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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Sore, if only because there was tension, largely related to the chasm they were walking away from and the plan that now lived at the bottom of it.

"Some say it moves differently. Don't know much about it myself, just what I've been able to piece together by talkin' to people that know more. I came from Lexington Kentucky, 2015. Another girl comes from 2039. Others from 2017. I can't find any correlation between where we were or what we were doin' when we were snatched. I'm bettin' you ain't our only new face either, so that opens that all up to new figures. It's a fishin' town, that we know for sure. Not much else."

"Hm. 2014 for me, I'm afraid." A small smile and a shrug. "I woke up in your makeshift graveyard this morning. With a man named Neal. I imagine he's found somewhere nice to bunker down in until this storm has passed."

Although now she wondered if this storm was entirely natural. It sounded like very little in this town was. Why would the storm be that way?

"Fishing town. It rather does fit the New England stereotype then, doesn't it?"

Raylan looked over, eyes squinting against the wind at the mention of the graveyard. "That where people are gettin' dropped out here nowadays?" He looked forward with a shake of his head. "Macabre as hell."

Speaking of bunkering down, they hit the main street and Raylan moved them down the half block or so that would get them to Jackson. He'd have to keep an eye out for more new faces.

"I suppose it does. Never much cared for the upper north east myself. I tend to stay south if I can help it. Miami, Florida if I get any say about it. Welcome back to the states I guess. Or a place that's tryin' real damned hard to look like it. Which ones yours?" he asked with a lift of his chin. "Feel like my lips are about to freeze off."

She shrugged. "Not nearly as macabre as the trenches of Verdun."

Though if she meant a historical context or personal experience would be entirely for Raylan to decide himself. Divulging her age or her history isn't quite a high point on the agenda.

"Well, with an accent like yours, that's hardly surprising." Helen gave him a bit of a smile. "Third one down."

"The what?" he asked, brow pinched in confusion that stayed as she continued. He looked up the street at her direction before looking back at her.

No, he didn't get it.

"Too cold up there for my liking." Nothing to do with his accent, as far as he could tell. "One of several reasons I've never gone to Canada either. What were ya doin' up there, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Verdun is a place in France. World War I?" She tilted her head, waiting to see if it by chance rang a bell. Not that many Americans knew much of the First Great War. It was far more a European matter after all.

"My facility is in British Columbia. I have several other satellite operations, but, I've lived in that one for some time now."

Raylan shook his head a little. "I know it happened, but I don't recall any details beyond that." Her assumptions were right - America had too much to worry about between World War One and current day.

"You said you were a doctor. Doctor of what?" Having a facility could mean scientist or she could be a shrink. There were lots of things to be Doctors of. Raylan was currently hoping for Pharmacist, not that Helen looked like one in the slightest. She looked like she belonged in a lab coat for sure, just not handing out pills.

"Hm. Well, it was one of the most horrendous battles of the war. Over three hundred days of nearly no movement, and men and boys simply dying. It gets far more gruesome... but, safe to say, it certainly had a No Man's Land."

She gave him a smile. "Medical doctor, among several other degrees. I graduated from Oxford University. My facility back home is designed to treat ...rare and unique cases. State of the art as well. Why?"

"I've known a few guys been off to war. Not ashamed to say that I'm glad it's them and not me."

He took a deep breath that blew out in front of him as they came up onto her porch. Despite his mouth and temper, he was raised with manners and one did not just enter someone else's house.

"Meet a lotta people in my line-a work that say they're doctors ain't the traditional kind. Though by that list, neither are you. I've got more questions, but.." He gestured at her door, clearly not expecting to be invited inside.

"It takes a certain sort to make it to the battle lines and willingly placing their lives down."

Helen climbed the few stairs. She opened the door, motioning for him to step inside with her. He may as well warm himself up before returning home. Or, to wherever he had decided to stay.

"You may as well ask some questions. You need a hot cup of tea... or coffee, before you leave. I insist. There's no reason for you to go out back into the cold without something warm in you."

"Mm." Raylan didn't elaborate - he never been in any wars. Arlo had gone to Vietnam, but it had broken something that was already deeply wrong with the man and returned a monster. Raylan respected the troops, what they did, what war meant, but he had his own opinion on it all.

He bobbed his head with a tip of his hat in silent thanks as he stepped inside and shivered off some of the cold with a deep breath and a glance around. Only one exit here, though he'd bet the place had a back door. Why yes, he did count the number of windows in his view.

"Thank you. Can't say I couldn't use it, considerin' the weather," he accepted with another little bob of his head. Following Helen as she headed towards her kitchen, Raylan continued. "You said 2014 and now you're talkin' about the trenches of a World War One battle. You're not suggestin' you were there, are you? I understand that time is a.. fluid kinda concept here, I've heard a lotta weird things but I'm afraid that I'm a little behind on all the possibilities of every world out there."

She smiled and closed the door behind him. Then, a motion for him to walk to the kitchen with her. Off came the makeshift hood and the mismatched gloves. There were bruises on her hands, cuts on her fingers. A bit more than a simple altercation had happened.

"Now, where's a girl without her secrets?" Helen added playfully. She'd let them come to their own conclusions. It'd be some time yet before her lack of aging was apparent to those in the town. Hopefully, they would be home before any of that mattered. "How is time a fluid concept? The fact the buildings all decay at an alarming rate? While others don't? Or, is it more than the fact we all come from different places?"

Edited 2021-01-09 10:18 (UTC)

Girl has been, apparently, out at bar crawls that led to a fight, clearly. He wasn't going to push the question he'd asked, but her secrets told him more than she'd probably like. Probabilities were rising. Raylan didn't remove his hat and kept his hands in his pockets, eyes darting around before falling back onto Helen again.

"Those and the fact that anything tellin' time runs on its own. We show up in places in odd times.." He shook his head. "You'll figure it out, Doctor." Even without her state of the art lab, likely paid for by a government which naturally put it into a suspicious category until it could be better sorted.

"What about those," he asked with a nod towards her hands. "Those bruises top secret too?"

It was almost a test. She wanted to see who had a keen eye and who didn't. They'd prove to be the ones who could see a thing or two in the town.

"Odd times? I'd say waking up in a small graveyard is certainly an odd time." She set about getting the coffee ready. Yes, she knew how to brew it. She may despise it but she still knew how to make a pot. "I was in an altercation before I arrived. A man by the name of Adam Worth... I'm hoping he didn't join me when I arrived, but..."

"If you think that's odd, it's just the lobby of the Strange Motel," Raylan said with a huff as he found a door frame to lean on, arms folding over his chest as he watched her. Helen was nice enough and he got no bad vibes off of her but that didn't mean he trusted her. It was all still information gathering, anyway.

"Pretty harsh altercation by the looks of it. I take it that means you didn't kill him - how bads he lookin' to compensate?"

The line was always 'You should see the other guy', right?

"My patients are often of the strange and odd variety. How similar Mathias is remains to be unseen."

Although, she had a very distinct feeling it would not be.

A shake of her head. "No. The two of us took a tumble off the roof... and I woke up here. I'd imagine he looks far worse than I do. Though, it is hard to judge, when he was covered head to toe."

"You think Mathis is a patient to treat?" Raylan questioned, eyebrows curling with his obvious disagreement at such an idea. How could a Place even attain that? He had to say, in the range of theories, that was a new and wide swinging one. But he'd let her explain and, eventually, have it. Raylan knew better than to argue the finer points of reality as he knew it.

"Tumble off the roof. If you were doin' all that, musta been a life or death fight.. Covered in head to toe in what? Bruises?"

"No. The people here, however, could very well be in need of medical treatment." Helen corrected him gently as she set the pot to boil. "I treat more than just the average person that walks into the emergency room. Most have very rare and unique medical conditions."

A specialty doctor. That might be the best way to describe it.

"If he landed wrong, possibly, but no. He was clothed head to toe. His particular way of trapping us in the building meant he could have no exposure to the elements at play."

"We could use some modern medical knowledge," he granted. "We've got someone to tend to basic injuries, I'm sure he could set bones if we needed him to.. I'm curious to see what you'll be able to do with limited supplies." They had people with rare and unique medical needs but unless Helen had the recipe and know how to press out pills, anti-psychotics, people like Malcolm were stuck where they were.

"Trapping you." He couldn't help but huff a little breath. "Did you get kidnapped from the middle of a kidnapping?"

"I'm sure I could navigate my way through it. Although, I'm afraid surgeries are quite possibly off the table. Unless, for some reason, someone might be able to find surgical equipment and an environment I could sterilize." She doubted both options, but that was hardly because she felt this town wasn't resourceful. It was more there was simply no hospital.

"I suppose that is one way to put it. Yes."

"Well I'm sure this place'll give you plenty of opportunity to be.. creative, considerin' we don't even have aspirin. No tools, no knives. No cars or liquor either. Nothin' useful in any real way."

It had nothing to do with the buildings they had; anyplace could be a hospital, if you had enough bodies. Enough sheets.

He hummed and nodded his head a little, pushing up from the frame. "What did he want from you?"

"Well, there your basic over the counter aids in the general store. How long they'll be around is something else entirely different."

Helen gave a small huff of a laugh and shook her head. "Revenge."

That must have changed. Or Raylan still hadn't spent any time in there. Whatever.

"Revenge for what?"

( basic medical supplies are at the general store, but i thought i read there are generic pain killers... it's not listed on the info pages, so i'll get clarification next log! we can just skirt over that part of the conversation till then! )

"He believes I wronged him and his daughter many, many years ago." The frown on her face said she wouldn't be detailing more than that. Not at the moment anyways. "I had believed he passed away a number of years ago... but it seems I was deeply, deeply mistaken about that."

Although how could one blame her for thinking that? She was the one that shot Adam. She saw him go off the cliff into the waters below. She still had no idea how he managed to survive that fall at all, let alone live more than a century past that.

"He's extremely dangerous. A genius, but, a deep hatred for feeling that he has been shunted by society and the world as opposed to being embraced."

"What is it with people here and livin' forever," he muttered under his breath with a rub of his thumb across his forehead, hat getting pushed back a few inches with the motion and somehow stayed on his head.

"Sounds like a ball of sunshine and joy." Sarcasm, at it's finest. Raylan let out a breath. "Let's hope he doesn't manage to follow you here then. No place to put people like that. Won't even be able to keep 'em in the ground. Whole host of problems. Everyone so far seems even enough, so maybe we'll get to skip that part of the action."

Which was good. Everything here was going to get feral by the end, Raylan could almost sense it.

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

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