The Village Mod (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
villagemod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
villagelogs2021-02-05 03:54 pm
villagemod) wrote in villagelogs2021-02-05 03:54 pm
Entry tags:
- *overview log,
- doc holliday (wynonna earp),
- eliot spencer (leverage),
- ellie (the last of us),
- john carter (er),
- raylan givens (justified),
- ~ bucky barnes (marvel live action),
- ~ daisy johnson (marvel live action),
- ~ max guevara (dark angel),
- ~ melanie king (magnus archives),
- ~ neal caffrey (white collar)
030-035 » a-hunting they will go
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"
navigation | faq | setting | mod contact
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.
no subject
That tracks in her head, at least. People who are hungry get angry and desperate. Maybe whoever is in charge here is trying to turn them against each other.
"Me? No, I haven't found anything. I'm used to going without, but...I have a feeling not everyone here is."
no subject
Claire shrugs a little, pursing her lips.
"Yeah, I... yeah. I'm used to still being able to scrounge up bits and pieces from dumpsters, though. I kept running away and living on the streets, for a bit." She adds the last part quietly, an explanation for dumpster diving, as if she needs one. "The respawning food was weird, but the complete absence is really weird, too. Good thing about being stuck with a bunch of people who know what it's like to fall on hard times is we're pretty good at rationing."
no subject
"I'm used to there being animals to kill and eat, but...somehow Mathias cleared out all the animals. Even the shitty ones." No squirrels, rats, insects. No deer or rabbits or birds in the woods. It's one of the creepiest things about this for her.
"Why'd you run away?" she asks. She's done that too, of course, run away from people who were supposed to be minding her. But she never had a home, exactly. Marlene hadn't really wanted to raise her. She'd been in training since she was a kid, to fight with the military or the Fireflies or whoever. Getting bitten had changed all that. Jackson had been home, and she tells herself going after Abby isn't the same as running away, but...well, that's part of it.
cw: implied unsuccessful traficking attempt
There's a clear jest in her voice, laced with something more bitter, and it seems for a moment that Claire will leave it at that, walls slammed up and unwilling to reach beyond them. But then her shoulders slump, she worries her lower lip between her teeth. Like Ellie, she can look older than she is by virtue of the shit she's been through, but for a moment she just looks young and unsure of herself.
But... Ellie shared about herself, when she was vulnerable.
"My Dad left when I was like... fuck, I barely remember. 10... ish? Briefly returned, then left again. Died, but I didn't know about that for a long time. He was just... gone, y'know? Mom didn't handle it well. She left to figure herself out, and put me up with my grandma. But mom never came back, grandma died, so I went into the system. Group homes and the like. Couldn't stand it. The circles of people sharing their 'woe is me' life story. The pity. The therapy. I was so fucking pissed that they'd just fucked off, y'know? My parents, I mean. So I decided to raise a little hell and kick up a fuss. I was a little shit. Kept running away."
And that would be a good place to stop, except... except the words kinda keep tumbling out.
"Kinda fell in with this guy, Randy, and his crew. Randy played himself up as some kinda replacement Dad to us kids. Taught us how to get by. Picking locks and pockets, y'know. We brought him shit we could steal, he kinda gave us a place to crash and looked out for us. Well, until he didn't. Tried to sell me to some perv to cover for his debt."
The world's a little blurry for a moment, and Claire's jaw works, tears not spilling by sheer force of will.
"Anyway, so Dean, Cas and Sam got me away from the fuck who agreed to buy me, Dean murdered the shit out of Randy and a few people, and that was that. Struck out on my own after that. Grifting, getting by. Tried to find my mom, 'cause I wanted to spit in her face and tell her she was fucked up for never coming back for me. Found her, turnes out she'd been kept a prisoner by a monster. So I guess I got to forgive her, but then she died anyway. And I killed the monster. And then I became a hunter."
cw: cannibalism, murder, implied sexual assault
Claire's world is full of dangerous monsters, but it's...also full of the normal trappings of everyday life and everyday misery. Absent parents. Living on the street even though you grew up in a house. Not the martial law and smugglers and fucking psycho cult leaders that Ellie's seen in her short life. She doesn't envy it, though. Everyone's carrying too much baggage. It just looks different.
"Too bad you didn't get to kill that trafficker bastard yourself," Ellie says, and that's really the empathy thing for her. She has no idea if Claire has killed a human being, and she won't ask. The first time Ellie killed someone was to save Joel, and it was terrifying and she'd felt sick afterwards, but...it got easier.
She thinks of Nora choking on spores in the hospital. Was it really pity to shoot her, or was it more cold-blooded than that? She knows the answer and doesn't want to see it.
"I'm sorry about your family," she says, and she means it. She doesn't do well with the whole comfort thing, but it's still genuine.
"I, uh...kind of relate, I guess? I was in the mountains in Colorado. We were going somewhere and..."
God, she can't say his name, it's too much and she'll choke. She still can't manage to say his fucking name, not even to Claire, not even after all of this.
"Um. The person I was with was really sick. And I shot a deer, you know, because it was winter and we were fucking starving and it's not like there's shit like restaurants anymore but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't trust one in the middle of the bullshit Colorado mountains anyway."
She hasn't told anyone about David. She didn't even tell Dina. Joel is the only person who really knew.
"I got caught by these fucking nutjobs, you know? I gave them my deer in exchange for medicine."
Joel had lived, that time, and it was because of that medicine. Somehow he'd lived and he'd crawled through the fucking snow and he'd been there and neither of them had walked out of that burning bar the same.
He hadn't even been able to stand up the last time she'd seen him. There are so many people she hates for all of this. Most of them are dead, but there's more to do.
"Yeah, anyway, so this asshole leader of theirs caught me because they were pissed off that we'd had to kill some of their other people. But it was us or them, you know? Like...some chucklefucks are shooting at you, what are you gonna do about it? Ask questions?"
Joel hadn't been the asking questions type. Ellie still sometimes is, but only if she really needs the answers.
"This total douchebag wanted to, I don't know, keep me as a pet. I broke his finger and he tried to chop me into pieces and feed me to the other people. Obviously I'm standing here, so. You can imagine how that went."
Actually, she hopes Claire cannot at all imagine how it went. She doesn't go into the details, how terrifying it was trying to stay hidden in the bar. How he'd tried to touch her. How she'd stabbed that machete into David's face over and over again unable to stop, until Joel was there. If she had it in her to cry anymore, this would be one of those things that pushed her there.
So she reaches for Claire's hand, which is a terrible mistake, too vulnerable, but she can't help it. This place they're all in now is a nightmare no one can wake up from. They might all starve. Who the fuck knows. If anyone has those cannibal urges, though, well...Ellie's still the only one in town with a sharp knife, right?
"Sucks when the monsters are just people, I guess."
no subject
Claire's never killed a human - well. No, that's not technically true. She killed an angel, after all, and that means his human vessel died, too. She'd not even thought about it at the time - not even cared, to be honest. And still doesn't. All that had mattered in that moment was ending the creature that had used her mother like a battery for years, and then killed her in front of Claire.
"Hard times bring out the worst in people. Real monsters at least have an excuse. They're nasty pieces of shit, but like how a really smart, dangerous animal is a piece of shit. People though..."
People are the worst.
She gives Ellie's hand a squeeze. Opens her mouth, hesitates and frowns more a moment, but then nods with resolution, more to herself than anything.
"I'll protect you. And if I'm not able to, I'll fuck shit up for you."
Her blue eyes are bright in how fierce they are. This is the hunter in Claire - the soft child who grew up hard and kicked back harder, who's become a killer in her own right, and who lives to save people and kill monsters.
"I got you."
no subject
She doesn't know. She'll never know, despite the cordyceps wrapped around her brain. Whatever grants her immunity saves her from that loss of self. She should be grateful for it, but she rarely is.
"But they aren't human. The older ones don't really look it. They don't have faces anymore. The really old ones don't have anything left that really looks human. But no matter what they look like, they're just running on instinct. It's not malicious. It's not like people. You can see when people think it. When people mean to hurt you." She's sure she's no different. She has no idea what she looks like before she kills someone. But it doesn't matter. She has to be a monster too or she'll choke on her grief. The only way through is through, or so it feels.
Her fingers twine between Claire's and she looks up at the other girl's face. This isn't fair to Dina, she knows. But neither is anything else she's done. Jesse better save Dina. She'll figure out her messy feelings eventually, probably. But Dina isn't here. And Claire is. And they'll probably all die here anyway.
"Same," she says. "It's not even a question. It'd be better with a gun, but...I don't need a gun to raise hell."