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

[thering]

That Malcolm was bullied comes as no surprise. While the dynamics and intricacies of the modern school system are lost on Doc, he understands ostracism and stigma. Malcolm would have been a prime target of the special kind of cruelty that children have not yet learned to temper down.

"If you have it, you have it." Doc shrugs. What can be done, in such a situation? It is not a consolation, it is a fact.

"It wouldn't matter in the end how you got it, if you do end up a certain way. After finding a place to stow away the blame you still need to face the next day carrying it with you." All the yelling in the world until voices are hoarse and broken, bridges charred to black and feelings irreparably destroyed, does not make anyone no longer angry or lost or bitter.

"I am not sure what can be done for such an ailment, but if those around you cannot handle the mere possibility that you may shoulder a burden they are blessed not to have to, if you have to hide pieces of yourself to be accepted then they were never worth your time or efforts to begin with. It was better to bid them farewell and find the precious few others who are willing to stick the hard times through with you."

[abrightboy]

“I don’t have any desire to kill anyone,” Malcolm said. A fact he’d spent most of his life confirming. “My mental health issues are all related to post traumatic stress. The anxiety, the depression, the insomnia, the night terrors, the hallucinations... it’s all the fallout of prolonged or serious acute duress on the human limbic system. My own fight or flight response throwing my whole body chemically out of whack. But I suppose people who don’t know any better might confuse a trauma response with a psychopathic urge.”

He looked at Doc.

“I don’t know that anyone has ever stuck so close and so steadfastly through the hard times as you and Raylan have. You didn’t even know me when you took it on.”

[thering]

Well. Doc has the occasional compulsion to kill someone - and really, actually put a bullet between their eyes, not just saying it out of a moment of anger - but he wouldn't consider that psychopathy. Malcolm... kind of lost him on the other technical explanations. Nevermind that he has been through some shit himself and exhibits some similar symptoms, uses unhealthy coping mechanisms and self-medicates through his mess.

"Is that what people do in New York? They look at you and give you a wide berth?" It's little wonder that the king has ended up acquiring two cowboy knights to place by his side.

[abrightboy]

"Not usually on a glance. But if I were like I am now? Off my meds... if I were having a bad day... I'm sure they'd back away as quickly as they do any other lunatic on the streets of New York," he said. "They wouldn't be offering me a place to stay, that's for sure. You and Raylan are special people, Doc. You need to know that. You're... kinder than average."

[thering]

Any... other lunatic? Exactly how many lunatics are walking around the streets of New York?

"No I'm- fairly certain I am at or below average. But perhaps my idea of average is a little skewed. Times have changed, after all. Or so I have been told on numerous occasions." It has not been easy to adapt to everything. But, at least he has patient company who is willing to put up with his old-fashioned ways.

"Well. It looks like our museum is still here. Along with all our handiwork." He's happy that not all the notes have blown away and the extra boards to reinforce the building are still in place. Hopefully they're not cooking up some insatiable beast in there.

"Suppose we shall have to do this again tomorrow. See if we can find the two new houses then."

[abrightboy]

Doc was not 'at or below average' in kindness. Definitely not. Not even just in this town. But Malcolm would push it. He looked over at the museum when Doc mentioned it, nodding at his suggestion.

"I can see how maybe the mansion is hidden away in the woods where we can't go, but... just a regular house? Maybe it's on one of the new streets," he suggested. "We'd just... have to look inside them all to see if you recognize one."

[thering]

"It felt much bigger on the inside than the houses we have been in so far," Doc explains. "Two storeys, with over a dozen mirrors." What kind of house has over a dozen mirrors? It was not so small that you needed all those mirrors to make the space seem bigger.

"I am not certain we would find it nested away in plain sight, but it is worth a try," he agrees. It would give them something to do for a little while longer, at least. Time away from the house. Maybe make some new (harmless) discoveries, if they're lucky.

[abrightboy]

"It's weird that you and Raylan ended up in places that, to our knowledge, aren't even in town and me, Negan and Neal were stuck in places that are well known in town," Malcolm mused.

[thering]

"Yeah that would describe our luck in life, just about," Doc comments, trying to lighten the events of the previous days. "I know it- should be strange. And it is unsettling. But 'ending up in places' has oft happened in my life." He used to be a drifter and in the recent few years he has been forcibly drifted, forced to adapt to the environment around him, forced to learn new things just to survive. In either case, he is not as perturbed as he should be. But it makes him reluctant to put down any roots and lay claim to anything.

"I'm a... spectator of the twentieth century. Or the twenty-first, now. Even in the house we share - through no fault of yours or Raylan's - I am a guest, borrowing a couch, eating out of a refrigerator I know not how it functions, wearing someone else's clothes." He doesn't talk about how he feels psychologically disconnected from everything from Wyatt's great great granddaughter, her family curse, their baby, to the way he hasn't unpacked his bag even after almost two weeks of sleeping in 1306. For all the reassurances he gives Malcolm about where he has a place to belong, Doc doesn't have one for himself. He's perpetually waiting to be displaced long before he is issued an eviction notice.

[abrightboy]

“We’re all in that boat,” Malcolm pointed out, not realizing how deep Doc’s sense of impermanence ran. “I can barely find borrowed clothes that fit,” he added with a self-conscious laugh. “But... we’ve managed to build a home here,” he said. “Until we figure this place out.”

[thering]

"It's just a house," Doc clarifies, unconsciously disassociating and emotionally distancing himself from the refuge they have set up for themselves and for others. Building these walls is how he protects himself.

"Once we find a way out of Mathias we will end up in another place yet again." Doc smiles and shrugs. That is the way of his world. He has accepted this.

"Hopefully it's... where we came from."

[abrightboy]

“...Oh. Well. No, I mean. Obviously it’s just a house,” he allowed. “I just. ....I thought it meant.... something. Too.”

[thering]

Doc pauses and tips his head to one side, raising an eyebrow. "It... meant...? I'm not sure I follow."

[abrightboy]

"You could live anywhere in town. You could live somewhere different every night. I thought living with us was... important to you. I thought that was why you stayed," Malcolm said.

[thering]

He hasn't asked himself why he stayed, if he's honest. As Malcolm said, he could have gone elsewhere. He has rationalised it as Raylan needing the help, not minding the company. He has turned Malcolm into a project in his mind. He has done everything except allow himself to ask what he wants, not because he is not a selfish man, but because he can't be thrown out of somewhere he doesn't let himself belong to in the first place. He will always have the choice to walk away if he never settles down, even if he wants to stay.

"It is." He doesn't feel the need to say anything more than that, having let Malcolm scale enough of his walls already. He will get defensive if Malcolm breaches any further into his guarded fortress.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm could sense a hint of barbed wire beyond this point. He nodded, glancing at Doc sidelong.

Really that was what he wanted to know. If Doc stayed because they mattered to him the way that he mattered to them.

"The lighthouse couldn't be reached before. Until the fog moved. Maybe those two houses will pop up before long."

[thering]

It's as close to any sentimental word Malcolm would ever get out of Doc if he squeezed him hard enough to force confessions out of him.

"I agree. Did you want to head back, get somewhere warm?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm wasn’t cold, but he felt like Doc was ready to head back, whether due to the weather or due to Malcolm’s incessant inquisitiveness.

“Yeah. That sounds good. I can make coffee when we get back. Or cocoa. Warm up your core?”

[thering]

"Okay." Doc talks more when he's holding a cup of cocoa, even before anyone dumps any alcohol into it. It might be a good way to loosen him up enough to dislodge a few more words out of him until he's reached his quota.

"No one else really drinks it in the house anyway." Much as they have taken their self-replenishing shelves for granted, he wouldn't deprive another man of his much-needed coffee.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm smiled a little.

“Just now and then. And I intend to offer it to Ellie if she ever accepts my invitation to come by.”

[thering]

"You might need to bring it to her." Doc visits her fairly often. He tries not to get too caught up in only what is happening in their house. He wishes so desperately to be able to do more for her than she would let him do, but that she allows him to Hover Anxiously is enough for him to never stray too far from orbit.

"If I could give her the world, or some other world where we get what we deserve, I would. Wouldn't even think twice."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looked over at him.

“Maybe when we escape, she just... comes with one of us. Who says we have to go to where we came from?” Malcolm proposed.

Perhaps he’d send the cocoa with Doc next time he went. He didn’t want to intrude if he wasn’t welcome. That was why he had put the ball in her court, assuring her she was most welcome any time.

[thering]

"I think she has some unfinished business to attend to. But... I would like for her to come along, if she can be convinced to. Perhaps with you?" Between Raylan, himself and Malcolm, she would probably be the safest with Malcolm.

"Raylan probably gets shot at a lot and I'm-... Purgatory is not a safe place."

[abrightboy]

"I wouldn't mind helping her out. Helping her get settled somewhere... more peaceful. I have the means."

He looked at Doc. "It'd be nice if we could keep in touch. I could... let you know how she's doing and all that."

[thering]

"Unless you can retrieve my phone number out of that flat telephone, I do not know it. I am the owner and proprietor of a bar by the name of Shorty's, in Purgatory. You may write me there or come visit, should you wish to." He does not expect it, but it would be nice. He might make his way down to Kentucky too, once the Earp curse is lifted and his assistance is no longer required. He is not foolish or hopeful enough to believe she actually loves him back enough to ask him to stay. Or perhaps it will be Florida by then, if Raylan has moved on to his beach paradise with beautiful women. That would be nice after these years spent up north, and in Mathias.

"I want to know how you are doing too. I should like to see you the way you want me to see you." Medicated, hopefully not sedated, and cool as ice.