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

[unrecovered]

[He smiles back, hidden behind the helmet - partially because he's happy to not be greeted with suspicion and partially because she might actually remember him, holy shit. She'd be the first, wouldn't she.]

[He gestures towards the piles.]

Slowly and carefully, I guess. Finding all of this was like a scavenger hunt.

Are you holding up okay?

[aceso]

[ She kneels down beside him, placing a few items she's recovered that aren't hers in what she assumes are their appropriate piles. ]

I guess considering what we could've woken up to, I'm doing all right.

[ She glances at him sidelong. Obviously the helmet isn't giving much away, so she'll just have to ask. ]

So, potentially dumb question, but do you remember me?

[ Because if he were one of the Reclaimers that's been memory wiped, it seems like he'd look a lot more lost. But on the other hand, this could just be how he copes. Christine's reminded of an image a friend at work once texted her. It was a cross stitch that said: Don't agonize; organize! And if that just doesn't sum her up, nothing does. Maybe she'd still be contemplating an organization system for lost items even without her memories intact. Maybe it's the same with him. ]

[unrecovered]

[There's a joke about 'could be worse; could be Space Cthulu' joke here, and Wash nearly makes it when Christine continues on, and-]

[It's confirmation. He's not alone.]

[He's not alone-]

[He thumbs the seal on his helmet and all but tears it off. When he looks at Christine, his expression is a mixture of surprise and abject relief.]

Thank God. I thought I was the only one!

[aceso]

[ She lets out a relieved breath herself. ]

Same here. Was starting to think I was the protagonist in a thriller or something.

[ Sitting back on her heels, she surveys the beach. ]

The last thing I remember before waking up here was Candlenights. I don't remember anything that could explain just why we ended up here or why nobody else but us seems to have their memories. It's like... someone tried to reset us all.

[unrecovered]

Nah, more like the Matrix.

[It's out of his mouth before he can think about it, and it leaves a chill in its wake. He knows a digital mind can be captured in a digital simulation; he has no idea if magic - technomancy - can capture a physical mind in a digital simulation, and...]

[He can't afford to think about it. Not right now.]

[He shakes his head.]

I remember a few things after Candlenights, but they're hazy. I honestly don't know if I dreamed it or not. What I don't remember is how we got here.

[He's quiet for a few moments after that last bit.]

Who knows - maybe they did. No idea how we got here, widespread amnesia, half the beach glitching out...we have no guarantee any of this is real.

[So much for not thinking about it.]

[aceso]

I was gonna say: this feels a bit like the training room, or the test of initiation.

[ It's a sobering thought, but she takes a deep breath to stop herself from digging deeper into the what ifs. ]

Well, first things first, we have to help people get their memories back. Once we do that, there'll be more minds to puzzle at this glitchy atmosphere problem. If it's not real, then we can find a way to bust out of it and back to the real world.

[unrecovered]

[The what-ifs of the situation are particularly horrifying, and it's all Wash can do to keep from drowning in them himself.]

God, I wish it were that easy.

[He sighs. Optimism has never been his strong point - he leans more towards realism, and past experiences are telling him that this is going to be an uphill climb at best.]

We do need to get everyone's memories back, but that's where it stops being easy. Natsuki remembered me just from looking at me, but Sans... [He trails off and shakes his head.] He's always been difficult.

[It's equal parts fondness and frustration. It's not like Sans would be the best candidate to help them figure out the potential digital prison they may or may not be trapped in, after all.]

[aceso]

If it were easy, we'd all be sitting here sipping mai tais by now.

[ She lets out a huff and busies herself with rearranging a few items sitting before her, turning them to all face the same direction. ]

Let's just get as many as we can nudge along. Then we'll worry about the difficult ones.