INTRO LOG: A TAXING JOURNEY

[hadrielmods]

Who: New arrivals and everyone else!
What: The intro log for December. Watch your step!
Where: The colosseum and all around the city.
When: December 10th-17th
Warnings: Taxxon-related violence, teeth shoes, general unpleasantness, mass confusion.

You wake up in the dust of the colosseum with no shoes on, regardless of the state of your feet when you arrived. There's dust covering your clothing and in your hair, but other than that, there's no signs of injury or bruising. You're also not alone- nearby, there are others, either still passed out or just waking up like you are. Feel free to take solace in that fact. Or don't- some of you aren't human, and are clearly not great people either. No offense.

To your left, there is a door in the wall of the arena, supposedly leading to the halls which will then show you to your freedom. To your right, and scattered haphazardly on the ground, are a myriad of teeth shoes. These shoes might be better than going barefoot right now, but good luck finding a matching set, let alone one that fits you.

When you do eventually try to escape, be careful. The halls are crawling with Taxxons. Large and grotesque, these caterpillar-like creatures have circular mouths and multiple rows of sharp teeth. Their sense of smell is impeccable, and they will stop at nothing to feed when they scent blood. So, you know, try to avoid stepping on anything sharp on your way out.

All done with the horrible monsters and awkward greetings? Try your hand at exploring the rest of the city! Find a house, find a new monster, or simply scavenge for supplies until your little heart is content. Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!

► This log covers December 10th-17th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well!
► Characters may find their own shoes scattered around with the teeth shoes if you like.
► All characters now arrive with phones that have network communication.
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!

Comments

[whichend]

Arya doubts that Kaz has a death wish, since she isn't entirely convinced Kaz is still alive. How does a person know if they're dead? Maybe she's dead too, killed by the Tickler or the Kindly Man without ever knowing it. Arya doesn't let those thoughts linger. They're silly, and frankly counter-productive. What does death and life really matter, anyway? All men die eventually. Someday, she will too.

Arya nods. "The monsters don't have anywhere else to go, and I don't think they are vanishing monsters. So we know there must be bears and slime monsters in the caves at least, although there's likely more."

Arya watches Kaz search the cabinets, and eventually she realizes he's looking for food. Of course. Can't survive without that. "There is food in the shops," she offers. "It just appears, and as far as we know, it's free for the taking. The gods provide it, so if you do not want to be in their debt, then you must hunt. Or fish, or make acorn paste." Arya doesn't suggest stealing. Kaz doesn't really seem like the type.

[vendetta]

It's not necessarily that Kaz would be above stealing if he were really left with no other choice, but it's not the first thing that comes to mind. Hunting is probably out of the question, but fishing is something he might be able to pull off if he can fashion the right tools and find some bait. The question is whether that's worth all the trouble when food is readily provided for them.

"Have you eaten any of the food from the shops?" he asks, figuring that if there was some kind of unexpected side effect, the people who had been here for a while would have figured it out by now.

"And as for the monsters, you can probably assume that there's giant centipedes added to those ranks now." Kaz rolls his eyes, but in reality he's still at a bit of a loss over that entire encounter. Thinking back on it feels surreal, and he'd assume this was all some bizarre dream if he didn't know better.

Still, Hadriel has done a good job thus far of making him question his sanity.

[whichend]

"Some of it." Arya doesn't eat the packaged foods, mostly because she doesn't recognize it as food more than half the time. She's definitely walked past bags of chips and cans of soda thinking that they're toys, or explosives, or something completely alien that the previous residents of this city needed for survival. She sticks with the raw fruits and breads and things like that, things she recognizes. Hadriel isn't the best place to get poisoned.

"That's not why I'm small, though." She adds, quickly. Arya isn't sure why she still looks like she's ten years old, but suspects it has something to do with eating little more than acorn paste for an extended period of time. Even now, when food is free for the taking, she doesn't take much. She doesn't know when it's going to run out, and besides, she's simply not used to eating so much anymore.

Arya nods, solemnly, not really catching that the giant centipedes comment was at least partially a joke. She's seen a lot of large, strange monsters here that centipedes wouldn't surprise her. "Do you think you can eat a centipede? I've never tried. But they seem easy enough to kill, and if the meat is good, there's no reason it should go to waste." She shrugs. "I ate the bears here, for a while, before they disappeared."

[vendetta]

In that case, it's probably safe for Miller to assume that he can eat the food that the gods provide for them. It may feel a little like giving in, but he also isn't in the best state to go hunting, so he can't turn his nose up at it either. It might seem wrong to eat from their hand and then plot against them at the same time, but survival and escape are Kaz's two primary motives at the moment.

He's not expecting Nymeria to bring up her size, unclear on what that has to do with anything. She is small, sure, but she's also young. She might have some kind of complex about it, probably because she's used to people underestimating her, but Miller has no intention of doing that.

What he wants is to get her as far from this dangerous situation as possible, but that clearly isn't an option at the moment.

When she starts in about eating the monsters, though, Kaz can't stop his eyebrows from shooting up in surprise. "You sound like an old friend of mine," he says, though there's a grimness to his tone because that all ended in one big mess. "More seriously, you'd have to make sure you could cook it and also that it wasn't anything poisonous."