logsinthenight | INTRO LOG: JULY

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

It's a beautiful building to lose yourself in for a while.

⟪ She re-arranges the meaning of her words as if it is nothing – clearly, this may suit him better than a talk of architecture. If nothing else, he looks profoundly lost. In her own way, she is keeping busy, making a home of this strange temple, speaking to those who look... just a little the way she pretends not to feel.

It seems a bit as though she needs to be another kind of priestess, here. The kind she was once prepared to be, before her calling turned out to be one of battle. ⟫

Have you eaten since we all arrived?

_{[That's just the problem: all there is is battle, or so he'd told himself (with Pilgrim's hand on the pen), and kept telling himself (with Pilgrim's voice repeating the words), and now that story's run up against an ending he didn't prepare for. It's quite the thing, beginning to question how unreliable a narrator one actually is.

Food, like architecture, is far from his mind and he shakes his head after a pause.]}

No. _{[But there's a danger in leaving it at that, if she's making an offer and not just an inquiry. After another pause he sheds light on why he's refrained from accepting Winters' invitation to settle in.]} I don't want to.

_{[Less telling than what he really wants to say, which is I can't. More telling than if he'd simply said yes, or that he had no appetite, both which would raise fewer questions. He's never been all that good at hiding what's riding close to the surface.

Creature comforts would make him feel good, and he doesn't want to feel good right now.]}

⟪ Guilt she knows when she sees it. There is almost a scent to it, it clings to the skin, it digs itself into each bone. Stannis had been shaken with it after the murder of his brother, after the killing of the castellan, after the defeat at the Blackwater. She had tried to offer comforts of the physical world, too. Not food, as she does with this boy, but body –– and he'd refused her, for the first time in a long while, too sick with thoughts.

Patience had soothed him. A presence, of sorts. ⟫

Hm. ⟪ It's a hum, with an upturn, fair enough, it seems to say. There is no use to leaving him to his thoughts. Call her damaged, but when she had been his age, so many years ago, being on her own with her thoughts was more of an enemy than any other. ⟫ I was on the verge of heading out. There is work to be done. Come with me.

What? _{[An echo of the first, but stronger now, more focused on her and on the present, her sudden segue taking him off guard.]} What work?

_{[Obviously there's work to do and everyone else is scurrying around doing it, but nothing, he's thinking in that moment, that has to do with him. There's a reason he hasn't pitched in with taking inventory or cleaning up, or even claimed any amenities as his own--these aren't his people. This isn't his place. This isn't his job. The Widow killed him. He didn't die to get comfortable.

And yet when she looks down at him so expectantly with those bizarrely red eyes of hers, his feet have the urge to obey, though he stops it as merely straightening in his seat. In all honesty, the spirit of compassion to help out a woman in need doesn't move him. But a task he can do...

She has his attention, that much is clear.]}

Why me? What do you think I can do that somebody else can't?

_{[Something else is clear, too--that he hasn't read between the lines and divined her reasons for asking yet.]}

It is the law of the world. ⟪ She tilts her head, curious. At least, it is the way she has ever looked at it. Her lantern sways as she shifts, though her eyes don't leave his face. ⟫ I do not know what you can do, but it is not for me to know unseen.

⟪ She smiles, softer then, as is her gaze. It is no longer piercing. ⟫ I believe god brought us all into the world for a purpose. It is mankind who divides us, who places one's birth above another's, but each of us can bring good. You came here for a reason, we spoke for a reason. It may not be clear yet, it may just be an hour to fill. It's a reason all the same, don't you think?

⟪ She takes a step back, giving him space. ⟫ There is something in the forest, we know as much. If it attacks, we will wish for a manner to heal, and I intend to provide aid to the healers.

_{[He'd be lying if he said the full weight of her stare isn't formidable. But he won't admit it--so he doesn't say it. He meets it; he doesn't know any other way but to meet it, even with the fight drained out of him all over the Meridian Chamber's sand floor.

God. Mankind. Goodness. He huffs a sigh of exasperation (specifically at that one word: good) and leans on the back of the pew like her avalanche of pretentious pedagogy is pressing him down into it. All things he couldn't want to hear about less. In that moment he can guess exactly what she is--a woman like Cressida, maybe even a witch herself, though where Cressida had preached savior and Azra this one speaks of an even higher power.

What's unusual is that he doesn't hate it. Where he drifts, her unearthly certainty is like an anchor to hold onto.]}

In other words, you're scared to go alone and you want someone with you in case there's trouble.

_{[Her words, rearranged into his more straightforward narrative as he sees it. Go on, tell him he's wrong.

But--fine. Whether she knows it or not, he can handle trouble. He pushes himself up to a standing position, enough to give his response without him needing to say it.]}

Who are you?

⟪ She inclines her head. ⟫ I appreciate company, and while I have faith in my ability to defend myself –– I did get murdered nonetheless.

⟪ The truth remains that he seems terribly, awfully broken down and lost for someone so young, but that is not a thing to be said. She wants him to do something that does not leave him wherever his thoughts are trying to drag him to ⟫

I am called Melisandre. May I have your name? ⟪ She poses it as a question he can simply shrug off, if he minds it, and heads on towards the innards of the church with a slight incline of her head, as if to ask him to follow.

More like than not, this is when he might step onto the trap door. ⟫

Did you?

_{[Couched in a quiet question of his own, but he's looking at her dress. At the darker red stains seeped into it.

Perhaps he shouldn't have so much faith in his own ability. After all, he was murdered, too, and by someone he hadn't expected to be so powerful. Then again, calling it a fair fight would have implied he'd fought back--and he hadn't. Inwardly, he shakes the thought off.]}

M.K. _{[He's not in what one might call a giving mood, but he won't deny her something so simple as that. In truth, he had briefly wondered about the trapdoor--the very same one he glances to as they pass--but her presence in the church has his focus.]} You seem like you landed on your feet.

_{[Meeting someone who believes in an obsolete god in an obsolete church. Fitting.]}

⟪ She crooks her head to the side with a serene smile on her face. ⟫ It's not slavery. There have been worse times.

⟪ And she does mean it: there is food, there is shelter, no one owns her and so far, no one has threatened her, either. The sun is gone, but it isn't as if she had seen much of it in Asshai. Soon, she'll have finished a new robe that does not speak of her cruel death, and who knows? She might still be brought back to life. ⟫

_{[Slavery.

That's enough to earn a look. To Melisandre's credit, she's evolved admirably past those worse times, well-spoken and well-groomed (with some allowance for the muss and fuss with that looks to have been a gory death).]}

Is that what you were? _{[In life, he means. Before Beacon.]} You don't seem like it. You remind me of someone--a priestess. She used to say the same thing about purpose.

_{[Until she betrayed her own faith... but that's a long story, and still fresh. Even Cressida. Even Cressida had seen something, sensed something, and pulled away from Pilgrim.]}

'Tis a long time ago.

⦑ She looks at him –– and she did think him haunted before, though she'd hoped it wasn't in the same way as her. Such things leave marks on the soul as they do on the skin. ⦒

I was a slave, then a slave at Red Temple, then an acolyte, later a priestess. I suppose the latter, I still am.

⦑ The slave girl is alive and well inside her heart, too, but there's no need to share it. ⦒ Most faiths like the idea of a purpose, or so I am told. Do you?

_{[True enough, how marks linger. His live on in methodical marching lines hidden under his sleeves. Different kinds of marks for a different kind of slavery, but if experience has taught him anything, the egotism and barbarism in thinking one person can own another is all the same no matter where one goes.

Where she hopes not to find common ground, he finds the potential for it curious. His damnable curiosity, always so hard to snuff out once piqued. Much as he's trying not to feel much of anything for the others assembled here, familiar lowly beginnings humanizes her further.]}

A priestess with red eyes?

_{[Is that all she is? It leaves room to satiate his curiosity if she's so inclined to share more, while at the same time offering to leave it at that. If she'd like to be known as a priestess, then that's what he'll think of her as.

Unfairly, maybe, a caustic cheerlessness creeps back in at the innocent question and pulls down on his expression, shuttering any chance of returning the favor.]}

It doesn't matter anymore. _{[His faith. His purpose. All for nothing.]} I don't want to talk about that.

_{[And with the same curtness, he raises his lantern and starts for the door.]}

Come on. Let's do this if we're doing it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

INTRO LOG: JULY

church prompt best prompt

as the wise prophet hozier once said

that's what's under the trapdoor: hozier's winter lair

goddamn it and now we woke him up

wE'RE DUMMY THICC AND THE CLAPPING OF OUR CHEEKS HAS ALERTED HOZIER

he hungerssss, KEEP LAYING OUT THOSE SNACKS, MEL

FULL ON LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS IN THE BASEMENT

it's fine, they can sacrifice someone to the lord of the basement and be saved

[ melisandre liked this post ]

✔ reblogged

⟢ follow for more soft human sacrificing ⟣

no subject