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In the Night Moderators ([personal profile] inthenightmods) wrote in [community profile] logsinthenight2019-07-12 01:00 pm

EVENT LOG: GRAVES


EVENT LOG:
GRAVES


characters: everyone.
location: Bonfire Square.
date/time: July 12-19.
content: mysterious shrines appear and bring visions of death.
warnings: likely violence and potentially gore.

time to pay your respects.

It happens when no one is looking, when most of the town is asleep and the rest are inside. A makeshift cemetery has come to Beacon, taking up residence in the middle of Bonfire Square. Each monument, shrine, and altar is dedicated to someone who now resides here, a memorial of their previous life.

Some may be drawn by curiosity, others by fear, and some may simply have to pass through this strange graveyard to get to the Bonfire itself. Whenever a person gets near, the altars beckon with a mysterious urge— an urge to approach, and an urge to leave something behind. They will feel compelled to make offerings at the various shrines, but doing so has a curious effect; it causes one to experience the death of the person whose grave they've honored.

Whether you resist the compulsion or give in willingly (or something in between), you'll also have to wrestle with the fact that a grave exists for you. Will you let your death be known, or try your best to keep it secret? Destroying it sure won't work, as it will return— with a duplicate somewhere else in town.

However you choose to deal with this, one thing is hard to ignore— this a tangible reminder of your death, and the fact that it's probably permanent.

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originallutece: when you've already got freckles but what the hell (robert; the umbrella's useless)

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-07-21 12:23 am (UTC)(link)
It was a mutually agreed upon venture. I hardly twisted his arm into it.

[She takes a deep breath, filling her lungs with the summer-tinged air, before exhaling slowly. Thinking of these things takes on a new meaning now, and it isn't that she's about to burst into tears, but it takes a moment.]

We'd been working on it since we were sixteen or so. That was when I'd come up with my initial research: that of atomic suspension via light waves. [That is to say: she can make things float, because fuck gravity.] I tested out the theories multiple times, and eventually, it worked, but--

[She smiles.]

Strange. I'd leave my experiment suspended over the evening, and wake to find it turned off. Or the opposite, over and over.

And on the other side, Robert grew ever more frustrated that he, too, would find his experiment in disarray. Like two people toying with switches for one lightbulb-- it took us quite a while to understand.

But once we had . . . well. You can make a crude morse code out of anything that can turn on and off.
fogey: (i've never been one.)

[personal profile] fogey 2019-07-25 12:46 am (UTC)(link)
[ he's quiet a minute, turning this over in his mind.

finally: ]


I get it now. You're him, and he's you. Same person, different universes.
originallutece: is to love myself so much it offends people (happy; honestly the goal)

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-07-25 02:15 am (UTC)(link)
[Despite the day, despite her grief, despite this strange little competition they have, fierce and sharp and prickly, despite all of that-- Rosalind laughs. It's short and sharp, more pleased than anything cruel.]

You're the first to figure that out in nearly two decades.

[Of course he is.]
fogey: (087.)

[personal profile] fogey 2019-07-25 02:48 am (UTC)(link)
Not surprising.

[ of course he is. ]

Doesn't sound like you had much other intelligent company, besides him. [ then, ] So you fell in love with each other. That tracks.

[ fell in love with....yourself.....that's so weirdly easy to see for you, rosalind ]
originallutece: you might just cut yourself on it (anger; an "excuse me" so sharp)

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-07-25 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
You'll keep that particular fact to yourself.

[It's sharp and swift and defensive, her tone a whiplash, like the crack of thunder after the sunshine. Her face is closed off again, her eyes so terribly cold as she stares down at him-- but can she be blamed?

It wasn't just a secret at home. It was the secret. It was a secret so awful that they'd never dreamed of revealing it. They'd spent ages perfecting how they were to treat one another in public, how they ought to act, what tones they could use, no smiles, no inside jokes, no intimacy, no touching, nothing but sterile coldness.

In England, maybe, they could have gotten away with it. Nobody would look twice at two people who were ostensibly siblings living together. But in Columbia . . . well. A few people knew the truth, didn't they? And their methods of punishment were far deadlier than a public disgrace.

She'd thought about it, once. A few weeks after the 1904 raffle. What would happen if they were discovered? Robert would be killed, she'd concluded. Or, no, perhaps not. Just locked away. Kept tortured and tormented, stripped and starved and hurt, but still alive, just as a reminder for Rosalind to be good. And Rosalind herself . . . perhaps she'd go to Fink. She has no doubt he'd like that. He'd always been obsessed with the two of them, dogging at their heels, always stepping in too close, hand lingering on hips, against shoulders, breath hot and his gaze so calculating, she'd hated him, she'd loathed him--

So yes. She probably would have been given to Fink, if not the two of them outright humiliated and killed in their joke of a raffle.]
fogey: (☄ F I V E.)

[personal profile] fogey 2019-07-25 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
[ her reaction is immediate, razor-sharp. she's aware, then, how people would see it; what they'd say, what they'd do. he gives her a long, level glare, mostly to show he's not cowed.

then he shrugs. ]


If you think I give enough of a damn about your memories to gossip about them, you're wrong.
originallutece: our daily mask (talk; give us this day)

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-07-25 03:30 am (UTC)(link)
[She stares at him for a few seconds, determining the honesty in his gaze. Whether or not she finds him the sort who would lie about such a thing, or if he truly won't tell.]

How saccharine.

[A beat, and it feels like an exhale, slow and steady. Not relaxing, per se, but at least not that sudden tension of before.]

But you do give a damn, I think. We wouldn't be having this conversation if you didn't. You would have left ages ago. So ask your questions, if you have them.
Edited (i wasn't DONE) 2019-07-25 03:30 (UTC)
fogey: (☄ 010.)

[personal profile] fogey 2019-07-25 12:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[ ruining people in this way wasn't often in his purview with the commission, though not never. they preferred the clean, efficient kills, as did he.

he'd say there's no point or value to it here, but he just. wouldn't. ]


Was that machine the one you've told me about?
originallutece: without you bleeding out jesus christ (robert; can we have one nice day)

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-07-27 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
It was, yes. It was two stories tall. We ended up having to take out most of the floor in our bedroom.

[The power that had thrummed through it . . . she can still feel it in her chest, her lungs, surging through every inch of her.]

We could see . . . oh, almost anything and anywhere. We tested it with a few books from the future-- psychology texts, mostly, and, ah . . . a particular painting.

[She can't smile, but there's something like faint amusement in her gaze.]
fogey: (☄112.)

[personal profile] fogey 2019-07-28 04:53 am (UTC)(link)
Do I want to know?

[ is it a painting he'd know about, or a joke she'll bother letting him in on? but true to his word, he doesn't push. there are some facts he's interested in, and that's the main reason he's still here. ]

So what went wrong? You've said you can rebuild it here easily, but it's killed you before.
originallutece: (060)

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-08-01 01:35 am (UTC)(link)
Have you ever heard of Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee?

[Y'know, that famous lost painting? Also, she gets her thing first, his questions get answered later, that's the rules.]
fogey: (☄114.)

[personal profile] fogey 2019-08-02 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
[ he breathes out a sound that might be a laugh on someone else, looking off to the side briefly. ]

You happened to it. I shouldn't be surprised.
originallutece: thank god it's robert to save me from my boredom (happy; oh look who just showed up)

1/2

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-08-02 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
I certainly did.

[She smiles briefly, faintly, more than a little pleased he appreciates this.]

It's a lovely painting.

[It really is. Officially, the goal of the experiment had been to see if they could truly bring large objects out of other worlds, but there was no reason to steal a painting. But they like Rembrandt, and Robert likes making her happy.]
originallutece: in a bath (neutral; who wears makeup)

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-08-02 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
[Liked making her happy. That particular correction smothers her mirth, and her next exhale is harsh.]

. . . in any case. Do you want the long story or the short?
fogey: (☄112.)

[personal profile] fogey 2019-08-03 03:00 am (UTC)(link)
[ he watches her glow, then the light fade out as she remembers where they are, what they're discussing. breathes out. ]

Long.
originallutece: no thank you (talk; fuck this shit i'm out)

[personal profile] originallutece 2019-08-07 01:44 am (UTC)(link)
[Long. All right. She exhales slowly, glancing away for a few seconds as she gathers her thoughts.]

Columbia debuted in 1893, at the Chicago World's Fair. There were any number of founders, because Comstock's abilities to get funding were great, but not perfect. He also had a fair few people on what he called his board: people who would work on varying issues. I, of course, was there as the person who made the damn thing fly in the first place. A few others there solely for their purses, or because they brought a personal expertise to the field: a police commander, an economy expert, so on and so forth.

And, when it came to the raw labor, to building the city up, and more importantly, to keeping people in their places . . . he had Jeremiah Fink.

[Rosalind crosses her arms under her chest, the movement not defensive so much as angry.]

Jeremiah Fink was not intelligent the way you and I are intelligent, but he was very clever. He knew how to wheedle and promise and cheat, and he all but enslaved his workers under the guise of employing the impoverished out of the goodness of his heart. He was the perfect man through which Comstock got vast legions of virtually unpaid labor, and because Fink chose those populations that were minorities, no one fought for them.

[Herself included.]

The other way Fink got his money, though, was through plagiarism, pure and simple. He was intelligent enough to understand how things worked, even if he couldn't come up with them himself. And sooner or later, he was wealthy enough that suing him was pointless.

He badly wanted my inventions, and accordingly, I kept them close to my chest.

[That's the first part of the story. The second is a little easier.]

I told you Comstock styled himself a preacher, and that I aided that lie. With it came others, more and more outragous, until at last one of his lies grew too sinful to ignore. We intervened. And then, a few days later, our machine exploded.

Tell me, what do you think more likely: that I made an error? Or that Comstock hired a man familiar with my work to sabotage one of my machines and make our death look an accident?