logsinthenight | INTRO LOG: JANUARY

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INTRO LOG: JANUARY

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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[ Sora understands that because he's the same way! For someone who's big on the power of friendship, he also knows how tempting it is to want to fix everything yourself and then blame yourself if it goes wrong, no matter if it's justified or not. He's usually pretty good about taking his own advice, though. ]

Thanks. Promise I'll get back to you on that, Hana. [ He'll keep walking and stay quiet as she taps out her message. However, he knows that the silence can't last forever - he doesn't know about her, but it'd drive him up a wall. Hm... ] If it's okay, can you tell me about where you're from? [ He partially wants to keep her mind off her injuries, but he's also genuinely curious. ]

Edited (formatting) 2020-01-04 19:52 (UTC)

[By this point, she's already finished her message. Thankfully, she's pretty good with technology, so adapting to these tablets don't seem to faze her.]

Oh, I don't mind. I'm from Busan, Korea.

[Would he know where that's from? She's... not sure yet. She's still not sure if she believes that she's really dead yet. Denial....]

It's a pretty big city. [Hard to say details about it without knowing whether or not he'd know about it.]

[ Busan, not as much. Korea, though? ]

Oh, I've been to Korea. [ ... ] Well, okay, layovers don't count. I have family in the Philippines, so when we visited, we had a layover in Korea on the way back. Like, Incheon? Or something? [ He shakes his head. ] Dunno where Busan is, though.

[Oh, so he was familiar enough at least.]

I see. Icheon is about three and a half hours from Busan. We're right by the East Sea.

[ Trust me, he hasn't been out of America much. This is just a coincidence! ]

The East Sea... Is that the one between Korea and Japan? [ He grins. ] You lived right by the ocean, huh? Must've been nice.

That's the one! It was nice. It was a pretty place.

[For being a city and all.]

[ He's not sure if he'd describe Locke City as a pretty city, even if it was also right near the ocean, but it was definitely home. He... misses it already.

They've gone up the stairs to the deck now. He swivels his head. Huh. Sure is dark out here. He spots the dock and starts walking along the deck, moving to disembark. ]

What did you do there? You said you were a soldier?

[At least they were given lanterns, but she never would have expected it to be this dark out here. Tablet in his hoodie and star shaped lantern in her good hand...]

Sort of. I was originally a professional gamer. When the Omnics started another uprising, the military reached out to the the people they thought would be able to handle piloting mechs to protect the city from the invasions; Professional gamers.

[It was still weird to her a little bit, so she can only imagine how odd that might sound to others. She always just took in stride and accepted it for what it was.]

I saw what was happening to my home, so I wanted to help out if I could.

[ Sora will actually pause, looking down at the town of Beacon and the lack of light radiating from it, then up at the sky again. Huh. Something... doesn't seem right. ]

Wait, the Omnics? What are those? [ He thinks the pro-gamer thing is cool, and he's definitely going to ask about it later, but this is weird. He was kind of thinking both of them were from Earth, but an uprising? A war? There was a war on his Earth too, but that's not a word he's ever heard before. ]

Omnics... They're... basically artificially intelligent robots and act as another race where I'm from. But I suppose this is just another instance of segregation, because they're not treated the same way as humans, so some of them have been trying to start an uprising for their rights.

... I can't say I blame them, but.... It's caused so much destruction and killed so many innocent lives in the process... The part of the military I'm from -- MEKA -- was designed in mind for protecting innocent lives from these attacks, but my teammates have all been put out of commission from an attack a week before this one.... I was the last one who was able to act and...

[And she was here... It made her feel horrible.]

I couldn't have died... Dae-hyun would have come for me in time. I know he would have.

[ ... This isn't what he wanted out of this conversation, and he definitely can't tell her what's on his mind to cheer her up, because he has a sneaking suspicion that all is not right in the place they've arrived in, dead or no. He especially feels as though telling her that he very distinctly remembers getting stabbed from behind by a surprise attack from an alien supersoldier might be a bad idea too.

He also doesn't want to tell her that, right after he woke up, he regained something from a past life. A distinct memory of a beautiful, perfect ocean, reflecting the sky like glass. He remembers it was the final world. A place to rest before one as a person, heart, body, and soul, moved on. A confirmation of what just happened to him.

She isn't alone, here. But anything he feels like he could tell her on that front feels like it'd be shaming her for having hope. ]

I hope we did. Maybe we're both dreaming. [ He looks back down at Beacon and begins to walk down the ramp, down to the dock, past people boarding the ship for other things, he supposes. ] At least, I know this isn't what I thought heaven or hell would look like.

[She'll eventually feel better, but that might take some time. It's easier to cope with death when you know it was definitive. Or if you didn't have people depending on you.]

I really hope this is just some bad dream...

[Although that said, meeting Sora wasn't all that bad. And her more than likely broken leg and arm were real enough to maybe not be a dream.]

Whatever this is, I hope it's nothing permanent.

[ He feels as though he has more proof that at least he's dead, but it doesn't feel definitive enough to share. It's difficult enough to know he'd failed in the one thing that Skyler ever expected of him... Not just because of his expectations for him, but for his expectations of himself. This... wasn't how things were supposed to go.

He takes a calming breath. It's just him who died, at least. He wasn't all that important, as far as people went. As far as he knew, his friends were still alive. They'd carry on without him. That was sad and lonely and terrifying, and if he kept thinking about it he'd probably just melt down right there on the dock... but knowing that he wasn't all that important in the grand scheme of things also comforting in its certainty, in a way.

Besides, Hana needs him to not melt down and keep them both going until they can find someone who can fix her arm and leg. That's enough purpose for him, for right now. ]

... Well, if it's permanent, and not a dream, I don't think it's too bad so far. [ He pulls a wry smile as he starts walking the dock toward the shore. ] I hope you're not a dream. I'm not creative enough to make up a person like you. I don't want you to go disappearing on me, you know? I still haven't heard about all those video games you pro-gamed back where you from.

[Of all the things to pick her out of her slump, that seemed to help. She was likely to sit on these feelings and thoughts for a while, but for the time being... it does get a small chuckle out of her.]

Yeah... I'm lucky to have had met someone who's been so kind to me. Thank you, really.

I can definitely tell you about them sometime, if you'd like.

[ Aw, shucks. He'd rub his nose with a finger if he could. (Let's not drop the injured soldier, though.) He doesn't think he's doing much. ]

Glad to help. [ ... ] Wonder if there's a doctor's office in town. Hey, do you think there's a map on the tablet? [ He's assuming that her post hasn't gotten any bites yet, so bringing her to a medic seems like the next best possible option here. ]

[She'll look on the tablet now for one. She can sift through everything else when they have a better chance to look things over.]

Hmm... It doesn't look like there's one. Maybe someone in town might know?

Maybe. Is there anything on the map that sounds like it'd help? [ Okay, on the beach now. A few more steps and they'll be on proper dry land. There seems to be a church in the distance, and a fire right past it. And, uh. Hundreds of little gremlin things running around, throwing round things everywhere. ] ... Hope that won't be a problem.

Umm... [Scanning...] It looks like there's a general store near the bonfire on this map. Do you think someone might know anything there..?

[Or have anything? Looking to what he was referring to...]

Well... Seems like there's a lot more going on here than I expected...

A general store... Okay. [ If it's near the bonfire, hopefully it'll be obvious where it is once they get there.

And, uh... he'll squint. He hears the faint sound of several somethings crashing in the distance. ] What are those? Leprechauns? [ ... He reaaally hopes they aren't the little fuzzy gremlins he has to deal with back home. Those things can, uh, control minds. He would like to think that he left those behind back in life, thank you. ]

Those actually exist? [She's heard stories about St. Patricks Day, but beyond that...] What exactly did we get ourselves into?

... I dunno, but I'm gonna find out. You okay with being along for the ride?

I don't mind. Especially since you're the one carrying me right now.

[They're in it together.]

[ ... okay his ears are gonna go red PLEASE... HIS FRAGILE EGO.... ]

Nice. Let's go. [ And off they go to the general store, dodging pomegranates and plates! Hopefully they'll find someone on the way who can set her bones and give her a few casts while she rests up LOL ]

[And off they go in search of crutches/casting in an epic display of ninjary. But Luna, that's not a word. It is now.]

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INTRO LOG: JANUARY

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