INTRO LOG: JANUARY

[inthenightmods]

INTRO LOG: JANUARY
ALLES NEU

characters: everyone.
location: the harbor, as well as the rest of town.
date/time: january 1-3.
content: beacon's newest batch of residents arrives on the ferry. the forest spirits engage in some new year's shenanigans.
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.

•••

A small crowd of forest spirits have shown up at the harbor to welcome the newcomers and to ring in the new year! They are very excited to promote and partake in the following traditions:

• Making lots of noise! Forest spirits are passing out a variety of noisemakers of all shapes and sizes with which to create a lively ruckus. Happy year!!!


• Setting off fireworks! Sort of! More like firecrackers, sparklers, and bottle rockets, but close enough, right? None of them cast light, but they're still pretty glowy things.


• Hanging bunches of onions from doorways! And also trees! And fences! And people! Hanging onions on everything! The more onions the better! Where did they get all of these onions!


• Smashing stuff! Specifically, the forest spirits are yeeting whole-ass pomegranates into doors and smashing every plate they can get their hands on before sweeping the debris into a pile. In fact, the forest spirits seem to be having small contests to see who can amass the largest pile of broken kitchenware. Hide your fruits and fine china, Beacon bits, because the spirits have a loose definition of "pomegranate" and "plate".


• Banging loaves of bread against walls! Maybe the tradition doesn't call for actual destruction or maybe it's just hard to smash a loaf of bread, but forest spirits are definitely running through town whapping hunks of bread on anything (and anyone) they run into. Some of the loaves even have coins and... acorns? Inside? Sure. All the better to bruise you with.


• Tossing flowers into the lake! They're all white flowers... mostly? Flowers are tough to come by this time of year, so it's more like white "anything that looks like a flower"s that are getting hucked into the water.


• Ringing bells! A couple of forest spirits have been tasked with scurrying up into the rafters of the church and town hall's clock tower, ringing the bells madly. Problem is, the spirits are trying to count and coordinate how many bell chimes peel through the town, but counting is hard and so is coordinating across a distance. So, uh, the bells are just kind of going hog wild for the day.


• Melting lead! One forest spirit covered in fur with a long tongue lolling out from their mask seems to be in charge of a lead-melting booth, where lantern-havers can melt bits of lead over a torch borrowed from the bonfire. The molten lead is then dropped into the lake and fished out with the spirits long, long tongue, after which they'll examine the lead's shape and hoot... something at whoever's dropped it in. A fortune for the new year? Tough to say. Even the other forest spirits don't seen to be able to understand this tonguey gent.


• Drinking burnt stuff! Be prepared for a forest spirit to run up and shove a scrap of paper and a glass of something bubbly into your hands. The idea, after some miming from the forest spirit, seems to be to write a wish or resolution onto the piece of paper, burn it in a bonfire torch, and mix the ashes with the glass of... something. Maybe you got lucky and it's champagne, but there's no telling what's in that glass. Bottoms up, though. You have to drink your wish to make it come true!


• Burning stuff! The forest spirits are making cute little dolls of each other and other folks in town! How cute! Less cute is that these cute little effigies are getting chucked right into the bonfire and swallowed up by the flames. Rastus is moderately distressed by this development, though he won't stop you from making your own effigies to burn.

By the end of the week, the forest spirits will have cleaned up their festivities, but for now, eh, get in the spirit of the holiday. It's a new year, after all.

Luckily for all the newcomers who may find themselves horribly confused by this welcome committee, their tablets 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! We're super jazzed to kick off the new year with a fresh crop of new players and characters.

For these New Year's festivities, you're all welcome to play out your own forest spirit interactions! NPC away, my dudes.

Go ahead and introduce yourselves on the OOC intro, and as you settle in, we'd like to ease everyone's minds with a little spoiler: More housing will be unlocked soon! A location discovery announcement will go up in the next week or so, whenever that exploration wraps up, and a whole crop of new housing options will then be made available. In the meantime, don't stress about finding lodging for your character. So long as everyone's settled by the end of the month, we're good to go!

DELIVERIES

The following packages can be found in the cargo hold:

• The monthly store restock
  
• For Midge: A menorah, a seder plate, a mezuzah, and a siddur
  
• For Rosalind: A dozen elegant eyepatches and the equipment necessary for her to construct her Lutece device
  
• For Hux: Equipment and tools to create mouse droids
  
• For Aziraphale: A fountain pen and two bottles of blue ink
  
• For Maes: A large crate full of collapsible cots and sleeping blankets, and an additional crate of various bedding and pillows
  
• For Crowley: A book of prophecies from home, a bottle of white wine, a box of various sizes of PVC tubing, a water pump, the goods, and a variety pack of seeds
  
• For Bucky: Bucky's armored vest from home
  
• For Daylight: A dozen packets of Soldiers' Kisses seeds
  
• For Rosinante: Two newspapers from Rosinante's home published in the months after his death, three bottles of nail polish (red, green, and pink), four cartons of cigarettes, and a crate full of various winter equipment
  
• For Peter: Webware
  
• For Rhys: A froyo machine
  
• For Kol: Kol's daylight ring from home
  
• For Elektra: A make-up case with a full set of make-up, six sets of good quality clothing (three for men and three for women), two bottles of fresh honey, three bags of coffee, and a Braille Bible (which comes in the form of seven very thick volumes)
  
• For Scully: A poster, three sets of medical scrubs, two sets of silk pajamas, and a bag with enough medical supplies to treat 5 major injuries or 10 minor injuries
  
• For Matt: An orchid-scented perfume, twin sai, a bottle of fancy tequila, three classic rock records, and a record player
  
• For Ignis: A violin, two dozen containers of various spices, a dozen skeins of knitting wool, and a dozen spools of colorful thread
  
• For Javert: A dozen outfits comprised of all 19th century clothing and a crate full of bedding materials

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

QUICKNAV
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Comments

[arsarcanum]

[ Sora watches curiously as he scatters, then looks down at his slightly damp fingertips, amazed. Huh. That felt pretty good, actually. He has... a lot of strange feelings hanging around that sequence of events that he can't quite quantify at the moment.

Whatever. He'll think about it later.

He'll ease the box down off his shoulder and peer at it, then back at his new friend. ]

I actually don't know if I'm unloading the crates! Or if I'm supposed to be. [ He shrugs, looking around. There were other folks unloading these boxes, and they mentioned they were going to the general store, but they've left by now, presumably off to deliver their boxes. ] I just figured someone probably needed these, uh, unsmashed.

[ He laughs. Is it that obvious that he's fresh meat? ] Yeah, you got me. Nice to meet you, Aziraphale. [ ... Huh. He hasn't really thought about it before. Now that he's here, and not in Locke City... Which name does he use? ] Thanks for the help. [ ... He knows he's supposed to follow that up with his own name, but he isn't sure enough about how he's supposed to answer to... answer. ]

[lunchbreaks]

Oh, it's not a problem. Yes, well, why don't we open it up together and see who the intended recipient of its contents are, hm?

[ He takes out a crowbar - has he just been carrying a crowbar? Did that just come out of nowhere?? - and goes about prying open the box to have a look-see. ]

Ah, yes, I believe this is supposed to go to the general store.

[ Did he just change that crowbar into a hammer? Where did he get that? ]

Just take a second to put this back together, don't worry, ah-- oh, what was your name?

[arsarcanum]

[ Sora will watch, nonplussed, as Aziraphale gets the crowbar out (did he blink at the wrong time? where'd that come from?), then the hammer (how is he blinking at the exact times these things are happening?). That is a level of weirdness he has never encountered before.

However, it is a level of weirdness that he has encountered before. Sorry, Aziraphale, this may be a bit of an awkward pause in the conversation as Sora stares into the middle distance, as though he's remembering something that he hadn't considered as a possibility before. It's short, only a couple of seconds or so, but it's still noticeable.

Sora shakes it off. Okay, echoes are still a thing here. Great! Good. What? He's still in the middle of the conversation, so he'll have to think about it later, but that is weird. ]

- Sorry? My name? [ - oh, we're back here again. Great. Immediate answer, go. ] Just, uh, call me Sora. We should - yeah, let's take these there. [ And he'll hurriedly crouch down to stack a couple of boxes on top of each other. Fortunately, there only seem to be about three or four left. Should be a quick trip if they both go. ]

[lunchbreaks]

Sora, ah, lovely name.

[ He speaks Japanese, which is totally meaningless to Sora, but for some reason Aziraphale just keeps assuming people are from Earth and that at some point Sora's parents have explained this to him. You know, despite that he has huge hands and feet and doesn't dress like anybody on Earth. ]

Very nice to meet you, Sora. Just such a shame we had to meet here. There's no Daylight, you see, in Beacon. Have you gotten a chance to listen to the welcome message? I suppose not, you've only just arrived, please remind me to send it to you later, it's very useful.

[ In the meantime, he'll help Sora carry the crate to the general store. Kind of odd, both of them don't look strong enough to carry this thing, and there's also that height difference, but Aziraphale isn't complaining. ]

[arsarcanum]

[ Actually... This Sora is from Earth. And is a quarter Japanese. And is currently wearing a grey hoodie branded with the logo for the Oakland Raiders. And is? Conversational? In Japanese? He took it for his high school language credit and his grandfather refuses to speak English in his old age.

Conversational, but not fluent. He'll blink, but give a very generic reply. ]

Uh, sorry, you're going a little fast. Thanks, though.

[ Aaand switching back to... English? He was assuming he was speaking English this entire time. Huh. ]

The welcome...? On the tablet? [ Sora pulls a face. ] I haven't even looked at that thing yet. I was kind of thinking that it wouldn't have signal.

[lunchbreaks]

What sort of signal?

[ Please, please don't try to explain to him how the internet works, he's still grappling with telephone wires. Things work because of course they do. ]

You just have to turn it on, I think we managed to get it to all the new devices by default. I don't know how, you'll have to ask Riku. He's quite nice, should be around here somewhere...

[ No, he doesn't understand the irony of this statement. ]

[arsarcanum]

The uh... Cell phone. Signal. Like, 4G. [ ... He'll shake his head. Please, he's equally as technologically incompetent. ] Never mind, at least it's working.

[ Yyyyyyyyep he is just going to assume that Aziraphale knows another Riku and not his Riku because, boy, what would be the odds? Really, what would they be? Especially if Aziraphale called him "nice" - he likes Riku, with all his heart, even though he's never really met the guy - but that is one rude dude. ]

You woke up with it with you, right? Was Riku the captain of the ship or something? [ It's the only way he can think of getting the tablets on them while they were still passed out from being dead. ]

[lunchbreaks]

[ During the entire time Sora explains cell phones, Aziraphale looks at him like he understands the words that are coming out of his mouth but that he might as well be speaking another language for all he knows how to put them together in a coherent sense.

He at least looks like gears are whirring in his head trying to figure it out. ]

Hm? No, as far as I know, there isn't a captain of the ferry, it just... runs.

But Riku is-- oh dear, where is he. Well, you can't miss him, he's about your age I think, and slightly taller. Ah-- and silver hair, very easy to spot!

[arsarcanum]

[ Honestly, Sora was just as confused while he was explaining it. He knows his strengths, and this is not one of them.

A Riku, his age, with silver hair? That narrows things down by quite a bit. Mmmmaybe by a little more than he's prepared for?]

Uh... Weird question, but does Riku have a giant key he carries around like a sword?

[lunchbreaks]

What?

[ Aziraphale has never seen Riku's keyblade, so. ]

No, I think he only has regularly-sized keys. Can't imagine what he'd need to open with a sword-sized one here, I don't even think we have doors that large!

[arsarcanum]

[ ... He doesn't know if he's relieved or not. He'll put a hand over his heart and take a calming breath. Okay, so maybe not. Either way, that's a lead he can follow up on later. When he's ready. it actually happens shortly after, when he's very much not ready. ]

Okay, good to know. [ He grins at Aziraphale. ] You'd be surprised how much a key the size of a sword can do besides unlock really big locks.

[lunchbreaks]

Oh? Do enlighten me, please.

[ It sounds sincere enough - he really is excited to learn all these new things about all these people from walks of life that he'd never even considered before. And that was saying something, since he'd been around for six thousand years' worth of people to consider. ]

And it's not much further. The general store, I mean.

[arsarcanum]

[ He looks down the way and - yep, that sure is the general store. He'll shift the boxes in his arms and push the door open with his butt, then turn back and hold the door open with his toe to let Aziraphale in. ]

Sure thing! Hang on. [ He'll set down the boxes with the others, then stand back and hold his hand out. With one magical, sparkly woosh of air, his Keyblade will materialize and he'll grab it by the handle. ]

This is a Keyblade. [ He'll offer it to Aziraphale to look at, but if Aziraphale tries to take it, it will... probably... disappear and reappear in Sora's hands. Hey, who knows? Maybe this is a keyblade ceremony and Aziraphale's heart is strong enough for a keyblade of his own. ] It unlocks big locks, but I can whack things with it too.

[lunchbreaks]

[ Aziraphale turns around and-- oh! Well alright then. ]

Suppose that's useful as a weapon. Can you do that with others, or only the-- the keyblade?

[ Because he can't imagine if Sora had a choice, that a giant key would be considered the immediate choice. But Aziraphale is also a sword-wielding kind of angel, so perhaps there's more utility to the tool that he hadn't considered. ]

[arsarcanum]

With others? [ Sora will pause, working through that sentence in his head, before - oh! other weapons, right. He'll scratch the back of his head. ]

Well... no. Sort of? Maybe yes. Definitely not a lot of them right now. [ He shakes his head, then look at his weapon, turning it over and considering it. ] A Keyblade can do a lot - it's sharper than it looks, sometimes - but it can also change into other things I can use? Sometimes. [ He sighs and dismisses it, letting it vanish in another sweep of light. ] I'm not clear on the details, either. It's... complicated, but I've got some stuff missing upstairs.

[lunchbreaks]

What do you mean by that?

[ He gestures to the... stuff missing upstairs part. ]

Have you also lost memories?

[ Why does it seem that anyone's who's lost memories retains their skills just fine? But loses the truly important things, like people and knowledge? ]

[arsarcanum]

Lost memories, huh. [ Sora thinks about it, but slowly shakes his head. ] It's more like... I'm finding memories. This isn't an amnesia thing.

I guess I'm not alone in the missing memories department, huh? [ He's slowly starting to understand that people from here are not only not from his Earth, but are also definitely unaware of a huge secret war involving the reincarnation of probably hundreds of souls in the forms of a bunch of people from the same city in New Jersey. Still, it's kind of nice to know that running around with missing memories isn't an uncommon thing around here. ]

[lunchbreaks]

Oh, you're definitely not the only one missing memories!

But-- what do you mean finding memories? How can you find memories if you don't have amnesia?

[ He blinks owlishly at this, because. That's not really aligning with his world view. He doesn't mind; this has been happening a lot recently, but. He just wants to understand. ]

[arsarcanum]

I, uh. [ He looks at Aziraphale for a moment. Well... he's not really sure if he's up for giving someone his life story, but maybe just... the concept? Will do? ]

I... get memories, and uh. A lot of other things. [ Okay, hang on, this is three kinds of complex because of how his deal has panned out in the past two years. One thing at a time. ] From another me. From the past. Uh, what's the word... Samsara? Do you know what that is?

[lunchbreaks]

Oh, yes. I do.

I wasn't aware... that happened.

[ But he supposes it must on Sora's Earth. ]

I mean. Like that. That you can still remember things.

[arsarcanum]

[ Sora nods - then interrupts himself, shakes his head. ]

I mean, I guess it's kind of like remembering things. But they didn't happen to him. Me. Sort of. [ He pauses, then blows stream of air upward, fluffing his bangs around his furrowed brow. ] It's more like... I'm a passenger, and. He was the train. And I was rearranging the furniture to make room for me and all of my stuff, and he couldn't stop me. [ ... He shakes his head again. ] That's not right either. Sorry, I don't think about this a lot. It just kind of happened.

[lunchbreaks]

Oh. It's alright.

[ He looks on a little lost, a little hopelessly, mostly because he doesn't have any answers - and he hates that he doesn't. ]

Perhaps it will just... come to you.

[arsarcanum]

[ It's clear in his head what happened, and what he has to do, but when it all comes out? It's just a jumbled mess.

Still, he's sort of used to knowing when to fold them when it comes to stuff like this. Sora's very solution oriented, but he's also pragmatic enough to know when something's out of his depth; the fact that Aziraphale doesn't have any answers doesn't bother him a bit because he has something else to do. Like, you know. The boxes. ]

That's what I'm hoping. People keep telling me to follow my heart whenever I get confused. It's led me wrong before, but it's better than staying still. [ He grins. ] Enough about me. Any more boxes? [ He also wants to get to know you, odd duck - circling around his own navel is much less interesting. Not much there, in his opinion! ]

[lunchbreaks]

[ Odd swan, more like. That will come soon enough. ]

Boxes! Yes, I daresay there will be more. We generally get supplies for the whole town a month at a time, and if there's anything you'd like to specially request, you'll have to do so through Rastus. He's always at the bonfire, you can't miss him.

[arsarcanum]

[ He ponders this, opening the door for Aziraphale to let them back outside. Who's Rastus? How does he get stuff here? If the boat drives itself, how does he know that the things they need will make it onto the boat?

... Why ask questions when the answers are probably too much for Sora to understand, anyway? How about something a little more concrete. ]

I was wondering - is the bonfire the only thing in the town that lights things up? There's the stars and the moon and all, and we have these [ He looks down at his lantern - it's a pretty star shaped parol ] but I was wondering why there aren't many lights that work in town.