villagelogs | 018-020 » what he hides

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018-020 » what he hides

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias.
WHEN: Days 018-020
WHAT: The fog recedes!
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Graham Plowman "Edge of Darkness"

DAYS 018-020
THE HIDDEN REVEALED
“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
— Benjamin Franklin

As the sun rises in the distance above the sea, the fog slips away from the unsettling town, winding through streets and across buildings until it is nestled soundly in the forest. There it waits, ready to snare any who dare test its limits — residents would do well to remember what happened the last time they encountered the fog so intimately.

With the fog receded, the western portion of Mathias is now revealed and available for exploring. There are more businesses on the town square and even some on the street that runs off the square. The schoolhouse is nestled by the southern treeline, not from the little makeshift cemetery at the end of Jackson Boulevard that is courtesy of a few kind residents in town. To the far north of the square is a sprawling garden, now covered in snow, and a greenhouse that once supplied the botanical shop. And to the west, beyond the square, is another residential district of the same size as that to the east. What is different, however...

These buildings are all in some form of decay. From the beginnings of rot to completely collapsed and little more than a pile of proverbial bones, none of these homes are anything resembling livable. Well, as far as one can tell, at least. For between the streets of Hill Lane and Stine road there is a crack in the earth. A dozen feet across and fifty feet down, the crack extends from one side of the forest to the other, either end cut off by the fog. The view to the other side is clear but there is no way across.

THE NEW ARRIVALS
There are quite a few new faces in Mathias on this day. Awaking throughout Day 018, they will find themselves laying in the snow beside that unsettling crack in the earth, houses both quaint and decaying surrounding them as the snow begins to cover their bodies. Best get inside and warm up, dears.

SPECTRES IN THE NIGHT
The days are short now that winter seems to have set in unseasonably early. Though the clocks in Mathias fail to properly keep time or sometimes even work at all, the sun rises around 8:00am and sets at 5:00pm. There is far more darkness than light in these days, but in that darkness there is, in fact, light.

In the distance all across Mathias, there are lanterns lit against that darkness. Their lights dance across the snow, the warm flickering shining like tiny stars and offering an almost ethereal glow to the crisp white snow. It would be a beautiful sight to behold... if it weren't for the shadowy figures that held them. With partially raised arms, the figures hold the lanterns and walk the streets of Mathias, drifting in between buildings and disappearing into the forest. Still yet, there are some that simply stand in place, as if waiting for something or someone.

No matter where or when these figures are seen, they always seem to be facing away from our residents, and attempts at reaching them are all for naught. They will fade from view if one gets too close, and return to sight when that distance is regained. And in the morning, those lanterns may be found in the snow, their lights extinguished but their glass somehow still warm.

STRANGER IN THE SNOW
Those investigating the western part of Mathias and venturing near that inexplicable crack in the earth will have the most unsettling feeling of being watched. Most of the time, there is nothing there and no one to be seen, but then—

On the other side of that expanse, sitting on a porch, in the shadow of a home, or standing in the oddly moonlit street, there is a man. His features are shrouded in darkness and not much can be discerned about him, but instinct tells you he is dangerous. There is a sense deep in your bones that he is maliciously amused.

He makes no move to speak, nor will he respond to any attempts on your part. Instead, he sits, or he stands, and he watches. By the end of Day 020, all sign of him will be gone, along with the eerie feeling of being watched.

LOCATIONS

Unless otherwise noted, all new locations have working electricity and other utilities.

BENEDICT BOOKS Nestled quaintly on the square surrounding the Town Hall, a thick layer of dirt covering the front windows. A portrait hangs at the front of the store to illustrate the namesake of the little shop... that may, in fact, not be so little. Dust covers everything in sight and detritus litters the wooden floor, as if someone left the door open and allowed half the forest inside. (more info)

MATHESON ANTIQUES Also on the town square is an antique store that is a lesson in chaos more than culture. The items within are stacked haphazardly, creating narrow aisles running throughout the space. Furniture, light fixtures, old revolutionary and civil war memorabilia, all of it is jumbled together with no rhyme or reason. Indeed, one wrong move could create an avalanche of aged wood and peeling paint.

POE'S CLOTHES Located on the town square, this shop carries only the basics. Loose jeans in a few sizes, khakis, solid color dress shirts and blouses, flannel in various styles, socks and underwear.

SPIN RIGHT ROUND RECORDS On the square across from the beauty store, the music shop is as dusty as everything else in this town has been. Tables line the walls of the long shop, filled with rows and rows of vinyl records, while a few wall shelves display cassette tapes for sale. One side of the store is for New items, while the other holds the Used section with items for resale. Residents may recognize some of the artists but many are unfamiliar to them.

CLINIC Outside the decayed, crumbling building just north of the square is a still miraculously intact sign with the name of the clinic's doctor, Dr. Ken Suzuki. There is no way to treat patients in this location, but with care, some salvageable supplies may yet be found in the remains.

BARKER BOTANICALS Not quite a flower shop and not entirely an apothecary, the botanical store to the far north of the square is something of an amalgamation of both. With a few broken windows to let in the rain, parts of the shop have been overtaken by nature, the house plants growing beyond their pots and rotted flower petals littering the floor to tell of seasons past. The still unclaimed walls are filled with decaying plants and jars of dried herbs and other vegetation, along with a few essences and tinctures.

GREENHOUSE A few dozen yards from the botanicals shop is a sprawling garden, now covered in snow, and a greenhouse that once supplied the botanical shop. The glass is still miraculously intact, though covered in grime so thick that one cannot see inside.

GALLERY The gallery is essentially a large empty space with framed and matted black and white photographs of the town lining the walls. There is a small selected of prints available for sale near the front entrance, and a few rooms at the back of the building — a dark room for developing photos, a small office, and a locked room.

MOVIE THEATER This single-screen theater is quite small, having only 40 seats, but there is a large collection of movies in its storage room. These are all old film reels however, so hopefully someone knows how to thread a film projector.

HISTORY MUSEUM Across the street from the Historical Society, this once esteemed wooden building has seen better days. Windows and doors are boarded up and there is visible rot and decay on the exterior walls. Part of the roof has fallen in and the accumulating snow threatens to collapse the rest of it as well. It is not wise to venture within.

HISTORICAL SOCIETY This brick building has also seen better days, though in a different sort of way. Where once had been carefully cataloged collections and cozy reading rooms for aficionados of local history, there are now stacks of bankers boxes and weathered tomes in every nook and cranny. There is no organization to any of it, everything seeming to have been stashed in a hurry and then left forgotten. Anyone who dares to dive into this archive will need to devote quite some time in order to find anything worthwhile. They will also want to bring their own light source — the electricity does not work here and the windows are quite dark from the accumulated dust and grime.

SCHOOLHOUSE A much smaller school than most of our residents might be used to, there are only a half-dozen rooms in the building, with a few comprising classrooms, meeting areas, and workspaces. All ages were taught here, and one might almost imagine the sound of children's whispered voices and distant laughter while within the empty building.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— SNOW continues to fall in Mathias. Days 18-19 see light snowfall that very slowly accumulates, but the snowfall turns moderately heavy on Day 20 and sees significant accumulation. The temperature hovers just below freezing and dips lower when the sun goes down.

— 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.

— THE FOG has receded from the town proper and much of the eastern and northern beach. The path through the northern forest to the lighthouse is now also clear.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. While Daisy Johnson has returned, Zed Martin, Rey, and Quentin Coldwater have now vanished without a trace.

OOC UPDATES

— MADNESS has now been unlocked. Congratulations to Inky for Claire earning the first Madness! Who will be next? (Please be sure to keep your sanity updated regularly; Stars has created an amazing tracker for anyone to use if they'd like.)

— HELPERS are officially in residence! Kelly is our Registrar and Stars is our Librarian — both of these delightful members of our community are helping behind the scenes to keep things organized and updated (and doing wonders for the mod's own sanity levels), so please give them some thanks for their hard work!

— REPORTING updates is still a thing that your mod and helpers beg you to do. Changes to locations, plot notes that affect the community, and discoveries should be reported over here so these can all be noted in their appropriate places. (For clarification, reported Discoveries are not public knowledge unless a character has ICly shared this information.)

— A MAP of Mathias now exists, thanks to our wonderful Librarian! Please note that it is not to scale and there may be a few minor errors due to your frazzled mod. Expect updates in the future as more secrets are revealed.

— BULLETIN BOARD — don't forget about it. That's all.

CLAIMING AP REWARDS

Normally, only one AP reward can be claimed per log, but due to the plethora of new and old locations to explore, this restriction is being relaxed. Instead, for this log only:
— Players may spend AP on up to three rewards, though only Spot Hidden may be repeated.
— If a player is spending multiple Spot Hiddens, they must be with different characters and in different locations.

If two characters are investigating the same location together, they may each spend a Spot Hidden on that location. Players should record their spent AP after the AP request has been approved. Sometimes there is nothing to Spot with your Hidden and the points will be "refunded" to use elsewhere.

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"Kid's squirrelly. He used to being on something?" He asks, point blank. There is nothing more unpredictable than an addict. (Sure, there are monsters, but there are humans, too, who are capable of too much, especially when out of their minds.)

He grabs two antiseptic wipes and the box of rubber gloves. He assumes there's tweezers in one of the bathrooms back in 1301. He needs to do a full inventory today. Maybe tonight. He needs to continue to find what could be used as weapons, too.

"You feel something?"

Doc hands the otoscope to Malcolm before he leaves. Between the three of them, it would be of better use in his than anyone else's. The other things he will take, even if he has no immediate plans to use them.

"He is from the big city, and is not handling the transition to small town life very well. He gets anxious, some days more so than others. Seems these days someone has been telling young people to take a pill for everything." Doc is not necessarily lying but he isn't telling Dean the full truth of it. If Malcolm wants to talk about his night terrors, PTSD or anxiety disorders or whatever it is he's dealing with, he can tell Dean himself. If there was anything anyone could do to help him, Doc would gladly share it. As it is, the daily struggles they have to deal with in 1306 are staying in 1306.

"Something about this place is... unsettling. It's- you will feel it too, at the edge of the fog, in certain parts of the forest. More so than anything anyone will tell you about answering your house phone or not going into the fog, heed your gut."

Malcolm stood outside, fiddling with the otoscope to test its batteries, waiting for Doc. He was slightly less antsy outside, though his bearing still had a nervous energy to it.

"He's big city. He gets anxious. Has too much sugar in his coffee."

He sees everything Doc says as the excuses he gives. This is just confirming to Doc that's what he sees. But, he's not one to call someone else on their addictions. If they become a liability, that's when it matters.

"I feel it. Not all the time, but. I feel it. You feel it here?"

Doc turns his hand up and shrugs. City folk. What can you do?

"Well don't let me taint your impression of him. Perhaps you can talk to him sometime. He's uh... a bit on the chatty side, but he means no harm." Raylan had been more blunt, called it annoying. Especially every time Malcolm tries to attribute a flippant comment to some underlying psychological whatsit. Doc is too polite to say as much. He would not presume that White Hat and Black Hat are the only two people Malcolm knows, but he could always use some more friends.

"I do. Right now. I think we oughta leave." Doc starts back out towards the door, rejoining where Malcolm is waiting. He gives the young man a firm squeeze on the shoulder, flashing him a small smile. It could have meant anything. It's fine. They're fine. He's sorry there was no medication to be found in the clinic. They should keep moving. He is free to interpret the gesture.

"We will be continuing northward. You are free to join us. Otherwise, we will see you again soon." Doc flashes Dean a tight-lipped smile and his hand slides halfway down Malcolm's back before falling away.

Touch was a powerful gesture towards the touch-starved New Yorker and more tension eased out of his frame at the shoulder squeeze, his eyes lifting from the otoscope to meet Doc's smile. He let that hand guide him easily as they moved away from the clinic.

"I can show you how to use this," he offered, holding it up. "You can keep it in your medical bag. Just in case."

Dean follows Doc right back out, not needing to stay any longer. He found what he found and pocketed what was useful. He gossiped about Malcolm that gives him more insight into the next time he'll see him.

Closing the door behind the three of them, Dean considers joining them. He has nothing better to do and complicated feelings waiting for him back in his house.

"Where to, next?"

"Okay," he agrees with an easy smile. Coming to him much easier now that he's out of the clinic, and that general sense of malaise and dread has slowly seeped out of his shoulders.

He looks over his shoulder at Dean, who seems to have decided to join them. Giving him a nod, Doc turns back to look upon the snowy road ahead.

"Well this is all fairly new territory." In other words, he hasn't visited or seen much of all these new establishments just yet, and he doesn't have much of a plan beyond covert Malcolm supervision duties today. He's happy to go where the road takes them, wayward son and prodigal son in tow.

"I'd say we go that way." Where majority of the newer buildings stand. "Might find something else useful."

“Maybe we’ll stumble across a place that hasn’t been cleaned out,” Malcolm said, looking over at Doc. “Looks like there are more houses to check, too.”

Dean notices the tension in Doc's shoulders has subsides, as has the overwhelming dread that had captured him. Something spooked the cowboy, so Dean's pretty happy they're all outside again.

"Maybe actual weapons," he adds, starting to walk in the direction Henry means. "However we're stripped," he starts. "It's like we never had them in the first place. But, I had my gun. A hunting knife," he says, listing them off.

"So, are our bodies searched, or do they not make it over the black rainbow?"

There is something to be said about the comfort of being in a wide, open space again. He would take the unforgiving cold and snow turning into unpleasant wet slush over being cooped up in there much longer than they had been.

“Heh. We should be so lucky. I was similarly adorned with such accoutrements before I arrived.” He had initially frequented the beach, hoping without hope that a familiar face might show up or that his guns might wash ashore. Camped out there before winter came. But here they are. Disarmed and making friends of kind strangers.

“I would say whoever brought us here did take them.” He has his doubts over Constantine’s theory that the shadowy figure on the other side of the crevice might have anything to do with their current predicament, but he should like to have A Few Words with the fellows responsible nonetheless.

“So far, hardly anything has turned up beyond a few old tools.” No medication, no weapons, with only the metaphorical kind of demons for company. Not really their kind of town. No point getting their hopes up.

“I haven’t carried since I left the FBI.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t own a gun; he just didn’t carry it.

He looked over at Doc and Dean.

“Of course whoever brought us here removed them. Zoo keepers do whatever they have to to keep the animals from killing each other.” Malcolm paused thoughtfully. “I wonder what they would do if one of us committed an act of violence against another person here.”

"FBI," Dean just responds. Nice name drop.

"Is that what you think? This is one big zoo. Some social experiment?" He asks, but he wants an answer. He even looks to Doc to get his input.

"It's possible what we brought didn't come with us. If it's about the town. What are the chances someone loots all of us. Quickly. None of us wake up until they're -- who knows where, maybe back in the fog." He just doesn't know. He also doesn't want to think about needing to kill someone, or hold them off, or go after them. He would. He may be love according to Cas, but he has killed.

"Let's... not test that theory." There is absolutely no reason why they cannot all just live here together harmoniously, and even though he is fairly certain that nothing particularly eventful would happen if one of them really started acting out against another, it is a mess they don't need to put themselves in. Not to mention the awkwardness that would inevitably follow for the rest of the time they would be here together.

"I would think there are easier ways to conduct experiments. And we would not be what I would consider typical of any group." Surely you would need either a group of wildly different people from all walks of life or just one group of similar people to conduct an experiment? The group here does not feel random - he is living with two lawmen and he has yet to meet a priest or butcher or accountant or mechanic; there are no young children or elderly folk - but they are not all that similar either. But Doc doesn't have a better or worse explanation for why they are here.

"A gun is not of much use without any bullets. They could have simply taken the ammunition, but they took everything." Were they worried that their captives would get desperate enough to start melting down their pots and pans? "If they robbed us once we arrived, then there should be a stockpile of our possessions somewhere. While they are mere... trinkets in the grand scheme of things, it does not hurt to be searching everywhere, try and recover them."

Malcolm isn’t interested in testing the violence question either, but sometimes curious hypothetical questions slip out of his mouth.

There’s something sour in the way Dean says ‘FBI’, but Malcolm only gives him a curious look before turning his attention to Doc’s analysis.

“A zoo isn’t an experiment,” Malcolm pointed out reasonably, addressing Dean’s assumption about his theory more than Doc’s perfectly thoughtful response to it. “It’s a collection.” He glanced between them. “Of interesting specimens. And we’re certainly that.”

Edited 2020-12-28 13:53 (UTC)

"Would you stockpile them all in the same place like some fogged over dragon?" Yeah, he knows dragons, Doc.

"Either, they were taken or they didn't make it," he admits. "So, what are we, a collection or a zoo?"

He chooses neither, but Bright has designs. He has answers and corrections, but no drawn-out answers he's heard yet. He still senses a difference of - if not opinion, fact. Doc does have a more thoughtful response, but all they're getting at are ideas. Vague ones. Maybe it's this. Maybe it's that.

Dean Winchester doesn't do well with maybe.

"Does it matter?" Doc turns to regard Dean with slightly furrowed eyebrows and a smile. No, he does not wish to be engaging in the topic of being a specimen, interesting or not.

"There will always be someone or something with ill intentions coming after us, with their own agenda. When we find our way out and leave all this behind the only thing that would have mattered is how we treated each other." Doc gestures with a finger moving between the three of them in a slow, lazy circle.

Malcolm wanted to point out to Dean that what he'd said was that a zoo was a collection, but Doc spoke and he looked down at the ground and then at Doc, as he wrapped it up, both pleased and visibly proud.

"That's the only thing we can really control," he agreed.

"Great. Let's all Kumbaya and stay alive, then. On second thought I should let you two keep on. I should check on Claire."

It's his polite was of saying, he lost this one, and his head is hurting. Sure, being nice and working together gets you somewhere. But, finding why everyone is here matters, too.

"Look after each other. Call me if anything killable shows up."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

018-020 » what he hides

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I did not get a notif for this >:(

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