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

Entry tags:

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

"Like you said, he's a grown man and will go where he goes. But this whole alternating nights routine is ridiculous and I'm going to tell that to him the next time I see him." Tim probably sounded a little short just then. It was a combination of difficulty breathing, and the awkwardness of this entire situation.

He was working off the assumption that Raylan had yet to tell Malcolm about what was going on between them. The sniper ground to a stop. Primarily because he needed the rest break, but also so he could turn and look at Malcolm rather than trying to keep an eye on where his feet were landing.

"Malcolm, listen to me, please. You love him and he cares deeply for you. You've touched and nurtured a part of him that I think he buried when he was a child and he needs you. But he also needs to be needed by you. If you need him, tell him. Fuck this whole alternating bullshit. If you need him, tell him. He will be there."

Malcolm considered telling him many things. That Raylan will do whatever he needs to do; that he takes his responsibilities seriously and Tim is one of them; that Raylan took that house at 1308 in the first place because he needs a certain amount of his own space; that night shift has taken a toll on all of the people who share it, and that’s with none of them even attempting to take every single night.

Instead, he told him one, simple, relevant truth. “I asked him last night. And he’ll be at 1308 tonight.”

He turned and started them walking again.

There really wasn't any point in beating the subject into the ground, so Tim shut his mouth and focused on carrying as much of his own weight as he could manage. It turned out to be a full time job by the time they reached Phillips Drive; 1308 had never looked so welcome.

He was sweating by the time they reached the porch, lurching to grab at the column closest to the stairs.

"Figure," he said between shallow breaths. "You could use a break from my weight."

Just gonna hug this column for a few minutes. Then he'd tackle the short flight of stairs.

“I’m fine,” Malcolm told him. “I can get you inside. I’m not as frail as I look,” he promised, offering his arm to take the weight again so he could get Tim up the stairs and - at least - into the living room.

"Realized that when you laid out Negan," Tim said with a small upward quirk of his lips. He wasn't trying to give Malcolm a hard time. "Alright," he continued indicating a readiness to tackle the stairs, with the smaller man's assistance please and thank you."

Malcolm huffed a laugh.

"Well, it's been pointed out to me that I'm lucky he didn't take it in his mind to retaliate, lest he turn me into paste," he said. "But he did tell me that I pack quite a punch."

'least he turn me into paste' that was going to prove to be an unfortunate choice of phrase!

"I've seen punches from trained Rangers, to deep hollar scrappers, and I agree with Negan. You have a hell of a swing on you." Yes, yes he knew that physical violence was not considered something to encourage and rah rah over. But Malcolm's huffed laugh was more than a little infectious and this conversation felt a lot more natural then some of the others they'd had.

“When you’re smaller than most of the people they anticipate you arresting, you have to take self defence seriously. Even if your instructor puts you in the women’s class,” Malcolm told him.

He lowered Tim onto the couch.

“Plus I got beat up at school a lot. My mother made me take krav maga with her with Grace Jones.”

Ahhhh. Flat soft surface. Tim couldn't entirely smother the groan of relief as he sank into the couch, closing his eyes briefly.

"Got my krav maga training, among others, courtesy of the U.S. Military," Tim shared in return. "Not the same thing as being bullied at school, but a lot of my fellow Rangers bring a new meaning to cornfed. They start at six foot one and go up, and out from there."

“Why did you choose sniping as a specialty?” Malcolm asked, shifting to lean against a nearby chair, but not to sit in it.

Tim exhaled a deep, careful breath and leaned back into the cradle of the sofa.

"I was always top scores in marksmanship. Had a natural talent for it, for the mathematics involved. When I went into Ranger training, I was initially tapped for scout work and from there my commanding officers added on sniper training."

He made a relaxed gesture with his hand.

"I enlisted, wasn't an officer. Picking up the specialties like scouting and sniping made me more money as well. Then I proved to be very, very good at both specialties."

"So you kept doing both of them afterwards; that makes sense," Malcolm remarked with a nod. He gestured around. "Do you need anything before I go? Something to eat? A blanket? Carried to the bathroom?" Okay, so the last one might have been teasing a bit.

Tim almost teased Malcolm back but he caught the words behind his teeth. They would have been more awkward than amusing. He quickly rewrote them in his head to something still snarky but more appropriate. ""It's been at least two days since I made a crawl of shame to the bathroom. I'm due."

Then he began to stretch himself out prone on the couch. "Thank you, Malcolm."

Malcolm looked like he was considering something but then he pushed upright from where he was leaning on the chair.

"Okay, well. Take it easy. I'm sure Raylan will be by to check on you. Doc, too, probably. He takes his responsibilities seriously. And we're all his responsibilities," he explained as he headed for the door.

Though he was no profiler, Tim was a lawman and well versed in reading faces. He was preparing for the question he saw in Malcolm's eyes when the other man quickly changed tact and moved to leave.

"What did you want to ask, Malcolm?" The question was soft spoken and if the smaller man brushed it off, Tim wouldn't press further.

Malcolm paused and looked over at him cautiously, like one might approach a possible trap.

“Historically, my questions don’t go over well with you,” he pointed out.

Tim ducked his head in acknowledgement of this fact, then gave a small shrug.

"At least this time I can't get up and go anywhere," which was his usual MO when it came to questions. But then he held up a hand, trying to indicate his next words were genuine.

"Ask your question, Malcolm. If don't want to answer it, or I can't, I will say so."

He hesitated, but then gave in. "You're in bad shape. Why did you leave 1306 this morning, where lots of people would be willing to help you out, so you can be here by yourself, crawling to the bathroom?" he asked.

The younger marshal was quiet for a few minutes, considering how to answer in a way that was succinct but also hit the heart of the matter.

"I'm a very independent man, Malcolm. I have been all my life. My mother was an addict and my father was a very bitter, resentful man who loathed being burdened with a crack head wife and a child. As soon as I was big enough to be able to turn the knobs at the back of the stove, while standing on a high stool, I was in charge of feeding and caring for myself." He shared this in a matter of fact tone. No drama, just what was.

"The only thing that scares the shit out of me is being unable to do for myself."

"Nobody is questioning your competence. But you were also in the military and you understand how much team work in life threatening situations saves lives," Malcolm pointed out. "Maybe Raylan is the only one you trust that much right now, but you could try trusting Raylan's judgement in who to trust."

"Yes, I was in the military," he agreed. "But I was a scout sniper. We're trained to work alone, broken off from the unit and on our own. Sometimes I would have a spotter, but it was me protecting them, not the other way around."

Reaching up to brush his temple with his fingers, Tim ran his tongue along his lower lip before lowering his hand.

"It doesn't work that way. I respect that Raylan trusts you and the others, and that's about par for the course. He wants to trust people, even when he keeps getting burned. I don't trust people, Malcolm it's as simple as that and I trust Raylan to be Raylan.

If you and I were both hanging off a cliff, he would save you and let me get my own ass out of trouble. He wouldn't do it to be spiteful. He'd do it because that is what he expects of me. To have his back and to be competent enough to get both of us out of the shit when it breaks."

“So abandoning the prospect of any tangible connection to other people is… what makes you happy?” Malcolm clarifies. “I’ve had to be my only advocate in a lot of situations from a pretty young age but… having been historically unable to rely on anyone hasn’t made me enjoy not having anyone to rely on. We all need someone to pull us up the cliff at some point. If you’re dangling over the edge, there’s no shame in accepting a hand.”

"You're putting words in my mouth," Tim scolded but he did so in a gentle tone. A push back, rather than a shove and run. "There is a difference between ignoring an offered hand, and not ever expecting it in the first place.

I told you in the beginning; nothing scares me more than being in a situation where I am expecting that helping hand and it doesn't come. So I fight like hell for my independence."

“I’m putting words to your actions, not in your mouth. You’ve been offered the helping hand. You keep swatting it away,” Malcolm pointed out.

"Fair," Tim agreed.

"Raylan's braver than I am," he continued after a moment. "He wants to trust and he wants people to care about, believe in. Even as many times as he's been hurt, he still reaches for it.

I'm not that strong."

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

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