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

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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

“I’m not sure that’s a bad idea but I don’t want you to get hurt,” Malcolm admitted. “Maybe we can find a pry bar or something?”

"A pry bar, a solid screwdriver, a hammer, shit; more than one way to skin a cat." Breaking into things was not a problem. Just the doing it without tools of any kind. He knew better.

As they came up to a garage, Raylan pointed to the left side. "You take that side, I'll take the other one?"

Malcolm nodded and moved to his side as directed, riffling the contents of every shelf and drawer and toolbox. The best he came up with was a philips head screwdriver. He brought it to Raylan dubiously.

"It might be good for blunt force."

For his part and ruffling through the shelves, he found a roll of wrenches. It wasn't torque wrenches but it was something and they could maybe do something with it. Might be a bit more work but Mathis never made anything easy.

He looked over at the screwdriver and bobbed his head. "Either we break in or we break it. If not, we got these. Can't attest to how strong they are but." He shrugged. It would work. "Worth a shot. You think they got somethin' you can use in there?"

“Based on the rooms, I’d guess it was used as some sort of asylum or soft prison. They probably have sedatives at the very least… if anything was actually left in the cabinets. They cleaned out the rest of town,” Malcolm mused as they headed back.

He'd take that as a yes.

"You're not going to try and sleep your way through this, right?" That was the last thing that Raylan wanted to worry about. Malcolm was a grown man who'd been medicated for long enough to manage himself but Raylan could still envision Malcolm over doing it and them walking in to find him dead.

“I don’t sleep,” Malcolm reminded him with a cocky grin, which immediately faltered. Okay; you got him. “I’m not going to take enough for sleep,” he replied more seriously. “Just to… calm down the noise.”

"You know I'm worried about you, right?" Raylan brushed his nose against Malcolm's before pulling back to pull his face back into focus. "I worry about you, Malcolm Bright. At least fourteen times a day."

He loved you. Deeply and without reservation.

That made him smile, almost shyly, up at Raylan. He clutched the screwdriver tighter in his hand.

“Fourteen times? How do you have time for anything else?” he teased in a dreamy near whisper.

"A lot of practice," he answered with a crooked smirk, bumping their shoulders and hands together as they went.

"But.. You're gonna be careful, right?"

“I will be careful,” he promised, looking over. “I can’t go around adding more worries to your plate. It’s pretty full.”

Raylan ran himself ragged tending his responsibilities. Malcolm knew he was one of them but he wanted to be at least as much safe space, if not more. He wanted to be a harbour when those responsibilities began to splash over his bow.

He looked up at Baneberry Hall as they drew near it.

“Some of these meds might help, too, if the doctors need to sew someone up or… more, too.”

"You leave my plate to me," he assured softly. "But I won't say no to the help of keepin' one less thing off it."

If he could trust Malcolm to take care of this, if he could know that he didn't have to worry about coming home and finding Malcolm sprawled out on the floor of the bathroom with a bottle of pills next to him.

"I assume you'll sort through whatever we can snatch - you plan on givin' any to your friend Carter?"

Oh, right. Carter. If he came back.

“I… suppose that would be the right thing to do. To. Leave distribution up to him.”

And Malcolm clearly wasn’t completely comfortable with relinquishing his treasure to the Greater Good.

"He is a doctor. Just.." Raylan shrugged. "Ya know. Be. Selective about what you offer. Things you won't be needin' right away. Or ever."

“Well. We’ll… see how much I end up getting.” God, he did sound like a junkie. He sounded like a junkie. “It’d be nice to help out the clinic.” Better? Better.

Raylan gave him a passing look but didn't press it. He did sound like a junkie.

"Yes. It would. Never know what kinds of injuries that stupid people like me might get next. It'd be nice to know we've got some relief for them."

Think of the community, Malcolm.

“If we find any painkillers, he can have them. I don’t usually take those,” Malcolm assured him. He wasn’t that kind of a junkie.

When they reached the office, he looked at the cabinet and then at Raylan. “What’s the plan of attack?” he asked.

"Great."

Pulling up in front of the cabinet, Raylan spun the screwdriver in his palm before wedging it into the lock and prying with a twist of his lips in effort.

"First step first."

Edited 2021-07-01 23:53 (UTC)

Malcolm leaned forward involuntarily in anticipation of the door opening, looking eagerly around Raylan’s shoulder.

“Is there anything in there? What do they have?”

"Course there is, otherwise it wouldn't be locked," Raylan said over his shoulder as he put his weight into it. The lock snapped loudly and skipped to a stop across the floor, but it wasn't just the lock. Half the screwdriver went with it and Raylan was lucky he hadn't gashed his palm open.

"Shit," he swore, shaking the hand that no longer held anything before working the latch open and pulling the door.

"You tell me." Malcolm would know what was useful.

Malcolm gasped when the screwdriver broke, taking Raylan’s hand to examine it before moving to examine the cabinet. Confirming it unscathed, he pressed a kiss into his palm, then turned to look in the cupboard, his eyes widening as he read the bottles.

“Sedatives. They’re all sedatives,” he remarked, filling his pockets with them.

The kiss in his palm made his heart jump and his eyes lingered on Malcolm as the smaller man digs into the cabinet.

"So.. good things? I thought you were on anti-psychotics."

“I’m on sedatives, two antidepressants and an antipsychotic,” he said, still stuffing his pockets until the shelf was empty and he rattled when he moved. “But the sedatives are for the general anxiety and panic and that’s a lot of what I’m struggling with here.”

"Somethin' that helps then. Good. About goddamn time she gave you somethin'." Don't think he didn't notice the liquor and everything that seemed to skip over Malcolm's specific needs.

"You think they're gonna refill?"

“I’m going to check that,” Malcolm told him. “I’m going to check that first thing tomorrow. Once I collect as many as I can find. I might have to go home and get a bag or something.”

He paused, then - rattling - threw his arms around Raylan’s neck.

“Thank you.”

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