logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: ENTER MR. SANDMAN (DREAMERS)

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: ENTER MR. SANDMAN (DREAMERS)

characters: all characters that signed up as a dreamer for the event.
location: dreamland feat. beacon of the past.
date/time: november 16-29.
content: the dreamers investigate beacon as it once was.
warnings: psychological/existential horror. further cws will arise depending on the location; mods will cw tags appropriately, and you will too!

say your prayers, little one.

Hello, dreamers. Welcome to Beacon.

Below, each group has a toplevel ready and waiting for the investigation to begin. Feel free to tag in however to establish a tag order, and mod responses will begin once each character has tagged in. If you need a refresher on how the event will work, give the OOC info another read!

As for those of you in the ~~sin bin~~ opt out area...

The Beacon of the past isn't all too different from the Beacon of the present, frankly, except for a few notable exceptions. For one, it's far better lit: daylight leaves everything feels a lot brighter and more sensible than eternal night does. Several advertisements for community theater in the Invincible are hung up (Tryouts for the Ice Man Cometh! Cometh try your luck!) and minor lost and found posters are tacked to a community bulletin board nearby. Oh, and a merry little tune is playing on loop from a record player set up outside the Invincible.

It's cheerful, if not a little off-putting. But the signs of life are clear, even if the forest still looks darkly oppressive over yonder.

Additionally, since investigation threads 1) rely on mod responses, and 2) will likely move on the slow side given the nature of the event/size of the groups, if you would like to have your characters "mingle" in their assigned location, please feel free to write your own toplevels! We ask that you post them as separate toplevels not in response to the mod toplevels (so our inboxes don't get super flooded/we don't accidentally miss stuff). Remember that groups may only interact with each other during the event, but you're welcome to assume timey-wimey shenanigans to excuse why your characters are mingling instead of searching for clues—they do have two weeks in this dream, technically, and dreams are not always linear. If your investigation thread has not yet progressed to a point in which you've got enough of a handle on the setting to write a separate mingle starter, ask the mod you're working with! We'll fill you in on some OOC details so you can mingle accordingly while still allowing for characters to discover those details ICly in the investigation thread.

If you're still jonesing for more threading action during the event, we encourage you to check out the TDM!

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[Maes glances down at the paper, seconds away from trying to open the door. He hesitates, the hairs standing up on his neck. His eyes are completely on the door and the paper -- not on any busts that may line the hallway. He's focused and wanting to see this through to the end. Maes picks up the paper and unfolds it to read.]

[While the faint sense that this is creepy persists, Bodhi's seeing them as the creeps. But that one was pretty much shoved at them. Whether or not it's the kid or the parent or an older Pawlina dropping mementos of a long past, it... might be ruder not to read? He joins his companion to peer at the letter as best he can while respecting personal space.]

[This letter is written in a hurried script. It almost isn't a letter at all.

Father please tell me what's happening. I don't understand. Mother hasn't come home and Puppette and Barkley are gone. You're all I have left but I don't know why, and nobody will let me get close enough to do more than hand off this letter. I'm so scared, I'm scared.

Everyone is acting strangely. People are gone, or they're angry, or they never leave their homes. My friends stay away from me now. They glare at me. I hear whispers about you that I don't understand. Nobody will explain.

Where are you?]

[Maes makes a thoughtful hum, his scowl deepening. He feels like he's being given very piece to a jigsaw puzzle. But all the pieces around it are missing, so he can't make sense of the picture. Is it the sky or the ocean piece? Or someone's blue shirt?

Looking back at the door he decides to step forward and he knocks, rather firmly yet politely.
If it was someone in the room, someone scared and alone now, he had to do something.]

Hello? Is someone in there? Maybe we can talk about this, offer some help or advice.

[He is careful not to promise help, he doesn't know what is going on or where they are either -- outside of being in the daylight version of Beaon -- but he has to try something to find out who is on the otherside of this door.

He glances out of the corner of his eye at Bodhi, curious if he'll add anything.]

[Bodhi frowns at the letter, struck by how... familiar it feels. Living in a place that's breaking down apparently comes with a few universals. He's only been in Beacon a few weeks, is still pretty shellshocked and hasn't figured out much of what's going on or what's still to be found out. This doesn't feel like a mystery to solve, just a few scraps of some small tragedy like any other.]

It seems like it would be, but just hiding out is one of the least, um, good options for... improving anything about the situation.

[After a brief, heavy silence, the doorknob turns, and opens inward from the other side, slow and creaking. There's nobody standing there, but the floor is littered in papers--not like the notes from before, but flyers. One single flyer, covering the entire place. And at the end of the room, covered in the same flyer, other ornaments otherwise knocked over, a desk.

The mayor's desk. The chair behind it is turned away from them, but they can see a man's hands resting on the arms.]

[Maes watches the door slowly open, braced for either an upset child or an attack. Neither is there. He looks over to Bodhi.]

You staying out here?

[He doesn't know what to expect, no one is near the door and yet it opened. Should someone stay on this side in case things go badly? Maes hasn't tried to teleport since waking up in this place and he's not sure if it will work or not. He'll risk it though, since he does still have his knives ready to be pulled.

The paper crunches and slides under his shoes and he takes stock of what they say. No longer a note from a child, they remind him more of what he saw posted on the bulletin board out front.

His eyes trace along the room and eventually land on the hand resting on chair. Of course it's turned away. Before Maes gets too far into the office he decides to do the polite thing and knocks on the door jamb.]

Uh...Mr. Mayor? Are you busy, sir?

[Automated doors are such simple aspects of technology at home that Bodhi doesn't think too much about that. The fliers, though? Paper is such a rare commodity at home. He knows intellectually that it's not the same here, but heaps of the same thing, printed over and over? It's the first detail he actually finds a bit creepy rather than just strange and confusing.

But not in a way that warns him off. Continuing to be generally uncooperative, he steps straight into the room rather than consider the polite suggestion from Maes, and picks up the closest flier for a closer look. He keeps his mouth shut, though. No need to make people feel crowded.]

[No answer comes. The figure in the chair doesn't so much as twitch. The flier is advertising a new attraction at an amusement park.

COME ONE, COME ALL!

There's an image of a roller coaster drawn in beautiful cartoon colors.

PROPEL INTO A BETTER TOMORROW WITH YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES!
PEACEFUL, HUMANE, AND DESIGNED TO ACCOMMODATE CHILDREN OF ALL AGES!]

[There's no answer. Maes feels dizzy looking at the image of the loops and spirals drifting out into the distance on the flier. The wording on the flier also bothers him since it makes it sound like we're launching people, children included, into...something. Somewhere? It's vague, but it's a flier not a book. It won't give away everything.

He thinks back to the map, but doesn't recall seeing anywhere marked as part of an amusement park. Maybe it was never built after all despite the fliers?

Maes continues into the room when there continues to be no response, crossing the room with purpose and perhaps a good set of nervous energy. He's good at hiding that part though.

He wants to see who it is in the chair or at the very least see if there is anything beneath the fliers papering the desk.]

[It's hard to make Bodhi dizzy, and the ride doesn't look the least bit intimidating to him as illustrated. It's the words that catch at him. Humane. Now that he's started to be aware of how wrong one bit felt, it's hard to turn away from the other details. The phrase is so jarringly wrong, but not in a way that suggests someone was trying to frighten anybody.

He's pretty sure he doesn't want to meet the person who wrote that sentence.

But here they are, and he's uncomfortable all the time anyway. He speaks to the back of the chair with a tone of bland reasonableness.]

Sorry to bother you, we had some questions?

[Again, there's no response. No movement. As they get closer, they'll see that the hand on the chair's arm doesn't look like it belongs to someone who's a corpse. At least not a rotting one. And there's nothing particularly interesting on the desk. A name plaque matches the name on the statue in the lobby. There's a few pens, a paperweight shaped like a telescope...a toppled and cracked frame of a family. A mother and father, three children. They all have dogs for heads.]

[This is wrong. Why wasn't he turning around? The hand he could still see hadn't even twitched. Maes's eyes are, of course, drawn to the picture. It is indeed the same guy from the statue and what he could only assume was the rest of his family.

The Von Bones. Pawlina, Puppette, Barkley, and their father Woofington and an unnamed mother. Maes reached out and propped the photo back up so it could stand properly. The glass was cracked, but Maes didn't have a way to fix that either.]

This is a fine family you have. I bet you keep your favorite pictures with you, I know I do. Three kids though...I can't imagine. My little Elysia is a handfull all on her own. Gracia and I did start talking about trying again, but at the time I was always working too hard and now, well, now it's too late.

[He takes a breath. No reason to talk about that now, unless he was just seeing if mentioning family, not work, would gain a response.]

You know, we found some letters for you, left by your little girl. She's worried about you and your wife, but you know kids have a hard time understanding why parents do the things that they do.

[It's for them. It's always for them. At least for Maes, everything he does now is for Elysia and Gracia and the one time he didn't consider the consequences of what he was doing was the time he died for it. Because he was trying to help someone else, was doing his job over taking care of his family. Dammit, Maes, focus.

Maes sets down the papers he had gathered, smoothing them out and intentionally placing them near the photo. He then straigthens and goes to walk around the desk.]

And sometimes, we mess up and we do things that aren't in their best interest. But we still have to face those things and deal with that too.

[He's talking to the guy in the chair right? Or is he talking to himself. Either way, he's not talking to the back of a chair any more.]

[Who and what, exactly, Maes is talking to, depends on how he looks at what he sees. Because the person sitting in the chair is certainly not the Mayor. No, it's Noctis. When did he get there? Who put him there?

Most importantly, who chew his head off from the neck, and where has it gone?

There's a sound of crashing outside, and the room suddenly feels very, very oppressive. The only way out is the way they came, but is it any more safe out there, to the tune of porcelain smashing?

Still, they'll have to venture out eventually, and when they do, they'll fine that all the statue busts have been broken to pieces, littering the floor. The husks all seem to be bleeding.

And there to greet them in the lobby is the woman from the Mayor's photo, the mother whose name was undiscovered. Her eyes are bloodshot, her muzzle covered in blood. She growls, hackles raised, and though she wears the suit if an accomplished career woman, everything else about her screams feral.

She has Noctis' head by the hair.]

What have you done? What have you done with the children?

[No amount of reasoning soothes her. It's going to be a battle for their lives. But the battle never comes, because they wake up just as she lunges with her teeth bared.]

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EVENT LOG: ENTER MR. SANDMAN (DREAMERS)

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wrap up!