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The Village Mod ([personal profile] villagemod) wrote in [community profile] villagelogs2021-06-05 08:09 pm

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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vampirebats: (pic#14493379)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-18 06:36 pm (UTC)(link)
That gets Malcolm a playful shove. "Hey, asshole, some of them may not be fit to talk about in polite fucking company."

Like that's ever stopped him before.
abrightboy: (smile between friends)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-19 02:00 am (UTC)(link)
“Sooo… lust, then?” he hazards, giving Negan a cheeky glance.
vampirebats: (pic#14493366)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-19 08:14 am (UTC)(link)
"Lust, anger..." He trails off, snorting as he eyes Malcolm. "For a guy who just saw what you did, you're in a much better mood than I'd imagine."

But it's-- easy to push down the bad shit when you're used to it.
abrightboy: (hates to break it to you but)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-20 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
Malcolm sobers a little but shrugs a shoulder.

“I’ve seen worse things done to more innocent people for poorer reasons,” he admits. “It’s a shocking thing to look at but… in context? It wasn’t exactly harvesting and pickling faces for pleasure, was it?”
vampirebats: (pic#14493367)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-20 04:54 am (UTC)(link)
"Ugh--" He makes a face at that. "Yeah, okay, that's a good goddamn point."

Pickled faces may or may not be haunting him as much as that girl now, but he supposes it's an even trade for what Malcolm saw from his side. "Whatever you saw-- no one's exactly innocent in my world. you got to do shit to survive or someone else will do worse to you."

He huffs out a sigh. "Before I became-- the Negan you know and love, had to deal with a guy who tried to use my wife's chemo against me. Asshole had me locked up for days, beating the shit out of me, pissed I wouldn't tell him where I found the doctors who gave me the drugs. That was the first time I truly saw what the world was becoming, you know?"

He shrugs. "Also pretty goddamn sure that's why she gave up in the end, thought I'd probably skipped out on her."
abrightboy: (pays attention)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-20 01:49 pm (UTC)(link)
“That’s an awful position to be in and I don’t know what I would have done in your shoes but… there’s only so much any mind can take before it snaps,” Malcolm says. “Nobody is meant to endure what you endured.”
vampirebats: (pic#14493362)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-20 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)
"Dude, your dad tried to kill you when you were a kid. You saw a mostly naked chick in a box. People endure shit they shouldn't all the time." He shakes his head.

"Also I've never seen pickled faces. Pretty sure you got me beat there."
abrightboy: (presses lips)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-20 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)
“They were clinically fascinating but aesthetically disgusting,” Malcolm supplies. He looks over at Negan. “I’m worried about what I could become if things go that way here. I don’t feel like I have a lot of room to judge.”
vampirebats: (pic#14493370)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-20 10:33 pm (UTC)(link)
"What you could become... what do you think you could become, Malcolm?" He tilts his head curiously at the other man.

"Because from what I've seen, I don't think you'd be the type to laugh about cracked skulls and eyeballs."
abrightboy: (pays attention)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-21 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
“Only psychopaths start off laughing about cracked skulls,” Malcolm tells him. “And I have more psychopath blood in me than you do. You know it’s a slow slide of escalation. You know it is, because that’s how it happened to you. Then one day you’re at the point where you have to crack a skull to save the world and you don’t see any other choice.”
vampirebats: (pic#14493386)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-21 01:19 am (UTC)(link)
"Alright, but just because you could doesn't mean you will or that the circumstances here will ever warrant that kinda shit, Malcolm." There's always a choice, in the end, but Negan chose the more gratifying of the two.

"Remember when you told me about the kid who locked you in a room in school? You said you intended to kill him, right? But then you didn't. You made a choice. And if it ever gets to the point you gotta crack a skull, you'll still have it in you to step aside, Malcolm because I'll be here. Hell, Raylan, Doc..." Guys who are used to getting their hands dirty.
abrightboy: (tries to understand)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-21 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
Malcolm bites his lip and looks at Negan.

"I don't want you to have to do it either. Let's hope it doesn't come to that," he says.
Edited 2021-06-21 01:52 (UTC)
vampirebats: (Default)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-22 09:25 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah..." He offers up a quick smile. "We'll do our best to make sure it doesn't come to that, alright?"

Or at least try.
abrightboy: (sadness)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-22 05:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Malcolm nods, sticking close to Negan as they walk. "I don't want everyone to turn on each other. The love in our house is the main thing we have working against whoever is behind this. They're always trying to drive wedges between us. Clearly cohesion in the group isn't what they want."
vampirebats: (pic#14493395)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-22 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's not a bad strategy," he admits, loath as he is to compliment the fuckers toying with them on anything.

"Separate us, keep us more afraid or pissed at each other than we are at them and they can keep dicking with us indefinitely in any way they want." He hesitates, hands sliding into his pants pocket after a moment.

"Just gonna put this out there... you're not the only one in the house who knows about what I did."
abrightboy: (pays attention)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-22 11:45 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm sure they understand what you were dealing with," Malcolm tells him. "We've all done things we're not proud of."
vampirebats: (pic#14493375)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-29 07:40 am (UTC)(link)
"I don't think that's the case, Malcolm," he answers honestly. "They're none too happy I've been living under y'all's roof after what I did, like I'm not a fucking danger."
abrightboy: (got his attention)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-29 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Malcolm frowned. "You're not a danger. Not to us. Maybe to someone who tried to break into our house or hurt any of us."
vampirebats: (pic#14493369)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-29 05:37 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yeah, well... the idea of a guy laughing and joking about someone's eye out puts people on edge, Malcolm." He huffs out a laugh. "People don't like sharing a roof with someone who doesn't just murder, but laughs about it while he does it, puts on a show."

He can't blame them.
abrightboy: (makes a point)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-29 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
"But that's just it: it was a show. A performance. A performance put on for a specific result," he points out.
vampirebats: (pic#14493373)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-06-29 06:57 pm (UTC)(link)
"It was." It was one hell of a performance. He meant to put the fear of the fucking devil into those people and it meant he couldn't be weak.

"I think that's what's bothering them, Malcolm. I was toying with those people. I wanted them to remember the name Negan and every goddamn reason they ought to fall in line after they murdered my people. Murder is murder, but sadism is a whole other ballpark."
abrightboy: (pays attention)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-06-29 07:01 pm (UTC)(link)
"Did it work?" Malcolm asked. "Did they leave your family alone after that?"
vampirebats: (pic#14493375)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-07-05 09:36 am (UTC)(link)
"Nope. We're in the middle of a goddamn war-- or we were. For all I know, it's over with, long as we've been here." He shrugs his shoulders. "The other group-- they wanted to finish the job wiping us out."
abrightboy: (regretful)

[personal profile] abrightboy 2021-07-05 07:37 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm so sorry," Malcolm tells him. "I'm sorry that they're probably in more danger without you there."
vampirebats: (pic#14493373)

[personal profile] vampirebats 2021-07-13 08:36 am (UTC)(link)
"You know, that's the shit of it," he starts. "There's this guy there who's probably fucking stepping up and taking over... but he's got a dangerous streak that I don't trust or respect. Should have killed him when he decided to fucking off children, but-- I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to end a life that day for whatever reason."

He hesitates a moment, thoughtfully. "I'm afraid he's gonna wipe this group off the face of the goddamn earth and anyone associated with them. Hell, they might all be dead now for no good reason at all."

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