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072-078 » pages of possible futures

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: Mathias Township proper
WHEN: Days 072-078
WHAT: The future is set in motion once more.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here! Next log will be the weekend of July 31.
MOD NOTE: The week did not go as planned. Apologies for the delay on this log and thank you for your patience!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Marco Beltrami "Bad Omens"

DAY 072
“The visions are fragmented and a dark cloud spreads
like spilt ink across the pages of possible futures.”
— Garth Nix
Blue skies greet residents on this bright new morning filled with summer sunshine. It's a day when birds would normally be singing, when there would be boats taken out on the water, children laughing and running through the streets. But in Mathias there is only silence, eerie and almost deafening in its absoluteness, and those blue skies do not stretch on forever. Far off on the horizon are dark clouds stretching ominously in all directions, never moving closer or farther away. They are always there, dark and angry, as if waiting... For what, who can say, but they will remain there for the days going forward, circling the town like a shark circles a meal.

Despite that dreadful darkness in the distance, there is some good news. Residents will also wake to find that their previously missing belongings have returned to them. Clothing and other personal effects are right where they should have been, as if they have always been there, and there is no sign of them having been returned by someone or something. They're just there.

That is, however, the extent of the good news. Residents who visit the Town Hall will find the bulletin board much changed, and those who have thrown caution to the wind and made use the sedatives found within Baneberry Hall will begin to find themselves changing as well. They are easily distracted while awake and plagued by nightmares while asleep. They dream of Mathias burning, fire spreading from the east until it consumes everything in its path. With increasing intensity as the week continues, they will wake with terror gripping their chests and sweat covering their too-hot skin.

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.

DAY 073-075
With those dark clouds still hanging on the horizon, some residents may find themselves watching the ocean a little more closely, searching for signs of whatever it is they are beginning to sense is approaching. If they do, they will find those signs, for every so often a dark shape will appear from out of the water before disappearing a few moments later. Residents are welcome to try getting a better look at those shapes, though moving to higher vantage points will be ineffective and swimming may not be the best investigation method.

Nightfall strengthens the sense of that elusive something. Though nothing can be seen in the darkness, there is something out there. They can feel it when they are outside themselves, a heavy presence that their animal instincts warn them against, urging them to flee to safety indoors. But once inside, they can hear whatever is out there in the night, the sounds horrifying and yet utterly indescribable and beyond the limits of their perception.

There is no way to glimpse what might be making those sounds, nor is there any way to properly record them, though attempts may be made to do so.

DAY 076-077
The strange occurrences of recent days continue as something attempts to lead residents out into the southern forest should they venture within view of the treeline. Unrecognizable voices may call out incoherently or the sounds of someone moving through the trees may pull at their attention. Or, perhaps, a dark figure entering the forest will catch their eye, pulling them to follow the possibly feminine figure with no discernible characteristics.

Whatever it is, it will lead them along the paths or even away from their relative safety, winding this way and that until they're completely lost within the expanse of sun-dappled trees that seem innocent and threatening at the same time. There is nothing left to do but continue following that figure that is always just ahead at the edge of sight.

Eventually, the trees stop and there is a stretch of clearing, the sky a crisp blue overhead, sun shining down and yet—

That dark figure is still shrouded in shadow, as are the other four that have joined it. All slight with long hair, something feminine in the way they stand with hands held out at their sides, facing outward in a line along the edge of the ravine that borders the township, though for some reason their features cannot be focused on enough for true comprehension. They stand there in silence as if waiting, so close to the edge that a strong wind could easily knock them over into oblivion. A concerned resident might try to stop them; a curious one might try to finally get a better look at the figures that led them to this place. Regardless of the reason, any movement into the clearing toward them will end in the same result.

All five figures step forward as one and disappear into the nothingness below.

The ravine so deep that the bottom cannot be seen and wide enough that the other side is tantalizingly out of reach. At first, there is the sense that safety is just beyond if only they could get there, but with that sensation is also the knowledge that if they stay here, death will be a certainty. The edge seems unsteady, like getting too close would set it crumbling and send them tumbling into that as well...

That is when those who do venture to the edge see the truth of the ravine and what lies beyond it: nothing. There is a neverending dark nothingness below and beyond this ravine, beyond this town, and there is something staring back from within the dark.

DAY 078
As morning arrives in Mathias, so too does the storm. Those clouds that hovered in the distance move in quickly, plunging the town into a twilight-like darkness. The rumbling that breaks the silence is like that of a thunderstorm but infinitely more ominous, signaling something approaching that is not meant for the world of man. Within just a few minutes, the residents will learn why as lightning arcs across the sky, the cracks of powerful energy echoing through the air. Those branching spikes at first remain in the sky, but then suddenly they crash down to meet the earth, striking the Lighthouse. The sound of splintering wood and pierced metal fills the air, followed moments later by the roaring crackle of a fire raging into existence. Those cracks and crashes continue as the lightning moves inward, hitting the forest, the beach, and the Grey Gull before moving down Phillips Drive to attack the homes left rotting by time.

While the lightning eventually retreats to the sky, the fire spreads with purpose. It leaps from building to building, consuming everything in its path. It is a living, breathing thing driven by a need to devour. There is no stopping or controlling the almost sentient entity, for it does not behave as fire normally would — it skips buildings before doubling back, burns when there's nothing to fuel it, and seems to almost actively pursue residents fleeing to safety. Ultimately, the fire consumes everything east of the Library, from Jackson Boulevard to the beach and the northeastern forest to the Lighthouse; for an unknown reason, it does not venture farther inland than this.

Ash falls from the sky like snow throughout the town as the eastern half of Mathias glows a terrifying raging red. Residents may seek sanctuary in businesses along the square or in areas in the western half of the town, though the latter will not be without its own risks and consequences.

SANITY LOSS

There are multiple opportunities for sanity loss within this log. All instances of such should be reported before the next log.
— BANEBERRY SEDATIVES These will effect all who have taken them, regardless of type, quantity, or frequency, until the storm on day 78. Each night of nightmares will result in 1 point of sanity loss for a potential total loss of 6 points.

— FIGURES IN THE FOREST All who witness the figures jump into ravine will suffer 3 points of sanity loss.

— SEEING BEYOND THE RAVINE Any who see the truth of what is beyond the ravine will suffer 7 points of sanity loss that cannot be recovered. Additionally, any Madness that results from this sanity loss begins immediately.

— DEATH BY FIRE All who are killed by the fire lose 3 sanity points and gain the Madness pyrophobia for seven days, which should be reported. The pyrophobia will be experienced at an intensive level for the duration of the Madness.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER Summer has arrived in Mathias, bringing with it warm days that average 70°F and comfortably cool nights.

— THE FOG has maintained its recent 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 have ceased for the moment but they're sure to begin again soon.

OOC NOTES

— ENDGAME We are officially heading into endgame. Over the next few months, things will begin ramping up and moving toward the always planned conclusion, with the last log projected to go up between the end of October and middle of December.

What does this mean? Essentially, hopefully, this will mean more opportunities to dig into the mysteries and lore of the game, as well as more chances for your characters to creep toward insanity. However, how things progress and what information comes to light will depend upon character interaction with the setting and involvement with the mysteries of Mathias.

— ITEMS FROM HOME All items from home have returned to the exact state and location in which they were last seen. This includes all clothing and possessions they had on their person when they arrived in Mathias (or, for arrivals in the previous log, what they should have had). Items from home that were left behind by other characters no longer in the game have also returned.

— THE FIRE A rough representation of where the fire spreads is available over here.

— REMINDER There are a lot of moving parts to this log, as there will be for all logs going forward. Read the narrative and all OOC notes thoroughly and carefully. Ask questions if something is not clear, but please also look through questions others have asked for further clarification.

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The sneeze heard around Mathis, it felt like but that was due to the eerie silence that followed them around every where. Raylan's head came up sharply at the intrusive sound, papers quickly forgotten as his eyes scan the room, quickly working his way up to the vents. There was no one else in the room with him and that would fit the echo but who would fit up there?

"Alright. Whoever's there. Come on out."

The papers were set down and some silent steps carried him closer to the suspect vent. Maybe they were in another room and it traveled? He doubted it. Shit, was he going to have to go climb, wasn't he?

She stays still and quiet at first, hoping that he hadn't heard, or that he'd decide he'd imagined it, or that he'd think it had come from some other room. None of which end up happening. Of course he moves right over to the vents, standing directly underneath. Parker makes a face in the vent up above, rolling her eyes, but as the seconds pass and he doesn't give up and move away, she realizes she has to do something.

Not necessarily the right thing.

Angling herself so that the acoustics of the vent distort the sound as much as possible, she puts on her most spooky voice.

"Thiiiis is the ghoooooost of Mathiiiiiias. Iiiiii am waaaatching youuuu."

Another sneeze.

"Aaaand I have haaaay feeever."

Raylan couldn't help the little scoff at the corny answer. He recognized the voice - Miss Kitty, since he didn't know what else to call her, and spread his hands on the wall, head hanging between them.

She was scared of him, last he saw and he didn't fully understand why. Maybe he could.. fix it this time somehow, before he resigned himself to her being set in her opinion.

"I'm terrified. Shakin' in my boots. C'mon. Air's better out here anyway. Kick out the vent, Miss Kitty, come down from your fort. Mainly cause I wanna see how anyone is gettin' around in these damned things."

There's an exasperated ugh from up above, and then the vent cover comes crashing down (better jump out of the way quick, Raylan) to be replaced by Parker's annoyed face.

"It's not that hard. All anyone ever wants to do is whine about it. Oh boo ho, I can't feel my knees anymore. Oh boo hoo, I hit a dead end and had to crawl backwards for twenty yards." She shakes her head impatiently. "Suck it up!"

Raylan stepped back, assuming that she would absolutely take him literally and kick the grate out and he was glad he did.

He couldn't help but smile crookedly at her annoyed exasperation with their apparent laziness.

"Most people don't find the occasion to get used to those kinds of quarters. Unless they're up to no good. You up to no good?"

Parker stays where she is for the moment, still up in the vent, peeking out over the edge down at Raylan. She gives him a puzzled look.

"Of course I'm up to no good. I'm a thief."

But she's not here to steal anything today. Instead, she looks around the room, at Raylan and at the files he'd left spread over the desk, remembering what she'd overheard him saying to himself.

"There was another fire before this one?"

His head turned a little at that answer.

"Suppose that would make sense then." She must not care what his job was, to so brazenly say it. That's what he assumes, anyway. Not that it much mattered; he lived with Neal Caffery, a thief and forger in his own right.

Raylan nodded at the question, looking around the place with a heavy breath of frustration before he started detailing it out for her.

"It was in the 1830 somethings. A lighting storm started a fire that ravaged the town and killed everyone but a dozen or so. Only two buildings and the forest survived, as far as structures. I was hopin' to find more types of.. odd tragic disasters." And judging by the frown on his face, he hadn't gotten much.

"How long you been up there?"

Parker's still only half-convinced that Raylan hadn't been lying about being a US Marshal in the first place. Besides, even if he is, what's he gonna do? She's not sure they're even in the US anymore, for one thing. And it's not like there's a jail to drag her off to.

She lights up a little at the mention of odd tragic disasters. Those are always fun. Well...except when they're happening to her.

"Oooh. Maybe mysterious disappearances? Unexplained deaths? There has to be a freak boating accident, right?" She's so interested she's willing to leave her vent, slithering forward in an uncanny and unintentional imitation of the girl from The Ring.

Once she's out, she pauses, glancing back at it with a shrug.

"I dunno. Long enough." She looks back at Raylan. "Do you always talk to yourself?"

He had his badge back now and had firmly reaffixed it to his hip, but it was hidden under the untucked hem of his t-shirt. Not that it did him any real good. She was right, there was no jail. He'd checked.. Several times.

"Somethin' like that. Anythin' like that, really. Most I got is the local editor bein' chosen for something and being very happy about 'serving' his community. Bein' honor by it." He wagged a finger at her lazily as he looked over the piles of paperwork. "And I talk to myself as often as needed. Helps work out a problem sometimes, when plan A doesn't work. Plan A bein' Stare at it until an idea comes from chewin on it."

That was always the South's first answer when finding a problem that didn't have an obvious answer.

"Odd way to spend an afternoon, in a vent, watchin' someone you don't know go mad."

Hidden under his shirt is a good place for him to keep that badge, if he doesn't want it to be a victim of Parker's sticky fingers. It's not like she hadn't warned him, after all.

She folds her arms across her chest, looking at Raylan right back.

"I know you. You're Raylan Givens, US Marshal. You talk to yourself, you live with your alternate universe self from California, you like doing research in dusty old libraries, and you really like your hat." Her eyes flick briefly up to his hat in a gesture that suggests she wouldn't say no to claiming it for herself again, but then she looks back down again, wandering over to the desk he'd been working at to see what he'd found.

"Oh, and you can't do magic." She glances back at him again for confirmation. "Right?"

"All of those are right except one and I'd call those facts, not details. That's where the devil is, after all." Talking to yourself was a sign of intelligence, in his opinion. Smart enough to work out something with only his own help.

"It's still more than I know about you. You're a thief. And you trained somewhere called Archie? Until you give me somethin' more than what I know was a joke, you're stuck with 'Miss Kitty'."

It's the name she'd given him, and Raylan has no way of knowing any better, but Parker snorts a laugh when she hears it again anyway.

"Miss Kitty." She grins, way too amused, before offering an explanation of what's probably both the least important and least interesting part of all that. You're welcome, Raylan.

"Archie's a person. Not a place."

What was even funnier is that he did know her name, only didn't know that she was the one that owned it. When he finally found out, his jaw was gonna hit the floor.

"So Archie taught you how to be a high flyer. Only a little disappointed that you weren't in a circus or something." No, he figured it was more likely that Archie and whatever she learned from them had more to do with that vent she'd just crawled out of.

"And frightfully happy you didn't make me break a hip or something."

"He taught me to be a thief." Get it right, Raylan. She makes a face, shaking her head. "Too many clowns in the circus."

No, she won't elaborate. Instead she shrugs dismissively. "Eh, it would've healed."

Edited (oh my god im a mess) 2021-08-06 20:45 (UTC)

"Oh, so the high flyin' is part of that curriculum?" He hoisted his eyebrows with a curl of the outer edges of his lips before shaking his head and stepping forward and squatting down again, digging into a box.

"Sure, after 6 months and physical therapy. If you're gonna spy, you could at least help me look for shit."

She gives him a look that says well, obviously.

"How else are you gonna get off the top of a skyscraper?"

Go ahead, tell her. She's listening.

But she also follows when he goes back to the files he'd been looking at, crouching down next to him to look curiously at the box.

"Like evidence of tragic disasters?" She can do that. She can definitely do that.

Raylan turned his head back up to look at her, eyes wide underneath the lift of his eyebrows, like she might be slightly mad and he was waiting for her to realize it.

"How do you without turnin' into a pancake at the bottom? You the Six Million Dollar Woman?" Not that Parker looked old enough to get that reference anyway, but he could try.

He nodded at the paperwork. "Yeah. Anythin' weird or.. gruesome. Anythin' that will tell us how they responded to that kinda stuff. Maybe they got somethin' figured out that we're overlookin' as a community." He knew he wasn't the first or only one to dig into these papers.

"It'd help more if they used actual names instead of initials too but that's a hope to far."

"Six million?" She glances sidelong at him, clearly insulted. Who does he think she is, Oliver Twist?

Honestly, it's not even worth a response. Instead she looks back at the papers, picking up one from the top of the stack and glancing at it.

"Who do you mean, they?"

"Mm, rich blood, huh?" Well, she was a thief and to be fair six million in current day situations was a nice chunk of change. No where near the real market value of high end items.

"They, the people that lived here before. The community. The ones that happily sacrificed their neighbors up to god knows what. They're the ones I'm interested in. They're the ones that navigated living here before the last disaster." People made a place, not just the stone and earth and wood. Without them to be here, the town would just continue to rot into itself.

Raylan wishes that they would be allowed to let it.

She's quiet for a moment, thinking about it. Trying to imagine the people who were here before. What might have made them do what they did.

Sacrified their neighbors.

"Do you think they were like us once?"

She looks up at Raylan, and then back down, fidgeting idly with the papers. Any hint of happiness or amusement is gone now.

"Do you really think they were...happy? To do that?"

Or had they been horrifed? Desperate? Were they eager to turn on each other to save themselves, or had they held out as long as they could? Until they felt like they had no other choice?

Silence didn't bother Raylan the way it bothered some people. Too many years on the other side of an interrogation table, too many years sitting waiting for Boyd or Dewey to just get to the point of whatever stupid scheme they were starting to try and run past him. Too many nights on a porch with a similar looking hat and some moonshine.

"I think it's been hard baked into this town so long that it was as normal to them as a happenstance that the Editor of the local paper put into his goodbye note on the last edition and, quote, said 'It was a great honor to be chosen'." The passing lift of his eyebrows suggested just how unimpressed he was with that.

"I think they were like us, yes," he continue, voice and tone gentler when talking about the families themselves as he shuffled through another stack, scanning pages as he turned them over. Nothing to see here, just a man working. "The morning whatever happened happened, they started their day like everyone else. Breakfast, kids arguing over where a shoe is, leaving for work. Aside from all this insanity..."

He had no proof of anything beyond the way they'd found the place, untouched by the outside passage of time, and everything that was lacking was so odd, he was sure he was missing something. How had they, collectively, not figured out what happened on day 0?

Even what Raylan describes as normal sounds foreign to Parker. Kids growing up in the system like she had didn't argue. Family breakfast was something for other people. Hearing him describe it is as captivating, in his own way, as his theory of what had happened to end it all.

She turns and hops up on the desk, pulling a sheaf of papers into her lap, but watching Raylan at least as much as she glances through them.

"So what did happen?" No one knows for sure, of course, but he seems to have a lot of ideas. Maybe he'll have an idea for this, too. "What made them change?"

She thinks about what he'd said in the church ruins. That the town itself was watching them. Out to get them.

"Do you think the town was always...bad?"

It was what he was told things were supposed to be like back home. What a 'good' house was like, what a set of caring parents looked like who didn't crawl into several bottles of wild turkey and set into teaching Mama a lesson. What it might have looked like if he and Winona got started sooner. But now wasn't the time for any of that or the comparisons that came with it. They had work, after a fashion and he thrived on it's ability to keep him out of his own head.

"I feel like I oughta set up a cork board so I can keep it all straight but she'd probably just tear it down and leave me with my thumb up my.. Nose." He'd opted for the cleaner language with a glance back at Parker; No need to be so crude in front of someone he knew so little of. Doc would be proud.

"We don't know. That's the one piece we haven't gotten any clue of yet. What happened after everyone started their day. Everything was untouched, there was no.. no panic," he explained, tossing the file stack to the side to pick up another. "Maybe they all got called to the Lodge. We can't get back there yet either, but.. somethin's in there that is part of this puzzle."

He took a breath. "What we do know is that the tunnels are older than the version of the town on top of it, and yeah. I do think they have always been doin' this. Since their founding or shortly after. Worshiping some.." His jaw worked tightly for a long second.

"God." There was a bucket of distain there, of a vast variety. "I think the fire I was talkin' about before had somethin' to do with it. A punishment or a-a-a cleansing or somethin'. You believe in Magic?"

Does she believe in magic? Does she believe in magic? Everything they've been talking about is completely forgotten as Parker remembers the real reason she'd been...observing Raylan. She looks up at him, expression flat.

"I believe in Jeff."

She doesn't add unlike you. She doesn't need to.

Raylan looked up from under his eyebrows at her, unimpressed.

"Are we still on that? If you wanna go talk to him, go talk to him. Don't come in here, spyin' on me and shakin' my chain because you didn't listen to me the first time I told you who I was. I got enough people tellin' me that I'm useless and stupid and can't sort my life out, I don't need you here givin' me hell for a face I can't control. I'm sorry you're disappointed that I'm not him. I tried."

Hazel, unbothered eyes dropped back down to the paper, flipping through more of it.

"Anyway, There's still pieces missin' here. First step is seein' what they did in times of trouble. Ain't even a surivin' church here; I'd bet money there's one out in the woods if it ain't the lodge itself."

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