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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Threaded | Flat

[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.]

Threaded | Flat

THE LIGHTHOUSE

THE OLD LAB

THE RADIO TOWER

THE CHURCH