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

"...You eat poached apples. Well. The rest of you do; I don't think I can handle them. But they smelled good."

He hadn't met Daisy to comment on whether she was, in fact, a 'nice lady', but Neal's judgement seemed... reasonable.

He huffed a little laugh at the question. "It would have been about fifteen feet to the sidewalk, but the other restraint held so I just kind of... hung there until I woke up enough to pull myself back in. My apartment's on the second floor at home, too."

He moved to sit down beside Raylan, turning to the side, pulling his knee up so he could still mostly face him.

"I'm sure there's some poached apples left in the kitchen if you want to try them. I bet they're good with coffee."

"Without makin' 'em into something else? Anything else?" Sounded weird to him. But they did smell good.

Raylan's eyebrows stayed up at their surprised angles. "Oh only fifteen feet, okay." It wasn't okay. "Hellva a way to wake up. Most people couldn't have done that. Suggests some impressive upper body strength." Was that why Malcolm's shoulders looked the way they did?

His eyes followed Malcolm over to as he sat down, smirking a little. "But you just sat down," he protested with a teasing tone. A beat later and he was nodding. "I won't say no to tryin' one but I don't promise anything else. Never much cared for apples, except for Mags Apple Pie moonshine."

"I do a lot of yoga," Malcolm told him. "And pull-ups."

He did have some upper body strength, yeah. But it was part of his mental health coping ritual. The strength was a bonus.

But you just sat down. He grinned. "We are going to get you some vices that don't destroy your internal organs," Malcolm declared, pressing the pad of a finger gently to Raylan's shoulder. "In time."

"Hey, it's not my choice that moonshine is our only option. I'd love to drink somethin' that doesn't taste like gasoline and clean me out." He wasn't going to go into detail with that but he wasn't drinking unaffected. Oatmeal was going to become a regular breakfast.

"My Aunt Helen and I used to tease each other about bad habits. I'd get on her for smokin'. She'd tell me I didn't have enough bad habits. Drinkin' is cultural at this point. Though I suppose it always has been. Beer History bein' what it is." He glanced at where he was poked. "Watch out, all that yoga, gonna do serious damage with that finger. Break a bone or somethin', geez."

"We've established boundaries," Malcolm retorted with a smirk. "If I use upper body strength on you, it's not going to be in public."

"What's that suggest for when we're not in public," he shot back sassily with a faint lift of one eyebrow. "Should we establish a safe word?"

Was this really how he was dipping his toes into the subject? He was stunned, even at himself, but there was an ease to joking about it. An easy way in that didn't twist and gut him as he fell into it.

Malcolm gave him an almost shy smile.

"We don't have to be that formal. If I frighten you... just tell me and I'll back off."

Maybe he wasn't talking about sex anymore. He could see where Raylan was twisting.

And just like that, there was no more easy joking about it. They'd been swerved back onto a blunter honesty. Raylan's smile curled at the edges and he nodded.

He wasn't going to say that Malcolm frightened him. Practically speaking, he didn't. They weren't talking 'practically' and Raylan found it hard to turn around to face the suggestion being made because there was a very loud ring of truth to it.

"Not much scares me, generally speaking." But the way he spoke left room for the exception that was Malcolm. "Not knowin' what I'm doin' does make the list every now and then."

“If you didn’t know what you were doing... it sure didn’t feel that way,” Malcolm admitted, ducking his head a little. He dared to glance up at Raylan’s face. “Made me a little dizzy.”

"If you would have fallen, I would have caught you." He knew Malcolm wanted more than that. Malcolm wanted how he felt when he kissed him, what was in his head. It was still a mess.

A million things sat on the tip of his tongue as he looked at Malcolm and none of them could fall without him twisting some more.

"Let's go see about those apples." He patted Malcolm's leg and stood, taking the opportunity as they walked towards the kitchen to reset a little. "Glad to hear that Ellie is bein' kept fed. Seems to be a pastime of people here. I wonder what about her triggers that."

Malcolm actually found If you would have fallen, I would have caught you extremely romantic and he didn't know what to say, though the goofy look on his face may have given it away. He was almost relieved when Raylan changed the subject.

"She looks like a little girl who's lost," he said by way of an answer to what was possibly a rhetorical question. "She has severe PTSD. But that's probably normal when you survive the apocalypse."

It was a good look on him, much like many others. There was a small amount of pride that was bolstered by it. He'd caused that. Even if he hadn't exactly meant to. It was better than the tension.

"I haven't asked her about what she's suffered, but I asked about her world. 2039," he scoffed with a shake of his head as they hit the kitchen, the whole house still smelling of warm apple. "Apparently, the world ended in 2013 and no one invited us. Rude, innit?"

Edited 2021-01-25 03:20 (UTC)

"In 2013. That's definitely a different world," Malcolm remarked. "From talking to her at the boarding house, I know there's no official authorities of any kind. Just... lawlessness and vigilantism. She's seen people killed."

Malcolm took down a plate for Raylan to put his serving of apple on.

"A lot of people here have been through some things," he noted.

"Made her nervous. Then again, maybe that's just how we all are here.. Nervous under the skin, amped up by stress." He took a deep breath as he fished one of the apples out onto the plate and got a fork out of the drawers to cut into it.

"They have. Some more than others. Not much use I've found in the comparing of it all. Suffering is suffering. It all leaves its scars."

"But maybe that's the elusive connection between all of us," Malcolm told him. "Everyone here is traumatized. Everyone here is covered in scars."

"That fits in with the idea that this place is pumping us for fear or stress. I'd say, so far that I'm the least.." He struggled to find the correct word and fell back on the one that Malcolm had chosen. "Traumatized and this place seems like it's workin' to get us all on the same level."

Malcolm couldn’t help the way he looked at Raylan like he must have known that wasn’t true, but he quickly schooled his expression into something more neutral.

“...You think so?”

Raylan perhaps repressed it better than anyone, but his level of trauma was visible to Trauma. Something in his childhood. A cruelty from his father, based on the way he distanced himself by using his name, would be Malcolm’s guess. ‘Dad’ was an honorific. Malcolm didn’t address his father that way either.

“Farming fear or anxiety. Interesting.”

Good save, Bright.

Very good save; by obliviousness or sheer misunderstanding, Raylan fully took the save as purposeful thought.

Raylan knew his formative years had been, objectively, total and complete hillbilly bullshit, as violent and ugly as the backwoods country got but some of the people here had suffered much more as adults, a much rougher go of dealing with it all, in his opinion. He was traumatised sure, but not like some of the people here.

Not like Malcolm.

"What other purpose would this place have for that kind of.. terrorizing. Bringin' people back from the dead.." That was supposed to be the ultimate escape. "It's the whole... theme of the place."

“No, that’s an excellent theory,” Malcolm told him, getting into the idea. “God, you’re smart,” he breathed. “Because if there’s a supernatural element - and I think we have to acknowledge that there has to be at this point - then why not beings who subsist on emotional energies?”

Did Malcolm just gush? Raylan's eyebrows twitched, lips taking on a slant of a smile at the compliment.

"They say that emotion is the most powerful thing in the world, but I swear to god the first person that suggests a hug pile or an orgy is gettin' the bird." The statement was meant to be a joke but..

No, he meant it. He was not here for The Power Of Friendship, thanks.

“As long as you’re not rescinding the closed door scenario, that’s fine with me,” Malcolm laughed. “But, really, it makes sense. It’s the missing piece. It’s the why.”

"No," he assured with a curled look of amused fondness that edged on the line of flirtatious. "The closed door policy stays in place." He took a deep breath, eyes dancing around the kitchen before landing somewhere safe, on the apple on his plate that he hadn't actually cut into yet.

"It's only the why unless someone comes up with something better. Or pokes a big hole it in all," he huffs.

"Poking holes in each other's theories is the way we'll figure out which theory doesn't have any holes in it," Malcolm said cheerfully. Only part of his cheer had to do with poking the mystery, though he did love that Raylan had brained out a missing piece.

He put more hot water on his herbal tea.

"Try the apple; I want to know if it's as good as it smells."

"I welcome it," he assured. Poking holes was a good thing, it led to better results. Something more on the mark, closer to what they needed it to be. It didn't hurt that Malcolm approved of his brainpower.

With a nod, Raylan cut into the apple and got a piece onto his fork, eyeing it briefly before popping it in his mouth. His brow pinched a little as he chewed and swallowed and he bobbed his head in indecision. "It's not bad. Textures a little new but it's like.. unsweetened applesauce once you starting eatin' it. Not bad," he reiterated with a nod. "He's luck to have found apples - we could all use a little more fruit, probably."

Malcolm smiled.

"Neal likes cooking. I think it calms his nerves."

He leaned on the counter, folding his arms in front of him.

"Maybe we should track these... times that we get displaced. Who and where and how long. Maybe in time, a pattern will emerge."

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