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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
He can't say he's into that. Turns out it's more of a notch in the belt of feeling like this place is slowly making everyone lose their minds.
(It's wild to watch yourself almost drown from the outside perspective. Feel the terror, the frantic countdown, the guilt, the weird nostalgia. The whole thing is wild. And how he just has it, too, the full compliment to what he missed between hitting the water and climbing back out.
He's glad he didn't have to redo the part where he was trying not to drown, honestly.
Helps keep the deeply unsettling feeling of the whole memory theater experience just a tiny bit more distant.)
Hardison finds Eliot digging through ruined paperwork. He doesn't bother trying to put any stealth on coming up next to him to dig through some of it himself, because it's Eliot, and trying to sneak up on Eliot is like trying to out-chess Nate. No damn point.
"Take your pick on illegible or inscrutable, huh?"
There's tension to it, to how he's holding himself, that sort of makes the joke fall flat. Not anger exactly. Working up to something.
no subject
"Pretty much."
This place is getting to him, but he himself doesn't sound overly stressed, or he's just good at hiding it. But, Hardison's voice or at least the way he says it, does sound a little off to him. Or maybe it's just the way he's holding himself, a sort of tension that robs the joke of its usual energy.
Now he's paying attention.
Eliot looks up briefly, holding one of the papers up to inspect it but is actually inspecting Hardison instead. Is he hurt? Upset? Something happen?
"You find anything?"
Are you okay?
no subject
It's weird. Having it all fresh to mind when it's been forever since he even really thought about it, even longer since he actually said anything about it.
Kind of been water under the bridge. Pun probably intended. Aired out the grievances, got the truth, would've been guaranteed murder to get caught out on that (like, murder if they were lucky level bad guy), wrapped his head around that, all the big numbers. Now he's back around to questions, wanting to pick things apart from the fresh angle.
He fishes a little on where to start. Practical groundwork's probably a better place to start, with Eliot. Better than launching right into it.
"Kinda." Which is, at least, honest in the roundabout sense. "You, uh. You dig around in any of the bedrooms yet?"
no subject
It's good-natured teasing, appearing to be inconsolably grumpy.
Maybe he's just imagining things being...well, off? With Hardison?
"Bedrooms? Not too much yet."
He's distracted by the paperwork for a moment but what he thought was a legible word was in fact, yet another smear.
"Why? What'd ya kinda find?"
no subject
Probably not much. But it could help.
The questions and feeling unsettled, that's one thing. One way or another he can handle that. The idea of Eliot sitting through it again, no kind of heads up or anything, that's a frontline concern as soon as Hardison has the thought.
"So, first thing. If you go back to digging around the rooms," he starts, looking away, serious as he ever gets, "I need you to be careful. 'cause I kinda found a front-row seat to someone else's memories? Which is pretty much not cool on any level."
That's chill, right. That sounded like a chill way to put it. Good starting point. Master of conversations.
He misses when they had problems that he could say 'we have a problem' about to Eliot, and the answer to the problem was Eliot punching it. Take nothing for granted.
no subject
Or not.
Eliot pauses and frowns, all amused secretly soft grumpiness evaporating into concern.
"Wait--what'd ya mean, a front row seat to someone else's memories?"
And then, nearly as soon as he's spoken, he speaks again, intensely worried, all previous current paperwork sorting and discovering completely forgotten--
"Are you okay? You're not hurt, are ya? It didn't do nothin' to ya, did it?"
no subject
"I complain about dust, man, am I gonna draw the line and not complain if I get hurt?" Technically that was an answer. Nailed it.
It's reassuring to have Eliot be Eliot about it. Hear him out, fire back, routine. Not because Hardison came in here worrying he might not be. Just for the steadiness of it. Count on Parker to be Parker and Eliot to be Eliot, even the one time Eliot was the least Eliot from the outside perspective, and that's a booster shot to the equilibrium. Which he needed a little more than he thought.
There's not a cooldown handbook for supernatural memory stuff.
Hardison hesitates. Crosses his arms while he weighs his options. AKA reaches into the ether and grabs one of the questions he has floating around on sheer curious impulse.
"How come you didn't tell me you were counting down? After we met up with Moreau."
no subject
And then--and then he asks that question and Eliot's defenses crumble completely. And so does his face.
Suddenly it's vulnerable, as if all of his many jumbled emotions are right there on display. It's not fair, it's not fair he has to do this but he deserves this. He deserved it the moment he put Hardison in danger that day.
"I..."
He's so unprepared, his mind jumbled with the horror of it all, with the regret, the sadness--
--he finally collects himself, somewhat, and looks away. He can't quite meet his eyes.
"...it didn't matter if I told you or not."
There's a pained pause.
"What mattered is that you got out and the mission was completed."
Nothing he could do or say, no apology he could make, would ever make up for what he did.
no subject
Not really any kind of funny.
Hardison watches, sharp-eyed, and feels guilty about that. Not for bringing it up, so much, but for blindsiding him with it. Doesn't really have the finesse to it. Doesn't really follow the usual flow, the setting something on the table and letting Eliot reach for it on his own terms.
"Uh-huh."
Can't exactly walk it back, though. He doesn't exactly want to.
"It's just like-- I got why you didn't jump in after me. You know? Once I got a minute to think on it. It's not like that was rocket science, man, our whole thing is leverage. And I was gonna be mad at you for lettin' me walk in there blind either way. There wasn't gonna be a magic reset button on that."
Some things are only up to time and understanding. He worked through that one on his own schedule.
"But speaking as the guy who was in the room and then in the pool, would've mattered to me to hear it. I would've been, like. Still mad, still wet, still scared, but eight percent less worried about your ass."