logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

characters: everyone.
location: the path from downtown beacon to the harbor; all over town.
date/time: february 16-21.
content: the forest spirits send off their friends to join the aurora. memory opals drop from the eerie green lights above.
warnings: n/a.

i had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.

For most of the day on February 16, all of the town's forest spirits can be found along the stretch of road between downtown and the harbor, clearly setting up for, uh, something. They're piling snow onto the pathway, creating a miles long sled trail that starts outside the Landmark Inn and ends at the very end of the harbor's dock. Not only that, but the forest spirits are also not super willing to explain what they're up to! They're busy, you lantern-havers.

By the time evening rolls around, the spirits have set up wooden railings alongside the snowy path, as well as a warming tent, hot chocolate booth, and announcer stand outside of the Landmark. Oh, and a starting banner for the race! It's dogsled time!

Throughout the event, Beacon's downtown and harbor areas will be completely overrun with forest spirits, all there to bear witness to this holiday celebration—this holiday is for them, though, not you weirdos with your naked faces. Point is, none of the spirits will be hostile at this time! They're more interested in interacting with each other than with Beacon's residents, though if pressed, a kind spirit might be willing to explain what's going on:

The aurora arrives in Beacon for about a week each year, and the forest spirits believe it to be "friends in the sky". The lights are old friends of theirs, it seems! And each night while the aurora shines above the town, the forest spirits send off a handful of friends to join the aurora! The spirits ready to join the aurora build sleds of their own and assemble mighty sled teams, sometimes comprised of dog spirits and sometimes... other stuff. Then, when the aurora is at its peak in the wee hours of the night, the sled teams will ride off one by one, racing down the snow-covered path all the way down to the harbor, where they'll finally rocket off the dock and out over the lake, picking up more and more speed as each team gallops wildly over the water before arcing up into the sky. Once the spirits are barely a speck, they'll hit the aurora and burst into a shower of light. Beautiful stuff!

See, since the aurora is made of light, forest spirits launched into it are killed on impact! Isn't that wonderful! The forest spirits seem to think so! What is death to a dead thing!

All of this information can be learned through handwaved/played-led interactions with the forest spirits during the event. They'll all be focused on saying goodbye to their friends and cheering them on as they stream through the sky, but they're happy to welcome lantern-havers to join in the celebrations. The hot chocolate is free and only tastes a little bit like mud, so. Enjoy!

•••
For the entire duration of the event, the aurora will dance in beautiful silence overhead, lighting up the whole town with its eerie green glow. Every so often, handfuls of opals will rain down like meteorites from the lights above, and these opals each contain the memory of someone currently in Beacon! They can be found all over town, landing on paths and atop buildings and maybe even rocketing straight through your ceiling to crash into your living room. Perhaps a forest spirit decided to hide some shiny rocks in your cereal box or under your pillow... Better hope the Postmaster General doesn't find your opals before you do, though. That spirits sure does love their rocks. Point is, who knows where the opals might turn up?

On that note, if you signed up for a random event, we'll be RNGing characters to receive these random events throughout the event! The event may happen in response to a toplevel on this event log, or we might turn up in your IC inbox... 👀 These events will be entirely random, meaning we could dole out any number of them at any time, so it'll be a fun surprise for all of us.

If you missed signups and would still like to toss your name in the ring, go right ahead! Signups will remain open throughout the event, though we can't promise everyone who signs up will get something.

And finally... Each day, we'll post a list of the forest spirits joining the aurora! What, did you want to know in advance? The forest spirits have never been a particularly organized bunch, so they're winging this—which means more surprises for you. :)

Enjoy the races and the lights and the opals, residents of Beacon, and remember: WHAT IS DEATH TO A DEAD THING!

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[He waits to open the little paper parcel, letting Kuai go first. The mention of his brother makes him hesitant, although thankfully Kuai is one of the few who already knows some of their complicated relationship. It doesn't make Rosinante more likely to want to talk about any of it, but should he break down crying or end up wanting to punch something, at least the Grandmaster has seen some of that before and was gracious enough about it.

Once Kuai speaks, Rosinante nods, then takes his turn. Ridiculous sounds okay to him. Better than -

Yeah. Better than this. Better than a memory that gives away far more about himself than he's comfortable with. Hopefully Kuai is the only one who found this one, or one from around its time. It doesn't floor him the way some do, but he narrows his eyes and tucks the opal back into the paper pouch, and slips it into the toolbox which he latches shut. That's enough of that.]

In yours... what is that? What are you seeing? It looks so strange. I don't even know how to put it into words.

Hm, it's a display. The best way to explain it is like our tablets, but analyzing everything at once. That's how I saw for a time.

[Well, this is awkward. There's really no good way to say "I used to be a robot." without it sounding very, very strange and raising far more questions than it solved. It had taken a very long time to explain to M.K. when he'd tried, and he's fairly certain that he hadn't believed him.]

How much technology do you have in your world?

[Because he recalls that very dead snail from their first meeting and the claim that it was somehow a 'phone'.]

How much?

[No, he knows what Kuai is trying to ask, probably. It's just awkwardly-worded. He thinks a moment, trying to work out how to answer.]

I don't see robots like Daylight ever in person but I'm sure they exist. But we have the snail phones, and there are people with metal prosthetics that are as functional as flesh limbs. I know there has been government research into modification of lineage factors. But - on a day to day basis, nobody actually sees much of any of that. Most people live very simple lives.

[He looks at Kuai with a shrug. Did that answer his question at all?]

[That answered enough to let him know that his explanation is going to have to be pretty basic and not get into how Sektor's cyberization plan worked.

Now. How to phrase this. Because he's well aware how it's going to sound. Unfortunately not only is Kuai very bad at lying, he's also pretty bad at being anything but blunt and honest.]

I was turned into a robot. For a time.

[At least he says it with a straight face, so hopefully Rosinante doesn't think he's joking.]

The Grandmaster twice prior to me had a plan to improve the clan, by removing weakness. And to him weakness was humanity, free will. What you saw was after the slaving protocols were removed and I was 'waking up' for the first time.

[This is all so completely strange that he just. Looks at Kuai for a second. Squints, even, trying to make some sense of it, but that's a real challenge.

It's not that he thinks Kuai is lying, just what the actual hell, man.]

So when you say you were turned into a robot - you had a metal body? Or more like a cyborg, where they simply made... changes?

[The latter is far easier to comprehend than a person becoming a robot entirely, and then not being one later. Is Kuai a cyborg now?]

A metal body. Heavy. Bulky. Made a constant whirring sound that was incredibly distracting.

[Leave it to Kuai to be more upset about the quality of his robot body than the fact he was a robot to begin with. It wasn't actually that bad compared to some of the subsequent things that happened to him. Also he could turn his hearing and vision off when Johnny Cage talked too much.]

The process ripped my soul from my body and into the cybernetic one. It wasn't pleasant.

[Rosinante would be a lot more skeptical if their souls weren't separate from their bodies here. He's still frowning about this, though. It's bizarre and also sounds awful. After a moment of thought, he speaks.]

So your world had technology somewhat like these lanterns. Before coming here, I wasn't even sure that souls were real. So... What happened to cause those "slaving protocols" to be undone?

It's some sort of sorcery mixed with technology, but yes, it would be similar to the lanterns.

[He'd had that uncomfortable thought before. It was a little too familiar. Shang Tsung kept souls in a well, why not a lantern?]

It's a physical device that can be ripped out. Kabal and Jax were able to knock me out and remove it. A minor miracle that Kabal didn't accidentally slice me in half in the process, he's not known for his delicacy.

[Also not known for being helpful in any way. They luckily caught him on one of those rare days he was feeling charitable and bored.]

I'm grateful to them, otherwise I would have been stuck obeying the Grandmaster's will until I was destroyed.

[Which would have taken a while. He's a badass fighter, but he was extra terrifying with the strength to punch someone through a wall.]

Ah.

[Finally! An explanation to a problem like this one that he can understand intuitively! Here he was expecting some complex politics, some convoluted reasoning for why this switch had to be flipped that way, but no. Rip the thing out.]

How many more were there like you?

[Robots are cool. Robot armies doing one person's bidding, made up of the enslaved souls of honorable warriors like Kuai? That's the kind of thing he knows some leaders surely dream about, and the exact kind of thing they should never have.]

My entire clan. So a few hundred. They were all destroyed. After I was .. reprogrammed, Sektor, the one who did this, changed how the protocols were installed. They weren't a physical object that could be pulled out anymore and once overridden it would cause the cybernetic body to self-destruct.

There's only one left, Cyrax. He was the last with a physical slaving unit and the only one I could save. But he did not want to live as a robot, so he's currently shut-down.

He's the last of my clan, and would be the next Grandmaster now that I'm dead. But no one knows how to wake him up except me. And he did not want that anyway.

[Wow. Here he had thought he had learned a fair amount about Kuai's history and the sort of battles he'd had to fight, but then he goes and throws this into the mix. What a strange and terrible world to live in, and what a hard time those people must be having with a leader like him gone.]

That must have been horrifying. I know for a while you said you weren't even aware, but... to come out of that and realize what had happened.

Unfortunately, I have had worse.

I was not aware of what I was doing, but I remembered once I was awake. Like it was a dream I had no control over. It's worse to not remember, then you forever think about what might have happened.

[Like when he was possessed with the Kamidogu and has no idea what he did. Only the aftermath of all the people he killed, the town he destroyed.]

In yours, meeting your brother again... You were on good terms at some point.

[Kuai's not connecting the pieces of why he ended up killing him.]

[Ah, damnit, Kuai. Bringing them back around to him and his own opal. Fair's fair, except for when it comes to himself.

His expression shifts subtly - an intentional, careful neutral that might be hard to distinguish from an actual disinterest in the topic.]

Haven't been on good terms since we were kids. What you saw in that memory wasn't us on good terms.

Hm.

[Well that sure doesn't seem like what he saw. Very suspicious.]

And you were reuniting?

[Kuai remembers the content, it seems, without the context. His own thoughts and emotions must not have sunk in memorably for him. That's good - that's actually an immense relief. He's just not comfortable with sharing so much.]

Well... Yes, but any good will he ever felt toward me was simply because he thought he could use me and my presumed support to his benefit.

[Maybe a far more cynical take than necessary. Doflamingo had genuinely been glad to see him return, and he knows it. He just can't help but be bitter about everything now.]

[The underhanded manipulation of their meeting is totally lost on Kuai. He saw only two people reuniting after a long while and not knowing what to say to each other. Perhaps they had fought long ago, something was off about it, but being someone unused to subterfuge he often can't spot it.]

I see.

Did whatever you were planning work? The reason for making your presence known to him.

[He might not have been able to grasp what was going on fully, but he understood enough to know there was a purpose for being there beyond a reunion between two brothers.]

[Did it work, ultimately? He has to actually think on that. So much of what he had been trying to do for those long years was erased in a moment by Vergo. But enough got back to Sengoku, to Tsuru who hunted his brother ruthlessly with the intel on his location.

Besides, yes. He did infiltrate the group for years. Clearly, it worked and he's being as hard on himself as he always does. He levels his eyes with Kuai's, then nods slowly.]

My brother is a criminal. He made me his second-in-command when I returned to his side. I'd say it worked better than I had expected.

I'm sorry you had to do that. It should not be that way between siblings.

[He knows that far too well with his own. But Rosinante was far stronger than Kuai, he didn't think he could lie to his brother even now. Even with all he'd done and the hatred between them. Somehow, Kuai would find a way to redeem him.]

You did what you thought was right though, and that's far more than most. Especially under such circumstances.

I had to. I was the only one who could have.

[The only one able to worm his way in, for Doflamingo would have been far more suspicious of anyone else in the entire world. It was hard, yes, but not always for the reasons Kuai implies - for while he does still harbor some tiny amount of love for his brother, it's for the boy he survived with and not the horror he became soon after. Nostalgia, not true affection.]

But now I'm here. So I don't know they'll do.

And now we have nothing but time to dwell on the past. Especially with situations like this that continually remind us of who we were, what we lost.

Along with giving us views into others' as well.

[Views that he would rather not have. But if nothing else he can't deny he's actually learning a lot more about the people he's trapped with.]

How many of these stones have you found?

Haven't kept count. A few. Even some of my own.

[He's found twelve stones. Some duplicates. Most he ended up handing back despite not originally intending to, but most didn't reveal secrets worth filing for the long term. With no benefit in keeping them, it seemed more suitable to give them back. The few he retained are sorted in his box and will be held more securely once he returns to The Invincible.]

How about you?

I've found none of my own, which I think is strange. But I've only gathered a few so far. One of which fell out of the roof of the Invincible and hit me.

[And also happened to be the most horrific of any he found. Maybe there's something to that.]

I'd hoped perhaps someone would find one of mine that wasn't terrible. But if they have, they haven't returned it.

Well, I'll let you know if I manage to.

[He lights a cigarette on his lantern, then stands from the crouch he'd adopted to keep Kuai from having to crane his neck too hard. He has more stones to search for and this seems as good a moment as any to break away from having to discuss his own memory farther. It seems Kuai is content with the minimal explanation he'd gotten and Rosinante is fine with keeping it that way.]

Message me if you find any more of mine, as well. I'd like to make sure the spirits don't end up with them.

[he nods, turning to go.]

Let me know should you find any belonging to the spirits themselves. That might prove most informative.

I've been hoping to, but no luck yet. I'll let you know.

[Off to hunt stones, then. Later, dude.]

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EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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