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

[He awakens to the sound of the surf. It's odd - he's not usually a beach person, he doesn't think. Or at least he wasn't near any beaches? He's not sure.]

[He opens his eyes to sunlight and the readout from his HUD. Temperate climate; proximity to ocean (wait, his boots are in the water, aren't they); location unknown. Motion trackers indicate movement nearby. Not reassuring, but not bad either.]

[There's...something he needs to be doing, isn't there? There's always something he needs to be doing. Time to...get started. Take stock. Start at the beginning.]

[His name is David.]

[He stops short at the sudden unease that statement causes, sliding down his back like ice, never mind a temperature controlled suit of armor and the warm weather. It's wrong. It's wrong. He hasn't been David since-]

[The sudden tidal wave of memories that washes over him impacts like getting hit by a car.]

[(He'd know a thing or two about that, wouldn't he.)]

[His name is Agent Washington. His friends call him Wash. He's a Reclaimer for the Bureau of Balance, because his home was eaten by a cosmic horror called the Hunger. It needs to be stopped- it's on its way-]

[And he's on an unknown island, fully equipped but without a goddamn clue how he got there.]

[Well, he wasn't wrong about there being something he needed to do. He pushes himself to his feet . Time to get going.]

1. There's No Such Thing As Ghosts

[It takes Wash about ninety seconds to realize that he hates this fucking beach.]

[He likes to think he can handle a lot, and maybe he can, but evidence that this might damn well be - and hell, probably is - a digital simulation, created by an unknown force and trapping them there for an unknown purpose-]

[They might be Alpha's memories, but that doesn't mean they can't still fuck him up.]

[Keep an eye out and you may see a heavily armored man all but speedwalking to get off this damn beach, because he is not staying here a second longer than he has to.]

2. The return of the Salt and Pepper Diner

[It doesn't take long for Wash to realize that, not only are his fellow Reclaimers here, but that not all of them got their memories back as quickly as he did...or at all. Yet.]

[Hopefully it's a "yet."]

[There's an easy litmus test for that, and all it takes is an hour of meditation before Athena is back in his arms, meowing loudly and batting at his helmet. There you are! She was getting worried.]

[She's now scouting ahead of him, so don't be surprised if a fifteen-pound gray Norwegian Forest cat bounds up to you and starts rubbing against your legs or pouncing on your feet. She's helping!]

[It'll take a minute or two for Wash to come by, and he's definitely got an eye out for your reaction. If you recognize Athena, you remember something; if you don't, you're still an amnesiac, or someone he's never met.]

3. Stuff and Things

[It started off small - finding the omamori Maya had given him for Candlenights tangled in the branches of a tree. Getting it down had shaken loose a few other items, and it had become a full-blown scavenger hunt, gathering up whatever scattered items he recognized as belonging to Reclaimers (and a few he didn't, but he has pattern recognition and he might as well) and bringing them back to a not-horrifyingly-glitchy part of the beach. He's currently sorting his current armful into a pile system - weapons, armor, magic items, miscellanea - with a number of other, smaller piles off to the side. If you express interest, he gestures at the larger piles:]

Go ahead. If something looks familiar, it might be yours.

[It'll get sorted once everyone gets their memories back, he hopes.]

[If he knows you, however, he'll gesture instead to one of the smaller piles.]

That one's yours.

4. Wildcard

[Want to do something different? Hit me up!]

[Sans had been trying to look for his stuff without actually letting on that he was doing that or that he wasn't entirely sure which things might be his. Then this guy--this guy he definitely doesn't remember, but what else is new today?--just gestures to a pile with way more certainty than Sans feels about this whole thing.

He doesn't like it. But, looking at the pile, Sans gets the idea he's right. A whole pile of shutter shades, a definitely magical bracelet, a just as magical belt, and a hand mirror.

Why does this guy know this is his stuff?]

You startin' a lost and found?

[No shitty pun- no greeting, even- tells Wash that Sans has no idea who he is. God only knows what else he remembers, if anything. Never mind that Sans works on his own internal logic and is incredibly powerful in his own right (though whether he remembers that is also a crapshoot) - if Sans is missing his memories, then Wash is missing one of the people he'd hoped he could count on to keep things together until everyone was up to speed.]

[If anyone ever gets up to speed. That's still a very big if.]

[Great. Just great.]

[But his helmet helps him keep a poker face, and his reply is casual.]

Something like that. There's too much stuff lying around not to.

[We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?]

[Sans is definitely regretting the presence of that helmet. Expressions say a lot, and Sans prefers to have that info available.]

I don't think I wrote my name on any of this, though. [He's spoken to Christine. He knows what she had to say about the situation. That doesn't mean it's what's actually happening, though, and if you feed someone information, they can spit it back out at you.]

[There it is. He's digging, and he's too smart for any sort of act to work. Wash sighs.]

How much do you know about all of this?

[He gestures somewhat uselessly, indicating the island as whole. He wants to establish a baseline, but he has no idea whether Sans will even give him that.]

[Another loaded question. If Christine wasn't lying, this guy might be involved in that whole magic reclamation thing, but still might not be. If she was lying, then this guy is definitely a mystery.]

The way you said that, buddy, it sounds like I should be askin' you that question.

Wash | Red vs Blue

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