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

"You're afraid of becoming something dark here. You're afraid of what this place will do to you. What it'll make you do. I think that's reasonable, considering the circumstances," Malcolm says.

"I can't..." His breathing hitches a little. He fixes Malcolm with a haunted look. "I can't go back. I can't go back to my New York, not if I turn into that kind of person. I shouldn't get to go back anywhere."

Malcolm leans forward, grasping both of Neal's hands.

"You're not going to turn into that kind of person. We don't do that here. We take it to the oppressors, remember? We don't kill each other; we love each other."

He nods slowly, squeezing Malcolm's hands, his own right hand trembling in Malcolm's grip. "Does Negan know? What you saw?"

Edited 2021-06-14 02:28 (UTC)

Malcolm nods. “We went for a walk. Talked about it. He… saw mine too. He asked if I wanted him to leave. The house,” Malcolm confides.

Neal's hold on Malcolm tightens again, this time unintentionally. "What did you say?"

“I said no. Absolutely not. He’s not evil, Neal. He won’t hurt us. He’d never,” Malcolm says confidently.

He relaxes. Slowly. "Good. I told him we weren't going to let him end up back there. That we'd do whatever we had to, to make sure he got to start over somewhere else."

Neal lifts Malcolm's hands to press their knuckles against his own forehead, a little gesture that's starting to become habit when he's upset. "I have to work at it. To keep the things from the asylum from feeling like they're really just mine. If I stop reminding myself, if I stop thinking about it, they just... feel like they've always been there, like they always will be, like they're part of who I am. Not stolen from somebody else."

He makes a tiny, softly amused sound. "And this confirms, by the way, that if I ever am unfortunate enough to meet your father face to face, I'm going to do my best to break his nose."

Malcolm breathes out a laugh and adjusts his position so he’s sitting - still crosslegged - but square to Neal and takes his hands more loosely.

“Okay; I’m going to show you an exercise to help you compartmentalize those memories. See, when you’ve seen a profile or been handed someone’s life in the past, your job has always been to become them. Mine has always specifically been not to become them. Close your eyes and take relaxed deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.”

Neal obeys, hanging on to Malcolm lightly, situating himself a little more comfortably. The breathing comes easily--Malcolm has shown him enough variations on meditative breathing at this point that he doesn't really need to think about it too hard.

"Okay. Now I want you to picture a hat box. A round hat box with a floral pattern on it. It's sitting on a wooden table, with a lace doily on it."

He intentionally makes the box whimsical. He doesn't want to say 'picture a box' and dredge up a memory of a travel trunk in a basement from Malcolm's own mind in his head.

"And I want you to take the lid off the hat box and set it aside. The box is empty. The inside is lined with white paper."

Neal smiles a little at the image, keeping his eyes closed.

"Someone tried to hire me to steal a hat box once. Well, it was more about what was inside the hat box, which was a tricorne-style military hat worn by Isaac Brock from 1812. Still pretty niche, not a huge resale value, but people like what they like."

He inhales slowly, exhales softly, settles himself back into listening.

Malcolm grins.

"I bet it wasn't as pretty as this hat box," he teases. "Now, I want you to take all the memories you collected in the asylum and put them in the hat box. I want you to picture something that symbolizes each one, and physically put it in the box."

That part is easy. Each of the memories comes with their own symbol ready-made, in the little objects he touched before living them. Pride & Prejudice, that little ribbon, a beanie, a scarf, a stuffed rabbit. A battered marshal's badge. The Friends of Eddie Coyle. An angel statue. A little set of affirmations that he wants to flip through but won't.

It's hard, as he mentally handles each object and tucks it away into the hat box, not to get lost in the memories again. They're so fresh, so close, so awful. It's hard not to let himself stray down the path of piecing out how these memories fit into the lives of the people they belong to. How much self-perception is based on those snippets of what they've been through. (They, the individuals and they, the collective, now.)

He takes a deep breath in, settling the little affirmation holder in next to the angel. He nods, not sure if Malcolm's eyes are open or not to see it, but it doesn't really matter.

Malcolm is watching his face.

“Close the box.”

He doesn’t continue yet. This part is important. He watches.

Close the box. It's such a simple command. Close the box. Inside his own head, he stands with his hands braced on either side of the lid, pushing it down. It should work. There's room enough for it to work.

But there's a warlord burning his village, and he's watching his best friend die, and he's stuck in a box with air running out, and he's beating a man's head in, and he's watching his younger brother get hit by a car and he's losing his wife and he's losing his lover and he's losing his dad and his dad is a liar, a monster, but he's losing him--

Neal jerks sharply, eyes snapping open, overbalancing enough that he has to put out a hand to stop himself from falling backward. He has to force himself to breathe evenly again. For a second his eyes stay locked on nothing in particular as he pulls himself together. Then he looks over at Malcolm, prepares to apologize, but that man, Glenn, is standing behind Malcolm with one eye driven have-free of its socket and Neal gives a startled little yell instead.

He curls in on himself, digs his hands into his hair, breathes. Breathes.

Malcolm just watches. He watches Neal try to process it. There's no judgement on his face or in his voice when he quietly says "Start again. Close your eyes. Breathe."

He nods, silent. Settles back into a seated position again. Starts over.

Before he does, his glance travels to the spot behind Malcolm where Glenn was standing. Not there, now. He shakes his head slightly and closes his eyes.

Hat box. Symbols. Each one carefully handled and set inside.

Close the box.

Neal can't make himself pick the lid up this time. What if he goes under again? He opens his eyes slowly, focus back on that spot, but Glenn still isn't there. He closes them again.

Close the box.

He lifts the lid and moves to set it down on top of the hat box and instead of all the little trinkets he tucked inside, it's Malcolm's head, slightly dented, one eye bulging loose.

"Fuck." Neal presses the heels of his palms against his closed eyes until he sees phantom lights flash.

"That's normal," Malcolm tells him. "Do it again. You can do it."

He growls under his breath, frustrated with himself. Then he pulls it together. Settles in again.

Hat box. Symbols. One by one.

He studies the way he arranged them in the box, this time. Examines each one, thinks of each person and the pain behind each memory. That moment of disorientation when he saw Doc face to face after the fight with Wyatt and thought he was seeing himself. Watching Negan's hands on the sharpened butterknife, cutting vegetables, a motion that was simple and domestic and entirely at odds with the way they--he--brought that bat down in the dark. Parker clinging to her rabbit. Callisto lying on the floor, looking at him like he'd grown a second head. One person at a time, one memory at a time.

He picks up the lid and places it gently--firmly--onto the box, keeping his eyes shut.

"Done," he murmurs, not sure how long it's taken.

It doesn't matter how long it's taken.

"Now take the box and throw it in the East River. You're never going to wear that hat."

His brows knit. He almost opens his eyes in surprise. It seems almost cruel to do that. Disrespectful at the very least.

But Malcolm is right.

Neal imagines the Easter River, imagines one of the little rope and cement bridges along one shore. He climbs over the ropes... and tosses that little treasure trove of nightmares into already-polluted water.

He dabs his lower lip with his tongue, an uncertain little motion, before opening his eyes. "That's going to work?"

Malcolm sees his hesitation.

“They’re not memorials; they’re memories. And you shouldn’t have to carry them; they’re not yours.”

He leans forward when it’s done and kisses Neal’s forehead.

“You might have to do it again, if they creep back. But the more you do it, the easier it will get.”

He smiles faintly at the kiss, idly thinking how much he's going to miss that when they all get home. He'll be back in a land of masculine posturing, with people who have never and probably will never seen the pieces of him this place has dragged into the open.

It's a depressing thought. Neal sets it aside.

"I... started seeing him. Glenn, the man Negan killed. I started seeing him yesterday, after that memory, half-dead like that. The same way I used to see Rey."

“All you can do is keep putting the book in the box. But you might see him for a while if he affected you so much,” Malcolm tells him. “It’s okay if you do; your mind is trying to process it.”

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