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

[ribticklers]

[Sans is eating his ice cream, but also he never opens his mouth. It's fine.]

It's probably like bottle rockets, yeah? All that carbonation in there. [Or magic, but bottle rockets are funny.]

[hxppythxughts]

[She should probably think his process of eating ice cream is weird. But she doesn't?

She's not going to examine that acceptance further, either, because she's far more concerned about the aggressive vending machine. She answers with a comprehending:] Ohhhh. Like when you put that one candy in some soda!

[A beat.]

...

[Belatedly:] Wait! I get it! Bottle rockets! [There it is.]

[ribticklers]

Gotta watch out for those sneaky ones. [Wink. It's not clear if he's talking about the vending machine or his joke now.]

[hxppythxughts]

There are sneaky bottle rockets?! [This...this isn't about the vending machine or the joke.]

1/2

[ribticklers]

[That's a hilarious idea, though. He acts automatically:] Yeah, see?

[And three white magical darts sail off harmlessly into the air.]

[ribticklers]

[...Wait. What was that?]

1/3

[hxppythxughts]

[...]

[hxppythxughts]

[...]

3/3

[hxppythxughts]

That was so cool!! How'd you do that?!

[ribticklers]

Uh--y'know, magic. [Sans still looks a little caught off-guard.]

[hxppythxughts]

Magic?

[That's crazy. That should be crazy, right?

It doesn't feel crazy, though.

She peers off in the direction that the darts sailed, though they're gone now.] Can all skeletons do magic?

[That's not the question she really wants to ask, but it's the one she lands on because she can't find the words for what's really nagging at her.]

[ribticklers]

Yeah. 'S long as they're skeleton monsters. [Yeah, that feels right. Magic in general doesn't feel odd to him, even if he didn't know what he did specifically right then. The hesitance in his response is a little more obvious than he'd like, though.]

[hxppythxughts]

[He doesn't seem entirely confident in that answer, but luckily for him, Sayori is a bit preoccupied by the itch in the back of her mind that she can't quite scratch.

Though she does repeat back, uncertainly:] Skeleton...monsters?

[It did not occur to her to think of skeletons as monsters. But.] Wait, skeletons probably can't walk around if they're not monsters, huh?

[Yeah that makes sense...]

[ribticklers]

Yeah. They'd be chill hangout partners, but kinda quiet. [This is a dumb way to describe a non-magical skeleton.]

[hxppythxughts]

[Despite her confusion and the itch in her brain, she has to laugh at that. And the first response that comes to mind is:] Yeah, chilled to the bone!

[ribticklers]

[Sans chuckles. That was bad and that's why it was good.] Only if you scared 'em.

[hxppythxughts]

[Hmm!] I don't think I could scare a skeleton.

[She's not sure she could scare anyone!

Contemplatively, she regards the remaining chunk of her ice cream. It's starting to drip onto her hand.] Hey, can you do that magic thing again?

[ribticklers]

[Can he? He should be able to.] Yeah, sure. [It takes a second of focus, though, now that Sans is doing it consciously. Three white darts shoot up into the air again.]

1/3??? i think

[hxppythxughts]

[She watches the darts with more intensity than she's looked at anything else over the span of this whole conversation.

There's something. Something she should know about this. She knows there is, but she can't— quite— scratch that itch—

The now-liquid ice cream drips from her hand onto her sleeve. She frowns at it and reluctantly clears the rest of the treat off the stick in one bite. But as she's looking at the darts again and wondering how the heck to get pink ice cream out of a white shirt—]

2

[hxppythxughts]

Wait!!

[Wait??]

3/3 yea.

[hxppythxughts]

I think I can—

[She holds up the hand with the stick. The sleeve with the stain. And then holds her other hand underneath it—] Clean this?

[And snaps as she says that.

The spot vanishes.]

[ribticklers]

[Sans watches as the spot vanishes.] You thought right. [It doesn't seem surprising that Sayori can do magic, though he doesn't really know why.] Now you've got a clean slate.

[hxppythxughts]

[Again, it comes automatically:] A spotless record, ahaha!

[Did she always make jokes like this? She doesn't think so, but they're pretty fun. And the magic thing is a pretty big point of distraction, but suddenly on the stick of the ice cream, she notices...] Hey, there's something written on my stick!

[ribticklers]

Oh yeah? [Sans glances at his own stick. Oh, hey.] Looks like these're the kind with jokes. Hit me with yours, kiddo.

1/3

[hxppythxughts]

[She squints a little at the stick and reads it aloud.] "A skeleton scared of a ghost sounds pretty nuts, / But when it comes to skeletons, no body's got the guts!"