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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She raises her eyebrows, impressed.

"Wow. Well, we can try to see if we can...find a camera, maybe? What was it, anyway?"

She doesn't actually know enough about Henry to know something he might be interested in. Besides...it must not be something immediately useful, if a photo would do? So she can't guess.

"Yeah, I'll come along. I'm...gonna stay here for now, though. Don't worry. I can take care of myself. I know...I know Rey won't be back or anything. Maybe someone else will wanna stay sometime. Malcolm said I could come see you guys any time, so..."

Ugh why does this feel so awkward.

"It was a photograph of some people standing in front of a big house, labelled 'The Lodge'. There were a dozen of those, taken throughout time." It's actually not for himself, it's for Number Five, but Doc is the kind of man who doesn't do very much for himself. His only agenda is to get out of this place. It is safe to say that he is merely supporting someone else in anything else he happens to be investigating also.

"Our door is always open. We do have a couple of new housemates, but we are making space for them." So she should know that there will always be food and other supplies available, over at theirs.

"I would invite you over, but you seem happy here." And she probably wouldn't want to squeeze in with all of them. Not to mention the matter of not being able to get a proper night's sleep with Malcolm's sleeping troubles. Sometimes he thinks she can hear the commotion even from all the way over here.

"I just don't like the idea of you thinking that you are alone. I hope you know that you are not." He flashes her a tight-lipped smile and reaches over to rest his hand on her shoulder.

"What are you gonna do with a photo?"

Ellie doesn't sleep well anyway; she has nightmares, inescapable flashbacks of Joel's death and other traumatic things she's lived through. Sleeping and eating are secondary ideas to her consuming grief and rage. Her anger is chilled here, at least somewhat, because there's nowhere to direct it. The people she's angriest at are a universe away, and she's not really keen to take that anger out on anyone undeserving. So she holds it inside herself, which is maybe not the best thing to do either, but here she is.

"Wow, how many people you got living there now? You're gonna run out of bedrooms."

She shakes her head. "I know I'm not. I get that."

Sometimes she feels alone as someone from a world grounded in stark, horrible reality and not some weird magic shit. Henry, for all his immortality or what the fuck ever, doesn't seem as hard to understand as someone like Eliot or John, with their magic and whatever. Even Five, who she likes a lot, can do something that seems impossible with that teleportation thing. It's cool as hell but it's still impossible. Henry being 130 or whatever is also impossible, but it's easy to forget that, because he seems so normal.

"Hey, um...I had this crazy thought. The weather here is really fucking nuts, right? Not even a month and we've had the storms and the fog and the blizzard. Well...people lived in this town before we got here, obviously. But I'm guessing they didn't just hang out in their houses through blizzards. So...what if there's another way to get around that we haven't figured out yet? What if that's how we get to the lighthouse or the place I got the knife from or...or anywhere, really?"

"A fellow by the name of Number Five seems to think the photo is of importance. I would give it to him." Either it is no longer important then, or all the years the photos were taken would end up meaning something that Five can make sense of.

"We are five, at the moment, but we are making do with an extra mattress and the couch. They had stayed because of the snowstorm, but we would not ask them to leave if they have made themselves comfortable." Besides, Neal hasn't fully recovered and Negan... well Negan just kind of does whatever he wants and they are happy to have him around regardless.

Coming to a stop perching against the backrest of the couch, Doc slips into a more casual lean and listens to her theory. It made sense, right up to the end. What... other way?

"There are no animals. No vehicles. I can't imagine they were all blessed with Mister Five's gifts..." Doc drums his fingers against the back of the couch as he considers. He would have just hunkered down and stayed indoors until the bad weather passes them by. Back in the day, no shops or schools or services would have opened if they were hit by days or weeks of unforgiving weather. They did not have this concept of 'business as usual'. But that doesn't mean she's not right. It has been a string of unusual weather phenomena in a relatively short span of time and who is to say they didn't have a yearlong killer fog problem once?

"...of course. The cave!" he exclaims as he straightens up. As if she knows what he's talking about. "The last time we woke up somewhere we did not sleep in the night prior, I had awoken in a wet and dark cavern. We had followed the light thinking it would have led us out-" and also because of Doc's crippling claustrophobia meaning he would have never gone deeper into the darkness but that's neither here nor there and hopefully would never come up in conversation, "-but what if we had ventured further into the dark?"

She's somewhat relieved that he puts any stock in her theory. What is she even suggesting? Underground tunnels? She's not 100% sure herself, but she has a distinct idea that whoever these people were, they didn't just sit in their houses through all the crazy weather. It would make anyone go bonkers.

"You...woke up in a cave? Do you know where it is? We could check there. Or...I don't know, maybe there's a crawlspace under the house or something like that. I guess I hadn't thought to look."

The mention of a crawlspace draws a sphincter-tightening, butt-clenching, half-inhale-and-tensing-up reaction from Doc. There may well be a crawlspace under this or all the houses. He is not going down there.

"No, I'm afraid not." He had been with Jill Valentine, who is no longer with them and still not with them. She didn't come back like the others. Her name still makes him pause.

"Did you... want to look under this house?" His voice gradually crawls higher and more uncertain in pitch as he finishes that question. Clearly he is hoping for one response although it is not immediately obvious whether he is after a yes or no.

Something changes on Henry's face. Ellie's maybe not the best at reading everyone all the time, but she's not totally antisocial and unversed. Besides that, she knows what it's like to be traumatised, especially over things you can't voice to others. She had issues years before Joel's death, after all.

"Uh...we can put it off for a bit if you don't wanna," she says. "But you don't seem like you're afraid of anything. So...what's the deal? Don't wanna be underground?"

He'd said he'd been trapped in a well, so she can put two and two together. But it could be something else? Maybe?

"I'd- barely even fit," he tries to joke it off. Does he really seem like he's not afraid of anything? It must be years of honing that poker face.

"I uh..." he shifts his weight, restlessness settling in his posture. There are only few occasions where Doc adjusts his hat without intending to take it off - when he senses imminent danger and when he's uncomfortable. She has been very honest with him, but he would rather not bring up this topic of conversation.

"Used to spend a lot of time under the house. It's... where I-- I mean. I was there. When my mother died." He doesn't- he can't- go down there. Anymore.

She hasn't really seen him terribly uncomfortable and it surprises her. Well, everyone has something, don't they? This is his something, for whatever apparently fucked up reason.

"Shit, Henry," she says. Well, she gets that association. The whole dead parent thing, though obviously the circumstances are different and Joel wasn't actually her dad anyway and It's Complicated, like always.

"Look, I'd never ask anyone to do something that made them freaked out. So...maybe we should just ask anyone else if they've noticed anything that seems like tunnels? Maybe I'm just nuts anyway, right?" She forces half a smile. She feels nuts a lot of the time in this place, and her tunnel idea has nothing to do with that.

Yes this is his something and normally it isn't a big deal. How often does he find himself needing to venture into any small, dark space? Apparently it is often enough in Mathias that has made him unsettled already.

"I appreciate your kindness, but I do not wish to stop you from looking under the house if that is what you want. Is there anything I could do to help?" If she finds any rabbit holes, he really doesn't want to go with her, but he would. There is no one else here but the two of them. And he would not risk anyone else's life or sanity even if there was. The guilt would be crippling if anything were to happen.

"I can always look later. It's not like I'm doing anything else," she says. She can barely keep her own shit together; there's no way she can keep his, too, if they do something that will freak him out. She cares about Henry, too, and wouldn't want to push him.

"I guess as a compromise, we can see if there's any sign that there is something like that around? Don't have to go in, just...if we find an entrance or whatever."

"If you're right then there should be a trapdoor or some kind of round cover inside the house itself. It would be of little use outside the house. The unstable weather comes frequently enough that I would not think they would carpet over it or cover it up with a display cabinet."

Yes, he is much more amenable to this idea of looking for some bumps on the floor where there should be hinges, maybe handles or latches, or some kind of unevenness for a sliding door kind of mechanism.

"Let's take a look around?" It would be quicker for them to split up but, just in case it ends up being a dangerous endeavour or needs anything heavy to be moved, it would be easier for them to stick together.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

024-027 » neither reward nor punishment

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lolol @ her pressed x to doubt face

lmao that description killed me

it's super effective

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