villagelogs | 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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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.

She raised an eyebrow at that. "Someone here lives for ever? Well, I'd rather like to see that."

Helen had her doubts that anything was ever eternal. It was more a matter of how long lived could something be. Everything had to end at some point. Which... simply made her wonder what sort of people were here in this town.

She poured one cup of coffee before handing it to the temporary companion. She folded her hands in front of her and rested against her hips.

"...Do people not stay dead here?"

Malcolm had mentioned something of the sort.

"Stick around long enough, I'm sure you'll run into 'em." He wasn't giving anyone up that easily, but he was sure Helen would sus it out in her own time.

He took the cup with a faint nod and a soft 'Thank you,' wrapping his hands around it to absorb all the warmth it offered.

"Seems to be hit and miss, but sometimes, no. We've had people die and show up again that night or days later. I don't know why or how but.. they show up full and uninjured, bearin' no scars of how they died, as far as I'm aware. Some of our number are gonna call it magic."

It was suggested in such a way as to open the door to Helen's opinions on it with no hint of his own.

Helen hummed slightly at the statement. Interesting. She'd met vampires and others with longevity before. The odds of them being here in Mathias... well, it seemed they were certainly in someone's favor. It made her wonder why so many beings with that trait could be centered in one place.

"Hm. Or some science we have yet to encounter and understand." She frowned, tapping her fingers on the counter then. "Which, I gather, is the tone of most of this town."

"No science that I know of that makes rain physically impassable with physical side effects, but hey, you find an answer and I'll be happy to entertain it. Some of it sure, but there's things happenin' here that even science fiction ain't even coverin'."

He gave her a gentle curl of his smile. "We've all got our expertise, from psychology to the occult to the supernatural which.. I assume are different things as it is not my expertise. You'll find a couple that say this is all a construct, that we've been kidnapped and this place is staged. Takes all types."

Don't let the accent fool you Helen, he's not stupid or the kind to fall into running around screaming about magic like it was the 1300's and comets were going past.

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

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