logsinthenight | INTRO LOG: AUGUST

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INTRO LOG: AUGUST

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 Some of the information is a little out of date at this point, but the most important details are still there: yes, you're really dead, keep your lantern close, and watch out for the spirits.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!

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She smiles up at him, genuinely pleased to see a familiar face again amidst the absolute madness of being here.

And of course she's still naked. What else would he expect?

"Then these are expected gifts," Merwen says. "Perhaps I can share this task with you. What do you need to find?"

Given the little he's learned about her so far, he has a feeling she won't like what's in the boxes. But he needs the ammo. Keeping people safe is always his main priority.

He shifts his bag around to his front and pulls out one of the ammo boxes to show her. It fits in his hand well enough, though would seem awfully large in one of hers.

"Like this. Need to keep my weapons loaded."

Yeah, she doesn't like that at all. She presses her lips together for a moment, trying to choose her words. She doesn't want to pick a fight. She's just arrived, after all, but she knows enough that she shouldn't go around alienating herself from everyone around her.

"I see," she says, her tone gentle. "And who or what do you plan to share violence with?"

Edited 2020-08-06 02:38 (UTC)

Another spirit goes darting off past them, this one with a basket of what looked like tools. He's not fast enough to lunge after it and the fact that he even wanted to disturbs him. Whatever the world eater did, he's going to have to get this under control. He does watch it as it runs off into the darkness outside their lanterns' range, and frowns. Someone probably will have to track those down later, they'll need them.

"Green-eyed spirits," he replies, still looking in the direction the smaller spirit had gone before returning his attention to her. "We actually just ran into some more a few weeks ago. They nearly killed a bunch of us. Violence is the only thing that gets them to leave."

As far as he has been able to determine, anyway. He shrugs, and sets the box back into the bag with a slight rattle as it settles.

She takes a deep breath, a rather shaky one. This is a conversation Merwen was actually not quite prepared to have. For a moment, she's a prisoner again, facing Realgar and all his untruths. She covers her face with her hands, trying not to lose herself to whitetrance, not now.

"I am a wordweaver," she murmurs, almost under her breath, but words right now are... hard.

Merwen gives herself a shake and forces herself to look him in the eyes. "Share words with me about these green-eyed spirits. Learnshare with me. What has been tried? Do they consume or do they have souls, as these small spirits seem to have?"

She's obviously in distress and he feels bad, but at the same time, Rosinante figures she's going to have to get used to the reality of this place. There are things here that want to kill them, that think nothing much of death and treat it casually, and who do not realize (or do not care) how desperately the rest want to cling to the last fragment of life they have. Negotiation is a good skill to have, and he supports its use where possible, but when it fails he'd rather fight than die.

Wordweaving, he suspects, must be something like negotiation. Mediation. Or just conversation, maybe. The way she speaks is like poetry but it's hard sometimes to make out the exact meanings. Whatever translation occurs here, it must struggle with her language.

"Not sure what you consider souls," he says with a frown. "They don't have lanterns. Green-eyes can speak, they plan, they order the smaller spirits around. Sometimes they communicate by planting visions in our heads, and sometimes those show things that happened before but other times it seems like they just want to make us afraid, or angry. I've never heard of anyone talking to one without it ending quickly and violently."

"Souls. Human, though in a sense that goes beyond species. Do they look into their reflection and recognise themselves and what they are? That is what I mean when I ask if they have souls." She exhales thoughtfully in one long breath. "But that description makes it sound as though they do have souls, and you want to hasten their deaths."

Merwen clenches her hands, then relaxes them. "I have just arrived, and here I am making conclusions already. I must admit that this does not sound... healthy."

Poetry again, and philosophy, too. She would like Cao Pi. He'll make a note to introduce them, or at least suggest they speak to each other.

Meanwhile, he frowns in sympathy. "I appreciate what you're trying to say here, really. I think it's really kind to want to try and empathize with them somehow. But they're not human - they're farther from it than anything I've seen. We can't assume they think like us or want to even be understood."

But hell, if she wants to try, he'll advise against it for her safety but quietly hope she can make some progress anyway. Daylight was like that, always trying to improve relations and communication with the spirits. They could use someone to fill his very large shoes.

She tilts her head. "And if you are wrong," Merwen says, a hint of challenge coming into her voice, "if they can be convinced to listen but you assume they cannot, then you will carry the weight of their souls upon your own. It is not possible to act and not be acted upon in return."

This... might not be the sort of argument she wants to throw herself into so quickly, but it's also the sort of argument she almost has to.

"Their inhumanity might make their intelligence harder to see, and perhaps for the same reason they cannot see ours. We must try. At least, I will try, if I can."

She's got fight in her, and he likes that, but it's worrying at the same time.

"You're likely to get yourself killed," he warns her, but there's a gentleness to his voice. "Talk to Diode, see what he says. He claims he's fluent in the spirits' language. He might have some advice. What you're talking about is something we've been attempting from the start, so I don't want to say it's hopeless, but I'd hate to lose someone so quickly. Even though we can repair lanterns, there's still a lot of people who never come back. We might not find your lantern if they take you."

Which is why he can't encourage her, even though he wants to. Most important is to keep people safe. Wandering off alone to negotiate with green-eyes is the opposite of that.

She's quiet a moment. It's hard to say how much weight she ought to apply to the wellbeing of this existence, this half-death. At last, she nods.

"I appreciate that. I promise I will wait longer than a handful of days, at least, to take any serious action, but I will not promise not to try to share understanding with these spirits. It must be tried. It must be possible."

"Maybe. I want it to be possible."

The green-eyed spirits are more inhuman than most things he's used to - more alien, in fact, than animals. At least he understands the basic motivations of a dog, or a horse. But he respects that stubborn desire for peace and communication. Of the many hard lessons learned in his early childhood, the strongest was how unnecessary violence and cruelty can be - how it's a reaction out of fear that could be avoided simply by trying to understand.

Trouble is that after a year here, he's just not sure applying those very human lessons to green-eyes is even fair to them. If they think in ways that are so far removed from anything he knows, why expect them to understand what humans and those like them want? Perhaps the world eater had been trying to tell him something, in that moment when it reached into his mind. Maybe they should be trying to think like green-eyes.

Merwen wants it to be possible, as well, because if it isn't, then a lot of what she believes about the world might be untrue.

"I suppose my main question, then, is who Diode is, if I am to share with him." The word itself means nothing to her; it's only a sound. "Does he have much to do with the spirits, if he is an expert?"

"He's a former lighthouse keeper. The spirits found his lantern and someone managed to figure out how to repair it and bring him back. He's... I don't know him well yet. He looks like a kid, but I think he was here a long time. If you can't track him down in person, just message him on the tablet."

Since not even Rosinante is sure where he's taken up residence. He's only just met the guy himself a week or so ago, and yeah, okay, Diode comes off as a bit grating, but someone who was a keeper probably knows a hell of a lot about this place if he can be convinced to share the information.

She nods, a decisive sort of gesture. She has her work cut out for her, it seems. "I suppose the tablet has its uses, even if it not the technique I would choose for myself. I have much learnsharing to do, and much reading and sharing of speech."

Oddly, giving herself a goal helps a lot right now. She's felt... aimless, in recent months.

"I think I do too," he says with a soft chuckle. "I've never heard anyone talk like you do before. It's really nice, though, even if it takes me a second sometimes to work out what you're saying. I keep thinking it sounds like poetry."

But awfully alien poetry. It's a big part of what keeps reminding him that she's not a fishman because otherwise she really does look so much like one. Except for the whole no clothes thing, but hey, different culture. He's not sure he'll ever fully get used to that.

"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.

"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.

"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.

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.

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?"

"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."

"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."

"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.

"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."

INTRO LOG: AUGUST

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