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The Village Mod ([personal profile] villagemod) wrote in [community profile] villagelogs2021-06-05 08:29 pm

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

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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chuju: (138.)

[personal profile] chuju 2021-06-17 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
[ 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: (111)

[personal profile] confractus 2021-06-17 07:19 pm (UTC)(link)
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: (015.)

[personal profile] chuju 2021-06-17 07:26 pm (UTC)(link)
[ 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: (173)

[personal profile] confractus 2021-06-17 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
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: (196.)

[personal profile] chuju 2021-06-17 07:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[ 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. ]
confractus: (167)

[personal profile] confractus 2021-06-17 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
No shit.

[ The smile crosses Billy's face again, but it lacks the easiness it might have once had before his face met its untimely demise. He's had years of practice when it comes to being charming, but it's funny how the state of his looks makes it feel like he doesn't know what he's doing anymore. ]

So we'll just disregard anything I might've said that you find offensive. Except the bit about Tony Stark. Never met him but I can say pretty confidently I wouldn't like him.
chuju: (Default)

[personal profile] chuju 2021-06-17 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey, you're entitled to your own opinion. And after everything I've heard about Stark, I don't really blame you.

[ Coulson had spoken at great length about his many encounters with Tony Stark. It had been a lot of good-natured complaints and frank discussion of the man's total disregard for authority, but there had been a bit of admiration in there too. Not nearly as much as her surrogate father had felt toward Steve Rogers, of course, but no one would ever come closer to that.

(Except maybe Daisy herself.)

She is very firmly going to avoid even the smallest hint that she may have cosplayed in front of Stark Tower prior to joining SHIELD. That is not something that is going to be shared with anyone here. Nope. Big big nope. ]
confractus: (Default)

[personal profile] confractus 2021-06-19 11:47 pm (UTC)(link)
So. What were you hoping to find in there?

[ He nods at the guest book that she put away. Maybe he only cares about getting out of here, but, he has to admit, he can't deny his curiosity. Everyone that's been here longer than him talks so ominously about everything, and he wonders if anyone has any clue what's happening or if they're just being led around in a circle. ]

I'm guessing not hourly rates or what's on the breakfast menu.
chuju: (Default)

[personal profile] chuju 2021-06-20 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
You know, even that would be more than the nothing I've got to explain this place.

[ Sighing heavily, she reaches up to run a hand through her hand, tugging the dark blonde strands back from her face. She cold and tired and the lack of answers to any of her questions is beyond frustrating. ]

I'm looking for anything at this point. Names, dates, secret devious plans to kidnap people from different times and places. Any little piece to this puzzle.
confractus: (Default)

[personal profile] confractus 2021-06-23 12:47 am (UTC)(link)
[ Billy had noticed that, while there was a clear check out date in the book, all the names had been taken out. It had struck him as odd, like a clumsy way of someone trying to cover something up, but now he's wondering how common that is. ]

Well, shit, if someone with SHIELD can't figure it out, that doesn't seem very promising.
chuju: (Default)

[personal profile] chuju 2021-06-23 01:00 am (UTC)(link)
Hey, now. [ Daisy looks slightly affronted, though it's more for show than anything. ] I've only been here a day, and most of it was spent hiding from that crazy storm. Even spies need time to work.

[ Not to mention the fact that there has been a noticeable lack of computers everywhere she's gone. It's incredibly annoying. She'd been able to hack things back in the '70s just fine, but she can't hack what isn't here now. ]
confractus: (Default)

[personal profile] confractus 2021-06-26 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
Huh.

[ He'd gotten the impression that she'd been here a while, what with her level of exasperation. It makes him roll his shoulders a bit. Usually he's better at reading people than this, and he doesn't like making the misjudgmenet. ]

I got here just in time for it. Lucky us. Should we check out some other rooms, see if any names come up?