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

Yes, I'd been trying to figure out their language so that we would be able to speak to them more easily but it hasn't worked so well.

[ He looks so defeated about it. ]

Do you believe they were trying to... teach us something?

That's what that network post claimed, right? But we don't know who really wrote that. Even if we could confirm it was a spirit, they seem to come in different types, with different motivations. Maybe the dreams were supposed to teach, and then the others took advantage of our reduced numbers to attack.

[But that's too simple and clear-cut and reality didn't feel like there was a neat division. Besides, wouldn't the spirits have tried specifically to go for the sleeping victims first? If the goal was to kill as many as they could, they would have been easier targets. It seemed like they went for prominent threats first. Of course, maybe that's what an animal would do. Not smart enough to prioritize easy kills.

But more likely he doesn't fully understand their goals. Their intelligence isn't human.]

We can speculate all day but we'll have to ask them directly if we want real answers.

Well, that's going to be hard to do. I had asked the Church spirit why we were attacked before - you know, before I came. He told me to ask Robin or Will or Rastus. Not very forthcoming, that one. Said he didn't want to get involved.

[ He did never get around to asking Rastus. ]

--I'll go, once everyone's returned. I should bring him something to eat. The spirits all have quite the sweet tooth, you know.

--And it does keep the Librarian from eating the books.

I didn't know.

[But that's very helpful. He'd realized at least one or two individual ones liked those kinds of treats during the autumn party, and recalls the one he had initially tried to communicate with, who had at one point removed the top of its head and placed an entire pie inside. Disturbingly.]

But it's worth knowing too that some of them just don't want to be involved. There must be different races of them, or different cultures, and we're just oblivious to it all. That will have to start changing.

Yes, I imagine we all seem the same to them.

[ He thinks about it. ]

Perhaps we should cook them something together. After this. It'd give us something nice to do.

[Forgive him if, for a moment, he looks unenthusiastic about that idea.]

I'm sure you heard of the first party we threw for them months ago. It was like that. People cooked food for them, tried to make a peace offering to distract them when we went to hook Robin up to the network. Some of them will wonder if we're trying to do something similar. It might make them uncomfortable. Maybe if it's not presented as one big party but instead occasional, smaller treats with fewer people.

[Big parties and feasts keep ending up poorly for them all. Maybe just avoid that from now on in general, no matter which side it's directed to.]

Edited 2019-12-05 02:54 (UTC)

Oh, alright. Yes, perhaps we should go about this more slowly. Honestly, I don't know what they were thinking.

Now there's a large rift. Can't imagine most people trust any of them, now. But they're like us, aren't they?

[ Some good, some bad. Some neutral. ]

I just wish the others would explain.

Yeah. We've faced rifts before, especially after that first time, but if they keep growing wider it might get too hard to get over them. We just have to do better to speak with them. Get to know them and what their needs are.

[Cao Pi had asked him to do that with the people here - find out what they need, what they fear, whatever might make them more amenable to accepting organization and leadership. And he can do that, it's no problem. That's what he does. But those of them dependent on the light of their lanterns are only a fraction of the living creatures in this world. They've been too self-centered.]

The spirits you know best, the ones you say like sweets. Do they associate with other spirits? Do they have... friends?

I don't believe so, no. They're almost always at their posts, unmoving. I believe the one at the church wants no-one to see him, and the one at the library is very shy and is much more suited to the company of books, though he had let me take a picture with him one time!

But I believe they interact with us more than they do with the other spirits. The librarian does speak a few words, and is quite the artist.

[ He seems very proud of the Librarian's artwork. ]

Huh. Didn't think they'd be so solitary.

[Maybe some hang out in groups, though. Maybe it's the strange ones that want to come and be curious about the town and its people.]

You think they're lonely?

Oh, I think they are, at least a little bit.

Though I do think the librarian and perhaps the church spirit are just shy.

But I do enjoy a chat with Rastus. He's a lovely fellow.

He's not a spirit, though, he's one of us. I need to find time to talk with him more, myself.

[Though he can see why some might confuse him for one of the locals, given most of the Beacon residents are human or appear to be so.]

He isn't? Oh, was he here from... Dr. Ingram's time?

[ He keeps having to remind himself to say the title because Will gets annoyed. ]

I wonder why he's stuck at the Bonfire, then. Suppose he doesn't trust anyone else to look after it for a break.

Assigned by Robin, I think. He must've been concerned about it during the time of his own group and showed he could be responsible with it. He's from before Doctor Ingram. Not sure exactly how long.

[It's times like this he remembers not everyone reads the network as obsessively as he does. It's not just that he's been here a little longer, but that he has to accumulate every fact he can and figure out how to tie them all together.]

I suppose we could always ask him. Guess that means he trusts Robin and what her plans are.

[ Which. He'd very much like to be told whatever these plans are. ]

We are really no closer than we were last month, I'm afraid.

I don't know about that. We know more about what some of the spirits are capable of, we've learned we need to always be ready for violence and to defend each other, and by the sound of things, we might have gotten something from those dreams if they're not all nonsense.

[He sighs, then pulls out his tablet to make some quick notes. Might as well keep track of who's had dreams and what they were. Monsters in the mines? Sure. Who knows what it means.]

What did you make out from the dreams? I'm not sure the one I had was very useful at all. Well, unless it's forewarning the grasshopper things that eat you. Which-- in that case, I haven't figured out how to fight it. If you see a giant grasshopper, run.

[ Yeah, hence he doesn't believe the dreams are a worthwhile pursuit. No one's told them yet that someone got to go to the portal location.

He'd be much more amenable if he knew. ]

But I suppose you're right. I should get to the armory sometime and pick out a sword. Just in case.

It tells us there might be mining tunnels somewhere. We could use them to get around to wherever they go without wandering in the woods. Just have to avoid the wildlife.

[Apparently. It's a shame Aziraphale wasn't able to get a sense of how to get into the mines, though. Where might an entrance be?]

Other than that, I've heard from a few people all saying they saw Beacon as it was in the light, right before the end. Daylight even saw what might have been the last day. There was a World Eater walking toward the city.

Perhaps, but it's dangerous to go down to the mines. And it was very tight-- I could barely fit in some parts.

And it's not like they're abandoned either. I think I'd rather face the wildlife than that giant grasshopper creature.

[ A pause. ]

Daylight saw a World Eater?

--And they've already been to this planet? Why would they return?

[He'd meant this grasshopper was the wildlife, in his usual dry humor used when not trying to entertain children with more obvious silliness, but - sure. It's a good point about them being tight. Probably rules out any trips down there for himself. But there are people here smaller than either of them.]

They've come by at least twice that we know of. Once when this place went dark, if Daylight's dream is more than just a dream. And then a second time, which is where the only image we have of them comes from, the one Doctor Ingram put on the network months ago. I guess as long as there's light and life here, they must come by to check it out. That's why the resets happen.

--There's an image of one?

Do you still have it, Rosinante?

[ He apparently missed this post because he hasn't ever seen it, and he looks surprised that it's not more common information. ]

Sure.

[There are many advantages to being a hoarder of information. Unlike other things people are greedy over, knowledge can be shared a little more readily if it suits him to do so. Here in Beacon, more often than at home, it does. They're all in this together after all.

He sorts through files on his tablet with a fingertip until he finds the photo he'd saved back then, opens it up, and hands the tablet over.]

Supposedly the damn things are enormous. Taller than buildings. Hard to see scale in that picture, though.

Yes, that is quite hard to see from this. But you know, most of us are quite small. The size is not what bothers me. It seems to be... organic, as a creature.

[ He seems comforted by being able to see a picture of it. ]

I wonder how it came to take over such things as planets. As large as they might be, this planet is much larger.

Maybe it's just something about what they are to begin with. I know we don't know anything at all about them, but you're right. They look just like creatures, and maybe it's simply their nature to eat light and life and don't think anything of doing it.

[No fancy magic, no foreign technology - perhaps they're just things that do what they were born to do. That's the theory he's going with anyway, until they get more information. It's both comforting and frightening to him. There's no evil intent behind any of it, but instead just... nothing. The stars are going out because of creatures mindlessly feeding on them the way cattle feed on grass.]

They eat light to live... Hmm. I wonder if we can just create light for them to eat instead.

[ And maybe they can just leave them and all other worlds alone, feeding on this farmed light instead. That's worth a shot, right? ]

I don't know if all this speculation is getting us anywhere.

INTRO LOG: DECEMBER

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