036 » aftermath: the dead

[villagemod]

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.

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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.

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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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Comments

[bestfuneralever]

"Maybe nothing. Maybe the whole fucking town because a fire that big is gonna be insanely hard to keep in check once it gets started. There's nothing in all the world to say we can't die again in this place, Raylan, is that really a risk you wanna take?"

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. If there's one thing Klaus is good at, it's panicked babbling.

He's shaking his head by the end of what the other man has said. "Look, speaking as someone who has someone and something to blame for every fucked up thing in my head, it doesn't help. My dad fucked me up royally, Raylan, and I have blamed him for it all for my whole life. And I thought that, you know, if it weren't for him, I could get my shit together. But he died and nothing changed. Actually, he died and everything changed, but not in the way I thought it would, not for better. Because the fucking Apocalypse happened instead!" He throws his hands in the air. "'Cuz fuck it, why not, right? And it was my sister that caused it. Because Dad never let her play with us as kids...basically." He waves one hand dismissively. Everything with Vanya is so much more complicated than that, but in the easiest-digestible nutshell.... that was kind of the thing.

"My point is, as great as having something to throw blame at sounds, it doesn't fucking fix anything! " Still in that sort of no-thoughts-only-action movement, he reaches up to frame Raylan's face between his hands, "And neither will razing the whole town to the ground."

[tinstar]

For some reason, Raylan hadn't really expected Klaus to start going off with actual reasons - he fully endorsed it, regardless, he just hadn't been sure there was a line that would make Klaus snap out of either his quiet withdrawn reprieve or the casual trauma lighthearted mix that was uniquely him. Klaus was still something of a mystery to him. No one had really tangled with Raylan here, spoken up against him, over him. It was a refreshing change of pace.

Even if he might not totally agree.

Without the forward movement, all of Raylan's impotent fury coiled in his jaw, he stayed quiet, letting Klaus say his peace, eyes dark enough to be black in the poor lighting. He blamed his father too and he couldn't wait for Arlo to find his way in the ground; he couldn't ever imagine not feeling better with Arlo dead and in the ground. But he wasn't a junkie trying to stay off smack or whatever Klaus's poison was. One day he'd ask.

There was a lot to unpack there and now wasn't the time, not that he could with Klaus stepping in to cup his face. It shifted something in his face, the touch taking off the edge to some of the uncompromising anger in his face. It helped that Klaus wasn't wrong in everything else.

It took him a half second to answer. "I can't sit down and let this place break me." He couldn't, physically unable to stop without the resignation of it all to weigh on him. He was too close to his death to be resigned about anything. "What else do you suggest I do besides hurt this place as badly." As badly as they'd been hurt. He wanted to make it suffer like he had, like they had.