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

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Use this space to ask general questions about this log and the circumstances or locations presented within. Please direct more broad game questions to the FAQ. Players may also use this space to ping a mod to a thread to give feedback on the spooky happenings therein.

Edited 2021-01-03 20:00 (UTC)

Use this space to claim a residential house for layout designing or exploration. Players are welcome to "claim" a house and then add/edit comments to provide details later. Because there are just too many numbers to list, simply specify a street and the general state of the house you'd like to claim/explore and the mod will provide your house number.

If you need to update your housing location, that should be done over here!

Use this space to ping the mod if you'd like to use one of your AP rewards (Idea, Spot Hidden, or Spooky Encounter). Submit your request using this form:

Requested reward: Idea, Spot Hidden, or Spooky Encounter
Characters involved: Please list all characters who will be involved if claiming a Spot Hidden or Spooky Encounter. You can also add characters by mentioning them in a later comment.
Link to thread: If available/applicable. May also be added in later comment.
Additional details: Location where this is happening, the circumstances of the character being there/searching, their current mental and emotional state, what they are searching for.

Requested reward: Characters involved: Link to thread: Additional details:

Edited 2021-01-03 03:22 (UTC)

TRAPPED HERE —
Ellie, Malcolm Bright, Melanie King, Negan, Yennefer, and Zed Martin

LOCATION DESCRIPTION —
There are three stories to the large brick building: the first floor contains the kitchen (fully stocked), dining room, shared living room space, and a half bath; the second floor has four single bedrooms and one full bath; the third floor also has four single bedrooms and one full bath. There is a locked door on the third floor that leads to an attic. Each room is furnished with a double bed, desk, and small table and chairs, and in each room, there can be found the clothing and personal effects both former boarders and current residents. There is a main phone in the front entry of the boarding house, and each room has its own phone and individual line and number, though no lines will be working during the storm.

DAY 024-025 —
Throughout their time trapped within the boarding house, residents will hear intermittent scratching from the ceiling of the upper level and a rattling from beneath the floor of the lower. The sound will stop when they begin to pay too much attention to it.

As they reach the evening of each day, the power flickers and then goes out from the storm, leaving the house in darkness. Flames they light may extinguish for no discernible reason, and curtains and doors may close when their backs are turned, even they had been previously opened. The power returns in the morning and everything is again as normal. As normal as things get in Mathias...

PLAYERS SHOULD RESPOND TO THIS TOP-LEVEL FOR THEIR DAY 024-025 THREADS.

Edited 2021-01-03 23:56 (UTC)

TRAPPED HERE —
Daisy Johnson, Elena Gilbert, Elijah Mikaelson, Eliot Spencer, Neal Caffrey, Sherlock Holmes

LOCATION DESCRIPTION —
The Grey Gull is what one might expect of the most frequented restaurant in a small coastal town. Perched on the beach at the end of Phillips Drive, the wrap-around porch is lined with white chairs characterized by peeling paint. Exposed wooden walls and worn seating speak to its many years of existence, and the mishmash of décor confirms that the owner never much cared for how the place looked. What mattered here was the food, and faded chalk menus advertise soup specials and a daily pie. The bar appears to have once been well-stocked, but all the bottles remaining are unfortunately empty. There is, however, quite a bit of food in the kitchen that is somehow as fresh as if it were purchased that day. There is a large fireplace in the dining area with a pile of wood neatly stacked nearby, and a small office at the back of the building beside the kitchen. (The documents out that related to the Mathias Fishing Company and the documents about delivering food to the Town Hall have been removed.)

The second floor of the restaurant is a sparsely furnished apartment. There are no personal items to be found; perhaps it was waiting to be rented out to someone. There are loose boards in one spot of the floor that were previously pulled by to reveal the small spaces below the wood. There is also a small fireplace in the apartment.

DAY 024-025 —
The residents trapped in the Gull will have a brutal awakening as the wind howls around the building and seems to emit a high-pitched shriek that is painful to hear, especially so for those with enhanced hearing of any kind. It cuts through their minds like knives and settles into their veins like ice, dying down after a few minutes but returning again before long. Unfamiliar voices can be heard from the corners of rooms or standing right beside the residents, but nothing is there and only the individual can hear them. The building shakes, perhaps from the force of the wind or perhaps from within, a rumbling that they can feel in their bones and which lasts for minutes on end before settling again.

These disturbances happen just frequently enough to keep these unfortunate trapped souls unsettled, uncomfortable, and awake. By the middle of Day 25, they will begin to feel the effects of sleep deprivation, far more forcefully than they should with the hours they been awake, and it will become clear to them all that this is being done to them for a purpose.

Late on the night of Day 25, the sounds and shaking will cease and they will sleep.

PLAYERS SHOULD RESPOND TO THIS TOP-LEVEL FOR THEIR DAY 024-025 THREADS.

Edited 2021-01-03 23:52 (UTC)

TRAPPED HERE —
Castiel, Dean Winchester, Doc Holliday, Helen Magnus, John Carter, Phil Coulson, Quentin Coldwater

LOCATION DESCRIPTION —
This house is different than any of the others the residents have entered. It looks... new. Fresh. Clean. The usual thick layers of dust and grime that would be caked onto every visible surface are nowhere in sight; this absence may be a relief for some and unsettling to others. Change in Mathias has never been a good thing.

The bedrooms on the UPPER LEVEL are all made up in shades of blue, each with crisp linens on the beds and the plushest pillows. There are no personal effects anywhere to be found. It almost feels like a model home with how sterile it feels, like the house is just waiting for life to be breathed into it by its new occupants. There is an oval mirror on the wall of every bedroom.

On the LOWER LEVEL, residents will find a large entry hall, off of which are an open dining room and kitchen, a cozy living room, and a slightly more formal sitting room with a piano. In the entry hall, there is a large oval mirror with “This we offer in humility and fear” written around the top curve of the glass, surrounded by a display of twelve photographs of a large group of people standing near a large building in a clearing in the woods. The photographs seem to span more than a century, judging by age and clothing, and a few faces can be traced through the photographs over time.

DAY 024 —
All mirrors in the house are covered with white sheets. If these coverings are removed, residents will see shadowy figures behind them in the room; no sign of these figures can be seen outside the glass, and the covers will be replaced when the person leaves the room. The shadows will not respond to any attempts at communication, and when seen in the mirror seem to be standing completely still and facing away from the viewer. They appear in a different position in the room each time they are seen.

DAY 025 —
All coverings from the mirrors have been removed and left on the floor; attempts at replacing them will cause the shadowy figures to move closer in the glass, with the coverings being removed again when the person looks again. The shadows continue to not respond to any attempts at communication, and when seen in the mirror now appear to be facing the viewer.

As they reach the evening of this day, the power flickers and then goes out from the storm, leaving the house in darkness. Flames they light may extinguish for no discernible reason, and curtains and doors may close when their backs are turned, even they had been previously opened. A scratching can be heard from the ceiling on the upper level, and a rattling from beneath the floor on the lower. And out of the corner of their eye, they begin to see impressions of those shadow figures outside of the mirrors, moving ever closer whenever there is light in the room.

PLAYERS SHOULD RESPOND TO THIS TOP-LEVEL FOR THEIR DAY 024-025 THREADS.

Edited 2021-01-03 22:53 (UTC)

TRAPPED HERE —
Claire Novak, Eliot Waugh, John Constantine, Klaus Hargreeves, Max Guevara, Number Five, Raylan Givens, Will Graham

LOCATION DESCRIPTION —
The residents who awake in this location will be greeted by a sense of opulence that has not yet been seen in this spooky little town. Whoever resided in this space must have been of great importance... or perhaps merely of great wealth. As nice as their new surroundings might be, however, residents will be frustrated to find that they only have access to a limited number of rooms on two levels of the building and that locked doors cannot be unlocked, regardless of whatever lockpicking methods they attempt to use. There is no way of telling just how large the assumed mansion might be, nor of where in Mathias it might be situated, for all windows show nothing more than a world of white thanks to the blizzard raging outside.

On the UPPER LEVEL just off the elegant staircase from the central hallway, there are identical sets of double doors on either end of the upper hall, tall and black with engravings of snakes surrounding the long handles. These doors are unlocked and lead to long corridors lined on either side with black-framed white doors, all seemingly identical and all unlocked.

The rooms behind these doors are also identical: large elegant beds with crisp white sheets and plump pillows, tall windows showing the white world beyond, and tasteful paintings of the grey sea and coastline. They are also clean, no trace of dust or signs of age like in so much of the city. In each room, there is a long chest of drawers against one wall with a mirror attached to the back, the wood dark and pristine. Another mirror is mounted to the opposite wall, an oval shape, and a smaller third mirror rests on a bedside table. The chest of drawers is mostly empty, though the bottommost drawer is filled with crisply folded white bed linens. The mirrors are fixed in place, save for the one on the bedside table.

At the end of each upper level hall are another set of identical black doors with snake engravings, locked. There are no personal items to be found on this level.

On the LOWER LEVEL, residents will also find a complete lack of dust and grime. Everything here is shiny and cleaned to perfection in order to show off the wealth oozing from every corner. Off the main hallway, they will find a brightly lit kitchen, a "small" dining room, and two sitting rooms — one is large with plenty of seating and more landscape paintings like in the bedrooms, and the other is more cozy with a small study off of it. The smaller sitting room also a very interesting wall display: twelve large skeleton keys surround four old maps, each hand-drawn on aged yellow paper and depicting "Mathias Township", though none of the layouts seem to match what residents already know of the town.

Those residents who have been irked by certain amenities lacking in Mathias will be very pleased to discover that an assortment of alcohol can be found stored in the kitchen (small collection of sealed bottles, clearly intended to be used soon) and in the sitting rooms (on bar carts). They will also find actual knives in the kitchen, all sharp and ready to be used.

DAYS 024-025 —
The more times a resident looks at the mirrors in the bedrooms, the more likely they are to catch the glimpse of something moving at the edge of each one. A flicker of light, perhaps, and nothing that can be discerned in great detail, but instinct will tell them it's something. As evening falls and the shadows in the rooms darken, the feeling of something there increases, until residents are certain there must be something standing there beside them, unseen and unheard...

Throughout their time trapped within the mansion, residents will hear intermittent scratching from the ceiling of the upper level and a rattling from beneath the floor of the lower. The sound will stop when they begin to pay too much attention to it.

PLAYERS SHOULD RESPOND TO THIS TOP-LEVEL FOR THEIR DAY 024-025 THREADS.

Edited 2021-01-03 23:29 (UTC)

[ This will be the last time this format for Town Hall is here! We'll be changing things to an actual open Town Hall format within a few logs.

OOC: If you'd like to just note what your character knows as a list OOCly, please respond to that! Otherwise, please also take the time to note on that even if there are IC threads what your character reports. This is the Ledger that John is putting together for everyone to be able to access when Town Hall is "in session."

Yes, he will have a separate spooky version for notes he is taking down for a bit more daring things.

Otherwise use the prompts as you would a regular thing for Day 26 and Day 27! ]

Edited 2021-01-17 01:32 (UTC)

( plotting: x. ;

berezka )

Day 26 - Closed to Raylan Givens

Malcolm, despite his troubled relationship with sleep, had been up for two days straight and Raylan’s insistence that he take a nap before they headed out for needed supplies and to check on the town was easily succumbed to, and not only because it came from the Marshal.

After breakfast and his brief conversation ensuring Neal would stick around, he headed up to his bed, securing one wrist with the bungees before attempting to jury-rig the broken restraint around his scratched opposite wrist to no success.

Day 27 - Closed to Doc Holliday

Malcolm was startled by the Shadow Man again that morning, dropping the glass he was holding, shattering it as he realized what was going on in the next morning.

“You’re starting to wear out your welcome,” he told the phantom in his head flatly, then bent to pick it up, startling as it advanced on him suddenly, but then it disappeared. Then he realized he cut his hand on the piece of glass he was holding. He sighed at himself, using a paper towel to staunch the blood while he finished cleaning up. He looked around for Doc but didn’t immediately find him. No matter; he only needed the first aid kit. He headed up to Doc’s room to look for it. In his search, he opened a drawer that had a single sheet of paper in it. He picked it up.

“...What’s this?”

Day 27 - afternoon - OTA

Find him around town investigating whether anything changed or find him at 1306.

For Ellie
After the flurry of activity back in the house they had returned to had died down, Doc had made up a list of things to do now that the weather permitted it. It wasn't a long list but it was enough to keep him occupied for more or less the whole day. They had to resupply in case this lull in the weather is only temporary. They were running dangerously low on first aid kits. Something more permanent needs to be done about the additional guests - more beds at the very least. Later in the day he was keen to find those new houses they had awoken in. But first - check in on the neighbours.

Ellie was one he was the most concerned about. He wasn't sure if she had decided whether she was going to be staying in 1304 or leaving. Had someone decided to move in with her?

Doc shows up with some pancakes - Raylan had made far too many that morning and he doesn't much feel comfortable showing up empty-handed - and knocks a few times at her door, announcing "Miss Ellie, it's Doc." After suffering through a day of unsettling noises in accessible places, he doubts she would appreciate some wordless knocking.

For Five
Doc had heard that Malcolm had gone to town a bit in the Boarding House. He wasn't sure about the extent of the damage the young man had done, but he can at least trust Negan not to understate things when he had asked. Still, he had reason to want to visit Number Five so when he had heard that Malcolm might have smashed a few things in the kitchen, Doc retrieved a couple of sets of items from 1307, the unused moonshine house. At the same time he could check in on how their current batch was coming along, unsupervised for two days.

They have had to use many of the extra items they could take from 1307 because of their own additional guests, but Doc figures the least they could do is to spare a pair of matching dinner plates, side plates, mugs and bowls for Klaus and Five. Tying them together with a strip of cloth, Doc heads to the Boarding House early in the afternoon.

He doesn't take his time dallying around the kitchen to survey the damage, heading straight to the Hargreeves's room and knocking with the tip of his shoe. When Five opens the door he'll be immediately presented with the peace offering.

"I heard there was-... an incident, and that the two of you might be needing these."

Kidnapping aside, the day prior was the longest time that Raylan had stayed indoors and frankly, whatever reprieve he'd needed to recover was over. Their little group was fed, well rested, mostly sane and both the house and the brewery were in decent order. Now Raylan had to turn his eyes back to the Township, tight-lipped town that she was, and see what they couldn't make of what they'd learned.

Closed to Doc

The Town Hall was the best place to look for anything, not that it had much anything of use, even with the slowly collecting knowledge that Constantine was compiling. Raylan was glad John wasn't there when they showed up - the last thing he wanted was to hear a fight today - and he hadn't arrived by the time they left empty handed. Well, not completely empty handed, they'd learned the barest scrap about the whole fire gig, but nothing actionable.

Displeased with all the roadblocks they seemed to hit, Raylan was glad for the suggestion about going out to the willow trees; it gave him something to do that wasn't go back home and drink some more. His gut was glad for it too.

"So where'd you learn about this kinda stuff anyway? Harvestin' off the land as you travel. Was it general knowledge? If so, the general population has gotten significantly stupider, even if more of us can read."

Closed to Malcolm and Will

After he and Doc got back home, Raylan hunted down Malcolm, though he tried to not apply a 'hunting' term to someone like the New Yorker, and brought up the subject of Will Graham again. Malcolm had expressed an interest that Raylan knew was both professional and intellectual, and there wasn't a lot of intellectual stimulation to go around on Malcolm's level. Raylan and Doc weren't slouches, but they weren't exactly sharp minded enough to profile in the way Malcolm and Will were. It might benefit both of them, not to mention get him a beat on what Will was like when he wasn't walking on the edge of.. Whatever that was.

"I don't know which one he's in," Raylan said as they walked up Phillips Drive, white hat back in its place on his head over the popped wool collar of his jacket. "But I figure it'll be process of elimination. Only a few glances into the windows, see if the dusts moved, if the house is even inhabitable in the first place. I'd like to come up on him easy if we can. This ain't an ambush." It was a social call. A social check up call.

Raylan had no idea how it would go, but Will could only be so many places and they had the hours to kill to check 'em all out.

Evening Wildcard

Despite the cold, Raylan found himself on the porch again at dusk to watch the sun go down, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand and not a drop of moonshine to be found in it. It wasn't where he would wish to be, if he could be anywhere, but the sunset itself was nice, and worth taking in. Maybe just as a reminder that beautiful things still existed, even here.

Threaded | Flat

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