villagelogs | 012-014 » even the air itself was grey

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012-014 » even the air itself was grey

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

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"They do not have much of it," Doc observes with a sigh. "Whether it is magic or something else. Miss Johnson hurt herself-..." Vibrating? "...doing what she can do. Number... Mister... Mister Number Five? Had me almost throwing up last week's dinner. And John Constantine, that-- man with the stupid suggestions. He could barely do his smoke trick. Either they are all frauds or something is... interfering with their various quirks." That's what he's calling those various abilities until he finds a better term.

"My telephone, it does not work here either. Though I suspect it was damaged in the water."

Malcolm pulled his own phone out of his pocket. "Mine doesn't work either. I mean, it works, as in it powers up and the non-phone functions work. But there's no network; it can't connect to anything."

He gestured towards Doc. "If you think your phone is water damaged, you should put it in a bowl of rice. That'll absorb the water out of it and it might work after that."

"Unh- truth be told I do not know how it works." It makes a sound if the ladies call him. And the gentlemen too, although it is almost always Wynonna, or Waverly.

He pulls it out of his front pocket and presents it to Malcolm, a 2015 model of a black smartphone testifying at least that he has spent some time in the 21st century. It's probably too late now to be trying the rice or any other technique but no harm giving it a go. Assuming there is rice to be found around these parts.

"I don't know why it's still in my pocket, truth be told," he confesses with a small laugh. "Used to make me jump every time it rang. Now I-... damn thing won't even turn on and I'm still waiting for a call."

Malcolm took it and turned it over in his hands, then opened the back and took the battery out.

"How long ago did it get wet?" he asked. "Did you arrive when Raylan did, dropped in the water?"

He set the battery on the counter, then took a bowl down from the cupboard, the started riffling through the pantry. "I'm sure I saw rice in here...." He looked over at Doc. "I don't usually go back to sleep after I... wake up." Wake up screaming. "I was poking around."

"Yes. Must have been... a week or so?" Doc offers vaguely with a shrug. "I got out of the water fast as I could, it was raining sommin' fierce, but I did not meet Raylan until the weather cleared up."

Those first few days were a little hectic. Doc had spent some time looking for familiar faces. It was only after he had convinced himself he arrived alone that he allowed himself to start preparing for what he needed to stick around this place for the long haul.

"This is a nice house. Hanging lampshades aside." The wooden one by the main entrance keeps attacking his hat. "Found anything interesting in your poking around?"

"Just the bungee cords in the garage and that the kitchen is well stocked with staples."

He poured rice into the bowl and nestled Doc's phone inside, leaving the back casing off, on the counter, next to the battery.

"We'll give it a try."

He glanced around. "I grew up in a big townhouse but I live in an open concept loft now. I don't need a lot of space; it's just me and a parakeet." He gestured to Doc. "Do you have a family at home?"

He's not familiar with these concepts, of townhouses and lofts. All he can surmise is that a parakeet does make for an interesting choice of companion.

"Everyone I knew is gone." Or so he has assumed, so far. He has not yet found out that Big Nose Kate is still alive.

"But I have a new family, yes. Wyatt's great great granddaughters have taken me in." That's... understating matters slightly, but he figures Malcolm is not interested in relationship drama.

"Has no one taken you in?" Apart from the parakeet who probably puts up with Malcolm because it gets fed regularly.

He poured the tea and handed a cup to Doc before picking up his own.

"I see my mother and sister all the time; they both live in the city. I work with my mentor, a lieutenant in Major Crimes at the NYPD. I have... people around. Just not." He gestured to the upstairs vaguely with his still shaky right hand. "At night." He clenched the hand into a fist and steadied it on the counter. "Raylan actually came in and tried to wake me up last night. I don't know how much of a good idea that was but... nobody's ever done it before if I wasn't... loose." Rampaging around blindly; a danger to himself and others.

"Thank you." He pulls the tea a little closer although he doesn't start drinking it just yet.

"Would it be better if we left you be?" Doc isn't sure what was safer. They are somewhat safer now knowing how Malcolm can get, knowing not to put anything breakable or sharp or have any obstacles in the way as much as possible, but if he's restrained and having one hell of a fit, he isn't sure if they should just let him ride it out or try to wake him and soothe the anguish.

It hadn't been unpleasant, waking up with Raylan's concern over him, though he was worried about hurting one of them sometime.

"The thing with parasomnias... they're largely considered inconsolable. It's hard to wake me up; I'm not just dreaming. I won't know it's you; I'll probably fight..." He took a breath and looked at Doc. "I don't want to hurt you."

He didn't want to say 'no, don't do it' but... he couldn't ask him to volunteer for a possible punch in the face.

"I'm physically safe, as long as I'm restrained."

"I don't bruise easily," Doc jokes as he takes a quiet sip of tea. "I have been shot, stabbed, decked, bitten - a bit of lashing out is a risk I do not mind taking, if it means you will not have to suffer a minute longer than you have to." But, just so Malcolm doesn't feel like he's being a burden or that the cowboys really are suckers for pain, Doc shrugs and hides half of his smile behind his cup.

"Besides. Raylan needs his beauty sleep," he adds with a small one-sided shrug. "Can't have you screaming the whole night away."

Malcolm huffed a laugh down at his tea.

"Raylan is doing perfectly well in the beauty department," he noted. "Though sleep deprivation is considered torture under the Geneva Convention; I didn't really want to inflict it on either of you. I was going to find my own place... he talked about helping me find a place. But I think my unconscious rampage changed things."

Doc purses his lips and tilts his head, as if he's considering those words. He does not think of Raylan in that manner. It is not what they do. They drink, Doc smokes, they talk about guns. Sometimes something personal comes up. They drink some more. There is some good-natured flirting and ribbing, to be sure, and hell he might even kill a man or a monster for Raylan Givens if it comes down to it, but that's as far as it goes.

Like it or not, he is better known for his shooting and his gambling and his other hedonistic pursuits over his medical talent.

"He was never going to leave you alone with your demons, Malcolm Bright. It is a pity if you thought he was that kind of man."

"It's not him that I thought was in any way... not morally upright. It's just... general human nature to stay at the opposite end of the subway car from the lunatic talking to himself, pretending not to notice him," Malcolm explained. "He's been nothing but kind and so have you." A beat. "You didn't have to be. There's been nothing in this for you except maybe the chance to step on some broken glass in your bare feet."

"Maybe that is true these days. I would not know." There was a time before subway cars where a few worried individuals would have turned their attention to the lunatic. Offered to call the priest or a doctor or chipped in to help in their own way, somehow. Doc does not think people were less selfish back then. Many kept their heads down and minded their own business. But more people would have cared.

Which might be why he doesn't think of himself or the marshal as an exception.

"A most tantalising opportunity to discover a riveting pastime, I am sure," he jokes about the broken glass. "But unless you have chanced upon a couple of Colt revolvers or railroad tracks that will lead us home, I am not looking for anything."

Malcolm nodded.

"I guess it's a good thing that the first person I came across when I got here was a level-headed man ripping pipes out of a wall, huh?"

"Well, when life gives you copper pipes in the wall," Doc muses with a tilt of his head and a smile. He nurses his tea slowly, keeping the cup in his hand. Admittedly Doc and he suspects Raylan too are both tequila boys rather than lemonade, but sometimes the lemons life gives you are still on the tree and you have to go pluck them yourself.

"I suppose you think we'd be better off building a wagon or something. Might just get us faster around town rather than out of here though."

"A wagon? There's nowhere to go. I guess if we were going to attempt a physical escape, a boat would make more sense but... if we just sail into another fog barrier just past the horizon, we'd be pretty screwed. We don't have enough information to attempt that. And the sea always seems to be choppy."

There's always somewhere to go. Especially for someone like Doc who never used to stay in one place for long. Recent events back home and present circumstances aside, of course.

"I am no good at building arks," Doc says wryly. He is a man of several talents, bitter jadedness and sheer necessity forcing him to pick up new skills throughout his artificially long life. A biblical saviour, he is most definitely not.

"You are of course, correct. We need to find out more information before attempting any such endeavour."

"Investigation is definitely a stronger suit for me than carpentry, too," Malcolm acknowledged. "But the problem here is the lack of context. We don't know what's real and what's contrived. We don't know how much of what we see if just exactly what they want us to see."

"Well the same thing could be said anywhere you go. I only see what I want to see, and so do you." Which is not to make light of their current situation, but there is nothing they can do about what they do not know and cannot find out. Doc is still not so sure about this big sinister 'They'. He does think that someone's hand was involved. There is something specific about disarming a man and then dropping him off on some secluded beach. But if 'they' wanted to kill him or anyone else in this town, then 'they' would have done it already.

"As long as you and I are both seeing the same thing, I'll be happy with that." And honestly, they would have a much higher chance of success commandeering an available boat than trying to do everything from scratch.

"I am not so sure anymore, if I trust everything I see and hear in this place."

"I don't trust everything I see and hear anywhere," Malcolm said lightly. He doesn't think they big bad 'They' wants to kill them, either. He's concerned They want something much more ominous than that. "But it's worse here. Not just being off my meds. Other people have talked about hearing things in the fog, for example."

"As did I," he confirms quietly. Not in the fog, per se, but he was neck deep in the woods when he heard a baby crying. He scoured everywhere before Five practically had to drag him away.

"I was with Mister Five. He did not hear the same thing I did. And this was before we were even able to get very drunk."

Malcolm leaned forward almost eagerly.

"What did you hear?" he asked, his eyes a little wide.

"There was a baby in the forest." He sets his almost empty cup down, lifting his gaze to meet Malcolm's. "I have not seen anyone younger than Miss Ellie, but I was sure of it. But I could not find any traces of it. The more I followed its cries the further away it seemed to sound. The only footprints I could track were my own, and Five's."

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