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

Entry tags:

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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Malcolm frowns. “Raylan is an excellent judge of character; he’s not going to decide he was wrong about you because of one thing that happened way in the past,” he insists.

"It wasn't way in the past," Neal says quietly. Even softer, he says, "It wasn't even a month in the past, when I came to Mathias."

Maybe a month. Maybe a little more. Not enough time for it to matter.

It matters, because this place has changed him.

“That doesn’t make one action who you are.”

"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts," Neal mumbles.

“But were they?” Malcolm pushes.

Finally, quietly, he admits, "I don't know."

So much of his life--too much of his life--has been about whether or not a thing can be done and how. Only very recently has 'should I' entered the equation.

"I don't know."

“You’re a good person,” Malcolm says firmly. “And nobody reminds you.”

Neal stays quiet at that. He's still not sure. He felt so confident in the idea that he deserved better, when he broke things off with Daisy. He felt so sure in that moment, and now.

Now.

"You said psychopathy has a genetic component. Maybe it's not the only thing that does."

Malcolm quiets for a moment.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he finally murmurs.

"I don't know," Neal says again. It's one part truth, one part avoidance. "You, Raylan. You took what you came from, and you made something good out of it."

A pause, then, "I don't know."

“You’ve turned your whole life around. You help the FBI catch criminals,” Malcolm tells him. “You can’t convince me that doing that doesn’t feel good.”

"But I never stopped being one," Neal says. "I never stopped lying to Peter, I never really gave up doing what I... do."

Not did.

"When I made the deal with Peter, to get out of prison, to work with the FBI... I planned on running. As soon as I had the chance."

Malcolm looks at Neal over his shoulder.

"So why didn't you?"

He almost says I don't know again. But he does know, this time.

"I didn't want to," he admits. "I was going to. With Kate, before the plane got blown up. But Peter showed up when I was heading for the runway. Tried to convince me not to go. I said goodbye to everyone else. He asked why I hadn't said goodbye to him. He wouldn't let it go. I... told him it was because he was the only one who could convince me to stay."

Silence, then, "I wanted him to convince me to stay."

"Did he?" Malcolm asks.

"The plane blew up," Neal says simply. "It's kind of a moot point."

“He never had to tell you that he wanted you there.”

It’s not a question.

“Do you know that we want you here?” he asks. “Because every single one of us was pleased when you came home, even if it was for a reason we didn’t want for you.”

Neal closes his eyes. "I meant what I said before. After the last... time I died. I've ruined everything good I've ever had. I'm. Maybe I just can't have something like this. Not forever. Sometimes not even for long. Whatever happens with Peter, whatever makes him decide I need an objective handler--"

Apparently he's not over that, yet. "Maybe you were glad I came back," he says quietly. "Maybe at some point you won't be."

"I will always be."

He watches Neal for a moment, then settles his head back against the pillow.

"I don't think Peter understands you. But I think I understand you."

Neal blinks. There’s surprise and confusion in his tone.

“What?”

"Peter thinks love is enough, but... that's not everything that someone needs," Malcolm says softly. "A lot of people think that. But I know what it's like, where people decide what I want isn't what I need. Out of love."

That hits Neal harder than he expects it to. It's what Mozzie did, stealing that plunder. Using Neal's own paintings to replace it. Peter, though--Peter...

"He wants what's best for me," Neal protests quietly. "He... maybe he hasn't always, maybe at first I was just useful, but it's not like that any more. He hasn't-- I've never-- This is the first time I've... had any idea what I actually want. What I really want. He's the first person who's ever given me a chance to have it."

“How could he even know what that was when you’ve never been given the space for you to even know what that is?” Malcolm asks. “I don’t doubt that he wants what’s best for you, but he was still the one deciding what that was. Just like Daisy and Bucky. It’s time for Neal to decide what Neal needs.”

Neal's arms tighten around Malcolm for a moment. He presses his face against the back of Malcolm's neck. The past two days have been... they've been so much. The past month and a half. Everything before that felt so big, so impossible, but the very definition of impossibility has been turned on its head since he got here.

These people, in this house, have kept him sane.

He kisses the back of Malcolm's neck. Loosens his grip around Malcolm's waist. Shifts, sits up, tugs on Malcolm's shoulder so the other man will roll onto his back. Blue eyes studying blue.

How are you the way you are, when people treated you the way they have?

The hesitation drops away. Every mentally shouted warning gets pushed back. Neal leans in and kisses Malcolm, one arm holding himself up, his free hand going to tangle in Malcolm's hair, thumb ghosting across Malcolm's temple.

He should see it coming when Neal looks at him like that. Neal's kissed him impulsively before. It still surprises him in its intensity. He returns it, but before it goes any further than that, he presses a hand to Neal's shoulder.

"I can't," he whispers, the hand pressing on his shoulder switching to grasp his shirt. He doesn't want him quite so close, but he doesn't want him any further away. "It's not that... I wouldn't. But. You know why I can't."

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