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.

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Comments

[myfavoritemurder]

"Not this," she says derisively, tossing the mug onto the carpet. "But I see yours."

She admits it completely without shame or regret, and without any fear of retaliation. He might be angry, she thinks - maybe even angry enough to fight over it. That's fine. They both know she can fight back.

[tinstar]

That got him to lift his eyebrows, head nodding a little. Tact, again - not something she had. It was harder for him to put his down.

"That so? Guess it's only fair I admit to seein' yours. You were a cute kid. Did it bore you? Put you to sleep from boredom?" He even mimed out sleep.

[myfavoritemurder]

Hold up, hold up. She'll ignore that second question for now, zeroing in on what she understands of the first bit instead.

"You saw mine? It was Xena, and the fire?"

She doesn't sound angry - just interested.

[tinstar]

Steady hazel eyes held hers. There was a note of sorrow, a note of steely resolve that likely looked out of place without the context.

"Yes." And it was terrible. Raylan felt a lot of things about it, all moot and pointless - there was no going back and changing it, saving those people, sparing her what had been put upon her.. But neither was weeping and moaning over what could have been.

"You live a hard life."

[myfavoritemurder]

It's the steeliness that most interests her now. She goes back and forth on whether she wants people feeling sad on her behalf - but no matter what, she always, always wants them to be angry about Xena.

"Xena," she reminds him, tapping her temple before adding in Greek, "Don't forget. Remember her name, and curse it every time you do."

And then she switches topics entirely, completely out of the blue - because she hasn't forgotten his memory, either.

"What is 'been served'?"

[tinstar]

"You," he retorted, "Her." He shook his head, eyes casting off somewhere else for a second as he took a deep breath and set that aside. His opinion didn't matter; Callisto already knew the 'rules' as it were. No use beating dead horses.

He started his answer with a shake of his head. 'Served' isn't the best place to start, but it at least confirmed that she saw what he thought she saw.. What Malcolm told him he'd seen.

"Do you know married? Your mother, father." He laces his fingers together, tone as patient and casual as it ever was. "Family, yes? My.. my woman broke that." His fingers broke apart as he cast them down like he was slinging shit off them. "Divorce. 'Served' is just about the paper. The legality. I'm sure you've got laws of the land, rules.." His brow furrowed a little. "But maybe not."

Don't get him started on the consideration of what made a Civilization enough to have such kind of dedicated, scripted social rules. He's thought about it.

[myfavoritemurder]

Her brows furrow in confusion as he goes through the explanation, though less because the concepts are beyond her and more because she's not at the point where she understands all the words.

"Your woman goes with another man now," she guesses, taking a stab at what he's getting at.

[tinstar]

Close enough, and he bobbed his head unevenly to one side with a nod to indicate as such.

"The man that sold our house." He couldn't help but wonder what kind of image or suggestion about him or his manliness that gave her - weakness or inadequacy - but it was a professional kind of curiosity, not a ego, emotion driven kind of worry.

"I'm still looking for the book that you found.. I'd like it back." If she remembered where it was.

[myfavoritemurder]

What in the world is a book. Based on context, she thinks she has a guess, but still. These people and their ridiculous foreign language.

"The paper?"

[tinstar]

Raylan couldn't stop the sign language that Liz had been teaching to him slipping out, his hands making the opening gesture for book.

"Many papers, bound together. Book. Paper means one." A finger was held up to indicate one.

Jesus, she knew how to count at least, right? He didn't want to be condescending enough to ask or insinuate, You didn't need to know how to count to make war, but if that bridge wasn't there, there'd be something of a struggle overall.

[myfavoritemurder]

Callisto gives a sharp nod at that - because despite never having set foot in a schoolhouse, she can at least count. Thank goodness for small mercies.

"It's there," she says, fluttering a hand vaguely towards the open door leading out into the hallway, in a gesture that's meant to encompass the entire rest of the house. His instinct had been right; she does indeed not remember where she'd found the book, nor where she'd left it. "I didn't--"

She copies his book-opening gesture - intending, this time, to indicate opening it up and reading it.

[tinstar]

He shook his head. "The book isn't.. No part in what you saw. I think it's just.. attached. Your was a ribbon. Something you might tie-" his fingers made the gestures of making a knot before touching his hair and gesturing at her own. "In your hair. A blue one."

It was fine, about the book. Either it would come back to him or it wouldn't. It was sentimental for other reasons.

[myfavoritemurder]

Her hand automatically strays to her head, where parts of her wild mane are tied up with bits of leather. But ribbons? She hasn't used hair ribbons since... well. Before she was a warrior, certainly.

"I don't want it."

[tinstar]

"Great. I don't have it.. But it's out there. You don't care about people seeing what I saw?"

The convenient thing about ASL was that the gestures for some things were clear enough that one didn't need to strictly know all of what happened in between - Raylan only used three gestures, You, a point at her, Care, a circle around his heart, and Seeing, with two fingers pointed at his eyes then pointed at her.

[myfavoritemurder]

It still takes her a moment to figure out his meaning. She is, by this point, familiar with both the word care and with tapping her heart to signify it - but only in the sense of loving, not in the sense of minding or being concerned about. Still, context is a big help here, and after a moment's pause she firmly shakes her head.

"I want people seeing," she says, vehemently - pointing at her eyes, then pointing at him, then flinging her hand out to encompass the whole building; the whole town. "I want everybody in Mathias know what Xena does-- did, and what my family--"

She cuts off, snarling in frustration. Even Greek feels like it doesn't have the words to convey the depths of her hatred and grief, so what hope could English have?

"I care."

And then, a quick addition in Greek:

"If I find that ribbon, I'll carry it around with me and make sure that every last person in this city sees what Xena did to my family."

[tinstar]

"Why?" It was a simple question with no real gesture to go with it beyond the look on his face, the pinched, soft confusion on his features.

"You want them to see you as a victim? Someone to be.. pitied? To feel sorry for?" No, he knew what it was; to show everyone what Xena had done but.. that still painted her in a very specific kind of light. One he didn't think she'd appreciate.

"Or you want them to hate her, as much as you do." It still painted her some kind of way. He was leaving her the room for that option, regardless of what he thought.

"What will you do, once you've made death on her, Callisto?"

[myfavoritemurder]

"Yes, I want them to hate her," she says, immediately jumping on that second thing - both because it's true, and because she doesn't fully understand the first. Victimhood, pity, and feeling sorry for people are not things that have typically come up in her conversations so far.

That last bit, though, earns him a frustrated sound made in the back of her throat. She is so tired of people asking her what she's going to do after, as if after is something that matters at all.

"Why?" she fires back, purposefully echoing his own words. "Why I should care about after?"

[tinstar]

"So we can what, suffer more death on her? You can only kill a person once, Callisto. So yeah. What then. Because life, because you keep going after Xena." 'You' was punctuated with a finger at her before that hand settled on his hip.

"If you kill her, what happens after? You don't stop because she does." He lifted a hand to stop any response. "Don't answer. You think about it. You oughta be more than Xena. Or she's stealin' everything you could be. You could be a real leader, get.. land or somethin'. Build somethin'."

Half of that probably went over her head but he couldn't gesture out all that.

[myfavoritemurder]

She does, to her credit, try very hard to listen and pick up as much as possible. She does it because she wants to spit and snarl and reject everything he says, and she can't do that if she doesn't understand it.

So she gets some of it, and what she doesn't get she guesses at, and what's too unfamiliar to make good guesses about she invents out of whole cloth. The effect she comes away with is very similar to the effect that Raylan had intended, even if the details differ a bit.

"But I don't want it," she says - turning her back to him, going to flop down onto a couch. "I could do this, but I don't want."

And there's the rub: between age eleven and now, she's forgotten how to want anything else for herself.

[tinstar]

The petulant way she answered and threw herself on the couch like a dramatic teenage girl was almost enough to make him smile but he had a solid idea that a smile would not be taken well. Either way, it spoke to an understanding.

"You're gonna have to do somethin'. Life," he gestured all around. "You, me. It all keeps goin'." He shook his head and worked his way slowly over to a chair to gingerly set himself down, feeling about a million years old.

"Do you like bein' a leader? Having Warriors?"

[myfavoritemurder]

"I like having warriors for fight Xena," she says listlessly, her eyes closed. The pop open again momentarily, though, and she cranes her neck to look at him.

"A leader is someone who have warriors? Their warriors?"

Someone who is in charge, rather than someone who is expected to follow others.

[tinstar]

Raylan wasn't sure if that meant she liked having the manpower to overcome Xena or if she liked the distraction they brought so she could fight Xena, but he supposed, in the end, it didn't matter.

"Yes. Lot's of names for them. Leaders. Commanders. Generals. Boss. You tell them what to do, they do it." The details and nuances of why they did what they were told was too much to be going into.

"You make big war on people, right? Not just Xena? You do it with your warriors, right? You are a leader."

[myfavoritemurder]

"No, just Xena," she insists, though it isn't true. And it's not that she's trying to deny the actions she's already admitted to. It's that she sees all those other villages that she's burned and all those other people that she's hurt as a means to an end - as something that she does to Xena, and because of Xena, and nothing more.

"I make big war on Xena by-- by with other people. You think I care about my armies? You think they matter to me, you think they give me satisfaction?"

This last bit comes out in rough, aggressive Greek, her fists balled at her sides.

"I don't care," she says in English, trying her hand at translating this sentiment. "I are a leader, but I don't care. I don't care soldiers, I don't care Theodorus."

[tinstar]

Raylan narrowed his eyes at her a little, not really believing the idea that there's just a band of motherfuckers running around in the forest chasing one lady. Not believing that Callisto didn't care, at least a fraction. Somewhere. Having seen exactly what Xena looked like, what it all looked like, he could understand a single-mindness, but he was having a hard time believing that Callisto ate, slept and shat Xena.

"Mm," came his reply, lips pressed briefly into a line. "You are, I 'am'," he correctly gently, like that was the point. It wasn't.

"Well, I realize that nothin' I say is going to change your mind on it." Maybe he'd planted seed enough. "You don't have to care about them to be a leader. Plenty of bad people are leaders, send their men out to die for them. You won't be alone in that at least."

[myfavoritemurder]

"You're a leader?" she fires back. "This is why you care?"