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

[villagemod]

WHO: Group C 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.




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.

---

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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Billy Russo ♔ The Punisher

[confractus]

(( plotting comment ))

DAY 063

[confractus]

♔ i. poppy cottage

---

[ Billy comes across the Bed & Breakfast early in the morning. He barely sleeps as it is, and he's itching to scope out the entirety of the township. After a shitty cup of coffee courtesy of the house he's squatting in, he throws on a coat he's found and heads out into the cool hours of the early day.

He has no specific location in mind. Eventually, he'll learn them all, clocking their layouts over continued visits, knowing all the places someone might be able to hide. He just walks, enjoying the sound of his boots against the ground among the silence of everything else. It's easier to stay alert when there's no other noise, though every so often he thinks he hears something along the line of the forest and he snaps his eyes towards it.

You're being paranoid, he tells himself, but he doesn't think it's without just cause. He knows how good people are at playing the long game.

And that's when he comes upon Poppy Cottage. Billy decides he isn't all that charmed by the outside of it. It looks like every other quaint New England B-n-B, and God knows he's seen enough of them from his time in upstate New York. It does make him curious, though, about what sort of people would come up here for a vacation. Mathias doesn't look like much now, sure, but Billy can't imagine it ever looking like a destination for tourists. Maybe it was just one of those places that people stopped at on the road to somewhere else. Only one way to find out, right? So he heads inside, looking around for he decides to check out the reception desk. ]

Jesus Christ, 1993?

♔ ii. the old church

---

[ The crumbled ruins have definitely seen better days. Billy snorts a bit as he walks up to the stones that are somehow still standing, and, if he's honest with himself, he's a bit impressed. Billy's seen plenty of ruins, usually thanks to bombings, but he didn't know America had things like this (assuming, of course, they're in America). Of course somewhere in America would have a shitty old church like this, though.

He walks the perimeter, keeping his eyes on the ground, in case he sees something interesting. He doesn't of course, but he finds he's enjoying calmness of the place, so he's in no rush to leave. Billy even scrapes a fingernail against the scorch marks on some of the stones, to see how easily it might come off or if it's really on there. Was it a fire that ruined this place, maybe destroying a wood foundation that toppled the stones around it, or something else? Who even knows, honestly.

Billy finds a place to sit among the ruins, absently picking up a large rock by his foot and tossing it in the air to catch. ]

— poppy cottage

[chuju]

[ When Daisy enters the quaint little bed and breakfast, she bypasses the front desk, more focused on — well, she's not really focused on anything, to be honest. Her mind wanders as she moves from room to room, idly looking for any sign of the people who might have stayed there. After a few minutes, though, she loses what little focus she has and simply stands at one of the windows, staring out at the forest in the distance. The fog that lays just behind the treeline tugs at her thoughts, the eerie oddness of it trying to break through the other thoughts that she would much rather avoid.

But she died a day ago. How do you stop thinking about something like that?

The voice from the other room cuts through the silence like a knife, pulling her away from both the literal and figurative fog. Turning away from the window, she moves back out into the hall and up to the front of the house, her boots quiet on the floor but certainly noticeable. Just as much so as her unseasonably warm thick cable-knit sweater or the scrapes on her face. ]

[confractus]

[ Hey, if anyone can sympathize with a banged up face, it's Billy.

He waits until the footsteps stop, then he glances up at her, eyebrows raised. He wasn't sure if he expected there to be anyone else, it's a small enough population and enough places for people to go, but he also hadn't seen too many people out and about on his way here.

It's not a bad thing, though. He still has plenty of people to meet. ]

Everything in here, the check out date. 1993. Let me guess, you probably weren't even born then.

[chuju]

[ Wow, he looks like he was on the losing end of a fight. Though, depending on how the other guy looks, it might have been the winning one; she's had a few like that herself.

Moving closer, she peers down at the book, noting the condition of the pages and the many smudges. Cold fingers reach out to lift a page to look at the other side, half her hand covered by the sleeve of her sweater. She misses her numerous shirts with holes cut out for her thumbs.

In a voice with a purposeful air of I don't care which it is, she offers him a comment in return. ] I can't tell if that's you assuming we're from the same point in time or a very lame attempt at flirting.

[confractus]

[ He almost snorts a bit (almost) as he stands up from where he was leaning over the guestbook. ]

My flirting's never been lame. [ Which means, of course, he's just making assumptions, because that's just what people do. He shrugs a shoulder. ] I mean, I don't know, I guess maybe you were plucked right from waiting in line to see Nirvana, but I don't get that vibe from you.

[chuju]

[ That's some confidence there, buddy. Surely someone at some point has thought of his flirting as lame. ]

I'm from 2019. Just. [ There's amusement in her voice when she answers, keeping her focus on the guestbook and not even glancing his way. She picks up the book, turning to lean back against the desk, and flips through more of the pages. Still no legible names. ]

[confractus]

Just born after 1993. It's fine, some of us are old.

[ Like mid-30s is old.

He watches her flip through the book, wondering if she's looking for anything in particular unlike he was. Maybe, unlike him, she's actually trying to piece together the ultimate mystery here. He wonders how that's going for her. ]

2019, huh? What number of iPhone are they on? Fifteen?

[chuju]

[ She was born in '88 but she's not going to correct him. Age isn't really something she has to worry about anymore anyway, is it? ]

Honestly? I have no idea. [ Snapping the book closed with enough strength that she's forced to lean back from the dust plume that rises up from the pages, she finally looks up at him again. ] It's been a rough couple of years and I haven't been around much.

[ The book is discarded back onto the desk behind her. That search for answers? It's like starting a puzzle thinking there are only 500 pieces and then suddenly realizing there are actually 2000. She just keeps finding more and more pieces that don't connect. ]

[confractus]

Yeah, shit really hit the fan after that whole alien invasion thing.

[ Again, just assuming they might be from some similar time or place. It's an easy way of learning about people without outright asking their whole backstory, it seems more conversational and less like an interrogation. ]

I guess shit was hitting the fan before that, too. Didn't find what you were looking for? [ Referring, of course, to the guestbook. ]

[chuju]

[ Daisy tilts her head at the mention of alien invasion, a bit surprised to hear someone else talk about something like that. She hasn't met many of the others trapped here yet, but she'd gotten the impression that not many were from a universe like her own. ]

Not exactly. [ Her answer is distracted, her attention on him rather than his question. Straightening up and stepping away from the desk, she frowns slightly. ]

By alien invasion, do you mean the Chitauri? The Battle of New York with the Avengers? [ Better to find out now if they're from even remotely the same place instead of dancing around the subject. ]

[confractus]

That's it. The Battle Of New York.

[ The corner of Billy's mouth turns up a bit. While he can admit that, without the Avengers, New York would've been out of luck, he can't say he necessarily agrees with the whole Hero Thing. Maybe he's just got a bad taste in his mouth, given recent events. ]

Tony Stark starts waving his iron dick around and suddenly everyone starts giving themselves a fancy name and a gimmick. [ He shrugs a shoulder, leaning back against a wall. ] Well. I was overseas when it happened so I can't really speak to the experience. I'm sure it was bad and they did a good thing for the city.

[chuju]

[ If Daisy had been drinking something, it would have been a spit-take moment for sure. Everyone starts giving themselves a fancy name and a gimmick. Well, technically the press had given her the name Quake and her "gimmick" is genetic superpowers, but... ]

I wasn't involved in that fight, but everything that's come after... [ She's quiet for a moment, then shakes her head. ] I don't know what year you're from, but things have just gotten weirder since then.

[confractus]

2017. So, you know, now there's bullet proof men and guys running around dressed like devils or painting giant skulls on their chests. Never a dull moment, right?

[ Now that Billy's sorted out that they have at least something moderately in common, he's pretty happy with the results of his outing this morning. He's not about to go out of his way to be buddies with her - that's just not something he does - but familiarity is a good starting point for anything mutually beneficial. ]

I'm Billy.

[ He decides to err on the side of caution and not give his last name. He doesn't know the fall out of his shit with Frank, if the war crimes he took part in ever got out or not, and if she's got a whole two years on him then he's not going to take that chance. ]

[chuju]

[ Bullet proof men — she's known a couple of those over the years. The other two she only knows from SHIELD monitoring the news, keeping an eye on anyone who might be party to the Accords. But 2017... wow. ]

Daisy Johnson. I'm with SHIELD.

[ She had to do a bit of mental timeline juggling before saying that. After everything that happened with HYDRA, SHIELD was out of the world for a few years before stepping back into the public eye in 2016. So much has happened since then, but at least they're out of the shadows. ]

old church

[twowaypath]

[Tai's wandering is pretty aimless, and if he's honest, he's not really paying attention to anything around him in great detail. It's more broad strokes, trying to get some sense of where he is, and what's where. He's only arrived here earlier today, but it seems as if he may be here for a while... wherever here is.

Someone tossing and catching a rock isn't especially loud or eye-catching, but it stands out nonetheless in the eerie stillness of this place. Tai tenses briefly despite himself... a little ridiculous once he realises what he caught out of the corner of his eye really is just someone sitting there, partly obscured by a wall left half-standing. He steps forward to a clearer view.]

Oh. Hello.

[confractus]

[ Billy heard the steps along the way, once the stranger got close enough. He'd tensed for a moment too, then finished catching his rock after another throw and glanced over. Not someone, he thinks, he needs to worry about.

At least not in the moment. ]

Hey.

[ He gives a nod of acknowledgment. ]

[twowaypath]

[Tai isn't too used to being jumpy like that, but he's had a particularly crazy couple of days. And his usual background sense of his surroundings through the Force seems weaker here, somehow. He should have sensed someone's presence there before he saw him, but he hadn't. Just one more completely strange thing to try to wrap his mind around.

Luckily, whoever this is doesn't seem in any way immediately threatening, nor particularly bothered by Tai's intrusion. It's a good enough opportunity to introduce himself, he supposes.]

I'm Tai. I just got here.

[confractus]

[ The only potentially threatening thing about Billy is the scarring on his face, but beyond that, the stranger's right to assume that Billy doesn't mean any immediate harm. He doesn't necessarily enjoy the interruption, no, but he's not going to say that. ]

Billy. Same, I got here just in time for that big storm.

[twowaypath]

[Tai notes the scars with some sympathy. Whatever caused them must have been painful. He also notes that Billy doesn't seem enthused about his presence, even if he's not especially bothered. He won't linger too long, but he'd like to be at least a little bit acquainted with the people he's meeting here. There seem to be very few of them.]

Storm? [He raises an eyebrow slightly at that new information.] I guess you've been here a little bit longer than me, then.

[confractus]

You really are new.

[ Considering it's only been a day, really, that Billy's been here. He wonders if that's pretty frequent around here, people showing up on the daily, or if it's more random than that. ]

Sorry I can't really tell you much about the place.

[twowaypath]

I've only been here a few hours.

[He wonders about that, too. It sounds like it's not unusual for someone to just appear the way he did, but he doesn't have any idea how often that happens or if there's any sort of pattern to it.]

You're only the second person I've run across.

DAY 064

[confractus]

♔ i. baneberry hall

---

[ Billy's seen plenty of houses like this. Usually people associate it with old money, but he knows that plenty of people who live like this are just putting up a front. People who get their money from all sorts of places, then they buy all this old and gaudy furniture just to impress everyone, but really they just end up looking like jackasses.

Billy doesn't even think he wants to go inside. Something about it makes his skin crawl, and not because it's giving him weird vibes. He just doesn't like the association. But Billy doesn't like to think of himself as a coward, and he especially doesn't want to potentially walk away from something important. He huffs out a breath through his nose and walks unceremoniously inside the old home.

He's not surprised at the state of it. He'd be more surprised if the manor had somehow been pristine and new, and he'd be suspicious about who was in charge of the upkeep. His footsteps echo a bit as he steps through the halls, peering into each room along the way. Turns out this place reminds him of a few places he's been, not just the garish homes of rich bastards. He steps into a room for no particular reason other than to look around more. Looking at the bed and the restraints empty and unused seems so strange to him.

He's used to seeing something like that occupied.

If you don't find him contemplating the furniture in one of the bedrooms, then you're likely to find him in an office. He'd never call himself a Detective Type. He's smart, sure, he can put things together and he can make a damn good plot, but he's not about solving mysteries. So when he's looking through desks, it's less about finding clues and more about just learning more about this place. That's when he sees the cabinets, and the bottles inside that are protected by locks.

You never know when something like that might come in handy, really. Good thing Billy's pretty decent at picking locks when he wants to be. ]

♔ ii. wildcard

---

Choose your own Day 64 adventure. Any location is available, and if anyone wants to find Billy's memories/you want him to find yours, just let me know and we can get that going.~

Baneberry

[exsto]

[ It's not really any news to Bucky by that point that strange things were happening in Baneberry. Items that belong to people are being found and whoever finds them are seeing those people's memories, too. He knows since it's only been a couple of hours since he got his dog tags back from the man who saw him being captured and experimented on.

Now he's holding someone else's dog tags and seeing a vision unfold like he's standing right there watching it happen. ]

cw: mention of drug addiction

[confractus]

[ The memory isn't particularly noteworthy, but it's not exactly happy. It's a nice enough day when a young woman carrying a child walks up to a fire station. It's evident there's something wrong with her, and anyone who knows what to look for might be able to tell that she's an addict, and maybe they can even put the pieces together as she sets the boy on the steps by the door. Fortunately, not long after she's gone, one of the firefighters finds the child she left behind.

The memory is quick but poignant in its own way, and it's probably interrupted as Billy steps into the room and stops by the door. ]

Didn't know anyone else was here.