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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Comments

[hellblaze]

"Most people don't." John shrugs. "Doesn't mean they don't believe in you."

That's the thing about belief. It's a personal thing. How one sees the world and reality. Thing is, you can ignore facts or truths about it because of it. John's experience? That's when things get bad. Even if whatever is in the Museum isn't a Hellspawn, and instead man made? The people who made it were evil. What happened to the town was evil

He just knows better than to think everyone is going to agree.

"Might come to a point where we have to go in there. Not now, but maybe someday. Either way? We need to know what happened down in there... meaning that there's more digging to do."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie laughs a little at that comment. "That's so fucking corny, wow," she says. It is, too. It sounds like a line from a book or movie to her. Point taken, sure, but it's still corny. She's just not a believer in much of anything, not magic, or fate, or the inherent goodness of humanity. That last one, she used to try harder. These days? Well.

"Yeah, maybe. I mean, do we have any answers to anything so far? Seems like everything is fucked and more people show up and nothing really makes sense. You're a magic guy. Any of it add up for you?"

[hellblaze]

"Just because it's corny doesn't make it any less true." His eyebrows perk up, as if daring to get her to think about it. Just food for thought. No one can blame him if he didn't warn them when the world continues to go tits up and make them wonder what's really deep and scary in the belly of the earth.

Well, a Earth.

"Seems like this town has some secrets that need unearthing. Been doing some digging in the Library, so, it's a matter of finding what they were trying to hide." He gives a casual shrug. "People filtering in? Been knocking the idea around with a few others. Might be whatever happened to this town ripped a hole in the multiverse. Maybe we just all fall through it into here. Or, maybe, we've being summoned here by something."

[enduresurvive]

"Yeah, whatever," Ellie says, but more amused than dismissive. She really can't fathom John's belief in magic, simply because she's never really seen magic. Not growing up with it makes being confronted with all this weird shit hard for her, even after other adversity.

"You really think you're gonna figure out what happened here?" she asks, tentative, not daring to be hopeful. Hope hasn't served her well recently. "If you figure that out, do you...think we could go back home?"

[hellblaze]

He chuckles and gives her a wry grin. Right, right. Crazy Old Uncle John. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

"Might take some time, but, I generally always figure out what is going on. I'm an occult detective, Ellie. Being an exorcist, demonologist, magic? That all just means it's tools to figure out what's knocking deep in the dark. What might be scaring the local folks who can't handle this side of the world. I, ah, don't see Heaven lifting a hand to do it. So, might as well be a bastard like me." John leans forward and raises his eyebrows at her. "I'm hoping that if we can find what brought us here and how? We can reverse it. Get all of us back where we belong with the people we belong with."

[enduresurvive]

Some of his words don't really register to her. Demonologist, what the fuck even is that? Ellie is smart and she's read a lot but occult stuff just isn't her bag. Mythology, sure. She's read some. She doesn't really read or watch horror things because when you live in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, scaring yourself isn't fun.

"Did you find anything out so far, then?" she asks.

[hellblaze]

"Only bits and pieces about the town... and that this town isn't too fond of my magic. Doesn't really like communicating the ways I know how. Which means? It either doesn't want to talk, or, I haven't found the right language yet." John hasn't written either possibility off the table yet. "And that at least one household wasn't aware of whatever was going to happen happened."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie's not sure she follows exactly what John's saying, but that's all right. Magic stuff just eludes her, but she's sort of getting used to that part.

"Wait, so you think that people here knew whatever was coming was coming, but some of them didn't know? What makes you think only some of them knew?"

A breath.

"Malcolm thinks this whole place is fake, like...like a zoo or something. Like no one actually ever lived here and it's just set up for our benefit."

[hellblaze]

"When you deal with dark magic, and magic in general? It's not bloody public knowledge. Only certain people go off into the sort of thing I do, Ellie. Mages? We live double lives or we life our life with kindred souls. Your average bloke isn't going to know about that. I presume something similar happened here."

He shrugs. "Harvard has his own theories. My spell showed there were people living here at one point. Unless, he would like to think that they were actors."

[enduresurvive]

"So you're like a spy, but with magic?" she asks, half-teasing. She can't possibly understand what he does or why or how, but she believes him. Her joking is how she deals with stress.

"I don't know, ask him," she answers. "But you really found people lived here? Did you find out anything about any of them?"

She hadn't been sure about Malcolm's theory either, though who the fuck knows? Anything seems possible here.