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

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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"

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.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“I’m always scared,” he admits. Not of Negan, though. Not really. His limbic system is in a perpetual state of fight or flight. “I… I saw a man’s head beaten in. You told me about it. When you were trying to prove you’re a bad person, you told me you did that.”

"Shit." He can already feel that coil of shame. He might've told Malcolm about it, but like hell he ever wanted him, or anyone else, to see it. He doesn't entirely know what to say. Given time and perspective to think over that shit-- it turns his stomach now.

"Glenn," he finally says after a moment. "Later on, I learned his name was Glenn. Maggie's his wife."

He can't forget those names now, no matter how flippant he tries to act about them at home. "Not a hard thing to prove, Malcolm."

“You could have done that here,” Malcolm tells him. “Made yourself a king. You didn’t do it for power, though. And trying to protect people here doesn’t work the same way. So you haven’t.”

He looks down at the book.

“They can say what they want to try to divide us but you aren’t proud of what you did. Killers are proud of what they did, Negan.”

Martin Whitly is proud of what he did.

He looks up at the ceiling, gripping the night stand he’s leaning against. “Take that, oppressors.”

"I can't say it didn't become about the power after awhile, Malcolm. When people fucking-- fall to their knees for you, praise you every goddamn day, or fuck you because you're the badass leader... I lost myself somewhere along the way. Can't stand the guy I became now that I'm away from him. I don't think my wife would've liked him much either, even if I named a goddamn bat after her." But no, he hasn't done that here. Mathias has definitely given him a different perspective on things, shown him other ways people can survive and work.

He should-- go. Not just from here, but from the whole goddamn house maybe. Too many people know who he really is, what he's capable of. How the fuck can they stand to be under the same roof as him?

He doesn't say that right now though. "Since we're confessing... I saw the girl. The one you told me about. I just-- I touched something and I could see it, feel it. I felt what your dad did and it was fucked, man."

Malcolm straightens up a little, eyes a little wider.

“You saw her?” He lets go of the night stand. “I see her every time I close my eyes.”

If he knew Negan was considering leaving them, he would try to stop him. Isolating himself wouldn’t make him better for the community. He’s part of their family.

“But my father… it definitely is about power for him. Control. He loves it. He relishes it. He does enjoy it.” He presses his lips together. “After I found her… I mean, I barely remember anything, just fragments - but he took me on a camping trip with that girl chained up in the back of the station wagon and another serial killer he was mentoring. The other serial killer told me he took me on the trip to kill me. Just before I came here… he admitted it. But said he couldn’t do it.” A humourless smile ghosts across Malcolm’s face. “He never could bring himself to destroy his work.”

"Don't think I'm forgetting that anytime either." He's done some fucked up shit, but that was--

He pauses when Malcolm continues on, just listening quietly. "Jesus, Malcolm... what the fuck?"

He shouldn't be surprised hearing that shit, but-- he is. Or maybe sickened is the word for it. He can't imagine having a kid and even contemplating killing them for a goddamn second... hell, killing any kid. It's fucking unforgivable.

He's not entirely sure it's welcome or not, not after Malcolm's trip down his memory lane, but he chances a step closer, reaches out a hand to rest on his shoulder. "I'm-- sorry."

Sounds like just the type of guy who'd get Lucille back home, and there'd probably be some pleasure in it, but he doesn't say that part.

Malcolm sees that hand on his shoulder and raises it a throwing of his arms around Negan's neck, hugging him tightly.

"I know you are; that's why we like you," he murmurs.

Alright, so they're hugging. Negan almost wants to push the guy off for a second, but-- he's not sure the hug's for his sake, so his arms settle around him easily, one hand rubbing over his back in what he hopes is a soothing gesture.

"You like me for whatever goddamn reason." Doc, maybe not so much anymore if he ever did in the first place. Anyone else who sees that fucked memory? Probably not.

Malcolm lets go, looking up at him.

"Maybe anyone who's definitely not going to kill me is okay in my books," he says lightly, but it's a lightness that is definitely forced in the wake of the memories. "Do... do you want to get out of here for a bit? Go for a walk or something?"

Malcolm is eager to keep looking for more pills and his pockets rattle with the bottles he's gathered since he last dropped some off in his room at 1306, but the room feels tight and heavy and maybe some air would be good.

"I'd never hurt you, Malcolm." And he means that. He reaches up to idly muss the other guy's hair, manages a nod. A walk... yeah.

"C'mon, let's get out. We can always come back later." Even if everything in here gives him the creeps now, makes him wary. He eyes that book with a scowl as he turns to head for the door.

Fucking Pride & Prejudice.

"Does that book mean something to you?" Malcolm asks as they emerge into the hallway and it's slightly easier to breathe. "Do you recognize it?"

"My wife used to make me read it to her... hated it but she ate that shit up." He shrugs his shoulders, looking away from it, focusing on where they're walking.

"Ironic. That was the last book I ever read to Lucille before she died. That night, I gave that pregnant bride her own version of my hell. Hell of a lot more horrific though."

Malcolm nods. "I've seen some gruesome crime scenes but that was definitely a lot of... brains," he admits. "Though... it was less mindful than some of the horrific acts I've seen. The last man I arrested with the FBI... he pickled his victim's faces in mason jars and kept them on a shelf in his kill room."

He wrinkles his nose at that. He can't even bitch about Malcolm putting that fucking image in his head when he gave Malcolm some pretty bad fucking nightmare fuel today. Then again, that chick-- fucking poor girl. He's gonna be seeing that for a while too.

"So it's true about the trophy shit I used to hear about on TV. What is it with serial killers and keeping fucked up shit anyway?" Then again, Negan doesn't exactly like ruminate on kills he's done. Just get it done, make your point, and go on your fucking way.

"Psychopaths have a distorted view of the world. The only feelings that are real are their own. No empathy, no sympathy. Their victims aren't even real people to them; they're vehicles for their power games and for their creativity and for their curiosity. When they kill someone, they're not destroying a person, they're creating something and they want to remember it. The trophies are... souvenirs of their accomplishments," he points out clinically. He looks at Negan. "My father kept detailed notes and drawings of the things he did to people."

"Used to wish I'd just-- go insane, you know. That I could be a real psycho just so maybe I didn't have to deal with all the goddamn dreams at night. Or hell, seen people break in the Apocalypse, start hallucinating loved ones or hearing voices. Part of me used to be jealous." Which is a fucked things to admit, right? He idly brings a hand up to push through his hair.

"Hearing that, maybe I'm glad that for whatever reason, I haven't lost it yet. Not completely."

It's not mentally sound to bust a fucking eyeball out though, is it? "Did you have to look at those things he kept?"

They step out into the sunlight and Malcolm takes a deep breath of the air.

He glances over. "Not when I was ten," he assures. "But I studied them when I was in college. I studied the methodology of a lot of serial killers at that time. I already knew I wanted to join the FBI and catch them. I needed to know everything about how they thought. His first hand notes gave me a lot of insight." He looks at Negan with a little more uncertainty and adds "So did the interviews."

"Wait-- interviews? With the asshole who thought about killing you or just serial killers in general?" He's guessing the former. Even if Malcolm didn't know about the killing part at the time, he's still not sure he could've faced either way.

"Wasn't that difficult? It was your dad... whatever fucked up shit parents pull, it's hard to separate that fact."

"With my dad. I'd take my class work with me and visit him in prison and we'd talk about it. ...Part of me... wants some kind of relationship with him. And the rest of me hates that part of me for it." He looks at Negan. "Wanting to go crazy after doing the things you had to do... that's normal. Wanting to be rid of the feeling of responsibility for it. Wanting to not have to do it anymore. It's a wish for dissociation. It's normal, after what you went through."

"It's normal too. I was a teacher, you know. Saw kids in so many messed up situations who'd still choose their parents over everything else. Hell, even the ones who hated them, there's always that part deep down that wants to just be-- normal. Wants that bond with their parents." He shrugs his shoulders.

"There's nothing to hate yourself for. He's your dad, someone who's supposed to fucking love and protect you... or that's what people tell you." But it doesn't always play out like that, does it?

"Anyway, normal or not, I know I don't deserve to ditch the responsibility. If you--" He hesitates, looking at Malcolm.

"If you'd rather I get out of your house, I will, man. If you think the one guy's all I've done, or the extent of the messed up stuff I've had to do, well..."

Malcolm looks at him sharply, if a little shakily.

"What do you mean? I don't want you to leave. Has someone told you to leave? I'll talk to them; that's not right. It's your house, too."

"I'm asking you, Malcolm." He's not here to stir shit or cause any trouble. He huffs out a laugh though, something a little fond sounding as he looks over at Malcolm.

"I thought-- it'd be easier on everyone. Living under the same roof with a guy who cracked a guy's skull open and laughed about it... might not work."

"No," Malcolm says without pause. His immediate, knee-jerk reaction. "No, don't go." He looks at him. "Maybe we feel safer, living with that guy protecting us."

"Do you feel safer, living with the kind of guy you experienced?" He doesn't deny that he'd be that guy again if he had to. He knows he would. He'll always be part of him, lurking under the surface.

"I don't know that guy," Malcolm says plainly. He looks at Negan. "I feel safer living with you. Because you'll do anything to protect the people you care about. Even if it breaks something in you."

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