logsinthenight | 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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Gregor winces a bit in sympathy. At least Joss wasn't present for his untimely (or more than timely, if he's honest) death. He's not sure what that would've done. Given Joss a feeling of responsibility, probably. As if he doesn't have enough survivor's guilt.

"Joss is a strong kid. He's a survivor." Gregor pauses. "Though he could stand to be a bit more selfish."

Maybe that's the thing that worries him the most, that Joss will keep giving until he's got nothing left. Take a bullet for someone else. Though if that's how he really wants to live his life... Gregor can acknowledge the choice without agreeing with it. They did that a lot with each other.

He sighs. "I guess all we can do now is hope that what we gave them was enough."

"Yeah." That's something Rosinante can surely agree to. He did everything he could for Law to make sure he would get off that island and cure himself. If it didn't work, then... at least he tried. He couldn't forgive himself if he hadn't tried his hardest and if his hardest wasn't enough then maybe that's just how life is sometimes.

But he has a lot of hope. Faith, really. In Law, individually, and not just in the mysterious clan he belonged to, but maybe a little of that too. Maybe he just wants it to mean something, in case it helps.

"Your kid, Joss... He just turned up one day?" he asks. He can't help but be curious how much else they have in common.

"Hm. Not exactly." As a matter of fact, not at all. Not remotely.

"I killed his father." He says it plainly, without any emotion either way. He wasn't really planning to out himself so quickly, but they're on the topic, and this is an important piece of the picture. It wasn't a secret between he and Joss. Of course, it wasn't anything they really spoke about either, because Joss couldn't bring himself to actually say he was grateful for something like that, and Gregor wouldn't have been able to really say you're welcome. Regardless of whether or not those feelings were there, it felt wrong to give them words.

"Real piece of work, that one. The situation was complicated, as such situations tend to be, but the bottom line is that he had to be stopped and didn't give anyone much of a choice about the how. Wanted to take everyone else down with him, too, and he succeeded, except for one."

He'll let Rosinante fill in the blanks. He seems like a bright enough guy. Though hopefully he doesn't read too much into the whole murder thing. For all Rosinante knows, this could've been a one-off thing. Though it's probably kind of obvious that it wasn't.

Doesn't sound like a one-off thing at all. People don't talk about killing others that casually if it's the only person they've had to kill. But it also sounds like there was plenty of strong reasoning behind it, so he doesn't show even the slightest indication that he's bothered by this. The fact is, sometimes people need to be dealt with and while he'd prefer imprisonment for dangerous criminals, sometimes death is the quickest way to keep things from spiraling out of control. It's just too merciful for some people. Like most Marines, he's been taught that punishment is best given in the form of long, arduous sentences so that criminals really feel the weight of their crimes.

The ease with which he takes this statement probably says plenty about him too, but he'll allow that.

"Probably best you got the kid out of there, then. What was his father up to?" Yeah, he's going to push, because "it's complicated" is never a satisfying answer.

Eh, sometimes you've just got to cram all of that weight into a few moments and be done with it. Besides, there isn't a prison system for the sort of people he deals with. Would be sort of impossible, probably. Imagine trying to keep a person behind bars who can open locks without touching them, or worse.

In this specific case, much worse.

"Up to is an odd way to put it." And yes, Rosinante taking murder in stride does say quite a bit about him. But hey, that just puts them on a more level playing field here.

"He was, you might say, a very persuasive person. He could put ideas in peoples' heads and make them seem perfectly rational, even if they were anything but." Gregor means this in the most literal sense, but the turn of phrase is common enough to slide past, maybe. "He'd started an extremist religious sect. A cult, if you're familiar with the term. He started to gain an uncomfortable amount of followers, and things got a bit out of hand."

It's a better answer than it's complicated, at least. Hopefully it's enough this time.

There's starting a cult, and then there's having some sort of mildly psychic ability to suggest things to people and have them stick. Making people think their ideas are their own when they're entirely not. It's a concept he can grasp even if it's not a power he's ever seen - and in fact he can imagine that sort of power functioning as a devil fruit, but a very, very powerful one. A terrifying one.

"A cult controlled by one man, able to direct them at his will. I can see how that kind of power could be abused," he says. It's the sort of power that would in fact make such a person awfully hard to contain if Gregor's world doesn't have the tools to negate such abilities, the way the Marines do with seastone to disable their prisoners.

Of course, he does know to take some of this with a grain of salt. People can tell stories here. He certainly has. Odd story to make up in order to justify a man's death, though, which suggests there's probably truth to it.

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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