Act 1/1.1

## [1.1] first threshold

**June 29, 2018**

 When you set your mind to it, you make a difference.

It’s more than a piddling inspirational quote, it’s the truth of the matter. No matter how little you are aware of it, no matter how much you doubt it, your belief holds great potential. It’s small, yes. It’s something so impossibly intangible. Yet with it comes great effect, from cataclysmic tragedy to heartful solace, the world’s most enduring transformations come from the quietest of ideas.

But this idea was little more than a whisper. Perhaps one that did not even reach your ears, coil itself into your head. Yet its threads strung around you all the same.

{-}
“Welcome to Aether!”

An excited statement that struck an unsatisfying tone as the one who’d uttered it pulled back into the weeds. Just as suddenly as she’d appeared, the being who called herself Felise was gone. Albeit, with the promise to return, but the first encounter in a strange land was short and coincidental, as insignificant as a pin prick. Further away, the sound of her rustling foliage eventually lost itself in the wind, and you found yourself standing at an impasse. A lull.

Was this the change you sought? The result of you appearing at the wrong place at the wrong time? In that moment, change felt perhaps a number of ways.

Wild grass billowed against the wind in a sea of green jutting overhead, the sky spun its own ocean of clouds beyond even that. Little things, from the direction of the sunlight to the scent of the soil, truly confirmed the otherworldly nature of it all. It was comfortably unfamiliar, just slightly askew of the ordinary. The wind didn’t feel just right, and you stood on a hunk of rock hanging aloft in the air. You were long gone from where you used to be.

So what were you doing? Waiting around, quartered on this island, surrounded by strangers and acquaintances. Humans, an interminable mass of a species made finite here on this strip of land. Maybe the only thing you really had in common was coming from Earth. Maybe that’s all you had in common. Who could say? But there you stood, a pack of individuals awaiting the future.

### **Summary**

You met up at a compass rose in NYC, following a mysterious invite, and were suddenly transported through it to a different world. The world you arrived in is called **Aether**, the deserted, floating island you landed on, you decided to name **Eden.**

Immediately, you meet four other beings:

* **Felise** *(she/her)*: Imp. Energetic and wants to help. Has electric magic and can hover on her lantern staff. Read about humans growing up and has lots of faith in their potential, whatever that means.
* **Toy** *(they/them)*: ???. Standoffish and strange. Can “trade” the qualities of things, buffing one thing while debuffing another. Does everything completely even, which is their motivation behind being equal parts “helpful” and antagonistic.
* **Brie** *(he/him)*: ???. Childish and proud. Casts yellow bubble-like magic that bursts in a stunning light, and can summon and store “familiars” from cards. Mostly just looks up to and follows after Felise.
	+ **Familiars:** have white pelts and purple eyes, are under contract to Brie
		- **Silas** *(she/her)*: Wolf. Used for melee attacks. Brie loves her.
		- **Eberta** *(she/her)*: Owl. For scouting and relaying messages.
		- **Small Pete** *(he/him)*: Mouse. Tracking, sensitive to magic.

* **Lemon** *(they/them)*: ???. Gentle and friendly. Can reap souls like a shinigami, but isn’t one by species, can expel smoke with an array of illusion powers. Was here for the ride and good company but can take up the reigns of responsibility.

The giant bird aberrant returns to attack and the humans are forced to choose whether they’ll **stay** and fight, try and **help** secure something important, or **run** and follow one of them if they want to live.

#### Stay

With Felise to try and fend off the abberant's attack.

#### Help

Lemon and Toy to find something, but instead, get attacked by a flock of small crying bird aberrants.

#### Run

With Brie to a well where they could hide and be safe, finding a dragon statue along with gems in the shape of orbs embedded in its wings (the treasure!)

### **Epilogue**

*From their various locations, each group witnessed a different sight that amalgamated to the very same meaning and conclusion. Elle, the skyship, the single ticket off the island, broke into pieces like a crushed eggshell. Every last piece of her fell through the clouds, sinking into the grand nothingness below.*

*Fortunately, perhaps blessedly, the aberrant seemed disinterested with the rest, retreating past the veil of white once the destruction had been done, satiated by just that. But that was the only good to come out of the scene. Everything else terminated to a singular, brief reality: They were stranded on this island.*

*This was the start to a long, long journey.*

{-}In the chaos, the ship gets trashed by the large aberrant. Pieces and debris rain down off the side of the island into the abyss below. The group is trapped on Eden now, and resolve to fix the ship so that they can escape.

Humans get split into housing and different teams. **Sustain** is in charge of providing food. **Protect** is in charge of safety. **Repair** is in charge of fixing the boat.

#### **Sustain**

The sorry state of Eden, the rather ironic name you’d given to the island, made itself clear when the matter of food made itself known. Water was not an issue, what with a well readily available in the center of it, and some irrigation channels here and there. Remnants of old farm buildings, some for crop and others for leisure, made it clear this island had once yielded edible vegetation, but not much remained except for the ghosts of that era.

Some fruit trees, gnarled and unkempt as they were, still produced plums, apples, pears, and the like. Underfoot, if one was careful, they could find an assortment of wild berries that had survived and proliferated despite years, if not decades of neglect. So while foraging from the land was viable for a little while, you would surely starve once everything had been picked clean.

Lemon volunteered to head the farming venture. Toy wanted in, too, but really only to immediately set up a spa for themself, so alas. That was a no go.

Hidden below the invasive webs of ivy, Lemon had found patches of potatoes, turnips, and carrots, other root vegetables that could be eaten and replanted. Little by little, the small promise of other crops preserved against time made themselves known, and became options for replanting.

Garden ponds held the promise of overgrown ornamental fish - or rather their grandchildren - and perhaps a trout here and there. On the other hand, Lemon strongly advised against trying to hunt the aberrants they’d seen before. They probably weren’t safe for consumption, let alone made of meat in the first place.

Nonetheless, there you were, tasked with the job to provide sustenance for yourself and others.

#### **Protect**

The events that led up to this moment made the need for proper means of protection starkly clear. This was a world full of bizarre beasts known as aberrants, and they could tear, burn, bite you into an early grave in a matter of minutes.

Eden, this island, wasn’t as aptly named as it seemed. Your paradise had a pest problem, and while it looked to be a farm of some sort once upon a time, that meant little now and meant nothing in the ways of arming and defending yourself.

Nonetheless, that became your exact objective. Felise, who had steadfastly chosen to head this initiative herself, explained that resources abounded. If that meant chopping and whittling down the wood around you, if that meant repurposing the metal tools littered about, then, by all means, do it. Make shoddy spears, try to string a bow, get creative. Do whatever it took to get there. Take what you need, because you’ll need it more. She wasn’t crafty herself, but she could help out in practice.

Dead grass became training dummies lined up along old picket lines. Mornings would consist of exercise and mock fights. If you wanted to live, you’d have to well and truly fight for it, but she’d be there to push you there along the way.

That meant defending yourself and defending your peers. They had other work to do - and they were going to have to train themselves to hold their own too, but this was your priority now. Provide yourself with all the resources you need, and then help the rest get there too.

#### **Repair**

The question of how to get off Eden, an island that was anything but an idyllic garden at this point, hovered heavily in everyone’s mind, especially with the destruction of the one ticket off the floating hunk of rock.

When the arcane core, what was essentially the engine of the skyship that allowed it to stay aloft was retrieved, the matter of leaving Eden became a simple matter of rebuilding the vessel that surrounded the engine.

Brie and Toy jumped on heading this project, and you couldn’t tell if they hated working together or not. Nonetheless, they did it. Armed with hundreds of schematics of similar warships and zero ideas on how to actualize them, they were primarily fueled by the simple desire to escape.

Attitude was perhaps half the battle, at least. The rundown nature of the island made scavenging for unused resources easy, whether that meant dismembering structures such as neglected tool sheds, turning scrap metal into nails, recovering or repurposing pieces of fabric and sewing them into the sails the ship would need to streak through the sky once more. What was the saying, monkeys with typewriters? Well, maybe that wasn’t quite the analogy to use here, but if you set your many many minds to it, surely you could build upon what remained of the ship and see it fly once more.

In fact, you had to. The hopes and desires of many depended on it, yours included. So while they worked to keep you alive, this was the duty that lay before you. While not pertinent to survival, the end goal was arguably the reason anyone worked so hard to keep surviving in the first place.

{-}You were advised to take up whatever relevant task best suited your abilities but were required to remain vigilant of protecting those that you’d been grouping into housing with, first and foremost.

## [Side Plot] wilderness expedition

Lemon asks a few of the humans to accompany them into the wilderness after work, mostly to find some plants for the gardens. The group consists of Svend, Solus, Ulex, Jace, Indigo, Pippa, Veronikka, Theodore. They find a bunch of abandoned houses in various states of disrepair.

After looting the various houses, they start to head back until they come across a **salamander aberrant**. The aberrant gets spooked and attacks them, setting things and people on fire. The group kills the aberrant and then goes home.