logsinthenight | INTRO LOG: FEBRUARY

Entry tags:

INTRO LOG: FEBRUARY

characters: everyone.
location: the harbor, as well as the rest of town.
date/time: february 1-3.
content: beacon's newest batch of residents arrives on the ferry. rastus gathers the town for a debriefing meeting.
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.

•••

On February 3, after the newcomers have had a chance to settle in, everyone's tablets will ping with a message from @rastus!

Come tob onfier squae.Pl eaas , we wikll disucss our orogress sincereeluy rastuaas I am th ebonfire keeeeeeepr.

...Followed by another message a few minutes later, this time from @keeper

Omg will everyone head down to Bonfire Square for Rastus' town meeting please? He wants to recap what you've all learned so far!!!

And can someone please teach him that he can record an audio message and then send it to everyone instead of looping the whole dang town in on a group text?? 😂😂😂😂

Assuming you do indeed head down to Bonfire Square after all that, what you'll find is this: a series of benches and tables have been set up surrounding the bonfire, and there's enough seating for all of Beacon's residents. As people take their seats near the fire, the barkeeper forest spirits from the Invincible toddle through the crowd with trays of hot chocolate and warm cider, along with a sampler tray of acorns and pinecones, if that's your thing.

Once everyone's here and settled, sipping on hot drinks and maybe busting a tooth on an acorn, Rastus hobbles forward to address the crowd:

"Crrk. Hello. I am Rastus. I tend to the bonfire. I have tended to the bonfire, mrawk, for years and years. You are doing, rmmm, well. Good."

He nods to emphasize the point. Yes, you are doing good.

"Talk. To each other. Share what you have learned. Yes. Crarrk. It is important."

He nods again, and then... shuffles back over to his post near the bonfire, waiting for anyone who might come by with an interest in torches. Seems it's up to you all to get each other up to speed?

Luckily for all the newcomers who may find themselves confused by their sudden arrival here, 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 thrilled to welcome so many new faces into the community, and you've come at a great time! Alongside this intro log, we have our very first cat herd, which is essentially a recap of the plot thus far, as well as a rundown on a ton of great info to help get you started in the game.

But don't feel like you have to read it all right this second! ICly, Rastus will call everyone together for the town meeting on February 3 to give new characters (and players) a chance to get their bearings before smacking them in the face with all the plot. This log will cover both the ferry arrival and the cat herd meeting, so feel free to bounce around in time in your toplevels.

Remember, too, that all of the plot info available in the cat herd can now be considered common knowledge! Newbies and oldbies alike, feel free to assume that your character learns as much of that plot info as you like at this meeting, regardless of whether or not you thread it out.

And of course, go ahead and introduce yourselves on the OOC intro, as well!

DELIVERIES

The following packages can be found in the cargo hold:

The monthly store restock
For Sora: A gameboy(?), 3 CPR/AED kits, a dozen CPR/first aid training manuals, two packages of capiz shells, a set of candy molds, a caldero, and 3 gameboy games: 3-D World Runner, Decapathon VII, and Sheep It Up!
For Crowley: A variety of clockwork equipment, a large clock face, and the goods
For Jason G: 2 bulletin boards with materials for mounting, 3 packs of pushpins
For Lucius: A manual sewing machine
For Castiel: A dozen flasks of holy oil and a pillowcase-sized satchel of various natural spell components
For Duster: A double bass, complete with a case
For Prompto: A polaroid camera with enough film for 50 photos and a folding sword, which is cruder than the example he gave but roughly the same size
For Aziraphale: A large crate of snowshoes, jackets, and coats in various sizes, a bottle of wine, and a bouquet of red, white, and pink roses tied together with an elegant bow
For Javert: A large crate of various fencing gear and 3 fencing handbooks

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

QUICKNAV
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is Masaomi sliding awkwardly into the spot next to Stone because he hasn't spoken to the guy since he was full of holes, and that's super weird.

"I... might not have been super keen on sharing til now. Starting to think it might be a good idea. Maybe." He is literally looking everywhere but at Stone. "Sell me on it?"

Aw, look at that awkward kid. So cute. Stone probably makes it worse by leaning over and slinging an arm around Masaomi's shoulders in a hug. Thankfully (for Masaomi, anyway) it's brief. "Good to see you looking better. What am I selling you on? Talking about the dreams? Or sharing in general?"

Oh, yes. That immediately makes it worse, no matter how brief. Masaomi's laugh is awkward and a tad bit forced as he raises his own arm to gently push Stone's further away.

"C'mon, man. Save that for your girlfriend!" he chides. "I'm here to learn a valuable lesson on the importance of sharing info, not sharing body heat!"

"I don't have a girlfriend. I'm dead. And a hug is not just for sexual partners, kid, are you really serious right now?" He gives Masaomi's arm a shove, himself, but doesn't hug him again. Yet. He's lying in wait to surprise him later. "Human culture is crazy if you all think hugs are a problem between friends. Rosinante did the same damn thing when I tried to hug him."

Not only is Masaomi not particularly thrilled about hearing Rosinante's name, he's also thrown aback by how seriously Stone is replying to his throw-away evasion. Nobody has ever actually rebutted him with so many earnest words before.

"Look, I don't know what that guy said to you," he manages after a moment to chuckle and regroup. "But I have a reputation to uphold, y'know? I'm a cool, casual lady's man with a joke for every occasion! And just because that rep was completely totaled last time doesn't mean it still is! Hugs are kinda..." He scratches at the back of his neck. "Eheh."

Intimate. Vulnerable. Embarrassing.

More than he deserves.

"Humans are weird," Stone says with finality. He still has not given up on hugs, though, Masaomi. So beware. "All right, so you want to talk about things. You want to hear about my crazy dream from when the rest of you were fighting cranky spirits, or the time I died trying to fly out after the ferry? Or is there something you want to talk about?"

Well, Masaomi can't argue with that, so he doesn't. He just makes himself comfortable on his log, settling in for the long haul. "Let's start with the crazy dream and move on from there."

"All right. So it started us off on the shore of the lake, and there were boats all around. And actual fish in the lake," Stone says, looking out across the square, in the direction of the lake. "I caught one and ate it. Tasted like a regular fish, and everything. Something got us on one of the boats-- looked like the ferry, only smaller, and it was only holding building supplies, mostly out of metal."

It's beyond strange for Stone to begin his story this way. Here they are, sitting around a supernatural bonfire in a world of eternal night, and Stone is telling a story about a completely normal lake with a perfectly regular boat floating on it. Everything about this situation is backward, and that's almost funny. Before he can interrupt Stone's tale with the most inappropriate laughter possible, Masaomi shoves his face into his bent knees.

"...Continue."

Don't worry, Masaomi, it's going to get a lot less normal in a second. "So the boat moves out over the lake, and then dips down into this underwater tunnel. Thing. It's kind of dark and spooky and the light keeps flickering, and there's this thing swimming in the water, with lots of eyes. Then some very large claws reach down from the surface and try to grab us. I had to shift big and swat them away, then grab Eliot and Matt and dive with them."

Very slowly, as the story progresses, Masaomi raises his head again, his mouth slightly ajar. Stone has captivated his audience.

"Whatever it was, it was even bigger than me, by a lot-- which takes some doing," Stone says. "You've seen me in my bigger form, right?" Surely everyone has by now. He's not shy about using it. "So I have Matt and Eliot, and I dive, hoping this tunnel through the water goes somewhere. It turns out to go back up again, somehow or another, only there's this big building under the surface that's in the way. Big, but not as big as that thing with the claws, so I thought we could get in there and hide."

Masaomi is having trouble figuring out this story's unique physics. There seems to be a lot of diving down in order to rise up happening here, but then again, that's probably not something someone who is escaping from giant monster claws would stop to question. Especially when caught between a claw and a hard place.

"Like an undersea castle or something? Did'ja make it in?"

Well, it's a dream. And they were kind of on rails, and the dream sent them where it wanted them to do. Stone scratches his cheek thoughtfully. "We did. Wasn't much of a castle, though. More like a big cavernous hole with a lot of stairs in it. We only got about halfway down to the bottom before the whole thing turned into a grinder full of sharp metal teeth."

"...Ouch."

"Didn't actually hurt as much as you'd think, maybe because it basically woke us up," Stone muses. "It might just have been the thing the dream used to wake us up. I don't know how groundling dreams usually work, but it may have needed that?"

"That is definitely not an us thing," Masaomi is quick to clarify. He wishes he could take credit for something like that. "We're the morbid weirdos who decided that dying in your dream will kill you in real life, not wake you up. That's how you get Freddy Krueger."

"You'd probably be better off picking up a book on dream interpretation."

"Maybe it was dream magic, then. Eliot did say there was dream magic happening," Stone shrugs. "I'm not sure regular dream interpretation-- if that's actually a thing-- would help much when it's a dream made specific by spirits to tell us things. It's been pretty well proven, I think, that the things we saw in those dreams are at least partly real."

"Well..." Masaomi tilts his head back, eyes the topmost bonfire embers as if they'll magically have an answer for him. They don't. How lame. "I can definitely believe that there are monsters like that hiding around here somewhere, but I don't know. Everything sure was trying to eat you. Maybe the whole thing was just 'world eaters bad'?"

"It might have been a World Eater," Stone muses. "The big one with the claws, I mean. Or the spirits' understanding of them, anyway. The building that turned into teeth, I don't know, though." He shakes his head. "Anyway, that's the story of the dream. When I tried to follow the ferry out right afterwards, to see if the water-tunnel was still there, something killed me almost immediately."

Masaomi is quiet for several seconds.

"So... You did die for real when you died in the dream."

This is absolutely not the take-away he was supposed to get from this story.

"I died a week later, the two events weren't connected," Stone says, giving the side of Masaomi's head a light thwack with his palm. "Except for to warn everybody not to go that way, anyway."

Masaomi very nearly spills the contents of his mug, not because Stone wacks him but because he can't help but laugh when he does.

"Okay, okay, I get it!" he chuckles under his breath as he waves Stone's palm away. "I gotta admit, I was expecting something way different from those dreams though. If we're supposed to be learning something from these surreal nightmare missions, you'd think at least some of the material would make sense."

"You'd think. I think there's language barriers here, between us and the spirits." Stone shakes his head. "Not just that we use words and they sing. Different species think in different ways. They probably think we're being very stupid."

He snorts dryly. "Sounds kinda like a teacher talking to their students."

INTRO LOG: FEBRUARY

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