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

[villagemod]

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.

navigation | faq | locations | report updates

Comments

[vampirebats]

Jesus fucking Christ. He'd definitely before yelling and throwing shit to what's coming. He's got a pretty good idea - and the old worn copy of his most hated book says plenty. He eyes doc warily before he reaches out to take it. Time to quit being a fucking pussy and relive one of his least favorite memories, then.

He'd have been more surprised if Neal hadn't already seen some shit.

For a moment, Negan's right back there, swinging that bat and joking, feeling that satisfaction when bone gives way under the swing. There's still a sick sort of thrill that lingers under the wave of nausea when it's done. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, trying to shove down the shame.

"Fuck--" He gives Doc a sharper look though, brows furrowing. "Really? I don't get to fucking say a goddamn fucking thing... you don't know what kind of world I came from, what I had to be to keep people safe. Alive."

[thering]

"I ain't interested," Doc replies, oddly calm and cool and serene, perhaps a little detached. If he was visibly angry it would have meant he still felt something strong about the whole thing. Maybe something strong that could be salvaged. As it is, there's barely any feeling in his voice.

"Although perhaps you ought to listen to that speech you've got up your sleeve for once." Maybe Negan would realise what all that defensiveness and that justification sounds like to the person standing in front of him.

Doc has priorities. If it's between keeping the New Yorkers safe and putting the roof over a bat-swinging lunatic, that's not even a question worth asking. It's not as if he was blind to the fact that Negan got a kick out of that, wholly unnecessary and twistedly sadistic that it was. It's not as if he doesn't know what kind of man Negan is.

And, yes, maybe he's taking things a little personally. He let a man like Negan stick his hand down his pants and his tongue down his throat. And elsewhere. Not only has Doc lost his appetite for the rest of the day but no amount of time scrubbing in the shower can make him feel untainted. Clearly that gross oversight was a horrendous lapse of judgement and he is more than a little disappointed in himself. Had he met Negan in the world he had come from, an expecting Wynonna in tow, would he have gotten that same kick out of making her watch while he bludgeons the tired old cowboy with a barbed wire bat? There's nothing Negan can say at this point that would improve his standing with Doc.

"Take. Your book. And go."

[vampirebats]

"They slaughtered my people in their sleep... in their fucking sleep Doc. Not one, not two, not three... it was a whole fucking outpost of them. Never knew their names, never gave a shit who they were. They just wanted to kill'em, get a problem out of their fucking way. They didn't care they snuffed out fucking precious goddamn lives!" But he's the asshole for killing a couple of theirs, right? For trying to make a goddamn point he never wanted to make in the first place.

"I realize that was fucking sick what I did, but I felt I had to do it, Doc. You're acting like I'd ever-- I'd never hurt a fucking hair on anyone's head at that house. You've got to fucking know that."

He's getting desperate here. The thought of being alone is more suffocating than anything. "I don't want to be that guy here. I fucking hate that guy..."

[thering]

No, he doesn't know that, because he gets his own kick when he pulls the trigger and he knows - oh, he knows - it is an itch, not a last resort, not a circumstance that drives a man to excessive violence. He has long ago stopped trying to explain away the blood on his own hands. And while he has had a chance to start over, more than a century later in a place that has completely changed with people who don't know him, he knows better. One cannot simply choose to walk away from being 'that guy' at one's own convenience. The suffering has already been inflicted. The sins committed. Doc is 'that guy' as much as Negan is.

He has been trying to change, to reconcile 'that guy' with 'this guy', which is the only reason he tosses the fragile papers aside and starts walking out of the room. If he stayed and listened to more bullshit he might have felt like throwing a punch. But throwing a punch does not a better man make, as satisfying as it would have felt.

For someone who takes it outside at high noon knowing his winning streak would never be beat, it's so hard to walk away. But he's getting better at doing it.

[vampirebats]

He's always been a violent guy, Negan wouldn't deny that. He's always liked fighting on some level, been quick to anger. But he never wanted to get used to killing... fuck, he can count the handful of times he's ever thought he wanted to kill another person, but he'd had that part that recoiled at the very notion of it. Then the apocalypse happened, then assholes started being mega assholes. He lost everything. There'd been no restraints on his eager dive into the worst of humanity.

He can't change that. He can only try to do better from here on out -- at least until it becomes necessary to be that asshole again, and then he can damn sure make certain his anger is directed at the assholes who deserve it and not anyone trapped here.

"Doc," he starts, a desperation eating at him as he rushes to follow the man. "Fuck, man... I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to see that shit. Hell, I don't even like seeing it, knowing I did it."

He should let him go, quit pushing his luck... but when has Negan ever been talented at that?

[thering]

He's not sure if Negan is even cognizant of what he'd done or if he was only sorry that he got caught out and other unwilling and unwitting people had to witness it. The showmanship and the senselessness of it all was unforgivable. The justifications even more so.

"I invited you into the house. Into my--" Other places he doesn't feel comfortable talking about even though he's fairly certain only the two of them are here if the way he takes in a breath and his shoulders tense up and rise are anything to go by.

"You have not been sincere since the day we met. But you don't owe me anything," he finally manages to growl out. He doesn't want apologies, or piss poor excuses, or bizarre twisted justifications, or meaningless platitudes. If anything they are making the hole Negan is digging for himself even bigger. "And I most certainly owe you nothing either."

[vampirebats]

"Fuck you," he spits out after a moment. "You don't get to tell me what I have been... I've been as goddamn sincere as I can be. How can you say I haven't, asshole? I told you I was a real fucking asshole before... hell, I told you I cracked skulls. I told you about my goddamn wife and cheating on her and--"

He's been real goddamn open. More than he's ever been, even with people back home. "I know what I am. I know-- I know. And I still don't fucking know how I could laugh about any of that shit, what was so fucking funny about it..."

It feels like his chest is tight for a moment, guilt twisting painfully in his gut like it always does anymore, now that he's been forced to slow down, look back. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to make it better or if I can, or if dying is the only way I can ever make it right."

[thering]

Doc shouldn't have, and it was Doc's mistake, ultimately, but he had felt sorry for Negan. He can't know for sure if Negan knows that, if he'd capitalised upon it or it would have riled him up, made him proclaim he never asked for that and never wanted it. Either way, it had been foolish and ignorant to have felt anything but contempt and disdain. He should have known better.

"You could die, and it would never be right regardless," Doc says coldly, as though it wouldn't bother him none if Negan dropped dead right in front of him in this very instant. More deaths won't unmake the mistakes of the past, uncheat on the missus, undo any of the brutalities or bring anyone back to life.

"Goodbye Negan." It is a small town and they can't avoid each other completely. But Negan is delusional if he thinks somehow he can convince Doc not to cut him off, if he believes he'll get anything out of Doc anymore.

[vampirebats]

He didn't need anyone feeling sorry for him -- he's never needed that his whole damn life. He'd thought, at the very least, he could count on Doc to have his back though... maybe not in a friendly way, maybe not in anything more than a begrudging way so neither of them died. For once, he's not confident at all about that.

And no, he can't convince him to feel any other way. So if he's gotta avoid the asshole to keep the peace-- he can do that. It still stings, but it isn't a surprise either.

"Fuck-- fine. Whatever, asshole."