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

[conning]

Manners, shmanners, really. Time and inclination have made Neal fastidious, but he's also the kind of guy to dig his whole-ass hand into a box of cereal looking for a toy badge when the mood takes him.

He takes his own meal slow, not wanting to put any pressure on her to try for more than she can manage. "It's a pasta dish--usually made from high-end ingredients, in this case made with bacon and fake cheese."

[enduresurvive]

She picks at her food, not because it's not good, but because that's just how it is. At least she's eating. She eats a lot more regularly with all the people who do make an effort to feed her. Doc especially does, but several of the other men have made that effort, too. Neal's in good company like that.

"You mean like powdered army stuff or something?" she asks between bites, thinking of what fake cheese must be. She's had dehydrated food before. It's never good, but it's better than starving. She's been close to that starvation threshold before, travelling in winter with Joel several years ago. Jackson has had some thin seasons but nothing like that, nothing so dire. "I mean, it's good. I wouldn't have known it was fake anything."

[conning]

"Yeah. Powdered, not fake, I guess." It's said with the grudging admission of someone who's used to having access to said high-end ingredients.

He can't help himself--curiosity wins out. "The army still exists where you're from? I mean, it exists where I'm from, but so do computers."

[enduresurvive]

"Unfortunately, yeah, army exists. I mean...kind of? In some places. They ran the QZs but in a lot of places they got overrun or whatever. I haven't seen any actual army in a long time, but there are militarized groups across the country. Same fucking difference, I guess. They're all bullshit from what I've seen." The WLF, the actual army, the Fireflies, whoever, she doesn't want anything to do with any of them. Hierarchical structures and sanctioned violence, that's all any of them are good for, seems like.

"I know what a computer is, I've just never gotten to be anywhere near a working one that did much of anything. I guess they were cooler when the internet existed, or so I've heard."

[conning]

Neal has to take a second to sort all of that out in his mind. It's a lot. It's a whole new level of what the fuck, a different brand than vampires and aliens and special powers. "QZ? Overrun by what?"

[enduresurvive]

This part is pretty easy for Ellie to talk about. It's not magic or resurrection or whatever. It's just...her lived experience.

"QZ. Uh, quarantine zone. The Army fucking sucks and people didn't wanna put up with them. So other people sometimes took them out," she says with a shrug, taking a second to actually eat.

"Infected, other times. I know you're gonna ask, so the Infection is a mutated form of cordyceps fungus. It gets into your brain and takes you over. Whatever is human dies and it's just the cordyceps left. That's how my world got all fucked up."

[conning]

Neal drinks some of his hot chocolate, mostly to give himself a chance to process. He exhales softly. "That's definitely a way to fuck up a world."

It doesn't surprise him that the army would try to take control in a situation like that. It's equally unsurprising that people would rise against it. "So where do you live now, if it's not in a QZ?"

[enduresurvive]

"Yeah, and I don't think anyone is even to blame. You can't just be like, well, some people fucked shit up for everyone. Nope! Just some mutated fungus! Natural selection or some other bullshit!"

She shakes her head.

"I mean, people fucked it up all over the map after that, but the big thing? No one's fault."

She's sure people blamed plenty of others. The government. The military. Some conspiracy theory group whacked out bullshit. She's never cared to blame people for the Infection. People do enough unforgivable shit without that.

"A town," she answers with a shrug. "Jackson, Wyoming. Some people who were sick of the military and the factions and whatever else got this town up and running. It's...as close to peaceful as I think anywhere's ever gonna be back home."

Though that peace has been shattered in her mind, probably in a way that no amount of vengeance and death can ever fix.

[conning]

"I'm not sure if that would feel better or worse than being able to point fingers." He's trying to imagine it. A natural disaster on that scale. One that quite literally reshapes the face of the world. "How long ago did it happen?"

[enduresurvive]

"I don't know. Maybe at the beginning it might have mattered to someone. I was born a few years after the Infection started, so I've never known anything else. That was...2013, it happened. Like six years before I was born." She considers Neal for a moment before continuing. "Let me guess, you already lived through 2013 and it was fine?" That seems to be the case for people who are from regular worlds, in her experience here.

[conning]

"Uh." Neal's fork stills against his plate. He feels slightly queasy. "It's 2012, actually."

What a lovely, unpleasant new possibility this has opened up.

[enduresurvive]

Well, shit. That's the first time it's been like this with someone she's talked to here. They've all been from later.

"Well, uh...it's not really likely we're from the same world or whatever, I think," she says. But what does she know? This is a question for someone like John who understands this alternate universe stuff.

"Guess you should avoid mushrooms from now on," she continues with a laugh. She has a terrible sense of humour, but there's no other way to get through.

[conning]

Neal makes a weakly amused noise. "I'll worry about my relationship with chanterelles once I'm home enough to think about it."

He does wonder if there's a way to find out for sure, whether or not the two of them share a... home universe. What an odd thought. Part of him doesn't want to find out, if there is a way.

But this isn't about him, right now, anyway. He taps his fork against the side of his plate, trying to get his mind away from the possibility of apocalypse.

"You should make a list. A list of things you've heard of but haven't gotten to try, food-wise. Granted, we're not great on supplies, but I can do my best."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie isn't entirely sure what a chanterelle is, but she figures it's a mushroom. At least he tries to give her humour back. It's probably a shitty thing to hear the world might end, and soon. She can't relate; her world was always the aftermath.

"A list? Uh...sure. I'll try to think of stuff I've seen in movies. Or you can just give me whatever you like. I'm not picky. But no pressure. I mean, I can make do with pretty much anything. I don't even care if the cheese is fake."

[conning]

"Perfect." His eyes narrowed a moment. "Speaking of fake cheese: have you ever had cheez whiz? I wouldn't be surprised, cheez whiz would probably survive through a nuclear blast, but if now we need to find some because it's definitely something that can only be experienced."

Yeah, he's a foodie.

He was also a teenage boy once, okay.