030-035 » a-hunting they will go

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias.
WHEN: Days 030-035
WHAT: Unexpected changes come to Mathias, followed by a Hunt.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! And shiny new CR meme too.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Marco Beltrami "It Hears You"

DAYS 030-032
A CHANGE IN CIRCUMSTANCES
The day after the earthquake dawns like any other in Mathias Township. The sky is a light winter grey, clouds obscuring even a hint of true sunlight, and snow falls off and on in dustings that rest atop the piles left from the storm a few days past. The air is bitterly cold, a gentle wind feeling like ice in the sub-freezing temperatures, and residents should be grateful that the earthquake didn't do more damage than just breaking a few household objects.

It seems like business as usual. It will not be until the second day that residents will begin to notice the difference.

The General Store's shelves have not been restocked. Items in kitchens have not replenished in the passing night. Food from the previous day has aged as normal, and as the days continue to pass, things will begin to grow stale or become moldy as they would in the outside world. Two days pass, three, four... Still, the food does not return.

Perhaps rationing should be considered.



NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake on the snowy beach near the Grey Gull restaurant. They should probably hurry inside and get warmed up before hypothermia sets in or something finds them out in the cold...

---

DAYS 033-034
IN THE NIGHT, IN THE DARK
These days, too, seem to be simply more of the same. The days are cold and grey, the food does not replenish, and they continue to be trapped in this eerie town. But when night falls, the story changes.

An hour after sunset, it begins. Scratching sounds at walls, like something searching for a way inside. The ominous feeling of something out there in the darkness, moving through the town, stalking through the night. The inability to find any sign of something being there at all. It's enough to make anyone feel like they're going mad. To happen just one night, it could be a fluke, a trick of the mind as so many things here seem to be. But to happen a second night, with more intensity... There is something there, or they are going mad.

It's hard to know which to hope for.

DAY 035
THE HUNT
This day is not like the others. There is something in the air, a dreadful anticipation that rises inside them all as the hours pass. Every moment that brings them closer to nightfall brings it closer too — if only they knew what it was.

An hour after sunset, the Hunt begins.

Those who are outside at this time are gripped by such terror that they can do nothing but run and be chased. They are prey and the predators that stalk them with steadfast determination are creatures never meant to be seen by mortal eyes. All lights outside go out, from streetlamps to flashlights, and the world descends into deeper darkness, only the clouded moonlight and curtained glow from illuminated houses lighting their way as they flee.

Those who are inside at this time are trapped in their safe havens. No doors or windows can be opened from within, nothing can be broken or forced, and they can do nothing but wait and listen while their friends and neighbors are pursued by creatures whose very presence they can feel in their bones and whose growls echo in the night, entwined with the screams of their victims.

In the thick darkness, these creatures appear little more than shadows, large and looming, deadly and unknown, but in rare glimpses in scattered pieces of light, the Hunted are met with a sight they cannot comprehend and will never be able to properly describe or fully remember, for these creatures cannot be fathomed within the limits of the human mind.

The Hunt lasts for one hour exactly and then the creatures vanish into the darkness, leaving only fear and death in their wake.


ABOUT THE HUNT
— Players may choose to have their resident be one of the Hunted or a Witness to the Hunt. None are exempt from the the Hunt and all will be affected by it in some way.

— Those who are hunted must flee the creatures or they will die. The Hunted may move throughout the town at any speed, for the creatures may choose to move both quickly or slowly, but the creatures will always inevitably find them. The only escape is to seek shelter — the creatures will not enter a building where living people are, but they will follow the Hunted into buildings where there are no other living people.

— Those who are trapped within buildings at the start of the Hunt are unable to open doors and windows from within, but the Hunted may open them from outside in order to take shelter in these safe havens.

— Those who are hunted are unable to fight back against the creatures until the moments just before their death. This is due the creatures only having physical form in these final moments, rendering any attacks against them useless, whether they be physical, magical, or psychic in nature. Attempts may be made in those moments before death, but by then it is too late — the prey has been caught.

— When one of the Hunted is caught, there is no escaping, there is only screaming in madness as death falls painfully upon them. No one can come to their aid and their body will be found afterward, the bloody remains ripped and torn apart by something that cannot be identified. Large sprays and pools of blood stain the area around the corpse, turning the snow sickening shade of crimson that darkens as the hours pass.

— After the creatures have vanished, there are no signs of them to be found in the snow. There are no tracks or marks of any kind save for the carnage of the fresh kill.

— Those who have been sacrificed to the Hunt will revive two days later on Day 037. The conditions in which they revive will be detailed later, but there will be only minor lasting physical damage from the Hunt.

— The Hunted will lose 5 points of sanity. Those Witnesses who find the corpses will lose 2 points of sanity, or 3 points if they are not unaccustomed to this type of sight. Others who are merely Witnesses to the sounds of Hunt may choose to lose 1 point of sanity as a result of the experience.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER is fairly typical of a northern winter. The sky is almost always grey, the temperature is below freezing during the day (and colder at night), and a light snow falls intermittently. The sun sets early in the evening. 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 beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the northern section of town, beginning just past Hill Lane, before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be between Hill and Stine Road. Venturing into the fog is ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue. Sherlock Holmes is still missing, and Phil Coulson, John Constantine, Zed Martin, and Helen Magnus have vanished as well.

---

OOC NOTES

— FOOD will be restocked in some fashion in the next full log, don't worry. We aren't going full survival mode yet.

— DAY 036 The next log will cover Day 36 only and will include the locations of deaths and any corpse burials that occur the night of Day 35 or are planned for Day 36. (There will be prompts included for both the "living" and the "dead" in this single day log.) Please submit all information by Wednesday, Feb 17.

— MOD STATUS It's mostly just Amy steering this ship for now, so things will probably be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pinging me if you're stuck waiting for something.

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Comments

[ghosthuntuk]

She shrugs, "All sounds the same to me, honestly. I was in Chelsea, London." Not that it'll mean much unless he's ever been, but fair's fair and all that. Especially when she plans to make demands of the bloke.

"I've tried in the library. Found a book or two with it, but... nothing useful." She feels the urge to roll her eyes, but it's.... not quite possible any more. It's a strange phantom feeling, at this point. "Is there anything worth knowing on them?" She asks curiously. "And I'm going to record you." She says after a beat. "I have to have notes somewhere, after all."

[tinstar]

It didn't, not really. "Never been," was all he said to it, unsurprised that she couldn't pick up on the otherwise very clear differences that a trained ear could pick up.

"Notes about what people have found mostly. One 'Don't go into the museum', a note about the tunnel.. under the library, huh. That's a new one, I'mma have to check that out.. in a few weeks."

He wasn't going to deal with that right now, and not in front of someone he didn't really know. "Are ya?" He was amused. "I'm not objecting, but on what?"

[ghosthuntuk]

"Well, I'd never been to the States 'til now-- I assume we're in the States?" She doesn't have any idea, honestly. Maybe it's really kind of nowhere. Who knows, at this rate. Her eyebrows arch up over the edge of her sunglasses. "Tunnels? That doesn't sound great. I wouldn't go alone, if I were you." She sounds like she has reasons for such a statement. "Oh," she reaches into her back pocket and produces the small voice recorder she'd found. "Found it in the music store a few days back, actually. There were only a few cassettes, but I'll make due." If she's really lucky, it'll just be one of the Archivist's recorders, and it'll never run out of tape or battery. (She won't hope for that, though. She doesn't want The Eye watching her again).

[tinstar]

"Mm," he confirmed with a hum and a nod he realized was useless as his head was bobbing. "Yeah. Northeastern coast, best we can tell. There hasn't been a fish fry to confirm though." He could only tell because of the dates on the invoices he'd seen here there and everywhere.

"Too much like mines for me to make that mistake," Raylan assured with a tilt of his head. Even when he'd gotten trapped, it was with company. "But they're pretty well reinforced, considering how crappy the rest of the infrastructure is."

"Huh," he sounded to the recorder. "Well I'm glad this place has a solution for ya. You want me to read them off left to right, top to bottom, just for the record?"

[ghosthuntuk]

"I'm only eating fish if you have proper chips with it." She smirks slightly.

She cants her head slightly. That was certainly a very specific answer. "Do much mining, at some point?" She's half-amused, half-curious. "Easy to get lost in tunnels, though. Especially secret ones." She thinks of the Archives, and the twisting way they always changed. They know why now, of course, but it doesn't stop her from fully believing that all the same.

She smiles at his compliance and nods, "Sounds good to me." She starts the recorder and lets it go until he's completed the list of things on the board. "Thanks for that."

[tinstar]

"You mean chip chips or French fry chips. I never know the difference but you don't know what you're missin'." The crook of his smile was clear in his tone. No one did a fish fry like the south, but he had a feeling that the northeast would give them a run for their money.

"Kinda Kentucky's thing," he answered. "It was only for a year, when I was 18/19, but it was plenty for me." It only took one near death experience to turn him more than happily towards something else. "Someone else will map it out, I'm sure." It sure as hell wasn't going to be him.

As Raylan read off the board, he tried to keep as much of his accent out of it as he could, adding as many G's as he could bother to remember. But once it was done, he nodded. "Happy to help. How long you been here?"

He assumed she'd found a place to stay but there was no way Mathis was easy to navigate blind. No, he wasn't going to ask in the first meeting how she lost her sight. That would be rude.

[ghosthuntuk]

She laughs softly at the question. "What you lot call chips, we call crisps. And fries are chips." Vernacular was always an issue with Americans, but at least it's amusing in this case.

"Ah," she nods a bit. To be fair, she doesn't know a ton about the U.S. or what its states are known for. But she does agree with the summation of someone getting to it. "Oh, I'm sure they will. I just hope they're not absolute gits about it." But she won't hold her breath. She hasn't been here very long, but she's put it together well enough that the people around here really tend to dive in headfirst without thinking things through first.

The question leaves her thinking about it for a moment. "Er- not quite two weeks, I think? It's incredibly hard to know how time's passing," for everyone, given the clocks and calendars are useless, and doubly so for her; she's gotten by well enough so far, though.

[tinstar]

"Ah," he said, head tilting back with a passing smile. "I'll try to keep it in mind." Mainly because he ended up feeding people and was finding that he enjoyed it more than he thought he would. Short Order Cook Givens, at your service.

"Considerin' the people we got? At least half of us would probably fall into that category," he said lightly. "Myself included." He knew his own flaws.. Sometimes.

He nodded at the answer with a little sigh. "Ain't that the truth. I've got us pegged down within a few days, been here just around a month, myself. It's not just you though, the clocks.. watches.. they all run.. differently. Can't explain it but no one else can either so at least we're all in the same boat of not knowin' what the hell is goin' on."

[ghosthuntuk]

"I wouldn't be surprised, honestly." She says it with a sort of distant-fondness; an aching longing for those short-lived seconds when she leapt at the job she needed to keep herself busy from the rest of her life falling apart, and the instant not-quite-comradery that came along with it, with a bunch of idiots willing to throw themselves into the trenches for answers, before it all fell apart in violence, loss of autonomy, and blood.

"Were you in the first lot that arrived, then?" Because she might be in mind to keep him close if that were the case. Anyone who's been here since the beginning would be useful to keep in hand.

[tinstar]

"Mm," he hummed with a nod before remembering himself again and answering properly. "I was. Me and.. a handful of others. We lost a few before you arrived, I think. I'd have to take another count to see who made it this far.."

His face pinched. What a fucked up way to think about it. Like it was some long race that they'd been set on, companions falling to the wayside as they failed to keep up or were, more accurately, drug off the course, kicking and screaming, by the township they were all running in.

"You... aware of the rest of the buildin'?" He would have said 'seen' but frankly, there wasn't sensitivity training for this.

[ghosthuntuk]

"I hate the sound of that... not because you said it, but because I came from a place not so unlike it. The world had Changed...it was...awful." She shakes her head a bit at the thought.

"Not particularly. Hard to do much investigating without a partner." she keeps her voice at the border-edge of teasing, a smirk quirking up one corner of her mouth. She misses Georgie.

[tinstar]

"The world changed?" He couldn't help but ask. He'd heard too many stories about worlds changing for him not to.

"Is that how..." Well, he had to ask, sooner or later, but if he didn't finish it, did it count as a question. "The building isn't that interestin'. One floor. Plenty of offices filled with useless paper.. Dirty, like the rest of this place."