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

[tinstar]

"Learn somethin' if I can, kick its ass, probably die tryin'." But what was his alternative?

"Hopefully not alone."

[walkingtrigger]

Shoveling up dirt, the younger marshal frowned pensively as he worked on a corner of the grave he was digging. His mind was turning over the image that Malcolm had shown him in the tunnel. The image he and Dr. Carter had found in the lighthouse, the tall and shadowy man.

"You think about what you're going to do if this turns out to be something we're not meant to fight?" Tim paused already anticipating that he might need to expand on that a bit.

"I had Malcolm show me a mural he found in the tunnels. There was a scribbling, a three lobed eye. There is a similar set of scribbles in the Lighthouse, that same eye figure. It's a type of image that pops up in various supernatural stories, often ones that investigate the idea of things that frighten us at an instinctive level."

Just thinking about it caused Tim to reach up and rub at the back of his neck, as if settling the hairs back there.

"You realize we're in a kill box, right?"

[tinstar]

"Not really," He admitted shortly. Sitting still wasn't an option. Laying down and giving up wasn't an option. What other options did he have? He welcomed any suggestions that he could get. If dying wasn't permanent, it was something in their favor, as ugly as it was.

Raylan stopped again and looked over at Tim as he talked about the image that was everywhere. "Negan and I saw the same image on a movie at the Theater. When we restarted the reel, it was fine but.. It was there.."

He shook his head. "What can we do about it except die? I keep lookin for a way outta this box canyon, a ladder or somethin'. Just dyin' can't be the option, can it?"

[walkingtrigger]

Tim's expression said it all. Two instances might just be coincidence, but three? That was starting to feel like a pattern that shouldn't be ignored.

"You're not going to like the other obvious possibilities," the younger marshal began in a sober tone. "Think about Athena's nightmare. Think about what many civilizations practiced when they felt the environment had turned against them. What lengths will man go to in order to secure favor with that which holds power over them is a universal trope, explored in a lot of literature; both fictional and not."

Tim bounced the handle of the shovel between his hands and looked out across the graveyard.

"It might not be about dying, but about belief."

[tinstar]

It washed over him like a tsunami.

"No. We're not-" His head pulled back, shaking a little as his face tried to process it all and failed mightly. "You're not suggestin' that we start doin' what we suspected them of doing, are you? Ritual sacrifice, Tim?"

He was right; Raylan didn't like those options.

"Fuck God. Ours and this place - belief? We meant to become those.. those fuckin' hieroglyphs they found in Egypt or something, huddling in bunches while we mutter some.. prayer to somethin' we can't see?"

It.. made sense. It did. And he hated it. What had faith ever brought him? What had God for that matter

[walkingtrigger]

The younger marshal stayed quiet and gave the older man his head to process the theory he'd just proposed. Did some digging and even letting a bit of quiet settle over them after Raylan's final outburst, before he continued.

"I don't think we're talking about the Judeo-Christian 'God'." Just wanted to clarify that because he understood the idea of struggling with THE FAITH of Harlan County. The struggle for lawmen to face down the worst of humanity day in and day out and the belief in an almighty being who would let such things happen.

"Do you remember the story I was reading, the Indian Princess and the invisible forest...wait, that's later on your timeline," Tim paused in his digging and leaned on the shovel. "Since the beginning of time humanity has tried to explain the inexplicable by building mythology around supernatural forces, usually in the form of a worshipped deity or deities.

Even when it begins from a place of good, worship is all too easily corrupted because it becomes about power. The greatest man made atrocities in history are rooted in the idea of communication with an 'other'."

Tim reached up and rubbed his arm over his forehead, spreading dirt.

"You're already talking about this town like it's a sentient being. Not saying you're wrong, Raylan but if that's how you feel about it after only a few months, how do you think the people who were actually trying to make their lives here, came to think of it? How desperate were they to make this shit stop?"

Picking up the shovel the Ranger began to dig again, speaking his next comment over his shoulder.

"It really approved of the bleeding I was doing down in the tunnel. That was part of why I ... kept going. Whatever was down there with me wanted more and more."

[tinstar]

"I don't think we are either, but there's been a few here that say they know Him," Raylan readily agreed. Harlan's God, his grandfathers God, Boyd's God wouldn't be doing this, he was sure. The sentiment still stood.

He frowned faintly as he tried to recall any book and then- Something else he'd missed. He knew it wasn't half fair to ask, what with his request of no spoilers, but part of him wanted to. To have a full run down of all the shit he'd missed. To be properly on the same page as Tim. He wasn't sure he was going to enjoy it. There wasn't much in his life that he did.

That idle thought aside, Tim painted a picture he hadn't given much thought to. There was no helping the people that had lived here and the way things were left, on the surface, it didn't look like much room for suffering. But if they were driven.. If the town wanted to consume them.

"You think that the blood she's already taken from us ain't enough? That's she's.. tryin' to push us to snappin' and goin' primitive on each other?" He tried not to sound upset by it and while he mostly succeeded, with Tim knowing his tones so well, he knew the sniper would pick it up.

Irritated by their situation, Raylan shoved his shovel away propped his hands on his hips. When all else failed, Southern Problem solving.

"This can't be a viable option for resolution. It can't be." Except now that the seed was planted, he couldn't help but water it.

[walkingtrigger]

Tim liked to make the impression that he was an idiot. It served him well when dealing with Feebs, other law enforcement agencies and most of all with the fugitives they chased. The baby marshal did not fool himself into believing that his co-workers were hoodwinked by the act, but he also rarely took steps to prove them right.

Aware that Raylan had adopted the Southern Problem solving stance Tim levered out one additional scoop of dirt before he buried the shovel in the dirt so it stood up on its own. He then turned and adopted a mirror stance, his expression sliding into the serious expression that seemed to put years on his otherwise youthful countenance.

"You dig deep enough into literature, art, philosophy you come to realize something," his voice was the quiet tone he'd used when he caught Raylan ditching him to drag Gary to Wynn Duffy. It wasn't in a scolding manner, as it had been that night, but was rather an indicator of intensity of thought.

"'Good' and 'Evil' are Biblical concepts. There is no evidence in nature, the planet, the universe that supports the idea that an action is 'Good' or 'Evil'. We assign those motivations to help explain the inexplicable to ourselves."

Tim looked around the town once again before coming back to Raylan.

"Think instead in terms of 'Order' and 'Chaos', where Order represents manifested reality and Chaos represents unmanifested reality. The stories I mentioned, they often center on the subject of a chaotic being as an unmanifested reality that doesn't have the parameters of an Ordered reality to contain it. It grows in power through sowing more chaos, more unmanifested reality to harness."

Suspecting he might be losing Raylan -at least given the older man's current temper- Tim stopped, took a minute and then tried to shove his idea into a nutshell.

"It's not just about blood. It's about the power to be found in chaos, in unmanifested reality: manifested. What is a greater example of disorder, than paranoia in a community until that community begins to turn on itself?"

[tinstar]

No, most of of the office knew Tim was a sharp man but how sharp was probably beyond everyone but the core group. (And those that were with Tim when Colt made them circle the wagons, but that was beyond Raylan. It didn't change what he knew.) A lot of assholes could get through the collage to be a Marshal, but there was more to being a sniper than pulling a trigger. There was more to being a Marshal for more than a few years than passing exams.

"I stopped thinkin' in black and whites before you were born, Tim," he mutters, just loudly enough to be heard, shoulders a little lower for having to broach into all this. It was good, in the end. He needed. "Good, Evil - All about perspective. People like Boyd, Arlo.. Ain't evil, just.. stubborn, stupid, hillbilly trash."

Raylan shifted forward in his waist deep hole, fingers digging into the dirt as he propped his weight on the grave's edge, very obviously trying to mull through the rest of the suggestion. "Ain't far off from my idea of them minin' us for terror and fear. No order in that."

He shook his head and once it started, he couldn't stop it, dangerously dark eyes coming back up to meet Tim's. "We can't let that be the end answer for us. Devolvin' into that base of ourselves."

If anyone here was capable of it, it'd be them. Or Malcolm, honestly. Will Graham too, if he thought about it. Pragmatism was a terrible beast.

[walkingtrigger]

Tim considered taking umbrage to the suggestion that they were that far apart in ages! But before he could form the right amount of snark he recognized that it probably wasn't unreasonable that a seven year old Raylan, under Arlo's roof would have stopped thinking in terms of black and white at an early age.

Sucking on his teeth the young Ranger glanced down at his feet, giving a slight nod of his head; accepting that Raylan was right about that not being the end answer. At least not one that any of them were going to easily countenance. However. His next suggestion was probably going to be even more impossible.

"That leaves the other extreme," he said, looking up from under his eyebrows. "We stop playing this town's game. We do what we need to survive, but beyond that we ... ignore it." So much easier said than done and Tim's expression says that he understands this.

"If it is feeding on our terror, fear, high emotions? Then I saw we starve it out, the way we would a fugitive holed up behind a locked door."

[tinstar]

A decade by a year or more was enough to note the differences but with Tim it didn't matter. Tim was older than he had any right to be mentally and that got him a lot of ground. There was nothing for him to prove - he'd already proved everything he needed to by still being here, still fighting.

"You really think we can do that? That we can convince anyone else to overcome the instinct that sits in all of us?" He glared down at the ground for a second. "We could make a social push for it. Shit like that work here. Especially with our connections. But. If we could get enough of us to strap it down.." He looked back up.

"You've already suffered a death here. With all you got on your plate. You think you could do that? Suffer another one without givin' into the fear?" Because Raylan wasn't sure he could. The two he'd gone through was more than enough.

[walkingtrigger]

"Pollyanna I am not," Tim said and he deliberately kept his voice soft rather than allow the sharpness that usually edged his words to creep in. It was just he and Raylan here at the moment and Tim understood that Raylan could use a little softness outside the bedroom. "But it might be worth putting the suggestion out there. Give people the opportunity to mull it over. They might come around."

It would take time but honestly, time was something they seemed to have in abundance. Then Raylan asked that question and Tim pursed his lips, glancing around automatically to confirm there were no ears about.

"I've lived with the notion that each morning I wake up, I may be dead by the end of my day," first in the Army and now with the Marshal Service. "My dying doesn't bother me. I'm gonna have a harder time wrestling with the emotions of failing to keep you safe and sound." The first time Mathias killed Raylan in front of Tim? The town was going to be lucky to remain standing.

Tim sucked a tooth and turned to pick up his shovel. "Shit, I'm more scared of what will happen to you if Malcolm gets killed."

[tinstar]

"I think you'd look cute in pigtails," Raylan halfheartedly teased, trying to pull a little levity into it all, enough to buoy them out of the darkness for a half second before they inevitably got pulled back under. Raylan had never been a prisoner before and while he'd argued the idea in the early days of being here, they were past 3 months and the few blocks of space they got were prison enough.

He nodded. They'd start the whisper campaign. Soft power games weren't his favorite, but he could play them just as expertly as the rest of the social games demanded. As he listened to the rest of the answer, he realized how stupid a question it had been to pose to Tim, specifically. Mainly because they shared the same mind on it. Raylan would have answered much the same way if he'd been asked. He needed to get his shit together.

And then Tim goes and says that.

"Only calculated risks," he echoed the sentiment of the other night like it would remind them both of what they had promised. Grief was a terrible, heavy thing. "It's not the him gettin' killed part that is worrisome. If we come back, there's hope. If he doesn't.." If they were properly gone, then he would have to accept their death as just that.

Raylan shook his head and took a deep breath before following Tim's que and picking up his own shovel.

"Both my deaths, nothin' no one coulda done about them. Better to remember and deal with that now. We weren't doin' anythin' more than having a cup of coffee on the porch and shootin' the shit. A bit of sense on our neckhairs but nothin' outta the ordinary for a quiet night..." He hefted and slammed his shovel into the dirt to break it loose harder than strictly necessary. "Til it wasn't quiet anymore."

[walkingtrigger]

"I am adorable in pigtails," Tim shot right back without missing a beat. "There is photographic evidence." He had just come in from a long tour out in the field and gotten absolutely obliterated drunk the night before he went into the base barber. His hair had ended up in pigtails that night and some asshole took a picture.

Tim stayed deliberately quiet over the next bit. He knew how hard it was for men like them to talk about the things that lingered in the back of their minds at night. Not so much the death itself but the memories leading up to that moment; that period of quiet til it wasn't quiet. That was what could jam the mental gearshift into a hyper-vigilant state that became impossible to turn off.

"That usually the way of it?" Tim asked when Raylan hit a pause in his recollection. It was a neutral sort of question but one designed to encourage the other man to keep talking. To drag the trauma out into the sunlight where it couldn't twist so easily into a mental monster in the dark.

[tinstar]

Pics or it didn't happen? Raylan would love to see that picture, rib Tim for the story until he got it. Maybe he would, when they weren't talking about such heavy things.

"No," Raylan said quietly with a faint shake of his head. "Even the fog rolled in slow enough for us to make a choice about where we needed to be. They were locked in. We were locked out, couldn't break the windows or shoulder in the door.. We tried to get back inside, I swear we did but then the.. The fear of it was unnatural, sent us scramblin' out into the snow. Talkin' about ignorin' it.. There was no controllin' it. No mitigatin' it. That's not the fear that chases me but.. I can't help but relive it sometimes in my head. Like I coulda picked anything else up that might warn us next time."

As he spoke, he shoveled, taking out the impotent rage Mathis left in him on her earth.

"Nothing we can do to stop it from happenin' again, if she wants. Part of the reason I'm diggin'."

[walkingtrigger]

More like some asshole trying to get bribery material only to learn just how few fucks Tim gave about shit like that.

Something Tim had learned over the years and over the years of working with Raylan Givens, was that sometimes there just was no answer. There was nothing that could be said to make things right, or even provide the solace of some sort of closure. Everything the older marshal was talking about did place a weight of despair on the mind and Tim knew that what he was feeling was still mild compared to what Raylan was carrying around.

For awhile he let Raylan dig in silence, offering his quiet companionship and steady help with the project. When he broke the silence it was with a question that had nothing to do with Mathias and the shit they were currently in. They needed a breather or Raylan was going to wind himself so tight he'd snap; again.

"Did Dewey Crowe honestly believe he had four kidneys?"