012-014 » even the air itself was grey

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias.
WHEN: Days 012-014
WHAT: The weather is behaving strangely. Again.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Michael Andrews "Liquid Spear Waltz"

DAYS 012-014
“The overcast skies had the colour of deadened stones, and seemed closer than usual, as though they were phlegmatically observing my every movement with their apathetic emptily blue-less eyes.”
—Simona Panova, “Nightmarish Sacrifice”

Rain has returned to Mathias. While those who remember the storms from nearly two weeks ago may fear reprisal of such tumultuous weather, this rain is far tamer. The cloudy grey skies let loose a steady drizzle that remains constant from start to finish, which is in itself, perhaps, a bit unusual. The patter of droplets against windows, small streams forming in the roads and on grass as the ground becomes saturated, all of it may seem normal to some, but a little too normal to others.

What is without question abnormal, however, is the sun. Though it cannot be seen distinctly behind the thick grey clouds, its light remains as constant as the rain throughout these three days. Hour after hour, regardless of the time of day, there is light in the sky. Unchanging, an inescapable reminder that Mathias is not home, and none who are brought here have any control over what will occur in this place.


NEW ARRIVALS
Once again, more unfortunate souls have been brought to Mathias by unknown means, deposited at the edge of the forest near the empty houses that tell of those who once lived in this strange little town. They may find themselves wandering through the trees until they encounter the strange fog that envelops the town, or stumbling upon the rotting remains of houses that have felt the passage of time more than others.

---

LOCATIONS
LIGHTHOUSE Residents will notice the lighthouse to the north of Mathias, situated on a cliff that is above the town level. Even the most observant individuals will not have noticed it before now, which might be quite unsettling to some. There is no path available to reach the lighthouse at this time, though residents are welcome to try — they will be blocked by fog in the forest and a sense of unease that becomes debilitating if they walk too far along the beach.

NO NEW LOCATIONS are available for exploration at this time. Residents are welcome to further explore available locations, including utilizing AP rewards at locations they may have previously explored.

CONDITIONS UPDATES

— CLOCKS continue to be unreliable. Some may keep irregular time at different rates, while others have ceased to work at all, each having stopped at a different time.

— VOICES are not openly haunting our residents, though they may still be occasionally encountered in the more heavily decayed buildings where some rooms seem to almost swallow whatever light tries to enter them.

— WEATHER conditions are both typical and atypical for late fall. Temperatures consist of chilly "sweater weather" days and nights that can dip below freezing — you don't want to be outside without a coat when the sun goes down. A constant light rain continues for all three days, only stopping on the night of the third day. And for all three days, there is constant cloudy grey sunlight, with the sun unable to be seen and tracked from behind the cloud cover. Darkness will return to Mathias on the third night when the rain stops.

— FOG continues to block the way of those wishing to travel further than the Town Hall, and all who venture into the forest will be met by its impenetrable wall after a few hundred yards. The fog will allow none to pass; those who try will find themselves overcome by fear and panic so intense, they can physically do nothing but flee back the way they came.

OOC UPDATES

— HOUSING LISTINGS now have a permanent home! A few of these may have been missed or information might have changed, so please do submit updates as needed, including if your character moves into a new location or if there are rooms still available at said location.

— NEW PLAYERS are still arriving with each new log, so make sure to keep an eye on our ooc intro post. (An easy way to do this is to track the post — click the bell icon, select More Options, and track when someone makes a new top-level.)

— INFORMATION may publicly be shared between characters at the bulletin board in the town hall. This is meant to be a permanent place for pieces of the Mathias puzzle to be shared and archived to both help information be shared ICly and to allow new players to easily dive into the mystery.

— THE CALENDAR has been updated through the end of the year. With the approaching holiday season, we will continue a lighter log schedule, but as always, players are welcome to create their own logs, conduct intensive investigators, and make more terrible decisions. (The mod is always happy to enable these shenanigans, never hesitate to reach out with ideas.)

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE LOG?

HOUSING DESIGN/EXPLORATION

PING THE MOD

navigation | faq | setting | mod contact

Comments

[unwilt]

Thomas's heart sinks at the sound of a young girl's voice, so abruptly that the tone and content of her words barely even matter. He hasn't seen many of the others here, but they've all at least been adults. He's not usually the type to underestimate a child purely because they're young, but – coming from where he's just been, seeing what he just saw only a few hours ago, it's enough to make his lips twist down in muted exhaustion.

That said, it takes him a little too long to come up with something to say, once he's cycled back through the last few seconds and reminded himself that she did in fact ask him a question. And what a question it is. His brow furrows, now, heavily, as he tries to find an answer that will suffice. The more he thinks about it, the stranger the question is, especially in lieu of an introduction.

"...New in town," he decides on eventually, sitting back a little on the step and watching her properly. Not a child, but still young, and there's something steely in the way she holds herself. "What kind of question is that?"

[enduresurvive]

She stands there, frozen like a deer about to bound away from danger at the slightest provocation. Though Ellie is just as likely to fight as she is to run, and maybe even slightly more likely these days. Her survival instincts are good but her head is fucked up.

She makes a sound through her nose that might almost pass for a laugh. His answer is the kind of smart ass terrible humour response that she's good at herself. She can appreciate it. At least he talked, and coherently. "I don't know, dude, you're like bleeding grass."

[unwilt]

"What?"

The second he asks it, he remembers. He'd pushed it right to the back of his mind since he got here, but he remembers seeing it, a single flower growing far too quickly under the drops of his blood. He'd thought, in retrospect, that he was hallucinating.

He looks down at the step next to him, where he's been steadily bleeding for a few minutes now, only it's not a pool of blood by his leg but a steady tuft of moss.

"You can see it too?" he asks, looking back up at her, down at the moss, back up again. If he's absolutely honest with himself, this just raises more questions than it answers, and as his gaze shifts from her he can see the little sprigs of something green following him all the way to the steps. Abruptly, he reaches out to the moss beside him and plants his good hand right in the middle of it. It certainly feels real.

[enduresurvive]

She watches all this, the way he looks down at the bloody moss before looking back at her. She doesn't move, but she's still there considering whether to run or fight. It's probably good for both of them that she doesn't have a gun.

"Yeah, I can fucking see it," she says. "What, is it like...did you think you imagined it?" Okay, she can see how that could be a thing, because it's pretty damn bonkers.

She follows his gaze, seeing the drops that lead here. She hadn't noticed them before, too freaked out by Thomas and his collection of moss to pay them any mind.

[unwilt]

"A little," Thomas admits, as he pinches the stem of a little pink flower and plucks it, turning it slowly between finger and thumb. "I... don't know if I'm in the right frame of mind. This all feels very delusional." He glances up at her, his brow furrowed. "You asked what I am. Not who. Why?"

[enduresurvive]

She watches him pick the flower. It's not like cordyceps, and anyway, whatever freaky idea this image had sparked in her brain, it's really not alike. But who the hell bleeds flowers? That's crazy.

"It does seem pretty fucking crazy, but either we're both hallucinating or it's real," she says, "And I don't hallucinate." Strictly speaking, that isn't true, but the PTSD-induced flashbacks she mostly keeps at bay seem a bit different than outright hallucinations. Maybe that's hairsplitting. Either way, she's not about to tell a stranger any of that.

She sighs, heavy.

"Sorry, I...uh, it just freaked me out, you know?" She glances at the moss again. "Are you gonna be okay or should I, like, get you some chlorophyll?"