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

[walkingtrigger]

"Normally I'd be heading for those items as we speak," Tim said with a sidelong glance. He was a nosy sonofabitch as a rule; hazard of the job. "But that ribbon was enough for me. Got no problem investigating every nook and cranny of a fugitive's life, but I do not want to be seeing private thoughts or emotions."

Tim briefly considers asking Neal why he should avoid those particular objects. He doesn't, in the end, for a couple of reasons. If he wasn't going to be sharing who and what memory was attached to the ribbon, then he had no right asking Neal to break similar confidences. Second, he was in too much physical pain, to do anything for anyone about anything. He was going to have to hope that if there was something that needed doing? Raylan would let him know.

[conning]

"If you tried, I might attempt to take advantage of the fact that you're hurt after all," Neal says bluntly. He closes his eyes, trying not to let himself tilt sideways into those lives in his head that don't belong to him. "You wouldn't be doing yourself any favors either way."

[walkingtrigger]

"Well. Good thing I'm not tryin'." Tim assured the other man. "Given the nature of this place, I wouldn't expect anything we randomly stumble upon to come without strings."

[conning]

Neal sits silently for a moment. "Find anything of your own?"

[walkingtrigger]

"Nope," Tim confirmed. "But then I can't say I've been looking, either. "Wouldn't mind if mine came in the form of a book." He mused in a pensive tone.

[conning]

The thought of Pride & Prejudice and of The Friends of Eddie Coyle makes Neal's skin pebble with goosebumps. Horror and heartbreak.

"You don't want to touch the books in here. You really don't."

He levers himself back to his feet before offering Tim a hand up. "I came looking for something I recognized."

[walkingtrigger]

"Getting that impression," Tim said, dark blue eyes watching Neal closely. The man seemed genuinely spooked. Under other circumstances that would have piqued Tim's curiosity, but he was all too aware that physically speaking he wasn't up for it.

Instead he reached to take the offered hand. He wasn't a particularly large man but he was solid muscle and hurt so he put more of his weight against Neal than he would have in other circumstances.

"I'm going out on a limb here and guessing you haven't found it?"

[conning]

Neal shakes his head, mouth tight. "No. But it could be anything, really. I might not even know until I touch it."

[walkingtrigger]

Getting his feet under him Tim glanced both ways along the hall and then nodded towards the southern end of the corridor.

"Start the sweep down there, work our way north?" It was a question because he didn't know if Neal had already been searching some of the rooms.

[conning]

Neal hesitates, but only for a breath. This is an attempt, on Tim's part, to reach past those walls Neal pointed out the last time they spoke. At least it reads like one.

"Sounds good. I've covered the four rooms at the very end of the hall, but nothing past those."

[walkingtrigger]

Neal has a good read on the sniper's motivations. He is trying. Trying to take on board the feedback he's gotten from Malcolm, from Raylan, and from Neal himself. It's not easy for him but he is looking for ways to open up that don't leave him feeling dangerously vulnerable.

"Did you see anything that looked significantly out of place?" The question was legitimate curiosity. Maybe Neal had seen something, known it wasn't his and had deliberately left it alone. But perhaps it belonged to Tim. He wouldn't know unless he asked and possibly checked.

"If not, let's pick up where you left off and keep working our way down."

[conning]

"No, nothing that wouldn't be at home in a place like this."

Not in those rooms, at least, and those were the ones Neal can assume without a stretch that Tim is asking about. He's not about to share anything about the things he's touched that have been out of place. Some of them seem to have vanished, for one thing. For another... it's not his place.

[walkingtrigger]

There was no reason for Tim not to take Neal at his word, so he simply nodded and began to gingerly pick his way towards the next room on their itinerary.

Neal could definitely move faster if he didn't have the injured marshal with him, so Tim offered up a question to pass the time as he inched his way down the hall.

"What do you think of all this? Mathias allowing us over to this side of the chasm after all this time?"

[conning]

"I think that's exactly what it is," Neal says, trying not to shiver. "They're letting us see what they want us to see. What they know, what they share--Malcolm's right. We're in their cage, and they're giving us a change in set dressing."

He rubs his face with both hands as he enters a room just in front of Tim. "When I got here I thought there had to be some kind of sense to this place. Now I'm not so sure."

[walkingtrigger]

"I don't think it's a they," Tim said quietly. Not trying to argue with Neal but thinking back over his encounter in the tunnel. "I think it's a singular entity." It felt weird trying to acknowledge the idea of the supernatural. Of beings in the universe beyond their ability to comprehend. But he's read too many books, across a lot of different cultures, that shared a similar sort of antagonist.

"Have you noticed the leaves?"

[conning]

"Yeah," Neal says. He shivers a little. Starts with the room's closet, flipping through the identical scrub-jamas hanging there. "I told Raylan a while back that it almost seems like this place is caught in the moment where whatever went wrong went wrong."

[walkingtrigger]

"Going by the leaves, it feels like time is moving backwards," Tim expanded on his own thought as he walked over to a dresser and began to rummage about.

"Makes me wonder about those phone messages, from ourselves to ourselves. Initially it felt like a warning for future events, but lately I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't the other way around."

Which made the possibility of this building, the restraints, the drugs, and the personal effects, even more disturbing.

[conning]

Neal's brows knit slightly. Yeah, he recognized the implication of the leaves returning to the trees. It was impossible not to. But he couldn't quite get his head around the idea of the warnings being from the past. The personal effects, though--that observation about them...

Neal shivers.

"Hadn't thought of that," he admits quietly. It doesn't make him less inclined to try and find what's his, even if he does just end up pitching it into the ocean. "I wouldn't be surprised if the things we found before were a misdirect."

[walkingtrigger]

"That's a good point," Tim said in response to Neal's comment about the previous objects. "Maybe these are the ones we're supposed to get rid of." It was still a lot of what ifs, the type of holes in the case that got under the skin and made you itch with the unknown.

Tim was moving towards another set of cabinets when he had to sidestep a bit of rotten board that had split open, exposing the ceiling beneath.

"Careful over here, the floor has a rotten spot."

[conning]

"The rate of decay in this place drives me crazy," Neal mutters. He checks the shelf at the top of the closet, then moves on to look under the bed and the dresser. "It makes no sense, though I guess asking anything here to make sense is asking too much. It wouldn't bother me if it was consistent in its inconsistency, but it's not even that."

Let me know if this isn't okay and I'll edit!

[walkingtrigger]

"Chaos abhors order," Tim said in a low voice that suggested he may be talking to himself. He had moved over to a low desk and pulled open the top drawer. Inside was a ball made of rubber bands. It made him smirk slightly because it was the type of time wasting busy work he would indulge in himself at the office. Without thinking, Tim reached for the ball, it could be fun to play wit...

Waiting on the back patio, listening to Mozzie and Elizabeth talking, the double click of Elizabeth locking the back door, then Mozzie smoothly unlocking it. Not much longer and they were both out the door, the alarm beeping out its countdown.

It was laughably easy. Satchmo was happy to see him, as he glided across the space between the backdoor and the alarm pad.

Great. Even betraying the dog.

The unfolded quickly from there, bringing with it the emotional warring within. That manifest was freedom, but it was also its own jail. Taking it, executing the score it would gain him all the money but would lock him into this life of crime for the duration. At the same time there was the thrill of doing what is impossible, of seeing artwork that no one has laid eyes on in almost half a century.

For every pro there is a con. The scales equally balanced with Mozzie on one side, Peter on the other. Either choice he makes will be a betrayal of a friend.

Tim crashed back into the present with a jolt that saw him instinctively stepping back. Except he was clumsy with his injuries, having to throw out a hand to catch himself and in that awkward moment, the ball slipped from his hands.

"Damn it," he gasped, turning and trying to catch it with his foot but the warped floor had the ball heading for the hole. Neal might catch a glimpse of it before it fell into the darkness but there would be no chance to retrieve it.

[conning]

Neal lunges toward Tim on instinct, even though there's a bed in between them. He feels a quick surge of relief when the other man catches himself, but he catches a glimpse of something falling from Tim's grip and into the gap in the floorboards. It was small, round, looked like--

There are plenty of rubber band balls in the multiverse.

Neal rounds the bed, holding a hand out without touching Tim, just a gesture to make sure he's not going to fall over now that he seems to have steadied himself.

"You okay?"

[walkingtrigger]

The younger marshal was gently waving Neal off. The last thing either of them needed was for the handsome thief to go crashing through the rotten floorboards.

"I'm sorry, Neal." He said, shaking his head and giving the hole into which the rubber band ball had disappeared. "I think, that may have been what you were looking for," his expression was genuinely apologetic. Licking his lips he leaned back against the desk, letting it take more of his weight than he'd normally allow.

"Peter, Mozzie, Elizabeth, Satchmo?" He said the names softly, testing his assumption before he shared any more of the memory. A memory that was settling in amongst his own, making it hard to unwind what emotions did and did not belong to him.

[conning]

Neal flinches back in surprise at the list of names. Then steps back again. He doesn't know what Tim saw, but the fact that he knows those names...

He doesn't want to ask.

[walkingtrigger]

Neal's reaction was not what Tim had been expecting and that probably showed on his face.

"They were all safe," he offered, wondering if perhaps something bad had happened to those people and Neal was afraid that was the memory Tim had seen.