logsinthenight | INTRO LOG: NOVEMBER

INTRO LOG: NOVEMBER

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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[it's been a rough morning for Cao Pi, he's only just gotten his damn pants back from the spirits and his sword from Quentin, so all things considered he's very late to the beach party. So instead, he conducts his usual appraisal of the crop of newcomers from the Bonfire, where people tend to congregate when they don't know if it's cool to just walk into the tavern and break into somebody's bedroom.

While the style of uniform is entirely unfamiliar, he can still guess at a military uniform when he sees it. Which makes Hughes a prime target for checking out and seeing if he's got any valuable skills. So here comes the emperor in his bronze-and-gold-edged armor, standing out among most of the residents.]

Aha. So there are newcomers this month. I'm sorry.

[Maes had been on the look out for areas that seemed important. He was making his way around, familiarizing himself, because he wanted to make sure he knew where to find people when he needed them. He also wanted to find out more about what was going on and talking to people before burying himself in any kind of records seemed like the smarter idea. It would give him a focus once he made his way to the town hall.

He had taken a seat at the bonfire to gather his thoughts and figure out his next move when someone else approached him. He looked up.]

Hello. It would certainly seem that way. Is this a regularly timed occurrence then, the ferry arriving with new people?

It is, this would be the...hmm, fifth month now? Though there was some worry on account of an incident last month. I missed the arrival itself, was there any difficulty? Is there a new ferry?

Five months...and how many people are here exactly? I feel like there was quite a number of supplies, but the community doesn't seem nearly so large.

[The supplies were far outnumbering those on the ferry at any rate.]

An incident? Like what? [He considers how there was no way to get off the ferry and guesses at the answer, or at least part of it.] Does it have something to do with why we stopped short of the shore? It looked like there use to be a dock of some kind, but we had to get creative when it came to getting off. Probably the trickier part was getting the supplies off.

[He had helped a little with that, though mainly he'd been still trying to process where he was and what was happening to him. Most importantly, why he was here.]

But, yes, we were brought on a ferry, though I can only guess if it was new or not.

[oh boy that's a lot of information to digest. Seems like he picked the right guy to approach after all. Cao Pi gestures vaguely to a spot beside Maes to silently ask permission to sit next to him...and then just sits anyway, permission or not]

Hm. Well, the previous ferry that arrived on the first of the month was destroyed last month, by a handful of idiots who decided to try to capture it. The ferry sank and the dock was demolished in the crash. To be quite honest, we had no way to know whether any newcomers would arrive at all, or how, given the situation.

But what you're saying is, the ferry is fine...? And the supplies. Hmm.

[Maes doesn't mind at all and nods for Cao Pi to join him even as he takes a seat. If he had wanted to be alone he would have found a house or room to hole up in. That could come later.]

Hmm. And yet if we're here then they either found a way to salvage it without you knowing or there's more boats out there ready to go and bring new arrivals here.

[Which led to at least two major questions about how they wound up on the ferry (Maes certainly didn't remember boarding) or where the ferries were docked when they weren't here.]

Well, there was something odd, but I have nothing to compare it to so I can't say if it was due to it being a replacement ferry. Did you all ever see a series of lights in the water? Not the red light from the lighthouse, but a blue flashing one?

[EXCUSE ME WHAT

cue the slow head-turn for dramatic effect. He manages to keep his tone fairly calm but definitely sounds wary.]

Lights in the water? No, that is...new. There have been dead bodies and shadows of large creatures but not blue lights.

[Zihuan genuinely sits there mulling it over for a silent moment or two, brow furrowed. And then something completely different.]

Make no mistake, this is a place of spirits. We are, as they say, dead, so expecting things to look and behave as they would in the living world is a mistake. That said, that is a new twist compared to what we know.

How large? [Because Maes had wondered if the lights were part of something living or mechanical. This was definitely not information he had expected to get so soon.] If the size is comparable, maybe the two are related and it just hadn't lit up before now...

[Maes nods at this admission.]

It's not my first time being thrown into a place that has beings and creations I could never have imagined back home.

[Hell, it wasn't his first time being told he was dead. That was probably the easiest part to accept after a year of being reminded of that fact by both Riza and Roy.]

The best thing to do is to record as much as you can and hope it makes some sense later, either to you or to someone you share it with.

I can't say for certain, I've seen nothing myself. I only heard 'large.'

[he considers Hughes' assessment for a moment, since Cao Pi is definitely into finding more people who not only aren't sure about the dead thing but have ideas to back it up. Given what he's been through he can't go higher than unsure, yet.]

Is that so? You've...well. I wouldn't presume that you've died before but you have an experience? That is, something that isn't merely being taken to another world, because in that sense, you would not be the only one.

[demon world visitor party of one over here...]

Any one you can tell me that did see it? That way I could at least compare the descriptions.

[Maes was in full on investigation mode at this point and so was grasping at any leads he could. But, there is time for all of that later as Cao Pi changes the conversation to Maes's history instead.]

I'm not sure, honestly. I died a year ago, woke up in a place called the Temple of Beginnings by a powerful goddess calling herself Astoria, and was told we were brought there to help combat the darkness. [He gestures at their surroundings.] Which clearly didn't do much good. Astoria told me that it wasn't permanent, my return to life, and I can't say for sure if my ending up here is my first death catching up to me or a different kind of death.

I don't recall. It was on the network. [gesturing at the tablet; really, that thing is such a nice way to quickly gather information that anything he says is probably going to be less useful than the network

That is a lot of information to take in, leaving Cao Pi quiet for a bit]

Interesting. That leaves me with more questions than answers, but comparing that to this may provide us more options. The commonalities of darkness and death...

[enough to make a man wax poetic. Though now that they've been chatting long enough it's time for introductions.]

Cao Pi, Lord of Wei. And you are...?

[A title, well, Roy always had mixed results when he threw around his title so while Maes was typically not giving away his rank at the first address, he always felt more compelled when speaking with someone else who had a rank or title.]

General Maes Hughes.

[Though there is some hesitation before saying 'General' because he still feels weird. Roy and Riza were the only ones to call him by that and tell him he was awarded that after death, so it never felt official nor did his old uniform properly reflect it. But, still, he was technically a general.]

And you've certainly given me more of a focus on my investigation. I've started reading some of the information on the tablet, of course, but there are clearly several months of communications on here. It's a lot to take in just reading it, let alone trying to sift through what's important and what's just idle chatter and gossip.

[He considers Cao Pi's own interest in his background.]

I can certainly do my best to answer those questions, but Astoria was always rather cryptic about our purpose and how we were actually supposed to accomplish it. Which, from speaking with Rosinante, sounds like a common trait with your Lighthouse Keeper as well.

General. [yes, good, he likes titles - especially familiar ones. The more generals the better.] Ah, so you've spoken to the commander. He's not wrong. The Keeper is a bit of an enigma - she could be cryptic on purpose, or because she's gone off, or because she genuinely doesn't know the answers to the questions we keep hurling at her. It remains to be seen. That said, we too have no idea how to accomplish the purpose of bringing light back to this world.

Tell me, did you succeed? Or were you waylaid in the process and ended up here?

[Maes raises an eyebrow. The fact that Rosi was a commander hadn't come up, but it's certainly raised his own interest. Not that he hadn't already had plans to speak more with Rosi -- the guy was clearly invested in his own information gathering and Maes naturally gravitated to people like that anyway. He missed having Barabas around, so he needed to collect a new group to work with and compare notes.]

No. At least, if we did it wasn't obvious. Shortly before I woke up on the ferry there was an explosion of light and Astoria was gone. I can only conclude that whatever happened severed my connection with her and that means I got to die for good...which I guess then brought me here.

[That was the hypothesis he had reached anyway. After all, hadn't she always said that if her connection to him or the Temple ended that he would be sent back where he was originally -- in the state he'd been originally. That was dead (according to Roy and Riza) or at least dying in the bottom of a phone booth (from his own perspective of things).]

Mm. Shame. [sorta] For a moment I hoped there might be something to be gleaned, there. A champion bringing light to another world set to come and try it again. Ah, well.

Fortunately, those of us who have been there the longest have not made so much progress that it would be difficult to catch up. Five months is not a long time to make great progress toward such a lofty goal, particularly when there are periodic setbacks.

[he glances over his shoulder toward the beach somewhere off thataway beyond the trees. Thanks Crowley x10]

I wish I could say this was a mission from Astoria, but I didn't see anyone else from The Circle on board and while we HAVE been separated in the past it's usually been within the same world. Sorry.

[Besides, it sounds grand, but half the time he wasn't exactly sure what "combating" the darkness even meant. Astoria had tried to explain once, that it wasn't always literal darkness, though in this case that certainly seemed to be what was meant.]

I know what you mean. As far as I could gather, the Circle was in action for over a year and we probably helped as many worlds as we failed at unfortunately. I think it comes with a task this large and...unfamiliar.

[It could be overwhelming, sometimes, to think about saving the entire multiverse and doing so through actions taken on individual worlds. He tries not to think for too long on the worlds they had failed, but it was just as much a reality as the mission itself.]

Five months is still a lot of reading though, not to mention whatever time isn't documented from before this current group was here. I'll have to get started soon I think.

Ah, but there's the issue. [ooh getting to share some saucy info brings a smirk to his face.] There is nothing from before us. That is to say, nothing that has been accidentally left behind, or even helpfully left. When the Keeper resets the town, everything is obliterated. Nothing, aside from her, Master Rastus, and one or two others held back from previous resets is allowed to survive. And they have thus far told us very little. It is suspicious, isn't it?

Then again, the recent discovery of an armory that had been camoflaged to hide it makes me think there may be more out there, clues or items left by previous iterations of Beacon to try to help, hidden to prevent the Keeper from knowing it's out there.

Nothing? [It comes out without a thought and then he has to process that news as well. It changes a lot of what he had thought they could do.] Why wipe everything? What purpose does that even serve?

[He tries to think, rubbing at his chin. Why would you want to completely reset? He'd already learned that they were not the first to be "welcomed" to Beacon, but wouldn't it make more sense to leave behind information that would prevent past incidents or at least give clues to what happened. All he can think of now is the discovery he had made shortly before his first death, the government hiding its true intentions and how all that blood had added up.

Roy had filled in some of the gaps later, but he's not reassured that this association has now occurred to him.]

It's very suspicious. Especially since you say there are others who are playing along with it.

[Beat.]

An armory? That's promising. What kinds of weapons are available?

I don't know. My theories so far have nothing to back them up, so your guess is as good as mine. As for the armory... [sigh, here's where he's dropped the ball, and knows it] ...I have yet to see it with my own eyes. But those who found it reported bladed weapons and some bows. I would very might like to get over there and pick up a bow, but it's on the far side of the river and bridges are still in progress.

[yet he still has his swords at his side, quite obvious, so Cao Pi isn't exactly unarmed and in a rush to resume his archery practice, it seems]

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INTRO LOG: NOVEMBER

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