INTRO LOG: AUGUST

[nextnightmods]

INTRO LOG: AUGUST
DARK, DARK, DARK

characters: everyone.
location: all over beacon!
date/time: the first part of august.
content: a few new faces, the teleporter is up to old tricks, and overall just loving not being trapped in an underwater science station right about now.
warnings: n/a.

welcome to beacon.

The first thing you're aware of as you come to is the glow of a lantern, just within reach. Hazily, you start to recall the events leading up to your arrival. You died, somehow, but how does that equate to you being wherever you are?

The second thing you're aware of is that you're being handed a slice of cherry pie by a six-limbed masked creature with a hairnet. Looking around, you find yourself inside a school cafeteria. The school looks to be in decent condition, despite being dark and clearly abandoned - except by whatever this creature is. Stick around long enough and they will also serve some chicken nuggets and a box of milk. Wander a bit, and you may find a memorial wall for dozens of unfamiliar names and faces. Where is this?

A few answers can be found if you pick up and look through the tablet that's settled right beside the lantern. Some of the information is a little out of date at this point, but the most important details are still there: yes, you're really dead, keep your lantern close, and watch out for the spirits. You might notice mention of a ferry, but that's odd, especially if you're nowhere near the lake...

Leaving where you are and using the provided map on the tablet will help you find your way to town, and along the way you might find some out of place items, like crates of food or toiletries or clothing. Feel free to grab what you find as you make your way there, your new neighbors are sure to appreciate it.

Luckily for all the newcomers, the tablet 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. It's still a little messed up (maybe someone might want to record a new message?), it has plenty of important information to share. Newcomers can always check out the weekly bulletins and the records that were thankfully saved from the bad storm a few months ago. If that's not enough, there's many long-time residents of Beacon that will be happy to share how things go around here. If not in person, network works too.

hide and seek.

The teleporter repair team has been hard at work, and their hard work has paid off. Items have arrived in Beacon aplenty! Only, the aiming protocol is still a little off and it's still all over. Whoops. While anyone with a specific request will find a spirit guide to help them find their wares, everything and anything else is fair game for a little fun.

The spirits are in a playful mood, and have taken the liberty of locating all these lost sundries and supplies. And of course, after that, they chose to hide them around town. Spirits vary from great at hiding things (lining a hollowed out trunk with swim trunks) to downright terrible (is it really "hiding" that sheet of plywood when you put it behind a streetlight that is smaller than it is?), though they seem to enjoy the experience either way.

Need something in particular and don't know where to start? Don't worry, spirits will be happy to give hints. If you can understand their esoteric forms of communication, that is. Others give away the game in the fact they hide with the items themselves, and find the prank so hilarious that little snuffles and giggles are an easy clue to the stowed stash. If characters play along long enough, the spirits will give up the game and will show the poor things with no seeking skills what they've hidden. Still, why not have a little fun with it? The spirits sure are!

ooc.

Hey there, wonderful players, and welcome to The Next Night! We're so glad to have you with us, both new and old. For a run-down on what's upcoming in August, please see the August gameplan, or check the calendar for a quick overview!

As a reminder, things like newcomer arrivals, item deliveries, and lantern repair all depend on the help of the characters in the game! If your character would be interested in assisting with the equipment at Dr. Solis' Lab in any way, please let us know!

DELIVERIES

The newly ported in items have arrived, but as in July, they're still kind of everywhere. Learning to use this portal technology is hard, and more hands helping out are always appreciated! As mentioned above, the spirits will readily help find people's personal requests, but the general resupplies? Guess you'd better be willing to play the spirits' latest little game. The following can be found, one way or another:

• The monthly store restock, which provides enough food, general sundry items, and basic supplies to comfortably last the group a month. You can check what kind of items to expect in a monthly restock here.


• For Elektra Natchios: several slightly oversized t-shirts and sweatpants made of comfortable materials, a bottle of black nail polish (chip resistant), a bottle of whiskey with a slight odor of sewer when the bottle is opened (though it tastes fine), and a teddy bear.


• For Rosinante Donquixote: 4 boxes each (25 rounds per box) of shotgun and flintlock pistol ammo, except in every box two of the rounds have been replaced with nerf darts that some poor kids probably lost long ago.


• For Fitz Kreiner: A limited set of lockpicking tools and a set of locks to practice on, and some paper umbrellas which may require some disassembly before they can be used.


• For Matt Murdock: an assortment of 14 lovely rings (not all pictured here) as well as 6 rings to share with his friends!

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

QUICKNAV
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Comments

[theimpatientone]

"Poetry?"

Merwen positively beams at him. "That is a compliment. I am a wordweaver, but poetry and song is not the sort of speaking I typically do. I never thought I shared that particular talent. Thank you, very much."

It might just be translation errors. She knows that. It's still nice to hear.

[callada]

"Yeah. If you haven't met Cao Pi yet, you might want to. He's not hard too find, mostly hangs out in The Invincible. He's an emperor, or was, but he's a poet also."

And a challenging person to talk to. Rosinante has come to respect him quite a lot, but that doesn't mean they agree all the time. The man is a good bit more callous than he'd like to see in most people, but maybe that's the sort of thing that becomes necessary when you rule an entire continent - his own world's version of ruling an entire sea, Rosinante supposes. It's good, though, that they can debate their differences of opinion and come out not hating each other for them.

[worthallthis]

Water person, right. "Don't swim in the river, whatever you do," Soldat warns, not wanting her to get any ideas. "It's too fast. Much faster than it looks. The bay is safe enough if you want to swim. The dragon goes out in it all the time. He is also very big, though, might just be scaring off any trouble."

[theimpatientone]

"I have not yet shared speech with him. Although, please, I do not know this word 'emperor.'" She tilts her head thoughtfully. "It is his profession, I assume?"

Though, aren't all people multiple things? She takes on many roles, many tasks. She is what is needed. Maybe that's a bigger deal for an emperor, whatever that is.

[theimpatientone]

"Hidden currents, is it? Very well. I know enough to not swim when the sea swallows, and whatever half-life this is, I won't throw my life away needlessly. The bay will be pleasant enough."

Merwen muses on this for a moment, then asks, "Is the dragon a threat?"

[bleedingsteel]

If that suits her, then it's none of his business. Societal norms feel quite silly in a place where everybody is dead.

"A pleasure, Miss Merwen. My name is Danse." His hands are full of tools and pieces, otherwise he might offer her a handshake. "I suppose the most prominent question would be whether or not you're... human."

[theimpatientone]

Well, not the first time she's had that question, even before she came here.

"I am," Merwen says. "Despite our differences, in all likelihood we share ancestry, far enough back. I am from Shora, however, and our great-great-grandmothers and further back, who I must imagine were similar enough to you, life-shaped their daughters into new shapes that would suit life on Shora better."

She spreads her hand for him to see. The thin skin of the webbing is slightly translucent and she has no nails, but she also has five fingers jointed just the way a typical standard Earth-human hand ought to be, even if all the bones are just a bit longer than might be considered "normal."

"On the chromosomal level, we share much."

[bleedingsteel]

There's a lot to process there. Shora. Life-shaping. Webbing and scales and chromosomes, and it's all undercut by the voice in his head that protests. We don't share anything. I'm not human.

He has yet to admit that to anyone here, and swallows down the urge to do it now. Instead, he frantically looks for some other tack for the conversation to take.

"What is Shora? Another planet?" That would explain everything.

[callada]

Doesn't know the word emperor, huh? Rosinante frowns a little, but figures it just didn't translate right.

"A ruler. Like a king or queen, but of many countries all at once," he tries again. "Head of a huge government overseeing hundreds of thousands of people."

The number is a complete guess. Maybe it's more than that, come to think of it, since they have so much land on that world given what he's heard about it. Doesn't really matter, anyway, since it's not like anyone's going to win contests here for how many people they used to command when they were alive.

[theimpatientone]

"It is. Shora is our world and the sea itself, the sister world to Valedon." It's... a pretty safe assumption that he wouldn't know Valedon, either, but you never know. "Both were settled during the old empire of humanity, long ago."

There's no particular reverence or awe in her voice when she mentions the old empire. They are a fact recorded in history, not myth or legend.

[theimpatientone]

Merwen frowns; this is an alien concept. Oh, she knows of it, but that's not the same as understanding it. "The Valans have their High Protector, and their Torran Patriarch." She says these titles with the precision of someone trying to correctly say a foreign word that they find difficult. "I suppose it is like that?"

[callada]

"Maybe. I'm not sure what those are myself," he says with a shrug. "But they sound like they could be right. Here, he's no emperor anyway, but he does help lead, especially when there's an emergency. Keeps track of who's where, what resources we have, makes sure information gets circulated to everyone after something happens."

[bleedingsteel]

Okay. So she's an alien. He can wrap his head around that one, without needing to get too deep in the human ancestry thing.

"I can't say that I've ever met anyone not from the planet Earth before." At least, not explicitly not from Earth. He hasn't exactly been questioning the few people he's run into.

"So your kind is adapted to more easily live in the water, then? That would be useful, in a place where the water is accessible and clean."

[worthallthis]

"Nah. Not unless you're afraid of getting splashed. He's one of us. Another person who died and was remade here. He died of old age-- think he's the only one here who did." Which is really kind of impressive, that of the dozens of people who have come through Beacon in the time Soldat's been here, not a single one of them besides Stone has died of natural causes.

[theimpatientone]

"Well," she says, "I have never spoken with an emperor, nor anyone else who 'ruled.' Only those who felt that they 'were ruled,' as though any relationship can exist only in one direction." She clucks her tongue disapprovingly. "Valan words for Valan concepts, although evidently they go beyond the people of Valedon."

[callada]

"No rulers where you're from, but you must have some sort of leadership, right? A council, or something like it?"

Because like all good Marines, he knows it to be fact that without order and structure, civilizations fall apart. Anarchy is the way of pirates and that's why they're such a hazard to society. Yes, he realizes too there's more nuance to it than that, but outside of tiny settlements like Beacon here, it matches with his experience pretty well.

[theimpatientone]

"We have Gatherings where we decide what is best to do, but all sisters are welcome at a Gathering. No one is first among the sisters of a Gathering." Merwen shakes her head, faintly disbelieving, with a lazy shrug of one shoulder. "If one's voice carries more weight, then it is likely she has earned that through her wisdom or insight. We share our conclusions to other rafts for them to consider. Serious disagreements may take many Gatherings to resolve, but those are rare."

[callada]

"Sounds peaceful," he decides after a moment of thought. Sounds maybe too good to be true, from what he knows of people, but the idealist in him wishes it were as easy as she makes it sound because that's how it should be.

"I wish that sort of thing was more common. I guess that's why you want to talk to the green-eyes, if that's the sort of thing you're used to."

[theimpatientone]

"I can share understanding. I was a child when the first Valans arrived on Shora. It changed a great deal about our perspective."

She pauses a moment, thinking about his choice of words. "To specify that the water must be accessible and clean implies that you know of a situation where it is not. What sort of world are you from?"

[theimpatientone]

"A strange coincidence, if we've nearly all had sudden or traumatic deaths," Merwen points out. "Still, I look forward to sharing meeting with him. I have wondered about the possibility of a soul within a creature who is not human, and certainly I am not the only one to imagine it. To meet such a sister would be to share much joy."

She's honestly not entirely sure what to expect, honestly.

[theimpatientone]

"It is peaceful. We are happy." Merwen sighs a little wistfully. "And we have sacrificed much to keep it. With so many souls waiting to be reborn, it is no wonder that I am in a place like this."

She falls silent for a moment, growing very grave. "I am not so naive as to think that sharing understanding with the green-eyed spirits will be simple or easy. It was difficult enough with the Valans. Still, I would prefer it hasten my death than I be responsible for the hastening of its own."

[clarius]

-Excuse me?

[ that last part catches her off guard, made clear with how her eyes get big (well, bigger) in shock.

he doesn't seem like the type to make jokes like this. she schools her shock, trying to keep herself from jumping to conclusions. the others she's come across, they've treated the spirits like nuisances at best. certainly not enemies. ]

I'm sorry but dead? Would it be too much for me to ask what happened there?

[bleedingsteel]

"Earth," he answers. "Two hundred years ago, much of the surface of the planet was annihilated by nuclear warfare. The water supply is largely irradiated. It's extremely dangerous to have contact with it without the use of a large-scale purifier or protective gear."

[catholicisms]

I wasn't expecting anyone to be in here, so I guess we're even.

( it's something Matt hadn't truly thought about up until this moment. with the lantern repairs less standardized, there's no ferry. there's no obvious hallmark of arrival. new people still did occasionally show up, and there's not much to help shepherd them towards town when they do. they should...... do something about that, maybe. anyway, )

I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just supplies in general. The teleporter brings them in, but we haven't managed to narrow down the where they land. Means we have to go looking for them at the start of every month.

( which... is maybe a confusing sentence, to a voice he's never heard before, which he presumes is a newcomer. ) I'm Matt — I'm sorry, I don't think we've met.

[catholicisms]

He laughs too. Matt has always been easy to laugh. Maybe he just has a very forgiving sense of humor, maybe it's a way to disarm people and make them more comfortable around him, maybe it's a combination of the two. Still, attempt a joke, and he'll laugh at it. Even if it's a slow huff of a laugh, rather than an actual chuckle. Look, he's been through it lately, Merwen... that was a good one, honestly.

"Merwen the Impatient One." He tilts his head, slightly, looking a bit like a confused puppy. "That's an interesting title." Did she give it to herself, or did someone else do it? And further, was it accurate or teasing or both? "I'm Matt Murdock. And the little one with leaves is my spirit friend. I call them Ivy."