monthly mingle: MEMORIA

[riverviewmod]

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!

navigation

Comments

[evasives]

[it hits him that he is hugging a runaway stormtrooper, and what a strange world the quarantine is. this is what it's like to have friends, he supposes. he almost doesn't want the hug to end, but he can feel his limit approaching.]

Much better. I woke up a few hours ago, and so did Jyn. We left. [more like they fucking bolted from the hospital as soon as they could.] She is making a food run. You are welcome to stay and eat with us, it's the least we could do for you taking care of Raddus.

[and for being their friend!!! but let's not get carried away with emotions. the hug was already A Big Step. but finn came to check on their cat unprompted and he's reliable and he's just...a good. he's a good person. probably not the kind of good cassian deserves, but he's not about to push finn away now.]

[bythehand]

[ See, Finn knows what's up. If there's a five minute hug on his docket, it's bound to be with Poe or Rey. Cassian is a man of refined limits.

Well, maybe he knows a little less what's up than he thought a minute ago. Cassian's always been pretty firmly bundled into the "would not accept hug" branch of Finn's circle of friends. Kind of like Jyn, who's only ever touched him in a non-sparring capacity exactly one time to date so far. And that category, clearly, wasn't 100% right.

He'll have to make sure he doesn't abuse this newfound acceptance. Finn doesn't necessarily go in for hugs too often, but he knows he's been known to grab hands and whatnot without thinking about it. The moral of these brackets is that nobody knows anything or has any idea what they're doing. ]

I was gonna ask to stick around until she got back anyway.

[ He'll keep any eating promises on reserve just in case Jyn planned on having a certain level of Smooching Privacy after all the, you know. Looking half-dead in the hospital business. Not that she wouldn't kick him out regardless, if she wanted to. It's the principle of the thing. ]

[evasives]

[he is a man of very refined limits, carefully constructed and stagnant for years. but they are maybe - just maybe - changing a little with his time here in the quarantine.]

[cassian is what the kids call touch starved, despite being a person who generally hates to be touched. it is a very tricky area to navigate, but he's working on it.]

[he almost smiles at finn, his expression lighter. he's still got bags under his eyes, a double whammy combo from both being sick and being a long suffering sufferer of soldier based insomnia, but he's in good spirits. which is rare enough with cassian too.]

She did not tell me what she was getting, but her tastes are quite varied.

[raddus hops off the couch and winds between finn's legs, happy to see her Good Friend of the Food.]

I have not had an appetite in what feels like ages. Are you okay? Did you fall any bit ill?

[bythehand]

[ Aha. The cat content. He knew it was a matter of time. Finn bends down to give Raddus a scratch on the head, mostly content to hang there for a little while and become an innovative self-petting post. He knows like two cats. Sometimes they don't want to be petted. They just want to butt their heads into stuff.

Varied tastes, Finn's pretty sure, is along the same lines as Rey's varied tastes. Which is to say she'll eat pretty much anything and everything, with a few standout favorites. ]

I've been fine. Conscious and everything. Poe and Rey, too. [ You know. Might as well cover the whole friend spectrum. ] Been seeing a lot of people go down, though. Spread pretty fast.

[evasives]

[the cat of all things is at least a constant with how much she adores finn. it's good to have routine.]

[it is exactly those kinds of varied tastes finn, how did you know?? edible food is technically the most important part, cassian can agree, but he's got his own favorites, even if they're not as all over the place as jyn.]

I have had enough unconsciousness in hospitals to be done with it. [can he say "to last a lifetime" when his first lifetime is, you know, done?] The recovery seems to have gone just as fast. Jyn fell into that coma first, but we'd idly heard of it happening to others too. I'm glad you were all safe. I never want to experience that kind of sick again.

[bythehand]

[ Fed up with unconsciousness: a real mood. It's good to hear that the recovery's been fast, sort of in light of the fact that they both immediately vaulted out of the hospital. ]

That bad, huh?

[ Or maybe Cassian has just like, never gotten sick ever before now. A turbo immune system. Which Finn can broadly relate to. ]

[evasives]

[it is the biggest mood.]

I have never gotten that sick before. I always felt like I did not have time to be sick, but when it puts you into a coma, I suppose there is not much of a choice. Colds and flus I just - pushed through and ignored.

[he is very excellent at taking care of his health.]

[bythehand]

I'd say I'm surprised to hear that, but knowing you, it adds up.

[ The real question is do either of them know anybody who wouldn't just push through and ignore colds and flus? Probably not. Catch everyone this winter ending up hospitalized. ]

surprise bitch

[realists]

[ jyn kicks the door open like it's holding a trove of thin mints, or she tries, but she's still annoyingly weak so she just kind of...

nudges it open. cool. ]

Romaria cried when I went to the deli, I think she thought we died. [ how often do they go to the deli that the owner cried when she lost her finest customers for a couple weeks? LOOK. it's good and it's close to work and it's good and it's cheap and it's good. anyway jyn comes bearing too many sandwiches for two adults even when one of the adults is her because said deli owner decided they were both too skinny (cassian wasn't even there!) and she needs to fatten them up.

jyn is not complaining, putting the bags down on the floor because they're heavy and she's barely not ill and you bet ur butt she took the stairs. pale and clammy is just going to be her new look. ]

Hi Finn.

[bythehand]

[ Let no one ever dare to call that entrance less than great. Crying deli owner. Carefully nudging the door open. Looking exactly like a half-dead person. Perfect. It's pretty much on par with descending from the heavens to a screaming choir. And everyone in this room knows it.

He came to feed a cat and two whole friends turned out to not have wasted away in a nanite coma. Is this the real life? Is it just fantasy? No. It's really happening in reality. That extremely comforting in-person, right before his very eyes confirmation that they're both here and back on the upswing. Cassian and Jyn are probably the most beautiful things Finn has seen in a month, going by his personal dramatic scale. ]

Hi.

[ Finn grapples with his impulse control vs. another wave of unmitigated and broadly-telegraphed relief. He loses this grapple, which he tends to do when it comes to his impulse control.

So he sort of just. Immediately gets a few quick steps in so that he can go for round two of hugging. He is not even pretending to try to hide this intent. The thought process on it stopped as soon as it began. Like any time, hug o'clock rolls around a solid twice per day.

This is a good day. Don't @ him. It's good, as pretty much anybody in the Star Wars universe could say, to just plain see people live through things. That doesn't get old. If it means putting himself at risk of being judo-flipped or whatever, then so be it. Well. So be it-ish. He would probably apologize and try to work on his impulse control again. But still. ]

[realists]

[ jyn does not judo flip him though the idea is there, in the back of her mind, an instinct to squirrel out of anybody's hold. but she lets finn hug her -- bringing the total of people she's hugged, in her entire life, to six.

which is honestly probably the highest number in this whole room, at least higher than cassian. finn may have hugged 100 people here, she doesn't know his life, she doesn't know his hopes and dreams. maybe he hugs a new person every day whereas jyn is more likely to judo flip someone.

she pats finn's back a couple times, letting the hug last as long as he fuckin' wants, even if she glances at cassian over his shoulder like UM. ]

Nothing can kill me, Finn, I'm immortal.

[ the stairs might kill her if she tries that again so it looks like they're getting take out for the rest of the week. ]