logsinthenight | INTRO LOG: DECEMBER

INTRO LOG: DECEMBER

characters: everyone.
location: the harbor, as well as the rest of town.
date/time: december 1-3.
content: beacon's newest batch of residents arrives on the ferry. robin posts a bulletin.
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 glowing 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.

•••
The ferry has barely docked when everyone's tablets will ping: A new weekly bulletin has been posted!

...Aaaaaanyway, luckily for all the 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! You've happened to come at a chaotic time, as we've just wrapped up a rather large event. Half the town was stuck in a dreamland version of past Beacon, where they explored for clues about the town's history. The other half stayed awake and defended the town from a brutal onslaught of green-eyed, hallucination-inducing forest spirits. The town's pretty haggard after all that, so hey, there's a conversation starter! It'll be good to have some fresh faces around to help with the recovery process.

You can check out the various Enter Mr. Sandman event posts in the OOC and log comms if you're curious, and plenty of the details will likely come up ICly, as well! The aftermath is just beginning, and we're so glad to have you along for the ride. :)

DELIVERIES

The following packages can be found in the cargo hold:

The monthly store restock
For Eliot: A carton of cigarettes
For Prompto: 17 pairs of reading glasses
For Eleven: A pair of walkie-talkies, and enough batteries to last for 3 months of casual use
For Aziraphale: 12 drums, 11 lead pipes, 10 pairs of shoes, 9 wilting corsages, 8 bottles of milk, 7 taxidermy swans, 6 goose eggs, 5 stale onion rings, 4 bins full of duck armies, 3 dead chickens, 2 turtles, and a whole tree, though it's long dead... and strung with lights and garlands and holiday ornaments!
For Kol: A book
For Crowley: Peppermint extract, cream of tartar, a candy thermometer, a tin of cocoa, graham crackers, a generic bottle of red wine, a t-shirt with a crown logo on it, a book of love poems, and the goods
For Eleven: An assortment of wrapping paper, gift tags, ribbons, bows, and gift bags.
A lot of medical supplies. The supplies are plentiful enough that everyone may handwave finding common first aid supplies that will help to triage injuries sustained during the Enter Mr. Sandman event. The supplies won't immediately cure wounds, but they will help to prevent infection and ensure proper healing. There's even an assortment of painkillers, ranging from over the counter pills to IV morphine (though, hm, it seems each character will only be able to find one dose of the hospital-grade stuff, no matter how hard they search)

If you submitted an item request last month and we've missed it here, let us know!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's a strange system," Ellever muses. That's putting it lightly, and she knows it. But still. "Especially considering how grim this place looks. It looks much grimmer than it usually is. I mean, the buildings have heat right now, and I don't think our house has a working heater. And then, you know, spirits attack us for two weeks and it matches the way it looks."

Mostly she's just rambling to fill in space, something she's doing a lot more of these days. Usually, she's the quiet one in the back of the room, adding in a carefully worded sentence when she's digested every tidbit of information she can get. But there's so little information to be had, here, that Ellever's inward process has come outward.

She walks down onto the pier carefully, shifting her box so that she can see her feet properly.

"Watch your step," she says, with a wry smile.

"Heat?" The Soldier hadn't even noticed that. They blink slowly, thoughtfully, but don't trip. They helped make those docks, they know every inch of them, even half-asleep. "I haven't been back to the house yet. Not for long. I will. Have to check that." Maybe chivvy Aziraphale home for a little while to warm up, promise the angel to watch the church for him for a little while. Even if the church also has heat, it's a bigger space, harder to keep warm. Also less comfortable.

"You don't need to worry," they say after another couple steps, on actual earth now. "I've done this before. It might be. Normal. For after a mission."

"Yeah, it's nice," Ellever confirms.

She'd been fully gearing herself up to weather through the cold without it, though she hadn't known what kind of winter weather this place would get. But the heat is a definite bonus. At least the powers that be — whoever they are — don't want them to freeze to death. That's good, probably.

...maybe.

With a soft, odd little laugh, she shrugs her shoulders once they're off the pier.

"I worry about everyone, around here." That's not something that she used to do, but after their little ordeal... "What part's normal, after a mission?"

"Being. Like this." Stupidly tired and zoning out all the time. Or falling asleep all the time, but can't do that standing up, apparently. "After protecting Crowley and Aziraphale in the forest for four days. Didn't sleep then, either. Or eat." Talking is actually helping them focus, even if it comes out a little halting. (Well, then keep doing it, pal.) "Used to be I'd just debrief, get wiped, and go into cryofreeze. So I only sort of know. What post-mission should feels like. But this is twice now. So maybe a pattern."

Her brows knit together as she walks with him. No sleeping or eating for four days? Well, no wonder he looks the way he does; it takes a while to recover from that kind of thing. Even for a big guy with a metal arm, probably.

"What did you guys do for four days?" Ellever wonders.

Though she feels just mildly silly about it now, most of her mind had been focused on the 'mission' of protecting those sleeping in the Invincible. Helping repair when boards had been slashed, watching the backs of anyone who had needed to leave the place for some reason.

"Found the armory," the Soldier answers. "It was a few months ago. I spent two days after falling asleep everywhere."

Maybe over the last few days of the siege, the Soldier ate more than they did on the trip out that eventually led to the armory, but not enough to keep up with all the work. There'd been so many the little injuries that they ignored, so many skirmishes and ambushes to deal with. There were only so many of them fit enough, in the end, to keep patrolling, keep dragging injured fighters back to the Invincible, keep fighting. The exploration, by contrast, had been a fucking cakewalk.

So now they pay for that mission-focus and upped use of their own physical capabilities, by wanting to fall asleep standing up half the time. "Felt a lot like this," they finish.

Is it comforting that it was months ago? Or not? Ellever isn't sure. Nothing's very comforting at the moment. They have spirits trying to tell them things⁠ ⁠— boldly, in the case of trying to kill them ⁠— and there's a severe communications barrier. And then there's whatever's happening with Robin right now, in a place they can't easily get to. Or get to at all, as the case might be...

She shifts her grip on the box again, her hands starting to get numb in that particular nook.

"Ah. Well, you need your beauty sleep, beauty." Ellever shoots him a joking grin ⁠— well, mostly joking ⁠— trying to lighten the mood a tad. They both know how grim things were getting. "I'm probably going to be doing a lot of napping in the next few days, myself. But I wanted to get out here and help and see what... new business was happening with the ferry."

Turns out it's same old, same old. From her perspective, at least. But at least the new people this month can walk off the ferry, that's nice.

At least they're about at the church now, headed for bonfire square. It's not that far to the general store. The Soldier gives her a side-long look for the joke. (Damn right, lady. I don't think weapons are supposed to be pretty, Sergeant. Says the guy who absolutely admires a good knife or rifle and gets jealous of the people with fancy swords. I admire them for practical purposes. Uh-huh, yank the other one, pal. It's got bells on it.)

It's been too long for a comfortable response, now, hasn't it. They twitch, blink, and hurriedly answer, "Yes. Me, too. See the new people. What was brought for us. Wanted to help, but I'm not doing so great at that, apparently."

Look, they can poke a little fun at themselves. They're aware this is ridiculous, even while it's also mildly alarming. They're just too tired to really get twitchy about it, especially now that they're thinking it might just be a thing they'll have to deal wit. It's one of the few times the Soldier isn't in a state of constant, over-focused vigilance.

"That's okay."

She resists the urge to pat him, and instead just shoots him a softer-looking grin, not having backed down at his Look. Being tired has infused Ellever with an unusual amount of confidence, today; she can't extend the mental energy required to doubt herself. It's not something she should attempt to replicate, but it's working now.

"You do a lot to help the rest of the time, you know. That stew did me a lot of good. We should just call you Mr. Helpful."

Luckily for everyone involved, Ellever isn't much of a nicknamer and that probably won't stick.

The Soldier makes a sound that's nearly a chuckle. A weak, rusty one, but still a sound that suggests humor. "If you want to. Scarlett calls me Tinman. Crowley calls me human soldier person. I let most people call me Soldat." It means "Soldier" in Russian if she knows enough Russian to figure that out. But it's the closest thing to an actual name they'll offer to anyone. But so she's aware they don't mind the nickname of her choosing, they add, "I'm not picky about what people call me."

"Soldat," Ellever repeats. She can guess what it means; Russian folklore is one of the things she's familiar with. Well, hey, at least she has a name now if anyone asks about him. And then she frowns. "Okay. ...wait, he calls you 'human soldier person' all the time?"

That strikes her as rude, not that Ellever's good at discerning what rude and appropriate are. Then again, she hasn't quite put together who Crowley is, because he never introduced himself to her when he'd given her the knife. If she knew, she wouldn't be as confused.

They weren't kidding when they said they weren't picky about what people call them, as long as it's not a real, actual name. And the Soldier has a massive soft spot for the demon, and right now, with Crowley still dead, every memory of him is kind of precious. And a little painful. "I don't have an actual name, and he doesn't like using soldat. Which is fine. It's kind of cute."

It's not possible to refer to Crowley in the past tense. That would mean he might not come back, the way they did. The Soldier is very good at denial, at carefully putting one set of thoughts aside and out of mind, at focusing on only one aspect of a situation. They want to smile, but it doesn't work, turns into a sad sort of grimace. "He's my friend. And he cares. So whatever he feels like calling me is meant with. Affection. Besides. I call him a dumbass all the time. I can't complain."

"Oh," she laughs, a lightbulb going off in her head. Hang on, maybe she does know this person. "I got it now. I was thinking they meant it as, you know, insulting, but if they're your friend..."

Not that Ellever has much experience with friends, but she has coworkers she'd call friends — tentatively. Maybe not to their faces, because she'd worry they don't feel the same way, but that's how she thinks of them. Moth doesn't talk, but sometimes she gets the feeling that he understands she calls him 'Moth' to be humorous. He'd dropped the 'man' part when he'd fully hatched, so she'd done the same with her name for him.

"We don't do a lot of nicknames at the Facility," she explains. "Everyone gets called by their last name. Or, uh, sometimes a scientific name."

The Soldier doesn't really do nicknames once they know someone's actual name, either, but when one doesn't have a name, accepting nicknames is easy. They focus on the conversation with dedication, and on Elle's side of things so they don't have to devote attention to that denial about Crowley. "Did you have friends there?" they ask. "At your Facility."

Ellever shrugs her shoulders. Normally, the first words out of her mouth would be about Circe, but... with her last memory being Circe's gun at her head, she's been less willing to think about her lately.

"I had... coworkers. I was the operations manager, and I lived there, so I pretty much just lived work," she explains. "But everyone was nice, so I didn't have any complaints. And my dad's the boss, he started the company, so I saw him every day."

If anyone wasn't nice, or at least polite, they were booted from Zier Security immediately. People needed to have a modicum of sense if they were going to interact with nonhumans and get along.

"When I was a kid I wasn't really allowed to leave much." Ellever shrugs again. It is what it is. "So I never went to a high school or anything."

The Soldier admittedly doesn't have a whole lot of experience with day-jobs and work-life balance, but it doesn't sound... pleasant, really. It sounds, in fact, a little too much like the kind of half-life they had to lead between cryofreeze stints. Though their "coworkers" were not exactly nice, and they definitely had no family involved. "I lived where I. Worked. Too. And I wasn't allowed to leave, either. That's not. Really a good thing, is it?"

That's not really a good thing, is it? She considers that question for a moment, glancing up at the ceiling with a half-squint. It takes her a moment to parse through the memories, instead of giving her usual stock answer. This place has been challenging almost every notion she'd had as a child.

And it hadn't exactly been a typical childhood, either. Even as far as sheltered children go.

"It wasn't like I was being held captive," she says slowly. "I was... I'm dangerous. I had a bad temper, when I was a kid; I didn't understand a lot of things about myself. I would have put myself and others in danger. I did, a few times. And then when I understood myself... I don't know, it was just habit to stay in, at that point."

Ellever shrugs. She'd felt guilty about, well, everything that was 'supposed' to happen. Looking at people whose lives she was supposed to end made her feel guilty. She'd preferred going out on expeditions into the wilderness, rather than trying to make friends with folks.

"I was told I was dangerous, too." The Soldier doesn't have a lot of attention at the moment, but all of it is now focused solely on Elle, stopping in the path with a box on one shoulder and another under their arm. They somehow manage to look both earnest and sober, despite the somewhat ridiculous situation. "I am dangerous. Maybe not the same way you are, but still. That doesn't make it right."

(Somebody's been listening to Crowley and Misty. Maybe. You gonna start talking like that about yourself? ... )

Ellever pauses, suddenly realizing where all of the Soldat's attention is. She isn't sure what to do with it and blinks, meeting his gaze but glancing at the ground frequently.

"I..." It's complicated. Too complicated; there's literal blood on her hands. But most of it is from when she was too young to know any better. Or that's what Circe told her. She shakes her head. "Thanks, I guess. It is what it is."

As an adult, she's come to understand that her adoptive father had just done what he'd thought was the right thing. He'd never been abusive, even though he could have been and some wouldn't have thought ill of him. It happened, and now she just has to piece things together as an adult who's emerged from under his thumb in the last couple of years.

Before, well, dying. That's a speed bump for sure.

"There wasn't exactly a guide for my dad to follow for raising some...thing like me," she says quietly. She's skirted around calling herself half-human before, but she feels comfortable enough with him to admit it. It's something about his calm nature, she thinks. "He had to worry about his own safety some of the time, I'm sure. When I was too young to understand."

It's okay, the Soldier is not great at eye contact, so it's not exactly going to be a prolonged stare. As soon as she looks away the first time, their gaze goes less focused, down to her shoulder rather than her face. Their brows come together, trying to put the pieces together into a different whole than the one they're familiar with.

She wasn't a prisoner. She wasn't hurt and programmed. She just... couldn't leave. Because she was dangerous.

They finally shiver once all over, including the arm in another calibration loop. "People keep telling me. That I'm not a thing. Is that something I need to have them start telling you, too? Or are you okay?" It's an honest question, not remotely facetious or sarcastic.

Her head tilts to the side, slowly, when he shivers. It's hard for her not to eye his arm, because it's fascinating to watch. But she's thankfully distracted by shifting her grip on her box, shrugging her shoulders almost hesitantly at his question.

"I'm... okay," Ellever tells him, just as quiet as she was before. "I don't normally—" Say that kind of thing out loud. "—think of myself that way. I guess it's just... this place, and dying, and all that good stuff."

She's half a Thing. That's how she looks at it. But the dominant half is her human half, thankfully, and that's not a Thing. She spent more than a week or two in more middle grey area than she'd like; it's starting to seep in. Her cousins spend far more time in that Other part of their brains, and that's plenty of an argument against her doing the same thing.

"But they're right," Ellever goes on, finally looking back up, "you're not a thing."

The focused attention, without the stare or not, dissipates into something less direct at the turnabout, and the Soldier shrugs, the boxes rising and falling with their shoulders. "I am a weapon. But I am a weapon that can have friends, so that's better than nothing."

They remember they were supposed to be walking, and start up again. The general store is right across the bonfire from them, at least, so they're almost there.

"Try not to let the dark and the violence get ya down, Elle. There's good things here." It's not quite the Sergeant, but it is a little more Brooklyn than usual.

As they skirt the bonfire, Ellever walking mostly on autopilot, her brows knit together at the slight infusion of... is that an accent? It sounds... New York? Somewhere around there? She shakes her head slightly, letting out a quiet sigh. He's got more layers than a wedding cake, this guy.

"I know. It's going to get easier. Probably," she adds. Who knows what the month will bring. "You've got your sea legs here. I've only been here a month and... well, a lot happened last month."

Too much, really, but Ellever's just got to get used to it.

"But there are good people here. Interesting people. And... a big old mystery to solve. Too bad I left my Scooby Snacks at home."

"Left your. What?" The Soldier is not up on pop culture in any way, shape, or form. They don't even remember much from their own time before HYDRA. "What are Scooby snacks?" And why does it sound so utterly ridiculous.

"Oh!" She can't help a small chuckle, at the idea of explaining what she's about to. "There was this show on TV called Scooby Doo, and some movies and other stuff. Scooby Doo's the dog sidekick and the dog treats they give him are called Scooby Snacks. They solve mysteries."

That's about as much as Ellever remembers. It hadn't been her favorite show as a kid, but she'd caught some episodes and she certainly knows it through pop culture.

"But mostly the mysteries are some old guy dressed up in a dumb costume trying to scare people."

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