monthly mingle: THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHT

[riverviewmod]

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: monthly mingle: the festival of light
when: The month of January.
where: Anywhere around the city.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

festival of light

In the days leading up to January 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: The Festival of Light. This holiday is in celebration of the end of the Quarantine's short-lived winter and serves to welcome the new year. The traditions associated with The Festival of Light involve fireworks every weekend of the month, a days-long formal ball that with an open invitation to everyone in the city, and lighting magical candles and incense with loved ones and new friends alike.

a celebration of the end of winter and the new year

As the Capitol World stops blocking the path between the sun and its moon, the snow melts and the rains of early spring begin to fall and the residents of the Quarantine gather together to celebrate the new year. New beginnings are honored as the sky is lit with fireworks to banish the cold and dark of winter, and residents share the light and warmth of the new year with each other by sharing candles and incense with fellow residents. These traditions are steeped in magic, like many other things in Riverview, and have certain magical emotional effects on participants. Additionally, over the weekend of January 5th - 8th, the Government will be hosting a formal ball to welcome the New Year, which is open to all residents and offers food, drink, dancing, and other activities, as well as places to stay the night and relax or 'relax' with friends.

i. fireworks

One of the main traditions of the Festival of Light is to brighten the sky to welcome the new year, and as always, the Government of Riverview and various other city entities including businesses and various organizations and clubs, have gone all out to light up the sky. Each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the month of January, residents can gather outside on the beaches or park, or indoors at various observation lounges set up on city rooftops for the occasion, to watch elaborate, beautiful fireworks displays.

Outdoor observation is facilitated by use of rented forced-air umbrellas that make viewing the fireworks without having to squint into the rain or peer out from under a traditional umbrellas easy. Curl up with a friend or lover under an umbrella to watch the fireworks displays. Temporary indoor observation lounges have also been set up on most of the rooftops of buildings in the city, if the outdoors isn't your thing. The lounges can range from simple transparent-roofed spaces with rustic benches and hot cocoa to elaborate, fancy bars or restaurants with food service, music, and dancing. Some of the lounges may even have themes, whether they're 18+ adult or just quirky. Let your imagination run wild - if you can think of it, someone in the city's probably set one up.

ii. lighting up

Throughout the city, residents will find booths and special sections in their favorite stores set up with stands displaying magical incense and candles in a wide variety of colors. These are traditional trappings of the Festival of Light, the original and ancient tradition that's built up into the modern celebration as residents know it. Most prolific are the candles - ranging from tiny tea lights to large pillar candles, they are inscribed with the word 'glow' in a variety of different alien languages, including some that residents might recognize. The incense comes in small variety of dusky, earthen colors, each with a different scent and effect, all clearly labeled.

Candles are meant to be lit with one or more other people, and when this tradition is observed properly with a candle inscribed 'glow' - the wick lit by two or more people at the same time, and held together between them for a minimum of 30 seconds - every participant will feel and see certain magical effects. As the candle is held between the participants, they will start to see each other's skin glow, seemingly lit from inside, and as the glow increases, all participants will start to feel an emotional lightness. Stress and despair will slowly dissipate, giving the participants a temporary feeling of absolute contentment, warm and happy. The effects last from 5 minutes to a full 24 hours, depending on the number of people who participate and the length of time the candle is held between participants (more participants or longer timespans will increase the length of the effect), and effects are cumulative - lighting a large number of candles with different people will cause the effect to draw out for longer.

Incense is something usually lit in private, at home or a small gathering at a friend's house, and in recent years as the celebration has become a bit more modernized and commercialized, at the Glow Ball. There are a few varieties of incense with different psychological effects, all of which are pleasant and take strongest effect when the incense is lit with one or more other people, and enjoyed long enough for the whole stick to burn down. Orange and yellow incense will increase feelings of affection and openness, sienna red incense will do the same but also induce arousal; blue-grey incense will make it easier to share and ease grief and sadness, while grey-purple will lull participants into an easy sleep with pleasant dreams.

iii. glow ball

Every year during the Festival of Light, the Government of Riverview hosts a formal ball called the Glow Ball on the first weekend of the month - this year, it spans from nightfall on Friday January 5th until dawn on Monday January 8th. The ball is a relatively new custom, but has quickly skyrocketed to one of the most anticipated events of many residents' year. Similar to the castle-themed maze during Hygge, the Glow Ball is hosted inside a beautiful golden palace erected in the City Center that is much larger on the inside than it appears to be on the outside. While there is no specific theme to the ball, many residents take it as an opportunity to really glow in a wide variety of ways, all up to each person's imagination.

The palace is magically-augmented to be lavish, comfortable, and fully-stocked at all times, and features a banquet hall with ample and frequently-replenished food, a bar and lounge area for attendees to get a drink and sit for a while, a beautiful grand ballroom as well as several smaller ballrooms with different styles of music, a swimming pool with hot tubs, a garden, and smaller private vestibules that feature a pillow lounge, incense selection, and a small bedroom where residents can rest or enjoy each others' company in private.

NOTE: New characters are welcome to join in with the party, even if they haven't had time to prepare. Any new arrivals who come to the party in the clothing they arrived in will be whisked up by a fussy light golem or attendant who will fit them with a nice set of clothing for the evening so they can enjoy the festivities.

dinner and dancing

The banquet hall is ringed with tables that offer a buffet food catered to the time of day - breakfast in the morning, light food in the afternoon, lavish dinners in the evening, and desserts, coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, and snacks available all night. With ample seating at group tables, residents can share a meal with friends new and old. The bar and lounge has several large free bars staffed by glowing, ethereal light golems that never tire and never get an order wrong, and offers seating at tables and in cozy dimly-lit booths. Riverview's drinking age is 14 years old.

The grand ballroom is themed golden this year, with the walls tiled in gold and featuring a dance floor of white marble veined with gold. The grand ballroom has classical, traditional dance music playing for those who want a classy formal dance. There are four wing ballrooms that feature different genres of music for residents who enjoy alternate types of dancing, with the genres consistently rotating - whether you like punk, country, rock, pop, or any other type of music from any planet or country, it's likely to be playing in a wing ballroom at some point. Schedules are posted outside of each door and there are four genres per wing ballroom per day.

swimming and gardens

Another feature of the Glow Ball is the beautiful swimming pool - warm enough to be comfortable but cool enough to be refreshing, the outdoor pool has both flower petals and the season's glow candles floating on it, a champagne service offered by light golems, and tables to sit and enjoy a drink and conversation while drying off. There are also small hot tubs ringing the swimming pool where residents can soak away the aches and pains of the day. The pool offers change rooms where speaking a magical incantation (helpfully posted on the door) will change the occupant's formal clothing into an equivalent swimsuit, and will change it back (and dry the occupant) after the dip has been taken.

The gardens are also available for any attendees who want to get a bit of fresh air. With beautiful flower-lined winding paths under a perpetually starry sky and ample candles hanging from the trees and edging the paths for visibility, the gardens are a scenic and relaxing place to take some time away from the light and get some air.

privacy

For residents who want a little private time or want to spend more than just an evening at the ball, there are small private vestibules scattered throughout the palace. Featuring a lounge area with pillows and lap tables for eating, and a comfortable queen-size bed, each room also has a vanity whose drawers hold both suitable pajamas for sleeping in and (in 18+ rooms only) supplies for intimacy ranging from massage oils to packaged toys. And most importantly, each room is fully stocked with a selection of the season's incenses for use in private.

v. roommates or wildcard

Feel free to use this prompt to meet new roommates, for the purpose of getting to know each other, or hit up the mod-posted prompt to create a Communal Housing floor mingle. Or, if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set during the Festival of Light, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: Jakub Grygier; image ii: Shutterstock; image iii & iv: credit unknown

navigation

Comments

[bythehand]

[ It doesn't take Finn as long to sit as it did to answer. The show is long over, he's somewhere that, while he may not be intimately familiar or comfortable with, he still at least knows.

Cisco's good at this. As far as he's concerned. ]

You can get a taste for anything if you try hard enough.

[ Finn takes a moment to be grateful to be here at all. That he didn't have to haul himself back to the room in a lot of shoddily stuck-back-together pieces and fall apart all over Rey or Poe, or both of them at once.

They wouldn't mind. They wouldn't hold it against him or anything, they'd probably be glad they could help at all. He knows that more than well enough. But he really doesn't want to be one more thing they have to deal with right now. He doesn't want to be one more thing anybody has to deal with, ideally, but given the option, he'd at least like to not dump it onto them.

He gives his drink an experimental sniff, takes a sip. Pulls a brief face while he evaluates. ]

I've had worse.

[franciscoramon]

[ If the situation were different, that's the kind of statement that Cisco would've definitely cracked a joke about. But right now, he has the good sense not to tease, and also not to ask. It doesn't sound funny at all. Just ominous, and a little sad. Cisco is trying to focus on comforting Finn, rather than his curiosity. But he can't help wondering what Finn's had to force himself to get a taste for, or at the very least, tolerate. Somehow, Cisco suspects it is a lot. So he keeps quiet and just... files it away, for his own reference. ]

The taste isn't great, but it can be useful to help mellow you out. Not that I'm recommending, you know. Drinking any time you're stressed. But once isn't going to do any harm. Temporary measures, and all.

[ He has a sip of his own drink, not wincing at the taste. It helps to give him a moment, because he's just had an idea. A really good one, maybe. Cisco holds up a finger, saying distractedly: ]

Hang on, don't go anywhere, I'll be right back.

[ A quick trip upstairs and back, and Cisco is holding a pair of very fancy-looking headphones. They are wireless, with a few faint lights glowing along the side. He sets them on the couch near Finn before returning to his seat, explaining: ]

Noise cancelling headphones. Not like the regular kind, either. I souped these babies up. Had to, when Yuri was living here. That kid's taste in music is awful. Should be enough to even block out fireworks. Why don't you keep 'em, 'til all this festival stuff blows over.

[bythehand]

[ Temporary measures. Right. It's not really something he's thought about before. But he guesses he can see where the logic comes from, if nothing else.

Besides. First time for everything.

Finn, perhaps predictably, manages not to go anywhere while Cisco dashes upstairs. He mostly sort of sits there looking bemused and taking another drink.

Bemusement is quick to fly out the window as Cisco sets the headphones down, explains what they are-- offers them until the festival circuit winds down. What files in to replace it is surprise, and something a little more like awe. ]

I...

[ He glances down at them. Thinks they may be up there in the category of most conventionally nice and valuable thing anyone has ever said he could keep for any span of time. And flat-out good tech besides, undoubtedly.

Then back up to Cisco. ]

Are you sure?

[franciscoramon]

Completely sure.

[ Cisco doesn't hesitate for a second before giving that reassurance. Partly, he trusts Finn to look after them - he seems like the sort of person who looks after his belongings. Partly, Cisco knows that, even though they were expensive and he had poured quite a bit of additional time into them, he could always make a new pair. Nothing irreplaceable. And partly, he had had a very vivid demonstration just now of how badly Finn needs them. Even if the first two things were not true, Cisco has never been someone who turned away when someone needed help that he could provide.

So - tech to help prevent a next time, a quiet place to sit for a while as he comes down, a little booze. What else could Cisco do? A distraction, maybe. Something simple and stress-free for Finn to focus on... ]

Oh, hey, I've been meaning to show you this.

[ He hadn't, in fact, been meaning to, but it's a tiny white lie that Finn will no doubt see through and hopefully excuse. Cisco turns on the TV and a game console, clicks over to a game that he sometimes will play, in the middle of the night, if insomnia or nightmares are bothering him. It's a puzzle game, but one particularly designed to be soothing, without violence or loud sounds or any urgency: not even a timer. It also has a two-player mode, which Cisco selects, gesturing at the other controller in the little basket on the coffee table. ]

Wanna give it a try?

[bythehand]

[ Finn is easy to win over, when push comes to shove.

He didn't come up in kindness, or in patience. He didn't come up with "things like this happen to me too, and this is something you can do that might make it easier." He's had about two months where he can readily find all that-- in Poe, in Rey, in the bits and pieces that reflect out of Cassian and Jyn, in Cisco now-- and after a lifetime without, it isn't something that's gotten mundane to be reminded of. When he finds it in someone, he's won over. When he's won over, his devotion is swift and inherently deep-rooted. He doesn't know any other way to do it.

Finn was already pretty firmly on the ride or die for Cisco Ramon train. Realistically. Cisco's been a good person, interesting to talk to, he was more than helpful with the distress signal issue. He's smart, he's reasonable. Finn likes him.

Any doubts that may have somehow lingered up to this point are abruptly so much dust in the wind.

If he catches on to that harmless lie, the sharp surge of gratitude and affection he feels is enough to let it pass without comment. Instead, he reaches for the other controller, glancing at Cisco's hands to make sure he's holding it right. ]

As long as you're willing to teach me.

[ He gets the feeling that Cisco will be willing. ]