063-064 » no matter how much / part ii (group A)

[villagemod]

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"

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.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— 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.

---

OOC NOTES

— 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.

navigation | faq | locations | report updates

Comments

[tinstar]

"A-a little angel statue. Knickknack that you tend to see on Granny's doily covered table or somethin'. I.. dropped it," he relayed, shifting up to a proper sitting position without using his feet to do so, awkward but not impossible, and leaned back against the tree.

"It was.. you, when you were little. Watchin' your father get arrested.." It was for her sake that he kept his eyes down on the battered book in his hands. Ainsley was a proud woman, he could tell that much, and he didn't know how she'd take him knowing. Feeling it.

He didn't know how he was taking her feeling and knowing what she had. Right now, he didn't know much of anything.

[welladjustedwhitly]

"Aw, man, not the creepy angel from Mr. Boots." She groans. Not exactly the reminder from home she wanted, thanks, Mathias.

When he explains the memory, she sinks back into the tree. "Oh..." She isn't sure how to feel about that being the one he saw. Of course, would it be any better if it was her being crowned Homecoming Queen? In etiquette school? Literally anything that's happened in the last six months at home?

Probably not. So she just lets the feeling wash over her. Grateful for the fact t hat his hat is still mostly over his face, his eyes on that stupid book she'd given back to him. "I guess Mathias decided it was time we walk a mile in each other's shoes," she says, blowing out a breath.

[tinstar]

"It the only pair you've walked in over the last coupl'a days?" Shit luck if she was looking for something exciting, a gift if she was looking to avoid the worst of things like Callisto or Malcolm's memory.

"And who's Mr. Boots?" It couldn't have been a play on words, but there was a joke in there, somewhere.

[welladjustedwhitly]

She smiles a little, corners of her mouth turned down so it's not quite the bright, thousand-watt thing it so often can be, and shakes her head. "No. I've seen a few things..." She sighs softly.

Unfortunately, no jokes to be found here. "I thought he was my imaginary friend when I was little... I recently found out he was a murderer-coworker of my dad's." She grimaces at the memory of the realization with her mother.

[tinstar]

That got him to look over, sidelong.

"Better an imaginary friend at that age than what he was, I guess. No helpin' it either, like takes to like. Makes me wonder how he got access to you.." And why, but that was too ugly a thought to share.

"I saw Malcolm's too. The girl in the box. Y'all got a weird ass basement for rich people, you know that right?"

[welladjustedwhitly]

She doesn't feel like going into that, so she just lets it lie there, with a lift of her eyebrows, tilt of her head.

She nods a little. "Yeah... me too." Seeing it, personally and up front, had been very, very different than knowing the facts, academically. "That's your takeaway?" She gives an amused huff at that, shaking her head.

[tinstar]

"Trust me, that's the most friendly, sanitize opinion I can offer without edgin' into being a dick. That basement is larger than some houses I've seen, for gods sake, to say nothin' of how expansive the top half is.." He shook his head a little, looking back out over their new playground.

"No, I know what Martin did. I know what Martin did to Malcolm. I'm glad he didn't get a chance to do it to you. But I get your position. Your point. You still love your daddy."

[welladjustedwhitly]

She scoffs a soft huff of amusement at that. She doesn’t doubt it, even if she can’t imagine a house that small. It’s just the old money world she grew up in.

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, staring down at her hands in her lap, pleating the fabric of her pants in her fingers. “I didn’t know the monster, just the father...” she says finally, voice soft. She isn’t sure how to feel about people seeing that, seeing her in a different light because of it.

“Did you ever find out why she served you those papers?” She asks, just as quiet as she turns the table back to focus on him instead.

[tinstar]

"That's the way it's suppos'ta be. I don't know how much credit he deserves for managin' that but.. It's okay to love your daddy, Ainsley," he said gently, eyes sliding back over to her.

Just because he hated his father didn't mean he begrudged anyone else theirs. He'd wanted to love his father. Wanted to have the idealistic family; what kid didn't. Didn't want to be beaten for breathing too loudly or not answering the right way. Part of him wondered if the balance was worth it on Martin's part. He'd fucked up his kids, but if he hadn't been caught.. Two for the sake of twenty something wasn't acceptable, in any kind of light. But there was a nuance.

"Yeah. I had a contact look in on her a few months later.. She'd moved in with the realtor that was selling our house. It was only once I got back into Lexington on reassignment, a year or so into that that I bothered to ask her..." His lips tightened and he shrugged a little.

"She can't handle my job. What it demands of me. Or her. Emotionally." He didn't mind telling her - he'd already spent the time and the Jim Beam to sort through it and be alright. "You'd think we woulda learned the first time.."

[welladjustedwhitly]

"Is it?" She looks up sharply. "Is it okay to love the man that methodically murdered at least two dozen people? Probably more." She isn't sure about that. All of her feelings about her father are a mixed up, complicated mess. Unsurprisingly.

She shrugs a little, "I get that. My... ambition is why my last boyfriend left me." She perks a brow at that. "You married her twice?"

[tinstar]

He rolled a shoulder and looked over at her again. "You can love him without that meaning you condone what he is or did. It doesn't have to make sense. Love usually doesn't, in my limited experience. I hate my father, and he's been arrested more times than I can count. Not for murder, he never got caught but."

Raylan had been in love before Winona but not afterwards, until he got here, so he was very far from an expert in that department to say nothing of his failing in other familial love.

"Did your ambition get you or him almost killed?" Little did he know how close to reality that earnest question was. "No. But she left Gary the Realtor for me and we got pregnant. Two months into that.. The night I was dragged here, matter of fact.. She left me a note. Told me she needed space. Not to look for her." His face pinched back into his lap with the telling of it.

"Tim says she's born now, the baby. Little girl. Willa Givens," he faux introduced, with a slight turn of his face towards her, smile pulling but his eyes not coming quite up as he righted himself. "Alls that matters is that she's okay. It's worth whatever I had to deal with for her bein' okay."

[welladjustedwhitly]

"Doesn't feel like it." She admits with a sharp blow of breath out. She tilts her head a little. "He never got caught... but he did murder someone?" Oh, do tell her more, Raylan.

Her jaw drops. Snaps shut. Tightens. "Technically... it saved him." That isn't an explanation, and she knows he's going to ask so she just skips the questioning. "You know about the interview I did with my dad?"

She can't help smiling at the comment about the baby. "Willa's such a cute name."

[tinstar]

Arlo could wait a second. But he'd give the comment about Willa a proud Papa smile that had his head ducking a little. He didn't get to choose it, he knew Winona did that on her own without consulting him but he figures that's her right, considering what she was going to be going through. Had gone through.

He could almost hear that snap of her jaw. Shit. Maybe he should go into gambling. That was decent luck. Raylan's eyebrows lifted again.

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

[welladjustedwhitly]

"Well... we were at Claremont, doing the interview, taking a few while Jin got some B-footage sorted out. I kept the camera going while me, Malcolm and Dad had a little family pow-wow and in the middle of everything, one of the other... patients escaped and got into Dad's cell. Jin got stabbed."

She doesn't sound very... phased by it, just stating facts. Maybe it's the reporter in her; maybe it's a flat affect. "Anyway... Dad's guard got him out, and us locked inside the room and... Dad tried to walk me and Malcolm through what needed to be done to save Jin. But... we're not... surgeons. We couldn't do it, so... we gave him the scalpel." She lets that hang in the air for a long moment.

"He saved him." she can't hide the amazed tone in her voice, the pride, the daughter desperately yearning for a father. "It was amazing. And I got it all on tape. It was perfect."

[tinstar]

His eyebrows lifted as she detailed all that out, assuming nothing on her character save what publishing that kind of content, about someone you claimed to care about even loosely. It did say something about her that she didn't care enough to consider that. Nothing save ambition, huh?

"You let him perform surgery on your boyfriend for what, a TV segment?" If he had an opinion, it was kept behind the roll of his eyebrows back to neutral as he looked back out over their view again. "The perks musta been worth it."

No judgement, no admonishment. No judge of how it effected his idea of her.

"Arlo no doubt murdered someone durin' 'Nam, but that doesn't count to the question. He was a petty scammin' drug runner. The number of people he robbed blind or put in a lurch," he said, eyebrows lifting faintly as he half glanced over. "Can't tell you where any bodies are but.. Arlo Givens has murdered someone. Rap sheet longer than your arm and that's only the ones we know about."

[welladjustedwhitly]

She can't decide what that tone means. If it means anything at all. Raylan is like that, more often than she'd like to admit. She's not used to not being able to read people, but she supposes he wouldn't be good at his job if he was just an open book all the time, either.

"Well, when you say it like that..." She huffs softly. "Jin didn't think so. He saw me working on cutting the footage together at the hospital and decided we were done." She hadn't been all that affected, truthfully.

She frowns a little. "Oh." That isn't... what she thought he meant, but serial killer's daughter. Maybe the more immediate sort of death is more a mercy than long-winding chain reactions, though.

Or maybe she needs to reassess how she looks at things.

[tinstar]

It was a well and long practiced tone. No one had the rights to know what he was thinking and he made damned sure to not covey any hints. His job demanded it, to say nothing of his personal life and how he dealt with that.

"Can't say that I blame him, if I'm honest," he replied with a faint lift of his eyebrows. If someone stayed after all that, they were just as messed up as she was. "Remind me to not get in your way at work."

Raylan shrugged at her oh. "It's not the same kind of glamour as a serial killer, but what we lack in glamour, we make up in mineshafts and redneck fuckary. Little more twisted, sometimes. There's a reason I hate bein' in Kentucky." So long as they'd successfully moved off his failed marriage, he was fine. It was the way it was.

[welladjustedwhitly]

"Lucky you, there's not much reporting that can happen around here." They don't even have radios, for Christ's sake.

"I didn't mean it like that." Her features pinch at the idea of it being anything like glamorous; not exactly the word she would choose. "Why didn't you leave? You could be a Marshall anywhere."

[tinstar]

Damned right lucky him. She would have a field day with how he normally operates and Raylan didn't talk to reporters for a reason. "You'd have us all on our toes, I'm sure."

Raylan looked over, eyebrows lifted a little. "Ains, I left Harlan at nineteen and until I got reassigned to Lexington to keep the heat off me from Miami, I hadn't gone back. It was reassignment or findin' a new job. Findin' a new job mighta been easier.. But. Once I get Boyd where he belongs," he continued, one lean finger jutting out to wag at.. nothing, really. "Then I'm takin' my ass back to Miami where I like it a whole hellva lot better."

He couldn't be a Marshal just anywhere, unfortunately. There was procedure to go through, which is half the reason he landed back there to begin with.

[welladjustedwhitly]

She can't help the grin that breaks across her face at that. The way she almost preens at the not-quite compliment. He wasn't wrong.

"Ew, don't call me Ains. That's Malcolm only." The words bubble out of her mouth before she has a second's thought, but it was just a gut-reaction. That wasn't a free-for-all nickname. "What happened in Miami that needed to reassigned?" Her eyebrows arch curiously at that.

[tinstar]

Raylan openly smirked at her 'ew' and made the mental note, not unoffended by her correction before he took a deep breath, eyes taking in the view again.

"A man named Tommy Banks pulled on me in a Miami restaurant and I shot him twice in the chest. It was justified but the AG wanted an investigation and the guy Tommy worked for wasn't too pleased about it either so.. Reassignment. It'll be fine. It always is."

Arlo may not have killed anyone in a style that Ainsley was used to, the immediate kind of death but his son sure as shit did.

[welladjustedwhitly]

"Sounds messy," she says, tilting her head a little. "Malcolm tell you why they made him leave the FBI?" She won't hand the story out because it isn't hers to tell, but she's curious how much of himself her brother has handed over to him.

[tinstar]

He shook his head. "Only to those who give a shit about it." He was not one of them

"Punchin' out a sheriff, but I never got around to askin' what else he did. FBI doesn't kick you out for just that alone, otherwise the Marshals Service woulda turned me out on my ear ten times over."

[welladjustedwhitly]

"Sounds like your boss was one of them." She shrugs.

She laughs softly at that, "Do a lot of punching on the job that you're not suppose to be doing, huh?"

[tinstar]

"That's a problem for him to solve, not me," he argued casually. He wasn't the same kind of heartless that Ainsley was, but he could give her a run, at the start.

Raylan hummed, smiling more broadly than he should. "Solves a lotta problems and a lotta people resist arrest. And I don't like talkers." Ironic, considering Malcolm.

"How'd you get into journalism?" Did her family drama gift her that too?