villagelogs | 036 » aftermath: the dead

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Mathias Township...?
WHEN: Day 036
WHAT: What happens after death?
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! And a log for the living.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Kijo 鬼女"

DAY 036
RED SKY AT MORNING
But for the dead, morning does not come. They awake to a frozen world covered in darkness, the night sky above so clear that they make out the stars that are both familiar and strangely not. The moon is full, casting light that reflects upon the snow, but both are covered in a haze of red.

Everything is covered in red. The snow, the ocean, the night sky. It's as if they are seeing through colored glasses, but that filtered hue cannot be removed.

Those who were victims of the Hunt awake where they fell, surrounded by their own blood but curiously unharmed. In fact, their physical state is that of before the Hunt, and the only sign of their injuries are the wild splatters of blood all around them.

There is no sign of anyone in Mathias except for the dead, no matter how much they search. And there is quite a lot now to search — the fog has vanished from the town completely and all paths are clear to be wandered. Time is of the essence, though, for the dead will not remain so for long.

They have only six hours in this place that is Mathias but not.

SAILORS TAKE WARNING
At the fourth hour into their stay, a storm arrives. Perhaps difficult to see at first, before long the clouds can be noticed moving across the sky, at first blocking out only patches of those strange stars but then blotting them out entirely. The moon struggles in vain to shine through their darkness, eventually failing and leaving only artificial light to guide the dead in their journeys.

The storm begins with the fifth hour. The rumbling is like that of a thunderstorm but infinitely more ominous, signaling something approaching that is not meant for the world of man. Within a few minutes, they learn why as lightning arcs across the sky, the cracks of powerful energy echoing through the air. Those branching spikes at first remain in the sky, but then suddenly they crash down to meet the earth, striking the Town Hall. The sound of splintering wood fills the air, followed moments later by the roaring crackle of a fire raging into existence. Those cracks and crashes continue, but no others reach the ground.

The fire spreads with purpose, moving outward from the town's center but never touching the forest. It leaps from building to building, consuming everything in its path. It is a living, breathing thing driven by a need to devour. There is no stopping or controlling it.

As ash begins to fall from the sky like snow and the final hour begins, the earth rumbles like the sky. Like so many of them recently experienced, the ground shakes, sending burning buildings collapsing inward and residents tumbling to the ground. For a full minute, it seems as if the world is truly ending—

And then it stops. The world is silent. No rumbling of the sky, no crackles of fire. For a few moments, there is nothing.

The sound returns with a cacophonous rush, jarring and overwhelming. At first, it seems as if everything is normal, at least as normal as this nightmare world ever is. But residents will quickly begin to notice that the fire is receding, following the same path it took before. Back and back it goes, retreating through the street toward Town Hall. And if residents pay close attention, they will catch glimpses out of the corner of their eye of burned buildings suddenly repaired and standing as they had before the storm — just a glimpse, gone in a flash when faced fully, but enough to have anyone questioning what sanity they still have remaining.

When the sixth hour ends, so too do the dead. They will blink and in one moment be in this empty red hellscape of Mathias and in the next, awakening on Day 037, with only their memories to show for their harrowing experiences.

ABOUT THE FIRE
The fire that spreads through Mathias can be treated as an almost sentient entity. It does not necessarily behave as fire normally does — it can skip buildings, burn when there's nothing to fuel it, and may actively pursue residents. How it behaves in your character's encounter with it is up to you and does not need to match how others perceive it.

Characters may be injured and even killed by the fire. Both will incur sanity loss and may cause your character to gain a Madness (in addition to others they may gain from normal sanity loss).
— All who are injured by the fire lose one sanity point and will wake on day 037 with their burns.

— All who are killed by the fire lose two sanity points and gain the Madness pyrophobia for seven days. The degree of their pyrophobia is up to the individual player.

CONDITIONS UPDATE
— THE WEATHER starts off clear, with temperatures well below freezing. The storm begins to move inwards around three hours in, and takes full form an hour after that.

— THE FOG has vanished. The dead may wander the whole of Mathias at their leisure, though there is still a chasm in the earth between Hill Lane and Stine Road. The chasm spans from one side of town to the other, each end disappearing into the forest, and effectively blocks passage to the "northern" (actually western) part of town.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue. Eliot Waugh has now vanished as well. Though none of them will notice until tomorrow...

— THE GREY GULL now has a working bar! The selection is not quite what it once was.

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

— REWARD REDEPEMPTION is on hold for this log. Sorry, friends! It'll be back next round.

— HOUSEKEEPING Please be sure to have a look at this post in regards to sanity loss from the Hunt and what is being done with the corpses of the Hunt's victims.

— MOD STATUS What will become a regular reminder that 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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Whatever was going one, Raylan was sure of the cause of it, the heart of it, the root - whatever you wanted to call it, he was sure it was on the other side of the chasm. Call him curious, call him suicidal, call him obsessed - the first place Raylan went after gathering his wits was the chasm. The fucking gap that haunted him and, in a more literal sense, haunted Malcolm. In this in between place - or maybe we should reconsider that Mathis IS hell - he had to hope something was different. That something would give way, let him over, let him see.

It was still there, an ugly rend in the land, mocking him as he strode up to it and stood, hands propped on crooked hips so he could glare at it some more. In death as he was in life, but there was something else missing, Raylan noted several minutes later. The fog. Without hesitation, Raylan picked a direction and started walking.

It took some time, but finally, the trees opened up.

An hour later, he came jogging out of the woods, eager to get the fuck out of dodge with the storm he sensed on the air. For people not used to smelling oncoming trouble, that might have sounded strange, but Raylan had seen and lived through enough storms, tornados and hurricanes to know what the sky was getting ready to give them. Like hell was he getting stuck out here in the darkness with no light of his own. Also, it was bullshit that purgatory had a day and night cycle - the perks of death were far from what he'd been promised.

Peace and quiet.

But Mathis seemed intent on tearing every bit of peace and quiet out of them, piece by piece.

Fire at the Disco

Raylan would have cheered when the Town Hall was hit had he seen it, but he barely got to the edge of the treeline before full dark fell and it was pure memory that had him running in a straight line towards the streets he now knew too well as the sky thundered around him. The sound of it alone drove him faster towards the now burning town.

He wasn't going to run away from this one.

"TO THE BEACH," he yells at the first person he sees. "BEACH OR THE TREES, GO GO."

Raylan kept booking it into town, more concerned about getting people away from the fire, getting back to his own turf, his own people than the fire jumping around him. He had figured the middle of the street would keep him safe, but all it took was a few seconds too long in one spot for the fire to leap out and catch his leg. Raylan stumbled and swore, hands madly grabbing snow and slapping his calf.

It did nothing. The fire seared him into his boot and crawled up him, jumping to his other leg as Raylan started screaming again in short breaths, brain trying to scream for help and not managing the words as he beat uselessly at the flames. In the end all he could do was roll around desperately as he felt his skin frying and breaking, screaming in agony until his lungs and eyes and brain finally collapsed and succumbed to it.

When the fire finally pulls back, what is left of Raylan is unrecognizable outside of the hat that had rolled several feet away and the tin star that could be found if one kicked the ash of his coat away.

Neal saw Raylan run past into town on his own way out. He slipped, skidding to a halt in snow rapidly turning to meltwater as the flames blasted through Mathias's streets.

No, no. No no no, he wasn't going to let this happen. He wasn't going to let Raylan throw himself into the middle of things in some kind of penance for not doing it before. There was no fighting this, no defeating this, all they had was the short opportunity to get away.

"Raylan!" Neal screamed the man's name, but he couldn't even hear his own voice over the roar of the fire. He looked toward the beach, desperately wanting to just go, to put as much distance between himself and this new threat as possible.

"FUCK!" Another scream, at the fire, at Raylan, at the town, at every stupid, stupid, stupid part of himself that fought the hindbrain need to escape with compassion. Malcolm would understand it, be able to explain it, the chemical madness that put safety so many bars below family.

Neal ran after Raylan.

He caught up as the flames chewed their way up Raylan's torso, as the hat flew clear, as Raylan's muscles started their snap-crackle-contraction, balling him up as the screaming stopped. Had it stopped? It hadn't stopped.

No, Neal was screaming, too.

One thing Klaus has always been good at is getting the hell out of dodge when shit goes sideways, as it invariably and inevitably always does. Like now, with fire springing up everywhere he looks, thanks to the freak storm that, frankly, he finds it incredibly unfair of to be happening when they're all dead, thanks.

He's already running as fast as his feet will carry him away from the danger. He has nothing in mind at all except getting away, getting safe somewhere far enough away from the flames that keep trying to lick at whatever they can reach.

The scream that rings out is a bone-chilling, guttural thing. There are no words, no sounds other than that scream. He tries not to think who might be in it-- but he knows who's around, and he knows who that sounded like and the thought sinks his heart into the pit of his stomach. Not again, Raylan.

Decades-deep training means he's already assessing everything as he runs-- he may not be the statistician his brother is (any of them, actually), but he had the all the same lessons they did. And he can tell from the way those screams grew worse and worse, there's no use turning back.

But he couldn't have accounted for someone else ignoring their flight instincts to double back and help.

He looks just in time to see Neal make that split-second decision to fight and his face twists into the horrific realization that it's going to be both of them now. He skids on his shoes as he turns to cup his hands around his mouth and shout as loud as he can, hoping the other man might hear him. "NEAL! FORGET IT! HE'S GONE, SAVE YOURSELF!" Those words may sound impossibly harsh and selfish, and perhaps they just are to a certain extent-- but they are also very real, practicality above emotion in the thick of an impossible choice.

He never stopped running, but he did trip over him own feet as he tried to gain traction again.

Klaus isn't sure he'll ever get those screams out of his head.

036 » aftermath: the dead

This is not the bonfire we requested - OTA

fire at the disco - closed to klaus?? since raylan's DEAD AND ALL

no subject