villagelogs | 021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

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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Neal's laugh is soft and surprises him with its bitterness. "Nothing that useful, no."

He has no idea what good a con artist can do in a place like this, how someone with his particular skill sets can be remotely helpful. Sure, he's smart. He's good at puzzles, good at teasing out solutions to complex problems. But against fog that can attack through closed windows? A steady hand and an easy smile can't stand up to something that seems more nightmare than reality.

Peter could handle this. Peter could organize these people, pull them together, keep them safe and moving forward toward a solution to all of this.

You don't owe anyone here anything, he thinks. You don't need to save anyone's skin but your own.

He knows what Peter would say at that thought. Neal doesn't even believe it himself, any more, that selfishness. When did that happen?

"You clearly have some skills, though," he says, trying for levity. "Moonshine?"

"Heh. I'm much better at drinking it than making it." Doc runs a hand through his hair and leans back a bit. It honestly tastes like a bottle of paint stripper so he shouldn't be impressed until he tries it. At least it gets the job done, fast and relatively painlessly.

"My particular skillset isn't required here, unless you come across a six-shooter or a pack of cards. I have some medical knowledge, but not the kind that anyone uses anymore." Still, he's well stocked with a few first aid kits should anyone swing by. And he's had a few idiots, done something stupid to themselves swing by already. Not that he would name names.

"Good old-fashioned cowboy, huh?" Neal smiles faintly, with no clue how right he is. The comment about medical knowledge that's not used any more, though, that gives him pause. He hasn't forgotten about Dean saying he's from 2020.

A pause. "So... Possibly this is a weird question, but I think we're kind of at the point where weird is the new normal. When are you from?"

"Sommin' like that. A fellow by the name of Mister Negan did abscond with my hat..." He has been meaning to get it back, but. It's been a rough and busy couple of days.

"That's..." Doc narrows his eyes just a bit, though he never quite breaks eye contact. "Complicated. I've been around since 1851. Bit longer than many of you folks have been around." Or so he's gathered, talking to people here and there. Maybe they're all from slightly different times. Only a handful of them are unnaturally old.

“Since—-“

Wait. “When is it for you now?”

He leans forward, eyes lit with curiosity.

Edited 2020-12-22 17:00 (UTC)

This kind of scrutiny makes Doc uncomfortable, though he doesn't show it. It doesn't bother him to be looked upon as some kind of circus act, he gets comments wherever he goes. But he doesn't fancy getting dragged away by some government organisation and turned into some kind of lab rat.

"2017," he answers truthfully. He hasn't lied to anyone here, but. He hasn't gone around telling everyone everything either. There has been a lot of details conveniently left out and peculiar omissions. With this direct line of questioning though, there's no clean or neat way of dancing around the topic.

"There's a big gap. From about last year, back to a hundred and thirty years ago. I couldn't tell you what happened."

All Neal's interest rushes out, immediately replaced by disbelief and concern.

Strange enough being yanked from his own home and dropped in a place where locals would probably still call the internet the WorldWideWeb. He's largely tried to ignore the fact that if they have somehow jumped to the 90s, he's a preschooler and Peter is nowhere near the FBI and no help is coming from that quarter. But the idea of being pulled from the 1800s into 2017? That dramatic a change, a loss? It hardly bears thinking about.

"That's...." Awful. Neal can't help thinking about all the history this man would have lived through. All the things that changed without him seeing cause and effect. He clears his throat. "So uh, going out on a limb and saying this place is not the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you."

He'll take disbelief over accusations that he's making this shit up. Even though at this point he's not entirely convinced that he won't wake up at Shorty's bleary-eyed and doggedly tired trying to recall this strange, elaborate dream about this town and all these people he imagined up.

"I suppose not. But it's fairly high on the list." He's more of a roll with the punches, take things as they come one day at a time kind of guy than the kind who would rank weird things that happen to him. He cannot forget the mistakes he has made and he will have to live with his regrets, but he's lived too long to be wanting to keep score.

"What about yourself? You a modern city boy?"

Something about this man, his name, those dates, is bothering Neal, but he can't put his finger on what it is.

John Henry.

1851.

He shrugs, smiling. "Born and bred. Living the high life in New York City before this little field trip to the heart Bat Country."

John Henry, around since 1851.

Neal freezes, eyes going wide. "You're John Henry Holliday."

"I am staying with a gentleman from New York City." He's also a kind of high life person, although he has never flaunted it. His suit and no doubt the dozens just like it that Malcolm Bright must own back home can probably buy half the land in all of Texas.

"Perhaps you should come over sometime and meet him." He could use a few more friends, whom he doesn't also see as caretakers. Feeling reliant on people complicates a friendship.

Neal is the first person to recognise him from just his first two names and Doc stiffens a bit, lips parting as if to say something. But say what? He cracks a smile and brings a hand to rub over his lips and moustache, scratching under the corner of his bottom lip.

"Heh. Wouldn't that be sommin'?"

Neal is still staring, shock slowly giving way to delight.

"John Henry 'Doc' Holliday, born August 14, 1851. Dentist, gambler, gunfighter extraordinaire. Saved the life of one Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, and later became famous alongside Special Policeman Earp following the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Arguably the most renowned shootout in the history of the American West."

All of that stress, that fear, that anxiety, has temporarily taken a back seat to the pure joy of a history nerd meeting an idol. "It really would be something, wouldn't it?"

God damn, did this guy write a book about him or something?

"Well if you know that gentleman that thoroughly, surely you would know what he looks like," Doc muses with an upturned hand. There were drawings, photographs, personal accounts.

"Word is he died of consumption... oh, I'd say, about a hundred and thirty years ago now."

"Give or take." He laughs quietly, leaning back in his chair, just taking in the sight of a historical figure in the flesh. There's a boyish glee on his face that's impossible to hide.

This is, without a doubt, the weirdest two days of his life. "Have to say, testing myself against one of the preeminent gamblers of the 19th century has an undeniable appeal."

So he's pretty sure he can't convince Neal that the name and the year and the guns and the cards are purely a coincidence, even if it is a common name, plenty of people were born in 1851, guns were everywhere and being a professional gambler made decent money.

For all his worries about his legacy, the things he had done with and without Wyatt, about the mistakes they had made over a century ago, it's actually good to get a positive reaction. There is still hope to right some wrongs. To be remembered as something more than a sickly asshole going around shooting people he didn't like the look of.

"You play poker?" he asks with a tilt of his head and the smallest of smiles, the kind he can't withhold until it's already half-formed on his face, a light returning to his eyes that hasn't been seen since he got here.

"If I am who you think I am I would say..." He purses his lips and nods a few times. "You'd be in for quite a challenge."

Neal's smile turns into a grin. "Poker, faro, Mexican monte--name the game. I've always loved the classics."

Playing cards with Doc Holliday. Now that would be a crowning achievement on a gambling career that's spanned the globe. Win or lose, who can say they've done that in the 21st century? "I'm not too bad myself."

"Oof. Sounds like you're a real professional, son. I might be in trouble." He smiles as he leans back a bit, sizing Neal Caffrey up in a new light. He hasn't seen or heard those being played since- well, since he vanished off the face of the planet and spent those hundred and thirty years, give or take, in solitary confinement. More or less.

"So we'll be seeing you at 1306 then? Soon as we find some cards." It's been difficult finding anything around here, in terms of answers or weapons, but cards... there might be some in the toy store.

"I dabble." The grin is still firmly in place. "And who knows? You might be."

Nothing wrong with a little harmless bragging.

"You can bet your last dollar I'll be there. Does your New Yorker friend play?"

"Hnh. Him? No." They would wipe the floor with Malcolm Bright within the first three rounds. Some days, he trudges down the stairs, and Doc looks at his retreating back thinking that it's no small miracle he managed to pull himself out of bed.

"He's... struggling, a little bit." That's an understatement for what that New Yorker is going through, with those night terrors, and being off his medications for two weeks now. But if Malcolm wants to talk about it, that's for Malcolm to share. Doc's just driving the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Same way he does with everyone around here, it seems.

"I suspect you will, too," Doc changes the subject hastily, but with relative ease. "Small town life doesn't work for everyone, nevermind a small town with all this other stuff happening." All this weird ass shit, he's referring to, except he's less inclined to be too blunt right now.

Neal sombers when Doc mentions his friend's difficulties. It's not hard to imagine what this place can do to a person, given the things Neal is learning. He doesn't want to think about how he's going to handle it if they don't get home soon.

"I've never been a small town kind of guy. Always liked it better where you can lose yourself without getting lost." There's absolutely unmistakable fondness in his face and voice. "New York City's one of the best places in the world for that kind of thing."

Doc wouldn't be able to handle New York City. The crowd. The traffic. The noise. The sheer... rudeness of people in this day and age, everyone rushing to be in three places ten minutes ago. Anything is better than being on his lonesome in the dark, but that is too far in the other extreme.

That's not his mental image of New York so he'd be in for a big, unpleasant shock if he ever gets a chance to make his way over there.

"Well I can promise you, Mister Caffrey, when we do find our way back we're not leaving anyone behind." And he's not resting until that day comes.

Edited 2020-12-24 01:20 (UTC)

Neal rocks back in his chair, blindsided by a phrase simple enough to be said by anyone. A sentiment that shouldn't be unique. But the last time he heard those words, Peter was dying on the floor of an office building, demanding that Neal save the criminal indirectly responsible. Doc doesn't know it, and Neal doesn't realize it, but the near-stranger just became someone Neal would take a bullet for should the moment require it. He's Peter's kind of people, and Peter's kind of people deserve better than this place.

It takes a second for Neal to find a response, and he manages to keep his tone light even if expression is dead serious.

"There's only one person I would even consider leaving here, and he's already in a Russian prison. So I'm with you on that."

"You must tell me more about that, maybe when you visit." Doc's been checked into the grey bar motel plenty but Russia sounds more like exile, something much more intense. Could be that it was being in the wrong place at the wrong time - he knows that well - but he has a feeling that there's a story there that can be shared over drinks and cards.

"Much as I like sitting around socialising, this snow won't be letting up anytime soon. Should you be needing supplies we could go to the store, or the restaurant, while we still can."

"Oh, it's a story worth hearing, believe me."

But Doc is right--not now. Neal doesn't have any gauge for how bad or good the weather will be over the next few days, but it's always better to be safe than sorry. And Doc Holliday would know a lot more than him, on that front. "I've been to the general store, so I at least know what's there. Haven't seen the restaurant though. Do we have any idea how the food gets restocked?"

"It just does. I camped out at the restaurant, and then at the store waiting for a supply truck to hitch a ride on. There is no truck." He's avoiding saying ~magic~ because it sounds crazy, but he doesn't have an explanation for how it works. He watched the shelves replenish themselves and still he checked for any sort of hidden compartment or dispenser, just in case.

"If the shelf is full though it might not give any more. I haven't tested that yet. But you're best to clear it, keep a stockpile elsewhere, especially for the essentials, like first aid supplies. Least you'll have some more come in the next day."

He leans forward and moves to stand, hands resting on empty holsters strapped to an ammoless gun belt. He's accessorised with other things, like a heavy duty torch, a handle that looks like plain silverware. It'll probably end up as a tool belt around here, but he's still holding out hope that he'll find his Colts, maybe washed up on the beach one day, the same way he must have come in.

"Hope you're a decent cook, Mister Caffrey. There's a lot you will have to make do with, 'round here."

"I'm better than decent, and necessity is the mother of invention. When I come over--cards, booze, and dinner. You get to do the dishes."

Neal hoists himself to his feet. "Or we could play for dish duty. I don't mind starting low-stakes."

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