riverviewlogs | monthly mingle: MEMORIA

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monthly mingle: MEMORIA

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: monthly mingle: memoria
when: the month of may
where: anywhere around the city
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

memoria

In the days leading up to May 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: Memoria. A more solemn celebration than Sampremi or the Flower Festival, Memoria is a week-long time of remembrance for those lost in the Great War and the epidemic that decimated Riverview Quarantine's population 10 years ago. Memoria traditions include lighting lanterns for the dead, telling stories about lost loved ones or lost homes, eating meals with loved ones, and a special gathering to send floating lanterns down the river in honor of those lost.

a solemn commemoration of those lost

While the main city-wide event associated with Memoria is the floating of lanterns down the river on each Sunday evening of the month, the holiday is generally seen as a time of reflection on and appreciation of things that have been lost - people, homes, cultures, and planets. It is also a celebration of the things that remain. Many locally-owned shops will host displays of culturally-significant food, and will hand out informational flyers sharing the unique customs of their own homeworlds and inviting others to share those customs. There is a heavy emphasis on sharing time with family, friends, and lovers, and anyone who is able to will cook meals or treats for loved ones, or at least purchase them something good to eat.

i. hanging lanterns

Throughout the entire week of Memoria, residents will be hanging lanterns around the city. Lanterns are generally placed in greater number in places of passage - streets, bridges, and all alongside the train lines are particularly well-decorated, as are any trees alongside paths, and most homes and businesses have a profusion of lanterns around their doors and windows. This tradition is twofold; some people believe that the lanterns are hung in these places in order to guide the spirits of the dead back to those who still love them, other people believe that the lanterns are to give light for living loved ones to find their doors in times of darkness...many people believe both.

No matter what your character might believe, you can be sure they will find themselves offered a lantern for free from various businesses or friendly citizens passing by, and invited to hang it before the sun sets, or they may be handed a bundle of lanterns and asked to help share them with others.

ii. sharing life

Throughout the city, characters will find groups of people gathering to share hot drinks and talk about their loved ones lost, their homes and planets, or their experiences during the Great War and the epidemic. Anyone who has lost someone, who has fought to survive, who is feeling cut off and homesick, is welcome to sit and share their story. If your character chooses to sit and to share their story, they will find that people will gather to listen, will generally be respectful of the telling, and may share their own similar experiences in return. This is an excellent time to air grief in an environment where most people understand and respect grief, and a good time to deepen the connections to others around you, to understand them better.

There is also a very large focus on cooking or purchasing meals or treats for loved ones during Memoria, with many people taking meals with everyone they care about during the week of the holiday. Some go the extra mile and will hand out baked goods (usually chocolate or cinnamon), packets of candy, or other little treats to acquaintances, especially if they would like to form a closer bond with them. This is a great time for characters to reach out to someone they would like to get to know better with a surprise treat!

iii. floating of the lanterns

On the evening of May 8th, just before sundown, many of the city's residents will head toward the banks of the river, where they will light lanterns in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, in honor of their dead loved ones. The types of lanterns vary wildly, based on personality (either of the person floating it or the person they are honoring), culture, and many other factors. Some lanterns are very simple, others are incredibly complex, but the one common feature they all have is that people write on the shades of them - they write about their feelings for their loved ones, their wishes for their relationships and friendships, a memory from childhood or home, or even just lines of poetry or lyrics from songs that express something they miss, or something that hurts them.

Once those emotions are written on the lanterns, the lanterns are set free, floating down the river in the darkening evening, in a cathartic gesture shared by most residents of the city. Waves of lantern floating will start around 7 pm and continue until the sun rises on each Sunday evening of May.

iv. down with the sickness

The epidemic that happened 10 years ago was an incredibly traumatic experience for the people living in the Quarantine, on a cultural scale as well as a personal one. While most people who live in the Quarantine are able to leave after 5 years, the trauma lingers in any number of invisible ways in the city. Besides that, there is a small population of people who have chosen to live permanently in the Quarantine, who have made it their home and embraced its melting pot of cultural diversity as their own. Many of these people are survivors of the epidemic, and have a particularly poignant connection to the Memoria celebration.

One of these long-term residents is an engineer specializing in magically-enhanced robotics who lost most of her family in the epidemic, and as each year passes she becomes more and more distraught by how the population turns over and slowly loses track of the importance of Memoria. In her eyes, it's become symbolic, commercialized, a celebration of general grief and not the very specific grief the Quarantine experienced 10 years ago. And she has decided to do something about it, something to make the specific trauma of the epidemic very real and very current to everyone in the city.

On May 1st, she will be releasing a small cloud of self-replicating magically-enhanced nanites near City Hall. The nanites are drawn to warm, living bodies, and once they enter, they find their way to the brain and central nervous system (or equivalent, depending on physiology) and start to take effect on the parts of the brain (or equivalent) that control a person's sensory experiences and psychosomatic responses. In effect, the nanites work as an artificial virus that makes residents horribly ill, and which can be passed from person to person like a contagion.

Throughout the month, reports of this mysterious illness will sweep through the Quarantine, with residents uncertain of how to cure it. Symptoms vary widely depending on the person, with each affected person facing a uniquely personal set of symptoms - but each case has the same thing in common: it ends with the victim losing consciousness and lapsing into a coma.

How It Works

● Participation is opt-in, and while the "epidemic" can't be ignored in the city, characters are not required to get ill even if they are exposed.
● The "disease" can be spread from person to person by skin-to-skin contact or exchange of fluids (kissing, coughing, spitting, etc.) There is no set symptoms for the "disease," and how much or little a character is affected or in what ways is up to player discretion. Incubation period (time between exposure and first symptoms appearing) is also up to player discretion.
● Since the nanites are based in both tech and mgaic, they are much harder to defeat than they would be otherwise. However, they can be deactivated and destroyed through a combination of electromagnetic pulses and magical nullification or spell-dispersing abilities. Players are also welcome to come up with other ways to deactivate the nanites, keeping in mind that it should not be too easy.
● Affected characters can be sick for as long or short a time as the player decides, and once they lapse into a coma it can last as long as the player decides. Once the character wakes from the coma, they will no longer be sick and the nanites will no longer be present in their system.
● Once a character has been infected, they will be immune and cannot be reinfected.
● All sick characters will be well again by May 31st and there will be no long-term effects.

● If any players wish to pursue or bring to justice the perpetrator, please send the mod a PM and we can discuss your ideas!

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 Memoria, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: RAW Visual, image ii: by trenchmaker, image iv: Bianca Draghici; image iii: found uncredited on Pinterest - please let the mod know if you find credit!

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She nodded. "I have been within this world long enough to know it is not just for profit. Once and awhile, such traditions seem to tie in with whatever sort of event will effect the populace-either as a detriment or the result of. Last month, those who participated in flower exchanges either earned themselves a temporary animal companion or their ages temporarily regressed."

Not entirely being one for flowers, she had refused them at the time, but she had noticed such a pattern. "Where you headed in any particular direction?"

He certain seemed to be, atleast that was what she gathered for how impatient he appeared-or perhaps he was just like Darcy and never cared for crowds of people in the first place.

That comment gave him even more reason not to get involved in this place. If things were going to alter them, possibly fundamentally, then he wanted nothing to do with it. Even more so if this whole thing was in his and Alex's heads. He didn't know how exactly this worked, and if Warren were monitoring it somehow and he let something slip, the consequences could be catastrophic. Not that he believed any of the nonsense that they'd been dealing with, but Warren and his cult did, and that was enough to worry about.

"I was looking for a bookstore. I'm just not, entirely well versed in where things are yet." And Alex was still sleeping. Something he didn't want her to stop doing just yet. While he hadn't mentioned it, he'd noticed the tiredness in her eyes, the fact that she obviously hadn't been sleeping. He just also knew she wouldn't want him outwardly worrying about it.

"You would have better luck in the library, if such is the case." She had nothing against the bookshops and did indulge in them on occasion, but the more informative texts wouldn't be found there. "They are more organized and possess records of past events from this world."

Something she herself had taken advantage of, especially with regards to the outside perimeter.

It was smart of her to suggest the library, which would have been where he was going if he was looking for that sort of information. This trip, however, was of a more personal nature. He'd literally read all of the books that Alex had brought with her, and she still needed to sleep, so he needed better and more extensive reading material.

"It's for personal reading, but I appreciate the suggestion." He honestly did, for someone who wasn't used to doing extensive research, it might have been incredibly useful.

"Very well," She told him the direction to one of the bookshops. "There is another one that sells books that are more.." She hesitated to use the word, given where she came from. "..What some would consider antiques. Suppose it matters what you are looking for."

He said 'personal reading', but that could mean anything. "You may wish to save the trip for tomorrow, even so. It seems most if not all of the shop keepers are keen to give out paper lanterns."

Edited 2018-05-11 03:47 (UTC)

"I'm afraid I've exhausted my," There's a pause as he tries to think of a way to term what he and Alex are. When he'd told her that he felt uncomfortable calling anyone his girlfriend, he wasn't lying. The fact that he was twenty years her senior, complicated labels, the fact that he was still actually married to Coralee, even more so. Finally, he settled on something that, while sounding trite compared to what they were, seemed the best fit. "companion's reading materials." Then, his mind crossed through the conversation to an earlier part of what she had said. "What do you mean, antiques?"

"The 'so-called' door that brings us all here does not discriminate," She saw no reason to hide any of this and felt no reason to hide where she was from. "Be it from eras or even worlds. It is the year eighteen-hundred and seventeen where I am from, and so some of the books you might considered old and outdated are, or I suppose they were, rather current to what I am used to, or at the very least not far off."

To say nothing of getting used to a version of Britain where the zombie menace was only something regulated to fictional stories. "The library might still be your best choice for the present, or, at the risk of sounding forward, you may borrow some of mine? Most of what I have collected are all historical or based on biology."

With the few books on warfare thrown in of course. People borrowed and lent books all the time in her world, though it wasn't entirely done here.

It appeared, she was a mix. Alex would never think up someone this direct and logical; he would. At the same time, however, he would never create someone so obviously fake. It was just a fact. He was a bit disappointed in this particular constructed person because, to be honest; he would have liked her actually to be real. There was a shortage of reasonable and practical people in the world. It could use another.

He decided not to say a word about the so-called 'door' that had brought them all there. It was obviously a fabrication inserted in the delusion by Thomas Warren to make it seem as if there was an escape, to make it seem more real.

Instead, he focused on the content of books. The idea of borrowing and lending not lost on him, after all, he'd lent books to students often enough to be used in their master thesis, and he'd always frequented the library; even if he preferred to have his own copies on hand for reference. Here, it wasn't yet a viable option. Still, something bothered him about her choice in books. "Are they your fields of study, or just a passing curiosity?" They could be useful in figuring out what Warren was doing to them. Maybe his mind was fighting against this more then he'd previously thought.

"Field of study?" She wondered if he meant to do with her job, though she definitely did not recall telling him about what she did here. "Well, the history books are more focused on military history, and as referenced, some are actually from my future."

Two hundred years was a long time to read on how the military has changed, and not even counting from the wider world. "Biology is two-fold, the first in regards to my post in the perimeter guard, and the second is less curiosity and more of a need."

She hoped, at some point, to find anything that might provide a cure to the plague back home. There were so many advances here, she strangely had to work backward to find out it all worked.

"I should be stopping by my floor, regardless." She hefted the bag at her hip. Though heavy looking, she carried it with some ease; the gesture was less an adjustment and more to show her reason for going. "And forgive me, but we have been talking and I have yet to introduce myself. My name is Elizabeth Bennet."

The woman was decidedly impressive. She had decided thoughts and was practical. He appreciated that more than most. Perhaps she was a product of his mind and not Alex's as he'd previously thought. He doubted Alex, with all her emotion and empathy could think up such a logical person; that is until he heard her name.

Elizabeth Bennet, 'Pride and Prejudice'. It seemed both the stranges perfectly natural for Alex to have some predisposition to the novel. Or maybe she'd just watched the movies or miniseries. God knew there were enough versions of the damn thing.

His brows drew slightly closer now that he'd learned her name, but she was helping him and he had promised not to intentionally get himself punched. Telling a fictional character that they were, as such, fictional, would probably go a long way to breaking that promise.

"Ah, Richard Strand." It wasn't often that Richard tripped over his own name, even slightly, but it also wasn't every day that one met a literary classic.

Edited (I have been doing a bracket thread all day. I failed.) 2018-05-12 05:01 (UTC)

A sharp eye such as hers was able to catch the slight reaction to her name, and to here the slight stumble. She felt her rise just a degree. "You too have read the Ms. Austen's book, then? A friend of mine has been good enough to lend me her copy. It is not an entirely accurate narrative, but entertaining enough."

With the lack of zombies and death, and the focus on marriage, Elizabeth could almost enjoy it as a 'what could have been' sort of story. "My building is just this way."

She turned just slightly so as to walk with him down the street.

That was certainly an interesting development. Still, it didn't mean that much in the grand scheme of things. Only caused him to appreciate her practicality even more. The commentary on it not being an accurate narrative had him smirking slightly.

Of course, it wasn't an accurate narrative. It was a fiction.

As Elizabeth moved toward the end of the street, he easily matched her pace by adjusting his gait to hers. He'd gotten so used to doing so with Alex that the whole action had become second nature. Over the past three years, there had been less overstepping people as he waled and more walking alongside or behind them.

And since she was already aware of Jane Austin's work, it seemed it was okay to continue the conversation. "Jane Austin is quite famous. Pride and Prejudice wasn't the only book she wrote. Did your friend suggest any of her other works?"

Edited 2018-05-14 04:03 (UTC)

"I have heard of some of her other titles," She saw them enough in the library and some of the bookshops. "But my reading of pride and prejudice was mere curiosity on my part, because if there were to be assumptions from a work of fiction, I would rather be prepared to face them."

Thankfully, though Longborne in the novel was zombie free, her character still possessed the same wit she herself was proud of. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, her two younger sisters were still silly as ever. "Might I ask your companion's name. I have been here for some months and perhaps I have heard or met them before?"

He couldn't fault her curiosity. If Richard were told that he was contained in a fictional work by an author that he'd never heard if, he'd be curious too. In fact, he'd probably sit down with the piece and analyze it for every incorrect detail; then hunt down the supposed author if he could and demand royalties. Not that he'd want them, but if someone were going to use his life as a supposed work of fiction, he'd want some control over it.

The fact that she'd taken an analytical view was refreshing. Taking things in from her perspective and deciding what to make of them. It was admirable of her. It made it easy to answer when she asked questions. "Alex Reagan." There wasn't any reason to be hiding that he and Alex were together here; and if she knew Alex, then he was sure she'd find out soon enough.

She felt the corners of her mouth turn up in a grin. "I do know of her, and consider her a friend. was the very one who told and let me borrow her copy of the book."

Part of her wondered at the sort of relationship Alex had with him, but it wasn't in her to pry either. She did hazard that theirs was more a professional relationship, judging by how he addressed her-at the very least, that was as far as she was willing to admit.

"Has she been getting much sleep lately?" Her tone turned towards that of concern. "Sometimes my patrol shifts entail very late hours, and more than once have I viewed her video messages on the network."

Video feeds that, as far as she was concerned, gave no evidence or reason for her to be up that late; none save her own need to keep busy.

Edited 2018-05-17 02:27 (UTC)

Being told that this Elizabeth was friends with Alex didn't surprise Richard in the least. Where Richard was insular, Alex was not. It would have almost been more of a surprised if Elizabeth hadn't known her.

"She sleeps fine now." Which wasn't even a small stretch; since they'd moved in together, she'd been sleeping a lot better. It was something that almost made him feel guilty, although he doubted it would be as effective in a world that wasn't dictated by their minds.

The messages comment caught his curiosity. He'd listened to Alex's sleep notes before, but, of course, her nightmares had been just that, nightmares with no basis in reality. He wondered what sort of content she was outputting here, in the hours she couldn't sleep. Still, it wasn't something he needed to press.

"Alex says she's been here for several months; is that common?" It wasn't that he didn't believe that Alex thought she'd been here, or that she couldn't create a scenario where she had been here. It was just important to get this information from multiple sources.

"Possibly, but I never thought to ask." In truth, she never really thought to ask how long Alex had resided here. The woman arrived the same as they all did, that was she figured to know. "I myself have been here since February," She smiled faintly at the memory. "Just in time to celebrate the Chinese new year."

They didn't celebrate it at home of course, that would've been silly. Yet, those years she'd spent in the Orient did allow her to witness such festivities, and even small touches to the familiar were welcomed.

The residential towers were just around the block, of which she was grateful for. The grocery bags were no heavier than before, but she was looking forward for the chance to set them down.

It was interesting, the fact that Elizabeth seemed to have a timeline of her own. It wasn't entirely outside of Richard's theory though. To have a convincing delusion it was necessary for the delusions themselves to have their own timelines. It only made sense.

"So the time spent here fluctuates from person to person." He filed the information away for later analysis as he followed Elizabeth to her destination. As he had assessed before, he had to admit that she seemed to be a strong woman with a good head on her shoulders. It was a good thing that Alex had created someone as down to earth as Elizabeth. Otherwise, Alex would have had no rational grounding and would have probably caused this world to go into some form of chaos. Of course, if this were also his delusion, there would have to be some logic in it all.

She gave it some consideration. "More in that, no one here arrives within the same day or even days. At best-and this is only my theory-there are days of the month when the Door is the most active. My duties in the Guard are to ensure those who arrive are safely escorted out, they're all on the roster, so I have a good idea of the Door's fluctuations."

She didn't meet every New arrival of course, but she saw the papers enough to get an idea.

Ah, one of those. Richard had met one when he'd arrived, and been given the general knowledge that they thought he'd need in this delusion. It was, tidy, to say the least. Having such a system seemed like something that Alex or himself would implement in a world where there seemed to be no source of actual order.

The fact that Elizabeth was making her own hypotheses was interesting though. That didn't seem like something Alex would program into a delusion, and he wondered if maybe many of these were a mix of both their minds. It would certainly make them more believable.

"You've had time to document it?"

"Not myself, no," She answered, trying to reach for her keys. The bag she was holding was only moderately heavy, but it was especially ungainly. "But there is a mailing list, and each member on the guard is sent the schedule so they know to keep an eye out."

Not that many could be confused with residents so soon after their arrival, but it did help to know who had just stepped through, as opposed to someone who stumbled out from the barrier.

They reached the building where her room resided, but she paused just a moment before using the key to unlock the building. Decorum would've been known had they been back in her era, but this wasn't the England she was used to (actually, not even England), and she could tell enough that Dr. Strand was from a more modern time. Much as she didn't really care one way or the other, the last thing she wanted was to give the wrong impression.

"If you do not mind waiting a bit," She decided to let that to his interpretation. "My quarters are on the third floor, so fetching a few books should not take long."

That was, interesting. There was a list that could be looked over as to who had just arrived, though he doubted those not in the guard were permitted to look at it. Besides, the only other people from actual reality who he thought Warren might add to this delusion would be to tournament him. Coralee, perhaps, his father. Maybe Warren would even add himself if he felt that the delusion wasn't working fast enough for his liking

Wrested from his thoughts, he nodded slightly in understanding. Of course, a proper lady of Elizabeth's supposed century wouldn't want a man in their house alone. It would be a scandal.

"Of course."

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monthly mingle: MEMORIA

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