028-029 » the winds of change

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias.
WHEN: Days 028-029
WHAT: A town meeting is called.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Ikiryo"

DAY 028
SOMETHING ON THE WIND
Another day dawns in the fair town of Mathias. The sky is a blanket of light grey, tiny specks of snow lightly falling as the hours pass. It makes the town feel almost quaint, the scenery quite peaceful in its winter garb. But beneath the veneer of peace there is a pervasive dread of something approaching. Something inevitable is on the wind, something that has come before and will come again...

Throughout the day, residents will consistently experience feelings of deja vu, that sense of having done or seen or said something before that can never be fully recalled. It happens again and again, tugging at the back of their minds, the memories just frustratingly out of reach.

Residents will also notice a note pinned around town:




The note can be found on the town hall's bulletin board and the front doors of many town establishments, including the Grey Gull, the library, and the boarding house. At the bottom of the note it is specified that the meeting will take place "tomorrow, when the sun is over the town square."


NEW ARRIVALs
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake on the frozen lawn of the town hall atop a snowdrift. They had best hurry inside and get warmed up before hypothermia sets in.

DAY 029
A GATHERING OF MINDS
In the late afternoon when the sun hangs over the town square, residents will converge upon the Town Hall, where a larger meeting room has been filled with rows of chairs. After most people arrive, John Constantine stands and addresses the room... and then sits again. A grand introduction, truly.

Residents are encouraged to share their experiences and information they have gathered in the town while holding questions until the end. Rather than getting tangled in the intricacies of each person's tale, it seems better to absorb the broad strokes and try to connect the puzzle pieces to get a look at the bigger picture that is the mystery of Mathias Township.


THE INEVITABLE
As the meeting comes to an end and residents begin to converse among themselves, the feeling of something approaching and sense of deja vu begin to build, becoming almost oppressive as night falls. An hour after nightfall, residents learn the reason for these sensations that cease immediately as the earth begins to rumble. The buildings shake, furniture tumbles, and breakables crash to the floor as the earthquake sets in without warning.

The tremors last around a minute, far longer than a normal earthquake, and then the town settles again. There are no aftershocks, which many may note is quite unusual. Residents will find quite a bit of mess in their homes and other locations around town, but there is no structural damage to be found despite the intense shaking.

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CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER is fairly typical of a northern winter. The sky is grey, the temperature hovers just below freezing during the day (colder at night), and a light snow falls during both days. Residents should bundle up when going outside and not venture too far into the dark night...

— 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 with Sherlock Holmes being the latest victim of the town's unsettling whims.

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OOC NOTES

— TOWN MEETING STRUCTURE The town meeting section of the log is designed for characters to share any information they would like to with the other residents in attendance. ICly, characters should "hold questions until the end" with the intent that they can get the Big Picture first and connect any dots they see. OOCly, this means players should post their character's information sharing tag in the Meeting section, but the actual conversation about whatever they share happens after the meeting proper in the Mingle section. That way, these conversations can happen however players prefer, be that one-on-one or in small or large groups.

— HOUSING Please be sure your character's housing arrangements are up to date on our list. We're missing a few people and it really helps to know where everyone is for planning. Frequent updates for wandering characters are perfectly acceptable.

— THE BULLETIN BOARD has been updated. Players should note there is a change to the wall near the board that may be of great interest to some residents.

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Comments

— claire novak

[waywardsister]

[ ooc: long post incoming with all the info Claire's found so far. I've bolded some things for emphasis just for skimming purposes while reading. ]

[ Claire's been a bit of a rare sight after her untimely death and resurrection. Now that she's back, she looks like she's contemplating crawling right back into some grave or other.

Public speaking - what a stupid concept. She was half tempted to just shove her notebooks into someone else's hands, but... no. ]

So, uhm. Anyone else feel like they're back in high school getting graded on some shit? Or maybe this is more like one of those AA meetings they always like on TV...

[ She tucks her hair behind her ear with her left hand. The right is notably bandaged with what looks like torn sheets stained red. After clearing her throat, Claire flicks open her notebook, worries her lower lip a little and then looks into the faces of the gathered people almost defiantly. ]

When we arrived, I hung out in the Anders house. 1306. Scavenged my way through it, found little of note, except the certificate of a baby's baptism. [ She pulls it out of her notebook, folded up as it is, and holds it up for everyone to see. ] Evan Anders, born March 14, baptized in April at the Old Church. It was signed by the parents as well as the officiant, and there's a strange spiral symbol on the certificate as you can see. For those of you old men with squinty eyes: The writing is dark red. I have no idea if it's blood. I found no convenient 'blood rituals and cults 101' books in the house. The year is illegible on the certificate.

Uhm... right, first town exploration I did after the storm, nearly froze to death in this miserable place. Felt like someone was watching us, too. And I don't mean 'oh it's spooky in the dark', listen, I know when someone or something is watching me, and I'm telling you something was.

[ She takes a deep breath, then flips the page and scowls. Her poorly bandaged hand flexes. ]

Next... that fucking door. So... there's a door on the top floor of the boarding house. It's locked. The lock can't be picked. Liberal applications of violence with and without super powers do not open the door. No key to be unearthed for it in the boarding house. Teleporting inside doesn't work. I knocked on it and heard scraping furniture, but it didn't open, and trying to talk at it didn't work either. I shoved a note under the door and it just appeared in my room without response or reaction. I hate this door. Fuck this door.

[ Deep breath. Claire clears her throat, cheeks a little red in embarrassment. Next page. ]

So, ah. You know our Bulletin Bord in town hall? So I put a note on it that maybe contained the letters F and U, and I signed it with my name. The note was just chilling there for like five days, but after that my name was gone from the note. I... took it down then.

[ She looks a little sheepish at this, the tough girl act sliding sideways just a touch for a moment before she straightens her back. ]

Anyway, speaking of town hall... There are no maps there, like at all, which I find strange, and there's also nothing there written before someone invented typewriters or whatever. There was mention of the transfer of older records to the Archive, though.

[ She taps her pen against her notebook, looking uncomfortable. For a moment the pause stretches uncomfortably and she looks like she's gonna abandon her position and stop sharing. ]

So I don't have a lot of information on like... the weird spectres, with the lanterns. I was a little pre-occupied. Well. I died because I didn't answer a phone, and then the windows exploded and I suffocated in my room. Anyway. No big deal, y'know, but. Yeah. Well. Anyway. I followed the spectres. They all just ended up going into the forest, where we can't follow. I tried throwing things at them, too. They didn't react or seem affected.

So, checking out the Historical Society... lots of old newspapers in the archive, but not many from sequential years, and all of them from nearby towns, not from Mathias. Found clippings of Mathias residents who did something worth showing up in papers outside this place, dating back to about the mid-1800s. Biggest of those events I found was a fire in 1831 that destroyed nearly the entire town, leaving only a few buildings intact and only 12 survivors. Cause of the fire reported was a lightning storm. No names for the survivors, no mention of which buildings survived either, but it was specified the fire didn't spread to the forest, so. Go murder forest, good on you for not burning down I guess.

The most recent article I found was from April 7th, 1993. Local student got a scholarship to a fancy school or something.

Also checked out the gallery... I'm not a very artsy person, honestly. There's lots of black and white photographs of Mathias in there. I found a picture of an opening in the cliffside along the beach, but I couldn't tell where that was taken. Maybe like a cave or something under Mathis though. There was also like a creepy old 'The Ring' style well in the forest, and a picture of the light from the lighthouse, and of the school house with children playing near the trees, and just... town square, and people milling about. Oh, I found one picture under the door to the dark room, which I couldn't open by the way. The picture was in colour, it showed the sky all red above a roof, but I have no idea what building that could have been. The roof looked super distinct, but doesn't match any of the buildings I've seen here so far.

[ Another deep breath, then a longer pause. Claire casts her eyes through the room again. ]

So, remember there was that day that we all just sort of... lost, right? Our 11th day here, if I tracked right and time didn't get its panties in a twist? So, I actually woke up in a mansion. I'll get to why that's important later. It was just rows upon rows of identical looking, super tidy, elegant and sparse rooms, and feeling like something was watching me through the mirrors, just at the edge of my vision. Through the windows in the corridors I could see a large forest. Found a skeleton key, haven't found what it unlocks. Doesn't work on the stupid boarding house door, that much is certain, or the dark room in the gallery. The hallways had doors with weird snake engravings. I went through a metric shit ton of identical corridors, until I found the landing of a staircase. Upstairs was dusty and derelict. I found a room, the doors locked behind me. There was a large pile of luggage, and a pile of burnt paper with a circle of soot under it. And when I mean circle, I don't mean vaguely circular, I mean it was a super precise circle, so definitely not naturally occuring. In the burnt paper I found fragments of maps, one piece containing a legend and the words "Mathias, established 1693". There was also a stretch of forest with a large building in it, and then I woke up.

I mention this 'cause... remember how some of us were in a mansion a few days ago? Same place. Just... couldn't find the dusty upstairs. There were more skeleton keys there, much larger than the one I found but otherwise similar. Maps of Mathias that don't match up the layout of the place we're in. Here, I noted down the dates for them... 1702, 1754, 1783, 1801. And... well, I got that same weird sensation of seeing something at the edge of my vision through the mirrors, so I smashed one. [ She raises her hand with the bloody, improvised bandage and shrugs. ] The scratching from the floor boards downstairs and from the ceiling upstairs was, uhm... new. So... well.

Yeah. That's... that's about it, I think. I got some notes on people, too, but like... I mean, on what people can do. 'cause we got all sorts of people there, but honestly... I'm not here to rat shit out, so. Yeah.... next?

[ And she sits back down, cheeks reddened - and oh so very done. ]