logsinthenight | Expedition || Closed

characters: Kuai Liang

paletteswap, Donquixote Rosinante

callada, Hanzo Hasashi

comehere, Irwin Wade

sulfa
location: Exploring! Will update this once it's decided but they're either going to go further along the same path Rosinante and Cao Pi took, or head towards the lighthouse
date/time: 5-6 days, from 7/22-7/27
content: Rosinante and Kuai have been planning an expedition for a while and are finally ready to head out. They're planning to be gone 5-6 days and to report back their findings to the rest of the town.
warnings: Nothing yet!

Kuai had gathered enough supplies for a decent trek into the woods or towards the lighthouse, carefully sorted into backpacks that had been packed with the sort of precision to be expected from someone who took hours to brew the perfect cup of tea. Now that it wasn't oppressively hot, Kuai figured it was a good time to set out. The sooner they knew what was out there, the sooner they could do something about it.

He'd sent messages to all parties involved, inviting them to meet in the tavern to discuss where they wanted to focus their efforts: head the same way that Rosinante had already explored? Or attempt to edge along the coast towards the lighthouse?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Discussion of where they're headed goes here.]

Already upstairs, Rosinante heads down to meet Kuai without too much delay. He's as eager as ever to get back out in that forest, for even if it's dark and strange, it's preferable to sitting around, wasting time.

The cool air, first in days, is refreshing, and so too was an actual night of sleep for the first time in a week. Those burial markers vanished and have not yet returned. Few seem to have seen what happened to him, and he's glad for it. Feeling refreshed (or as much as he can, through the cigarette withdrawals), and like he has some sort of purpose again, he even took the time for makeup this morning, with lipstick and bright yellow beams of light below his right eye. Symbolic, cheerful, something to try and make himself feel better.

He raises a hand in greeting and scoots aside a chair to join Kuai at the table by sitting on the floor, with his lantern beside him. "So. We have some decisions to make, don't we?" he asks rather rhetorically as he withdraws his tablet from a pocket to find his conversation with Winters. The man is certainly useful, even if cryptic.

"We're not the first to think about going toward the lighthouse. Did you hear what others have found so far?"

He nods in greeting, tucking his own tablet away. He'd been using it far too often recently. And not for communications.

"I heard about the village and the library, but not much about the lighthouse. Were you able to speak to Winters at all?" His own inquiries were rather uneventful - he'd spoken to the man who'd found the village and a few others, but nothing was really swaying his decision one way or the other. "I saw the lighthouse is broadcasting a message to "go back" which is rather ominous."

It's a little odd to be speaking to someone who's sitting on the floor, but at least it makes them eye level with each other instead of the alternative.

"Yeah, I heard that too," he confirms. "And now that I've gotten more from Winters, I agree the lighthouse is a no-go. The forest spirits around the place are vicious, and the keeper is just like us. Another person who came here one day with a lantern. He's spoken to her over the network, but she's not hooked up to it right now."

And little does he know at this point there will soon be a mission to fix that.

"So as soon as he's able to figure out how to get her back on it, we can talk to her that way. I'd prefer face to face, but I'd also prefer not getting my face torn off."

"So not only can we not get to her, she might not be able to leave to get to us? Maybe a rescue mission is in order once we know more about what we're dealing with." But that's putting the cart before the horse, as he agrees that the lighthouse might be better saved for a later time.

"So the forest then. What did you discover in your journey with Lord Cao Pi?" Kuai can't even speak about him to others informally, he is nothing if not honorable about tradition. "Would it be beneficial to retrace your path? Or forge somewhere new?"

"A few hours out of town, the river forks. One keeps heading generally west, while a branch of it heads south. Near the fork, there's an old bridge that could be crossable with some repairs," he says, as he pulls up the map on his tablet to point out where he's marked these things.

"Right now it's just rope with some planks that's trailing in the river. Cao Pi tried to pull it up but we didn't have supplies to reattach the rope. He said when he touched the water he saw a vision of it rising up like a tidal wave. Didn't look like anything from where I was standing. I painted a red X on a tree near the old bridge so it should be easy to find again. After that, we followed the river west for the rest of the day but it was just trees. We camped right about here." he says, pointing to indicate the approximate spot. "While I was sleeping, he said he heard singing coming from the river but he couldn't see anyone out there."

"How far across is the river? Grandmaster Hasashi can teleport, but not with all of us, though he could see if there was something on the other side worth investigating." He considers what he just said, realizing he hasn't actually spoken to Hanzo about how his powers may have been affected here. Everything to do with fire seems to be wrong in this place.

Ah, well that's a problem for the future. His eyes trace the path marked out on Rosinante's map, nodding in agreement. "If we can find a suitable way across the river investigating the southern fork may be the wiser option if the two of you already ventured some ways to the west. No sense covering the same area."

The more he explains, the deeper Kuai's brow furrows, "He saw things you did not? And then heard things you didn't? That sounds like an entity toying with him specifically. Perhaps to drive the both of you away? Or confuse you so you became lost in the darkness of the forest."

"Yeah, I dunno," he says with a shrug. If something was toying with Cao Pi, it's probably because he's the one who actually touched the water, he figures. Myths about sirens luring men to their deaths swim in his head - though the sirens were never in rivers, and sought to ruin entire ships, he'd thought. But here, there's no sea. Who knows what sirens of lakes and rivers seek to do.

"But the river itself doesn't really get any smaller up west of that fork. If your Grandmaster can get across down by the mouth, he can get across there. Might be too hard to get all of us over until the bridge gets fixed, though. Anyway, it's not wasted effort since we only went a day in. There's plenty more river going west."

He's pretty alarmed that there might be something in the woods that can make them hallucinate. Some sort of unknown sorcery that could make the journey extra perilous. Not that he thinks they shouldn't do it, more that he'll now be on high alert for even the slightest thing out of order. Good luck getting him to sleep in between nightly watches.

"That's true, perhaps we'll find a place where the river narrows enough to be able to cross if we continue to the west. When you were out there, did you find that the tablets still functioned? I'm curious if the network will still be reachable if we're too far outside of town."

"I didn't try to contact anyone in town while we were out there. I looked at the map, but that's it," he says with a shrug. He's still really not in the habit of, say, texting people or reading the network all the time even though he probably should be. Keeping up with information is important. It just happens that not enough goes on here to need to be constantly glued to it.

"I hadn't considered there might be a limit, or that it would be as short as a day's walk. The snail phones I'm used to can cover most of the distance of the whole world," he continues. "We should try it out."

"I'm more used to either communicators that have a range between them or those that relay with satellites, and the tree cover would interfere with both," he says with a shrug. It isn't really important, he's more curious. Not that he ever really used cell phones or the fancy tech comm that the special forces gave him back home. He knew how, basically, but he didn't really see the need.

"If we find anything truly noteworthy it might be useful to be able to tell someone about it." Unsaid but, it would also be useful if they got into a truly dangerous situation and needed to call for help.

"We'll find out when we get there I suppose."

[Expedition towards their destination.]

[There and back again.]

Expedition || Closed

Preparation

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Heading Out

The way back