EVENT LOG: DAYLIGHT

[nextnightmods]

EVENT LOG:
DAYLIGHT

characters: everyone.
location: Everywhere
date/time: April 1 and onward
content: Light, and its changes, begins to creep back into the world. What will you do next?
warnings: spirit suicides

With the World Eater truly gone, light begins to slowly make its return. The glow that took over the lake spreads to the shore, giving life to all it touches.

For some creatures, this will mean their end. The spirits, as seen in the aurora, cannot exist in a place with light. But those still trapped between death and life, held to this place by the light in their lanterns, can continue on.

Beacon isn't fully healed. The darkness will take time - months, if not years - to recede. In those remaining dark places, green-eyed spirits and other strange creatures will continue to lurk, to push back against the light. The many-eyed spirit is nowhere to be found after the vicious battle, but the people of Beacon now know that as long as there are violent, destructive spirits remaining, there is still a risk that one could muster enough strength to grow and change and plunge the world into darkness again.

But the light has its allies in all of you. Help the new plants grow. Take care of the land and each other. Speak with the remaining spirits who are reluctant about these new changes, and help them move on - or destroy the ones who only want death and ruin to prevail. The future is yours to shape.

The prompts below are just ideas, as always. Feel free to use this post to thread out any future character actions, or make your own logs if you prefer. The communities will all remain open from here on out. Thanks to all of you for taking part in this remarkable adventure!

i come alive, alive, alive, every time

In those first few days of April, forest spirits bound back into town, energetic and elated. They helped!! They sang, and they bought you all time!! They want to throw a party, because that's what they love best (well, some of them) but thankfully, partying seems to already be in the works by the efforts of a few of you lantern-folks. There is food and music spread all around Bonfire Square and beyond, and spirits eagerly hand out balloons - though where they got those from is anyone's guess.

daylight, with the sun I'm in now

The sun eventually rises.

The light is still faint at first, though already growing from a dim blue twilight to something pinkish and golden. For months, the glow never really manages to be more than that, but by early June the clear shape of a yellow-white orb breaks over the horizon for a few hours each day, and grows ever-steadier from there.

Over the course of those weeks and months, spirits do the other thing they love to do. Familiar faces, old friends - among them the Rat King, the Baubledook, the radio-loving Handy and finally, lastly, even the Postmaster General and the Librarian - approach the leading edge of light as it reaches up the lakeshore, and dive in as spectacularly as if they were jumping into the water itself.

One by one, those spirits evaporate, bursting into glittering particles and showering Beacon once again with opals. The small stones will forever litter the lake's shore, even long after the spirits have gone, and the casual wanderer may find their own warmest memory or that of a friend's here in Beacon, or even the lost thoughts and memories of the spirits themselves, as they were in life before the world went dark, or after.

It may be sad to see them go, but they're happy to do it, to keep themselves from holding back the return of the light to your growing world. After all, what is death to a dead thing?

wanna let it in from the outside

As temperatures warm and the lake thaws, and once her injuries have healed, Weaver returns to the Helix Station to make sure it's all still in working order after the bomb - which, thankfully, it is. The water absorbed most of the shockwave, and though a few things have been knocked loose and fallen to the ground, the machinery is all still operational.

The portal, most crucially, still works.

For those who want to leave, she'll be here to see you on your way - if that reverse-engineering she came up with actually works. "I can't make any promises," she says. But she's confident enough in the actual math of it all, and someone's got to be the first to test it out, right?

(It's not a requirement to address Weaver at all, if you'd prefer to thread your goodbyes out among each other! If you want to just assume she'll be there to take the controls, feel free to do so.)

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Comments

Bucky/Soldat | OTA

[worthallthis]

I. Party

Soldat is not... great at partying. Unless it's for serving food or dancing. Thankfully, both those things are available at this one.

Everyone who wants gets a turn out on the "dance floor" beside the bonfire. Everyone who wants gets plenty of food, whether from the big grilled fish Rosinante summoned through the portal or from the more vegetarian salad and pasta options, or from the wide array of desserts.

When there's no dancing to be had or people who need help with portions, they're just kind of off to one side, quietly watching the spirits as much as the lantern-bearers. Things are so up in the air now, and they're... worried. And uncertain. And, frankly, afraid of losing even more friends now.


II. Plans

In the end, Soldat has nothing to go home to, and the thought of trying to start over again anywhere else is too much. They're staying. They have no other options that feel possible. What they're going to do while they're here... they don't now. Work with Weaver and Rosinante to come up with a strategy to save the rest of the universe, maybe. Do repairs on the radio tower to try and boost the signal, see if any other pockets of life remain somewhere on the world, maybe. Read every book in the library in an attempt to learn enough to rebuild a world alone. Find Rye-Mother's farm. (At least "leave Beacon to try and map out the rest of the world" is scratched off the list early, when Stone makes his intention to do that himself public.)

They don't know what to do, and they spend time sitting out by the growing light over the lake every day with a notebook trying to list out pros and cons of every potential plan. It's not really helping much. Somebody come talk them through this? Or just make a decision for them, that's fine, too.


III. Parting

They were right: more friends are being lost. The planet is going to be empty soon, but for those few of them remaining behind with the portal. Soldat spends some time every day just making as many different origami shapes as they can for all their spirit friends. If a couple animals wind up ruined by a little salty dampness, well, there's plenty of paper, they just toss the tear-stained one in the fire and start again.

They try to visit them all daily, on their patrol, before the spirits go. The Junkyard Dog, the tech-shop bird, Handy, Flesh Horse, Rye-Mother, the Librarian. "I'll miss you," they say in the spirits' language. "Thank you for everything. You're my friend and I'll never forget you."


IV. Plowing

In the end, Rye-Mother's farm it is. Soldat looks it over with trepidation. They have no idea how to farm. They have no animals, yet, to populate it. They just have a handful of people left on the world.

But they did promise Rye-Mother, and it's... reasonable. They need to support themselves, and this is a step in the right direction. They sigh and turn to their companion. "Where do we start?"

Kuai Liang | Open

[paletteswap]

1. Farewell Spirits
Kuai hadn't enjoyed the aurora any of the times he'd seen it. While he understood far too well the knowledge that dying was a better outcome than becoming a monster, and he'd even tried to do something similar to himself, it wasn't a good feeling to be on the outside looking in. It might have been hopeless, but Kuai still felt like there had to be a way to save them. To let the spirits live on somehow without corrupting eventually into something horrible.

But there wasn't. And the spirits seemed determined. To force them to stay against their wishes seemed cruel in the face of those who had helped them over the years.

If nothing else, he can do them the honor of witnessing their passage, standing on the treeline by the beach to protect himself from the rain of opals. But he'll watch each and every one. A silent vigil overseeing their journey into further death. Even for dead things.

2. The Cleanup
It feels good to be able to clean up after the wreckage and know that this time it feels permanent. The small amount of sunlight casting soft shadows and while the warmth isn't tangible yet, it can almost be felt just from the joy of seeing it again.

Kuai still does his patrols, a creature of routine he'll never be able to break that habit, but now they're really more like walks. Seeing the green bits of grass poking through the ground, the way the light shines orange and soft against the trees, a world being born anew.

It's the most hopeful he's ever felt.