INTRO LOG: NOVEMBER

[inthenightmods]

INTRO LOG: NOVEMBER
OLD FAT BOAT

characters: everyone.
location: the harbor, and around town.
date/time: november 1-3.
content: the ferry's back! yay! and it's piled high with goodies! yay!
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.

•••

To everyone's surprise, the ferry does indeed arrive on schedule. Right on time, it comes chugging along toward the beach, though its usually noisy engines are silent. And it seems to be sitting quite low in the water... Hmm.

Unfortunately for those unlucky enough to find themselves onboard, there isn't yet a replacement dock for the one that was destroyed last month. The ferry stops right where it would normally anchor, but then... that's it.

Logistically, there's good news and bad news: The good news is that the ferry is only about 25-30 feet from shore, which is well within the safety of the harbor and is a manageable distance for swimming with an open flame. The bad news? It's... 25-30 feet from shore, which is going to make unloading supplies, er, tricky.

The usual monthly stock has also come in, but, oh, what's this? There's an awful lot in the cargo hold. An awful, awful lot. As a matter of fact, the boat is absolutely filled with food and goods. The storage areas are packed tight, but the bounty spills out onto the decks, and even into the cabins. It's entirely possible that some of the newbies woke up surrounded by potatoes, or with a carton of eggs balanced on them. Maybe even in a pile of Beacon's signature standard clothing. In short, the ferry has become a proverbial horn of plenty.

Where all this stuff came from is one mystery, but another is how to get it all to shore. Better unload it before the weight sinks the ferry again! Just kidding. (Or are we?)

At a glance, the only thing out of place on the ferry is that the door to the bridge is welded shut. Seems a small price to pay for this resurrection though, doesn't it? Besides that one door and all these goodies piled high on the ship, it's almost as if the ferry crash never even happened. Maybe things will be okay after all?

Or maybe the new arrivals will have something to say about that. 🤔

And speaking of newcomers, the tablet and the town have some resources available for getting acquainted with their new situation! In fact, as soon as they're prompted to enter a network username, an app containing all sorts of useful welcome information will launch. Newcomers can always check out the weekly bulletins and the records in town hall as well, and everyone's welcome to get in touch with the NPCs through their inboxes.

ooc.

Hey there, wonderful players, and welcome to In the Night! For this intro log, you are officially without a chaperone. Rastus is back at the bonfire, Will is characteristically elusive, and Robin is, well, you know where she's at. It's up to the veteran residents to fill in the new folks.

As hinted above, it's also up to veteran residents (and newbies alike) to figure out the missing dock situation. Some efforts have already been started to rebuild the structure, but until that's done, the logistics are in your hands! Swim for it, fly for it, teleport to the beach, or maybe use one of the rafts or boats built earlier to shuttle people to and fro. Whatever you do, just make sure you get all the cargo (and people!) off the ferry before it departs.

As an additional note: We will NOT be tracking how you do all of that! There's no need to report salvage efforts to us, as by now, we trust y'all players to make things happen. So long as we see these challenges getting addressed ICly, we'll assume the town came together and figured it out somehow. Nice work, everyone!

DELIVERIES

The following packages can be found in the cargo hold:

• The monthly store restock
  
• A smorgasbord of other items; though limited in scope to the items typically found in the restock/stores, there's an abundance of everything.
  
• And that's it. With the fate of the ferry uncertain, Rastus was unable to order deliveries last month. :(
  
• ...Except for a single box of blueberry Poptarts for Peter Parker.

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Comments

[onlyeverdoubted]

There are advantages to coming from a universe with hundreds of sapient species. Not that Stone isn't striking, or that shapeshifting isn't pretty crazy, but they have shape-changers at home. He's never seen one (that he knows of), but they exist. Frankly, this is far from the strangest thing that's happening right now.

Always desperate to be both busy and useful, Bodhi has thrown himself into handling supplies. He may not understand a lot that's going on, but he understands deliveries. Helping with the loading up, he assumes his best pose of enthusiastic industriousness. "Is there, um, a way that... makes the carrying easier, or..." He has no idea how something that size is flying at all, but just carrying boxes without some kind of rig strikes him as uncomfortable.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Stone is still in groundling form, so as best to fascilitate communication before taking off with the good. Also, because it's easier to land on the ferry and catch his breath that way. Stupid aging. "For you or the boxes?" he asks, sounding friendly enough. "For the boxes and things, roping them together securely might be a good idea. I can't carry as much as I used to--" Ugh. "--but I can still carry more than you can. For you? Holding into my shoulder flange and chest scales helps, then I don't have to focus so much on not dropping you."

That's not seriously. Mostly not serious.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi does not look particularly cowed at the idea of such a flight, though in practice it'd no doubt be terrifying. He may not be your typical cocky flyboy, but he still has a pilot's quiet confidence that he could handle any task that involved aerial transport. "Well, it was the boxes I meant, so, um, I'll get on those ropes, then."

[scarsolderthanyou]

Some people have reacted to the idea of a flight with excitement. This guy reacts as if it seems normal. That's interesting. "What's your name, kid?" Stone asks, staying seated. He'll absolutely let the young one do all the work for now, while he recovers from the damn flight over.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"Rook." He's not entirely sure why that's what he's settled on, but he's starting there. He's not an ensign anymore, not that it was ever a rank to conjure respect and open doors. No honorific seems to belong to him anymore. So surname it shall be. NiJedha's gona and he was the last Rook well before that was the case. If there's anything worth carrying with him it's his family name. "You?" He busies himself about the ropes somewhat clumsily, mostly used to magnetic locks and hovercarts but possessed of enough mechanical cleverness to deal with the low-tech version.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Finally someone with a decent name. Short, to the point, sounds like it could be an actual thing, even if Stone isn't sure what that thing could be. "Stone," he answers, leaning over to watch him work. "Line-grandfather of Indigo Cloud Court, not that it matters much now that I'm dead."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Most of those words are meaningless, but he imagines it must be nice to have them even if people might have to nod along. His attention lands more emphatically on that last thought. Yes, he read the message, but what a conversation to have. "Sounds like you're, uh, used to the idea?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

That's the point: say a bunch of things that people don't understand, and it usually gets them to ask about it. Then Stone gets to talk about home, which means he can ask about their home, and then a whole conversation has transpired in which both of them learn something interesting.

Rook is not playing along as well as some others have. Still, there's a question there, at least. "I had over a year to get used to the idea. Raksura lose our coloring when we get old, and when I finally hit white, that meant I knew it was almost time. So far I'm the only person here I've found who died of old age."

[onlyeverdoubted]

It's very true that he's not much of a communicator if he can help it, but he's quite happy to listen politely. He's never heard of the species, but it's a big galaxy. "I see. I meant, um, used to... being dead, only here we are handling boxes. Instead." He doesn't like to make assumptions about what people think will happen when they're dead. Being brought up to an illegal religion will do that.

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Oh, well, I've been here a while," Stone allows. "My people don't really believe in any kind of afterlife-- when you're dead you're dead. So it was a bit of a shock, waking up here, I'll admit that. I guess this would be a little surreal for you. Did you read the thing on the tablet yet? Supposedly it talks all about what this place is and what we're supposed to be doing here." Because Stone has not read it. He can barely see the damn thing.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"Yeah, gave it a quick look." Practical in effect, and he can admire that, but the tone was so positively airy he remains a little unclear on how seriously he's supposed to take it. He's dead and walking around. Assessing the real seems like a particular challenge. "I didn't actually--I mean, um, there wasn't that much about the... supposed to be doing part? The supposed motivation for having us, but, uh, short on... practical advice?"

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I think that's because no one really knows what we're supposed to be doing," Stone answers dryly. "We have this great mission to save this place from the world eaters, bring back the light or something like that, but not even the people who've been here the longest have any real idea how we're supposed to do it. You don't have any ideas, do you?"

That's said with a kind of wry doubt, because he's sure Rook won't have any.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"Oh, well, that's fine then," Bodhi says in the soft, mild monotone he's perfected for when he's feeling particularly bleak. "My world-saving track record is... not great. So. I guess, um, I guess I'll wait on further instructions."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Neither is mine. I got to help once, but I didn't do much, and then I got mad at the one who actually did the work." He's over his grumpiness about Jade's decisions. They were the right ones, at the time. They just were terrible to have to live with the potential consequences of either way she'd gone. "But if all of us wait for instructions, nothing will happen."

[onlyeverdoubted]

He's of the opinion that not a lot of people should have world-saving experience at all. Ideally that wouldn't come up a lot. But maybe that's the criteria for getting here. There has to be one, right? And maybe there aren't enough people who actually did a good job. Maybe experience counts.

He feels better with the beginnings of a theory. "Blundering around without instructions isn't, um, the best way to ensure most outcomes, either, though."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I don't know, it's how I usually do things," Stone points out, not without a smile. "I haven't properly taken orders from a queen in turns." He's exaggerating by a lot, there. But Rook doesn't need to know that. "And if there's no one to give instructions, you'll be waiting a long time."

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi is not from a moon with a queen, but he supposes they're pretty common. He'll just run with the deduction that anyone who'd know that kind of person, even to answer to, is important, and adjusts his expectations accordingly. "That, uh, is also a point, but... bit of an impasse."

[scarsolderthanyou]

"I'm sure we'll work something out. There's a lot of us here." Stone reaches down from his perch to give Rook a pat on the shoulder, then climbs to his feet. "Think this is ready to go? And I can still offer a ride ashore. We've got hauling and unpacking you can do there, too."

[onlyeverdoubted]

"I'll have to get there eventually." The idea is strange, but from even a brief glance of Stone's other self, there's nothing there he's worried about. The huge, hulking thing he briefly spotted doesn't have tentacles or hands. And it's big enough not to have to think about.

[scarsolderthanyou]

Well, technically he has hands. They're just big, scaled, and have claws on them. No tentacles, though. And he's a lot bigger than the thing Bodhi's been scarred by. "You might as well come now, with this load," Stone suggests. "We're running out of boxes." Just as well, too. Stone is running low on energy. He may need to go grab something to eat and pass out for a while, after this run.

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi looks around for more, not tremendously eager to leave work that makes sense. But the loads are a bit low. He frowns but looks back and nods. He has to leave this boat eventually, and he's certainly not doing it under his own power unless he wants to just drown. "I, um, thank you."

[scarsolderthanyou]

There's still more to do on the other side. Haul things to the store and Invincible, organize things in both places, find a place to stay... Bodhi can still keep busy while Stone collapses and sleeps for a day or two. "You're welcome. Make sure that's tied good and tight, and hang on to the ropes on this side." He taps the back end of Rook's pile, then starts to climb up onto the roof of the cabin. It's trickier to shift from so close, but less exhausting than the water take-off. Plus, it's easier to keep the lantern close. "I'll just scoop you up along with these."

[onlyeverdoubted]

He busies himself with knots he's not spectacularly confident about, preferring that to thinking too hard about what scooping might entail. He's been flying for years, just not so... organically. Bodhi fusses as intently as he can, and manages not to have a moment of last minute panic over this plan as a result.

[scarsolderthanyou]

All right. Complicated, extremely-quick shifting time. Stone gets to the top of the cabin, the highest point on the ferry he can get to, and crouches... then jumps as high as he can. For an old guy, he's at least pretty springy. Good thing, too, because halfway up he disappears-- dark mist, hardly distinguishable from the general gloom, reforming into something much, much bigger, wings already spread and beating down hard to keep from falling and landing on the ferry.

And probably sinking it. Stone might not be as strong and heavy as he was before he faded, but he's still big.

The wind from his first few wingbeats, as he rises up a little in the air, might buffet Bodhi around a bit. Hang on, kiddo, he'll grab you and your crates up in a second.

[onlyeverdoubted]

If Stone was disappointed by Bodhi;s attitude, the kid is certainly impressed now. It's partly just the response any descendant of an arboreal plant eater would have to this swooping down on it, but Bodhi's prey instincts war here with his pilot side. It's fascinating.

At least he has a good head for the sudden shift in gravity and orientation. Same old same old. He doesn't quite cheer, but he's quite calm for a first-time Raksura rider.