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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[Wanda, Hux, and Buffy have never seen a sunset so beautiful. The sun itself is bound to be quite a sight after the typical darkness of Beacon, but this sunset is particularly brilliant, shining beams of light spreading through the light smattering of clouds and out over the lake and mountains. The sky is filled with golds and pinks and oranges and even a touch of violet here and there, the colors mixing vibrantly before collecting into a deep crimson near the horizon. Somewhere behind them, a single mourning dove croons.

Up ahead, though, is the lighthouse.

It's not quite so close to the water as in the picture—instead, it's nestled atop a steep cliff that looks out over the calm water below—and from where they're standing near the treeline, the group will be able to make out a small outbuilding attached to the far side of the tower.

They're close enough to hear the faint murmurs of a song crackling to life through an open window in the tower.]

[Ignis, Scarlett, and Castiel awaken to find themselves shrouded in dense forest, cicada songs buzzing around them as the late afternoon sun streams through the treebranches above. It's a calm day, with a breeze gently drifting through the forest, carrying with it the scent of pine. The nearby mountains cradle this little clearing at their base, much more impressive in size now that they can be seen beyond vague shadows in the distance.

In front of the group is an unfamiliar building that's clearly seen better days. It's concrete, unlike so many of the old, wooden and brick structures they've seen in Beacon thus far, and there's no signage to indicate where they are.

...But there's a strange device placed neatly on the cracked asphalt immediately in front of them.]

[It's the thrum of electricity overhead that wakes them. It's dark, this place, and while waking up in darkness is not a cause for alarm in Beacon, the faint stench of copper and decay certainly is. The floor beneath Sarissa, Kol, and Daylight is cold and littered with debris, and somewhere nearby, flies are buzzing hungrily.

Their eyes will adjust as they collect themselves off the ground, and with the help of their lanterns and a single fluorescent light flickering in the southeast corner, they'll see that they're in a large room. Once, it might've been an office—desk, tables, and chairs have been shoved up against one of the walls in a floor-to-ceiling heap. Files and broken remains of furniture have been scattered haphazardly like the place was ransacked, though it's been some time since the mess was made given the layer of dust covering it all.

The still-intact furniture has been shoved up against the south wall. The east wall seems inconsequential at a glance, while the west wall has a filing cabinet still standing up against it. The north wall, however, has a couple things of note: A closed door, and a nook containing a desk with a single computer monitor.

The group also seems to have collectively misplaced their tablets... Hm.]

Edited 2019-11-16 23:32 (UTC)

[Nestled in the woods just off the path north of Bonfire Square is the church. It’s a lovely, inviting building that appears to have been freshly painted, and is surrounded by hand-potted flowers. The entryway stands open, and the Heavenly music that plays within seems to be meant to entice all who hear it to come and seek sanctuary. Or maybe it’s the church bells that spur you forward; you wouldn’t want to be late.

Inside smells of fresh pine and roses. The pews are polished and pristine, the walls unmarred. The sunshine streams through the expanse of stained glass that reaches high to touch its tips to the vaults of the ceiling, filling the chapel with an array of stunning color.

Here, you feel protected. Here, you feel welcome. This is warmth.]

[Beacon’s town hall is an impressive building made of brightly-colored brick. The attached clock tower chimes every hour, on the hour, and the sound echoes merrily through the sunset sky. In the foyer, a small construction site has been blocked off with tarp and tape. A sign has been placed in front of it, inviting the townsfolk of Beacon to join them for the unveiling at a yet undetermined date.

This place is familiar, yet not as you’ve ever known. There’s an energy of business, of progress, of hope for the future, that permeates the bureaucratic halls.

Although you are alone, you don’t feel as if you are. It’s not the feeling that you’re being watched, or being followed, or the grim, shuddering feeling of a specter looming just out of sight. It’s as if the chairs in the lobby are full. An unseen secretary types away an agenda at the front desk. City workers maneuver between offices, swapping pleasantries as easily as they do paperwork.

A community board bursts at the seams with notices, events, advertisements. Something for everyone, from everyone.

And what you do hear, certainly, without a shred of doubt, is the joyful squeal of a child from deeper within.]

[The harbor you come across is far from unassuming. The beach is lined with fishing gear and coolers, the lake filled with small, personal boats. Not far away, a foghorn blares, and turning your head toward the sound you see that the ore dock is fully operational. A barge sits parked in the lake beside it, and train tracks make its way from the end of the dock into Beacon proper.

The train that sits atop it, though still, steams and rumbles as if with an unbridled and anxious energy. As if to say that the day has just begun...and there is oh so much work yet to be done.]

[Darkness is relative, though not many people know that. But it's true. There's a vast difference between the darkness of a city at night, still lit up by distant buildings, and the darkness of the countryside, where you've only the moon and a flashlight to keep you safe. Or, in a more immediate example: there's the darkness of Beacon, with its bonfire and its torches and its people . . .

And then there's a mine.

You don't need supernatural horror for that. A mine's darkness is complete, utterly so. And what very few ways one might have to light up the night-- those lanterns that you'd better not let go out-- doesn't so much eradicate the darkness as dirty it.

But it at least gives some context for setting.

They're in a mine shaft, which seems to stretch out both before and behind them for miles. There are branching tunnels, places they can turn left or right, but perhaps that isn't the most advisable thing when you're lost underground. The tunnel is wide enough for two abreast, with rough walls that snag at skin and rusted grooves etched deep within the floors.

And behind them, slow but inexorably steady: a noise. A steady thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . that seems to never falter.]

[There's a concept called liminal space, which goes something like this: any space that is normally occupied by a multitude of people will, when empty, feel very off-putting. There's no real reason for it: one knows, logically, that schools and offices and yes, even museums, must be empty at some point, and yet the uneasiness remains. It's your more animalistic instincts, see: they look at all that open space and say that if others are gone-- if the herd has fled-- perhaps you ought to as well, just in case . . .

The museum is empty, and your footsteps echo very loudly as you walk through it.

In part, it looks much like it normally does, although given their disorientation, the familiar might take a tinge of the unknown, off-putting and eerie. Shadows loom as the dreamers raise their lanterns, and while they may hear little noises, surely that's all in their own head.]

[Buildings have a feeling, as everyone knows. Certain places just exude an atmosphere of oppression the instant you walk in (a DMV being a good example). Creepiness is another common one. It's not any one thing, but rather just a sixth sense feeling, and one that you'd often do well to pay mind. Your unconscious mind knows more than your conscious one, and when you feel as though you shouldn't enter a place, well, maybe you shouldn't.

The library feels loved.

It's overwhelmingly soothing, and yet it's hard to say why. Are the shelves cleaner? The darkness less oppressive? One can see at least one remarkable change: it's brightly lit. Someone clever had set multiple torches around the place and amplified their light through cunning use of glass and mirrors, so the library almost feels as though it's lit up by daylight.

It isn't, of course, but still.

The reason for these changes remains to be seen. But at odds with all this cheer, a note of dissonance: a sobbing, loud and ugly, coming from the distance.]

Just... Stay in a line. It's easier that way. This isn't my first trip through a mine. [Molly's taken the lead, much as he doesn't want to, but he's the one who has visible weapons. He wishes he had darkvision, but something had to go and take that from him. Without it, he's relying on the lanterns and the torches to see anything at all.

And then there's the thumping. He can't really do anything about that, except be quieter.] Not to alarm anyone, but does that sound like we're being followed?

[ One second, she'd been enjoying something delicious at the feast, just casually stuffing her face, and the next— Well, it's not the first time she's had to deal with sudden teleportation shenanigans or whatever the heck this is, and it's about as fun as all those other times had been. As in, not. Except for one little one. ]

Hey, who turned on the sun? And isn't that the lighthouse no one can get to?

[ Can you hear the confusion, people she hasn't met yet? Because she is very confused. ]

Ah, hopefully they're friendly!

[ Aziraphale's voice is very quiet, and he has one hand out at all times to go against the wall. He's never been claustrophobic, and there seems to be enough oxygen down here considering their lanterns are still lit, but he's getting increasingly worried.

And after all, if whatever it is following them isn't a familiar face? It might not be the brightest idea to pull out his halo. ]

[For a moment the light was overwhelming. Spots danced at the edges of his vision. After so long in the dark, he had become accustomed to it. It took him a few moments to let his eyes adjust to the light, looking in the direction of hearing a woman speak.

He didn't recognize her when he could see clearly, glancing at her before looking at the lighthouse. He could hear something that faintly sounded like music but he couldn't place it either.]

I don't know. How did we even get here?

( one minute, he remembers the vague discomfort of his body slipping into unconsciousness despite his demented, stubborn refusal to let himself. usually that works, he's really good at refusing to let himself to rest. this time, he feels his eyes close, a little too heavy to stop, and then...

and then, who the hell knows.

Matt doesn't dream in clear, vivid pictures. sometimes he sees things, though he never figures he sees them accurately. usually it's flashes, skewed toward one sense or another, painted in monotones or dulled colors, often blurry, rarely long enough to make sense of. he's more like to dream in sounds and color than a clear and distinct picture.

that's the only reason that blinking at a sunny harbor, hustle and bustle all around him, doesn't seem like a dream. it seems impossible, or a very cruel trick, but not really a dream. ) What... what the hell? ( you know it's Going Down™ if the good catholic boy said a swear.... ) What the hell is happening? ( sorry for the mild uncomfortable panic, but Seeing is incredibly uncomfortable when he hasn't done it in 20 years. )

[ Castiel doesn't need to eat, normally. He indulged for Jo's sake, mostly. She's one of the humans in his charge, and he'd found himself reluctant to brush her insistence off. And now... now he starts awake, two strangers by his side and Jo nowhere to be seen.

Worse... the sun is shining. Castiel does the first sensible thing that comes to mind: He tries to summon his angel blade, tries to let its familiar weight drop into his hand to have it ready. He bites down on the instinct to call out for Jo, but looks around - for any movement more so than her specifically, despite the concern flaring up uncomfortably.

For now he doesn't spare his companions a proper glance, but scans the treeline briefly before looking towards the building with a frown. ]

Where are we?

[To go from eating to being in a dark mine shaft, it's not what Goro expected. At least the darkness is something he's been getting used to by now. Allowing Molly to take the lead, he simply followed, studying what he could of the mines. He hears the sounds, but he's not quite sure what it could be yet.]

I wouldn't put it past this place. We should keep our guard up just in case and be ready for whatever that sound belongs to.

Edited (This is why you should re-read your tags kids) 2019-11-17 00:49 (UTC)

( Sarissa's expecting to wake up with a hangover, and that hazy few moments of consciousness before she cracks open her eyes are pretty nice, in that she's not. When she stretches, though, she's suddenly aware that she's lying on something cold and hard, paper rasping noisily beneath her, and she jerks to sit up very suddenly as just how wrong the circumstances are.

Quietly, as she becomes aware of the other two with her, she pushes herself up to stand and takes a few steps away from them, suddenly not so different to a caged tiger. )

Hey.

( Rough, urgent - it's the fact that the two of them were bundled in here with her, it seems, and the fact that she recognises Kol, which is keeping her from more volatile introductions. )

Don't 'spose either of you gentlemen have an explanation for what the fuck is goin' on?

( Calmness... was attempted. )

[Bruce has never made a habit of going to church in Beacon and that's largely because he didn't make a habit of going to church in Gotham. He has no beliefs about the afterlife or omnipotent beings one way or the other and he's been fortunate thus far not to have 'died' and returned there. He hasn't lost anyone else in his time here. But he does recognize the church from a few sparse visits he's made, to leave supplies behind, to gain an understanding of the building itself.

He pauses outside and one arm comes up immediately, an attempt to shield his eyes from the- he freezes. Sunlight.

How long has it been? Certainly long enough that his eyes sting and that he's left squinting at the church. This doesn't make any sense. He was just there, in Beacon, in the dark. And now he's-? Bruce frowns and looks back over his shoulder, presumably the way he came.]

Do you remember how we got here?

[ The sound of her heels sound less like shoes hitting polished floor and more like a herd of buffalo, but that noise furthest thing from Midge's mind. She doesn't remember going to sleep and actually waking up here just like she doesn't quite remember the exact moment of her death--the town 2, Midge 0. Time to look for a reception desk, check out any fliers or see if there's any maps of the place. ]

Hello?

[ Voice raised, high but pleasant. Not that she believes in ghosts (or does she?) but she doesn't want any trouble. ]

Am I hallucinating or is this place actually real?

[For someone that acquired teleporting a little over a year ago, Maes is getting really tired of one minute minding his own damn business and the next finding himself somewhere completely different. It probably has something to do with control (or in this case the lack thereof).

Besides, during that same year a witch had thought it important to occasionally send him and the rest of the Circle to different worlds so, for a brief moment, Maes doesn't question the soft glow of sunset. But only for a moment, as he's always been a skeptic at heart and he'd already confirmed that Astoria was, for lack of a better term, done with him.

He rubs at his eyes and then takes a step closer to place a hand on the brick. It's warm, soaked in sunlight...real.]

Oh...kay. Well, I don't know what just happened, but it might be a good idea to figure it out sooner rather than later. [He finally looks over to the only other people nearby.] You two interested in checking this place out with me?

[The noise doesn't pause for a moment, no matter that Aizraphale's voice echoes down the mine shaft.

As the trio walks, it's Molly who will stumble first: his feet catch on something, and if the other two aren't careful, they'll trip too. It turns out to be a few mining helmets. If they pick them up, they'll notice that they're fairly fresh: no dust or cracks, but they're abandoned nonetheless. And on one of them . . . hm. There seems to be a sticky mixture of something dark and a few hairs . . .]

[Molly pitches forward suddenly, yelping loud enough to echo which is the exact opposite of what he wanted. He catches himself before he falls face first onto the ground and braces himself just in case the other two smack into them.]

Found something. [Said dryly. He stoops to pick one up and passes it over to Aziraphale and a second to Goro, keeping one for himself. No reason- mostly just so they can each scrutinize them.

Molly sticks his hand inside his and his fingers come up sticky with a few stray hairs stuck to them. He bites his tongue and shakes his hand to try and rid himself of them.] Well, someone's been down here. I think they might have come to a bad end. [the sticky, dark mixture and the hairs are still clinging to his finger and he shows it off, in lieu of being able to get rid of it easily.] Is that blood? Tell me that isn't blood.

[ Aziraphale reaches out to grab Molly before he falls, but ends up clutching his own chest when Molly doesn't fall forward.

He takes a deep breath and then passes a helmet back before inspecting his own. ]

If it's blood, it must be fresh to be wet.

[ He gently lifts the helmet to his nose to take a sniff. ]

[Thankfully Goro was behind them both. From what little light there was from their lanterns, he was able to avoid running into them. Taking the helmet to look it over.]

These don't seem to be damaged in any way though. If it is blood, I hope you guys are capable of fighting if need be. Things might be dangerous here on out.

[And it's times like these that he's glad that his Personas are still (mostly) functioning well here.]

[It sure is blood, and it's wet enough to be somewhat recent. Kind of gross, really, but so it goes. Behind them: the noise increases just a bit, the beat between each footfall cut in half. Thump, thump, thump, still behind them, getting louder.]

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EVENT LOG: ENTER MR. SANDMAN (DREAMERS)

THE LIGHTHOUSE

THE OLD LAB

THE RADIO TOWER

THE CHURCH

THE TOWN HALL

THE HARBOR

THE MINES

THE MUSEUM

THE LIBRARY

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