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

[thering]

"Hasn't yet turned up dead." Small blessings. Doc will take the paltry few blessings Mathias deigns worthy to give him. Table scraps are better than nothing. Although, of course, he hadn't scoured the town this morning, so he can't be sure if there's just one or several bodies he hasn't stumbled across yet.

"Maybe burning the museum down had something to do with freeing us from the dreary cycle of that neverending day," Doc offers, trying hard to put an optimistic spin on events and it probably shows, too. But the Town Hall had been restored and he was there to watch it be reduced to cinders. What happened here was definitely different.

[conning]

"Maybe." It would make sense. It's the only thing Neal knows of that's actually changed in the past twenty-four hours. But he's not confident in the idea, the way he might have been when he first got here. There's too much that's been senseless, pointless, disconnected. Too much that feels like it's just been someone pulling a lever on a lotto machine of horrors to see what lines up and spills out.

Neal studies the tarp for a moment. "It must be a relief, that it's gone."

[thering]

The more disorienting Neal is finding Mathias to be, the more likely it is that he is getting accustomed to the senseless violence that this town finds delightful. It is not necessarily a bad thing. Doc doesn't always see Mathias as particularly cruel. His world had been one where children often died before their parents, disease and unprovoked gunfights were rampant, and a stroke of misfortune could ruin livelihoods forged by generations of hard work in a matter of seconds. Some of what Mathias does to her people is unnecessarily cruel. But some of it is simply life.

"I am just happy no one got hurt. And that we are no longer stuck in the same repeating sliver of time." Doc has been setting his bar lower and lower these days. If there hasn't been an overnight massacre and a handful of rotting, mutilated corpses to bury come morning, it doesn't count as a bad night anymore.

"I do believe we are finished here." All the rocks he had brought up from the beach are fairly evenly spaced out, and the tent nails are secured in place. "I was going to go to the greenhouse. Tend to the tomatoes." Neal is welcome to follow, if he wants to.

[conning]

"I'll help," he says immediately, maybe a little too eager to prove his apology was sincere. It's what happens when he disappoints someone--he tries, immediately and too hard, to make it up to them. It's a variation on Malcolm's fear that everyone is going to eventually walk away. For Neal, it means proving he's worth keeping around.

He brushes his fingertips along his jaw, the small start of his beard. "I don't think I've ever really been in the greenhouse before."

[thering]

"In that case, I would be happy to show you around. I chanced upon Yennefer there when the food stopped replenishing and we seeded some tomatoes." That's not a euphemism for anything, by the way, in case Neal is wondering. Yes, Yennefer is drop dead gorgeous. No, nothing of that sort has happened in the greenhouse.

"And a few other vegetables. Will Graham has been there a few times also, tidying and cleaning the place up." It's actually quite nice now compared to when he'd first stepped into the place.

[conning]

Yennefer. There's a moment's pause before name and face click. "Ah, she's the one who looks like she could have any man she wanted and would murder them after just to prove a point."

Yeah, he thinks it's hot. No, he's not ashamed to admit it.

[thering]

"That would be her," Doc agrees with a twitch of a smile. Look, they are all men, and he has no doubt they've all thought about it. There's no need to be coy. When he first met her she was even wearing this most elaborate dress with the most distracting boob window and it was a struggle to maintain eye contact.

"She is also a renowned sorceress. But I... would think it's safe to say us mere mortals know very little of magic." The most magical person in 1306 is probably Neal Caffrey with card and coin tricks. A far cry from the Yennefers and the John Constantines they have met. "I imagine, with her assistance, what we are growing in the greenhouse will be fruiting in only two or three more weeks."

[conning]

Could step on him in the ordinary way of things, and in the magical way of things. Somehow that's even hotter.

"I wish there was a way to pick it up. Magic, I mean. It could be useful in a lot of ways."

Not just the cultivation of food. The defense of people here, maybe, or the protection of houses and buildings. Maybe. He knows it doesn't all work here, not properly. But something would be better than nothing.

[thering]

"Well some of our local magicians have claimed that anyone could learn while the others insist you have to be born with... something." Not that Doc has engaged in these long discussions about nature, nurture, magic, and all the rest of it. He suspects that maybe while there will be few less fortunate amongst them who could simply never learn, it won't be much different from any other skill that can be picked up with some amount of difficulty.

"From what I have seen, how much it has cost the people we have met far outstrips any of its utility. And it is not as if you can jettison magic out of your life once you have been tainted by it. Can't unfry an egg, reductive as that sounds. Once you have it in your life, it..." Doc shakes his head. "I 'on't know. Hasn't seemed to work out well for anyone."

[conning]

"That's true," Neal admits. He hadn't thought about what having magic would mean once they get out of this place. Or what it would be like to learn it in Mathias, where everything is twisted and corrupted to begin with. Maybe it would just turn into another way to feel helpless.

"I wonder why the worlds people are from are so different. With magic, and demons, the angels, the supernatural creatures. Or entirely different, with continents and countries that never existed for us. The Many-Worlds Interpretation makes sense, but... not like this. At least not as I understand it, which admittedly isn't as well as some people could."

[thering]

"I do not believe we can ever truly understand how our own world works, let alone anyone else's. Ignorance makes fools of us all, but. If you are to find any peace in a good night's rest, sometimes it is easier to accept that you've attained what you needed to know to do what you needed to get done that day, and let that be enough for now." Some things cannot be rushed, the pursuit of knowledge included, and sometimes it doesn't even matter. He would never say that settling for less is good enough. But he doesn't need to know how this all works if all he needs to get done today is wrangle a few unruly boys together and try to stay alive.

"We have a hard enough time figuring out the trajectories of our own lives. Don't be too hard on yourself."

[conning]

Neal makes a little noise that's close to heh. "That's my problem. I've never liked not knowing everything."

As though everything is a thing someone can know. But it's who he's always been, always trying to figure things out, always trying to understand, unlock, achieve. He rubs his face with both hands, dropping them back to his sides as they approach the greenhouse. "You said Yennefer and Will have worked in here--are there others? Should we, I don't know, put a sign-up on the bulletin board?"

[thering]

"Well. You will have to forgive my lack of foresight and ambition, but generally I have found that you only need to know enough to be the smartest man in the room," Doc replies. And that is a title he will gladly cede to Neal Caffrey. Not that he thinks the young man needs the validation from the self-proclaimed village idiot.

"I think Yennefer would detach pieces of me if anyone killed her tomatoes," Doc laments. And not in the sexy way either of them can envision. "Most of the work is already done, but perhaps we could use a hand keeping things running."

[conning]

Neal gives a tiny little laugh. "We still need to see who comes out on top in a poker game."

He ducks inside, the smell of green things soothing in how alive it is. "Could be a good idea. Make sure there's a rotation keeping an eye on things."

There's an unspoken just in case that he doesn't feel the need to address.

[thering]

"Well. Clearly that would be me. I always come out on top." And he may or may not be referring just to poker. "But I would be gracious enough to let you win a few rounds." Doc adjusts his hat, ducking his head and smirking somewhat playfully.

"Let's make a note, after the first harvest." That way they can at least save the first crop of tomatoes and beans and whatever else Yennefer managed to get growing if a prospective volunteer happens to be a little overenthusiastic with their watering.