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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I guess so. But I always liked adventure stories. Used to read a lot of pretty cheesy ones when I was a kid. "Detective Percival" and the "Dogs of the Sea" series and all that kinda stuff.

[Which, hm. Sora probably has never heard of those, but oh well.]

And the ones you and some of the others tell are real, so that's even better. Your worlds are so strange.

[Says the ten foot tall guy who gained powers from eating a fruit.]

[ Sora has never heard of those indeed, but his first life was filled with those kinds of stories. He'd never really read them for himself! It was always Riku or Kairi calling him a dummy for not reading the same books they did, then filling him in, acting them out. He liked the stories better like that. They always seemed so excited to tell him what happened. ]

Soldat keeps calling my world "weird". They're right.

[ Sora smiles. Keys and princesses and dragons and space ships and pirates and monsters and stars. He wouldn't believe any of it if they weren't what made him real. ]

Then again, isn't that, like... what's the word? [ The word is "relative". He's not going to find it. ] Something that means, like. If you live one place all your life, everything else is always gonna seem weird. And there's always something weirder whenever you go someplace else.

Sure. I've seen it plenty of times in my own world anyway. In a way, each island is like its own world. Especially in the Grand Line, where you can go from spring on one island to winter on another and only a couple days of sailing in between.

[Which is still weird, he knows it, but also he's known it for so long that he just accepts it. So yeah, complete agreement.]

Right! Yeah, traveling and seeing other worlds was like that. I guess the only things would be different would be, like, biology.

[ As long as he finds someone to befriend, a world is a world is a world. Still fascinating, still exciting, but what's the difference between traveling the seas and the stars besides the novelty of the journey? ]

There's that feeling of like, you know, you're probably the first visitor from that far away they've had ever, and everything's new, and they have their own celebrations and problems and stuff. [ Was it like that on the Grand Line? Where did Rosinante go? Big Sora Questions here. ]

I didn't see that as often. Most of the places I sailed to were world government member nations. But they still had their own cultures, for the most part. Always fun to see how different people talked and dressed, or what the local alcohol was.

[He smiles at that last bit, as if it's a particularly pleasing reason to visit. Which isn't to say he didn't enjoy finding out what the various food and drinks were, but while most Marines probably got to disembark and find somewhere to relax and enjoy their stays while cargo was transferred and supply lines maintained, he never really got to have that sort of trip too often.

But it's what they all talked about. He can fake it. Now is not the time - never is the time - to talk instead about being dropped off from much smaller ships and left for months to map out drug and slave trade networks, money laundering operations and scams, or any of the other number of things he'd found some places to partake in.]

Yeah? Did you have a favorite?

[ Not at aaall suspecting that he might get stonewalled on this answer. After all, people usually like talking about wonderful things they've seen or experienced on their journeys, right? Sora has a whole ton, and probably would toss out three favorites if prompted. He assumes most people are the same way. ]

Never was good at picking favorites. Besides, I think most of the ones that would've been my favorite were places I never got to go. There's a story about an island called Zou that's probably real. The island is actually a giant elephant that slowly walks through the ocean on long legs, and has an entire civilization on its back. Always sounded magical to me.

[And now he never gets to see it. Dressrosa, of course, is another obvious similar choice - a place he only knows from secondhand information. It sounds beautiful. He hopes it can stay that way.]

[ Sora does a double take. Dude, what? ] So that's probably real, and there's no magic where you're from? [ Sora is... pretty sure? That he knows what can acceptably fall within the boundaries of science and within the boundaries of magic? ] ... Must be a really big elephant. Or reaaaaally long legs.

Enormous, yeah. I mean, it's the size of a whole island. Bet it's the biggest living creature in the world.

[And they have some very large ones. Such as:]

I also know for a fact there's an island of giants, called Elbaf. Never been there either, but I know giants are something like twenty times my height, so I guess that's why it's not so hard for me to believe there's an island-sized elephant.

And all of this is on the same world?

[ Sora blinks at him a couple of times, then shakes his head, grinning. ]

And all without magic, huh. What wouldn't I give to have stories about your world growing up. [ The kind of thing that you wouldn't really appreciate if you were too close to see how weird and cool it was. Well... Riku was kind of like that, too. Speaking of... ]

You traveled around a lot, right? With the Marines? Is that something you wanted to do? Explore?

[Big world, lots of separate islands, what can he say. The ocean holds its share of mysteries and then some. It probably sounds idyllic and exciting to someone who never had to also survive through the hardships that come along with living there. For every peaceful, colorful village, there's someone looking to profit off its people's backs.]

Wouldn't say it was my goal in joining up, but yeah, I came to love it. Sailing, itself, that's something I always enjoyed. When you catch the wind just right and cut straight through the waves... Yeah.

[Satisfying. Can't do it here, though. Beacon and its darkness aren't entirely joyless but it's kind of crushing to be stuck here on land for months on end.]

[ Well, if Rosinante is comfortable with Sora having his fantasies about that world of his, Sora's going to continue having them. It's not like him to try and push for the darkness and pain until there really isn't much other choice. This does mean Sora has a vague uneasiness when it comes to his image of Rosinante, something that he can't really quantify because he hasn't had a moment or need to sit down and put the pieces together, but that doesn't mean he'll stop liking or trusting him until it becomes too big of a problem for even him to ignore. He isn't really one to think of prying until then.

He doesn't need a reason to continue to trust others. He just does. His feelings about it can be worked out later. ]

I get that. All that water, and air, and sun. [ Man, he misses the sun. ] I keep getting these big worlds in these memories, big enough to explore a little? If I get any memories of my islands or the Caribbean back, I'll let you know. If it's the Caribbean, you'll have to get used to running around with pirates, though.

Heh. I think I'll be able to put up with some for the sake of the memory.

[Though, that does raise a question. A lighthearted one, for it's not like he's about to interrogate people here, there's just no point to it.]

What were you up to, running around with pirates?

[ So being a marine in Rosi's world is sort of being like a water cop. Sora now has a place for his unease and will be even less willing to actually analyze what's up with him. Rosi's military. A cop. Sora... has nothing against cops personally, but. Three years changed him, man. ]

Tryna save the world. [ Sora looks up at the aurora for a moment, shakes his head and laughs. ] Well, I was trying to save the world. Jack was trying not to die. Get his Pearl back. Avoid Davy Jones.

Jack being a pirate, I take it. How'd that happen? You sailing with a pirate crew, I mean, in order to save the world.

[Pirates don't save much, in his experience. Their "freedom" means anarchy and selfishness. Not the sort of people who typically do selfless things unless the benefit is their continued survival and ability to loot people who can't protect themselves. But he'll humor Sora for the sake of hearing the full story.]

[ Lord, the things Sora knows about pirates. He puts his hands behind his head and hums, thinking back to what he remembers about Jack and Will and Elizabeth. It's really a lot, comparatively. ]

It all kind of started with a rescue mission? There was this guy, Will, who was trying to rescue someone important to him from a bunch of pirates. [ Sora nods. ] That's when we met Jack, who was going to steal a ship to get out of town. Turns out that Elizabeth - the girl Will was trying to rescue - was aboard the Pearl, Jack's old ship, and the pirates who kidnapped her were Jack's old crew. They marooned him a long time ago and stole his ship. Jack owed Will a favor, and he was alone, so he needed a crew. [ Sora grins. ] And... after that we were sort of stuck with each other. Jack, Will, and Elizabeth helped out when stuff from off-world started affecting their world. We couldn't explain everything, there was a - a rule? Something about the world order. They did their best, though.

Huh. Couldn't tell them like, if you told them what had happened, it'd make things worse, I guess?

[Sounds like something out of a fantasy story and not something real, but he gets that feeling about a lot of things these people tell him, so he's plenty used to it by now. Magic? Sure. Angels and demons? Okay. Why not. This slots right in.]

Don't worry, you don't need to answer that. Doesn't sound too bad anyway, as far as makeshift pirate crews go. How long were you with them?

[ He frowns, shutting his eyes so, so tight... but opens his eyes, shaking his head. ] Thanks. [ It really is a relief. He doesn't remember what importance the secrecy had at all. ]

I... wanna say it was a while. We ended up going back, um. At least a couple of times? [ He frowns. ] I can't say for sure we ended up staying for more than a week at a time, but the Caribbean was bigger than most worlds. There - there was a map, I had a ship. Lots of little islands, we weren't allowed to fly to them. We had to have spent at least a month over the course of, um... a year? Exploring them all. [ He doesn't know for sure, but context clues seem to fit that into the timeline pretty well. ]

[He shrugs. A month isn't long, especially in and out like that, suggesting he was right in not judging too hard. Sora just visited, it wasn't like he was joyously pillaging with them over a span of months or something like that.]

Guess I'll have to keep looking for opals, then. Maybe I'll find one like that. Would be nice to see the ocean again.

[ Thank god Sora doesn't remember the part where he absolutely blew up a ship filled with royal navy seamen or else he'd be WAY more hesitant to share all this! ]

Yeah! Mine all look the same - the bright red ones with clouds inside. [ Sora likes them a lot. Kind of look like a sunset on the sea. ]

I've been a lot of places, but hopefully it'll turn up. If you end up finding the Caribbean or my island, have fun in there!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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