinting angle. It wouldn't be obvious by sight, but for smell, Sans definitely seems to have just appeared out of nowhere.]

Yeah, it'll do that. Sucks, huh?

[Sans is not helping at all.]

[iustitia]

[You remember those meme videos a while back where people were putting cucumbers behind their cats to watch their reactions? And then the cats totally freaked out? That's what Terezi does now. The hangtime is actually pretty impressive. She'd be impressed with herself if bloodpusher wasn't going faster than a Formula 1 car.]

YES

IT

DOES

[The hollering is impressive. She has a voice for every kind of thought now, and fifteen voices all focused on the thought "what the absolute shit" can raise quite the ruckus.]

How did you even do that?

[ribticklers]

[Is she referring to his teleportation? Sans didn't think he'd teleported at an obvious angle... Then again, he's taking to a fellow non-human (monster? Sans knows he's a monster, but for some reason he also thinks that it's not as simple as just humans and monsters here).

He has to keep teleporting to keep up with her. Okay, that's not exactly true. He could run, but why would he ever do that? Teleporting is a lot easier. If she noticed last time, she's definitely gotta notice all of this, right?]

Do what? [Sans continues to be extremely helpful. But actually, he will offer some real legitimate advice now:] You've gotta try the drink, by the way.

[iustitia]

You were just there! Out of nowhere!!

[Surely she would have caught a whiff of him if he'd been in the area? She didn't just hallucinate that, right??

But that's a mystery to be investigated later. Lunging for a beach umbrella, she yanks it out of the sand and holds it in front of her, like the world's shittiest shield. But it does the trick, several bottles immediately papping right off, and so she hunkers down and yells out to the.......

...........is that dude a skeleton]

Are you kidding me? That stuff is black! Who knows what's inside??

[ribticklers]

Oh, that was magic. [This is the truth, but also not really that helpful. It's the best kind of truth!] Whatever it is, it tastes really bad. But it probably won't kill you.

[iustitia]

["Magic is fake" very nearly leaves her mouth, held at bay only by the realization that it's a deeply stupid thing to say. Of course magic is real. How else would she be under attack by a machine gun vending machine?]

Probably? Probably?? That's the best you've got???

[ribticklers]

Hey, I don't know what kinda stomach you've got for mystery drinks. [Literally and figuratively.] But it's less likely to kill you than the vending machine.

[iustitia]

Did you drink it?

Is that why you're a skeleton.

[ribticklers]

Nah, I was just born lucky. [Too bad everyone can't be a skeleton.] But I did drink that stuff.

[iustitia]

[squint.

squiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiint.]

And it left you alone after that?

[ribticklers]

Yeah. You can tell 'cause it's not throwing bottles at me. [Ironclad evidence.]

[iustitia]

Okay, wiseguy. But if I die and become a skeleton -- [don't say that'd be rad as fuck, don't say that'd be rad as fuck] -- I'm going to come back and haunt you!

[It's not hard to reach out and grab a bottle. There's a veritable mountain of them piling up by her umbrella shield. She feels a little sorry for the poor shmuck who's going to have to clean all this dumb nonsense up.

ALRIGHT, BOTTOM'S UP BINCH....................................]

[ribticklers]

Skeletons don't haunt people, they just hang out in peoples' closets.

[Good luck with that delicious jellyfish ink taste.]

[iustitia]

[From behind Terezi's little beach fortress, Sans will be able to hear the sound of something not entirely unlike the miserable bellowing of a beached whale. Actually unlike a whale, however, also comes the coughing and bleching as Terezi tries to get rid of the lingering slick tar clinging to her tongue. Not only is she getting the already-terrible taste of the potion, she's getting the nasty taste of its color as well. The amount of noise she's making is truly awe-inspiring.]

It's soooooooooooooo baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

[ribticklers]

[It really is impressive how loud she is. But she does have a mouth for every kind of noise. Now that the vending machine isn't pelting bottles in Terezi's direction, Sans meanders over with some crackers. Palate-cleansers!]

Ten g.

[iustitia]

What is g...........

[iustitia]

Wait, like gold?

[ribticklers]

[It's a good thing Terezi kept talking, because Sans didn't actually know what g was either. The confusion only lasts that instant between Terezi's two statements, though.]

Yep. Or we can negotiate.

conksunk threads...

[wingstosee]

Hey, wait-

[ a couple of things are happening here. for one, just seeing terezi is enough to set off a hundred memories at once. laughing together. nicolas cage the fairy. pulling her mouths open so she can breathe. holding each other and laughing and crying and just being. it's a lot. it's everything at once. she needs to get to terezi so she can just... hold onto her for a moment.

she's also desperately trying to make her way across the sand to stop terezi before she takes that whiff. and when she realizes she's coming in a bit too late, she just... slows down and makes a small, sad noise. ]

Oh jeez. [ and then, reaching out to put her hand on terezi's shoulder- ] Um, are you- you know, okay? I've been getting headaches just looking at those things, so...

[iustitia]

I don't think I'm okay at all.

[Her voice is soft, wondering, full of an awed kind of surprise. It's like she's been sucker punched right in the nose, the sinuses blooming full of just the absolute worst feeling in the universe.]

Wow! I didn't know static could even be a smell!

[wingstosee]

That doesn't help??

[ but she's seen terezi do stuff way more stupid than sniff some static, at least. and she has to admit, she's kind of curious? ]

...so, uh. What does it smell like?

[iustitia]

[Terezi starts massaging the bridge of her nose, eyes squinting at the feeling.]

You ever bang the nerve right up in your elbow, and then it hurts but not really and it itches and tingles in a weird way kinda but basically it's the worst?

It smells like that.

[wingstosee]

Oh.

[ and normally, that might be an end to the conversation. but it IS venus we're talking about here, and she comes back about three seconds later with: ]

...I think I get what you mean? That's. A really good way to put it, actually.

[iustitia]

I know, right? Pretty good metaphor.

[The long pause is more comfortable than awkward. For the first time since she took her ill-advised whiff of the glitching tree, she takes notice of Venus's appearance. Something about it tickles right at the edge of memory. Interesting!]

My, what pretty and familiar eyes you have! Do I know you from somewhere?