logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: HUNGER AND THIRST

Entry tags:

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.

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Good thing someone's close with the resident programmer. It'll probably occur to him later when he's not trying to keep Cao Pi alive.

Anyway good god that's a mouth right there. This spirit might be small but it could still probably swallow his arm in one big gulp if it really wanted to and that's a little unsettling. But it's also far from the first time Rosinante has faced some sort of horrifying monster in his life. He has a split-second decision to make - stop as well and negotiate, or kick this thing's face in?

Better not risk the lantern, and maybe with Cao Pi close to it, he can help somehow. He slows and comes to a stop only when it looks like closer proximity might make the spirit flinch away, and keeps the pistol trained on the spirit's masked forehead.

"Give it."

Cao Pi doesn't risk interfering so he doesn't move, but at last they're close enough that he can breathe much easier, feel his head clearing, and take a moment to consider tactics. From where he is he can't see the whole picture but he can take some guesses. "Do you know how to tell it that the lantern is my life?" he murmurs against Rosinante's shoulder. It has to be their base-level reasoning, that it's not actively trying to kill him, before they step things up to aggression. Maybe it just doesn't know. God he hopes it just doesn't know.

All he can do is add, "...I know how to say 'please,' but that's about it." He tried learning, but his aptitude for music is a hindrance to such a language. At the very least he has the polite words down because politeness is everything.

"Didn't think I had the time for a please and thank you session," he mutters. But if Cao Pi is feeling up to talking, that's a good sign. He hasn't messed much with seeing how far one can go from a lantern or how long it takes them to recover. Slowly, while still watching the spirit, he crouches down low and loosens his grip so Cao Pi can stand up and regain at least some amount of dignity.

He can't put together the sentence that Cao Pi hopes for, but he can try to convey some other hopefully-effective message. "Give that. He hurts. Please. I give you food."

Look, who knows if food is going to convince it and anyway he doesn't have much on him other than some jerky and a bag of trail mix but it's something. Hopefully at least a semi-convincing trade.

You know what, that's fair. Cao Pi only straightens himself up as best he can, brushing down his mismatched clothing and wobbling a little from the residual light-headedness. It's not like he needed a reminder to keep his lantern tied to his swords but good to know that none of this is what he would ever want to voluntarily undergo. He's not very good at whistling and doesn't have any flutes on him so his attempt at adding a please is an abject failure - but hey, he tries. Just in case it's not enough, he tries a bit of pantomime that would look to the untrained eye more like a court dance than a game of charades. Hands toward the lantern, then cupped over his heart. A fist miming snuffing out the lantern, and a gesture over his chest that obviously means death.

The spirit eyes them both, back and forth, though it seems to be leaning more toward Rosinante after a moment, sniffing the air. Food?

You know, that's a pretty good dance, though Rosinante isn't fully sure how much the death part matters to these guys given past run-ins. Still, he nods as he watches, as if to suggest that yes, spirit, this is exactly the issue. Please be sympathetic.

Or hungry, hungry works. He holsters the pistol and holds up a finger to tell it to wait while he spins the bag around on its strap to his front, then reaches in. No, not the grenade, and not the spare jacket - aha, but then his hand contacts the lumpy bag full of nuts and dried fruit and candy. He withdraws it, and holds it out, but not too far just yet.

"Give," he repeats, beckoning with his empty hand in the direction of the lantern as he offers the food in the other.

There are a few indescribably tense moments of waiting, watching, eyeing each other, before the spirit makes up its mind. Or, perhaps, the benefit of such a simple word is that it could be taken as an offer rather than a demand - that food would be given. It leans forward to sniff some more, and then lights up like a, well, lantern. Fuck the jerky, candy is where it's at! It trots forward and then hesitates once more - and Cao Pi holds his breath - to look at the lantern, then at the trail mix, then the lantern, then the trail mix...

Pins and needles.

At long last (very long last) the spirit carefully sets the lantern on the ground like a perp giving up a gun and then snatches the entirety of the bag of trail mix instead, and books it off several yards into the trees before turning to verify that they're not still chasing it. No? No. Good, no chasing, good trade. It crams a fistful of chocolate and nuts into its enormous gaping maw and then stands there watching them, to see what they'll do.

As soon as it looks like his tormentor is happily eating the offering, Cao Pi lunges to grab his lantern and re-thread the string around the sword scabbards at his side. His sigh of relief is, shall we say, audible.

Rosinante's life (un-life?) may not be the one at stake in this precise moment, but he's holding his breath just as intensely as the spirit makes its decision, and when it makes the trade and darts off, he just. Lets himself tip backward out of the low squat and lies down on the ground for the moment.

"You all right?" he asks, as he reaches back into the bag for a cigarette. He needs about thirty of these in his mouth right now.

"As much as I can be," Zihuan answers in a low mutter, though he really doesn't look the worse for wear on the outside so it's mostly all in his head. To that he adds, "Thank you. That was quick thinking."

"Mm," is the initial response, an acknowledgment he heard as he makes himself sit back up so he can get into his lantern for a light. He takes a slow breath from it, and keeps his eyes on the spirit as it munches on the trail mix.

"Just glad it worked. It's not like they're all after the same thing but food does seem to help sometimes. I don't know how many would respond to reason even if I could give them a good argument."

"When all else fails, barter," he agrees with a dry huff.

Cao Pi isn't willing to get up and go so long as that thing is still lurking around, since it swiped his lantern pretty easily in the blink of an eye - and how, he wonders? when he keeps it knotted so tightly even he has trouble undoing it sometimes - but plays it off as needing a few moments to recover and allow Rosinante to finish his cigarette. And, well, there is one other problem...

"Where are we?"

Everything around them is featureless black forest. They're nowhere near a trail. He may not still be suffering visions of death and sensations of drowning but Cao Pi absolutely does not like this wide-open, exposed, defenseless feeling. It's too alike to the time he lost his face.

The forest is dark and disorienting, the branches block too much of the sky, and this is exactly the sort of situation nobody should be in - but thankfully, Rosinante has an answer to Cao Pi's question. Or, he can get one.

A little bit more searching through the usual supplies he carries with him, and he comes up with a compass, which he flips open and then holds out. The needle points steadily behind them.

"Bonfire's that way. And it didn't take too long to run here. We should probably get moving, though, while that thing's distracted by food."

Whoa, spirit gifts for the win! Zihuan is suitably impressed, leaning in to see if there's anything obvious that makes this compass different from a northward-pointing one. As he does, he murmurs, "I don't trust it. It got the drop on me too easily, I don't want it coming back for a second try in order to get more food from us."

Maybe it's just the fur around the toothy grin but it puts him in mind of a dog that follows you home after you feed it once. He shoots it a furtive look to find it watching them in turn, while still casually crunching on nuts.

It's a pretty stylish compass, certainly - nicely-polished metal, embossed. No cardinal directions marked on it, though, given there's no need for them. Just the little gold leaf flame symbol at the base of the needle itself.

He closes it up, then, and places it back in his bag. If this spirit-thief is so quick and nimble-fingered as to steal a lantern, it could too easily take the compass out of his hand. At least if it's in the bag the creature would have to really dig for it.

"It could still do that if we keep sitting here, though. Not sure that waiting for it to finish eating is the right call."

Whatever Cao Pi decides, Rosinante goes ahead and stands up, shifting the bag back into place over his shoulder. At least this way if it somehow manages to dart over and grab a lantern, he'll be ready to run again.

It's a fair point, and as he quickly and diligently considers all options, Cao Pi decides he's right. Right enough, anyway, there's any number of things it could do next and he can't sit there hemming over which one is most likely. He waits a moment longer and then pushes himself up as well, checking the knot one more time and then deliberately making eye contact with the spirit as if to silently warn I'm watching you, you furry little bastard. "Very well, then. Lead the way, but I will keep a hand on my swords from here on out." Which are conveniently right next to the lantern strap, oho.

"At least with two of us it has to decide who to steal from," Rosinante says as he too glances over at the spirit one last time before starting off in the direction the compass had pointed, one hand tight on the strap that holds his bag and that his lantern is clipped onto, while the other helps push aside branches as they walk.

It's no more than a minute before he hears the rustle of an empty bag somewhere behind them. "Sometimes I wish I had eyes in the back of my head," he sighs.

At his comment, Cao Pi glances back over his shoulder. The spirit is shaking the bag over its gaping maw and looking vaguely disappointed that there's no more, but it doesn't seem to be paying them much attention at the moment. Everything could change in the next second, but Zihuan chances a moment of optimism. "I would give for a better means of communicating," he mutters back. "It seems at least half of our conflicts could be resolved before they even start if we could just speak openly with each other."

Another glance. The spirit is sucking on the empty bag, as if trying to inhale the remaining particles of salt and sugar from its surface. Okay, that's...not so bad, it hasn't come for them yet.

"It's true. That's why I've been trying to learn. Been to any of Soldat and Diode's classes?"

Cao Pi doesn't seem too worried, so he doesn't risk turning back to look, he just wants out. One foot in front of the other, and - thunk to the ground. A minor misstep, probably the fault of an errant root or a pinecone or nothing at all. He'll be back on his feet quickly enough, so long as he didn't wipe out Cao Pi in the fall.

Almost, since he wasn't anticipating it for once - distracted by their irritant behind them, probably - but he manages to side-step at the last possible second and only flails a little. Gawd, Rosinante. "Ahem. Problems?" Rhetorically. "I have, one or two. I am not nearly as musically-adept as my wife, it seems. Mastering the flute will take some work."

"Oh, yeah, I kept breaking those ocarinas," he admits as he straightens the strap of his bag and checks on his lantern, then carries on. "That's why I kinda sing and whistle the notes. I figure there's lots of ways to make the sounds correctly, since the spirits have all kinds of voices themselves. I just do the closest I can and hope it works."

Well, so far so good, Cao Pi thinks as he steals another glance back to see whether their friend will come for their lantern. It seems to be skulking after them, but at a distance, as if it's already aware that it can't play the same game twice and get the same result. "The trouble is," he says, figuring that if they just keep this conversation going it will act as a cover for his heightened wariness, "it's fairly difficult to know whether you've succeeded or failed in getting your point across. Any attempt is as good as the next."

For now he's going to keep to himself that he literally can't whistle. Some talents just aren't that easy to pick up, it seems.

"Not necessarily. I've seen Soldat and... uh, Daylight used to talk to them a lot too. Could hold whole conversations. Didn't seem random at all."

Bringing up Daylight hurts, though. He clamps his lips around his cigarette, using it to keep focused.

He feels it, too, judging by his deep sigh. Though, mostly because Zihuan can see how useful he would be right now. "I should like to improve, but there are already so many things to stay on top of, investigate, discover..."

As much as his overachiever sense wants to master everything, know everything, it's physically and mentally impossible, so all he can do is grumble about it. Given that his attention wandered for two seconds and he lost his lantern - and nearly his life - he's going to be angry at himself for not being perfect for a few hours after they get back to the town proper. He still keeps throwing quick hunting glances over his shoulder just in case, and at last notice the spirit is ducked behind a tree trunk, just its mask showing around the bole as it watches them from afar.

"Yeah. It's like we were talking about earlier, needing to try and find the mines, explore farther down the tracks, but also get to the Helix Station and fix it up. Between trips like that I'm trying to keep up The Invincible's defenses in case of another emergency, trying to fix up that boat in the scrapyard, still watching the stars, helping rebuild even though the flood was almost half a year ago now."

And where the hell did all that time go, speaking of the flood? What have they done since then, and how much time do they actually have left? He works so hard, and so does Cao Pi and a handful of others, just trying to carry the town on their shoulders so they have a fighting chance but it's exhausting.

He shakes his head, knowing there's not much to say to all that. They both know it well. "Wouldn't mind having some of that infinite wine when we get back, if you're interested in a drink and a game."

Cao Pi's step falters briefly. "Has it been that long...?" Thinking, thinking...yep, that much time has gone by. What a gut-punch. Have they done much? Well, that bit with the rescue at the station was definitely something. He shakes himself alert and stretches his stride to catch back up.

"All things considered, a drink and a game is all I'm capable of right now." His hand loosely resting on the pommels of his paired swords tightens a little. "I'm not a fan of putting things off but if I cannot even keep my wits long enough to protect my own lantern, I should not be attempting anything more strenuous than beating you at Go."

"We can always talk long-term plans over wine and Go, anyway. Until the wine gets the best of us. I promise to drink more that my share to keep things even."

Although it's dark and he's leading the way, the smirk is probably pretty obvious in his voice alone as he makes that last comment. Given his larger size, he does need a larger handicap - but it's also totally one of those rare moments where he's willing to make a dig at someone and joke that he's better at something than they are. Really only because he knows Cao Pi well enough by now to tease him.

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