villagelogs | 059-061 » the place where you stop the story

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059-061 » the place where you stop the story

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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[Well, she understands that question.]

No.

[She makes no more attempts to take the pager, though, but says breezily in Greek, "It was worth a shot."]

Oh.

[Carter isn't sure what language that is and his hand pushes into his hair, not sure where to go from here.]

Uhm... okay... hang on!

[He grabs some more paper and starts scribbling, two panels, comic style. Well, stickman style. The first one shows him and a person on the ground, bleeding with oversized droplets coming out of its body. One of the twiggy line legs stands up in a wrong angle. It has a very sad face?

The second one shows him again next to the person but this time both are standing with happy faces. The patient has some squiggly bandages around its leg and its torso.

He's clearly not an artist but maybe it gets the point across?]

That's me? You call this... [He holds up the pager.] ... I come... [Some itsy-bitsy spider movements with his fingers.] ... and I'll try to fix you up.

Īātrós.

[She proclaims, looking over the drawing. He's a healer. She remembers Malcolm telling her that most people who die here don't stay dead - maybe this man is the reason why. Maybe his healing powers are far beyond anything most people are capable of.]

Death?

[She asks, stabbing her finger at the paper.]

[Īātrós. Does that mean doctor? Probably, right? Carter thinks the drawing is pretty straightforward.]

Death? Uh... yeah, I try to stop death.

[He nods, not really catching on to how else that could be interpreted.]

[She thinks briefly of the woman lying at the bottom of the chasm, and wonders if anyone's told him about her. Or maybe the problem is that she's too far out of reach - maybe his powers of revival require touch.

Leaving that topic behind for the moment and turning back to the phone, she studies the symbols again, ghosting her fingers over the dialpad. There are symbols on the houses too, symbols that - if she's remembering correctly - look very much like these, and Malcolm had said that his house had a number assigned to it, so maybe--

Grabbing a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, she carefully copies down the symbols as she sees them, moving right to left and top to bottom: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 * 0 #. Each button has sets of smaller symbols next to the bigger ones - abc, def, ghi, and so on - but she ignores those for now; she's seen them elsewhere, and is pretty sure that they're the letters of some unfamiliar alphabet. When she's done, she lifts the paper and shows it to Carter, then mimes counting on her fingers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, *, 0, and # - are these the numbers one through twelve in order?]

[Carter waits, craning his neck a bit and watching her curiously. Maybe she wants to communicate, draw a little comic on her own? As impractical as it is, he has to admit that it's also kind of fun.

When he sees the numbers and her counting he understands what she's getting at and he nods, then shakes his head.]

Yes and no. Almost.

[He starts at 0, making two fists as to indicate there's no fingers. Then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 - counting them the same way she had before.

He takes a pen and writes 10, then holds up all ten fingers. 11, 10+1 fingers. 12, 10+2. He moves it up all the way to twenty, starting a new column and writing 21, 22, 23... trying to clarify the system and the counting by tens.]

Numbers.

[He writes the * and # away from the columns and shakes his head.]

Not numbers.

[Well, okay. That's useful enough to know. She scratches out the *, 0, and # in her original row of numbers, rewriting 0 at the beginning of the line. Then, knowing she's not going to be able to memorize all of this in one go, she folds the paper in quarters and tucks it into her dagger sheath (which currently only holds a butter knife).]

Who are you?

[She asks, once that's done with.]

Name?

[Oh good. Carter wasn't really sure how to explain what the * and the # actually do so he's relieved when she puts the paper away and moves on to introductions. That's a lot easier to get across.]

John Carter.

[He places a hand on his chest, then gestures at her.]

Who are you?

Callisto. From Hellás, and Tártaros.

[From Cirra, really, but everybody here is a foreigner, so she has to speak more broadly.]

You--

[She points at him.]

Īātrós.

[Then she touches her own chest.]

Fight, death.

[She's a warrior, a warlord, a killer - all those words fit.]

[Tártaros. Somehow that rings a bell. Something about Greece? Maybe she's Greek?]

Īātrós.

[He repeats it slowly, probably butchering the pronunciation but he tries.]

Īātrós. Doctor. Doctor Carter.

[Fight, death. Carter nods slowly. The butter knife, her whole appearance and attitude...]

A soldier? You fight?

[He gestures at the sheath and makes some slashing motions.]

Fighter Callisto?

[She gives a sharp nod of acknowledgement at Doctor Carter. She's not quite sure how these people's names work - he'd introduced himself as John Carter, but now he's chopping off the John bit, so maybe one of those names is a patronym? - but the inclusion of the title is easy enough to understand.

And as for the title he's suggesting for her... that makes a slow smile spread across her face. It's not a nice smile, and it's noticeably empty behind the eyes, but it's a smile all the same.]

Yes.

[Yes, absolutely; she likes that.]

Yes, Fighter Callisto. But--

[She pulls out the sad little butter knife, showing it to him with a look of distaste. This isn't exactly a suitable weapon for a fearsome warrior.]

[Riiight.

Carter blinks slowly at that not!smile and licks his lips, unsure. Should he be nervous here? It feels like he should be nervous here. He's really all for having more fighter types like Spencer in the city but maybe it's actually a good thing a butter knife is all she has?]

Oh yeah. Yeah, that, that sucks.

[He nods, feigning sympathy that isn't entirely disingenuous. He's not a fighter, he's not a violent man, but after the Hunt? He'd probably sleep better if he knew the more powerful people in town had actual weapons to defend them with.]

I made a sword out of a branch. Uh...

[He scribbles a tree on another paper, then another stickman fencing with it.]

[His uncertainty barely registers with her - she's used to people being nervous around her. They have good reason to be. The ones who aren't nervous are the weird ones.]

This is what?

[She asks, tapping the makeshift sword in his drawing. If she's going to keep looking for one, it'll help to know what they're called here.]

This is a "sword". Made from a "tree".

[He taps his approximations of trees he scribbled down.]

It's not much but it's the best we can get, I suppose?

[Plus, if she really is a fighter like Spencer? He's pretty sure she can make a sturdy branch deadly enough.]

And this?

[She holds up the knife next.]

Knife.

[He puts his thumb and index finger closely together.]

Small.

[Very small. She mouths the word knife, wrinkling her nose a little. It's not even good enough to carve a proper point into a tree branch - though she could use a branch as a staff, she supposes. That would be even more effective than trying to make a sword out of one.]

You fight?

[She asks, tapping the drawing of the fencing stick figure.]

Me? Uh, not really. I fence?

[He draws something that resembles more of a broadsword and crosses that out, then draws a rapier in comparison and taps it before shifting into an en garde stance.]

That one. You know that one? Lighter. Faster.

[Callisto is completely unfamiliar with fencing, but that certainly looks like swordplay to her, so she resolutely taps the paper again, then points to him.]

Yes. Fight.

[Own it, Carter.]

Okay, okay, I guess. Fight.

[He does pride himself on his fencing skills.]

Small fight.

Small fight.

[She agrees, amused. Then she spreads her arms as wide as they can go.]

And this?

[How does she declare herself to be the biggest, baddest fighter of them all, Carter?]

[All right, that makes him laugh and he playfully mirrors her action.]

Big fight.

[He makes a stabbing motion, the pauses, wondering if he should encourage this. Oh well.]

The biggest fighter.

[It makes her smile, at least! Though her smiles are more unsettling than properly joyful.]

Big and biggest, yes.

[She is, if nothing else, a good person to have fighting at your side - if you can get her on your side.]

[Yeahh, that. That's something. His okay-that's-a-patient-you-shouldn't-turn-your-back-on sense is tingling a little but then again, their conversation has been friendly and interesting so far.]

That's good, really. We need big fighters. This place is dangerous. Lots of monsters.

[His hands come up and he makes a roaring sound while doing the universal gesture of teethy things that come at you.]

Bad monsters.

In the woods?

[She's been warned, and while it hasn't stopped her from sleeping out there, near the treeline, she's kept an eye out.]

In the-- the--

[Not remembering the word for fog, she instead mimes squinting through it, walking slowly the way one does when they' can't see more than a foot or two in front of them.]

This.

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