021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias.
WHEN: Days 021-023
WHAT: A cold storm approaches.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Emily Kinney & Lauren Cohan "The Parting Glass"

DAYS 021-023
THE WORLD TURNS WHITE
“Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow,
For which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning go?”
— John Banister Tabb
The howling wind is what wakes the residents of Mathias each day now as the world turns slowly into a bleak stretch of white. Snow continues to fall in thick curtains of flakes that accumulate on trees and rooftops, swirling sideways in the gusts of wind that bow trees and whistle through any crack they can find. The drifts of snow grow taller against the buildings and the wind makes the already freezing temperatures feel bitterly cold.

By day 022, the far ends of streets begin to resemble the hazardous fog with how little becomes visible as the winds pick up. Buildings can still be discerned as dark shapes but the weather's warning becomes clear — a storm is coming. And by day 023, the storm arrives properly, the wind still screaming through the streets like a winter banshee announcing so many deaths to come. These conditions are far from hospitable and only the truly mad would be foolish enough to venture outside in weather such as this.


THE NEWLY ARRIVED
With an embrace of wintery white, Mathias offers a chilly welcome to its newest residents. They awake along the southern treeline bordering Mathias, near the small makeshift cemetery containing a handful of wooden markers erected without names or signifiers of those buried within. And not far from them is the schoolhouse, where in a snowdrift they will the frozen corpse of a young woman named Rey.

LIGHTS IN THE DARKNESS
“A lantern can give you light only when you light it”
— Munia Khan
When residents wake on the morning of day 021, they will find outside in the snow the abandoned lanterns of those shadowy spectres who have moved so silently through Mathias. Each nestled in a patch of frozen white outside their door, the lanterns are now cold to the touch, the half-burned candle within each one seeming to have been lit so very long ago. Inside the glass encasement is a small rolled piece of paper, upon which is written:

keep it lit
There is nothing more, and the prior owners of these lanterns will not return within these days.

There is one lantern waiting outside the building for each resident wherever they are sleeping — the exception for this is those who may have already claimed a lantern as their own. Removing a lantern from its resting place results in no apparent reaction, nor does lighting or not lighting it. However, whatever residents ultimately choose to do with these lanterns should be reported.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— SNOW continues to fall, resulting over the three days in upwards of a foot of accumulation. The winds blow in gusts over 35 mph.

— 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 still receded from the town proper and much of the eastern and northern beach, with the path through the northern forest to the lighthouse still clear on day 021. On day 022, however, as the storm worsens, the fog returns to the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper or else.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. While Zed Martin has returned, Rey's corpse will be found in a snowdrift near the Schoolhouse; she disappeared on day 018.

— THE STRANGER is gone.

— THE SPECTRES are gone.

OOC UPDATES

— DISCOVERIES have been collected and collated for your review. Please note that this is OOC information only, put together for the purpose of helping you as players see connections and possibilities for CR and your own character's potential avenues of exploration and investigation. (If we are missing something, please report it so we can add it to the list.)

— AP REWARDS have a new option now — Ideas may be requested if you find yourself stuck. You may now claim up to 2 rewards per log: (1) idea and (1) other reward.

— SANITY may be regained in two ways: self-medication and treatment. In Mathias, this means such coping mechanisms as drinking or drugging oneself into a stupor that allows them to face their fears and issues, or talking to someone about those fears and issues. Since both of these will take some time, best get started. (A form will be added to the Sanity page.)

— REMINDERS — Don't forget about the bulletin board. Please continue reporting your updates to locations, plots, and discoveries. The map of Mathias has been added to the locations page for ease of reference. Make sure your character's sanity level is kept updated. Prospective players are still joining the TDM, so it's recommended to track new top-levels so you don't miss them.

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afternoon

[conning]

Neal is in the bookshop, several sketchbooks still in their plastic wrap under one arm. He's also got a book of Romantic poetry in hand. Sure, he has a lot of the Romantics committed to memory, but there's something reassuring about familiar words on paper. And he can take all the familiar he can get, right now.

He pauses when he sees someone else in the shop, trying to get a look at their own selections. "Pretty good variety for... what this place is."

Re: afternoon

[abrightboy]

“A prison?” Malcolm supplied helpfully.

The man was well dressed and was carrying a book of poetry. The whole look hit a little close to home.

“I take it you draw. Has the town inspired you or are you just hoping to stave off boredom?”

[conning]

Neal winces. He'd been trying to avoid that comparison.

"Bit of both. Thought I'd try to pick apart some of the symbols on the bulletin board. And it helps me think in general. I'd offer you a hand, but--" He holds up his load. "I'm Neal."

[abrightboy]

Ah, the bulletin board.

“Malcolm Bright. Which symbols caught your attention?”

He knew what some were, even if he didn’t know what they meant, while others were a mystery.

[conning]

"All of them, really." He looks around, spots an empty table, and unloads his books there. Then out comes the paper from his pocket where he copied down a few of them, so well that Malcolm could be forgiven for thinking it's the original note. "Particularly interested in these at the moment, though, since someone responded that they think one of the symbols represents them. They didn't say which, though."

He shrugs. "We've got an umbrella, a daisy, pentacle, a bird--possibly a sparrow, possibly just a feather plucked from the symbolic collective unconscious. And then this one." He taps the symbol at the end. "It looks like the start of a runic compass or the Aegishjalmr, the Helm of Awe in Norse mythology."

Neal shakes his head. "Five symbols, someone mentioned that people five people died in the fog, here, and one of those people said he thinks he's one of the symbols... I don't know. I'm probably just running in mental circles. I just got here."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looked at the symbols as Neal talked and nodded, raising his eyes to Neal’s face.

“Was it John Constantine suggesting he’s the pentacle?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow in faint amusement.

[conning]

Neal blinks. "Yeah. He didn't specify the pentacle, but...." From what Neal knows about the man now, well. "Makes sense."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm huffed a laugh. “I’m not saying he’s wrong about everything or even that he’s wrong about this, but he sure does think he’s uniquely equipped to solve the puzzle of this city.” Malcolm gestured to the symbols. “I don’t know what they mean, but I think that suggestion is a reach.” He shrugged. “I’m not the magical kind of detective but one of the symbols is a daisy. There’s a woman here named Daisy. She disappeared the day those five people died but she wasn’t one of the five fatalities. So if she counts as a casualty, then there aren’t enough symbols for the Fog Tragedy Day,” he pointed out reasonably.

[conning]

Neal eyeballs the symbols again and sighs. "Good to know."

He folds the paper back up, tapping it against his palm. He just wants something about this place to click, something to be more than prickling instincts and half-cocked guesses. Neal turns his focus on Malcolm, taking in the man's clothes, his face, the way he carries himself. "You think you're uniquely equipped to help figure it out?"

Not an accusation--simple curiosity.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm laughed. “Me? No. In fact, I think it’s designed not to be figured out. Maybe that’s a clue. But. Does an animal in a zoo understand why he’s in a weird bit of forest he can’t seem to get out of where food mysteriously shows up? It looks like a town, but some of the small details are wrong. Unnatural. Contrived.”

[conning]

"A very reassuring comparison." Neal gestures at Malcolm with his little paper, his smile crooked, his voice warm. "So, you wouldn't call yourself uniquely equipped, but you're obviously working on it anyway. Who were you before this little trip to the menagerie?"

[abrightboy]

“I consult for the NYPD these days, but I used to be an FBI profiler. I specialized in serial murder, actually, so while I do enjoy a puzzle, I wouldn’t call this one my wheelhouse,” he explained. “What about you?”

[conning]

"A fellow New Yorker." Neal grins. "And a fellow consultant. FBI White Collar division in Manhattan."

[abrightboy]

"White Collar. Art forgeries and Ponzi schemes? That's a specialized skill set. What did you go to school for? I work homicides with Major Crimes out of the fourteenth precinct. They only call me for the really sick or weird ones, so my job hasn't changed much. I was out of the DC office when I was with the FBI, but they sent me all over the country. I was the Weird Murder Guy," Malcolm told him.

[conning]

"Among other things." Neal picks up his poetry book, riffling the pages. "I've studied Art History, restoration, economics, business development--anything relevant."

He grimaces a little. "What does a person study to become the Weird Murder Guy?"

[abrightboy]

"I did my degree in psychology - abnormal psychology, largely - but I also studied psychopathy and the methodology of known serial killers in depth and interviewed a serial killer in custody extensively," Malcolm explained. "I had the highest close rate on violent crime in the Bureau," he added as a credential that made it sound less macabre as a fascination, he hoped.

[conning]

Neal nods slowly. He can’t imagine doing it himself—-working that long and hard to get inside the heads of monsters. But there’s no denying the value of it. No way to deny its importance.

He lets the book fall open in his hands, onto a selection of Keats. “It takes fortitude. To do that kind of work.”

Neal studies the poem without seeing what it is. “I’ll take mortgage fraud for over homicide, and mortgage fraud is as boring as it gets.”

[abrightboy]

Fortitude.

Most people didn’t credit Malcolm with strength. He was seen as odd or morbid or effete. Or all three.

“It takes a strong stomach, at any rate,” he agreed self-deprecatingly. “What’s the most exciting sort of case you’ve worked?”

[conning]

“Sophisticated palate I have. Strong stomach, not so much.”

Neal smiles faintly. The most exciting one is easy—he’s still dealing with the fallout. “Nazi plunder hidden in a sunken U-boat, with the coordinates secreted away in a song in a long-lost, coded music box. That one was a hell of a thing.”

[abrightboy]

“That’s amazing,” Malcolm exclaimed. “I think if I wasn’t in murder, I’d want to work with antiques. I actually have a collection of antique weapons.”

[conning]

"It was once in a lifetime, that's for sure." Neal grins properly, letting himself enjoy both Malcolm's reaction and the memory--most of the memory--of that day. "I was one of the first two people in the hold. I was one of the first two people to lay eyes on a portrait done by Anthony van Dyck since it disappeared during the Second World War."

His grin softens into a real smile. "Once in a lifetime."

His life has been strange, but it's never been boring.

"Yeah? Any particular theme to the collection?"

[abrightboy]

"I would love to do something like that; that's amazing," Malcolm enthused.

At the question, he laughed self-consciously. "Um, anything that catches my fancy, I guess. I have a lot of blades: daggers, swords. But I also have a pair of double barreled flint lock pistols and a thirteenth century morning star, so it's not really... one type of weapon. Probably looks like a mess to an expert," he conceded with a tilt of his head and a grin.

[conning]

"It definitely beats mortgage fraud."

Neal runs his fingers down the center of the page of the book in his hand before letting it fall shut. "Collection is self-expression, in its own way. The possessions you surround yourself with are as significant as the clothes your wear and the friends you keep. They're not just what you project toward the world, they're also the imprint you let the world leave on you."

He shrugs. "The only mess of a collection I've ever come across was one that had no significance to the owner but price tags."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm nodded knowingly.

"That would be the art collection at my mother's house," he admitted. Why yes, he did come from that sort of a family. "She's assured that they're very good pieces." He leaned in conspiratorially. "She has a curator."

[conning]

Neal grins. "Well, I'm sure the curator's taste is impeccable."

He studies Malcolm a moment. "You'll forgive my saying so, I hope--it is a compliment--but you don't scream 'law enforcement' at a glance. Wealthy family background, refined education. FBI specialist I can see, but how did you end up working with the NYPD?"