logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: november 5-7.
content: use that bonfire!
warnings: n/a. please cw tags appropriately.

maybe we can bring back the light

Shortly after Robin's network post, a magnificent display of fireworks will start to launch from the lighthouse! They're odd-looking, though, given that they glow but don't cast light. But still cool to watch! The best place to view the show is at the beach, but some of the bigger explosions can be seen just over the treetops from town, and they can certainly be heard from all over Beacon. Exciting! Maybe! Robin sure thinks so! The fireworks will continue for a couple of hours before a very colorful grand finale, after which the lighthouse beam will shine red again for the duration of the event.

Meanwhile, back in town, Rastus has set up a magnificent display of his own. Torches are set up in a wide circle around the bonfire (which looks a bit less bright, given how many torches he's pulled from it), ready for the taking. You don't even have to talk to him first! He's lingering nearby, though, and... has looked more excited about things in the past. This is gonna be a bookkeeping nightmare, he can tell.

In any case, the torches are free for the taking, but do remember to report any torch movement to the event header on the item requests page. Don't let Rastus's fears become reality!

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Stone hasn't seen anything like it, either. He's sitting, rather than laying, because the ground is cold and he's a frail old man (damn aging), but he's watching fairly avidly himself. It's far enough away that he can actually see it clearly, which is amazing these days. Occasionally one of the louder ones will make his hands twitch, like they might have claws and might want to swipe at something, but mostly he's just enjoying the show.

"Magic?" he guesses. "That's what they'd do on my world. If they did anything like this anywhere on my world. We have fire guns and flying boats, but not colored explosions, that I know of."

"Mm." He's thoughtful a moment. It's not the response he had hoped for, but admittedly it's one he had expected.

"Is that how things are in your world, then? Enough magic where if you don't know how something works, 'magic' is a good answer for everything?"

After months here, he's becoming sort of torn on this particular topic. Magic is interesting, but it's also kind of a letdown when used to explain anything at all, as if no deeper understanding is needed. It seems dismissive, rather than engaging.

"I'm a shapeshifter, my people live in a giant sentient tree, and I've sired two mentors who regularly got visions of the future," Stone says, sounding vaguely amused. "There was a magister I knew who could make people invisible, and another who could make rocks open like flowers. Magic is a perfectly reasonable answer."

Yeah, okay, fine. He can't really argue, even though he finds himself frowning in the dim lantern light.

"Yeah, I guess. Not sure if it's the same here or not. These must have come in on the ferry. Could've been made in another world."

Which is wild to think about, but it's what Robin had confirmed in her latest series of messages to them all. Everything they ask for comes from some other distant corner of the universe. It would be hard to accept if he hadn't already come to terms with being dead and now reanimated with his soul, or something like it, trapped in a lantern.

"Have you asked Rastus to deliver you anything since you've been here?"

Damn right, he can't argue. Stone doesn't know much about science, sadly, but he's seen a lot of magic. The only science he's really been involved with had been designed to destroy an entire species, and had been falling apart anyway, it was so old.

"No, there's not really anything I need. Besides fresh meat, and that comes anyway." He can't very well ask for live animals to hunt. Even though that would be great. He glances aside at Rosinante, brows up. "Have you?"

"Cigarettes." Lots and lots of those. "Makeup. A sextant. I didn't think much about where they were coming from, just that they would be nice to have. Funny to think it's all from one of those stars out there."

But it confirms his impression that out in the distance, those other worlds hold life. All the planets the people here come from and more are out there, winking out one by one as the World Eaters render them lifeless and dark.

"I never thought about other worlds before waking up here and meeting all of you," Stone admits. "It's fascinating to think about. My world is so full of diversity. What would other worlds be like, that's even different from what I know?"

He says it with a smile, looking up at the stars, beyond the fireworks.

"If I ever do see my family again, I'm telling them to have the groundlings start looking for other planets out there," he adds. "I'm sure there's a people clever enough to figure something out." He doesn't have much hope for seeing his family again, of course, but it's still a thought.

It's a nice thought, getting to go speak to family and friends again, not that he has many of either. The sort of poisonous thought that latches on and gives false hope. They're dead, there's no way they're going back home and to wish otherwise is like allowing a wound to fester.

"Doctor Ingram talks about building a ship that can fly sometimes," he says. "Fly in that, up there, between the stars." He's seen it through Will's memories, in fact. A vision that was hard to understand, and painful due to the violent nature of the man's death, but incredible.

"Seems like it would take a lot of time, though. Materials and expertise we don't have. But wouldn't it be incredible?"

That does sound pretty incredible. "I'd like to see that." Stone considers, then adds, "Maybe not use it. I'm not sure you'd want to make anything big enough for my other form to fit on it." Anything less than that would feel much too small, he's sure. "My ancestors made a ship... thing. Docked on a big spinning machine. We destroyed it on accident, but it would have been interesting to see what it could do, if we hadn't."

"Shame of an accident. Did you see it yourself?"

He can't help but be curious. Things like that in his own world, the relics of a past era, inspire his curiosity and yet too often they're taboo. Dangerous subjects. Discoveries of those old technologies "accidentally" get unwritten; their discoverers disappear. And it's that fact, plus his own kin's fascination with the truly ancient stories of descent from the stars, that keeps him from digging too hard despite his own tendency to seek the sort of knowledge that's hard to find and hoard it.

"I landed on the thing," Stone says with half a smile. "We were trying to stop the machine it was stuck on from destroying half a dozen species, so it was probably worth it. But some of the groundlings we were with were really upset about losing all that potential knowledge." Stone has only started being unhappy about it since waking up here; before this, he never thought much about their history and future as a species. Shown that there are other worlds with strange human-people on them has kind of piqued his curiosity some.

"Sounds like you did the right thing, though," he assures Stone, nodding along. Yeah, losses like that are regrettable. But more regrettable? Mass extinctions, genocides, that sort of thing. Of course, Stone didn't say they were intelligent species, but at this point it seems out of place to ask. Maybe for them the distinction doesn't matter.

"Maybe by some stroke of luck we'll be able to see something like that here some day. Flying in space, I mean. If not through Doctor Ingram's technology, then by some of the magic some people have here."

"Well, we've got a little less than two years to see what we can come up with," Stone says with half a smile. "Though we probably ought to work on actually finding a way to deal with the world-ending monsters during that time, too."

"Of course. World Eaters first. If we succeed with them, then we might have unlimited time for whatever else we want to achieve."

Though he's less sure of that every day. This isn't really an afterlife like he'd thought when he first arrived. Some sort of technology seems to capture their souls on death and send them here through the portal Robin mentioned. He doesn't understand it, but it means that they might not stay here forever - maybe there's a limit to how long a soul can last after death. Maybe they'll be sent elsewhere to solve some other problem. Who knows, really. One step at a time.

Stone would be okay with dying again, really. He was ready for it when it happened. He's lived so much longer than anyone should have to, watched too many people he loved die of shitting old age while he kept living on. But this isn't too bad, either.

"I don't suppose you have any insight into stopping the world eater things, do you?" he asks, without much hope. "It seems like we should be making plans and trying things. Besides me just planning to diving on their heads or something." Which he will certainly try if it becomes necessary.

"They cause the stars to go out. They destroy light. I'm not sure what hurts a thing like that. Not bullets, not swords. Starvation, maybe."

But that would mean no light and no life and that's what they're trying to avoid, themselves.

"Best I can do is keep seeing if there's a pattern in their movements. But it's true, we're running out of time."

"Maybe they can be poisoned," Stone hazards. "Given the wrong kind of light to eat."

Not that he'd have any idea what the wrong kind of light would be, he's just making guesses.

Wow, now there's a thought. Rosinante thinks on it for a moment, with a hand on his chin. "Wrong kind of light, huh. Like what?"

Sorry, Stone, but it's the obvious question to ask in case he does know. Because Rosinante has no idea either, but he clearly appreciates the idea. It's awfully creative.

It's how the colony defeated their own enemies, the Fell... if diving and tearing out throats isn't possible, poison is a viable option. "I don't know. How many kinds of light are there? Sunlight, firelight, moonlight-- we still have moonlight here, they didn't eat that their first time through." Stone also doesn't know that moonlight is technically reflected sunlight... but if that were true in Beacon, they wouldn't have moonlight, eight. "Maybe the bonfire, since I hear it's magical somehow."

"Worth trying. Might be a hard thing to achieve, though, with no guarantees it works." What would they do, anyway, throw torches into open mouths? If it doesn't work, it's a good way to lose their only reliable light source. But if the World Eaters are close enough to try feeding them bonfire flame, they're probably not going to make it much longer anyway.

"I like the idea of poison in general. It's just a shame we know so little about them."

"There has to be a way to learn more, doesn't there? We have people who know some things about them, even if they're flighty difficult people," Stone muses. "And your the stars thing. Maybe there's a reason why they eat some stars and not others that isn't just distance."

"That's a good point. Maybe," he says, nodding. "If there's no obvious pattern based on distance, maybe knowing what kinds of stars those are is a good thing to investigate."

Though that seems even harder to do from here. But there are some awfully smart people around who might just have an idea of how to try.

"And that's the end of my wisdom for the night," Stone decides, only about half-seriously, leaning back on his hands to tilt his head back up at the fireworks. "You'll have to figure out how to run with that yourself. Though if you want me to try flying up as high as I can and see if Raksura can reach stars, after all, I wouldn't be against it. Later, though."

"Later, if at all," he agrees with a nod. "The stars themselves are so far that it sounds like you might never reach them, but maybe the space between. I'm not sure it's safe, though. Probably the sort of thing you shouldn't just do without asking the people here who have been out there before."

And ultimately it seems kind of frivolous anyway, for now. It would take a long time, a lot of energy, probably would require packing some food and water, and what would it achieve? He's curious, for sure, but flying out over the forest would probably be more practical right now.

And flying over the forest is hard. Stone has done a little of it, and can't seem to get enough lift to actually clear the tallest trees, not for long. So he hasn't gone far enough to even count as an exploration. Flying up towards the stars might be harder, but he's willing to give it a shot.

"We have other fliers around here, right? Aziraphale has wings, and that fluffy bird-girl. And I read that someone else can just kind of hover." None of them are Stone, but they still have them.

EVENT LOG: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

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