villagelogs | 030-035 » a-hunting they will go

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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"

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.

navigation | faq | setting | mod contact

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Of course, Ellie isn't going to push him to go underground again, even if they find a trapdoor. She's just looking for confirmation – and probably something to actually do with herself. She's restless because the town is a terrible place. Every day that passes is one more day away from her own world, one more day of uncertainty about Dina and Jesse and Tommy. She has to believe they made it out, or she won't be able to keep going.

Jackson. Doc is asking about Jackson. That's a fraught subject in her own head because of the reason she'd had to leave for Seattle.

"Jackson? Oh, it's in Wyoming. In the mountains. A bunch of people worked to clean it up, get the power and shit on so we could have a town that wasn't run by the military or any of the paramilitary assholes that think they know things or the weird cultists or whatever. We have a lot of safeguards in place to keep Infected out. It's...it's nice. Almost feels like home, you know?"

Almost. Because how can anywhere feel like home without Joel there? She'd spent literally years barely talking to him, but he'd been there anyway, annoyingly watching over her. She feels his absence keenly no matter where she is now. There will always be a hole in Jackson where he used to be, his house full of guitars he made and things he carved, the way he channelled all the terrible shit still inside him into something beautiful. It's what she does with art, though she hasn't made anything beautiful in months.

Her fingers run along the floorboards, but there doesn't seem to be anything hiding here.

She looks up at Doc. "You okay, Henry? There's nothing so far. We're not gonna get stuck down there, I promise." That's an easy promise to make and to keep, since they're going even going anywhere.

"I understand." In a way, these houses also kind of feel like home. These creature comforts are not essential to their survival, but ultimately important to keep them sane, keep them together. It's easy to just live from day to day and forget about all the troubles around them. They could have it much easier than they're making things for themselves if they could close one eye about all the... unnaturalness that plagues them.

"You could have lived out the rest of your days in Jackson," he observes quietly. She hasn't had any violent negative reactions to his line of questioning so he feels it safe to continue asking, under the guise of just making conversation.

"This table behind me is the next biggest thing we could move," he gestures once it's clear there's nothing beneath the couch. Doc figures they can work their way through all the biggest pieces of furniture first and leave the rest for last. In case they don't find anything today, she can continue looking more easily with Yennefer to help move the smaller items around.

Ellie's had similar thoughts. There's a price for staying here, and they're all paying it. But they could just...give in to whatever the fuck is going on here and stay put when the weather hits and not try to decipher anything. But are people really like that, so easily complacent? Well, maybe. Jackson had seemed safe, even when the whole world is a dangerous pile of shit. She's heard from Tommy that they were ambushed. But the thing is...the WLF still found Jackson.

Nowhere is safe. Complacency just means you die, and Mathias doesn't seem any different to her in that regard.

She looks back down at the floor, but goes still at his statement.

"No," she says. "There's something I gotta do before I can go back to Jackson."

She's told Malcolm about this at length, but he's really the only one. Henry doesn't know about all the blood on her hands, or why she keeps wanting a gun and not some other thing. The small knife she has is a comfort, but it's not a gun. He has gun holsters, so maybe he gets it. But he doesn't know what she's done. And if she doesn't get to Abby, all those other deaths are for nothing. How do you live with that? How does anyone live with anything?

She gives up on the floor and stands up, not looking directly at him again for a minute.

"The table? Yeah. Might as well try it while we're here."

She moves past him to one end of the table.

"You get that end and we'll push it that way," she says, gesturing off towards a wall.

"Unfinished business," he says. It is not a question, though she is free to elaborate if she so chooses. He only says as much because he understands what unfinished business is. What it means to have the weight of something on your shoulders and feel unable to move on, stuck in this cycle of restless frustration-rinse-repeat until those matters are settled.

"Okay. On three again." And after he counts them down, he waits a half second for her to pick up her end of the table first before he does, moving the table aside enough for her to take a look around down on the floor.

"When you have finished said business. Are you bound for Jackson then?" Is it a happily ever after ending? Because he knows it is selfish and indulgent of him to want to take her somewhere else, somewhere where she doesn't have to suffer. And he would still do so even if it meant she would never be able to find the sort of closure and complete whatever mission she is dead set on seeing through that is keeping her going. But seeing as he doesn't think he will have much of a choice in the matter, it would be of some relief to know that she would go back to something of a better life, whatever that looks like in Jackson.

"Yeah," she says. At least that much is clear. She doesn't know how much he could guess at, but he's a pretty shrewd person. She probably doesn't give most of the older adults enough credit, all things considered. That's just part of being 19 though.

The table is heavy, but much easier to move than the couch. Once it's out of the way, she can look at the floor again, squatting to see if the floorboards here are different. Nothing is immediately obvious, but she keeps looking. Of course this wasn't going to be entirely easy. That's all right. She'll keep looking.

She does stop again for a second, considering how to answer. What happens after Seattle? She takes Dina back to Jackson. God, please let Dina be okay. Let Jesse and Tommy be okay. Let Dina's baby be okay. It hasn't been that long so she wouldn't have had the baby yet but...

"Yeah. There's nowhere else to go. The whole world is a mess." Jackson had been a haven. It isn't now, but it's still home, or as close as she imagines she can ever find.

"It can feel that way sometimes." Doc would never make that claim about the world definitively, having not had the opportunity to see more of it even though he had traveled more extensively than many of his peers in his time. Talking to a worldly man like Neal Caffrey can put such things into perspective. He has the luxury of time at least, once they have put down familiar old demons. Maybe he will have the opportunity to find out that only his world is a mess and the rest of the world is doing just fine.

"Is there someone waiting for you in Jackson? A young man who treats you right? Or a woman you would give anything for?" He judges good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair plenty. When it comes to love, there is nothing to judge.

"'Tis not the most terrible thing, to have to face the rest of your life alone. But it is nice to have company. Sometimes."

Ellie's travelled across almost the entire country, the wilderness of it, both urban and otherwise. It's not a wasteland, exactly, but it's all ruined and dangerous. The people and the things that used to be people are all ruined and dangerous, too.

Jackson...she doesn't know now how to make it safe again. This revenge quest, still the thing that drives her even here in Mathias, is the only thing she can hold onto.

She's surprised at the way he words the question. He's old-fashioned, but that doesn't mean homophobic or anything, obviously. Still, it takes her by surprise.

"Uh...Dina. Dina was in Seattle with me," she says. "A friend of ours showed up. I swear to god if I get back and something happened, I'll kill him. Even if he's already dead, I'll kill him again." She doesn't bother explaining that, because they both know there are no answers from there on out. No one knows what's going on back home, if time passes the same, if they're all stuck in some weird ass limbo or what. There's no way to know.

"...She was pregnant. Dina."

That's the hardest piece of it, isn't it? Dina probably hadn't known when they'd left for Seattle. Ellie has no idea how long she'd known, but it never would have changed a fucking thing, just like it didn't make her turn around and leave Seattle. She was so close. Abby was so fucking close and all she had to do was put a bullet in her head. Ellie isn't like Abby; she doesn't need to do to Abby what Abby had done to Joel. She just needs her to die.

She forces herself back to the present time and place and moves again to look closer to the wall. She shoves a chair out of the way, mostly to take her pent up feelings out on something.

A twitch of a smile tugs on the corner of his lips. Ellie may not have meant her death threat in an endearing sort of way, but that's how he's reading it. He's fairly certain he is asking to get shot at once he gets back, too.

Giving the young lady some space to look around, to process her frustrations, Doc lingers around the dining table they had moved, watching her closely though he keeps his head down, ankles crossed and fingers gripping the edge of the table to play it cool. He might be an annoyingly overprotective cowboy dad but he has to be cool doing it if he wants to stick around and be able to get anything out of her.

Dina is none of his business. He probably shouldn't ask too much about Dina. Or anything at all. But since they're standing around, since Ellie's already said half her piece, he might as well give her the rest of the floor to deal with Dina.

"You had plans, with Dina? About that?"

Confusion crosses over her face for a minute. It's a little like Joel asking if Dina was her girlfriend. At the time, she definitely hadn't been. And Ellie hadn't really thought too much about the thing that comes next. Sure, they were bullshitting about a farm and all, but it wasn't a plan. There's no guarantee they'll live through Seattle (though Ellie has no plans to die, and certainly no plans to let Dina die). But anything after her mad quest to revenge, she hasn't thought about. She can't manage to.

"God, no, I don't know. I didn't even know she was pregnant. I don't think she knew. I wouldn't have wanted her to come with me." Ellie's revenge is a cold, selfish thing. Having Dina there definitely saved her life at least once. But it's a lot different putting someone in danger when they're pregnant, seems like.

She decides to turn it around on Henry instead.

"What about you? You must have something other than I lived in a well. Something you stay alive for."

She turns away from him, though, distracted by a strange spot there in the corner where the spare chair had been.

"I have a pregnant lady of my own that I would like to look after, if she would let me. Though she has been... as cantankerous as ever, and does not seem to know how to accept a genuine offer of help." Hormones, she had tried to excuse herself with. He knows what hormones are, but he does not understand what that is supposed to mean. He has always loved his women hot and batshit crazy, but this is not a topic he feels appropriate to discuss with an unladylike young lady. Nor the topic of fatherhood.

"And now that I am here and she is not, I guess I... have you." And the boys at 1306, of course, but he feels differently about them. They can rely on each other should Doc up and vanish one night and while he would worry - of course he would worry - he would not worry about the same things or in the same way as he would worry about Ellie. Even if she does have Yennefer with her now.

She looks up again at that, actually surprised.

"Oh, fuck. You're a dad. Like...for real." He acts like a dad (or whatever, he acts like an overprotective dude; she never had a dad other than Joel and she never corrected the other kids in Jackson who called Joel her old man). But literally he has a kid, or will. What a heavy thing to be stuck in this town waiting.

Maybe they're both projecting, then. Maybe sometime she'll tell Henry how she feels about one Claire Novak, despite obviously still caring deeply for Dina. Trauma bonding is rough.

"Guess you have me," she repeats, quiet. Before she can let that turn into further emotions, yikes, she looks back at the wall.

"Hey, Henry, wait a sec. I think this is it." It's hard to see, blended in with the wood, but there is definitely something weird about this floor panel. The tunnels. Fuck, are they really under every house? She meant what she said and she won't ask him to go down there with her, especially right now after what happened to him and Raylan. But just finding it feels important in the moment.

"Ahhhmmmmnnnnuhmmhfffuh." Was that a word? It was more Doc making a string of incoherent noises and blowing out a sigh and shaking his head and shrugging and turning his hand over and scratching the bridge of his nose and averting his gaze. Yeah, he's clearly spent a lot of time processing that.

"I'm. I. Wouldn't. Go that far." He just has. Tendencies, being as old as he is, keeping the company of impulsive and reckless young ladies who like to give him headaches and heart attacks.

Thank God for the terrifying hole in the floor. Maybe He does exist after all. He hurries into the kitchen, now completely focused on their task at hand, and pulls open several drawers looking for something to try and pry it open. He won't go down there willingly, but they can at least open it up to be sure.

"I did not see a ladder in this house," he muses, glancing over his shoulder and around the general vicinity on his way back to Ellie, holding the blunt carving knife out to her and standing close by in case she isn't careful with it or if he needs to do any heavy lifting. How did they get up and down into the underground space?

She laughs at his reaction. Well, at least she can ruffle his feathers in little ways, right? He's usually so composed, though he has that fear thing about being underground. This is more like...the normal way of needling, not some dire circumstance. The normal moments matter in the midst of all the shit, either from home or from Mathias and its mysteries.

"There's probably a rope, or we can...I don't know. String sheets together," she says, thinking on her feet more than proposing they actually go down there. "Anyway, we aren't going in, we're just seeing what it's like from up here."

But it begs the question. Did these people actually come and go? They must have, right? It couldn't possibly be that they just went into the tunnels and never came back. Well, maybe that's what happened, but they must have been using them before that, too. Did they take the ladders along with the sharp knives and the animals and whatever? She can't really imagine what the answer could be.

She takes the knife from him and jams it into the crack there along the edge of the trapdoor. It takes some fiddling, and it hurts her fingers a little, but it's not a big deal. She's not afraid of pain, especially this little bit. Finally, it gives and she can get her hands under it as it comes up. Sure, it could slam shut on her hands and that would entirely suck, but whatever. She starts to pull. It's heavier than it looks, but not outrageous or anything.

The cowboy would protest very much against her going down there. He's half-tempted to confiscate all the sheets in the house. But she's a smart and resourceful girl and she wouldn't go down on her own, surely. Seeing what it's like from here is a much more acceptable compromise and he crouches down next to her, letting her work and hovering close in case she needs the help. For as protective as he is over her, he doesn't want her to think that he believes her to be incapable. He wants to be her safety net and her bedrock of support, someone she can call for help if she wants to after she's exhausted her own resources, not smother her with his misplaced affection.

When she looks to be struggling with the door once she's got it open, he intervenes and lends his strength, making it easier for her to throw the hatch open. He doesn't expect anything to come rushing out since that didn't happen when he got the trap door open in 1307, but he does hang back a bit with his hand hovering close enough to catch Ellie or yank her back in case anything happens.

"Let's shine some light in there?" He could drop a match but it's best not to. There might be something combustible in there and even if there wasn't, what negligible amount of light from a single lit matchstick would only last a couple of seconds.

She said she won't go in alone, and she won't. If she had real weapons, maybe it would be a different ballgame. But going in alone with just a tiny knife and, what, a candle? A flashlight that would definitely stop working down there just to fuck with her? No way.

He's there to open the door the rest of the way, of course. That's the type of person he is.

"It's fine, I had it," she says, with the easy petulance of a teenager. She's an adult, sure, but she's also a teenager, prone to moodiness and pushing back at capital-A Adults out of habit. She doesn't apologise.

But she pushes herself back from the dark space in the floor and stands up, in no danger of falling in. "There's a flashlight in the kitchen. Hang on a sec."

She goes to get it; it's not far so she doesn't take long to fetch it.

"Shall I do the honours, or do you wanna?" she asks him, tossing the flashlight back and forth between her hands, just a way to work off nervous energy.

"Oh I do apologise. I thought I should make myself useful." And also to make sure the door doesn't slam on her fingers but clearly he has belittled her and he should be made to say sorry for it. He has very little experience with teenagers, truth be told, but he understands that sort of petty sulking perhaps a little too well. He gently lowers the door down, resting it on his shoe in case it does go all the way down and becomes troublesome to try and get under it to shut it again, freeing up his hands in the process as he watches her move to the kitchen and back.

"Go ahead. I do not expect you would be able to see much, though. We were not able to see far down there from up here." And he was certain there wouldn't be a rope or ladder or anything to get her down into the hole just waiting on the inside. They would have seen it from underground had there been a way up to her trapdoor.

They have a ladder over in 1306, but he's not offering it to her just yet. Perhaps it is somewhat selfish not to purely because he doesn't want her going down there. But it will definitely come up in conversation for when the time inevitably comes for a second trip down under.

"As if you being here isn't useful," she says over her shoulder. She's never seen him be anything but useful, really.

She crouches down by the hole again and clicks the flashlight on, shining it into the darkness.

"Wish we had a flare instead," she says, not really considering what he had about something being flammable. Sure, maybe, but that's just not a serious concern for her. Either way, they don't have any flares.

She holds on to the edge of the hole there, definitely not wanting to just fall into the dark. But her balance is good and she's careful, not leaning too far over. She shines the light back and forth, but it disappears into the darkness.

"Damnit. I can't really see anything."

"There's something about the darkness here. Like the-- museum." She's making him antsy getting so close to the edge of the hole. He's barely able to restrain himself, clenching his hand into a fist atop his thigh and watching her like a hawk. God if she falls in and breaks a leg or something he's going down there to smack some sense into her.

"Perhaps we can build a way down," he suggests after clearing his throat. Tie sheets together if they have to, like she suggested. "Bring a few helping hands along. Could cover more ground and be safer that way." Ellie you are stressing him out, get away from the hole please.

She stares for a moment longer, but it's no use. He's right, though the tunnel doesn't have that same sense of awful foreboding that the museum does. It's just...dark. That poses its own problems, though. But it will have to wait for another day.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay," she says, standing up again, safe from the darkness that waits underground, at least for now.

"Maybe I should put a towel under the edge of the door so we can get it open easier, at least."

She turns to look at him, taking him in for a second. "Henry...I'm not gonna, like, fall in. Or go down there alone. Too many people die here. I can't die in this shitty town. We're okay." They aren't, but they're okay for right now. That's enough.

"That would be a good idea. It would be easier to spot too." He would naturally become less anxious when she lays her towel down, shuts the trap door on top of it, and walks away from the hole. Until then he would remain a little on edge.

"Of course. I trust you will be alright. Did you want me to... come back tomorrow, with some reinforcements?" He offers. There are perfectly good men next door. They are all some level of traumatised but half of them wouldn't have such a violent reaction against venturing underground with her. They may even have some ingenious way of getting down there, or would at least be willing to bring their ladder over.

She goes back to the kitchen to grab a kitchen towel. (How did these people have so many towels? Towels in bathrooms. Towels in kitchens. Towels in a closet. What the fuck does anyone need so many towels for? She doesn't know.)

She leaves the towel at the edge of the hole, half of it hanging over, so they can lower the lid. Hopefully she's right and this makes it a bit easier to open. But it's fine for now either way.

"Nah, we'll get to it," she says. "I'll post on the bulletin board and we'll see if anyone says anything, then go from there."

Doc visibly relaxes once the hole is shut again, and he heaves a relieved sigh and a nod.

"Alright." Most of these people are trustworthy and generally capable, no matter who decides to show up to help her. He would not try to gatekeep who can befriend her unless someone shows up whom he knows means her harm.

"Should I leave you to it then?" She'll call him if there's anything she needs. He trusts that much of her.

She nods and brushes her hands off on her jeans.

"Yeah, I think I'm good. I promise I won't go in there on the sly or anything. I'm over my teenage rebellion phase or whatever." It's a joke, and she isn't, but she's at least sincere with her promise.

"Be careful, Henry. Don't get stuck anywhere else," she says, softer. Despite the quiet note of humour, she means it.

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030-035 » a-hunting they will go

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