polylogs | Something in the air...

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Something in the air...

✖ The Isle That Blooms

Ⅰ. ARRIVAL
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
This is the first isle you can smell before you see it rising on the island. It starts with the faint hint of growing things that blossoms into a floral scent that teases you with the combination of familiarity and the unknown. The next breeze seems to carry you closer even as it coats everything in a delicate wash of golden pollen that only the Ferryman seems to be able to avoid.

Do you like your lips to taste the gritty sweetness? Or are you already starting to sniffle? Either way, the island starts as a smudge then turns into a riot of color as it reveals itself.

The Isle that Blooms lives up to its name as flowers vie in a silent war of roots and strangling vines to cover every viable surface with sprays of color and vibrant pulsing life. There are signs of human life in the form of a village built on stilts and full of little anachronisms like a glowing neon sign that hint that the island sees a large number of Travelers come through this place.

And who wouldn’t be drawn to the abundant flora, brightly painted houses, and lively locals?

Everyone seems to be glowing with health as the locals gather near the dock to welcome the latest set of tourists. They come with arms full of flower wreaths and friendly smiles, clearly in control of their faculties and interested in trade. Their clothing is as bright as the paintings on their buildings, as the flowers that surround them, and perfect for the warmth of the day.

Do you notice, though, the absence of any babies or prepubescent children? Or that while there are old people, no one shows signs of the infirmities that come with age? It might be easy to miss, especially as the Isle starts to affect you, too.

The ache in your back from that terrible fall, the craving for that next drink, the trauma that’s too close to the surface, all the petty hurts the build up in a lifetime start to fade as you, too, start to bloom.

Notes:
1. NO GUNS are allowed on this island. The Ferryman will keep them safe for you.

2. These residents of the island are normal humans. Killing them is possible and may affect the color of your Scrywatch.

3. Any type of flower could exist on the island, blooming somewhere, regardless of its real world requirements. Rare ones are difficult to find and magical ones need a check in with the mods.

4. There is nothing preadolescent of any animal species on the entire island, including insects.

5. The island’s ability leaves people as the healthiest, most energetic version of their current selves. Examples: A blind person in otherwise good mental and emotional health would notice minimal changes. A person with a disorder would find themselves having a string of good days. A 50 year old probably hasn’t felt this good since their thirties.

Ⅱ. THE TEMPLE
Orchids in shades of yellow and pink so bright they glow have been trained to grow along the walkways and bridges of the elevated village to guide Travelers to this island’s Temple. The building stands alone at the edge of the Village, extending out in the ocean of flowers that fill most of the isle.

The temple is made of simple stout wood that has been carved and painted in patterns ornate and lovely in a way that speaks of hundreds of hours of creation and maintenance. The same orchids that guided you here gild building and act as camouflage the sleeping porches ring the outside. They are kept private and safe from insects by fine netting, and you will find the bedding soft and fine.

This Temple’s Guardians are a pair of lazing cats with strange spots and scaly wings that regard you with affectionate disinterest as you explore the facilities. There are toilets and sinks, but no baths or showers. The pantries are stocked with edible flowers and fresh fish and the space and tools to cook. If you are brave enough, the Guardians will probably give you practical advice on how to use those supplies. There are new clothes and sandals better suited to the heat, and even practical machetes.

Notes:
1. The Main Temple is still open to those who are brand new to PM.

2. There are paints and carving tools if you want to add to the temple decorations. (Maybe mention it during the Oracle Event if you do.)

3. All fabric items are ridiculously bright and vaguely tie dyed.

4. The marker orchids have a distinctly strong smell of vanilla with a hint of lime.

Ⅲ. THE LOTUS BATHS
CW: fantasy setting drugs.
There’s only so long a person can stand to be covered in pollen, and when you ask the locals, they grin. Oh, you want a bath? There’s a path back to the ground and through the tall flowers to a natural spring. Make sure to head out early, they warn.

It’s always better to be in the village before nightfall, and you are clearly going to take a while.

As you walk the winding path to the baths, the everpresent flowers seem to thin out and even disappear as ground warms and rock rises from rich soil. You can smell the mineral richness of the bright blue pools that form waterfalls over a series of rising ledges. There is life, though, even here, in the form of delicate lily pads that float in rafts around vivid lotus flowers.

If you test the water, you’ll find it’s warm enough to melt the knots out of muscles and make it easy to understand why the few bathers seem to be so languid and relaxed. If you sink all the way in, well, not only will you manage to get clean, but you might find yourself mellowing out even more. So mellow you’ll hardly notice when the pleasant hallucinations start.

You’ll find yourself drawn into visions of your most private joys and of the pleasures you keep to yourself. Maybe it’s a matter of shame or maybe it’s because they’re too precious. There’s one small problem, though. If someone else gets in the same pool, not only will they start to share the same vision, but you’ll start to see theirs too.

Will the fantasies become a nightmare or will you manage to navigate them together? Will you ever be able to look at each other the same way again?

Notes:
1. The hallucinations will end when you leave the water, but only once you and your bathing partner are both out.

2. The flowers are magical and will affect everyone, even robots or super powered people.

Ⅳ. NIGHTBLOOMING
CW: abduction, violence.

You are warned to stay in the elevated village at night. The flower fields are safe enough during the day, but things happen at night. It’s hard to imagine during the day when stingless bees that glitter in jewel colors bumble along and hummingbirds the size of chihuahuas feed from the abundant flowers while squeaking their strong opinions at each other.

But as the moon rises, and most of the flowers close, there’s rustling sounds that make it clear that there are big things moving through that growth. Things that make the hair rise up on the back of a person’s neck. It would take a big prize to make it worth finding out what makes those sounds. A big prize or a reason to face your fears.

There’s a scream in the night. You can ignore it, of course. Not everyone is meant to run towards the scream. It might not even change the color of your ScryWatch.

But if you go to the source of the sound you’ll find a mother weeping openly while other locals gather around to comfort her. It seems her teenager decided that the best way to woo their lover was with glowing flowers that only open under a full moon. The teen has been gone for hours, and the grim expressions on the people around you say his chances aren’t good.

You have a choice to make. Will you go into the dark to face the unknown dangers? Will you offer some other form of comfort? Or will you go back to hide in the safety of the Temple?

Notes:
1. The danger in the flowers consists of six foot tall nocturnal orchid mantises who have the teen pinned in a tree. They are currently singing a human language lullaby to the kid to get them to go to sleep and fall out of the tree.

2. The mantises have a hive mind and will retreat if one of their number is killed, but can also be talked to and negotiated with. They will be willing to trade a regular supply of fish for no longer hunting people.

Ⅴ. SPECIAL EVENT: THE FLOWER ORACLE
In the center of the village, there is a giant flower bud that is bigger than a man is tall. The villagers tell you that you are lucky. You will be here when the Flower Oracle blooms. You will have a chance to speak directly to the Ancient One through the Oracle, and She even answers. All it takes is a little sacrifice.

Notes:
1. During the week of July 12-18, there will be a special event post where characters can choose to interact with the Flower Oracle for a chance to be rewarded, get an answer, get silence, or get punished by the Ancient.

2. Any starter posted during this window will be honored, specifics to come.

3. This event is optional!

Bonus: music to watch the flowers bloom to.

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Malcolm's honestly not that upset about the fact that the woman is taking up space in the kitchen. He doesn't eat much anyway, and he's content to snack on some fruit. More interesting is how she's dressed and what she's doing.

"Is this an experiment?" he asks, his eyes glancing towards the open notebook on the counter.

"More or less." She is actually working on producing a reliable black dye after witnessing various people's reactions to only having technical wardrobes along with extracting some very specific chemical components from a few of the more interesting flowers she has been able to identify so far. The actual experimentation will take time, but time has taught Elenore people do better when she's less pedantic.

"There are a lot of interesting things here," she says by way of further explanation before reaching over to carefully stir one of the solutions to prevent actual bubble formation.

"There are," Malcolm agrees. He munches a piece of a mango-like fruit while gazing at the bubbling pots. She seems like an intelligent person, so maybe she'd be a good one to ask the question that he's been asking a lot of people.

"Where do you fall on the 'are we dead or not' debate?" he asks. Malcolm's still gathering evidence.

That's a question that has her looking up in clear surprise. Not so much that she doesn't turn the heat down on one of the pots, but he's got some of her attention.

"Well, as far as I can tell based on the limited technologies I've had access to, my body shows all the classic signs of still being alive. Basic chemical and biological concepts seem to still be in play, but, well, easily altered like the density and variety of plants on the island. This could be a simulation, but really, if we're talking technology that advanced, you could say that about life before the islands. My last memory was nothing dramatic, but there's a lot of ways to die that wouldn't be."

She shrugs and stirs a different pot. "We could be dead, I suppose. But I don't know that it matters if we are unless you're a religious or spiritual person."

Yeah, he did kind of spring that on her. Sorry. But, she mentioned experiments and it reminded Malcolm of his own. It's not so much of an experiment as it is a poll, really.

"It matters if there's a way to leave here or not," he says quietly. He doesn't imagine that there's a way back from death. But if they haven't crossed over that threshold yet, then there might still be a chance. "I agree that we seem alive though. I personally don't remember dying. Maybe this isn't the afterlife. Maybe this is some kind of..." He waves a hand. "Alternate dimension?"

"Could be a purgatory, could be a holding station. Might be outside of our traditional concepts of spacetime." She shrugs again, keeping her hands busy as she thinks and maintains her work.

"I think the assumption that there's actually any way back is a big one. Even if the powers behind this are actually working in good faith, expecting one person, let alone groups this large, to be able to go through significant personal growth and change is a lot."

Malcolm exhales slowly through his nose as he leans back against a counter.

"Would we all have to achieve personal growth in order for one of us to leave though?" he asks. "Or if a person manages to achieve their growth, can they at least be allowed to go home?"

He realizes that she doesn't have definitive answers to this questions and that it's just speculation. If his being able to go home is incumbent on everyone else making personal growth, then he's probably going to be here forever. Hell, he's not even sure if he can make his own personal growth.

"No, I don't think that we all have to achieve growth. I assume there are so many of us because having big enough numbers is the only way to make sure that any of us actually manage any kind of growth at all. People don't change quickly."

Look at her, turning a kitchen into a lab, chasing scientific knowledge rather than change.

"Right," he says. "Then they can maybe at least show some success." If you have a big enough data set, you're bound to see at least some of what you want to see.

Malcolm puts one of his hands up. "I guess my next question is why do the powers that be here care if we make any growth or not? Are they omnipotent beings that care about... morality? Ethics?"

Somehow this has become a philosophical discussion. At least scientific knowledge can be used for change. Elenore might be helping herself without even realizing it.

"Could be a morality or ethics focus. They've been pretty nebulous about what their perception of good or bad behavior is for that, though. I would expect a lot more written record and law." She is biased by her own experiences with religion from the outside, but what other data does she have to work with? Besides, this is just talking while she finishes her work.

"There are three main factors I lean towards: keeping humans is a requirement of its nature, it feeds off the whole Traveling thing, or we're pets. Maybe all three. Like a hipster keeping chickens."

"You're right. Those are both very subjective concepts."

Malcolm leans back against the counter, contemplating one of the pots that Elenore has bubbling on the stove. He huffs an amused laugh at her theories.

"Can't say I'm a fan of the idea of being a hipster's chicken," he replies. "I wonder if you're on to something with the whole 'feeding off' aspect though."

It's still beyond what he's used to back home, but it's clear he's dealing with a force that's unlike anything he's come across before.

"I'd rather be a pet than a food source, but it's not like I get to chose. I think a lot of our fellow travelers have a lot of illusions about the amount of control they have in our given situation."

She pulls one of the pots off the burner and rests it on a fabric pad. "If we're being fed on, no one seems to be being tortured in the process, but who knows? This could all just be the prepping stage. We are remarkably vulnerable at the moment."

"Right," he says. "For me it would depend on if being fed off was painful or had negative consequences for me. I agree that there's something rather creepy about it regardless though..."

They're all rather vulnerable, aren't they? None of them really know where they are and they're at the mercy of the god-like being that apparently has brought all of them here.

"I didn't introduce myself," Malcolm continues, holding out a hand for her to shake. "Malcolm Bright."

Elenore is of the school of thought that pain that you can do nothing about isn't worth focusing on. It's not entirely healthy, but there's a reason she got pulled into the Isles. Many reasons, really.

"You don't want to touch my hands right now," she indicates her gloves with wiggly fingers. "But I'm Elenore. Nice to meet you, Malcolm."

Malcolm puts his hand up, taking no offense. "Nice to meet you too." He turns his attention to Elenore's experiment in the pots on the stove. "What exactly are you... cooking?"

Whatever it is, it does not appear to be food, so cooking is probably the wrong word to use here. Since she's using the stove though, it at least seems appropriate.

She looks a little confused by his question. "Well, I made some cauliflower steaks earlier, but right now, nothing?"

This is followed by her adding a little more salt to one of her mixes.

He smiles, then laughs and shakes his head a little. Okay, he can be technical too.

"Will you tell me about your experiment?" he asks. "And cauliflower steaks, because those sound interesting."

As someone who doesn't eat red meat, Malcolm might be curious about trying something like that.

She's honestly not trying to be pedantic, however much she might be succeeding. She just tends to be a bit more literal in the middle of lab work.

"Oh. Nothing as exciting as I'd like to do if I had access to more complicated equipment, but it's pretty easy to get some plant-based dyes going. I'm working on some extracts of some medicinal plants."

A stir of one of the pots reminds her of the other bit. "Oh, I stumbled into a weird patch of Brassica relatives, so I snagged some cauliflower, sliced it into slabs, and baked it with herbs, oil, and spice. Wasn't terrible, all considered."

"Ah," Malcolm replies with a nod. "Trying to get something more exciting than white linen?" He doesn't blame her. As someone who's used to wearing suits of various shades, the white's getting boring for him too.

Elenore's clearly knowledgeable about plants, something that's probably useful in a place like this. "Oh, I thought you had managed to make some kind of steak substitute out of vegetables, but I understand what you mean. That sounds good though." Malcolm's found that he's felt more relaxed since he got here, leaving him with more time to think about things he neglected at home. Like eating.

He looks around their kitchen area to see if he can find any coffee. "Where are you from?" he asks.

"People were complaining about the options, and I noticed a lack." She doesn't strictly mind the tie dye that came with this island, but it was never about making something she wanted.

The thought that she made a meat substitute has her grinning breifly. "Give me enough time, and I probably could, but there aren't a lot of veggies out there. Or anything that requires fertilization, for that matter."

His question stops her from expanding on that. "Honestly? I was in New York before I got grabbed. But which New York, right?"

"White's not my preferred color for clothing either," he comments, thinking of the white suit his mother managed to get him into before she tried to make him go on vacation. Tie-dye's on the other end of the extreme though.

"I'm sure we're probably limited to some tropical fruits and vegetables here, maybe even ones we've never seen or had before." Malcolm doesn't think he's eaten flowers before he came here, but he's found the ones on the island to be surprisingly good.

He raises an eyebrow. "Is there more than one New York? Or are you talking about New York in different years?"

"You trying to get in on the dark clothing, too?" She sounds both amused and open to it.

"No fruit at all. No vegetables that aren't greens or roots. Apparently, some of the locals trade pretty well to anyone who shows up with fruit. Makes me wish I'd grabbed some raisins or something." She'd noticed the suspicious lack pretty early in her adventures and followed up by talking to some of the islanders.

"Both? Seems like we aren't coming from consistent points in time or necessarily the same." Multiple universes is a known fact from her previous existence, so she's pretty comfortable with that statement.

"Yes. Well, dark-er," he replies with a shrug. "I look better in jewel tones."

It's interesting that this island has no fruit. It seems like it would fit right in with the aesthetic of the place.

"It's possible, based on conversations that I've had with some other people here." After locating some coffee, he sets about brewing it in the makeshift pot that somebody set up. "My New York happens to be located in the year 2020."

"Darker is doable. Easier than black, honestly." She's mildly amused but the jewel tone observation, but willing to concede the point.

Elenore has lots of thoughts about their setting. Especially its plant life.

"2021. Was magic a factor in your New York?" She's content to delay giving specific information until she gets a feel for him. The coffee smells good, though.

He might deny it if confronted, but Malcolm's a little bit of a fashionista. He likes looking good, particularly if it involves an expensive, well-tailored suit.

"No," Malcolm tells her, one eyebrow slightly cocked. "I'm guessing it was in yours?"

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hostile_encounter - 2021-08-21 23:21 (UTC) - Expand

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Something in the air...

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