The Tåkete Realm - Valley of the Old Gods - Opening Thread

This is a thread for all players who wake up in the Valley of the Old Gods. If you don't know how wake-up works, everyone wakes up peppered throughout the Realm. You can choose where you wanna wake up, and coordinate it with your friends or people you want to be friends with. Or play eenie meanie miney mo idk. This thread will go for a little while until they all converge into one new thread.

Remember, your character has amnesia.

>executing E:\Lied\Processes\Wakeup.bat

The sky pulses to life above. All around, people appear in a blink of static blue. Bodies, unconscious, litter the ground, the rocks and caves and hills of the land. All at once, at if coordinated, their eyes open. It seems someone is watching them from above, but there is no evidence save for the dazzling, sparkling sky.

The Valley of the Old Gods is the largest, central area of the realm. Massive walls, cascading with cool waters, sidle the valley in the form of steep cliffs. Pink-leaved sakura trees dapple the mossy ground, the crags that overlook the small river. A town exists but it has been abandoned only a short time ago. Pots can be found left on stoves, dolls upright in childs' beds. The Valley seems to stretch on infinitely into the fog on one end, into Njólbark Forest on the other.

All she registered, in the brief seconds in which her mind could grasp the world around her, was the sound of running water, roaring close to her ear. Beneath her the ground was cold and sticky, the muddy bank of a river. Her eyes fluttered open, reluctantly at first, then with more zeal. A numbness had overtaken her entire body, especially strong in her left arm, which she had been lying upon while asleep.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position. The image around her cleared of haziness bit by bit, until she could make out the wide stream by her side, littered with stepping stones she didn’t feel strong enough to cross. Once she had gotten up, the fragile girl searched for a way out of the portion of river bank she had found herself upon. It was unusual, not connected to the rest of the bank, almost as if the ground here was much taller before it had tumbled down. And that in itself, was strange, because she didn’t recall this place at all. Not the before and after of any landslide, not why she had fallen asleep here, or why she was dressed in a pink, princess-like gown, covered in mud on one side.

At loss for words, (not that she thought she could speak - in fact, her tongue was dry and swollen, and only got better once she took a series of hungry gulp of water) she managed to find enough footholds that she could climb off the riverbank and onto a long plain, covered in grass almost as tall as her. Barely above it, she could make out... houses? She ran, or she found herself doing it, almost involuntarily. Questions, answers, civilization... something had to be there!

The water was cold. It ran over his mouth occasionally, his nose, causing him to sputter or flinch. He woke up on his own time, when he finally groaned and rolled over. It sent him face down into the stream, where he jumped up with a splash.

"What in the fuck!?" He spit and hacked and coughed as her crawled up to the shallow waters of the shore, where he had been laying, and out to the dry riverbank. Well, drier. He only then realized he was soaked, and had been soaked for a long time. Dark soil dug into his palm, where tiny worms burrowed away from him into the bank.

He didn't see the girl. She was ahead of him, or more accurately, above him.

She woke up on the cliff of sorts, with her entire body aching. She struggled to stand upright as pain flowed through her body, and she felt it spread through her like many searing-hot flames. To top it off, she had no memory of anything that might have happened up until now.

Well, this was quite a predicament. She would have to make the best of it, and maybe try to figure out what this strange new place was like.

Advancing through the thick, tall grass proved a challenge, eating away at her fleeting supply of energy. The little girl struggled, overwhelmed by the vegetation around her, pushing wildly left and right and constantly feeling the sharp tips of grass graze across her cheeks and nose. One left a particularly visible cut, but in her growing panic, she ignored it and blindly tried to press on, until a voice caught her attention. It wasn't particularly loud, but it was unmistakable. Low, and hoarse, but it sounded human.

Her eyes lit up energetically, and she turned back, trying to follow the sound of the river back to its bank. After what felt like forever, but had been nothing more than a minute, she caught glimpses of glistening water, and the grass began thinning out until she was out, panting and shivering. From there on, she followed by the side of the course, scanning the bank until she finally saw him, laying down on the cold soil, plastered with mud worse than her. He looked miserable. Two clumsy hops and she was down next to him, nearly slipping but catching herself soon enough to stay upright.

"A-are you alright?" the girl prodded him with a small, gloved hand, before instantly jumping back, like a scared critter.

He didn't see the girl at first. Perhaps his mind was clouded, racing from almost drowning in a shallow river. He stared at her with dark eyes, his brow cocked.

"Not really," he said. His voice jumped, like a cat into linen as he doubled down. "In fact, I'm pretty shit. Where am I?" It was almost as if the question started a chain, prompting more of the same. Who am I? What day is it? He put his hand to his temples until a screen shot from his arm-- no, wait, the bracelet on his arm. He jumped back. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before, though he couldn't quite remember what else he'd ever seen before. The screen popped from the girl's wrist, from the person deeper into the Valley that they hadn't even met yet.

The screen was thin, thin enough that he saw the river coursing through it. A cold feeling ran across his neck, and he stared in firm silence as a video played. A young woman came across the screen, a fuzzy speaker blaring from the bracelet.

"Hello, new players," the woman said. Her voice was cool and kind, like a mother's, but she was far too young to have a voice so polished and warm. She was slow to speak, like everything she said was pondered and laid out in front of her. Perhaps she was reading from a script. "It's so good to finally meet you."

Casper sat up with a gasp. His air coming into his lungs and forcing out the water he breathed in for a small moment. Who's good idea was it to stick his head under a small waterfall? He coughed a few more times, his lungs feeling rough and ragged still from the water being in them. The boy scooted himself out of the water as best as he could before a blue screen appeared along with the other people in the area.

Who was this girl speaking to them? Why did a screen appear out of no where? He shook his head trying to clear the fuzziness away, but it failed. He couldn't remember a thing. It was all too fuzzy except for what was right in front of him.

Endiko fell out of a tree. Now that woke her up. Everything was fuzzy, and she couldn't remember anything. It felt like a bad dream, except it was real. She looked around, and saw dozens of other people waking up. "Now this is going to be horrible."

Playing with a lock of her short hair, the girl approached him warily, twirling a strand of chestnut-brown before tucking it behind her ear. He seemed... somewhat friendly, so she neared, curiosity overtaking cautiousness. Finally, shuddering as her skin touched the cold soil, she knelt down besides him, watching him rather intrusively as he struggled to grasp his own memories, a sympathetic but sad smile on her face. "I tried too... it's just... it's too fuzzy. P-painful, sometimes." the child started, before her bracelet activated, the screen startling her so much she fell back, yelping.

"H-hello...?" she reached out, and waved her hand through the screen, watched her hand break a hole through the seamless interface. When she pulled it away, everything came back to normal, the projection of the beautiful woman once more impeccable. The girl's eyes shot to the older boy's, huge with confusion and fear.

The man looked from her back to the screen back to her. What was going on? A name appeared in the corner of the screen, 'Kellan,' which wrestled with his attention in between the prerecorded words.

"Welcome to Project Lied," the woman said. "Like song in German. You're currently in the largest and most advanced digital world ever. You have been chosen for a wondrous experiment, an experience of a lifetime."

"Do you know who this is?" The man gave a sideways glance towards the young girl, pointing at the bracelet. He tried tapping it, shaking it a few times, but the screen wouldn't go away. He had no idea what was going on. He longed for something he couldn't remember, a feeling biting at him and crawling up his neck like a bad itch. He knew he didn't want to be here.

Project Lied...? They were apart of an experiment? He didn't recall to sign up to be apart of one.. But he didn't remember anything at all what so ever. He didn't even know if Casper was his real name even if it did feel familiar. "What does this experience involve?" He said to himself waiting for the girl on the screen to finish what she needed to say. He couldn't help but get a bad feeling about this. It is called an experience but what risks where involved? What was waiting on them ahead? Would he get his memories back?

'Luka.' she read in one of the corners, and her heart skipped a beat, as if finally she managed to remember something. But the relief was fleeting, as she scrambled to get up out of the cold murk and on her feet. The woman continued speaking, and her words only confused her further. 'Project Lied...' she repeated to herself, but the name was anything but familiar.

"There is a village in the Valley. Go to it and you will get more information." she continued, purposefully but with the same hint of motherly care.

"Why would I?" she responded, not looking at him. Instead, she began trying to climb back up off the bank. Here the slope was much more slippery, but with after couple of attemps, the little girl managed to roll unto higher ground, then turned back on her knees, motioning him to follow with urgency. "If we want to know anything, our best bet would be the village she mentioned. It's close, I saw it!" Luka called out

Kellan watched her climb with a cocked eyebrow. It was bizarre that she had taken to the place so quickly, and was already scrambling to move somewhere. Where was this village? Why was she so accepting of it? For all he knew, it was a setup, some kind of genocidal wrangling. Shouldn't they be at least a little wary?

"I reckon I won't be led anywhere by some ten year old girl," he snorted, bounding up the bank with his longer legs, reaching the top with ease. "You're following me, you got it?"

The other two were somewhere further, out of view from Kellan and Luka. Kellan gave the girl a hard slap on the back. "Let's get on it, then," he said. The sooner he could return her to her mother, the sooner he'd figure out what the fuck was going on.

Still on all fours, the little girl watched him climb, visibly amazed by the ease with which he scaled the slippery slope. Seeing him get up, she followed suit, shaking mud of her pretty dress, having grown oddly attached to her garment already. Her expression changed to one of displeasure at his teasing, stopping in her tracks as she was making her way towards the tall vegetation she had lost herself in just a while back. No protest came out of her mouth. Maybe it was better to let him lead, anyway.

Crossing her arms, she stubbornly stuck her tongue out the moment his back was turned, though, frowning, before watching him vanish in the grass, at which point she promptly hurried to catch up, fearful of getting lost. With a small hand, she grasped the back of his shirt, holding unto it as a lead.

"I'm twelve, you know. And I'm a tough girl." Luka huffed as the two started for the village.

"Much better, love." Kellan snorted, before his attention waned. He walked with her, but his eyes were focused on the sky, or rather, to where the valley touched the clouds. He could see the cliffs, the way the edges folded the blue like paper. He was sure he could see people up there, too far to make much more details out. Perhaps he was just crazy, however, or tired. His shirt was sodden, his pants heavy and sticking to his ankles.

The village had to have dry clothes...

A village huh? the black haired boy looked up from the screen seeing others ready to head that way. Well if he wanted answer then he better follow suit. At this rate he wasn't going to figure anything out. Casper let out a sigh before standing up off the little shore and followed the others, keeping his distance. He didn't really want to engage in a conversation right now. He just wanted to learn all he could about where he was.