villagelogs | 024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I think it's worth being cautious," he assures her. "And Henry thought so too. He still tells people not to go in there; that it's too dangerous to be worthwhile."

"John says we might need to know what's in there," she answers. "But fucking why, you know? I don't need to know what's in every goddamn cranny of this shitty town. I just wanna know how to go home."

She looks over at the window. It's totally dark, of course, but the snow is still falling. God, she hates that blizzard, trapping them here with weird shit. There had been some sound of smashing dishes or something earlier. Apparently monsters live in the attic. Fuck this town.

"I hope this blizzard does go away soon," she says, softly. "It reminds me of the worst parts of home." The emotional whiplash of that last day, getting stuck with Dina on patrol, coming back to Joel and Tommy missing. She could choke on all of it.

Malcolm nodded tightly.

“That sounds like John. But, listen. You warned him. Henry warned him. If he goes in there and something terrible happens... Raylan and Henry will do what they have to to make sure everyone is safe. If that means we have to bury him again, we have to bury him again. He’s making his own choice.”

He watched her for a moment.

“You’ve been stuck like this by the snow before?” he asked.

She nods. Malcolm is speaking sense, and she did believe Henry about his grim resolution to take down Negan if Negan hadn't been all right from the spores. She trusts Henry, more or less. She'd take someone out herself if she had to, but that would be easier with a gun. At least she has her knife. Or she did back at the house. It's not on her here. It better still be there when she gets back.

"The snow? Oh, um. Yeah. I live in the mountains so...we get blizzards like this every year. But...this year was bad."

"Just bad for snow or did something else happen?"

He paused and added "You know, we're just next door. Once we all get back to our houses. If you're lonely, you can... come over. Just come. Any time."

"The snow was pretty bad," she says with a shrug that jostles the blanket around them just a little. "But it wasn't that."

She swallows and can't bring herself to look at Malcolm.

"Someone...um, someone close to me was murdered in a blizzard. Not because of the snow. But I was stuck somewhere with my...with a friend." Is Dina her girlfriend? Joel had asked and she'd said no. After the months that passed, she's not sure. But if they are, then she should probably take better care of Dina. Well, it is what it is now.

She tries not to think about it too hard, because she still has to just trust that Jesse got Dina home. She can't allow any other possibility to enter her mind or she won't make it through Mathias. She has to make it through Mathias.

"We were too late. I couldn't save him," she finishes. Would she have been able to if they'd gotten there earlier? Probably not. She might have died then too, but...that might have been better. Living through everything took a toll, after all.

Malcolm's comment registers, a bit late.

"Oh. Thanks. Henry asked me if I wanna move, but...I don't wanna live in this boarding house, that's for fucking sure."

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said to her story. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He reached over inside the blanket and gave her hand a gentle squeeze, then let go.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to live here. You can really come over any time though. Even if it’s just... windy and you don’t want to be alone that night. Stay with us. We’ll make room. You can keep your independence and just... have a port to go to in a storm.”

Ellie just sort of nods. It's not that she isn't grateful for Malcolm's presence, or for him listening. The whole thing is just a fucking mess. And even adding the weeks she's spent here to it hasn't done anything. She can't get revenge out of her head. She can't stop seeing Joel in her mind's eye. She doesn't know how to heal. And really...she doesn't want some sort of healing. What she wants is to make that bitch and her lackeys pay for what they did.

"I was in Seattle to kill the people responsible," she says, cold and dispassionate. It may seem strange, because she's a small person and she doesn't look like a killer. But grief and trauma and loss coupled with growing up the way she had compound inside her. She's not like Joel, really; the violence and the death and the killing people weigh on her. But none of that matters, because she refuses to stop until everyone who stood there and helped Abby is dead too.

"I don't know why you guys all give a shit about me, but...I'm glad you do."

"You were brought here before you were able to... finish that job?" Malcolm confirmed.

He gave her a small smile.

"We can't control a lot of things here, but we can control how we treat each other. We can look after each other."

She nods once. "Yeah. I thought I was close. And my friend Dina...she was sick. She was with me, but she got sick, and...I just hope she got home okay. Jesse, our other friend, he showed up. I have to believe he took her home."

God, what a fucking time.

"You probably think I'm a shitty person, but...I have to do this."

She doesn't really expect Malcolm to understand.

"Fuck, you're the only person I've even talked about this to," she says, fidgeting a little, adjusting the blanket over her shoulders a little.

"Anyway, I guess I'm just used to people being shitty. You guys are all pretty cool."

"I don't think you're a bad person for wanting to kill the person who killed your friend. The world you live in sounds harsh and lawless. Is there another way to pursue justice? It doesn't sound like it."

When there was no law and nobody to enforce it, justice became vigilantism. He couldn't judge her for living there. It wasn't like she chose it.

He looked at her. "It's natural to want to see justice done when you've seen someone do remorseless harm."

She thinks of correcting Malcolm when he calls Joel her friend. Is that what Joel is – was? Wow, that's...complicated. He was more like her dad, but they hadn't spoken regularly in awhile because he was also the man who took her choice away and made her life mean so much less. And he'd told her, that last night, that he'd do the same thing all over again without batting an eye.

So she leaves it at friend.

"There's no such thing as justice," Ellie says. "I know why those people killed Joel. But I don't give a shit. They came into our town and tortured and murdered him and hurt other people." Herself included, but that's neither here nor there for her now.

"So yeah. You have to make your own justice."

Besides that, she wants her nightmares and flashbacks to stop, and she strongly believes that killing Abby will accomplish that.

"Thanks for not, I don't know. Going off about how it's wrong or whatever."

"The law really has to simplify 'right' and 'wrong' so it can be applied across the population. So the rules can be understood broadly. What's morally right or wrong... is a lot more nuanced and open to argument. But the need to see justice done in some form when you've been wronged is universal," he said.

"We don't really have laws and shit anymore," she says. She can't really imagine a world run by laws and not just assholes with guns. Jackson has rules, sure, but it's not like the old world 2.0. It's a good place, a good community. People listen to the rules because they don't want to be like the ones out there, the hunters and the cannibals and the religious freaks.

"I don't know if it's morally wrong, but...it doesn't matter. I just have to do it." It's the only closure she can imagine finding.

"Even if I'm stuck here for a long time, I won't forget. Someday I'm gonna get home and finish what I started."

Interesting, that she's not sure it's right.

"...If you're not certain that it's morally right, then why do you want to do it?" he asked. "What do you want to get out of it, if not justice?"

"They deserve to pay for what they did," she answers immediately, that flicker of anger surfacing in her voice. She really hates them, Abby and the WLF and their torture and death.

But she thinks again of that girl choking on spores in the hospital. But they made their bed, didn't they, all those WLF assholes.

Ellie can't afford to be sorry.

"I can't let them live. I can't."

She doesn't know how to explain to Malcolm how she can't sleep, how she hears screams when there's nothing there, how the smallest thing can tip her over some edge she can't see. He already knows she has flashbacks. But she can't talk about so much of it, lacking the language for it.

"Do you feel like killing them will bring you some measure of peace?" he asks without judgement.

She shrugs a shoulder again. "Maybe," she answers, her tone bordering on defensive. "Maybe I want to see them suffer, too."

Like Joel did. Like Ellie herself still does.

She would never do what Abby had done, all the torture. She tells herself that, at least. She doesn't want to kill Abby slowly or anything. She just wants that girl dead. It's too much to think of her just getting to go about her life.

"No, you don't," Malcolm said with gentle certainty. "You're not a sociopath. You've just been through a lot and you've been hurt a lot and you feel like... there must be something you can do to make that pain go away."

"Sociopath? I don't know that one," she says. She reads a lot, fiction and nonfiction, but she hasn't really delved into psychology and doesn't really want to.

She shakes her head. "It's more than that, though. People just do whatever the fuck they want all the time. Eat other people. Sell people like they're fucking property. Walk into our town and get stuck in a blizzard and then fucking murder the man who was good enough to try to help them."

That's justice then, isn't it? In a world where there isn't any, where she and others like her make their own. She's aware it's perpetuating a cycle. She knows why Abby killed Joel, but like she told Malcolm, she doesn't care about that.

That, and it's hard to admit that she thinks it will make her feel better.

"Did you know that a need for fairness is so deeply ingrained in our animal hindbrains that even other animals that live in social groups display it? They did a study where they gave two monkeys the same food reward and they both accepted it, but when one got a better food for the same task or got the food without doing the task, the other got upset, refusing the food or refusing the task. What's more is they found the same sort of behaviours in dogs, rats and even some types of birds. We need fairness and justice. It's hardwired into us."

Ellie listens to Malcolm talk, frowning a little, though she isn't looking directly at him. She's not entirely sure what the point is, but he does get there.

"So you're saying I want justice because it's hardwired into me as a human?" she asks, sceptical. Maybe he's right, though. Maybe that's why this cycle just repeats, the violence and death.

Not that she's looking for someone to talk her out of it. She doesn't want to hear anything like that.

"Yeah. And in most societies, there's a mechanism in place that determines how justice is dispensed so that it's fair for everyone. But not in yours. So I don't think you necessarily have a choice in how you go about it, even if I think it's a shame that someone your age has to be in that position," he told her.

It's strange to find validation in Malcolm's words. She's not sure he gets it entirely because like other teenagers she's sure no one does. Dina tries to. Tommy might have an idea, since Joel was his brother, and he was out there in Seattle doing the same thing she was. But without living through it, it's hard to explain.

Malcolm's explanation is good enough.

"People a lot younger than me have to do terrible shit to survive, too," she says. She'd killed a man when she was fourteen to save Joel. It was one of the worst things she's ever done. That one seems so impossible now, despite all the atrocity that lies between that first undeniably self-defence murder and the slew of vengeful remorseless ones that now litter Seattle.

"I always knew my world was fucked up, I just...didn't think there was anything else left to compare it to. All these other worlds or whatever."

"If you could leave here and... go to one of those worlds instead, do you think you would do it?" Malcolm asked.

024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

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