atonementlogs | Event 001: The Potions

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Event 001: The Potions

Characters: All.
When: February 1st
Where: Town Square
Warnings: None. Please put any warnings in the comment subject if it progresses that way!

As of this morning, there will be a steady rain over Penance that will darken the skies to black and fall as if somehow tainted and muddied, followed by a cold and harsh wind that will chill one to the bone if they dare to venture out in it... which may be necessary. The ground and roads will be slick and muddied, but there will be power outages due to the weather so staying in may not be necessarily more appealing. The rain will continue steadily for a week and be intermittent the rest of the month.

However, should anyone venture to the town square in search of warmth, there will be a large tent set up that is entirely illuminated regardless of whether the rest of Penance is or not. There will be supplies such as food and water for the taking, as well as a few old blankets for people to huddle under while they wait out the storm.

That's not all, of course. It wouldn't be atoning in the slightest if things were made too calm and cozy during the storm. There will also be letters left to each of Penance's new citizens detailing what this month's punishment entails.

It's time for your hosts to be a little less kind than upon arrival.

A table set up under the tent has five different kind of vials on it, plenty of each to go around. They have the following effects:

Pink. Allows for one to hear the true thoughts of others, including what is thought about them for 24 hours during all interactions. This is to cause some self-reflection and insight into how they're viewed.

Green. Allows for pain to be given to another for 24 hours. It will be agonizing pain and sickness. While this is extremely frowned upon, it will mean that the person in question will have participated in punishments this round and will be excused from drinking any other potion. However, remember that the actions we take now may have consequences in the future. It should also be noted that you won't get to choose who experiences the pain due to your decision, so no trying to take a grudge out on anyone.

Purple. Allows one to feel the pain they caused another during their lives for 24 hours. They will feel what that person felt entirely. Hopefully this will cause some reflection and remorse for the actions that caused another to feel hurt.

Blue. Forces honesty for 24 hours. No lying and one may even be compelled to spill their deepest, darkest secrets and sins to anyone who will listen. Transparency is key to atoning for past sins.

Red Causes significant pain for 24 hours. It may be general pain like an ache in your bones that can't be soothed, or it may manifest in physical injuries such as cuts, bruises, etc. They say pain can be cleansing...

For those eager for punishment (which your hosts love to see), you may take more than one vial to spread out over the month, although taking multiple potions at once may not be entirely wise for most. Citizens may opt to try to avoid punishment this month, but again, remember all choices may have future consequences. Your hosts are here to see that you pay for your sins, not just scrape by.

With your letter collected, you may stay and get to know each other a little better while you wait for the storm to pass or insist on grabbing your items and brave the return to your home. The choice is absolutely yours.

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He snorts, because to him, penance is basically hell. Penance means feeling sorry for what you did, which Vasquez isn't. If someone has managed to claim the reward on his head and killed him, he feels like he's in the wrong place to deal with that.

"I call sucking up to some God for forgiveness hell of its own kind," he counters, because the truth is, it's not far off to him. "You're here, chopping wood, it's definitely not heaven," he deadpans. Shivering with the rain, he gestures for some of the logs. "Come on, give those to me, I'm not standing outside in this miserable witch's rain anymore."

Maybe he could take that definition of hell if he believed in a god. Maybe. But the sweetness of this place isn't lost on him. The quiet moments that he can steal, the privacy. If he had died and gone to hell, Goodnight wouldn't be there beside him.

"Here, take these." He slides the axe into his belt, among his silver gilt sheathes, and begins piling logs into Vasquez's arms. Split the load, 50-50.

"We have coffee." It's not home, persay, but it's shelter from the wind and cold. And it has food and blankets. Feels like a boarding house, most days.
"Follow me."

Vasquez isn't used to being loaded up and made to work, but on the other hand, what else is he doing? He's been lurking around and trying to find some answers, but the best he's found is Billy. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, though, which is why he takes the wood without a biting comment.

"Coffee is fine, but do you have liquor?" That's the real thing that will warm him to his toes, and the hopeful look on his face reflects that need for it. "We?" he echoes. "What we?"

"Bourbon, mostly. There's a saloon closer to the center of town that has tequila." He had made quiet observations about everyone's drink of choice when they had shared meals together. Vasquez had favored tequila, Sam preferred whiskey, and Faraday pretty much drank whatever he could get his hands on.

Ah, the advantages of being sober. Most of the time.

Carefully, he adjusts the load of wood in his arms, taking off from the woods back to the paths that lead to home. Hard, smooth stones much larger than the flagstones of cities and smoother than the dusty dirt roads they were both used to.

"Goody's here." He holds the comment of knowing that means they aren't in hell. Vasquez doesn't need to hear that. No one but Goody does.

His eyes light up to hear about this tequila. He's about to open his mouth to demand why they're not going there, but the logs in his hand are probably a good reason why. He makes a note in his head that they're going to go out and find this saloon closer to town.

When he follows after Billy, carefully looking at the surroundings, trying to understand where it is that he's landed himself. Or, well, where a bullet to the head put him (seeing as he imagines that's what did it). "You and Goodnight are both here?" He's trying not to let himself hope that maybe they're not the only ones, but he knows better.

"Is anyone else here from Rose Creek? The Cullen husband? Any of the others?" Faraday, he doesn't say. Horne? goes unsaid, too.

"Yes, we are." There's a long silence as he listens to the request. Anyone else from Rose Creek? Who else might have died? He had hoped- quiet, really, that hope- that no one else had died but he and Goody. That the rest of the seven had made it out for better or for worse.

"... They aren't here. You're the only other one." There are strangers, though. Men he's never met before. And the ghosts that flicker in the shadows of the corner of his eye, invisible specters of former residents. Or maybe, just maybe, their mysterious hosts.

He leads Vasquez back to the main road, following the path to the home he and Goody have marked as their own.

"Then I must have done something to deserve that," he says, but the fact that he's not entirely sure about this means that when he says 'deserve', it doesn't mean necessarily a good or bad thing. It just means that he's here and apparently he deserves to be here. He's probably dead too, yes? He can't imagine that he's not.

Walking after Billy, he's not very sure about this, but what else is there to do? "And you and Goodnight," he points out. "So I guess that you also deserve this," he adds. "Maybe because you died for a good cause?"

Deserve? Deserve what? Penance and punishment, a way to atone for your sin so you can get into heaven? It isn't something he believes in- he thought that there was nothing after death. Just the abyss, and your name carved into a legacy.

But if anyone deserved salvation, it was the man he had followed like a shadow. Wherever Goody went, so did he. That had always been their agreement, right?

"I didn't. I just followed Goody here." He replies simply, dropping the issue cold as he shifts his grip on the logs in order to pull the latch on the door and open up the home. It's quiet- Goody must have gone to town for candles and the like- but at least it's dry.

He'll leave Vasquez to follow him down the hallway and into a spacious middle room with a fireplace and some dust-embedded furniture that they haven't quite gotten around to cleaning.

He doesn't make the comment about how Billy clearly follows Goodnight anywhere, even if the reverse doesn't seem to be true. "You don't always follow him," he points out, because he'd been present for the exception to that. Still, he has to think that there's something of deserving in this, because it's a better house than he'd ever get and Billy has Goodnight to avoid loneliness.

It's much better than anything he's had before. Wandering into the house, his attention drawn to everything, he takes a little while before he actually makes it to where Billy is. "This is more room than I've seen in my life in one place for one person," he criticizes, even if he's a little jealous. "You think this isn't something a person gets for doing a good thing? You're loco."

Vasquez has a point. He doesn't always follow him. That night in Rose Creek... he had exchanged words with Goodnight. Called him a coward, useless, dead weight that would only get himself killed. Lied until he was blue in the face just to get Goody to leave, hoping to save his life. And then he drank. Drank until he couldn't remember, or could fight the urge to go after him to take back all the things he had said.

He doesn't tell Vasquez any of this. Only shrugs slightly.
"Followed him here, I guess."
The novelty of the home isn't lost on him. The size is comparable to the mansions of Sacramento, or at least a boarding house with as many rooms as it has. Parlor, kitchen, library, and three separate bedrooms. Plus a root cellar and an attic, with a patch of land behind them that could hold a garden.

"It feels like a boarding house. And it isn't just me living here." If asked, he'll point out that he and Goody sleep in separate rooms, even if it's a lie. There's enough beds in the house to make it true, even if only one of them is undisturbed from the dust of the previous owners.

He sets his logs down by the fireplace, then starts shrugging off his coat to go put back by the door with his hat.
"I'll get the bourbon."

"It must be nice, to have someone that you can follow to places," he says, and maybe it's snide, but it's only because he feels off-kilter for never having had anyone he would even have called a friend until he hit Rose Creek and met other men like him (some of them more like him than others, but seeing as those people aren't here, he's not thinking about that).

He raises a brow when Billy comments that he's not alone. It's not much of a jump to know who else is here, though he wonders if Billy will admit to anything beyond companionship. Still, he perches on the arm of a chair as he waits for the bourbon. "If you have tequila or whiskey, that too," he says, because he'll need that and the bourbon to process what's happening. He settles the logs at his feet after he leans forward, trying to brush off some of the rain from his shoulders.

Admit to anything beyond companionship? Billy had a better chance coming back to life. He knows that their relationship is a crime against nature, punishable by death, a sin that he willingly repeats with every kiss he might steal. And he knows the difference in their statuses, the questions it would raise. No, their affair is a quiet one, kept behind closed doors and to subtle looks and the smallest of touches.

All the same he fetches glasses. One for him, one for Vasquez, and one for ice that is so conveniently stored in the icebox with no need to chip away at it or harvest it from some lake.

Water for him. Bourbon for Vasquez.

"I'll have to take the whiskey next time I go to the saloon." He smirks slightly as he brings the bottle, the glasses, and sets them all on the low table before the sofa and chairs.
"Welcome to the boarding house of Penance."

Vasquez raises a brow as he looks around, because it's not surprising that this place could be a boarding house, but it might be a little surprising that they're intending to make it one. "You want to take in people, serve them like this?" he asks warily, or maybe Billy is just saying that he's one of the guests.

Regardless, he reaches for the alcohol so that he can pour himself a glass, needing more than a little to get through whatever it is that this place is. "There's a saloon? An actual one?"

The intention isn't there. It's merely Billy's poor attempt at a joke. And an offer, hidden in there somewhere, that if Vasquez should want to stay with them, well- there's more than enough room.

Still, when he mentions serving people, Billy's face darkens slightly. He'd rather rot in hell, honestly, but he makes his displeasure known with the sharp way he puts his glass of water on the table.

"No. We're not making this a boarding house. I'm not serving anyone." Not to say that, if they were settling here for a while, they would need to find steady work. And unless they wanted to split the shares three ways, that meant finding someone other than Vasquez to rig quick draw contests against.

"Something like it. There's no piano and no cathouse. Just plenty of alcohol." A lot of things he couldn't name and that hadn't smelled like his particular brand of poison, really...

That sounds like it makes more sense, even if Vasquez doesn't want to say that out loud. He glances around the large space as he drinks, trying to imagine the saloon. "That's the only part that matters of a saloon," he does feel compelled to point out, seeing as he doesn't really care about pianos or other things.

He always could find his own entertainment when he was five sheets to the wind. "I don't get it," he says bluntly. "If this is a place where we're expected to show penance, why give so many things that can lead to more sins?"

Billy doesn't comment about temptation or penance. Only leans back in his chair and sips the cold water, staring out the window at the lashing rain and dark clouds overhead. There's a chill in the air that seeps into the house, through the cracks under the doors and around the edges of the windows.

He misses the warmth of Rose Creek. Of Volcano Springs. Of any of the dozens of towns they've passed through.

"Goody's the one for philosophy." He points out, shaking his head slightly. "Personally don't think our hosts actually care."

"All I know is that this is better than what I had back home, on Earth, whatever you want to call it," he says with a disbelieving huff. "How sad is it to say this? That your life back home is worse than something that's probably purgatory."

Shaking his head, he turns instead to his drink, intent on that instead of being miserable. "Is there something next door to here? Maybe I could put myself there, in spitting distance for safety."

There's a soft "ha" of laughter as Billy can't help but agree. That life back home was arguably worse than this limbo between life and death. Even with the fresh brand on his arm- M, for murder- it's still good to be here. A roof over his head. Goody by his side.

"All the houses around here are empty. Not a lot of neighbors." Only a few he'd actually met. Some kid, a man that set his teeth on edge, the one who had given him this fine bottle of bourbon.

It was a proverbial- maybe a literal- ghost town.

He doesn't have to say that he's somewhat relieved if Vasquez decides to live next door. At least he won't have to end up sneaking out of Goody's bed before sunrise.

"In that case, you can expect to see more of me," he says, at least, if it's true that he doesn't have to keep hiding out from the law like he had to before. Now, though, it's not so bad. Maybe he gets a house over his head and drinks, but there's one big point that still hasn't been addressed.

"What about food?" He's not a starving man anymore, not since Rose Creek, but knows too well how quickly that can all change. "Where do we get the food?"

"Hunting isn't good." He shakes his head. Hasn't seen a thing in the forests or trees, at least nothing worth eating. The wood is cold and nearly frozen with rain, slicked with mud as all growing things lay dormant. Any snares that he'd set broken or empty.

"There's a general store in town with nothing but food. I suppose our hosts don't mind us borrowing some." There's a loose shrug again as he drinks, because borrowing is a much nicer word than 'stealing'.

"Tent in the middle of town has some canned goods up for grabs."

That's going to be a problem in the long run, if their captors suddenly decide that they don't want them taking from them. "Whatever we need to feed ourselves, I'll gladly borrow," he guarantees, having no issues or compunctions with being the one to steal the food from the store or from the tent.

He's not going to starve again, not if he doesn't have to and that much will be clear from the steely determination in his eyes. "I don't understand," he admits. "Why keep us fed? Warm? Saving us for something, maybe?"

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Event 001: The Potions

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