The Village Mod (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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villagelogs2021-06-05 08:09 pm
villagemod) wrote in 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"
CONDITIONS UPDATE
OOC NOTES
navigation | faq | locations | report updates
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.
— 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.
— 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.
no subject
Better to change the subject for now. Except that in such a small town, it was hard to get away from anyone, even in conversation.
"It's not pedestrian," he started, hand squeezing gently. "Nothin' about either of those were that." Callisto's was terrifying, Neal's was.. disappointing is the word that Raylan would go with, personally. "Neal could have at least made a different choice but.. I suppose we all have those moments." He took another deep breath before continuing.
"And how'd that go? Was there a lot of baring of teeth?"
no subject
"I get the impression that when Neal is always looking to keep a parachute on his back, ready to pull the ripcord if he gets trapped. Sitting still is as debilitating for him as it is for you and Malcolm."
That brought them to Raylan's final question. Tim curled a strand of hair around his finger, looking down at the top of the older man's head as he thought back to the conversation. He weighted sharing it against the fear that he would just sound like a whiney broken record. In the end fear won out.
"I kept my teeth to myself," he assured his partner.
no subject
His head tilted into the stroke of Tim's fingers and hummed a note of acknowledgement. "Maybe. Maybe.." He didn't quite believe it. Neal could have told Moz no. Could have agreed to find a different way or a different market. All without breaking the trust of the people that had let him into their home. Raylan's jaw and ribs throbbed in reminder of a similarly broken trust.
An eyebrow was lifted at that answer and he hummed again. "And yet you aren't tellin' me how it went."
no subject
"I don't know what to tell you," he began. "I tried to hold a give and take conversation, I tried being open, and answered a personal question he put to me." Tim paused in the face rub and dropped his hands to Raylan's shoulders. "His response was that I needed to do better about letting people help me."
Tim was struggling not to convey how dismissed he'd felt by Malcolm's response. He knew that it had to be something wrong with him. Everybody kept telling him how sweet Malcolm was but every time Tim talked with the man he ended up feeling criticized; like he was shit the profiler found on his the sole of his shoe.
no subject
"What was the question?" Context before opinion. Doing otherwise always got him into trouble. There was no way that Raylan himself was going to fix anything, but he could listen. Try to help, in whatever way that was. He was running out of options.
no subject
He wanted to lay all of it out. The question, his answer, the way Malcolm made him feel even though Tim knew it had to be in his head, because that's what everybody kept telling him. He wanted to confess his insecurities and his fears and he ached for the older marshal's reassurance.
But even as he considered how to answer Raylan's question, Tim knew he wasn't going to share any of it. Because he couldn't tell Malcolm that he was afraid of relying on another person, then go dump all his shit at Raylan's door and rely on the older man to make him feel better. Not with everything his partner had coming on his own plate. Tim couldn't run his mouth about wanting to help protect Raylan and then throw more over his shoulders.
No matter how broad and well shaped.
Lowering his hands, letting them slide down the older marshal's chest, Tim hooked his chin on one of those broad shoulders.
"I love you, Raylan." He said softly. "But that is for Malcolm and I to work out between ourselves, and we will. I know you've been pushed onto a timeline not of your own making. You focus on your relationship with Malcolm. I'll take care of mine. All you need to remember is that we both love you."
no subject
"Tim. Darlin'." He pressed a kiss against Tim's temple and rested his head against the sniper's with a deep breath. "You've already got too many secrets. And I've already been in this since the beginning. You don't want me to say anything, I won't but.. Let me in to that head for a few minutes, huh?"
Before he proved Malcolm's point. It was a little ironic that Tim was responding to the accusation by refusing the most trusted hand that was cast out to him.
"Let me help carry just a little of it." Everyone assumed what was on his shoulders. No one asked. No one let him have a voice in all of it. He didn't like decisions about him being made around him. He didn't like to feel excluded from his own people via this kindness they thought they were gifting him.
no subject
It was ironic. Everybody out here trying to protect Raylan and Raylan would be annoyed with the lot of them if he knew. Tim should know better, but this whole attempt at a relationship for the first time in his life had him being a little stupid.
"I pushed myself too far today," he began. "There is more damage than I originally suspected. Malcolm helped me get back here, poured me on the couch. He asked if I needed any help to the bathroom and I made a joke about having missed my weekly crawl of shame.
I could tell he wanted to ask me something before he left and I invited him to ask," trying to be open, trying to establish that conversational connection. "He asked '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?'"
A fair question.
"I tried to explain how terrifying it is for me to be at the mercy of anyone. I explained about my mother, and my father. How I grew up. Information I haven't even talked with you about. I was trying to show him why ... I tried to let him inside my head." It was as good a description as any.
no subject
But Tim was right. He would be annoyed. Mainly because that protection didn't seem to include a lot of conversation with him about it. Something in his chest unclenched as Tim started talking and his eyes drifted closed again as he listened.
Tim trusted him enough to say anyway. God that made him happy. His hands lifted and ran over Tim's forearms, squeezing them gently.
"Understandin' why doesn't mean we can't hope for a little change," he finally answered after a long second. "Objectively, he might have been right. That's no slight against you. It's not your fault, what they did. Or what Arlo did... We were kids, Tim." His heart broke for them both. "What else were we supposed to do."
no subject
"My mother was an addict, Raylan and we're not talking weed or even Oxy. If she was shooting heroin it was a 'light' day." He wasn't sharing this for sympathy, but because it would illustrate the situation more clearly for Raylan. Both of them, in their jobs, saw what happened with the kids of addicts. "I was never a kid. I was cooking for myself, cleaning up after myself ... fuck sake I potty trained myself."
There was no childhood for kids like him, like Loretta McCready. Kids who grew up not only neglected but also having to be the parent in the parent/child relationship.
"I know understanding doesn't negate hoping for change," he continued. "I just ... I don't know, Handsome. Maybe I'm being childish in wishing for a little recognition that I'm trying. Rather than keep getting told I'm not doing good enough."
no subject
"You're not being childish." Raylan always wanted it too, that recognition, and it very rarely ever came without a kick in the gut follow up of 'You're not X enough'. Just because he had gotten used to living without it didn't mean he didn't understand the feeling.
"There's no good enough mark to be aimin' for. You did a good job in answerin' him. 'M sure it wasn't easy. Thank you for tryin'." He hoped Tim wouldn't stop trying. Either of them.
no subject
"Stay at least till I get to sleep?" He asked in a quiet voice. Tim could feel the turmoil coming off Raylan, the sort of anxiety that often required a special sort of solitude. "I'm just going to bed down here on this sofa. Malcolm brought me some water before he left, bathroom just across the hall. Night in the Champagne Room."
no subject
"It's gonna be okay darlin', I promise."