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.

navigation | faq | setting | mod contact

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ it's a day after her second waking that she finally flits over to the Town Hall.

she's discarded the dress from her arrival - stained with blood and ash - in favor of something else. there wasn't a lot to work with, no, but mending and illusion spells are simple even now. it takes little to mold lackluster clothing into something more. it still lacks the finer details, and hidden under a long coat. she already misses the warmth of fur.

yet, still, she swings the doors open and strides into the hall with the surety of someone whose power rolls off of her in waves, warn on her sleeve for good measure.

a look thrown around her, before violet eyes land on him, and she takes a few steps towards him without a rush. ] This is the Town Hall, then? [ she doesn't sound tremendously impressed. ]

[ the door opens and the first thing he gathers is the sound. the next is her magic. oh, it rolls off like a steady current and fills the room. john turns his head towards her, eyes starting at her face then down to her feet to take her in. someone likes to dress a bit fancy compared to everyone else in town. it's enough of a distraction from the wall and his uncontrollable fit from the night before.

at least he'll give the new face that. ]

Just like the rest of Mathias, luv. Not much to go off of or be impressed by. [ a head tilt. ] Violet. Now, that's a new eye color.

[ he wonders if she can notice his powers. while casting and their effects are usually 50/50 these days? no doubt she can sense that he's got his own magic to him. home trained and curated through years, but, hopefully he won't need to do a cheap trick to show it to her. ]

[ she does note the magic - a curious thing, subtler than the chaos of her. different in a way she can't describe. less refined than what aretuza teaches them - like sulfur and ash and shadows, if she had to describe it.

so this must be one of the magic users that were mentioned to her by henry. ] Small towns don't often boast frivolity. But even this seems scarce. Have the previous residents been gone long?

[ her smile is distantly polite. ] Is it. [ her eyes fall to wall, to the spirals scrawled across them, and her brow ticks up in wordless curiosity. ]

There's not much of a way to tell how long it's been. Some houses are in complete decay. Others? Well, they're brand new minus the thin layer of dust on them. Time is broken here, luv. No point in trying to understand it until we know what broke it.

[ he properly turns to her then. someone is used to the comments about her looks... which means it's either gotten old for her, or she does things to provoke that reaction. a bit of a manipulator, maybe? hm. it seems all mages have an ounce of bastardy to them.

chaos... that's a good way to describe that sense of magic that comes off from her. an ocean that seems calm, but could turn into a turbulent storm at any moment. dangerous. he likes a level of danger. ]

So, the question is... did you just show up, or did you find yourself in one of the lovely locations we all ended up trapped in?

Yennefer, [ she says with a raised chin, by way of introduction, because you are not going to keep calling her luv.

as for commentary on her looks, on her eyes? aretuza shapes their vanity, doesn't it. they remade her, and she knows her beauty because the enchanter was a master of his work. because he took the reflection straight out of her mind. because she knows her power, and who would she be if she didn't use it?

her eyes aren't an illusion though - they're one of the only things still left of her old self. of the twisted girl in a pig pen, sold away for four marks.

but he's right about one thing. she's an inconvenient asshole at the best of times.

her magic is the eye of the storm, a prickling of petrichor across the skin, of fires and anger and control, as she ventures deeper into the Hall. ] I arrived several days ago. In - the boarding house.

Portal, and time magic. And yet, our kidnappers hide like cowards, [ is the curious, measured statement. ]

John Constantine. [ it's just his dashing english charm, yen. he might just keep calling you it now because it aggravates you.

assholes unite. he's a straight up bastard. ]

Ah, the Boarding House. Cozy, innit? [ his accent is probably like nothing else she's heard here in the town. there's not too many people from england here. most of them are various parts of america. although, he doubts anyone has given her the location lesson. ] Most of us have our own places we have holed up in. Few of us knacker down in the Boarding House though.

You're presuming the kidnapper is a human being.

[ whatever your understanding of charm may be, yennefer is a hard crowd to win over.

his accent isn't the first she's heard, though it was stronger than the woman she'd met. melanie, was it? and it was similar enough to most of the continent to not stand out as starkly as the twang of the other's.

and while no one explained to her the location lesson in any clear terms, the handful of people she's already met comprised of enough context for her to start guessing at it herself. the displacement extended far deeper that mere countries. ]

I'm presuming they're sentient enough to be the cause. [ she huffs, gaze unwavering as she tries to make more sense of him.

they don't necessarily need to be humans. it could be elves, though it didn't feel like their magic either. ] If you've more information on them, then by all means, enlighten me.

Possibly sentient. Could be a pissed off local deity for all we know. Or, someone with very powerful magic. Powerful enough that I doubt there's much humanity left in the bastard.

[ he grins at her gaze, body relaxing into a comfortable stance. this is familiar. being around another mage - someone else that understood what magic could do. it's been a while since he's met someone so powerful. even if he has a sense that mathias has done a number to her magic as it has his and zed's. ]

All we know for sure is something happened to this town that took out the local population. There's a bloke that seems to radiate and ooze malice. He was just across the chasm you'll find in the town. Threw me a good few feet with his own magic. Fairly sure he was apart of all this.

Magic of this power comes with a price of equal measure, [ she counters.

powerful enough to doubt there's any humanity left though? maybe, though it isn't a symptom she's seen. what fringilla cast came close, perhaps, but fanaticism wasn't a lack of humanity, per se. whatever the fuck that meant.

they were taught to control their emotions, chaos bottled, as tumultuous as lighting caught in a storm. tissaia said it was to give them clarity - and it did, to a point. but yennefer was now trying to gather the remnants of that bottle and piece it all back together. for her own good, the heat of fire still to near a memory across her hands.

mathias seems to have humbled her chaos though, but - she isn't yet aware how much. or if it would stop her as well as the powers that caused this intended. ] And let me guess - you didn't have a chance to talk.

[ obviously enough. she sighs. ] How many more here have any magical talent to speak of?

The more powerful the magic the higher the price. I was never a fan of big magic.

[ there's no disagreement in his tone at her counter. he merely sighs and sits on the edge of the desk in front of the bulletin board. his hands settle between his legs, hanging loosely as his head tilts to the side and continues to take her in.

she seems skilled in magic. disciplined. taught. it might roll off her like waves that could be dangerous, but, there is a current. a current that is directed. ]

I got the feeling he wasn't interested in talking. He seemed to be more the bloke to sit back and laugh as the madness ensued around him.

[ his eyebrows perk up slightly. ] Well, yourself and me for starts. Two other mages that come from a different reality. Three others you could consider their powers being magical... another one that has some sort of power but I've no idea what it is exactly.

[ she bites her tongue in whatever bubbling retort may spill out. yes, she knows all about the fucking price.

but it will do her little favour to let her emotions rule her, as unbridled as fire magic and standing here and now, she can understand why the chaos of it burns so many.

a part of her can't help but think this was the price, but that would be too easy.

for all his weighty appraisal, so very at ease in contrast to her stiff coolness, the information he's providing is more than she had, and that already is a step in the right direction. ] So, just as melodramatic as the rest of this town.

[ she frowns as he goes through the headcount. ] Hardly inspiring odds. [ no offense. ]

He might be the reason the town is so melodramatic. Or, at least, he was in on it.

[ john shakes his head at that and pinches the bridge of his nose slightly. ]

Suppose that means you expected a bit more or a bit less of our fellow mages?

Speculation that's useless if we can't talk to him.

[ she's not meaning to be purposely obstinate. but she's still running on thinned patience and brittle temperament. ]

I've no expectations. But four mages and four with vague magical talent against assumed deities isn't what I'd call favourable fucking odds. [ maybe, she's just a little too sore from the battle she was pulled from. twenty-two and a handful of pig farmers against an entire army. this felt like a parallel slap to the face. ]

Speculation is all we have until we can find our way over certain blockades. Maybe your magic might help us out a bit more than mine.

[ good thing her stubbornness doesn't much bother him. ]

Trust me, luv. These are the best odds we've got so far. [ he shrugs, not bothered much at all. ] I'm all ears if you've got some ideas.

Why - is yours a particular kind?

[ oh good, someone impervious enough to yen's ill tempers. ] I need to test this place's purported limits on my own magic, first. [ is said lowly. ] Then I need to test its limits.

This much chaos is bound to be depleted sooner or later. [ from what little she knows so far, she can only guess. and yet, she throws a contemplative look around. ] Or, if there's a source, it ought to have enough of a pull to be found. And smothered.

Bit of everything, but, ah, it's a fifty-fifty chance if it's going to go off right.

[ meaning that he hopes she has a bit of more luck when it comes to being effective. john's a jackass of all trades. he takes bits of all the magic he finds and makes it his own. conquers and bends it to his will. ]

Well, It can lock our souls to this town. Bring us back from the dead in new bodies -- or exact copies of our old ones. No sort of tampering can be found on our old corpses. No bits of hooks from other magic users dug inside it. Just to knock a few questions out for you.

Communication spells also get bounced back to you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

i !!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject