lifeaftr_mods | Search Requests

Search Requests

And no one knows how far it goes

As a central element to the game, Search Requests may seem very daunting at first. Never fear! Below is a table of contents for this page that may help answer your questions, giving you the confidence to venture forth into the great unknown.

[ ♆ ] What Are Search Requests?
[ ♆ ] What Impacts a Search Request?
[ ♆ ] How Many Search Requests Can I Make?
[ ♆ ] Why are Searches Limited?
[ ♆ ] Islands Available
[ ♆ ] Search Request Form

What Are Search Requests?

The contents of many islands that make up the archipelago of LifeAftr require player exploration and participation to uncover and chart, as everything from the potential dangers, obstructions, and resources are randomized. Alongside adding weight to the potential dangers characters may face, it also gives you the potential to influence the game as much as possible.

Upon arrival to a new island, a blank map of the island's general shape will be provided with a grid, parsing the island into square sections for the purposes of exploration. Each of these squares are a base size of one mile by one mile in terms of width and breadth, unless otherwise noted. Each square is also labeled for player convenience. Characters who have access to boats or another means of traversing the ocean waters can perform search requests on surrounding waters.

Search Requests are intended to be used as a prompt for IC interactions. While not all search results will hold something of particular interest, such as finding new seeds or fruit, but in circumstances where enemies or information has been located, we encourage ICly threading out these results, or using them to foster new CR.

What Impacts a Search Request?
As of July 2018, there are new factors to take into account when submitting a Search Request:

[ ♆ ] GROUP SIZE limits the timeframe in which a search request can be completed. While a single mile may not seem so far to walk, thoroughly investigating a square mile is a different matter altogether. Depending on the size of a group, characters may choose to push on into an additional square at the cost of spending the night in the wilderness, potentially exposing themselves to other dangers - or in groups of four or more, split the group to cover the additional ground. Search Requests are currently limited to two squares maximum at a time, regardless of group size.

[ ♆ ] DIFFICULT TERRAIN such as mountainous regions, thickly wooded areas, or those under the sway of severe weather conditions may severely hamper a group in covering new ground. Due to this, search requests may be limited on occasion to one square per search, regardless of the group size. This restriction will be announced when relevant.

[ ♆ ] POTENTIAL RISKS can and will hinder characters set on searching more than one square. If searching an area thoroughly, it is assumed that your character is both taking their time, and covering as much of the ground in that square as possible. Obstructions, predators and catastrophes should be predominantly unavoidable due to this.

How Many Search Requests Can I Make?
Each character is limited to submitting one search per week, of up to two squares. When searching in a group of three people or fewer, a second square may only be searched if characters intend to spend the night camping out, which puts them at risk for additional dangers.

Beyond submitting a search, characters may also band together with others for an additional two search requests, but these requests must be submitted by another character.

Additionally, Search Requests may only be forward-dated up to two days ahead of the current date. As LifeAftr may sometimes see events suddenly beginning, forward-dating is limited to avoid the need to retcon.

Why are Searches Limited?
The introduction of limitations to the number of search requests characters can conduct is to ensure moderation of the game's pacing, in addition to ensuring all players have a chance to affect the plot, regardless of their tagging speed or RL obligations. Previously, search requests have been unlimited due to an agreeably slow pacing as LifeAftr established itself. The beginning of July saw the game expanding and going through a new teething stage that required a few new aspects to our search requests system, in addition to discarding mechanics that simply weren't being used.

In some circumstances, such as when an island is due to disappear - potentially for good! - we may lift these restrictions to allow those who'd like to further explore islands to go wild.

Maps Available:
The current islands, their descriptions, and how much area has already been unveiled can be found on the Locations Page. A key describing the area, resources, and dangers can also be found.

The following island(s) are currently available for exploration:

ENSŌ
NASTRANDIR
The following island(s) are not currently available, but have individual locations pages for player perusal:

AI'TUOH
CAHYPDO
CHOL
IO
MAATI
MONSUN
NUIDAN
UMUI
ZIZIPHUS

Search Request Form
To submit a search request, please post the below form in a new comment. Before submitting your request, keep in mind that map updates may lag depending on mod work schedules. Checking the last few posted searches may avoid doubling up accidentally.

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( CODED BY BOOTYCALL, COMISSIONED ART BY RUKA )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Player name: Vanessa
Character name: Commander Shepard
Character journal:

tenthstreetbred
Character(s) accompanying: Keith, Beau, and 2B!
Area searched: Nastrandir, E4 and F4
Date of search: 8/11 and 8/12
Additional notes: Team Gay PTSD is gonna rock this one. Beau will be using her Gift of Knowledge ability to search around the area extra carefully, and Shepard has experience in unknown terrain and exploration. At the very least, they're unlikely to lose their footing.

The Search Begins...
E4 is mostly woodland, as fate would have it. Swampy woodland, wet woodland, probably a fair pain to travel due to how humid it can get and how thick the ground can be at points, but woodland nonetheless. Dense-packed trees with dangling creepers and curtains of swamp lichen can prove irritating to traverse, along with the whine of insects eager to find some warm flesh to drink from, and there aren't any obvious indications that anything lives here. At least...if there are any prey animals to be found, they don't show themselves.

Still, there is part of a metallic construct protruding from the ground, covered with moss and half-reclaimed by nature, but nonetheless still capable of issuing a very faint red glow from the top. Should this group find a way to compare notes with two other groups, they'll find that they're not the only ones to encounter something just like this.

The light mounted at the top of this odd siren post does start to pulsate with a low-level red glow, the closer travelers approach. Stronger, too, than either of the sirens that came before it, if anyone here has heard tell of them. You're definitely getting closer to something...

This might make staying the night in this area a little bit unsettling. But, hey - at least you don't have to worry about lighting up your surroundings any. You've already got a convenient nightlight!

♆ E4 has been unlocked on the map of the area! ♆

Hi Ho
Half-buried in the ground near the siren is a squarish, boxy shape that will, with a little digging, reveal itself to be a very old minecart. The group will also be capable of digging up ancient mine rails, though there aren't nearly enough of them to indicate where this cart may have come from or where it was meant to end up.

While the cart is rusted, and clearly quite old, there's still something to be found inside it. Namely, the group will be able to uncover a few old sacks that look as though they were crafted from some kind of waterproof or hydrophobic material. This didn't protect the contents from absolute wear and tear, but it did save some of them from the worst of the warm weather, as well as the pitfalls of the general passage of time.

The first sack contains chunks of coal that look as though they were cut roughly from...somewhere. Probably by hand, if the unevenness and irregularity of each piece is any indication.

The second sack contains fragments of copper ore. Again, they look as though they were probably mined by hand.

The third sack contains only wet silt and mud. It's possible that it contained something of use, once, but a few widened punctures at the bottom of the sack suggests that the heat and moisture got to the contents and ate away at them over time. Alas!

The Search Begins...
Now you're going to be lucky to run into something very special - ruins. Specifically, ruins of a few old buildings built of stone. Like other ruined structures found on Nastrandir, the composition of these buildings matches the stone of the mountains, so it's not a stretch to say that they were probably carved from the same stone.

F4 contains only three buildings. Of those three, only one is truly intact enough to offer any insight to who these people were, and how they might have lived. And even then, it's not in a very good state at all; the roof is missing completely, and a lot of this stone looks charred and blackened, like it was once set on fire.

While the door has long since rotted away, and any wood supports have crumbled and molded into little more than compost - those that weren't reduced to ash, anyway - the building's interior looks vaguely as though it was meant to be some kind of archive, or library. At least, that's what it appears to have been. There are dark shapes of stone shelves in the parts of the building that survived, though the humidity seems to have done away with any books that could have shed some light on what happened here...

Oh no, wait a second. There's something on one of these shelves. And it's...glowing?

Hey. This looks familiar.

♆ F4 has been unlocked on the map of the area! ♆

The Past Remembers
A round orb exhibiting a faint glow - sounds like something you've seen before, right? At least two of your number will know what this is, because they'll have seen it in the underwater city, buried on the ocean floor just off the coast of Ensō.

It's a merotome, one of those orbs that carries memories inside of it. That material, and faint light, is unmistakable. But there's something...very, very wrong with this one. For one, it crackles with a deep reddish energy, not the neutral, colorless glow that the other merotomes exhibited when they were uncovered from the ocean floor. For another, there are what appear to be cracks threaded across its exterior - the parts of it that aren't blackened, much like the stone outside.

This object is unstable. Very unstable.

You can touch it with no seeming consequences, play around with it, try and throw it as far into the ocean waves as possible, but no matter what happens to it, it seems to have been aggravated by the presence of so many people around it. Or maybe it's something else that's causing the reddish light to heat up, steadily, until it's a blistering, scarlet glow...

The morning of August 16th, the merotome breaks.

And the consequences of this are going to be felt all over the archipelago.

Search Requests

owo

NASTRANDIR - E4 | ⋈ OLD TOOLS (1/2)

NASTRANDIR - F4 | !! EXPLORATION EVENT TRIGGERED !!