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lifeaftr_mods) wrote2018-05-22 07:34 pm
Timeline
Chapters
♆ The Siege of the Sun ♆ The Floating Islands ♆ Ai'tuoh ♆ Ziziphus ♆ The Overgrowth ♆ Nuidan ♆ Mu's Reproach ♆ The TrialsTHE ARRIVAL
No one can rightly say when story of LifeAftr began in earnest.
For many, it began on August 3rd, when a great many people awoke on wooden rafts, floating just off the coast of a large island. With no other choice available to them and the siren song of the mainland beckoning, everyone gravitated toward that single visible landmass. They would learn that they were not alone, either: the sprawling ruins near to the island's coast would house an eccentric deity known as the Storyteller, who would inform the new travelers as to their destination.
They had landed on the island of Ensō, located in the curious archipelago of LifeAftr. The Storyteller would claim no knowledge as to how they ended up there and who or what had drawn them to those shores, but would agree to assist the travelers nonetheless. The arrivals would tell them stories, and the Storyteller would use those stories to fuel their own power, as well as grant requests for items and supplies.
September would bring with it the promise of shelter. With rudimentary shacks and the joint sustenance and transportation provided by the mana pools, basic necessities could be fulfilled. The beginning of each month would see adventurers pulled into the archipelago anew, and by mid-month, each would be invited to participate in a monthly Storytelling, to share their adventures and accrue stories to trade with the Storyteller for favors and items.
And with that, the story began anew.
THE QUARTZALCOATL
As some unfortunate explorers would discover, they were not alone on Ensō. A group of intelligent, carnivorous simians had already made their home, and by the beginning of October, has seen fit to abduct and imprison both new arrivals and old-timers alike for their own gain. The resulting bloodbath saw most of the monkeys exterminated, and revealed the presence of a curious stone door with a sigil inscribed across its front - the second of its kind to be discovered. While the door itself was sealed, the Storyteller would inform everyone that it was built specifically to keep whatever lay beyond out of the Storyteller's reach; they could not breach the seal.
But mortals such as their guest adventurers could. Stockpiling them with supplies, food, and light, the Storyteller sent everyone beyond the doors, regardless of whether or not they wanted to, with instructions to destroy any of the symbols that reduced the Storyteller's influence.
The doors opened into a network of caves beneath Ensō that contained evidence of some sort of civilization, now long gone. This would turn out to be for very good reason: the caves also hosted a species of creature known as Quartzalcoatl. Hulking masses of green crystal, quartzalcoatl were both hosts and victims to a deadly virus that spread through physical contact with the crystals scattered liberally throughout the caves beneath Ensō. The virus claimed far too many lives before the Storyteller could sweep everyone out of the caves, flood them, and seal them shut in an attempt to isolate the horror they'd unknowingly inflicted upon everyone. The Storyteller's grief and horror echoed across the following months as the waters surrounding Ensō threatened to flood into the mainland, and blank pages from the deity's ever-present tome were left scattered across the wind. The outrage of the adventurers who bore witness to and suffered the agony of the crystalline virus was well-deserved.
It seems that everyone had learned something.
MONSUN
The Storyteller had evidently learned their lesson from their mistake. When the first new island, a curious thing known as Monsun, surfaced in the archipelago, they elected not to force anyone to venture there unless they wished it. Most chose to explore the new land regardless, searching for resources and answers.
The former existed in abundance, and some would be lucky enough to find the latter in the form of the island's avatar: Balance.
It was around this time that characters pooled together resources to form a network, albeit a very simplistic one - it ultimately started out as little more than a communal rock to be written on, but it was a significant step up from nothing.
THE WARNING
Monsun would not be the only island to materialize. Come December, the much smaller and relatively safer island of Chol would surface, bringing with it the first other sapient lifeforms willing to engage in the peaceful art of diplomacy. The naga-like Jormun were all too willing to initiate friendly relations with travelers, particularly the leader of the faction that had taken up temporary residence on Chol: a young Jormun known as Munin, eager to prove her worth as a leader.
In addition to being a source for trade and information, the Jormun were useful in informing adventurers of a rather vital event in their future: the death of LifeAftr's sun, followed by a week-long period of darkness before the sun is reborn and rises again. In her efforts to prove herself capable of leadership, Munin chose to help defend the sun in the week of its slumber, as all manner of creatures would swarm from the depths of the ocean floor to take advantage of its vulnerability, and try to keep the archipelago suspended in perpetual night forevermore.
THE SIEGE OF THE SUN
The sun nestled in a smoking crater in the center of Chol in late January, and the battle to keep it safe began. After a week-long struggle, LifeAftr's sun swelled into the sky with a triumphant cry, revealing itself to be what it had always been: a phoenix.
While the Jormun were grateful for the aid in ensuring the sun's survival, they are sea-dwelling creatures by nature. Monsun and Chol's joint disappearance in the beginning of February coincided with the Jormun's return to their home on the seafloor, though they left a means of remaining in contact with the surface, and friendly relations endured.
THE FLOATING ISLANDS
The phoenix's flight disrupted the cloud cover hanging thickly over Ensō, and so by mid-February several strange shadows in the sky began to take more visible shape. The mana pools, ordinarily quite reliable in their means of transportation, began to spontaneously displace those using them into the strange shapes in the sky instead, confirming them to be something most peculiar: floating islands.
The peculiar properties of these islands went beyond their ability to hover, untethered, far above sea level. They were particularly receptive to the conscious and subconscious desires of those that traversed them: the longer one remained, the more the landscape would mold itself to suit their mental thoughts and wishes. Some islanders would even find wishes granted in a temporary or permanent sense - sight restored for a handful of days, or a long-lost memento returned to their possession.
Some were not so lucky. The islands were prone to "glitches" and much worse. Those that spent too much time trying to shape the islands to their will would bear witness to a strange, volcanic corruption that would gradually consume the landscape whole, as though eating away at it. Those that did not retreat to certain safe zones by midnight would discover that each island would undergo a "reset," and be wiped blank - and those caught in those radiuses would be victims to various and unpleasant side effects.
After clearing everyone from the islands and replacing them onto solid ground, the Storyteller was adamant that no one attempt to reach them again. Fortunately, most seemed amenable to this - though plenty had questions as to some of the strange undersea structures they could glimpse off of Ensō's coast, with the help of a bird's eye view.
AI'TUOH
In an effort to prove their willingness to listen, the Storyteller elected to allow the islanders to choose their next destination from the islands they could most readily perceive. The vote landed in favor of an island that boasted civilization, and come March, the Storyteller complied: the island city of Ai'tuoh appeared on the horizon. And, unfortunately, the citizens there were far less kind and accommodating than the Jormun. With draconian laws and immediate retaliation toward those who broke them, a truly staggering amount of islanders were apprehended and condemned to "purging" via a mysterious artifact known among the citizens of Ai'tuoh as the Standing Water.
One of the city's militia, a guard assigned the designation of 41916, spoke to the prisoners at length. Enough of them questioned her system of faith and planted seeds of doubt in her mind to thoroughly rattle her. By the time prisoners were loaded onto boats and transferred to a remote islet off of Ai'tuoh's coast, that doubt had begun to fester.
The islet hosted an underground pool of eerily glassy, utterly motionless water. Those that vanished within its depths disappeared with barely a ripple; nothing would disturb its chilling stillness. As it would turn out, the Water did not merely devour those delivered to its depths whole; it would merely preserve and contain them in a dimension removed from all else, one that took the shape of a shadowy mirror Ai'tuoh. The unlucky would learn firsthand that the soporific effects of that dark netherworld was wholly effective in beckoning them into seemingly eternal slumber, and Ai'tuoh's many lawbreaking citizens were no different. The Water contained a great many of them, all sleeping deeply, and most of them children, as they were most susceptible to break Ai'tuoh's laws restricting emotional expression, and after the age of ten they became full adults in the eyes of the law.
One such child by the name of Ninth was condemned to the Water, and this combined with the systematic challenging of 41916's belief system led her to cast her faith to the wayside and attempt to free them. In the ensuing struggle, many of the imprisoned islanders were able to free themselves and escape their fate to be doomed to the Water. Others were not so lucky.
Thankfully, most would be rescued through the joint efforts of the Storyteller and the islanders who managed to retain their freedom. The Storyteller delivered to the free islanders a spool of red thread and information regarding an old rite lost to time and to a people that eschewed storytelling both in theory and in practice: the Trial of Orpheus. It was through this, along with the aid of the Jormun, that most of those lost to the Water were recovered - including 41916 and Ninth. The Ai'tuoh citizens who had been condemned prior to that point were sleeping too deeply, and could not be roused, but both 41916 and Ninth were exceedingly grateful for the assistance. Enough, in fact, for 41916 to impart her given name as opposed to her numerical designation, upon her island's departure - Mari Zalin.
ZIZIPHUS
By the end of March, Ai'tuoh had faded from the archipelago and taken its crumbling civilization with it. Islanders voted next for an island that contained vegetation. A further donation of stories also guaranteed the advancement of the character-established network, which was comprised of Stones of Farspeech - essentially audio-only walkie-talkies made of stone.
Come April, the island of Ziziphus had materialized within LifeAftr. The land was lush and verdurous - so much so that nearly every creature on its grassy slopes seemed to be essentially be part plant. As travelers uncovered more and more of Ziziphus, they would discover strange vines in the undergrowth that seemed to have a life of their own. They would follow travelers, worry them, and then promptly disappear into the bracken upon pursuit.
On May 15th, Ziziphus stopped being the idyllic, floral paradise it initially promised to be. The vines that had been stalking the travelers up until this point abruptly surged to life, trapping adventurers in blissful fantasies of their deepest desires, no matter how unrealistic. This bled into the dream-land of Mu, which began to rope adventurers sleeping on Ensō into fantastical constructs of their own. The longer they stayed asleep, the more the life began to drain from them.
A combination of the Storyteller's intervention and lethal action on the part of those with the wherewithal to strike at the source saved most those who had not already allowed the vines to bleed them dry. For as the Storyteller clarified, the vines were not simply dangerous creatures, no; they were the appendages of Ziziphus's resident god, the avatar of Bliss. And as gorged as they were on the travelers' fabricated happiness, the Storyteller knew there was only one way to ensure the safety and freedom of those who had not yet been freed - and all those who would pass through in the future.
Bliss had to be killed.
Though the battle was arduous, it was eventually successful. The islanders were triumphant and suffered no losses. Unfortunately, without Bliss's root structure to support the island of Ziziphus, it quickly began to crumble into the sea. The island of Monsun was briefly returned to the archipelago so that the flora and fauna of Ziziphus could be transferred to somewhere safe before their home was lost forever.
By early June, the island was no more. Much of June was spent in a state of peaceable recovery as a result - between visiting Jormun and an atypically subdued Storyteller, islanders were left to pass the time on Ensō until July.
THE OVERGROWTH
Early July brought a new island to the archipelago: the floral island of Umui. It very quickly became evident that this island was once populated, as the scattered shells of old homes, factories, and laboratories were uncovered the longer travelers combed through the land. Inactive automatons were also common, though nearly all of them seemed rusted and irreparable. One, however, managed to survive - an automaton that identified themself as ARUM-25, and could give limited answers. They had suffered significant damage to multiple key systems, including the loss of most of their memories.
The more of the sordid history of these people that travelers uncovered, the more grim the story became. Umui was apparently intended to be a quarantine island for an illness that caused flowers to sprout from one's skin and grow into their airways. For at least several generations, people were ferried from another island to Umui. The automatons were constructed to serve as nurse-bots. Scientists, doctors, and engineers pooled their resources to best treat their patients, but eventually, the ailment - known only as "the Overgrowth" - claimed every sentient creature on the island, be they humanoid or automaton. ARUM-25 was the only automaton to have escaped this fate, though it was not immediately clear why this would be. A more detailed analysis of the history of Umui (as well as Ai'tuoh, and other points of note), can be read here.
The source of the Overgrowth turned out to be emotional dishonesty. The civilization on Umui shared common points with the civilization on Ai'tuoh, which rejected emotional outbursts. In early August, travelers unearthed a mass grave that released an older strain of the Overgrowth into the air, leaving countless adventurers stricken. Some were able to save themselves by acknowledging fears or confessing something they had never admitted aloud, but many perished.
ARUM-25 was eventually repaired to the point where they could recover much of their processing and mobility. However, the restoration of their memory circuits infected them with the Overgrowth, astheir programming rendered them unable to do away with the illness as adventurers could. It was only their creator's foresight and final acts in removing those circuits that saved them from the same fate. Upon this realization, adventurers were faced with a grim choice: either remove the restored memory circuits so that ARUM-25 could perpetuate in amnesiac isolation, or allow ARUM-25 to keep their memories and be consumed by the Overgrowth, which was their preference. In late August, ARUM-25 was powered down instead. The automaton now remains dormant on Umui, which has halted the progress of the Overgrowth. A few months later, the island dispersed from the archipelago.
NUIDAN
September brought the farming island of Nuidan to the archipelago of LifeAftr. The avatar of harvest, known colloquially as Harv, was eager to allow travelers the choice to help fix up the island's defunct equipment in exchange for granting several upgrades to Ensō and its accompanying islets. For a few months, characters could fix fences, harvest fields, chart lands, and perform farming labor. In exchange, the houses on the islets and in the monkey compound were improved tremendously, and a new farming islet was added that contained fields, storage houses, pens for livestock, and more.
This island remained in the archipelago for several months to allow travelers the fullest opportunities to improve their quality of life on Ensō. They were rewarded with bee houses, water wells, and plenty other structures besides.
MU'S REPROACH
At this point, the Storyteller departed from the archipelago, briefly, to search out more islands for travelers to explore. In their absence, the dreaming world of Mu reacted poorly to not being maintained. Throughout the duration of October, the fabric of Mu began to creep into the waking world. Characters were tormented by figures from their pasts, received visions of their home worlds' presents, and then were visited by a version of themselves from their futures.
Relative order was restored when the Storyteller returned, though the monthly Storytelling was still tremendously warped. Nonetheless, the Storyteller was still able to communicate their intention in allowing adventurers to vote on their next destination.
THE TRIALS
By early November, the voted-for island of Maati surfaced in the archipelago. Its peculiar seven-pointed spidering shape was rocky and difficult to traverse, and explorers who combed the terrain would unearth strange trinkets and old objects indicative of some previous passage, when they weren't running square into natural predators. The local avatar, Anbaki, identified themself as the Avatar of Justice. Placid, calm, and even-tempered, their stance on justice was that all were guilty in some way or another, but it was in one's guilt that they could better themselves.
Explorers were not likely to agree with this come December. Characters awoke in one of seven starting chambers situated underneath the island of Maati. Without any warning, Anbaki had initiated the seven trials of Maati for most, though not all, of the adventurers in the archipelago. Characters were tasked with passing the trial laid out to them, tailored to challenge their greatest flaws and weaknesses. Many trials allowed for multiple chances and multiple deaths without penalty, and many succeeded - though some did not.
Those who were not so unlucky to struggle with their personal demons would discover that the shores of Ensō were far from safe, however. The water surrounding the island began to ooze along the land in a distinctly unnatural way, and those that it could locate were each delivered a fleeting message. The water communicated only in symbols and sensations, instilling upon those it found a feeling of immense pressure, as well as certain symbols associated with Monsun's avatar - the Avatar of Balance.
RESTORING BALANCE
The message left by the water in December proved to be a meaningful one. In early January, the island of Monsun returned to the archipelago. Adventurers had to re-explore every inch of it, as its landscape had become horribly warped. The transference of Ziziphus's flora and fauna had disrupted the balance that was so indicative of Monsun. The topography seemed to be fused with that of Ziziphus's, and large swathes of territory were subsumed by black blots of inexplicable shadow. The more of the island that adventurers retreaded, the clearer it became that things were horribly, horribly wrong. The Avatar of Balance was in clear distress, repeating a need for balance to be restored. And, by mid-January, it would be.
Adventurers would spend the next week being menaced by both their worst and best qualities, in that order. At first they had to contend with their Shadows, their darkest selves. Then, after, they had to contend with their Lights, their best qualities. The rejection of those ideal qualities would result in the formation of Rejection Rooms - the shadowy spots on Monsun that would shape around an affected character, who would unconsciously mold that into a "room" with metaphorical interpretations of their shaken psyche. Some were rescued from the violent representation of their own catastrophizing mind, while others ultimately died in a state of denial.
No matter the individual result, by the event's end, Monsun was restored to its original, unblemished state. Tormenting adventurers with their most extreme selves was sufficient in returning Monsun to its status quo, and the island's avatar was grateful for the assistance.
YOUNG VOLCANOES
The month of February was far kinder to islanders, as the Storyteller merely enlisted their help to coat the island of Ensō with a special sort of think that would allow an improved security system against potential threats. What followed was essentially an exciting days-long game of paintball.
By March, a new island had surfaced in the archipelago, known as Cahypdo. The most notable thing about this one was that it was populated by an intelligent population of treant-like people known as the Roaka. Initial explorations on Cahypdo revealed a fertile valley running through the center of the island, hedged in on both sides by two massive mountains. The Roaka were a friendly people who were willing to trade food, information, and much more, but were generally unused to interacting with species other than their own. Nonetheless, they invited travelers to celebrate at a celebration they called the "Festival of Cycles," come April.
The day after the Festival suggested why it was named as such, when one of the mountains proved to be not merely a mountain but a volcano. Its eruption was not merely cataclysmic and unexpected, but also potentially horrifying, as many islanders were transported to caverns beneath the other mountain for their own safety. This turned out to be part of the Roaka's natural life cycle, as the extreme heat would cause a "rebirth" of those that had reached a point where their current physical shape could not sustain itself; the heat and lava allowed them to be reborn, like a phoenix from ashes, as a younger version of their very same self. This was not immediately evident to adventurers, however - and most of them had no natural protection from the heat and smoke the way the Roaka did.
To say nothing of the effects of the ash from the mountain and the reborn Roaka, which drifted over both Cahypdo and Ensō to a most...peculiar effect. Namely, it caused islanders' ages to drastically fluctuate, both physically and psychologically. Islanders would age or de-age or both, gaining and losing memories and emotional maturity and plenty other traits besides, for almost two weeks - the Storyteller included.
By the end of April, the effects of this ash wore off, and by mid-May, the island of Cahypdo had disappeared.
THE CHAOS SPREADS
The third island in the last voting round made its debut in early May. Seemingly designed purely for relaxation, the island of Io required no exploration whatsoever. The local avatar, Eleu, identified themself as the Avatar of Celebration. Their island reflected this to the fullest extent, as Io contained just about every luxury one could imagine: from grand bathhouses to firework cannons, vineyards to tea gardens.
While this relaxation was well-earned, it would sadly be interrupted when the character-established network suffered a crash in mid-May. The chaos that ensued would see the Stones of Farspeech malfunctioning wildly up until the end of May, when enough story donations ensured that the network could be sufficiently stabilized, as well as upgraded.
This was not an end to the chaos, however. In early June, a sinister entity known only as the Clown Box started frequenting the shores of Io, stalking characters and generally turning an island of celebration into a terribly unsettling experience. Mid-June saw the Box's tactics drastically escalate until its chaotic effects could be felt over both Io and Ensō. Characters were body-swapped, power-swapped, alignment-swapped, species-swapped, and inflicted with just about every "swap" imaginable.
Characters teamed up to tear down the Clown Box in a climactic battle that was ultimately successful. The Clown Box dissipated, but was not destroyed - rather, it reunited with the Avatar of Celebration, having been an aspect of them that had been separated by unknown forces. In the moments prior to reuniting, avatar Eleu identified the entity trapped within the box as Zun. A violent wave of disorientation and color signalled the reuniting of both aspects of the Avatar of Fun, otherwise known as Eleu'Zun. Io's status as an island of relaxation acquired a mildly chaotic twist - the bathhouses were garnished with waterslides, the island gained a rollercoaster, and so on.
With this resolution, the island had disappeared from the archipelago by early July.
THE SUNKEN CITY
Midsummer saw the return of old allies the Jormun, and this time they brought a special sort of magic with them that would allow characters to transform into an aquatic shape and live as the Jormun have. Some simply enjoyed the change and socialized with their friends under the sea, but plenty others took the opportunity to search the sunken shapes of buildings that were sighted as early as February of 2018. What they uncovered was the crumbled remnants of an old civilization, now lost to time.
Many of what was discovered beneath the waves answered questions that travelers had about the archipelago's past...while simultaneously generating far, far more.