THE LIGHTHOUSE
Across the bay and about five miles away from the harbor was the lighthouse. It's too far out to see much, so it was usually just a black tower barely visible along the horizon against the stars.
A black hill of rubble stands in its place, jutting sharply skyward. The silhouette of the tower and the red beam of light that shone from it, welcoming new arrivals for the past seventy-five years, are both gone.
Characters are now free to go to the lighthouse ruins! Let us know if you'd like to undertake a formal exploration there, but the forest leading to it no longer holds any threat and does not need an exploration to unlock it.
BONFIRE SQUARE
Bonfire Square is the central hub of Beacon. It's not a large area (just about the size of a typical city intersection), but it's equipped with all the essentials for surviving in this world. The
bonfire is the main attraction, blazing over a story high in the middle of the square. Even when it's stretched thin, it's bright enough to light up the entirety of the cobblestone square. The fire is contained in a shallow pit that's been cordoned off, though benches circle the pit in case you want to hang around for a while.
A
photo booth stands vigilantly just east of the bonfire! "A small metal structure. It's too small to be a house and completely open besides, but upon further inspection, a very beat-up wooden sign stuck in the ground nearby claims it's for 'PHOTOS' and also that it's 'Free to use! Pls don't destroy any props/decorations! :c'"
Around the square, you can find a handful of buildings that look straight out of an old mining town. Floorboards creak underfoot, splinters practically jump right off the walls at you, and you can't help but wonder when some cowpoke is going to proclaim this town ain't big enough. Nevertheless, this area includes the following locations:
The InvincibleThe Invincible is the local
tavern and inn. The first floor is a
typical common area complete with
a bar and a small dance floor which includes a
jukebox. There's some minor flooding from the storm, and the front door has been removed. Forest spirits from the kitchen serve a basic selection of food and drink (including both alcohol and coffee). It's your standard bar and pub fare, and it's... passable. The bar itself is empty with no spirits around to bartend, but you're welcome to help yourself to the drinks. Most of the tables and chairs have been broken to various degrees and piled into a corner. Above the entrance outside the tavern is a sign that reads THE INVINCIBLE, the letters burned into weathered wood that looks like it was ripped off of an old ship. Underneath that is another sign, a simple plaque that reads WELCOME TO BEACON. THIS TOWN IS TOO SMALL FOR A TOWN DRUNK. WE ALL HAVE TO TAKE OUR TURN.
The interior of the pub is lit by one torch.The Invincible's windows are boarded up (unless individually removed by residents) and remnants of barricade supplies rest at the main entrance as well as at the landings of each flight of stairs. However, the ground floor interior where the bar can be found is now
painted from wall to wall with murals of blue skies, wide seas with sailing ships, fields of bright green grass and colorful flowers, and patches of abstract, swirling color.
Even better, the flooding has graced the front room with a
statue from Boneset Park, and it's kind of appropriate for a bar setting, don't you think? It's miraculously unharmed, upright, and smiling away. (And heavy. Dead-center in the room and very very very heavy.)
Should you visit the stockroom behind the bar, where food was once stored, you will feel a deep chill, and will occasionally find black water puddles in the corners of the room.
Mounted on a wall near the door is a bare-bones bulletin board. There isn't much on it yet except a hand-written notice about
PATROL INFORMATION. On it are names of people who go out on patrols, their possible routes, and when they are out and about. There is plenty of space to sign up yourself, if that's something your interested in coordinating. There is a pen tied to a piece of yarn tacked to the bulletin.
The upper two floors of The Invincible make up the "inn", though it's more of a
permanent living quarters these days. It also seems that someone has left a
log book here for their fellow inhabitants to reference at will.
Two torches have been placed outside of the Invincible's entrance.General StoreIf you're in need of something, the
general store should be your first stop. The shop is small and its supplies are basic, but they'll get the job done in a pinch. On the muddy shelves you can find a small selection of
groceries, simple
hand tools and
survival equipment, a thrift store's assortment of
clothing suited to the current weather, essential
housewares, and even the odd luxury like
books and
jewelry. The variety is lacking, but maybe you'll find what you're looking for in another part of town.
Starting in September, there also appears to be a selection of
ocarinas available on the shelves! Anyone new might be able to puzzle out that these go with a specific
text file that can be found on their tablet’s home screen. Characters can use the ocarinas to communicate these phrases to the forest spirits (and are welcome to
try learning or communicating other phrases), but keep in mind that there's not much plot info to be learned from the forest spirits, at least not for right now.
The general store is lit by one torch set on the counter.Town HallBeacon's town hall used to be an
ominous brick building, complete with a clock tower that chimed on the hour. While the general structure is probably salvageable, there's no saving the former clock tower, unfortunately. It didn't survive the storm and collapsed. In the mess of rubble that used to be the foyer is a life-size statue of a person with the head of a cocker spaniel, now on its side. The cocker spaniel head rests a few feet away.
Further inside, a giant sinkhole has opened up in the middle of the town hall's archive, which used to house documents on Beacon's history. Any information on the
game history page could have been learned ICly here (in the form of artifacts, journals, old bulletins, etc.; it's up to you), even if that information was outdated. Although they can't be put back in the archive at the moment (if at all), the records were saved thanks to the quick thinking of a local resident and now can be found at the school.
Painted on a now crumbling wall to the archive, you can just barely make out a
large tree with names on its branches, and while there were once pictures pinned next to these names, they've been moved to the school. This Wall for the Remembered, started by
a since departed Beaconite, was once open for public meditation and remembrance.
The walls also used to be lined with busts of unidentifiable people, but they've been broken into pieces now. Buried underneath all the debris is a
log book for fellow inhabitants to reference, waiting to be dug up again.
THE HARBOR
The
harbor is unassuming, its dock only just long enough to accommodate the ferry. There's not much to see here unless newcomers are arriving or there's an event going on, though the harbor is the only place in town to view the lighthouse across the bay. Beyond that, though? The lake stretches well beyond, eventually meshing with the horizon until you can't tell what's water and what's sky.
"On the path between the Harbor and Downtown, about a fifteen minute walk after passing the church, there's a post made of sturdy wood, propped up by a sizable pile of rocks. It sits in front of the mouth of the wooded isthmus that leads to lighthouse. The pole has a wooden sign affixed to it that reads: "Robin's Lighthouse -
DO NOT GO THAT WAY! THE SPIRITS THAT WAY WILL KILL YOU! GO AT YOUR OWN RISK! (But wave hi! She's nice!)". After another fifteen minutes of walking, a
rough stone bench sits where the path meets the coastline, perfect for sitting and enjoying the view of the stars reflecting on the lake."
BeachA strip of sand runs along the southern coast of the bay, and
technically you can call that a beach. The water is quite cold and swimming is ill-advised for a few reasons, but hey, it couldn't hurt so long as you're careful, right? Or maybe you'll have some luck fishing or looking for washed up treasure. An odd-looking (but appropriate)
sculpture seems to have washed in from the flood. Further down the beach, past of mouth of the river, the sand abruptly juts up into dunes, and then into sheer, rocky cliffs. It's much the same heading north toward the lighthouse, too. Looks like this is the only beach in town.
Boathouse RuinsThe boathouse
is was tiny and pretty much empty, but it's been leveled and reduced to ruins. RIP the boathouse. A single, deflated volleyball sits among the wreckage.
Ore DockAbout a half a mile down the beach from the harbor is a massive
ore dock that was once used to load ore onto barges. From the looks of it, it's been out of commission for a long, long time. The only trace left of the bridge that once connected the dock to land is the series of rotting wooden posts still peeking out over the waves between the beach and the dock. You can hop across these old support posts to walk into the lower level of the dock, though there's not much to find out there. Just a lot of concrete and the faint taste of copper on your lips. There aren't any stairs or ladders leading up to the dock's upper level.
DOWNTOWN
This once-bustling
city center is just a three-block
stretch of road with old brick buildings lining either side. Back in Beacon's heyday, this quaint little district would've been a great place to spend an evening, but now, it's dark and quiet and lifeless, just like the rest of the world. The emptiness resonates more deeply here, though, perhaps because of all the dark windows overlooking the long-dead streetlamps and empty storefronts. An outdoor patio juts out from one restaurant, tables ready and waiting for patrons that may never come. Distantly, the sound of waves crashing against the cliffs floats in from the north, a sound that would've never been heard over the ambiance of the town in life.
There are quite a few notable locations in downtown Beacon:
The Landmark InnA ritzy hotel in the center of it all, the
Landmark provides residents of Beacon with high class room and board. A large fountain sits in front of the hotel, though it's not currently operational.
The hotel itself is a few stories tall, and its entrance features a set of solid double doors, although the scrap wood patches and mismatched hinges look a little rougher than the fine wood and fittings in the rest of the building. The lobby seems to be made up of just the reception lobby and what looks to be an upscale restaurant just past the front desk. The ground floor has some minor flooding due to the storm. Notably, there's a
new resident settled just to the side of the reception desk. The Gacha Machine has been through it, and got a little rained on in the process. The sad song it hums seems sadder, and a little slower, at least on occasion. However, it still loves to be accessorized and talked to, even if the Gacha functionality has malfunctioned, it will still spit out riddles for anyone that has time on their hands. They just make a little less sense than before, that's all.
Lit with deliberate atmospheric dimness, the Landmark's restaurant is as ritzy as its lobby. Scarlet tablecloths alternate with white ones, each table and set of chairs solid oak. There's an atmosphere of class, and perhaps that's encouraged by the waitstaff spirits, who are always nearby to ensure the best possible experience.
Towards the back, the swinging doors to the kitchen prove that the kitchen staff is a little busier: six spirits rush about back there, washing dishes and cooking food, busy but clearly happy in their work.
Mounted on a wall near the door is a bare-bones bulletin board. There isn't much on it yet except a hand-written notice about
PATROL INFORMATION. On it are names of people who go out on patrols, their possible routes, and when they are out and about. There is plenty of space to sign up yourself, if that's something your interested in coordinating. There is a pen tied to a piece of yarn tacked to the bulletin.
As far as the rooms go, they're all upstairs, and characters may wander freely through the hotel's floors, though
all of the guest rooms are locked unless you check in with
The Concierge at the front desk! These interactions can be handwaved—point is, it works like a normal hotel in that you need a key to get into the guest rooms, and getting a key requires you to check in. Characters may temporarily check into the hotel, but more importantly, they can
live here! The Concierge won't issue keys for snooping in other characters' rooms, though, so don't even try!!!
A large logbook can be found at the front desk, which appears to be a record of past and current guests. The book is quite thick, and all of the entries are written in the red ink from a fountain pen, though they're all in different handwritings. Inspecting the book will reveal that all the pages up to this point have indeed been filled out by former guests, but they've all been crossed off and listed as checked out. Attempting to read the guest record will require—you guessed it—an
exploration!
The hotel's upper floors can be accessed via the stairwell or the now-unlocked elevator! For more information about the hotel's guest rooms, please see the
housing page.
The entrance to the Landmark is lit by one torch.The DelftThe Delft seems to be a theater of some kind. The marquee out front formerly spelled out "HEAR FEAR ! EYES DIES" on one side and "H AK I YA YO" on the other. It now reads "E A R F AR !YES DI " and "H A IY O".
If characters entered the Delft theater before the flood, they were faced with faded carpets with cheesy patterns, glass counters containing candy bars and chocolates, little ropes indicating queues, all manned by various spirits ready to sell them all the candy and popcorn one would ever need. If one is daring enough to shove their way past the debris blocking the front doors now, they will find that the entire theater is
fully flooded. Standing water and a lack of light underlines the destruction in this poor theater; soggy candy boxes and the odd little popcorn kernel float on the water's surface. Not a single spirit vendor can be found... Did they evacuate? Are they trapped further inside? Who knows!
Dark shapes twist under the water. If one stays here for too long, they might spot something moving in the unlit corners, poking from the walls, shifting inside the abandoned candy counters. Wait, there
was something there, right? There was something in that chair in the lobby a second ago, wasn't there? Uh... well, it's gone now.
It's probably fine.
Deeper inside are several rooms dedicated to live theaters and movie screens alike, with props and movie reels to spare. The projectors are in an even worse state of disrepair, but the large electrical box with spaces for five enormous batteries should... still be there, right? Four are hooked up a single projector each, and the fifth is for... something else, presumably. However, the box will probably take some getting to now.
Characters are free to clear the Delft's entryway and poke around the debris on their own, but getting past the water will require an exploration.Shopping CenterA small, indoor
shopping center comprised of a variety of stores! It seems to have made it out of the storm okay. It's dark and creepy inside, with some standing water left over from the flood. Some of the shops are open, though most things on the bottom floor are even soggier than they were before, if that's even possible, and... What's that? The dulcet tones of Muzak that are normally crackling over some distant speaker now sound a bit
wrong. Just inside the entryway is an art feature! Five statues stand together in a group facing out toward the doors. Behind the statues, there's a little sitting area for tired shoppers to rest, complete with fake plants and trash bins and mall signage.
Near the entrance, players can find a clothing store, a jewelry shop, a specialty hat shop, and a grocery store! These shops are all currently available, and stock soggy wares appropriate to what you'd expect. Check the
items spreadsheet for more info about what can be found in those stores.
Most of the mall is one level, but the far end of the mall opens into an
atrium. The skylights overhead have blown out, which exacerbated the mall's many (many, many, many) flooding problems. A pair of nearby escalators are rusted through, and the elevator is most definitely not functional. It looks like someone took care of all of the tank and pipe repairs some time before the flood hit, but unfortunately, the lower floor is once again entirely flooded with 3-4 feet of water. Geez!
The lower level of the atrium contains an outdoor recreation shop, a janitorial corridor, and a tech shop that will need to be explored before they're available to the public! The
crocodile spirits have been dealt with, the
tech shop has been unlocked along with its
overseer, and the burst pipe in the outdoor rec shop has been
repaired. The water will need to be drained before the lower level of the shopping center is open for business. Almost... there...!!
The atrium's upper level is dry, though! A furniture store, a hair salon, and a kiosk selling tablet accessories (tablet cases, styluses, wireless keyboards, that sort of stuff) are all open for business. Check the
items spreadsheet for more info about what can be found in those stores. The hair salon features a team of forest spirit stylists that are happy to provide basic salon services (hair cuts/styling/coloring, manicures, that sort of thing) to the residents of Beacon! Though, uh, they're forest spirits, so results may vary.
CourthouseThere's not much to the first floor of the
courthouse—just a reception desk, some clerical offices, and a room of town records. It's quiet and dark and... ransacked, with papers and files tossed in every direction, furniture overturned unceremoniously, and thick gouges where claws have raked against the brick walls. Did the storm do this? It's hard to tell considering how bad it looked even before. A stairwell lies off to the side beyond a set of double doors, each with a large frosted glass window set into the upper half. In its heyday, this building must've been quite ornate.
Beyond the second floor landing lies a wide hallway meant to serve as a lobby to the adjoining courtroom. On the doors to the courtroom, there's a troubling amount of gouges in the wood, all concentrated on the upper half of the door. These were probably left by the
hostile forest spirits that used to roam the courthouse, but those have been, er, dispatched!
All the furniture has been piled in the middle of the
courtroom to make an honorable island for the judge to ride out the storm. The serious noises the judge makes to any visitors indicates perhaps they'd like their island to be disbanded and returned to something with some semblance of order, but for now the island remains.
The judge's office beyond is a hot mess. Some kind of large animal has been nesting in there, it seems. The furniture is all piled up to form a makeshift burrow. The shredded legal book papers that carpeted the floor like bedding are now soggy and gross.
It seems the only notable feature of this location is
the honorable Skunk Judge. All rise for Skunk Judge!
Kickaxe Brewing CompanyKBC is a local brewery inside of a building that looks to have been a small factory at some point. The bar is modestly large with a
functional garage door taking up half the front. The few patio tables that had been scattered before it are now missing thanks to the storm.
Inside, the space is
large and missing its many small coffee tables and chairs. The inside is industrial, but in a hipster kind of way: very neat and clean, but with enough paneling and support beams to indicate this space is rundown deliberately, not from neglect. For some reason the interior is completely slimy, all over the walls and floors and ceiling, anything you touch, it's gross. Faded soggy posters and shattered neon lights hang on the walls, along with a few faded photographs of black-and-white cityscapes that now hang crooked.
There's a small bar in back, with an older-seeming spirit ready to play bartender. A doorway in back reveals a
semi functional brewery, for all your alcohol making needs! As in, yes, you can absolutely brew your own alcohol (or... other liquids?) here! The only problem is that the flood seems to have washed many of the supplies away.
Upstairs, there's another
bar, but it's the performance area that dominates the space. Come sing a song, listen to a Beacon Bit do some slam poetry, or just get rowdy! While there used to be
plenty of
seating to enjoy the show, the storm carried them off to who knows where. Oh, and there's a
large electrical box with spaces for five enormous batteries tucked into the wall—but hey, who cares about that when there's karaoke to sing?
The Fallout ShelterThis nightclub can be found on the second and third floors of the shopping center. True to its name, it weathered the storm and flooding quite well - while there's plenty of mud and water lingering in some areas, it's managed to make it out in one piece. Opening the doors to the
the Fallout Shelter puts you immediately in the thick of things. No matter when you go inside, it seems like the place is booming with activity, and more importantly, with
music. A set of hefty speakers sits at the forefront of the dance floor. Between them, a spirit, hunched and in focus, mans the turntables. Any songs available on the Songbird app might just turn up in the club.
Other spirits are always scattered on the dance floor, twirling without a care, squealing along to the music as they bounce around, some waving sticks around as glowstick substitutes. It does appear that there are some
private rooms, but strange noises always seem to be coming from at least some of them. Better not open those if you don't want to see a bit more of some of the forest spirits than you ever bargained for. As the spirits party it up, another
duo has taken up some room on the dance floor after being swept in by the flood. Though, instead of dancing, they look hard at work.
On the second floor of the nightclub is a bar. The music from downstairs is still audible, though not nearly as oppressive in its volume. Just like below, the bar is fully stocked and manned by spirits, with several more spirits generally found lounging around at tables and on stools with drinks in hands or munching on bowls of acorns.
Another interesting thing to note: there's an electrical box located backstage. It has two slots for batteries about the size of car batteries, though it doesn't look like your standard car battery would actually fit.
The whole place smells like weed. Wondering where you could get some of your own? Maybe one of the spirits here can hook you up. Rumor has it that the DJ might just be willing to sell you some cigarettes, cocaine, MDMA, or LSD if you're willing to pay... in bling! This forest spirit wants
shiny stuff to wear, so hook them up and they'll hook you up right back! (Players are welcome to handwave these trades or play them out on their own!)
StorefrontsThere are a handful of other small storefronts along the road as well, but they're locked up for the moment, devoid of any indication as to what may be inside. Strangely enough, the storefronts are... sparkling? Apparently, the dirty water from the flood somehow left the windows cleaner than they were before. The long abandoned restaurant storefront is the one exception, with multiple muddy handprints pressed to the windows. No amount of cleaning seems to remove them, either. These locations
do not need to be explored! They'll all be made available once the other downtown locations have been thoroughly investigated.
THE CHURCH
Nestled in the woods just off the path north of Bonfire Square is the church, a
small cathedral, composed of just a main sanctuary with a couple of off-shoot rooms, possibly once used for storage or private worship. The building looks quite run-down on the outside, and appears to be slightly sagging northward after the storm, but remains standing thanks to the hard work of dedicated volunteers. Inside, the pews are laid out neatly inside the sanctuary, clean and sturdy, but with minor scuff marks left over from the flood.
Stained glass windows once ran along the walls from the entrance up to the altar, but water pressure and collisions with flood debris have now blown them all out, and they have been replaced with clear glass. Even though the architecture resembles a Catholic cathedral, everything else about the church is devoid of any particular religious affiliation. If you listen, you may hear church bells echoing faintly in the distance.
The main attraction is the
altar of candles at the head of the church. Dozens of candles, some lit and some not, burn brightly and mysteriously, given that they're not part of the bonfire. The flames can't be transferred to anything, including other candles, and they seem to resemble the candlelight inside your lantern... Anyone paying attention will notice that candles light up at the death of Beacon's citizens, as well as snuff themselves out again when citizens are revived or new arrivals come to town.
On the floor in front of the wall housing the candle altar is a flat metal square set into the stones. It has no visible handles, though it looks like it might open somehow. The echo of rolling water persists below that sealed trap door. Nearby is a
hand-made sign.
In front of the church where the path splits stands a sturdy signpost that points the way to various locations with approximate walking times! The sign for the Bonfire has info for the Invincible, the General Store, the Town Hall, and the Post Office, but does not mention Lutece Labs. It also indicates that the Bonfire is on the way to the village. The sign for Downtown also mentions that Robin's lighthouse (now destroyed) and the museum are on the way. At the bottom of the sign is a friendly warning to stay on the paths and use the bridges (also now destroyed) unless you're prepared to probably die.
The church is lit by one torch.
THE POST OFFICE
The post office is a small, one-room building just to the west of Bonfire Square. Inside, the single
counter is manned by a tall, tired-looking forest spirit with very long, spider-like limbs:
The Postmaster General! They can use those limbs to navigate the mail slots behind the counter, each of which has the name of a resident character scrawled on the label. The handwriting looks quite childish, like whoever wrote it was just getting the hang of writing letters.
The piranhas that once littered the floor of the post office are gone. The roof over the mail sorting room, once caved in by the storm, has now been rebuilt with recycled wood and shingles.
Characters are welcome to send letters, packages, or other mail items to each other or... to someone else, maybe? The Postmaster General will receive any incoming post and will dole out any parcels you may have in your mailbox, but don't you know, messing with other people's mail is illegal? There will be no snooping through other's private belongings!
If you would like to send mail to other characters in game, feel free to organize that directly between players. If you would like to attempt to send mail to an NPC or, erhm, to somewhere else, that's best done through the
post office page. Same goes for if you'd like to check your own mail slot for any gifts. There might just be something waiting for you. (Though, less cryptically: If anything especially important arrives for your character, we'll drop it in your IC inbox!)
THE MUSEUM
The museum is a
bizarre building that looks like it was made by jamming two other buildings together. It sits relatively close to the northern cliffs, which drop down to the lake far below. Jutting out over these cliffs is a kind of
viewing platform, though it's difficult to really see anything out there but stars. Between this structure and the building proper is a
strange little sculpture garden, the most prominent feature of which is the bronze statue of a woman on a pedestal. She has long hair and holds a clipboard under one arm, with a flame in her outstretched hand as she looks defiantly toward the sky. It looks like there used to be an inscription underneath, but it's been violently scratched away. The building's front facade faces the garden (and therefore the cliffs).
Evidently built on an unstable section of the cliff, most of the ground has collapsed below the museum's foundation after the storm, opening a large channel through the floor that's filled with deep black murky water. Not too far from the water is
a torch lighting a crudely-made wooden sign, which has been scratched with a nail to read "No Swimming, Here Be Monsters." Above the words is a circle with a diagonal slash.
Through the shattered windows and missing front doors, one can see that much of the flooring and walls are just gone, along with whatever displays were here. Nothing in there seems stable anymore.
Please note that, much like the lighthouse from the last iteration of the game, entering any point in the museum will put characters at serious risk of injury or death.
THE BIKE SHOP
A small building filled with
dusty windows and, on one side, an enormous
garage door stands not too far from the post office. The building's interior is just one room and a bit of a mess, with various tools and parts scattered over the shelves and floor, all of it covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Papers are scattered on the floor, but they're not so interesting. The content ranges, including scraps of a shop ledger, brochures for local mountain biking trails, guides to proper motorbike upkeep, and hobby magazines relating to bikes, mechanics, and... taxidermy and pin collecting? Sure.
Bicycles have been strewn about thanks to the floodwaters. Some are stuck in trees or lodged between wreckage; some have their wheel frames bent, their chains snapped. But most are able to be recovered! They just need a dedicated round of maintenance to fix them back into working order. Strangely, they seem to have rusted excessively for being submerged only a couple weeks. There are plenty of supplies to repair and upgrade them, too, should your character get a hankering to get their hands all greasy. Among the wild mess is at least
one upright bike that seems to have ridden in from a certain park after the storm... On the other side, near the garage, there are a few motorbikes. They run on electricity, and they're ready for use so long as they've been given an opportunity to charge!
Characters may freely borrow bicycles and motorbikes from the bike shop! You don't need to report the borrowing anywhere (unless your character engages in any
property damage), and you're welcome to assume your character can find functional bikes at all times.
Bikes of any kind may only be ridden around the explored parts of town, though. These little vehicles won't be much help off the beaten path.
THE SCHOOL
A one-floor schoolhouse, with faded brick and ivy creeping over the forgotten walls. The windows are dark, but the door swings open when anyone approaches. Oddly enough, the floodwaters seem to have cleaned up the place. It's positively pristine.
The
Wall of the Remembered has now been moved from the Town Hall into one of the first classrooms you reach should you enter the school. There is a large tree painted on one wall of the classroom with names and pictures -- some may have flood damage, but otherwise they're all accounted for. A table in one corner allows for people to add names if necessary and the room is clear for you to mourn or celebrate as you see fit for the person you are missing.
Adjacent to the Memorial Room is the Records Room, featuring a somewhat-organized collection of documents and artifacts recovered from the Town Hall which detail Beacon's history. Any information on the
game history page can now be found here as an IC resource.
Past classrooms filled with broken bits of chalk and shattered blackboards lies a
cafeteria, with little tables and chairs set out, ready to be used. In the back, towards the kitchen, there's a long metal counter, and behind it, a forest spirit is waiting.
With six arms, a squat body, and a mask that sweeps back into a hairnet, they stand behind the counter all day long, scraping a metal spoon against an empty container, doling out nothing to nobody. Nothing distracts them, although peppering them with questions will prove that they're fairly ill-tempered—they're working, don't ask them personal questions! But if characters want food, the spirit will serve them a
typical school lunch meal—think along the lines of chicken nuggets, pizza, pasta, and so on.
There's also a unisex bathroom down the hall, should anyone have a few too many apple juices.
The storm may have left the school unharmed, but it does appear to have washed in a new student! A sculpture dangles next to the entrance, its chains tangled in the handles of the front door and among the nearby tree branches.
Welcome back to school, kid!The school's entrance is lit by one torch with an additional torch in the memorial room.
DAYBREAK ORPHANAGE
Nestled into the woods near the lakeshore in North Beacon, the four-floor
Daybreak Orphanage looms wide in a gap between the trees. A rusted sign reading "C OS D" lies at the top of a short concrete stairway.
Immediately inside the front doors, the dusty entryway with its peeling paint leads to a
main office and a
hallway running east-west, while ahead is a sturdy-looking spiral staircase. The floor here is covered in mud, and it looks like the flood slammed open the office door with such force that the doorknob has broken entirely off. Inside the office are quite a lot of old files - some about staff members, and many about the children who lived here.
Following the hallway leads to multiple rooms in either direction:
A
chapel and three small
classrooms form one wing of the orphanage, to the left of the front door. The chapel, like the church, appears loosely Catholic in construction with its gothic arches, but features no clear denominational symbols. An altar and several pews are here, though the pews are child-sized. The
classrooms include blackboards (one of which has fallen off the wall and hangs at an angle); twelve desks per room, all pushed against the walls and covered in mud; a teacher's desk; a
variety of
very dated posters; and low bookshelves lining boarded-up windows - although unfortunately most of the
books are completely waterlogged and turn quickly to mush when handled. A door in each classroom leads out to the
yard which now looks much like the rest of the woods, except for a few
broken toys still lying within the bounds of a twisted, overgrown fenceline.
The opposite wing contains a
kitchen,
laundry room, and
boiler room. The
kitchen still holds a number of cooking utensils, but the gas line to the range doesn't seem to be working, and the oven door has rusted off its hinges. Still, it's a sizeable kitchen with an island for preparing food - and everything here seems targeted toward cooking in large batches. The laundry room has several non-functional washing machines, a linen closet with very musty off-white bedsheets, and another door to a side yard where a large metal bin contains several black plastic bags of children's clothing, securely tied shut. The boiler room holds, as might be expected, a damaged water heater and assorted other pieces of plumbing and electrical equipment.
Upstairs, all three remaining floors have
dormitories,
toilet and shower facilities, and each floor has a
common dining room. Although it looks like the building was capable of holding over 100 children, most of the dormitories show no real signs of having been occupied other than the empty beds. The second floor is the one exception - for here there are
toys and other personal belongings decorating a scattered handful of beds.
Daybreak Orphanage is occupied by several forest spirits.
One tall, bent form draped in black rags paces the halls. Its face is entirely covered in fabric except for its lower jaw, which has pasty white skin stretched across it, and it has far too many hands on long, bony arms which grasp at anything it can reach, picking up objects and caressing them before setting them aside as it continues on. At the slightest sound or hint of movement it comes quickly to inspect the source, and can emit a horrendous high-volume, very stern-sounding screech when displeased. It seems particularly interested in chasing down the other spirits in the building, but evidently has a lot of difficulty in catching up with them.
The remaining occupants are a trio of fuzzy, rotund, long-eared raccoon-like spirits with
playful masks. While walking through a doorway - or as you begin to head downstairs, thinking the path you just came through should be clear - you might stumble over a tripwire. Entering a room? Watch out for the bucket of muddy water above the door! These three play a variety of Home Alone-style pranks, scribble nonsense on the walls, and paint arrows on the floors that loop back around on themselves. But as soon as the bent, ragged tall spirit comes looking, they take cover under beds, in closets, or manage to slip into cracks in the walls they simply shouldn't be able to fit into. Watch your pockets, in case they start trying to take things!
SOLIS LABS
Dr. Maridel Solis' home and laboratory complex lies nestled deep in the woods at the foothills of the mountain range that borders Beacon to the southwest. The quiet, cozy little house is mostly
buried in the earth itself, with a mossy roof and tiny windows. The buried home provides insulation and protection from the elements but also camouflage from the many curious - and occasionally belligerent - people who have made Beacon their home.
The
house itself is divided into two levels: an initial entryway, with a writing desk, lanterns, and a few other personal effects, and then a stairway leading down to the bedroom, kitchen, toilet, and study. A small framed photo in the bedroom shows a man and woman who look to be about the same apparent age as Dr. Solis was when she was last seen, but the picture is worn and faded. Books in the study cover a variety of physics and mathematical subjects, and include a bound volume titled "Experimental verification of the quantum foam hypothesis. M. Solis, 1958." On the desk itself is a very dog-eared, well-loved copy of the book
Arras de Cristal by Clara Lair.
A keypad-locked door in the study leads to a short earthen tunnel and another door - or at least its metal frame. The door itself has recessed into the wall and is open to the laboratory beyond. The lab is a fully-underground facility with white metal and concrete walls which lie in sharp contrast to the earthen home and tunnels surrounding it. It is composed of the following rooms:
Workshop: The
machinery here is not at all uniform, and none of it looks contemporary with the 1970s as known by most from Earth. A set of tables down the middle of the room hold a variety of computers as well as equipment of a more mysterious nature, strung together by wires and cables and various homemade adapters. Lines run from monitors to what might be servers, across the ceiling, and across the floor although rubber mats have been placed over those to prevent tripping. Along one wall is a whiteboard covered in dry erase pen, and the numerous layers of writing and erasing yield
equations that, to a highly-trained eye, show a complex but elegant series of calculations that describe a series of wormholes. It looks unfinished; more like brainstorming than serious work.
Along the far wall is a machine covered in knobs and dials. A flat metal bed on the right side of the machine falls about a centimeter if pressed, and a corresponding large dial facing the bed suggests something ought to be measured or weighed here. A door here leads to the
printing room, while stairs downward lead to the
device testing room.
The third wall has shelves and hooks covered in all sorts of strange tools, and a door which serves as an exit to the
Beacon tunnel system. There is a larger amount of open concrete floor space here, and multiple workbenches with soldering irons, boxes of hardware parts, and labeled bins full of scrap metal, cables, and other resources.
Printing room: Rows of 3D printers fill this modestly-sized room, with each seemingly specialized for working at different sizes or with different materials. Shelves here mostly hold lanterns and lantern parts, as well as several unlit candles. Along the back wall are a few large metal tubs approximately ten feet in length. Inside one of these tubs are two cracked, unlit lanterns. By the tubs, a notebook sits on a table which at a glance holds a list of names and dates. A door here leads to
storage.
Storage: A large warehouse of shelves full of raw materials for printing, more cables and wires and hardware, and boxes of broken lanterns. There is also a corner of the room dedicated to tinned, preserved, and dried foods; fertilizer and gardening equipment which looks dusty and unused; and household goods such as rope, blankets, cleaning supplies, and sewing materials.
One wall is dedicated to some very
unusual sorts of
objects, as well as what look to be preserved biological samples in jars.
A heavy metal door on the opposite wall from the entryway is closed and locked.
Device testing: Stairs from the workshop lead down to this very large room. At the base of the stairs are two computers hooked up to multiple monitors. The rest of the room is open, with large concentric circles on the ceiling and floor that mark measurements in a variety of units.
A
strange patch of corrosion has damaged the floor in the center of the room. The metal of the floor, walls, and ceiling is warped and strained toward this central point as if it had liquefied and stretched. Metallic dust blankets the room and the computers, and anyone entering the room will notice sparks of light firing off apparently at random - although moving does not alter the location of these sparks, suggesting they take place in the eyes or brain of the viewer.
Beacon tunnels: The
tunnel system that Dr. Solis used in order to retrieve bodies and lanterns for revival stretches from the
workshop outward to several locations around town. Near the center of the tunnel system, approximately below the school, is the
morgue where bodies were held temporarily in a set of open wooden caskets. The morgue has been colonized by a variety of fungal and slime mold species, and all caskets are now empty. Past this room, the tunnel forks, with one branch heading north and another heading west toward the lab. A rust-resistant galvanized green steel sign sits at the fork with "DR. SOLIS LAB" with an arrow pointing west.
Lab assistant sign-ups can be found here.
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