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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.
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Well, gentle when it wasn't accompanied by that threat. The Marshal scoffed at it as he closed the door behind him; it was just him today.
"I'll sit still tonight," he promised with a curl of his features. "Bit of 'shine to keep my pain down enough to catch a few Z's before Mathis wakes me up again. Though I can't promise it'll do anything for my lookin' like shit. Did I catch you countin' wrinkles or somethin? We got a beauty pageant on I should know about?" he asked with a nod towards the mirror Doc had been looking so hard into.
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caring?overbearing so in the end he tears his gaze off of Raylan and goes back to studying his reflection in the mirror."That's what the moustache is for," Doc drawls, running his fingertips over the mirror pane before knocking on it a few times as though it is a door. He is self-confident enough that a few wrinkles don't bother him none.
"I have been here before," he explains. "There was a spectre dwelling in this mirror last time. You'd look over your shoulder thinking you might catch a glimpse of him standing behind you, but there would be no one there. Then when you turn around again he's moved even closer towards you. It was... unsettling, to say the least." It didn't help that he seems to be the strong, silent type. Any attempts Doc made at communicating to him fell on deaf ears also.
"Ain't nothin' anyone could do to make him talk or go away. Course, it appears as if he is no longer there."
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"Don't ever trim it shorter than it is, you're a half inch on either side away from a bad 70's porn mustache." Not that he expected Henry to know what that is.
As Henry answered the question, he moved closer, less an amble and more like walking the worlds broadest tightrope - every step felt like it might be enough to send him down if he didn't step right. "Is this the place you got kidnapped to, then? We had somethin' followin' us in the mirrors at the Lodge but.. Didn't quite creep like that."
Raylan leaned back a little to peer at the engraving at the top, eyes drifting over the photos. This we offer in humility and fear. "Any idea what that means?"
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"A bad what?" he asks, eyebrows furrowed as he tips his head to one side. Yes, he's familiar with lewd imagery - who isn't? - but no, he's not familiar with that particular concept. They can probably find some tucked away in the corner of the video rental store if they looked real hard for educational purposes but there's always something more important to do around here.
"Last time," he confirms. He glances over at Raylan again, always at the ready to catch him if he falls, but making no moves at the moment to initiate contact. It is not something he does unless he's sure they will be alone. His gaze follows Raylan's to look up at the inscription.
"No. But these are the same photos as the other ones that have been goin' around. Decades and decades with people who look the same." He can't help but wonder if they're a bit like him. Immortal through magic or some other means. Or maybe like Five, capable of hopping around through time.
"Maybe I am reading too much into it, but there appears to be something ritualistic about... well, this town. There's this--... sommin' about making offerings and mirrors. When you first met Malcolm I was in a cave or tunnel. There was some kind of altar with a mirror there too, in the middle of nowhere. We are made to follow some nonsensical, cryptic instructions like some kind of cult." He also thinks there is some kind of significance about water. They had come in through the beach and many a time when people have perished, they come back into town through the beach. It's happened often enough that it's trained him to sweep on past the Grey Gull everyday, just about, in case he might find someone there. There's just something perhaps thematically appropriate about the water.
"You were in that building?" Doc asks, tapping on the lodge on one of the photos. "Find anything in there? Other than half-decent whiskey."
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Right now, there were more important things to do and Raylan figured they had plenty of Porch Drinking sessions that they could cover that part of Doc's education with one slightly drunken escapade. They only needed to watch the beginning, anyway. He liked the porn they made with each other, sans camera better.
"People who look the same? I assumed it was a generational resemblance.. I'mma havta bring the ones we've got from the house up here, compare 'em." He studied one picture after another as he listened to Doc go on, head turning to look at him at the point mad about mirrors specifically. He felt like there was something here, a piece hanging just above them that if he bent himself just the right way, he'd be able to see. To make sense of something else, however fractional.
"I don't think you are. Reading too much into it," he admitted with something of a worried glance towards Henry as he shuffled back a little. "Tim and I were talkin' the other day. About what if that's what Mathis wants. Not for us to turn on each other. Not even necessary to farm us for fear, but to get someone, anyone to give up a sacrifice. The idea was floated of tryin' to starve her out but.." He shook his head with a cluck. "No stoppin' us.."
"But I was. In the Lodge. I can only confirm it because of when I died. The.. The Other Mathis. Drenched in red. The fog was gone. So I followed the Chasm. I know where it is. It's their base. The Lodge." The repetition of the title came with a heavier, more respectful weight.
"It holds the rest of the history and the rest of the clues to this place. But you're right. I was too busy gettin' drunk and findin' Will Graham to mind much more than the keys and the maps, the ones that predate the ones we've got in the Town Hall. 12 keys. Plenty of locked doors in the house. It'll take days, when we get to it, to figure it out but.. It's there. It's got somethin' for us... I'm sure the fog'll keep us from gettin' to it, even with this expansion."
no subject
"The photos are a little grainy, especially the older ones, but I believe that some of the more prominent people in the photo are the same people throughout time." Doc is more used to looking at older photos, the ambrotypes, tintypes, daguerreotypes and the like. There's a lot less guesswork involved in the newer glossy and matte photos.
The more loose threads they tug on, the more obfuscated everything seems to be. It feels like they've been trapped in this fog ever since they stumbled into town that they haven't been able to find their way out of. Even when the actual fog has dissipated they are still just as lost as they had been when they first got here.
"I suppose we will receive further instructions, if we are to start burning offerings and slitting each others' throats." Doc is obviously opposed to the idea since they have no offerings to burn and no sacrificial throats readily available. He is curious about The Lodge, and he wouldn't mind visiting where Raylan had gone even if it is just to see the space where the lodge should be. But he would not ask this of Raylan while he's still nursing his injuries.
"I don't know if the Lodge will have any means of opening pathways home," Doc muses quietly. It would probably only lead to more questions, more mysteries, more confusion. "I-- there are oft moments I consider the merits of going home." He glances at Raylan for half a second before looking back at the mirror. He doesn't want to explicitly say he has considered staying, outright. It feels counterproductive.
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He nodded at the declaration of surety and he believed Doc. But to pick out which ones, he'd have to go over it himself. Fill out the mental file. Maybe he was stupid to find hope in each new thread Mathis gave them, and maybe it would lead him down the dark and merry path she laid out, but he was half his job and this slotted in too well for him to ignore.
Raylan huffed a dry breath, eyes coming back over to Henry at the quip. "Likely in blood on parchment or over the damned telephone," he said darkly. Was he annoyed at prank calls from the universe? Why yes, yes he was. He didn't appreciate these strings on them. Were they going to follow them?
He'd see where they were at the time.
The idea that the Lodge didn't hold any roads home had Raylan frowning gently at the prospect and shuffling his old feeling ass over to a chair to sit down; he couldn't take the standing anymore.
"Your little girl isn't enough? Not that.. I can understand why maybe stayin' here is better. You don't see her, you can't.." He was edging into dangerous territory and offered the out to let it go with a deep breath. "If Mathis wasn't.. the way she is, I might agree with you. No one to miss me at home, not really."
Not when he knew that Winona wouldn't be single for long. Women who looked like that never were. No matter what he did, someone else was going to be raising his child.
"Unless the fog and bullshit is preferable?"
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He watches Raylan move like an old man to the chair out of the corner of his eye, hesitating when he lifts a hand to touch Raylan's elbow and stopping just short of it on his way over. They end up brushing arms like a Victorian scandal, but it's enough of a sentiment to convey Doc's concern.
"That was-- before Alice." Doc lowers his gaze, deciding he doesn't want to look at the men in the mirror anymore. Breathing out a sigh, he raises his forearm and rests it against the doorframe, watching Raylan whilst tilting his head and scratching his eyebrow. This isn't a porch and there's no moonshine around, but they seem to be talking nonetheless.
"Of course we... need to go back," Doc repeats like a broken record, even though he sounds like he's just toeing a line he doesn't entirely believe in. "You do too. Whatever you think about the people in your life, there is more just than chasing down miscreants by day and messy motel rooms and empty whiskey bottles by night."
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"There really isn't," Raylan countered with a soft under the eyebrow look and a shake of his head. "Willa's the best thing I got goin' and I already know that Winona is only gonna let me into part of her life. Alls I got to go back to is loneliness and job spent fillin' the holes in my life. Assumin' nothin' here follows. Ain't a bad, I suppose. Not in light of what some people choose to fill it with but.."
He bobbed his head as he carefully propped his feet up on a nearby chair.
"You don't talk about her much. Alice. Will you tell me about her? I take it she was your wife.. back in life." He didn't know how Doc parsed it so he wouldn't assume, but the door was open for him to elaborate none the less.
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That there won't be space in the motel room for anyone or any time in between the stakeouts and the meetings and the getting shot at and the Willa time is obvious enough to Doc that he doesn't mention it to Raylan. No point rubbing the loneliness in, but some of that stems from what he has devoted his life to doing. You can't bring a slice of the idyllic moments of Mathias and expect it to slot and fit perfect into Harlan. It don't work that way.
"Contessa was my wife. Everyone knows her as Kate, although she was not the woman in the photographs that have survived today. We could not get married." Not that they needed the bells and whistles to know what they had. "Even if we had wanted to, it was a felony for me to marry someone who wasn't white, and for her to marry someone who was. No one would officiate, and I didn't want anyone shooting her." He expects not needing to explain much more than that to a Kentucky lawman who must have seen his own fair share of unprovoked racial violence, so he leaves the topic of Kate unless Raylan wants to ask further.
"Alice is. My mother. Though she did not know it, I was there when she died. I got tuberculosis from trying to be there for her in a small, dark pit under her room so she wouldn't wither away and die alone." Doc crosses his arms and turns his back to the frame, leaning against it as he heaves a long sigh. "I don't recall telling Wynonna about her, but she named our daughter Alice. I can only hope that she won't suffer a similar fate. Kate left me shortly before I was on my deathbed. And though I bear no ill will towards her for it, it is a terrible thing, to die sick and alone." And scared. Not that the Doc Holliday would ever admit to being scared.
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Lucky, maybe.
Raylan had also know that Doc was married to someone named Kate, but the treads getting weaved were still something of a surprise and the Marshal's brow pinched a little with it. He had nothing against interracial relationships or marriage but the fact of that matter was he simply hadn't thought about it being a part of Doc's story. He should have, considering but there was nothing to do but shut up and learn now.
And when Henry ended, Raylan nodded with a brief look in his lap before turning his eyes back up to the gunslinger.
"Yeah, that is." A terrible thing. "One that you're not gonna haveta worry about here. If nothin' else." There weren't a lot of silver linings here in Mathis, but that was one of them and Raylan wasn't going to harp on it. He would, however, fight anyone who argued about it. Henry wasn't going to leave any of them alone to suffer and goddamnit, Raylan wasn't going to leave him to do it.
"Good name for a baby too. Sweet of Wynonna, even if she didn't know. Bit'ta your family movin' on with you.. If we don't go back, that doesn't stop her from goin' on, you know. Either of 'em. Damage is done," he huffed, not wholly sure it was damage, and not wholly sure it wasn't. Him not being there wasn't enough to stop that from happening now.
"Suppose plenty of kids grow up without fathers." He just hadn't expected his or Henry's, really, to be one of those numbers.
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"I never wanted this. For anyone." Of course, everyone would go on with or without the cowboys. The world doesn't revolve around them. Even if Doc is slightly more eternal than Raylan, there will come a time when neither of them are going to be around. They would want the people they love to endure.
"I wanted to be a good man. Make amends. Keep my promises." He never prayed for fatherhood but he never prayed it away either. It was what fate had allotted him and he was willing to roll with the punches.
"Sometimes, this place..." Doc breathes out another long sigh, straightening up, dropping his head. What else is there to be said? Raylan can read his mind and finish that particular sentence.
"I'm going for a wander. There was sommin' strange upstairs last time - gon' check if anything's changed." He doesn't want to talk or think about either of the Alices. Or Wynonna. Or Kate. Even a short walk around this old house will help clear his head. While he is open, and honest, and true with Raylan, it doesn't mean he actually wants to talk about all these burdensome things he keeps close to his chest.
"Holler out if you see a black phantom crawling out the mirror trying to kill you." He'll come running in time to watch Raylan get eviscerated.
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There was so much that this place did that Raylan couldn't quite finish that sentence but the sentiment was understood. Sometimes Mathis made them question everything.
"I'll scream if I need a rescue. Promise. But first I'm gonna.. sit here for a minute. Rest my feet. Stare at these pictures. If I hear anythin' I'mma run up so please don't knock any lamps or somethin' over. Likely to plant my face on the landing in my scramble."
He wasn't going to stop Henry or force him to stay. Force him to spill any beans he wasn't comfortable spilling, and Raylan wouldn't begrudge him trying to offset how much of their hearts were tangled up in the conversation.
It was only once Henry was gone and Raylan had sat those few seconds, churning over an impossible series of what if's before he heaved a sigh and pushing himself to his feet. There had to be more to this house, more to that mirror, more to those pictures. Who's house was this? Someone important? It was clean, cleaner than everything else. It had to mean something.