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villagelogs2021-06-05 08:09 pm
villagemod) wrote in villagelogs2021-06-05 08:09 pm
063-064 » no matter how much / part ii (group A)
WHO: Group A members only.
WHERE: Mathias Township proper
WHEN: Days 063-064
WHAT: Matthias becomes a little larger and a little smaller at the same time.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here!
RECOMMENDED ♫ DEADLY AVENGER "Raiju"
CONDITIONS UPDATE
OOC NOTES
navigation | faq | locations | report updates
WHERE: Mathias Township proper
WHEN: Days 063-064
WHAT: Matthias becomes a little larger and a little smaller at the same time.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here!
RECOMMENDED ♫ DEADLY AVENGER "Raiju"
DAY 063-064
NO MATTER HOW MUCH“No matter how much suffering you went through,
you never wanted to let go of those memories.”
— Haruki Murakami
At first, in the calm following the storm, nothing seems amiss. When the residents awake, it is to another glorious morning dawning in the unsettling paradise that is Mathias Township. Indeed, it does seem rather glorious that morning, for there is sunshine in a blue sky that has been cleared of any remnant of the angry storm clouds from the day before. But before long, residents will start to notice signs of something being not quite right.
It should be a familiar sensation to most by now.
It begins as just a feeling, a strange hint of something in the air, a nagging voice at the back of the mind. They can't quite put their finger on it but there is something. Something wrong, something that shouldn't be — which is quite a statement in a town where everything shouldn't be. But then the pieces will begin to come together.
A person has gone who ought to be there. This in itself is not a strange occurrence, for many have vanished and then returned, or not. This time, though, it is one person, and then two and three... A dozen people or more have gone, with no trace of their whereabouts to be found.
No resident is alone, thankfully. There are others who also remain: friends, acquaintances, strangers. Others who are just as trapped in this nightmarish place.
As the hours stretch on and residents begin to venture beyond their self-claimed shelters and move about the town, they will find that their fellow captives are not the only things that have vanished. The Chasm is gone as well, the crack in the earth that once stretched across and cut off the western part of town. There is not even the smallest mark to show where it had once been; it has gone so completely that some might wonder if they had merely imagined it.
ABOUT THE NEW LOCATIONS
POPPY COTTAGE This bed and breakfast has a sense of casual elegance with the elusive quality of being both sophisticated and comfortable at the same time. Aside from being covered in dust and grime, of course.
PENHEW HOUSE Perhaps familiar to some in Mathias, this grand house is different from any of the others the residents have entered. It looks... new. Fresh. Clean. The usual thick layers of dust and grime that would be caked onto every visible surface are nowhere in sight; this absence may be a relief for some and unsettling to others. There are certainly other unsettling things to be found in this location.
THE OLD CHURCH Barely more than ruins, the property is marked by a crumbled stone outline that has no roof and only partial walls, nothing left inside besides a broken cobblestone floor.
BANEBERRY HALL From the outside, Baneberry Hall seems like your average rich person's house, but one would be mistaken to assume anything of the sort. Even the baneberries that cover the back lawn leading to the forest treeline are deceptive, for they appear harmless but are fatal to any human foolish enough to eat them.
The building is decaying from within. The rooms have begun to rot, from the parlors and libraries still done up in grand and expensive style to the bedrooms that have locks on the doors and bars on the windows. There are restraints in some of those bedrooms, while others are bereft of sharp objects. In the hall closets, there are identical sets of white pajamas of all sizes, and the offices have locked cabinets (that may be picked) full of a rainbow of sedatives (that will not replenish). The names on doors and in logbook lists are all smudged beyond legibility, and all paperwork has been water-damaged and weathered, leaving no indication of who may have been kept in those bedrooms or why. But within each room, there is an item that may be familiar to one of the residents now wandering its halls. As caked in dust and grime as anything else, each item is placed as if it belongs there, as if it might have been there for years. But it couldn't have been... could it?ABOUT THE ITEMS FROM HOME
Within the unsettling walls of Baneberry Hall, residents may find OBJECTS that are uncomfortably familiar to them. Each item has one singular memory attached to it that, when touched in any way, will be experienced first hand, as if the person receiving it had lived it themselves. This person will endure all of the associated emotions and psychological reactions to the memory that the memory's owner experienced.— Items may only be found within Baneberry Hall. These items from home are not all in one room or a specific location but instead are scattered throughout the bedrooms. (Only the items on this list are available to this group.)
— Ownership and possession of the item are important elements to this event. While the item is in possession of someone who is not its owner, it will continue to infect all who touch it with the memory that belonged to its owner. The item will also, before long, begin to make the possessor ill, both physically and emotionally uncomfortable and upset. This only occurs until the item is reunited with its owner, or until it is no longer in someone else's possession. (For example, if Person A finds Person B's teddy bear and carries it with them, they will continue to experience the bear's associated memory until they no longer have it in their possession, whether this means they have left it somewhere or it has been returned to Person B.)
— Recipients of memories will retain those memories even after the event has ended.
— When the owner of an item finds their item or has it returned to them, they will also experience the memory once themselves, having it returned to them as if they had just lived those moments again. The memory is only replayed once in their minds and then the memory effect of the object is gone. After this point, the item can be held by the owner or any others without consequence.
— If a person removes an item from its room in Baneberry Hall but does not remove the item from the property entirely, the item will be mysteriously returned to its original location when no one is looking. This is so that people do not have to keep close track of where items are going in the possible changing of hands, so the original owners can still easily locate the item without having to plan in great detail. Once an item is removed from the property, it will not return to its original location even if it is discarded by the possessor before reaching its original owner. Instances such as this should be planned among all involved parties, including the owner of the item.
— Once an item is removed from the property, please comment below so that information may be updated. Items that are not removed by the end of the event may reappear at a later time, so accurate records are essential.
— Before an item's memory is viewed by someone other than the owner, permission must be granted or requested for that memory to be viewed by another character. Because the experience is an uncomfortable one for the other characters, the viewing of memories not their own should ideally be kept to a small number.
— 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 new boundaries.— 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 from the western section of town entirely.
— 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.
— DISAPPEARANCES AND DEATHS continue! Yennefer, Number Five, and Tony Stark have vanished and Ellie is still missing, though this may be difficult to tell with half the town also seemingly having vanished. Will Graham's body may be found within the ruins of the Old Church; he appears to have been frightened to death. (If someone decides to take care of the body, please report it below. For in-game reasons, this does not need to be coordinated across groups.)
— ALCOHOL supplies have run dry, save for any dregs that have been squirreled away by individual residents. Moonshine can still be acquired by those in desperate need.
— NEW MAP Thanks so much to Scy for yet another amazing new map of Mathias!
— 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. IC events are also helpful to know about in advance so they can be included in the log write-ups.
— MOD STATUS For those who don't know, I run a summer program that is set to start in just 2 weeks. We've only recently been given the green light to go ahead in person, so it's a scramble to get everything pulled together in time. My non-RP life is going to be busy and chaotic for the next while and I am thus asking for your forgiveness and understanding as things continue to be slow, as I cannot guarantee timely mod responses beyond weekends, and even that is not guaranteed.
— NEXT LOG Because of the aforementioned real-life chaos, the next log will be more relaxed and free form with everyone coming back together again and having a few chill days. It would be very much appreciated if some of the more intense investigations could be saved to take place in future logs, as the new locations that are opening up in this log will remain open in the next few at least and there will be plenty of time to explore all their mysteries.
— ITEMS FROM HOME The items from home remaining in Baneberry Hall will not be available past this log, at least not in this form, so if you would like to play with these elements, you should not sleep on this opportunity. More things may show up in the future but, for now, this is the main event.
— DW NOTIFS Back at the beginning of the year, the issue of missing email notifs was discussed in a code push plurk by Mark of the DW admin team. For those who missed it, the gist is that the issue with missing notifs is not going to be fixed anytime soon. The issue is so sporadic that the dev team has concluded the only way to possibly fix it is to redo the notification system entirely. This issue does not extend to DW's internal inbox, so short of checking every thread you're involved in, the DW inbox is the best way to make sure you're not missing things.
— ACTIVITY CHECK Beginning with June's AC (posted at the start of July), all tags that consist of only dialogue will count as 0.5 comments, not just those that occur in an inbox thread. This applies to both AC and AP totals.
Liz Brundy | Brimstone
Day 063
The world changed again, seemingly overnight. Growing accustomed to it, Liz rose early, before the sun had finished rising, to explore and get a lay of the land. Whether or not there were dangers, that didn't factor into her thinking. She wanted simply to move, to get a sense of this place and see if there was anything present that shouldn't be. Maybe not as terrible as her voice in a box, but something. There was a feeling niggling at her, chewing at the back of her neck that something was amiss or out of place.
The new buildings certainly seemed to fit that, far different from what she was used to in the Old West. Poppy Cottage was the closest she might find to home, but even then, it was nicer than anything she had really seen before. Were she more trusting, she might choose to stay there, but anything that appeared in this world never came without a steep price.
Penhew House was too nice and clean for her liking, but she stayed long enough to get a sense of the layout. It wasn't until the Church that she started to feel that fear again. She stared up at the crumbling ruins, seeing nothing of the Reverend's parish or the steeple where her mother hanged herself, but she could still sense the meaning of this place. There was always some power belonging to a church, some indication God had been there. Or perhaps...it was the trace of evil that the Reverend embraced.
Whatever the case, she trembled, unable to really move, watching the horizon fearfully, as though the man would suddenly appear.
Day 064 (OOC: PM me for the memory if you want it. TW: Child death)
She had saved Baneberry Hall for the next day, having sifted through enough of the buildings in one day and not liking the smell of rot coming from the mansion. When she finally braved the threshold and wandered the halls, it didn't take long to find the various objects that seemed almost out of place. She didn't fear touching them, so she walked willingly into the memories, not realizing at first what they were.
By the third or fourth, she understood that she was seeing something belonging to another. These were personal experiences, glimpses into another's mind, which was disturbing in a way that compared to hearing her voice again.
It wasn't until she saw the faded and browned photograph of Eli and Matthew that everything fell into place. She saw events that she had hoped would never replay in her mind again, a moment that still haunted her in this place. With a clenched jaw, she held tightly to the photograph and hurried down to the kitchen, hoping the burners would work or there would be some matches. There was a chance no one had seen this, no one knew what was attached. She would dispose of the evidence either way and hope her secret never got out.
[OOC: I couldn't find a screengrab of the actual photograph, but that is what Eli (left) and Matthew (right) look like.]
no subject
"...Liz," he greets verbally, holding the pantry door open while he looks at her over her shoulder. It looks almost natural when he signs 'what's wrong?' to her next. It isn't ideal that he's felt he's had to learn these few signs first - yes, no, what's wrong, what happened, are you hurt and so on - but he did that precisely because he knew they would be used more frequently than weather and children and supper talk.
She looks troubled, but determined. She didn't simply saunter in here to look around. He's pretty sure she isn't here to ransack the cupboards either.
no subject
His signing had improved a great deal, though they had focused more on what was important rather than the sort of thing her daughter might know. His question deserved an answer, not that she would give the actual one. She could only fix a smile on her face and hope that smoothed things over, perhaps dispelling any doubts.
With her free hand, she made the sign, 'This house is strange.' As though that would explain her behavior.
no subject
Turning to face her properly, he adopts a more casual stance, leaning back against the adjacent benchtop, the heels of his palms resting on either side momentarily until he finds a comfortable way to perch.
'Did you see...' He can't finish that sentence since he doesn't know the sign for 'something'. In the end, he opts to do that over to 'what did you see?'
no subject
And unfortunately, a longer response than "nothing" required both hands. She very much did not want to go into details. The last time someone confronted her about her decisions, her home was almost set on fire and a man tried shooting her from outside. She was well aware how someone might view her for this memory and she had wanted to keep the past away from this place.
Instead of signing, she simply shook her head, her face dark and troubled. She didn't want to rehash this, in sign language or otherwise. It made it all too real and she preferred believing it was a bad dream.
no subject
"I... haven't yet learned the sign for asking if you were planning on burning this place down. And if perhaps we could leave, before that," he says quietly. There's no punchline, nothing really to laugh about. But she had come here iron-willed with her heart and mind set in stone. He would have left her to doing whatever she had come here wanting to do, had it not seemed like it might be something dangerous.
no subject
Kindness she did not feel entitled to.
She held up the picture of her husband and his son, letting him see the token before setting it on the counter. I need to get rid of this.
no subject
Unless, of course, her name is Negan and she might go batshit one day and gleefully kill everyone in the Boarding House. Then he might not show her the same kindness she has been receiving from him.
"Suppose we could try burning it." He's not sure that's the best idea considering everyone who has played with fire thus far has gotten some kind of burnt. But it is a surefire way to destroy the photograph irreversibly, and ultimately it is her choice, her consequences to bear.
"'tis a nice photo. Don't want to just rip it up and throw it away?" he offers.
no subject
She doesn't think about it again until hours later, when she spots Liz herself in one of the bedrooms. Impulsively, she ducks in after her, signing her name sign by way of greeting - she's remembered it decently well, even if her finger movements are unpracticed and imprecise.
"I saw yours," she says conversationally, gesturing to her own eyes in a makeshift sign language of her own.
no subject
A number of possibilities were in her mind at what it could be. The Reverend, that marriage ceremony he tried to complete, her life in Bismuth. All of them things that she never wanted the people of this place to see. Now one piece of her was exposed, some form of her life was revealed and it was a bitter blow.
Where? It needed to be found and destroyed.
no subject
"You're afraid?"