villagelogs | 015-017 » enter the fog!

Entry tags:

015-017 » enter the fog!

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias.
WHEN: Days 015-017
WHAT: The fog murders a third of the town. This is Fine.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! Thank you so much to everyone for your patience!!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Kevin Penkin "Core-collapse"

DAY 015
ENTER THE FOG
“If you want to see what the fog hides in itself,
don't wait for the fog to disperse! Enter the fog!”
— Mehmet Murat ildan

In the early hours of the morning, when darkness finally descends upon Mathias once again, so too does the fog. It moves slowly, filling every inch of the forest before spilling into the streets like water, a wave of thick white vapor surrounding every building and structure in the town until it reaches the rocky beach. And at this early hour, before the sun has risen in the sky, the residents of Mathias will learn the true power of the fog that has surrounded their prison.

In every building in town, in every room that has one, the phone rings. The sound is shrill in the quiet of the town, the cacophony of ringing echoing into the night. Again, and again, and again, the ringing is incessant, continuing if unimpeded for minutes that feel like hours.

If the phone is answered:
— There’s a strange clicking sound, like an old tape player that’s reached the end of the reel, click click click, and then a crackling whisper comes through across the line: “Don’t go outside.”

— If your character still chooses to open a door or window, the fog will remain in place, a wall of white just beyond their entry. It will not enter that room and they will feel no ill effects.

— If they choose to ignore all warnings and step into the fog, they will immediately begin to suffer mild side effects from the exposure (headaches, nausea, and weakness) that will be gone in a few hours if they retreat to safety but will increase in strength if they continue forward. More than two minutes in the fog will bring on a sharp pain in their head and nausea that forces them to the ground. They will be unable to breathe and unless they are somehow brought to safety, they will die in three minutes.

If the phone is not answered within a few minutes, there is a knock at the nearest exterior door or window. Polite, at first, and then pounding, a deep sound that echoes through the room, louder and faster, seeming to come from every wall all at once.
— If your character opens that door or window, there’s nothing there except the fog, which immediately begins to seep into the room through the open door. Those who shut the opening again will suffer mild side effects from exposure to the fog (headaches, nausea, and weakness) but will recover in a few hours.
— If they don’t open the door or window, the pounding stops suddenly, complete silence pressing in. And then— every window in the room implodes inward, shattered glass raining down everywhere as the fog rushes in. They are overcome by a sharp pain in their head and nausea that forces them to their knees. Breath is stolen from their lungs, leaving them gasping, and unless they are somehow brought to safety, they will die in three minutes.

The fog withdraws after one hour, just as the sun begins to rise.

Only those who answer the phone are truly safe from the fog. If any player wishes to opt-out of this event, their phone will not ring and they will sleep soundly through the hour. All those who perish in this event will leave behind corpses where they died and they will resurrect in separate bodies on the beach later that day as the sun sets, in the exact state they were in before the fog appeared. There are exceptions to these conditions...

A WAYWARD ARRIVAL
There is one new face in Mathias on this strangest of days. While so many are suffering and struggling to come to grips with the new facets of their strange reality, the latest resident to arrive in town will wake on the beach in the afternoon, when the sun has begun to dip on the horizon but the sky hasn't yet started to change color.

DAY 016
IN MEMORIAM
The sun rises and the sun sets, the day passing like any other. There is nothing eventful worth noting on this completely normal day beyond the return of even more of our weary residents. By sundown, all have returned who fell to the fog — except for those who don't. One has perished for good and the other remains lost.

New notices have been added to the bulletin board, including notes of memorial and missing persons. There are also a few graves that have popped up near the treeline, thanks to those who have taken it upon themselves to take care of the corpses left behind.

DAY 017
DECEPTIVE BEAUTY
Residents wake to a winter wonderland. Under the cover of night, snow has moved into Mathias, dusting the town with a coating of white that gives an almost picturesque quality to the eerie ghost town. It's a beautiful sight, concealing the deadly secrets that they've discovered existing beneath the surface here.

The snow brings with it an extra chill in the air. Breaths come in white puffs of air and frostbite and hypothermia are dangers to be mindful of. Stay inside, stay warm. Repair those broken windows and doors. Hope that another storm isn't on the horizon...

THE FOG'S AFTERMATH
THE PERMANENTLY DEAD
— Jill Valentine's dead body will be found in the street outside the Boarding House. She will not return to Mathias.

THE TEMPORARILY LOST
— Daisy Johnson will be missing from the town following the fog's departure.

THE RESURRECTED ONES
— John Constantine's body will be found inside 1308 Phillips Drive by Doc Holliday, who will bury him. He will resurrect on the beach the afternoon of Day 16. (x)
— Number Five's body will be found between the beach and the Grey Gull by his brother, Klaus. He will resurrect on the beach the morning of Day 16. (x)
— Phil Coulson's body will be found outside the Boarding House by Doc, Raylan, and Malcolm. He will resurrect on the beach the evening of Day 15. (x)
— Claire Novak's body will be found inside her room at the Boarding House. She will resurrect on the beach the evening of Day 15. (x)

LOCATIONS

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

— WEATHER conditions for days 15-16 are typical for late fall, with temperatures consisting 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. The temperature falls overnight into day 17, bringing with it a light snowfall that continues throughout the day.

— 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

— SANITY levels are now available as part of the game. Your characters have settled in and seen some things, so it's time to figure out just how crazy they're starting to go.

— REPORTING updates to locations around town may now be done over here. Did your character dig a moat around their house? Have they burned down part of the town hall? Are they growing magic carrots on the beach? These are important things to note for the rest of the class, so let us know about them and the updates will be added to the locations page!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He doesn't want to lighten the gravity of John Constantine's death by saying it is just a bit of fog, but. He is impervious to more methods of dying compared to the average person here. Besides, he doesn't mind a bit of choking every now and then. If there is any real benefit to testing anything out in the fog, he will throw himself out there without asking for either of their permission.

"I'm a gunslinger, not a chef," he quips as he descends down the few steps of the porch. He's been smoking since he was younger than the current legal age to be smoking; it's safe to say that his sense of taste has been shot to shit. Giving Malcolm a look, Doc started to turn to look the other direction from where Raylan was pointing before the marshal got their attention.

"Oh, hell." Huffing, Doc lowers his head and scratches at his eyebrow with his thumb before starting towards the beach. Today is going to be yet another long day in this fffffffblasted shithole.

Malcolm's expression sobered further as he followed their line of sight.

"Nobody exposed to the fog without immediate shelter available would have survived for long. If someone was walking on the beach when it rolled in...." He followed after them. "Consciousness would be lost by the two minute mark in most cases. The brain succumbs to permanent damage after only four minutes without oxygen. Depending on the victim's health, death usually follows by the six minute mark. This was an ambush."

"Shit," Raylan swore as he headed that way with the rest of them. "Whoever they are, we'll put them in the house with John. Find another sheet.. Anyone who's alive will be needed to help with this much death."

Death was something Raylan was well used to. This much in one night of people he was not against, less so. There was no casual aloofness to Raylan this morning; just a quiet, level matter of factness.

"And more shovels." Times like these, the group in whole needed to be together.

The time for running had passed, over an hour ago. There is no point hurrying there. Not for the first time this morning, Doc feels he should have pushed through the discomfort of the fog. He might not have been killed by whatever lurks within it. He might have been able to save someone.

Before they get even near the beach, one silhouette runs towards the body from further down the beach, another one in tow, confirming their suspicions that they will be having a body count this morning when knees hit the sand and a bit of smoke goes up around the body.

"...that is Mister Klaus." Doc does not recognise the female with him though. And judging from the hysterical state Klaus is in, visible even from this distance, Doc knows. His steps slow to a stop.

"Mister Five is gone." Five had saved him from the taunting, dismembered voices in the woods. It seems it is not in the cards for Doc to return the favour.

"I don't understand. He can just- he could have just vanished. Reappeared in any one of these houses." Doc looks over his shoulder to confirm his own thoughts - that only the Mulcalley house had its windows blown in down Phillips Drive. Five would have been safe anywhere else.

"...Klaus. Klaus Hargreeves? I... what do you mean, Five could just... 'vanish'? You mean teleport?" He looked at Raylan. "I think they've got that one. We should check the boarding house, like we planned."

Raylan watched the figures slide in, saw the smoke and squinted at it like he could get some better understanding by that alone. The sound of grief carried easily across the open beach and Raylan's jaw flexed as he started at the ground for a long moment. Three graves at least. How many more would they find dead?

But Malcolm's reaction to the name and Doc's mention of Five's capabilities had the Marshal turning around to look at them both. He was behind, clearly. Too many faces he didn't know.

"Let's go. They'll likely pull him up the beach some more before thinkin' about what to do. We can circle back around with a cart or something if we find one. Bury their dead too." He hated this. Inexcusable murder. For seemingly nothing, and them the undertakers.

"Shoulda learned how to build a coffin in shop I guess," he remarked darkly as he made his way back towards the houses and the town beyond.

"Yes. It seems their entire family is... unconventional." And Doc doesn't mean unconventional as though they do Christmas dinners in August.

He has inadvertently gotten to know many people in this town. Went looking for Wynonna on the first few days, running around like a madman despite the relentless rain, and found everyone else instead. Played doctor sometimes. Got introduced by association, like Klaus through Five. And then they all came over to drink their moonshine. New arrivals he cannot vouch for, but everyone else wears vaguely familiar faces. He knows all of the victims.

A part of him would later, somewhat selfishly, wish he didn't.

"You would've been no help to the living, making caskets. And none should have to be built that small. We can speak with them later," Doc agrees, turning his back to the beach with some reluctance. "Last we spoke, Mister Five had said he was close to a discovery. Perhaps he left some clues in the boarding house."

They will come upon Jill's body before they even reach the front door of the boarding house. She lies cold, alone, exposed to the elements, the same way the two of them had awoken in that wet and dark cave. She had cracked a John Henry joke when he introduced himself. Steel-driving man. Sympathetic about his claustrophobia without ever making him feel self-conscious about it.

"...she'd called me Hank." Like a real Southern lady. "Some kind of agent, like yourselves. Bioterror sommin'." She might as well have told him she fought pterodactyls for a living. The concepts of bioterrorism, chemical engineering and the like are foreign to him.

Malcolm pulled one glove back on and took out his penlight, crouching down and examining around her mouth, her eyes... tilted her head back to see her throat. He looked up at them.

“Same cyanosis. Same lack of physical causes of suffocation like smothering or strangulation. No visible wounds of any other kind. Asphyxia by... whatever that fog is. Like John.”

He got up, tucking his light away in his jacket, glancing around.

“I’d s....”

He paused, then pointed a short distance away; what appeared to be a leg sticking out from around the corner of the building.

“Is that another body?”

It would be later in the day that Raylan learned about some of the oddies of the Numbers Family's dynamics but for now, he's more than willing to believe Doc and Malcolm in their views on the group.

"Jill. She ended up takin' shelter in 1307 with me for a night." Her name was sighed with the same regretful tone that he'd taken with seeing John. Matter of fact - there was no argument or question about the reality of them being dead. He'd only had one conversation with her, but he'd liked what he'd seen. It was what it was, however devastating it was. His jaw flexed again as he looked around, catching sight of the leg about the same time as Malcolm did.

"Goddamnit." There was no choice but to go and see who it was and Raylan, eager to not stand still, headed that way, clucking with a tilted bob of his head. "Phil Coulson," he announced heavily, sitting back on his hunches, one arm propped over his knee. "That makes four. What the hell happened last night?" He looked up and around. "We're going to need to find a cart or get more hands to haul. Let's check the rest of the boarding house and hope we don't find more."

Oh yeah, he was getting shitfaced tonight.

It is too early o'clock for the news to just keep getting better and better. Doc knows all these people but he cannot draw any logical conclusion as to why this happened to them.

As Malcolm moves over to Raylan, Doc crouches down and slides his arms under her body, picking her up with relative ease. Felt like just yesterday they were talking. He half-expects her to still be warm. Carrying her out from the middle of the street, he brings her into the shelter of the boarding house. She deserves a lot more than looking like roadkill out there.

"Did they all die at the same time?" he asks Malcolm after setting Jill down. Shedding out of his long coat, Doc drapes it over the two of them as best he can. No one needs to be getting up for an early morning and tripping over corpses.

"Let's split up," he suggests to Raylan. "No need for three of us banging on each door like we're looking for trouble."

“It’s hard to say,” Malcolm admitted. “I don’t have the equipment to take their core temperatures. I think it’s safe to say, though. The fog lasted... what? An hour?”

He would follow their lead on searching the boarding house. If they agreed to split up, he’d do his part.

He looked at Raylan when Doc made the suggestion to him.

Following suit, Raylan picked up and hauled Phil back inside where he belonged, setting him down gently next to Jill. They were going to go through a lotta sheets today. Opting to not let himself linger in the churning internal morbidity at this exact moment, he nodded at Doc's suggestion.

"Round about an hour, yeah. Alright. You want top level or bottom level?" The question came with a heavy sigh and an adjustment of his hat as though it could do something for the growing pinch of pain behind his eyes. He figured that two people could scour the larger bottom floor and leave the top rooms for the other. Needless to say, if anyone found anything, he assumed they'd be yelling. "We probably also need to do a full round outside, just in case."

At least this time Raylan didn't think he'd find anything that he'd want to shoot.

Is there one thing lurking in the fog? Multiple things? Is it just some kind of killer gas? Only a hundred more questions to add to the pile of three hundred already there.

"I will take the bottom." He actually has no preference either way, but he wants to speak to Daisy about Coulson and he knows which room she is staying in. Given everything she had told him over his campfire on their third night here, he owes her at least that much. He does not know if she had been as earnest with Malcolm or Raylan, but that doubt does not change the feeling that it has to be him.

"Let us convene back here when we are finished. We should not venture outside alone." He tips his hat at Malcolm and gives Raylan a curt nod before turning away to venture further into the boarding house. He doesn't mind some company of course but today is turning into a kind of day where he would rather talk over his shoulder, at a windowpane or into a mound of dirt instead of making prolonged eye contact with these two people who can read into the disquiet in his eyes.

"He's not okay," Malcolm said to Raylan, gesturing after Doc. He turned to face Raylan. "Um." He pointed up and then gestured around them. "Which one do you want?"

Did he want to stay on the ground floor where he could keep an eye on Doc or did he want to avoid Malcolm being on a floor by himself?

Raylan nodded back at Doc and then again at Malcolm. "I think you're the only one that is. A hard mornin'." He looked up the stairs with a gesture. "I guess I'm takin' the upstairs. Y'all scream if you need anything."

There was no avoiding Malcolm; Malcolm was there regardless and Raylan wasn't as bothered by the man as Malcolm assumed. A few moments of peace weren't going to be found up there, with or without company. He was worried about Doc, devastated by the growing body count with no explanations of why and he knew the day was far from close to over.

One by one, Raylan went through the second level bedrooms, finding his way up to the third. Nice place, over all, despite the dust. But whatever Home Renovation thoughts he had were blasted out of his head at the sight of a new set of boots peeking from beyond a half open door. "Goddamnit," he muttered to himself as he pushed the door open to see Claire. Raylan clucked and gave another sigh. "Goddamnit."

Instead of calling for anyone, Raylan carefully picked her up to cradle in his arms and sighed down at her again. "You weren't supposed to go out like this.."

He'd reappear on the first floor a few minutes later to lay her down next to Phil and Jill, remaining there on one knee as he worried the inside of his index finger. What had these people done before their deaths? Claire wasn't found outside, nor was John - why were the murders split like this?

Doc takes a cursory look around the place. The Boarding House is, by comparison, hauntingly quiet. Nothing like the outpouring on the beach. It is only the sound of Doc's footsteps, left, right, left, right, the steady beat of wardrums and Malcolm pattering around behind him like rain on asphalt echoing down the corridor. Perhaps most are still asleep. Or is that being too optimistic?

He should be checking on every room, but he goes to Daisy's first. Standing outside her closed door, he breathes out a sigh and ducks his head. Resting his forearm high against her doorframe, he tilts his head and scratches his eyebrow with his thumb, his other hand resting on his hip. What does he say here? Morning. How is your injury today? Do you need your bandages changed again? Hey, you remember that father figure you loved dearly that you told me about when we first met? Well he's keeled over in that doorway over there.

Closing his hand into a fist, he presses his lips and chin to his curled finger and thumb, gaze dropping to the ring on his finger that grants him his immortality before he clears his throat, straightens up and knocks on her door.

"Miss Daisy," he calls out. "It's John Henry, ma'am. I'm afraid it cannot wait." Please open the door. There might be no God up above to curse and swear at, plead to, bargain with, but there has to be a young woman still alive, still able to answer him.

Malcolm went the other direction from Doc, methodically opening doors and closing them, finding nothing.

At Doc's insistent knocking on a particular door, Malcolm comes up to stand behind his elbow.

"She might not be in there," he points out, but doesn't push Doc to open the door. He hears Raylan's footsteps coming down the stairs and goes to see what he found.

And then he sees what he found.

He takes his light out of his jacket. Best to be thorough.

"Were her windows smashed in?" Malcolm asks as he crouches beside her.

Claire seemed to be the worst of them, body abused by the trauma, cut and bloody. He couldn't pull himself to look away. The older souls were just as sad, but there was something deeply disturbing about youthful deaths. Raylan tended to avoid them by grace of the types of people his job went after and while he'd found bodies before, this was.. Different.

"Yeah. I think she was tryin' to go for the door." What else was there to say? Raylan pushed himself to his feet with a rough little noise from the back of his throat as he rubbed at his eyes again. "I'm gonna walk the perimeter. Suns up now. I'll be fine."

He had heard Doc's suggestion about it not being safe. It didn't matter. He needed the air.

Doc turns, belatedly, but Malcolm is gone, back over to Raylan's side. Sure, she could have taken a walk in the middle of the night. In which case, she'd be a corpse waiting to be found. Or she had moved out, maybe.

Schooling his expression and steeling himself before opening the door, he takes a deep breath and steps inside. She is not there, as predicted. For a moment Doc is not sure whether he ought to feel relief at all the intact windows and not finding a body, or dread at the fact that there might be one to be found, still.

He steps inside and searches through her things. Checks under her bed, to be sure. Opens her wardrobe, closes it again. Her things are still here. She was unlikely to have moved out, nor does it look like she packed.

Doc leaves a note for her on the table. Hastily written, but still legible, it simply reads 'Miss Daisy, please call me' followed by the phone number to their residence and signed off as 'Henry'.

"Miss Daisy is not there," he confirms once he returns to Malcolm's side. He takes one look at Claire and something in his gut twists and contorts in ways he did not know was possible.

"We should bury them close by. And then I need to find her." He does not inquire about Raylan, trusting that the Marshal will return before long for their impromptu service. Truth be told he would rather be getting his hands dirty digging than talk about anything right now. All this death does not excite him the way it does Malcolm. Or is it calming him down, giving him something to focus on? Either way. They are taking it very differently.

"No, Raylan..."

But Raylan's long stride has carried him out the door, so Malcolm turns his attention to the young woman's body. A puzzle to focus on; Doc is correct that it calms him down.

"She's the first to have other physical injuries," Malcolm tells Doc, looking up at him. "But these wounds aren't fatal." He shines the light on her face, so Doc can see. "The same cyanosis as the others. Asphyxia. No injuries consistent with smothering or strangulation. Same cause of death as the others." He tucks his light away and stands. "Considering three of the bodies are here, it would make more sense to bring John here and go from there," he suggests. "Do you want to finish searching the town first? In case the person you were looking for is out there?"

No protests were going to stop Raylan from getting out of the house and striding around the side where he knew he'd have a better chance of not being seen. He needed a minute to not be seen, to exist without the oncoming responsibility literally staring at him in the face. For once, Raylan was glad for the colder air.

He took several minutes to meander around the building, eyeing how many windows were busted out to those that weren't. Whatever happened, it was targeted to rooms. Individual happenstance, just all happening at the same time. These facts were easier to focus on but he knew that he had to go back in and face the harder ones again. With another deep breath, Raylan steeled himself again and made his way inside.

"No one else outside that I can see. Seems like only some of the windows were blown out. Whatever this was, it was targeting each of us."

"I will bring John Constantine here. And shovels. We can do a round of the town on the way." There are still a few places they have not checked, like the various shops and facilities, the restaurant.

Doc is happy to dig on his own, it would not be his first time digging graves, but he would not deny them the opportunity to stare and stab angrily at the dirt if it helps them blow off some steam.

When Raylan returns with his situation report, a kind of confusion settles in Doc's furrowed eyebrows.

"I knew all of them, in passing. Two agents, a- monster hunter, a magician, a time traveler. They had very little in common." Died in different places, some inside, some outside. Phil had spent much time living by the books. Whatever John and Claire were doing were most definitely off the books. Five was... different. Jill was not.

"It must be something they had done here," Doc muses after a shake of his head, leaning his upper arm and most of his weight as casually as he can manage against the wall with thumbs in his belt loops. "We must find out what, so no one else gets hurt. Perhaps we ought to search for clues in their rooms, after we bury them."

"What if it's not that complicated?" Malcolm suggested. "What if... it was random? Maybe the point is a display of their power. It may be impossible to know for sure..." His voice trailed off. Doc said 'I will bring'.

He looked up at Doc.

"I thought you said it was a good idea to stick together." He gestured between the three of them. "All of us."

"Only other thing that happened was that phone call. You think that might be the connecting link? No one was home at 1307 - we lost our window there - no one to answer the phone."

He glanced over at Malcolm, eyes narrowing at the conversation he seemed to have stepped into and looked back at Doc, one finger gesturing out at him.

"What'd I miss, what splittin' up are we doin?"

Doc doesn't like the idea that it was random. Can't protect anyone against a killer in the fog with random targets. He mulls over the idea of the phone call, though not all of them answered it in their house, when Raylan shoots him an accusatory look that has him raising his hands in surrender.

"I offered to bring John Constantine's body here, bury them together. Miss Daisy is not in her room and it does not look like she had moved out. I was going to take a quick look around town along the way. You are both welcome to follow, of course." See? Not splitting up. He is giving them an opportunity to stick together. There will be plenty of opportunity for him to be alone, a little later.

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Klaus finds Five on the beach so I've no idea how this is gonna go!

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I think Jills on the beach too but it's all too much to keep track of so ONWARDS

Ah she's outside the boarding house; I'll move them there

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Doc doesn't mind bottoming - you heard it here first

Everyone is a bottom around Raylan.

Raylan legit chose those words carefully, top or bottom is just too open ended a question lol

Hey if Raylan wanted to bottom, ain't no one gonna stop him

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