059-061 » the place where you stop the story

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Southern Mathias
WHEN: Day 059-061
WHAT: Time returns to "normal" and Mathias grants a reprieve.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted the weekend of May 15th May 22nd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Nathan Johnson "Foul Play"

DAY 059-061
A BRIEF REPRIEVE
“There is no real ending. It’s just
the place where you stop the story.”
— Frank Herbert
Residents awake to a peaceful morning with the sun shining and earth remaining still. There is no unsettling shaking to rouse them at dawn, and time has continued moving onward as they slept. Whatever state they were in the night before, they remain that way now, for good or for bad.

On the surface, there seems to be little lasting effect on the tiny town from that strange series of days, save for the memories of any traumatic experiences residents may have faced — but there are always consequences within Mathias. The perpetrators of acts against the town are tormented by nightmares of those acts being used against them, and those who did not raise a hand to stop those acts of destruction may yet face consequences of their own. For now, however, the unwilling townspeople should do their best to rest and recover from the disturbing ordeals of late, for this reprieve from the madness shall surely be shortlived.




THE NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake up on the beach near The Grey Gull. It's a bit chilly out with their wet clothes, but surely there's something to help warm them inside the restaurant. They may even find some alcohol within — and not just the cowboys' homemade moonshine.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE HISTORY MUSEUM has not fared well with the return of "normal" time. The once esteemed wooden building is now a charred ruin, the recent fire leaving behind little of the contents within for study. The structure is unstable and it is not wise to venture into the ruins for long.

— THE WEATHER conditions remain fairly typical for early fall: warm days and cool nights. It feels almost like spring arriving except that there fewer red and orange leaves on the ground and more of them oddly returning to the trees and slowly fading to green. It's like watching one of those nature documentaries that have a timelapse of the seasons, only it's going in reverse.

— THE FOG has retreated from some areas!

— Residents may now wander the southern stretch of the forest surrounding Mathias Township — it is possible to leave the paths but potentially unwise to do so.
— The fog has also retreated farther into the western section of town, now stretching across town between Stine Road and Shelley Drive. This has revealed the Chasm in the earth that stretches from one side of town to the other between Stine and Hill Lane.
— Access to the northern section of the forest is still blocked beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline; this section of fog will urge residents to stay huddled within the town proper by inducing a physical reaction of panic and fear.

— DEATHS & DISAPPEARANCES continue! Max Guevara has vanished into the fog. Claire Novak's body can be spotted on Day 059 facedown at the bottom of the Chasm between Hill and Stine, near Phillips Drive; by the morning of Day 060, her body will be gone. (Attempts may be made to reach her body but will likely not end well for those involved. Such attempts should be reported under Exploration.)

— ALCOHOL is still in Mathias! Just barely. (Supply is running very low after recent town events.) A small stock of beer and cheap wine may be found at the General Store, and some homes may have a small store of alcohol in the fridge or pantry. The Grey Gull was also restocked with its lower-end offerings of a variety of alcohol types. (Alcohol does not replenish as food does.)

---

OOC NOTES

— PROJECT HELP Your mod needs help with some projects!

— FUTURE PLANNING If you haven't, please answer the questions here for future log planning. I will almost definitely need some of these answers for the log going up the weekend of May 15, so act quickly! Late submissions will not be considered for that log.

— UPDATES Don't forget to report updates as they come up! Changes to locations (like toppling a few bookshelves in the library), big plots you have coming up that will affect the game (parties, major property destruction, etc), or exciting discoveries that may tie into the game's mythology (even the things provided by the mod) are very helpful to have in one place so relevant page updates can be made.

— MOD STATUS The usual reminder that it's just Amy steering this ship, so things will are going to be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pestering me if you're stuck waiting for something.

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Comments

[enduresurvive]

Ellie has known Dina a few years, but it's only very recently that they had been together. She hadn't even known Dina liked girls at all until Dina had kissed her at that party. She doesn't want to think about that night, the last night Joel was alive, the reconciliation she'd started that had been cruelly taken away.

"Yeah. I mean, we might not get home, so...why be totally miserable until then, right?"

She finally sits back in the chair, pulling one leg up and wrapping her arms around it. It might seem like an awkward position, but she's pretty small anyway, so it works for her.

"I don't know what to fucking do, Henry. We can't stay in this place. We'll all die here. But we can't leave. What's the point, you know? If whoever or whatever trapped us here just wants to kill us, why not get it the fuck over with?"

[thering]

Well. That's not what he meant, even if he's not sure about their prospect of going home. But he does think there is some merit in living in the moment. Waiting for some eventuality that hopefully will but might never come, it can drive anyone mad.

"They do not want to kill us." He surmised this a while ago. Or at least, simply made this assumption. Like Ellie, he believes that if someone who is capable of all this wanted them dead, they could simply have been struck down many moons ago.

"The person who imprisoned me wanted for torment. Suffering. She seemed to delight in it. Sometimes people are... simply cruel. And more often than not we find ourselves at the whims of cruel people." There are few, if any, benevolent folks who would lord themselves over others, like this. The cruel would have taken advantage of and walked all over them long ago.

[enduresurvive]

"Then why are so many of us dead?" she asks. She mostly agrees with him, though it's hard in the moment. It's clear they could all just be wiped out. But the town keeps fucking with them instead.

"Raylan thinks there's some cult or god worship or something. Maybe we're just...I don’t know. Maybe it is like they do fucking want us dead and the time isn't right." That doesn't seem entirely implausible. But then, most things seem plausible here much of the time.

She hears what he says about imprisonment and thinks, of course, of Abby. Abby could have just killed Joel right off. Instead, she made it worse. She made it torture. She thinks of David, willing to literally chop her into pieces because she wouldn't do what he wanted. She thinks of countless others, some dead, some unjustly alive. The world is not a nice place.

Sometimes people are simply cruel.

"Yeah," she says. "I know."

[thering]

"Recklessness and some inexplicable need to test and push boundaries," Doc replies dryly. They ought to know better by now - especially the ones who have been here for the better part of a couple months already. And still he finds he is having to pick up the pieces they leave behind when they go and do something foolish.

"Well, nevermind what Raylan thinks. He's an idiot. What do you think, Ellie?" That isn't ruling out that Raylan might be right. But Raylan is also good at getting himself hurt, or killed. And Doc is only calling him an idiot because he is quietly and subtly fond of the man, ill-fated though they might be.

"Do you think that is what this is? Cruel zealots holding us here waiting for the right time to kill us?"

[enduresurvive]

Ellie considers that answer.

"I don't feel like I play it safe," she says. "But I'm still here. And you are. Some people have died over and over and I just fucking...I dunno. I only wanna die once. And I sure as fuck don't wanna die here." Something is hard in her features at that. Doc already knows what she's about back home, her revenge and all of that. She isn't afraid of death or pain. But she doesn't want to live while Abby lives. That's just how it is.

She makes a sound that's almost a laugh at his comment about Raylan. She knows he doesn't mean it literally.

"Fuck, Henry, who knows what this is? I think the freaky cult shit is pretty fucking obvious. I've seen freaky cults. This seems like that. But it seems like that ended. So now we got that creepy shadow guy? Is he the leader or just...some soldier or some shit? Whatever this is, someone orchestrated it. And they want something from us, or want us to do something for them." She takes a deep, sharp breath. "I guess I don't think they wanna kill us all necessarily. But it's pretty clear that it doesn't matter if we do die. At least some of us. Maybe not all of us."

[thering]

Well, maybe it isn't just sheer recklessness to blame then. Maybe there is an element of luck also. Or just being gung ho in a less self-destructive way, if that is even possible. Of course, he'd rather not die at all. The prospect of losing everyone is very real to him. He doesn't want to be the only one left in Mathias a few decades from now.

"So perhaps a group of us were brought here by someone who had known full well that not all of us would make it," Doc repeats back to her, just for clarity's sake. It certainly makes sense to him. He would have done the same.

"I suppose I thought they would have given us their request by now. Like the phone call about the fog, and the note for their lanterns." This just feels like they're getting toyed with, strung along. It is unsettling yes, makes them anxious.

"I would like for you to continue living, in any case. For yourself and the things you need to get back to complete, if nothing else." He is not so conceited as to want for her to explicitly acknowledge that the people here care for her deeply.

[enduresurvive]

"Yeah, if they actively wanted something, you'd fucking think. It's been like two months or whatever. What the fuck are they waiting for? Maybe you're right and whoever did this is just a world class douchebag."

She shifts her weight a little in the chair and remembers something.

"Hey. Speaking of phone calls, there was a really fucking weird one recently. Like...it sounded like I was...calling myself? But I couldn't hear it all. I know it's some bogus truck, but it gave me the creeps."

Another sigh.

"I want you to live, too. You got shit to do back home, but...you know. I just don't want you to die." There's too much to unpack internally about the why of it, but Doc is her favourite person in town, and that was true even while Claire was definitely alive. Projection or whatever contributes, but it's not all that. Doc doesn't baby her or talk down to her, and she's known him since right at the beginning. Maybe there's something to the fact that they both keep living through, too. If it's luck, fine. If it's fate, well...she doesn't believe in fate.

[thering]

"I had been thinking about those. Whether it is someone mimicking us. Or if we'd figured out a way sometime in the future to warn ourselves now." But it would have meant that they did something differently at some point which never actually happened, and, well. He doesn't understand time travel or different timelines. He is barely cognizant that most people here are from different worlds.

"Nobody wants anybody to die," he says in an effort to try and make this conversation less awkward for her. But he appreciates the sentiment and he understands that maybe he means as much to her as she does to him.

"Maybe we'll get to find out what happened to Claire tomorrow. If we're a little bit lucky." He won't explicitly hold out hope for it, but. The possibility is there.

[enduresurvive]

"Warnings from the future sound way too fucking sci-fi to be real," she says, darkly amused. She's thought that too, though. But who knows? In the end, they know so very little about how this place works or what any of it means.

"That's bullshit. There are people in this town who wouldn't care or notice. There are people I don't know. I couldn't mourn someone I didn't know. But you? Raylan? Five? Shit."

Claire. Yennefer. Neal. Athena. The list isn't exhaustive, of course. The unspoken thing there in the air between them, again, is that it could be any of them at any time.

"Yeah. Maybe we will," she says, distant. "You never fucking know around here."