logsinthenight | INTRO LOG: JULY

characters: everyone.
location: the harbor, as well as the rest of town.
date/time: july 1-3.
content: beacon's newest batch of residents arrives on the ferry. winters, will, and rastus introduce themselves and explain the situation.
warnings: n/a.

welcome to beacon.

It's dim, and the room won't stop swaying, gently rocking you back and forth. A loud sound startles you fully awake, a deep, moaning call: a foghorn. As your eyes adjust, you note faint red light streaking through the room from a tiny, round window.

You've found yourself in a private room, lying on a bed. The last things you remember are the events that led up to your death. Beside you is a folded tablet and a lantern that glows steadily with a healthy flame.

You're on a ship. And that ship is docking.

Making your way to the deck, and eventually the pier, you find only moonlight to greet you, and a dark forest beyond. There are other people here, each with their own unique lantern, and many of them look just as lost as you are. On the ferry you've just disembarked from, the speaker system begins to play a song.

In the distance, across the waters of the lake, you can see the tall silhouette of a lighthouse, its red light slowly turning.

•••
Winters and Will are waiting for you on the beach. Winters flags you down from where he's standing atop a large rock, surveying the gathering crowd. Will stands next to him, though he's monkeying with his tablet and looks rather bored. He barely looks up as Winters speaks:

"First thing's first: I'm sorry you're here. There's no easy way to break this news, so let's just get it over with, hm? You're dead. Or, ah, you've died. Call this the afterlife if you want, or don't if that ain't your thing, but point is, you're here 'cause you died. Those are the facts.

This world's dead, too. You've noticed by now it's pretty dark, yeah? That's 'cause there's no life here, not anymore. And that lantern you've got? That's your life, so to speak. The flame goes out, you die, and vice versa. Keep it close. Should be easy enough to remember on account of how the sun don't rise. You'll need something to see by.

This place is called Beacon, and that's Lake Red Jacket. Town's 'bout a mile down the road, and we've got a bonfire there, but that's the only other light you'll see in this place. Save for the moon and all, though the sky won't do you much good out in the woods. I'll let Rastus explain the bonfire to y'all.

Ah, right. I'm Ben Winters—Winters'll do—and this here's Will Ingr— What? For christ's sake, Dr. Will Ingram. Likes to think he's the brains of the operation, as you can see. If you've got questions about these tablets, he's your guy. Rastus tends to the fire, and you'll find him in town. He's married to his job in a way. And you may never've seen a person like him back wherever you came from, but don't make a big fuss over it. He's a nice fellow. Mind your manners.

The three of us are leftovers from past resets. We came here on that ferry just like you, but it's just us left now. 'Sides the Lighthouse Keeper, but it'll be a bit before you get to meet her. She's got control over the town, see, and if she ain't satisfied with a group's performance, they get the axe. Town gets reset. If she pulls a reset on you folks, a couple of you might end up like me and Will here, giving this speech to the next crop."

The red beam of the lighthouse pulses over the group, over the trees. Winters glances up to watch it swing out over the bay.

"But don't hold it against her. Ain't her fault we're in this mess, and we've all got a job to do, including you.

For now, concentrate on accepting your lot, yeah? We're here to answer your questions, but we ain't gonna tell you all there is to know just yet. Some things are best learned on your own, and some of it we just don't want to saddle you with yet. There's a limit to how long we can stay here safely, that's true, but thing is, we do got time. Time enough to play this smart. Do better than the folks before us did. Settle in, make peace, explore a bit if you're up for it. Use these first couple weeks to come to grips. You ain't gonna be any good to the town if you don't sort yourself out before worrying about what comes next.

So listen up: You're dead. You died. Whatever your old life was, it's done now. None of us can go back, so all we've got is forward. Welcome to Beacon. Could be worse, yeah?"

ooc.

Hey there, wonderful players, and welcome to In the Night! For this intro log, all three NPCs will be available for chatting with, whether your character wants to make casual conversation or ask questions about all this. The headers on each NPC toplevel are there for easy reference as to what each of them are responsible for, but you're welcome to go to any NPC for whatever reason. You're welcome to assume your character has overheard any NPC conversation to learn more about the game. After the NPC threads have died down, we'll compile the info learned ICly and add it to the game history page. If your character would contribute something specific to the game history records, let us know!

DELIVERIES

The following packages can be found in the cargo hold:

The monthly store restock

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

_{[He's not enough of an idiot to miss where this is going, and his gaze cuts over with a mild reproach that has more to do with a supposed educated man not making the connection faster than the implication itself. While they're on the subject of old world terminology, it is, in the vernacular of the twenty first century, what one might call a duh look.]}

Most people don't. After it fell. _{[Like the man's unease around him, the reaction--pure indignant puzzlement, like the very idea is unheard of--of someone obviously in the realm of the 1% goes noted but not commented on.]} I don't.

_{[He's not ashamed to say it. Why should he be? You can't miss what you've never had, or your parents before that, and probably their parents, too, though they'd been long dead before he was born. Being able to understand one of Veil's books wouldn't have kept him alive. It hadn't kept her alive, either.

Truthfully, the real thorn in the side is the emphasis on your world. That's a learning curve he's still struggling to climb over. More than one world. More places than he can imagine. At any rate, Will's so close to making the connection himself--when a world crashes and burns, so does privilege--that he resents having to butt heads with this strange new reality and say it out loud. He takes a drink from his glass.]}

I heard they used to use things like this in the old world, but that was a long time ago.

[That look somewhere between angry and unimpressed— it's probably a look Will would've given, say, a couple decades ago. Alright, he supposes he deserved that one. He's always thought of himself as a self-made man, having clawed his way up from the dregs of society. But not everyone gets that chance, and he paid dearly for his.

Maybe this boy isn't so different from his younger self. A survivor, making do with what the universe tossed in his lap.]

Well, it's common where I'm from. [It's less defensive and more explanatory.] Even the colony kids are taught to read, though that's mostly just so they can do their jobs.

[Moving on to more important things.]

This sort of tech is old-world to me as well, though for very different reasons. This is probably the sort of thing they used before we even left Earth. But luckily for both of us, it's fairly intuitive. And luckily for you in particular, it can read things for you.

[He reaches for the tablet that M.K. is looking at and taps the settings button, switching it over into text-to-speech. He then goes and picks a random network post, which the tablet reads out in a robotic voice.]

_{[He understands the internal logic of what Will's saying very well. You need the right tool for the job--it just so happens that cog kids needed their hands to do theirs, not their smarts.

That's what Pilgrim had been trying to change. Flattening the hierarchy, teaching everybody, letting a person decide their own fate. He'd even offered to teach M.K. how to read when there was time, but they'd been short on that, and M.K.'s primary and most pressing job had been to swing the sword.

And he'd failed at that.]}

"Left"?

_{[That part, he hazards to question. There's so much he doesn't pretend to understand.

The icon, though! A part of him is pleased to see it's as important as he'd thought while playing in his own time, looking like a little cog wheel in and of itself. Cogs were the foundation upon which the Badlands had run. Cogs did all the hard, manual labor. It seems as though that hasn't changed. However, he does sit up and look visibly perplexed when the tablet begins to... apparently read aloud at him.]}

Wait. You're saying it's translating that?

_{[Those exact words? Matching every letter with its sound? For one of the first times, he's impressed without feeling the accompanying bitterness.]}

Left, yes. As in moved away from. Out into the stars, as it were. We found other planets to live on, further and further from home, and then a lot of us stopped living on planets at all. Now the only ones who stay behind are the haughty bastards who think they're the only true humans left.

[And his tone makes it obvious how he feels about that.

The unmasked sense of wonder that M.K. shows when the tablet starts to speak is... unexpected. Yes, it's fairly neat, but it's also mundane, and this kid hasn't been very impressed with much of anything so far. To think that something so simple could have the most impact.]

It is, yes. It's the same as if a person were reading to you, except it's a machine.

_{[Finding out there's more hardship after death--more battles to wage, more people keeping secrets, more sacrifices to make--is no no great astounding surprise to him. Death imitates life, or so it would seem.

But this--this is new. There hadn't been a surplus of bedtime stories even back when he'd still been with his family, and with other pressing, bloody matters to attend to, not a lot of time to sit and watch someone read from a text. But here he is, sitting and watching the page while a computer pronounces each word, perfectly understandable if artificial.

He blinks, shaking his head a little in astoundment. Putting one finger to the screen, he drags it down, following the progression of the voice.

It's one thing to be told there more worlds than just the one he knew and quite another to think this little device was humanity's beginning somewhere else, not its end.]}

We heard stories people used to go into space. That they could build anything they wanted to. We thought they were just stories, though.

_{[Space. Stars. All this clean, smooth, streamlined tech. It feels beyond him, him who was born in the dirt of a world that had long since given up hope of being anything beautiful.]}

INTRO LOG: JULY

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