hadriel_logs | Event Log: The Beach Episode

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Event Log: The Beach Episode

Who: Everyone!
What: The event log for the transition to our new planet!
Where: The city, which has now been fragmented onto four separate islands.
When: May 27th-June 10th
Warnings: Surf's up! If by 'surf', you mean separation from your friends, weird sea creatures, and cold rainfall.

The sun and the sand and a drink in your hand- well, it all sounded pretty nice when you voted for the island planet, but ultimately what you're getting is a bit less glamorous.

The transition takes place instantaneously, with very little noteworthy shakeup, though those of you who are particularly in-tune with the supernatural may feel a bit dizzied or nauseated by the sudden movement. And that's exactly what it is: for those of you who are outside, the change is fairly noticeable, as in the span of a single blink, what used to be miles of desert is now rocky ocean. The city is simply in one place one moment, and then somewhere entirely new a second later.

And that somewhere new is exciting! The islands have plenty of landscape to explore and weather conditions to adjust to, fish to catch, and- wait, how do you get to the other islands? What if your friends or your home or the bar is on these other islands? Enjoy having to figure out who is where and how you're going to get by with only a small fraction of the city to work off of- hopefully those boats will come sooner rather than later...

► This log covers May 27th-June 10th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you drown or get eaten by an alien shark, let us know here.

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Curufin laughs. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if the island sinks! I'm sure the gods would get a wonderful feast out of that, and it wouldn't bother them a bit if some people drowned. They'd just revive them in Hope's temple, or open the Door and get replacements."

The darkness in Curufin's soul is ancient. He himself believes that he was born with a fair portion of the dark element and only after he grew up did he add to it by committing actual crimes. But he's gone to war with beings that are far worse than he ever was, and he knows well how to defend himself against the arcane. His soul would not be easy pickings. However, he has no sense of who Leo is, only that a stranger is showing interest in his boat and an interest in conversation.

"My name's Curufin, by the way."

Leo looks pleased at Curufin's response, smiling just a little bit. "I'm glad someone besides me sees it that way. Worlds are fragile things. One day everything's fine and the next complete chaos." That's how it had been for Leo's world. Verity had been a quiet little territory. Then one day monsters had come through the cracks created by the wickedness of men and things had never been the same.

Leo has never known what a truly normal world would look like. Every one he's been to has been just as full of sin like the first. It's colored his personality to an unhealthy degree. He can come very cold and self-righteous at times, but others, there's a little bit of humanity left to him.

"Call me Leo Flynn."

Curufin nods. "Worlds are fragile, indeed. We think our feet are resting on solid ground, but no! -- it isn't like that at all. I believe that it is never like that." Chaos always bursts upon the world and monsters always come through the cracks.

Sin and humanness, the double concerns of all who have the sense to be concerned. Strangely, the Sunai and the Fëanorian Elf have something in common, though their journeys have been different.

"Pleased to meet you, Leo Flynn." In Curufin's world, the formal greeting upon meeting for the first time requires given name and surname. After that, he'll be less formal. "Have you been in Hadriel long? Even though it is a small place, I have not yet met everyone."

Edited 2018-06-14 08:12 (UTC)

"You seem like someone whose had personal experience with such a thing happening." Leo is like that too. He was created from chaos, but had chosen to spend his life trying to help restore order rather than cause more as the other monster types of his world were warranted to. Towards the end of his life, that outlook had changed into something a bit more extreme, doing whatever it took to create order. It had cost him his life at the hand of his brother.

"I've been here a little over a month. Showed up with my adopted brother and his girlfriend. We were in Reims, France before here, in a town where you couldn't make any noise." Leo is very thankful at least he doesn't have to deal with that nonsense anymore.

"I am indeed a person with experience in worlds bursting into chaos. Mine certainly did. I suppose we Elves ought to have seen it coming, as it had been coming for a very long time. But we were taken by surprise, at least my family and our clan were. We were strong and inventive, and so we responded. But we weren't at all prepared for the way chaos and destruction invaded the very fabric of our lives, overthrowing or even subverting our best intentions. Mine, certainly. But we still fought against the Dark Enemy of the World to our last breath. My brother Maglor was the only survivor in our family."

"A month, eh? It is good to be here with family, if you get along with them. I had to do a great deal of apologizing to mine, in order to restore amity. Do you and your brother and his partner have good relations? And what is this town of Reims, and what is this country of France, where you can't make noise?" He is tempted to laugh. "How did you stand it?"

"My family was created to restore balance to my world, sorting out sinners from the innocent, and protecting those who were left from monsters." No easy task. It was one that had made Leo extremely cynical and bitter after so many years. He wondered if there was anyone who would not eventually fall into sin and ruin.

"Elves? So you're not human then?" He'd noticed the ears weren't quite the same, but more than that, there was a certain air about the man, something as distinct a difference between a graceful, long-legged horse and a big-eared donkey with stubby legs. There was something in him that was different than normal human beings, that same something that set Leo as a Sunai monster apart from them as well.

"I arrived there after I died." Seemed to be a common thing both back in Reims and here. "There were monsters that would kill you if you made any noise whatsoever, which made it very difficult since I need music to eat. I didn't get along with most of the people there, but meeting Seth and his girlfriend Margo made it worth it." He'd ended up forming a family with them very family. They were all damaged people and so had sought solace in one another. Seth and Leo had both been missing their brothers, so they formed a bond very quickly.

"Your whole family had that responsibility? How would you decide who were the sinners and who were the innocent? Were you given the power to see souls, or other arcane powers of sight? And what were you expected to do about it, once you made the decision?"

Clearly Leo had an onerous life!

"I'm an Elf, but we probably have different definitions in our world. There are Elves and Men, Dwarves and Hobbits, and even some strange sentient trees called Ents. We all consider ourselves human, with sentience and a natural or benign origin being the markers of humanity. There are other beings in our world, powerful beings of pure spirit who can take material form. We Elves generally cannot change our forms, though we have a few of the other capabilities of those non-material beings."

"You went to France after you died?" A little bit of a smile. He's heard of mortals going to heaven or hell after they die, never to France!

But then he listens to the explanation, which is not funny at all. "Your world was plagued with monsters? How did they get there? Were they invaders or native to your world? What is this thing about your needing music to eat? -- well, you did seem to indicate that you are not mortal yourself. What sort of being are you? Seth and Margo are mortals, then? I am glad that you had their company and their friendship. It seems a difficult sort of world to survive without family or friends."

"There was only three of us. Sunai only get created when there's a tragedy that's filled with enough death to upset the balance of how things should be. That doesn't happen all the time." Terrible events like that thankfully didn't happen every day, which is why they were the rarest of the monster types. "Exactly. I can see the state of a person's soul, whether something has darkened it enough to the point where it can't remain pure anymore." He doesn't tell Curufin what his looks like. He suspects he's already cognizant enough to know.

He listens to what Curufin's world is like. He's never heard of Elves or Dwarves before, but then, Leo's never been one much for fantasy literature. He prefers non-fiction. The one thing that he finds really interesting is the idea of sentient trees. He's not sure if that would be terrifying or amazing to look at. "That sounds like quite a world. Mine isn't nearly quite so varied. There's only humans and the three types of monsters: Corsai, Malchai, and Sunai."

"I know. I thought it was strange too." That gets a bit of a smile out of him. He hadn't expected to wake up in a silent town after dying. If he was going to wake up at all, he expected it would have been wherever it was monsters had come before they ended up on Earth. "I don't know that much about the monsters. We were never given too much information on them, since the natives didn't really understand them either, only that they had been around a long time."

He goes on to explain about himself a little bit more. "I'm a Sunai monster. We look human most of the time, but we eat the souls of sinners to survive. By playing a piece of music, I can entrance someone long enough to take their soul." Most people might be disturbed by this piece of information, so he wonders how the Elf will take it. "Yes, the two of them are human. Sinners too, but I've never been tempted to take their souls." That was unusual for Leo, who generally had a much more black and white view of sinners. He'd thought about taking their souls as he did for every other sinner he'd met, but Leo had been lonely enough when he met them to latch onto them as family instead.

"Sunai is the type of being you are, then. You sound a little like the Reapers I've spoken with here, except that taking souls off to paradise or wherever doesn't seem to be your function." He smiles. Yes, Curufin knows what his own soul looks like, or at least, what it feels like. It is a strange feeling to be in the company of someone else who can see that, too.

"Death does come as a surprise, doesn't it? And whatever comes after? -- another set of surprises! Oh, and if you have only humans and monsters in your world -- what is the purpose of the other two, the Corsai and the Malchai?"

Another smile. "Then you are a musician? So am I. Does it require a particular piece of music to immobilize your unwary prey, or can it be any music?" Curufin isn't disturbed. He knows the uses of music as enchantment, and he has a voice that can project a vision when he wants it to, in either speech or song. He doesn't fear the power of another who has such a skill, albeit a being from another world, one who eats souls. Curufin's would be one hell of a hard soul to enthrall or extract; he counts on this. "But it is good to hear that you make exceptions. Apparently, for you kind as well as mine, the need for family tops other concerns?"

"That sounds similar. But Sunai take the souls of the wicked rather than the good. We're judge, jury, and executioner all in one." Leo sounds very proud of what he is. He sees his role as a good and righteous thing, for it makes the world a better place by taking sinners out of it. He never had the moral compunctions about killing like his little brother August did.

He looks grim as he explains about the other two types of monsters. "Corsai and Malchai are mainly around to cause more misery for humanity. Corsai are the most common monsters. They're living shadows with teeth and claws that are created from violent sins. Malchai are sadistic killers and get created from murder. They're basically vampires: pale, red-eyed with sharp teeth, and they drink blood."

Leo seems to warm up towards Curufin visibly when he says he's a musician. He always likes finding someone who can appreciate music as much as he does. "It's a particular song that I play. My brother only play it using a violin and my sister with her voice, but I can use any instrument to create it." They'd speculated over the years why Leo broke the rule the other two seemed to follow, but none of the Sunai had an answer. He doesn't reply and looks off to the side when Curufin mentions family. It's always been Leo's biggest weak spot and it's hard for him to admit he compromises when it comes to the people he cares about.

Judge, jury, and executioner. "Sounds efficient," Curufin remarks with a little smile. "Good thing for me that you didn't exist in my universe."

"And good thing your Corsai and Machai didn't, either. They'd have made a sepulcher of my world, I suspect." So great was the violence in that world that the smoke of ruin must have blackened the sky in the last years that Curufin can remember. Adding sin-created monsters would have been over-kill.

But he smiles again at the talk of music. Even when it's used for such a purpose. "What happens, exactly, when you sing your particular song? Do the sinners recognize that they are about to meet their demise, or are they oblivious?"

"I think there's a very good reason such monsters only exist in one world." They'd soon make a ruin of every world they were in as they'd done to Leo's. He sometimes wondered if the cult who had helped in his creation had been right when they thought it was the end of the world.

Leo's fingers itch for a small instrument, something he can keep on him at all times. He needs to find a flute or harmonica around here. "It sort of puts them into a trance. They just become calm and relaxed, wanting to listen to the music as long as they can. It also makes them compulsively tell me the worst sins they've committed."

To that, Curufin nods his head emphatically. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and sufficient unto each particular world are the monsters thereof." (Mangling a quote from the Gospel of Matthew that he'd once heard from a clergyman friend.) "I certainly wouldn't want other worlds to have to deal with the monsters from my world." He shakes his head.

"Those sinners must be very surprised, when the concert and the confession end and dinner begins!"

Curufin's words get a genuine smile out of Leo. "I'm glad that someone here seems to get it. Quite a few people have been getting their underwear in a twist over it. As if I can help being what I am."

He explains a little further. "Souls are the only thing I can eat. Normal, human food does nothing for me. It's not like starving myself would do any good."

Curufin smiles back. "Let's just say that in my world, I wasn't the most congenial, ethical, or law-abiding citizen. I don't know if I could have helped being what I was, but I certainly did a lot of damage. I can hardly judge another being's situation, especially since you don't seem to have had any choice -- you didn't ask to be created as you were."

"If you can only eat souls, then what happens here in Hadriel? Do you just continue? And if you tried to stop, would you die?"

"I made a deal with Hope to get the sustenance I need. Not quite the same thing as hunting my own meals, but it'll do for now."

His face goes very serious at the mention of stopping. "No. It's much worse than that. Sunai can never starve to death. Instead, we go dark, and assume our true forms. Wings, a tail, and horns, all made of shadow, smoke, and fire." Which makes him look a touch like a miniature Balrog.

"Then we lose control and take whatever souls are nearby to satisfy the hunger. It doesn't matter if they are innocent or sinful. Any will do. And that keeps on going until we are finally no longer hungry and come back to our senses." In other words, this was a Very Bad Thing, something which Leo tried to impress on the people around him. He'd gone dark many times, but that was a necessary evil where he was, in order to purge the city of those that were corrupting it.

"A good thing, I guess. I'm not normally a fan of deals with the gods, but sometimes it's necessary. Did you have to pay the god? Usually these gifts of the gods are not free."

He listens gravely to Leo's description of what happens in the case of no sustenance at all. "This going dark sounds like a fairly dire event. Hunger truly is a driving force in your psyche, then." Leo's description of his dark self does sound a bit familiar to Curufin. The Balrogs had a different kind of hunger, but their appearance was fairly similar.

"No. He said since it was necessary to my survival, it wouldn't cost anything." A good thing, for Leo was wary of owing someone as powerful as a god anything like a debt. Who knew what the price to pay would be when they came calling?

"It really is," Leo confirms gravely. For Sunai, hunger was a thing ingrained into their psyches, as much a part of them as breathing or sleeping. It never truly left, only pushed to the side for a while, the way it was for a shark.

"It's a good thing he understood that this is food for you." Because Leo is right, deals with the gods are perilous. Though it is true they usually make you pay up front, so it's not a debt.

Curufin nods. "I hope that you will be able to survive here without eating anybody's soul. The hunger I can understand, as I have the experience of a driving force taking over my existence -- indeed, it felt, at the time, as though it were the reason for my existence. I am controlled by it no longer. But it doesn't sound as though you have that choice."

Edited 2018-07-12 04:22 (UTC)

Leo looks off to the side when Curufin says he hopes he won't eat anyone's soul. He hasn't done anything like that so far, but old habits always die hard. If anything happens to Hope or if he loses control, he'll end up taking souls without an ounce of regret. "We'll see."

The idea that Curufin has had something similar happen to him is an interesting one to Leo. He's shown much more understanding towards the monster than anyone else here. "Has anyone ever told you that you're pretty wise?" Maybe it was just an Elf thing, he certainly didn't know.

Curufin smiles. "No, people don't generally tell me I'm wise. I've made plenty of mistakes in my time, even here. But I have things I care about, and people I care about. And I'm committed to the continued existence and the welfare of this community." He shrugs and smiles again. The smile contains mixed emotions.

But it is true that he is trying to understand Leo, and that he has some basis for understanding, different though their worlds and origins are.

"What else can we do but do the best we can?"

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Event Log: The Beach Episode

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