EVENT ★ NALAWI INTRO

[futurologists]

Recruits leave Oska at midday, with about 10 minutes of final warning given from the jewelry. Then the white mist rises as rifts open, and Oska is left behind. The transition into Nalawi is not a peaceful one. When the mist fades, recruits are immediately hit with a face full of lashing rain and driving wind. The recruits have arrived in the middle of a nasty storm, but that’s not all that greets them. Seawater surges all around, breaking against -- houses? It’s a little hard to tell at first, in the chaos of the storm. Half of these buildings are made of rock, not carved, but shaped, and the other half seem to be living trees, thin wood and thatch, and a handful of more ornate (and more fragile) material, including clouded glass or obsidian. The stone houses are standing up best to this onslaught of waves, but even they weren’t made for this, and they shudder and crumble in the thrashing storm. Thin screams can be heard over the wind and water, too. The locals are having some trouble not being washed away. The people here are small bipedal deer, and those hooves were not meant for swimming. They struggle in the water, some of them trying to snag a few precious belongings from drowning houses, some of them not even able to do much more than hang onto some jutting stone or tree. There are a few heroes among them, putting superhuman powers to good use: here a young man hovers in the air, dragging others out of the water and toward safety; there a girl parts the water with careful gestures of her hands, enabling a whole family to dart from their ruined home and run for higher ground. These feats are rare, though, and on the whole most of these natives are in trouble. They don’t look too stunned to see the new arrivals -- they don’t have time to, and will push roughly past a new arrival to deal with some crisis sooner than stop and stare. They’re mostly just grateful for any offered help, generally seeming terrified and shellshocked by all of this. If any of them are asked what happened, they’ll point with varying degrees of wordlessness toward a high stone wall between the village and the sea, with an enormous gap broken through the middle of it where the sea rushes in. Like many of the houses, this dike was clearly shaped from living stone. But whatever shaped it apparently has no power to maintain it, and this is the storm that had finally taken advantage of that. This long, dark afternoon provides plenty of tasks: help the Nalawi people evacuate from their ruined village, try to find material to rebuild their shattered (and still crumbling) dike, or take care of the hungry sea creatures that have taken notice that the deer, usually safe on land, are suddenly in easy reach. They look like crabs with too many legs, but each of them is nearly the size of one of the villagers. They’re more than capable of seizing a struggling villager and scuttling back toward the break in the dike to drag their prize into the sea. Their shells are difficult to get through, their pincers terrible and sharp, but their joints and eyes are unprotected and tender. The storm won’t last forever, though. It blows itself out in a few hours, just in time for a truly beautiful tropical sunset over the western edge of the island. Exhausted locals will finally begin to talk a little more. They’ll explain to their rescuers that the Stone Shapers have all had their Gifts faded out: there’s not a single one left. Without these abilities, the dike was left defenseless against the storm and the water rushed in. Their despondency and resignation suggests this kind of disaster is not new to them. They are, however, very grateful for the help: anyone who lends a hand over the new few days (thankfully sunny and clear) sorting through the wreckage, rebuilding, and setting up new dikes will be given food and shown to the inn for free lodgings. Welcome to Komo, Nalawi. OOC INFO ICly this log will cover the day of arrival and the following few days of recuperating and rebuilding, if you would like to include that in your top level prompts. OOCly it will last until the 26th. New information will be available at that time. As some quick refreshers, we have our Mission Overview here, which also includes a questions subthread for general questions. For intro event-specific inquiries, please see the comments below. Additionally, be sure to have read the Chantes epilogue as well as the Nalawi: Locations page. Note that we will also have new characters arriving during the event, so be sure to give them a hand!

Comments

[humerous]

[So she's met Papyrus...well, figures. It isn't the first time someone's made the association, and at this stage Papyrus has gotten to know so many people he doesn't expect to hear about all of them.]

Well, y'know, I'm not the one with skin.

[And all the accompanying nerves.

Even if skeletons can still feel pain, apparently.]

[grunehexe]

Have you no sensation at all? Pain receptors of any kind?

[Bit of a sudden segue-way, admittedly, but he opened the door with the lack of skin, and she's definitely curious on that point- Papyrus she'd seen "eat", after all, and he obviously thought without a guaranteed fleshy brain, so...

Asking the real questions, shh, ignore the fact that he's right about their temperature problems.]

[humerous]

Why? You're not thinking of doing somethin' untoward, are you?

[Did Papyrus mention his older brother is very unhelpful.

Because.]

[grunehexe]

It is merely a question born from curiosity.

[So just answer it???]

[humerous]

How much curiosity?

11?

[grunehexe]

Eleven what?

[Someone isn't familiar with the "on a scale from one to ten" model...]

[humerous]

[Oh boy...]

11 curiosities.

You've never heard of the curiosity scale?

[grunehexe]

No......

[But her tone betrays that she isn't quite sure it's a real thing or not, other worlds aside.]

[humerous]

Well...

It's anywhere between 1 to 10 to the power of 100.

So if you're only an eleven...

[Didn't he say 11??]