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villagelogs2021-06-05 08:19 pm
villagemod) wrote in villagelogs2021-06-05 08:19 pm
Entry tags:
063-064 » no matter how much / part ii (group B)
WHO: Group B 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
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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.THE NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake up on the lawn of Town Hall, at the center of the little town square. There are shops all around them, with houses just beyond, and at first glance, everything seems almost picturesque. Except for the silence that is at times so complete as to be maddening... Welcome to Mathias.
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
“Terrorize?” He squints a little. “You saw the mausoleum, didn’t you?” How fucked up is it that was one of his lesser crimes against one of his sons?
He frowns a little. “How’s that? You seem like an open book kinda guy.” But he doesn’t know him that well so maybe that’s wrong. “Sure, yeah-” he nods a little. “I think it helps, talking about it.” He’s talked about Dave with a few people here, and it gets a little easier each time. Maybe that’s a good thing.
“Let’s find somewhere less creepy to talk,” he laughs softly. He hates new places popping up in this town.
no subject
"That was it. With the, ah... ghosts?" Weird, but far from unbelievable, given his own experiences.
Jeff shrugs a shoulder, humming softly. "I guess I do seem that way." He's got a lot of practice with that, talking a lot, seeming open, without really saying much. Even with Lisa... He'd always been too afraid to fully be open with her. No wonder their marriage ended. Ayo was the last person who'd ever really seen him-- all of him.
"Somewhere less creepy..." Jeff looks around and laughs a little. "That's pretty tall order for this town." But Klaus is right; Baneberry is fucking creepy. Like, even by Mathias standards. "How about my place? Since I totally crashed yours earlier."
no subject
"Aren't they lovely? Can't imagine why I did so many drugs." He says it with a laughing lilt in his voice. He has a sense of humor about... well, everything, but nothing more than using it as a shield against his own traumas.
He tilts his head as they start moving toward the exit. "But...?" There felt like more to that, a hidden back-end statement, somehow.
He laughs a little at that. Fair point, good sir. "Sounds like a plan." He nods and he feels a little better when they're out of that place. "Okay, before I explain who Dave is, and how we met, let me just... explain something first." He knows it's a hard pill to swallow for some people, and he can never be sure who might be more accepting of it. "Time travel is a thing in my world. My brother can do it, not perfect, I wouldn't suggest asking him to take you to any specific. year, it's rough-going. And... with these weird-ass briefcases I won't pretend I understand, that are part of a creepy not-really-government agency that fusses about keeping timelines in order."
And he's just going to let Jeff digest that before he continues. Of course, Klaus hadn't known any of that at the time of what he's about to explain....
no subject
As for the big 'but' in the room, fuck if he knows how to explain it. On some level, sure, he knows logically why he keeps a lot to himself, but it's hard to really look at it-- look at himself-- and articulate it to somebody else. Jeff glances away, taking a last look at Baneberry Hall before they head outside, back into the too-quiet world of Mathias. Then he looks at Klaus again and admits, "I guess people like to see me one way, and I don't like to correct them much."
Soft, sweet, a little stupid, and a lot uncomplicated.
He listens to the preamble, and... it's crazy, yeah, but it's the kind of crazy that's a little easier to accept, after what he'd seen of Klaus's life-- not to mention the bullshit he'd experienced in his own. Once you've had a demon in your brain, a lot of stuff seems totally plausible.
"Time travel. Okay. Got it. That's about the single most stressful concept in the universe--" Look, he's a history teacher, and all he can think about is BUTTERFLY EFFECTS and which style of time travel we're talking here: Terminator, Back to the Future, is it a closed loop where all was predestined to happen, or would bumping into a random person on the street ultimately lead to the fucking apocalypse?! "But your brother can time travel. Okay."
no subject
Klaus nods a bit at that. "I get that." He does a lot of the same, in fact. People see an easy-going hippie or party boy and it's so much easier to fall into those roles than be the broken mess he is underneath it all.
"Ah, but it's the briefcase that's important in this one." He says, pointing with a finger. "So I was kidnapped and tortured by my brother's former co-workers," he drops it as casual as mentioning he met someone for coffee. "because they thought I had information they needed- fun times- anyway, I get myself out of the ropes eventually and decide to book it out of the motel- but you know, not before grabbing this briefcase I think is chock-full of cash. I'll be partying for weeks, right? Wrong." He says the last word with emphasis.
"I'm riding the bus and I open this suitcase and there's no money, and then I just feel lightheaded and a little like my body went through a blender and I'm being barked at to get dressed and get on the bus. I'm literally in Vietnam during the war. Shipping out to A Shau Valley." And that's just the beginning.
no subject
He tries not to dwell on it, though. Tries to follow the story of torture and time travel briefcases and--
"You were dropped into the Vietnam fucking War?!"
no subject
"I was there for ten months... so it was a pretty short-lived relationship, I guess, but... longest one I'd ever had." He shrugs a little, fidgeting with the tags again; it's hard not to when he's talking about him. "But Dave..." He can't stop the smile that breaks across his face, small and genuine and sad. "He was my rock. He was amazing... I fell for him so hard, so fast, I didn't have a chance."
He chuckles lightly, "It... sounds so dramatic, you know, but... he really showed me I was worth..." He shakes his head, not even sure which word to put there, so he just goes with all of them. "the time? the effort? to love. That I could... care about someone else, more than myself."
If only that was where that story ended.
no subject
"There's nothing wrong with dramatic. Sometimes that's what makes things important, you know? He made an impact."
Though, god... He can only guess how this story's going to end. And he hopes that somehow, against the odds, it might have a happy ending. But given the time, the place, the conflict...
"It sounds like... you made a lot of good memories in ten months."
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"He died on the front lines... bullets straight through his chest." His eyes welled up with tears that he doesn't bother hiding, or trying to stop from spilling over onto his cheeks. "I tried... but... there was no saving him..." his voice trails off into a whisper, and then a heavy silence.
There were no happy endings for a Hargreeves.
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Jeff swallows back a sympathetic lump in his throat, and he puts an arm around Klaus's shoulders in a one-armed hug, tipping his head against the other man's. He's not sure if it's, like, too much, for a man he's only just met a couple days ago, but he can't watch somebody cry and not try to offer what comfort he can.
"That is so... fucking unfair."
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He does, however, accept the comfort. Probably far easier than Jeff might have anticipated. He leans into it, like they're old friends, and it's just a rough night, and he needs a hug.
"Yeah," he laughs softly, a hollow, sad thing. "Yeah...it is. But... he taught me things I never knew about myself, and that's worth the world to me. He will always be the reason that I know I can love someone more than myself, and that I'm worth the effort and the hangups to be loved by someone else."
no subject
Well. He loved Jeff, all of him, probably more than everyone before, and everyone since. But Jeff can't exactly say the lesson stuck; there's still a part of him that's convinced Ayo had it all wrong. After all, they were never gonna last in the real world, and Jeff hadn't lost him.
Jeff ditched him.
He chews on his lip, looking guilty for a second, before seeming to wipe the expression from his face and replace it with another warm smile.
"You know, Dave... He must've felt like you were the sun shining through a fucking cloudy day."
It's not like Jeff lived through the 1960s or anything, but fuck, being a boy who was into the other boys had been hard enough in the 80s and 90s. He can only guess how lonely Dave had been, until Klaus came into his life with a crazy magic briefcase.
no subject
He laughs at that, shaking his head. "I don't know... maybe. I totally fucked everything up when we all went back to the 60s." A beat and he adds. "There was an apocalypse, we got scattered in the jump back. It was before things were really ramping up, we were all in different years, it was a mess. But I think I really freaked him out. He was barely old enough to enlist. I just wanted to save him. Stop him from–" He lets out a soft huff. "It didn't work... I mean– I'm sure he thought I was nuts."
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Who knows why. It had been a misplaced love, in the end. Jeff ended up hurting him the way he'd hurt everyone else.
"Oh..." He tries to follow all the crazy threads, apocalypses and more time travel and... Jeff looks at Klaus, brows knitted and eyes wide. "You saw him again? Before the... Oh. Fuck, dude..." He exhales. "I can't say I wouldn't have tried to save him, too..."
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"Yeah," He nods and huffs a soft laugh. "But how do you even explain it, you know. Like-" he waves a hand vaguely. "I won't know if anything changed until?– if?– I ever get home. I'll look him up..." There's no guarantee that Dave lived, or even that he would know who the hell Klaus was, which timeline would take precedence... so many unknowns.
no subject
"It's hard to explain," he says, and he realizes that's a total copout as soon as the words leave his mouth, so he tries again. "It was like... living in a dream. I could never tell the difference, if I was asleep or awake. Things were always just a liiiiittle bit..." He gestures vaguely. "Wrong. And there was always something--" He cuts himself off with a shrug. "I fucked around with magic too much is all. It messed me up real fucking bad for a long time."
He goes quiet for a moment, mulling over Klaus's dilemma. The big WHAT IF dangling in the air...
"What if you didn't look him up? When you get home." When, not if. He has to believe it's a matter of when, for all of the people here. "What if you just believed in that happy ending?"
no subject
"Like a really convincing acid trip?" He suggests. Look. It's just terms he can conceptualize, okay, don't judge him. Not that he thinks Jeff would.
He scoffs softly, shaking his head. "It's... a nice idea, but..." he shakes his head again. "I know me and... I don't have that kind of self control."