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

Tommy Oliver | Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers | OTA

[gogreenrangergo]

1. Reign of the Jellyfish
[ A thatched roof vending machine is certainly new. (Or is it? It seems new, but whatever it is that's new to him is hard to gauge in the hours since he woke up on the beach). A bit of light exploration of the island has led him to the cabanas and their tiny, autonomous, thatched roof curio shop. In his hand (on the same arm that now sports a bracer he can't seem to pry off) is a vial filled with some sort of black goop. He's been looking at it for a couple of minutes now, trying to read the label but finding the symbols seem to shift under his vision; it's not that he doesn't understand it, like a foreign language or something. He just can't read it. One of the few things Tommy can parse however, seems to be telling him to drink the contents. ]

You want me to drink this? It uh...it doesn't smell very appetizing.

[ The vending machine makes a quiet KER-PLUNK, answering in the affirmative by way of the flap opening once again to pop a second vial out that rolls to a stop at Tommy's feet. ]

I don't know about this one.


2. Orchestral Maneuvers in the Park
[ Today, Tommy has decided to make his way around the perimeter of the island as best he can, both to familiarize himself a bit better with the main island, and to scout out the archipelago from the beach. He still doesn't remember much, really only that his name is Tommy Oliver, he's good at karate, and he seems to like green clothes. That's what makes what he finds on his walk today something special: it's something that feels familiar. Lodged in a coconut hanging from a glitching tree that's grown in a lazy diagonal arc is a strange green and bare-steel dagger that seems to have been smushed together with a clarinet. ]

Huh...

[ Tommy makes his way over to the tree, hopping out of the sand and onto the trunk with practiced, athletic ease, shimmying his way up it in a matter of moments before turning to sit atop it where its arc is most horizontal. He reaches down, yanking the coconut off the tree by the hilt of the dagger before pulling the blade free, pausing a moment to drink some of the milk from the coconut before tossing it down to the sand below.

He looks down at the dagger in his hand. The strange symbol on the hilt seems familiar and important, but to his frustration he can't place it. Still, he knows somehow this is his dagger..and that he might not like everything he's done with it. He shakes his head, letting his muscle memory take over as he lifts the mouthpiece he somehow knew would be in the hilt to his lips, blowing into the weird flute assembly on the weapon's side, producing a bright, trumpety fanfare that rings down the beach. He looks to the ocean expecting...something? He finds he's disappointed, sitting in his tree looking out over the water as the trumpet-flute-dagger fanfare rings off into the distance. ]


3. Island of Illusion
[ Over his time here so far one thing has become abundantly clear to Tommy: he is not supposed to be on this island. From the glitching trees to the memory loss, something is very rotten in the state of...of course the saying escapes him. He's forgotten what its from. Hell, he's forgotten he's forgotten.

He hasn't asked any of the friendly animalians to take him out on a boat, or really asked much from anybody who seems to fit here. After all, if this place is meant to keep him here, they probably wouldn't be allowed to help him out of it anyway. For similar reasons he's decided to conduct this particular experiment on a bright, starry night.

And he can't help but feel like he has been held in something like this before, but trying to focus on the memory just calls to mind an image of a strange golden-ape-dog-man, so that's probably a dead end. ]

Well, only one way to find out if I'm stuck here.

[ Finishing this encouragement to himself, Tommy tucks away the dagger he had found, which he had taken to carrying all the time now, before walking out into the surf until it's deep enough to swim. He swims out, and everything is relatively smooth sailing for about 20 minutes. But once he's out about 1/2 a mile from shore, he finds that the water's resistance has increased ten fold, and a second later finds himself landing stomach down on the beach mid-stroke. He sits up, dusting wet sand off his soaked clothes and frowning out at the surf. ]

Guess that answers that question.

1

[spaghettimonster]

Oh my god, it's not just me? That machine's been pushing those on me all morning.

[Having approached from somewhere behind Tommy, Papyrus leans around to look past him at the thatched vending machine in question - and visibly frown at the machine. His skeletal facial features crease up not quite like skin, but close enough.]

Hey! Stop throwing vials of terrible soup at people. Nobody wants it!

[The vending machine, very helpfully, shoots another vial at Papyrus. This one catches up in the folds of his scarf, then slowly rolls off to plummet into the sand. His frown turns into a scowl.]

[gogreenrangergo]

All morning? How many has it tried to-whoa!

[ Tommy starts as he turns to find the voice behind him is coming from some sort of ambulatory, armored skeleton. Out of reflex, he drops into a karate stance for just a moment. Some buried part of him shouts in his mind that "this is one of Rita's monsters!" but he relaxes his stance after a second, shaking his head to himself for a moment as the skeleton admonishes this...soup dispenser? Is that what this stuff is? And who the hell is Rita? ]

Oh, uh, sorry! You surprised me. This stuff is soup?

[ He looks down at the vial by his feet, which is soon joined by another spat out by the machine. He then turns back to the skeleton. ]

Hey, weird question, do you know anybody named Rita?

[spaghettimonster]

Rita? Not that I recall... But, I barely know my own name.

[He thinks it over briefly, thinking through the other people he's encountered - and exchanged names with - so far today. None of them was a Rita, that he can think of offhand.]

And... Maybe it's soup. It's liquid, but not water. And it wants us to eat it!

[Or, well, drink it. The amnesia isn't a complete one, but even beyond the absence of personal memories, Papyrus keeps tripping over little broken connections between concepts even when he has the separate concepts themselves.]

[gogreenrangergo]

Hmm.

[ He looks down at the bottle again, trying to focus on the name Rita, but it's slippery. He can't even tell if it's a good memory or a bad memory he's trying to chase. But hey, no point getting caught up in that now. He looks back up at the skeleton, ignoring another new vial rolling into his feet. ]

Do you think this stuff's dangerous? I don't know if anybody would be trying to hurt us, but I don't trust this place.

[ He gestures vaguely at a nearby palm tree, which flickers almost as if to underscore his point. ]

Oh! I almost forgot: I'm Tommy, by the way.

[ Tommy extends a hand for a handshake. ]

[spaghettimonster]

Oh, of course! I'm Papyrus.

[Papyrus hesitates at the hand, then slowly offers his own hand in a mirror of the gesture - only realizing what's happening while they're in the middle of it, and following through on the handshake. Tommy is saved from the experience of directly shaking hands with literal bones by the fabric of Papyrus' gloves, but they're not so thick as to disguise what's within them.]

I don't know if it's dangerous...

[Like the glitching tree, which doesn't seem right, but also doesn't seem to be harming anything but his own ability to pay attention to what's going on.]

But I don't like the smell, and don't want to try it!

[gogreenrangergo]

[ The feeling of loose bones in a glove gripping around his hand is certainly new, but if it bugs him, Tommy hides it well. ]

Yeah, it definitely smells fishy. In a few ways.

[ Another vial rolls into the widening pile of them at his feet. ]

I don't know if this machine cares much what we think, though.

Island of Illusion

[myliteratureclub]

[ Monika watched out curiosity. Really, she didn't have a lot of faith, but wouldn't it be great if it worked out? But... nope. No luck.

When Tommy washes back up, Monika will approach him and offer a waterskin and a smile. ]

You did your best.

Re: Island of Illusion

[gogreenrangergo]

[ Tommy is so busy frowning out at the sea he doesn't even hear Monika approaching until she's close. He manages not to jump in surprise though, turning and taking the waterskin gratefully, pouring it into his mouth from a few inches above, careful not to put his mouth on it. Just because he's trapped on glitch island doesn't mean he's lost all his manners. ]

Thanks. And yeah...not that it did any good.

[ He hands the waterskin back over, looking back toward the sea. ]

We're stuck here. Or I guess I am, at least? I don't think anybody else would have a different result, though.

[myliteratureclub]

No, we're definitely all stuck here. But the effort is very appreciated.

[ Monika smiles, taking a seat next to him. She looks out to the sea before addressing him again. ]

By the way, I'm Monika. I'm no expert on this stuff, but I think as long as we all stick together, it'll turn out okay. And hopefully soon we'll know why we're here.

[ She thinks to herself it must have to do with the Bureau... but she doesn't remember Tommy from then. And she's pretty sure she has all her memories. So why did this guy show up...? ]

[gogreenrangergo]

I'm Tommy.

[ He leans back a bit, relaxing his posture as he looks out at the ocean. ]

You know, you sound like somebody I know. All that stuff about sticking together and things working out.

[ Tommy looks back at Monika, smiling a bit wearily. ]

Of course, I don't remember who that other person is, but you definitely sound like them.

[ His gaze returns to the ocean, and he concentrates again. Whoever he's trying to remember, they remind him of the color red. ]

[myliteratureclub]

It's good to meet you Tommy, even with the circumstances.

[ She tilts her head at though. What an odd comment to make, but she doesn't really mind. She feels kind of bad he can't remember. ]

Oh? Are you sure it wasn't me then?

[ Well maybe not that bad. ]

[gogreenrangergo]

[ He shakes his head. ]

No, I don't think so. I think I'd recognize you if I knew you.

[ He lifts the Dragon Dagger for a moment. ]

I remembered this thing when I saw it, at least a little, so I think I'd recognize people too. At least I hope so.

[ Tommy's eyes widen as something seems to occur to him. ]

Wait, do you know me and I'm being totally rude right now?

2

[hxppythxughts]

[The sounds of someone messing around in the trees catches Sayori's attention, but she doesn't find the source until he's already climbed out of her natural line of sight. Only by the coconut falling to the ground does she realize that he's up in the tree, which is definitely cause for amazement. To her, anyway.

He has something in his hand, and when he lifts it to his face, it...makes a sound! Like a little...she has no idea what instrument that sounds like. Nor why a weapon sounds like an instrument, but for some reason that part doesn't seem as strange.]

That was so cool! [Just gonna call up to him from the ground, huh?] Can you play other stuff too?

[gogreenrangergo]

[ He starts a bit, not having expected anybody else to be on this stretch of beach, but the question grabs his attention as he looks down at her. ]

Uh, maybe? Let me see.

[ Deciding not to think about it too hard, he raises the dagger again, and to his surprise manages a different trumpety fanfare. Once again he glances at the ocean in anticipation, frowning at the nothing that happens. He recovers quickly though, looking back down and chuckling a bit awkwardly. ]

Don't ask me for a third one. Something tells me that's all I've got, at the moment.

[hxppythxughts]

[Good enough for Sayori! Her grin grows brighter and she applauds in excitement once he's done, bouncing a little on her toes.] That was perfect! Good job!

[It's a little hard to get a closer look from down here, but her eyes trace the shape of the instrument-thing again as she cranes her neck to look up at him. It really is an objectively weird object, even if she doesn't find herself all that confused by it.] So...it's like a knife too, right?

[She's going somewhere with this.]

[gogreenrangergo]

Oh, yeah! I think...I think it's called the Dragon Dagger? It seems to be mine. Well, it feels like it's mine, I guess.

[ Tommy looks down at the dagger in his hand again, giving the air a few quick swipes with it. ]

I've definitely used it before, at least.

[hxppythxughts]

Whooooa! What a cool name!! [There is absolutely no evidence of sarcasm or facetiousness here. She genuinely feels this way. What a loser.

But this brings her to her question:] You don't get worried about cutting your face when you play the music part?

[gogreenrangergo]

Oh, no the blade is pretty f-

[ Tommy stops, realizing he's gesturing toward parts of a dagger from 10 feet away and that's probably not super helpful. He kicks his legs out, the momentum carrying him off the tree trunk to land in the sand below. He lands in a crouch to absorb the impact, knees bending in practiced ease before he stands back up straight. He walks the short distance to Sayori before resuming. ]

See the uh...mouthpiece? I don't know instruments super well, I think that's the term. Anyway, the mouthpiece bit is in the crossguard, so the blade's pretty far from your face when you're actually playing it.

3

[parfaitgirl]

[ A tiny pink-haired girl stands behind him watching this unceremonious beach landing, arms folded across her chest as she watches him dusting the sand off. ]

Answers what question?

[gogreenrangergo]

[ Well, so much for nobody being around to see it if he failed. Tommy turns at the sound of the voice, getting to his feet and knocking the sand off still stuck to his wet clothes. ]

The question of if we can get out of here by the sea. There's...some kind of barrier out there? I think it teleported me.

[ Teleport? Why in the world is that a word he feels comfortable using casually? Shouldn't he be freaking out over teleportation? He shakes it off. ]

2

[usamin17]

[Nana is wandering around aimlessly when she hears loud music coming from atop a tree. The type of instrument that she hears is very familiar, so she looks up to see a man in the tree holding... not the aforementioned instrument. The music couldn't have come from that, but it must have? Nana stands there for a long time and stares very conspicuously at the instrument, occasionally squinting her eyes and scratching her head.]

Wha...?

[gogreenrangergo]

[ After a few moments, he gets the distinct feeling he's being stared at. First, out of habit, he looks around his eyes level, but given he's up in a tree that proves fruitless. At the sound of the "wha" however, he looks down. ]

Oh, uh, hi. Sorry, I didn't disturb you or anything, did I?

[usamin17]

[She waves her hands in front of her.]

Ahh, no! It's not that, I just... I heard some nice music coming from up there. Do you know what it was?

[gogreenrangergo]

Oh, uh, yeah that was this!

[ He motions toward the dagger in his hand. ]

It's got a...flute in it? I know it doesn't sound like a flute, but you can blow into it and play music.