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logsinthenight2020-09-19 02:02 pm
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EVENT LOG: HUNGER AND THIRST

EVENT LOG:
HUNGER AND THIRST
characters: everyone.
location: around beacon.
date/time: september 19-30.
content: some new friends - or enemies? - seek offerings, and offer something in return
warnings: memories may involve violence, death, grotesque body horror. please cw as appropriate.
pining for the things i could have been.
Recently, the forest spirits have been agitated. The crooners, those that remain, chatter noisily and strut with purpose. The lunch lady hunches over their station and holds claws to their face, miming peering through dense brush. The skunk judge murmurs about the ones from the countryside. Word has passed beyond the reaches of Beacon's light - there are people in town, and they are mostly good this time. These lantern-bearers have lasted longer than most. They may even want to help.
Seems these spirits will have to see these people with their own eyes, and test those rumors themselves.
For the first two prompts below, please feel free to NPC spirits yourselves. However, if you prefer, you may post your toplevel under the MOD-CONTROLLED SPIRITS header and we will do our best to drop in and out with interactions as time permits. These are not intended to be one-on-one threads with spirits written by the mods, and you will likely not always want to wait for a mod reply at every step and may find yourself doing some minor NPCing all the same, but we will do our best to keep up with you and your thread partners who tag in!
In that header, please specify whether you want a friendly or antagonistic spirit, or if you want a surprise, you can always say "surprise me!"

ALL MY JOYS.
You come home to find spirits in your wardrobe, with socks on their hands and pants tied in daisy chains from wall to wall. Abruptly they squeak and dive for cover, or crash through windows in their attempts to escape. They steal things that are yours, only for you to find them days later, floating in the lake or buried in the greenhouse. Can you chase them down alone? Maybe you need some help.
Not all spirits are so troublesome. Maybe you turn up at The Landmark kitchen to find that one spirit has already gotten the coffee pot started - well, except it has poured instant cheese powder from a box of easy mac into the pot. But at least it's trying to help! Maybe you can show it how the machine works. Others wind up at Solis's labs where they thumb rapidly through books and peck at computer keys, and more than one takes samples from the shelves and shoves them in your face. Did you need this alien foot in a jar? No?
A pack of roving... branches? crawls around town. They have no mouths with which to speak, but instead vibrate and clack their many tangled limbs together. They grow in number and size, making a thicket of live wood that bars you from a doorway, completely fills up a section of the tunnels under the town - or makes an impromptu and convenient bridge, if you think that climbing on someone's limbs is appropriate. Is it?
Largely these spirits seem neutral, even benign. Confused. They might ask for your help, or try their best but they struggle to communicate even more than the usual forest spirits do. They have no sense of what your personal space is, though, and more than one will reach for a lantern to bring it closer and investigate. Awfully uncomfortable, so what are you going to do about it?

ALL MY GRIEF.
At any moment, the above interactions can go south fast if you meet the wrong spirit. The one who took your lantern? Decides to run off with it, leaving you gasping for air and with very few options if you are to survive. The branches constrict and crush you, or drop you suddenly in the river. Are they here to harm you, or just to test your limits?
Others will be malevolent no matter what. The scrapyard dog snarls and pulls at its chain as it watches the thing that stalks and hunts. A small herd of soft, wooly spirits crouch low to the ground, whimper and pant as if sick or starving, only to turn on you with vicious teeth once you seem invested in assisting. Better hope you have someone nearby who can help you fend them off. Or is it better to try to distract them and make an escape? Will they be convinced to stand down, or will they wear your face as a new mask?

ALL MY BONES.
You are directed by the local spirits to the dense curtain of trees where torchlight fades to darkness. The ones you are familiar with hang back, but nod for you to continue ahead alone, or with a friend or two if you prefer. The more people who go together, the stronger the connection - as indicated by the spirits grabbing at your hands and linking them together, and giving a very serious nod. Bring your offerings whether they be food, stories, gifts, or memories of your own, and hope they are sufficient. Place them on the forest floor, or hold them out to the air. The new spirits will find you, they promise; this is not a trick. Make yourselves comfortable on the damp, mossy ground and wait for the sound of footsteps in the leaf litter.
For this prompt, you are welcome to describe your arrival to the site if you like, but all that is required is a comment with the names of the people involved, and the offerings you bring. Characters can make multiple offerings and visit multiple spirits as many times as they wish.
Afterward, a spirit will lead you back to Bonfire Square and encourage you to tell others what you've learned from your new guests. No fair keeping the goods to yourself alone!

LEFT IN THE LONG NIGHT.
After connecting with spirits, you are led back to the bonfire, to recover and recuperate from the joining of hearts, minds, and memories. You will find yourself weary, in a way the flames seem to help. The glow of the campfire is comforting, tempting. It might be difficult not to fall asleep or try to draw others into enjoying the comforting lull of crackling firewood along with you.
The weariness does fade, after some time around the fire. You're not the only one resting from the experience in the glow of firelight — and there's likely things you've seen to share. Ideas and memories and pieces and figments of past to fit into place like puzzle pieces. Now is a good a place as any to share it, isn't it?
Lastly, those that approach a spirit in tandem will find an unseen consequence. A link between them that isn't so easily shaken by a short stay at the fireside. Characters will find that feelings and sensations seem to move from one to the other without warning. Fear, anger, mourning, resentment, joy, love. Touching makes the link stronger, but even distance isn't enough to stop it. Did you want to share night terrors, even a mile apart? Or to taste coffee, even though you're in the middle of brushing your teeth? Well, too bad. The effects will last for two weeks, whether you like it or not.
QUICKNAV | |||
comms | | | network β’ logs β’ memes β’ ooc | |
pages | | | rules β’ faq β’ taken β’ mod contact β’ player contact β’ calendar β’ setting β’ exploration β’ item requests β’ full nav |
Soldat, Misty, and Javert
no subject
Perhaps then it is no surprise that such a spirit appreciates the neatness and precision required for origami. After studying the trio, they finally decide to bend down and collect the pieces, then stand again to inspect them. As they do, the paper blackens and crumbles to ash in their hands slowly, as if lit by invisible fire. They hold the star aloft, and the ashes blow to the three. Their vision catches at the corners; embers spiral wildly and the world curls and burns away, leaving blackness.
Sound comes before vision. Labored breathing, and a far-distant rumble as everything shakes. The light is so bright he swears he can see it through his eyelids, even though he knows this is a safe distance, and the protective shelter around him will filter out the worst of it. The power plant is one of the safest areas in town.
Not that it matters. They're all dead anyway. Bryson just wants to live long enough to see this through to the end. Whatever future this world has might not even have people left, so he slips his glove off, revealing red, rotting skin, and resumes his writing.
I've just heard the third volley. Should be the last. If that damned thing is still walking around out there then I guess we're all fucked.
I remember reading War of the Worlds when I was a kid. Martian invasion seems preferable to this. I always thought it'd be exciting, being one of the guys to fight the aliens, defend the world. Hero of humanity and all that shit. Now I just hope it was worth the price.
If anyone ever finds this, stick to what you know, all right? There's a reason we're born afraid of the dark. That shit out there ain't what the books and movies make it out to be. Aliens, gods, whatever you want to call it, we're just lunch to them and if the whole of humanity gets killed by some motherfucking alien having lunch on a Wednesday then...
Fuck, man. Then I don't know. I guess we're not all we think we're cracked up to be if that's what our whole species gets reduced to in the end.
Dan said it was always gonna be the cockroaches who'd live through this, so I guess if you're a cockroach that learned to read, congratulations. You win the big prize. Inheritors of the world. Glad we could hand it off to your capable selves. Because then at least you're here. At least then something survived.
Harder to write. My hand barely moves. Feels like my bones are burning. So here's Bryson Langstrom's last words:
Fuck you, Maridel Solis.
He tries to set the journal down but drops it instead. Fuck it, good enough. He's too full of rot and decay and death to worry about that now. He drags himself up onto his failing feet and peers out the window, across the open expanse of barren mountainside. Used to be a forest there once, he thinks. Used to be trees. Now it's just rock.
But with all the smoke, he can't see clearly enough to know if the launch worked. He turns, and his ankles collapse, so he drags his way to the radio, to the long-range monitors, to the cameras installed up on their towers that are close enough to see in the persistent twilight. There's a black stain in the middle of the crater, and all he can think is Thank God, it worked.
He leans against the console and closes his eyes.
When they open, Soldat, Misty, and Javert look at the spirit with its long half-face, who watches them back. It makes no attempt to speak - it doesn't even look like it has a mouth, really - but finally gives a deep and very formal-looking bow.
no subject
"We're sorry that happened to you. We won't let it happen again."
Not much, but something. Hopefully something true.