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

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Comments

[thering]

Doc just shrugs at that, tongue flicking over his upper lip. "I already know what's in it for me. I get a reliable alarm clock at ass o'clock in the morning." He clearly says it in jest, so hopefully Malcolm won't take it personally. Raylan does a good job with Malcolm every other night; Doc just sleeps right through.

[abrightboy]

"I'm happy to be of service," Malcolm assured him, tucking his shaky hand under his opposite elbow. "Have to pull my weight somehow."

[thering]

"I am most certain there are better uses for your other talents than just your sleeplessness." Which is not really a talent, more of a condition, but one they are adapting to as well as can be hoped.

"And there may still be a thing or two we can teach you." Raylan probably more so than Doc, in terms of usefulness. But you never know, in a place like this, when the old ways might come in handy.

[abrightboy]

"I know there are some... modern amenities," Malcolm said, glancing around the kitchen. "But in a lot of ways, this is a lot more like the frontier than New York in 2020. A small community, isolated from the outside world. I expect you have a lot you could teach all of us."

[thering]

"It was not like it is in the movies. The old world will lose its charm fairly quickly if I went into all the details." It is for the best that they do not need to resort to the tediousness of yore, and they get to keep the illusion of the 'Wild West' intact.

"We did not live. We mostly just survived. It is not what I want for anyone here."

[abrightboy]

"I'm not sure we're going to get a choice," Malcolm remarked. "Our options are limited and we don't know what's coming."

[thering]

"We've got time," Doc quips with a cant of his head, perhaps somewhat selfishly. Even if there is some sense of urgency for him to be returning, he's got nothing but time and he's come to take that for granted.

Besides. There are no frontier solutions for Malcolm's hypothetical scenario of them all going mad and killing each other. Unless he wants to conjure up in his mind six different ways to kill another man with a butter knife. In which case, he does not need Doc Holliday for that.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm knew thousands of ways to kill a man and could rate them by efficacy, but he had no intention of using any of them.

"I suppose, for now, we do have all the time in the world," he allowed. "I wish there was a way to know what was going on at home, though."

[thering]

"Same thing that goes on when you're around. Maybe somebody angry that you took off without a word. But life goes on, with or without you." He has been given no reason to think something Earth-shattering has happened in his absence. Besides, where Doc had come from, they have much bigger and far more terrible things to worry about than him going missing. They probably thought he took off because he couldn't handle news of the pregnancy - Rosita's probably cursing to high heaven that he's left her to run his bar and their side project all by her lonesome, and he doubts the Earp girls are even looking.

"They will be thinking I 'needed some space'. Probably for the better; it'd be a waste of time to have gone looking."

[abrightboy]

"...I didn't... consider what my family would think happened to me," he admitted. "Just." He looked down at his cup, then looked at Doc. "Right before I was brought here... I stabbed my father. It's a long story, but my mother was being coerced by a kidnapper and I did it so she wouldn't have to. I... would like to know if he survived."

[thering]

"Hum. I thought you had mentioned, he was a serial killer." They don't... take those out back and shoot them? Because frontier justice does not look like a psychiatric facility.

Sounds complicated, and Doc had wrongly assumed the man was dead.

"You attribute your sleeping troubles to his deeds, yet you are worried about him," Doc observes with a slight furrow of his eyebrows and a purse of his lips masking his frown.

[abrightboy]

"...He is a serial killer. He killed twenty-three people for fun and he drugged me with chloroform when I found out and he made a plan to kill me when I was ten years old....." He shrugged a shoulder. "But I'm not him and I was pretty sure I could stab him without killing him. I didn't want to kill him. I don't want to kill anyone. And... I guess..... he's still my dad. He was a great dad. Until he wasn't."

[thering]

Doc straightens up a bit before finding a spot against the counter to perch. He seems to be studying Malcolm somewhat. Considering what he has to say about what a man who has killed twenty-three people for 'fun' and wanted to kill a ten year old child before he says it. Likely nothing Malcolm has not heard before, he concludes. Words like 'manipulative' and 'evil' float by silently. 'Great' anything never crossed his mind. It is evident in Malcolm's eyes that he would not hear such words for what they are. He is too close to the man.

"I do not know the man," is what Doc ends up saying after a stretch. "Just seems a waste to me, to be losing even more sleep over it."

[abrightboy]

"I'll lose the sleep anyway. Can't do anything about that. The problem is... he wants me to be like him and... right before I stabbed him? I think he was happy about it. That I was going to do it. It satisfied him."

[thering]

Yeaaap. That's about as all kinds of messed up as Doc had been expecting. Lifting his weight away from the edge of the counter, Doc slips his thumbs into his belt loops, head dropping a little to one side.

"Did you enjoy it?" he asks frankly, devoid of judgement in his voice and in his eyes.

[abrightboy]

"No. But." He looked down as he untucked his hand from under his opposite arm, watching it for a moment as it shook. "My hand didn't shake. Not even a little bit." He looked at Doc, tucking the hand away again. "He noticed."

[thering]

Of course he did. No doubt he would have thought it meant something.

"Well I can guess what he thought of that. But why do you think that is?" Malcolm is the behaviour person, after all. He must have some hypotheses even if he is not sure of his own body.

[abrightboy]

"I like to think it had something to do with purpose or determination. I was protecting my mother. I was saving a hostage."

He shrugged and looked down again.

"I don't actually know, though."

[thering]

"Perhaps." Doc has no reassuring words to offer. Beyond what he could have gleaned from a few hours at a poker table, he would not claim to know Malcolm after mere days of staying in the same house, going about their new lives. They do not know what each other could be capable of.

"You seem like a good man, son. Or at least you do try. For whatever that is worth to you."

[abrightboy]

"Ever since his arrest, I've always felt everyone's eyes on me, like they're watching to see if whatever monster is inside him is inside me too. And I don't even know the answer. What if it is? I'm afraid of it," he said plainly. "I'm afraid of not knowing what I could be capable of."

[thering]

One would argue that that is slightly paranoid. But it's not really paranoia when you feel that piercing gaze on you all the time, heavy with judgement, boring through your skin. Doc has something of a thick skin. It does not mean he is a stranger to what Malcolm is describing.

"I do not think it is a bad thing. The fear. Nobody truly knows what they are capable of until they find themselves at a crossroads in a situation they should not have ever been put in. It matters then what you decide to do. Now it is only a shadow of uncertainties and men you could or could not be, looming over you."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm nodded faintly.

"That makes sense, I suppose." He looked at Doc. "Why do you think your family would assume you need 'space'? It doesn't bother you that they'd assume you just... left?"

[thering]

Family. He supposes that is what they are, now. Better that than the L-word. Breathing out a long sigh, Doc crosses his arms and tilts his head back, closing his eyes as the warm lights overhead chase the shadows away from the contours of his cheeks and jaw. He taps his foot once, twice, then lowers his head again.

"My lady-friend, is expecting. Unexpectedly." That was not the L word he had in mind but it is the L word that came out of his mouth. "I was-- well, something supportive had sprung to mind. But we did not talk, properly. She needed space. I needed a drink. So..." Raising one arm up from where it is folded, elbow staying where it is, Doc's hand twists at the wrist and uncurls, palm facing the ceiling in an explanatory gesture. And then he sighs again.

"Here we are." Not drinking.

[abrightboy]

"You're going to have a baby?" Malcolm said. "Well, we have to get you out of here. Then you can tell her... all the things you're compartmentalizing right now."

[thering]

"I am not 'compartmentalising'," he insists while raising his hand. Clearly he is not defensive either. "She is going to have a baby. I'm--" Compartmentalising. "...merely concerned for her wellbeing. All of them." Her, her sister, her baby, and everyone else in their 'family'.

"It is as you say. Not knowing what is happening over there is difficult." There are people trying to kill them. And he can't be there to protect them.