024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias + ???
WHEN: Days 024-027
WHAT: The consequences of their actions.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted January 23rd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Onryo" 怨霊

DAYS 024-025
CONSEQUENCES
“There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments —
there are consequences.”
— Robert G. Ingersoll
When the unwilling residents of Mathias Township wake on the morning of the 24th day, they will find themselves in yet another set of frustratingly unnerving circumstances. None of them are where they last remember being, and some of them have strange marks on the palms of their left hands. It's all incredibly unsettling, but truthfully they should be used to it by now. No one will remember traveling to their new location.

Residents can wake up anywhere within their new location and in any position. Curled up in a bed, sprawled on a couch, huddled beneath a coffee table, propped against a wall... Wherever they are, they will themselves to be in quite an unusual state. While they are wearing whatever clothing items they went to sleep in, plus their shoes and a coat. The newest arrivals to Mathias Township will perhaps stand out for being slightly more appropriately dressed than their new neighbors. They are all a bit damp, physically worn out, and half-frozen from their apparent walk through a blizzard.

Each of the four locations is inescapable — residents are trapped, with exterior doors and windows being shut tight and a blizzard raging outside. The locations are stocked with fresh food and water and a large pile of firewood for the fireplaces in each building. The circumstances residents will face, however, may vary wildly between locations as the forces at work in Mathias respond to the recent actions of certain individuals.


BOARDING HOUSE | GREY GULL
NEW HOUSE | MYSTERY MANSION

These residents will wake with a mark on their left hand palms, a spiraling black symbol similar to those some may have seen around town. All marks are identical and cannot be removed, but will have seemingly vanished from their skin on the morning of the 26th day.

Castiel, Daisy Johnson, Dean Winchester
Elena Gilbert, Elijah Mikaelson, Helen Magnus
Phil Coulson, Quentin Coldwater, Sherlock Holmes

DAYS 026-027
IN THE AFTERMATH
After their ordeals of the past two days, the unfortunate residents of Mathias Township will be grateful to find that they were back where they are supposed to be, a chill still clinging to their clothes in whatever place they went to sleep the night of the 23rd day. New arrivals will wake in the living room of the boarding house. None of the residents will wake with anything in their possession from the locations in which they were previously trapped, including any notes or documentation they may have made during their time there.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— SNOW continues to fall heavily on Days 024-025, resulting in white out conditions from the wind that blows in gusts of over 35 mph; the temperature also drops drastically, making conditions extremely dangerous for residents. The blizzard clears on Day 26 and residents are left with a cold, calm world covered in white.

— THE FOG remains blocking the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the northern section of town, beginning just before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be. Venturing into the fog is... ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. Kylo Ren and Thomas Richardson have vanished without a trace.

— NO NEW DEATHS have occurred in town, but there is a new "grave" in the small makeshift graveyard near the schoolhouse. Rey's corpse has been moved and covered with stones to wait for the ground to thaw enough for a proper burial.

— THE LANTERNS will be gone from the morning of Day 024. No trace of them remains.

---

OOC UPDATES

— A GIFT for everyone! As a thank you for being part of this spooky little game, every character in the game is being gifted 2 Activity Points. These may be banked over here — instead of linking to an AC post, you may put "New Year gift" in that field. Happy 2021, friends!

— NEW LAYOUTS have been installed for our communities! Huge thanks to our Eldritch Librarian Stars for putting in the time to get this place looking shiny. (You may have also noticed some new page layouts being installed — these are also our Librarian's handiwork!)

— 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.)

— 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

iii.

[setthetone]

While Carter doesn't wish injury on anyone - quite the contrary - there's still something comforting in the routine. In focusing on others. In checking in on them.

There is neither comfort nor routine in the nature of these injuries. Carter can't remember how many punched a mirror incidents he saw in the ER over the past three years but none of them looked like this. It's frightening, it doesn't make sense and leaves him with an impalpable, childlike fear that comes with the urge to hide under one of the blankets from whatever is out there.

Or... rather in here. In the ceiling. In the floorboard. In the mirrors.

He comes by later to check on Coulson and his injuries, setting down some first aid supplies and tea he found in one of the cabinets.

"How are you doing, sir? You've had quite the day."

[40seconds]

Coulson's had better days, really. He's sitting mostly upright (just slightly hunched over, although no position is really comfortable), and he's breathing almost normally, although there's still some very uncomfortable shortness of breath present that wasn't there before. Moving the wrong way sends pain shooting out everywhere in all directions, so he's just trying not to do too much of that, because the last thing he wants is to pass out right here from more sensory overload.

Sleep is more or less out of the question for now, and, well, his current state is his fault. No one else could remotely be blamed for his recklessness, not that he would even consider doing such a thing.

Briefly forgetting that the cuts on his left hand are barely healed, he clenches his fingers into a fist out of frustration, and the resulting hiss of breath is all too audible. Just then, he notices Carter approaching, and he tries to straighten up somewhat so as to give the appearance of well-being, but he doesn't make it too far because again, movement right now is a very bad thing.

"Fine. I'm fine." The words are a little bit too clipped, so he adds: "Thanks for asking. How are you doing?" It's what he'd ask if this was a normal day and they weren't trapped in a house with scratches coming from the ceiling, sounds beneath the floorboards, and mysterious figures in the mirrors.

[setthetone]

"Oh, I am definitely not fine," Carter admits freely, flashing him a quick smile, hoping to be disarming. The man is a stranger but he can spot a stubborn patient a mile away and he's learned that sometimes openness can go a long way in these situations.

"Pretty freaked out, angry, questioning my sanity, wondering where in the five stages of grief I am right now..."

It's a light conversational tone sprinkled with some gallows humor while he's checking off his fingers. Really, it's quite the list. He's learned so much over the past two days - about Mathias, about the supernatural, about the fact that he's apparently stuck in some kind of horror movie with eerie things living in floor and ceiling... It's just been a lot.

"If a mirror attacked me like that, I think I'd be livid."

He brings up his stethoscope to his ears, holding up the chestpiece.

"May I?"

[40seconds]

"Aren't we all?" Referring, of course, to Carter's checklist. "I want to tell you that it gets better, but that would be lying, and there's no point."

This place really is a hard pill to swallow, and while Coulson's nowhere near about to give up trying to chase down any threads or leads he finds, it's definitely not getting any easier.

"The way I see it, getting attacked by a mirror is getting off lightly, considering what's happened to others around here." He's thinking specifically of Constantine and Five, who both attempted things at the chasm, and got handed pretty significant consequences because of it. Sure, he's not exactly comfortable right now, but he'll survive.

"Go ahead," he adds in response to Carter's question. No, he doesn't like being poked and prodded, but he doesn't have the energy to protest right now.

[setthetone]

"Yeah? What happened to others around here?"

There's part of him that regrets the question as soon as it's out. In these two days he has already learned that nothing good ever came from this question. Just more confusion, fear, anger and the ever-growing wish to go home, somewhere where things made sense and he was in control of his own life.

"I heard something about caves. And that you have to answer the phones or you're toast. Heh."

He tries to make it sound light-hearted as he works but it's more miserable than anything.

[40seconds]

"Well, for starters, someone tried to launch some spells at a mysterious stranger that was standing on the other side of a chasm. He got some broken ribs for his trouble. And the other individual who got a rough end tried to teleport himself across that chasm. Oddly enough, he also came back with broken ribs and a handful of bruises."

Coulson sighs, forgetting that he's still having difficulty breathing, and he has to stop for a minute to catch his breath again. "And you've already heard about the phones. I was one of those who was toast."

He manages a sort of wry smile to go along with that last comment.

[setthetone]

"Launched some spells. Tried to teleport."

There's already so much in that that Carter has to sort through. Magic. Teleport. Apparently that's a thing that people do here. Okay.

He takes it at face value like he would with a confused patient, but his stomach churns because it's not just a story he hears during a check-up, it's not something he can nod along to because hey, it's kind of like that one guy that told him about bigfoot and how many times has he heard that the world was ending this year anyway? No, this is actually happening right now, having an impact on his life.

Coulson catches his breath and he frowns and listens, magical plights momentarily forgotten, but when the man mentions being part of the phone tragedy, his shoulders come up and his expression turns sheepish.

"Sorry. What, uh, what happened? If you don't mind me asking?"

[40seconds]

"It's all new to me too. Mostly. I've heard stories and seen some crazy things, but this whole place and some of the people who are here redefines that word for me."

For a normal guy like him, it's a lot. At least he's not coming into all of this blind, though, so he sympathizes with any confusion Carter might be feeling.

"The short version is: there was a phone call, which I didn't answer. It was followed by something knocking, but would you answer if you didn't know who was doing the knocking?" It's a rhetorical question and he really doesn't expect an answer. "I did, however, go outside to have a look, and that's when the fog rushed in, and the next thing I knew, I woke up on the beach again."

[setthetone]

"That's horrible. I'm really sorry."

It's simple, genuine, while he tries wrapping his head around that idea. Getting killed by some bizarre horror fog. And then coming back from the dead. Carter makes a mental note to always answer the phone and never to open the door if there is any knocking.

"... Sir, are you having trouble breathing?"

[40seconds]

Coulson just shrugs, because while it wasn't fun at the time, it's over with and now he knows to be more wary and vigilant. Not that he wasn't before, but now he knows a little about what kinds of things can happen around here. Sure, there's not much he can do to prepare, but at least now he knows that ignoring phone calls and mysterious knocking are rarely good things in this town.

"Hey, it was a lesson learned. I might not like what happened, but at least now I'm more aware of the dangers than I was before." He sighs, but it's not as deep as it would be normally, courtesy of his run-in with the mirrors. "I'm not sure I'd call it trouble, exactly, but there's definitely some shortness of breath going on. I don't think it's serious."

He doesn't mean to downplay it, but it doesn't seem to be life-threatening, although he's not a doctor and that's only his opinion.

[setthetone]

"Has that been there all the time?"

He frowns, trying to figure it out. Cracked rib maybe? Collapsed lung? He was under the impression that his injuries had been primarily lacerations. But maybe if the mirror had shattered outward and he had been caught in the blast...

There's a silly, automatic response to call for a nurse and order some chest x-rays. Man, wouldn't that be convenient.

"Did you get hit in the chest when the incident happened?"

[40seconds]

"No, only since the mirror broke. It's- Not strange, really, but when it broke, it felt like all the air in the room got sucked out, and only a little of it came back." He shrugs lightly, because he's not used to talking about himself like this. Clearly, he's standing and talking, so that means he's fine, doesn't it? "I suppose a little shortness of breath is normal after something like that."

He finishes talking and then he shakes his head. "I don't think so, but the whole thing happened pretty quickly."