riverviewlogs | monthly mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

monthly mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: monthly mingle: feast of the dying + agricultural emergency
when: the month of october
where: anywhere around the city
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

monthly mingle: october

During the month of October, a particular natural phenomenon on the moon weakens the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead, allowing for the crossover of those dead into the world of the living, with ghosts from the pasts of both the residents and the Quarantine itself to take corporeal form. This has given rise to an array of celebrations and traditions surrounding the transition from life to death, encouraging residents not to fear death, but to embrace it.

Things aren't all spooky celebrations this month, though. There's also a serious emergency happening in the agricultural district, where a herd of vengeful and intelligent hog-like creatures has decided to mount an attack on the city, with a large measure of success. Between September 20th and September 25th, they rammed the fences near the agriculture district where most of the farms providing livestock and produce for the city are located, succeeding in breaking through the fence on the 25th. Drastic action needs to be taken in order to protect the city's ability to feed itself throughout the upcoming months.

feast of the dying: a celebration of the transition between life and death

In the days leading up to October 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: the Feast of the Dying. There is an old, widely-known, and widely-believed superstition or proverb in Riverview Quarantine: 'The greater your fear of death, the easier it is for death to find you.' This is a cornerstone belief of a lot of the residents of the Quarantine, most of whom have survived intensely difficult and violent pasts on their own worlds and who are still willing and eager to throw themselves into exploring and settling new worlds, starting their lives fresh. To honor this spirit, the Feast of the Dying is a celebration of the transition between life and death, an opportunity to face death both figuratively and literally, and come out on top.

The festivities during this time feature tests of courage in highly haunted places, escape rooms both virtual and physical with varying levels of danger, and the week-long Feast of the Dying itself, between October 1st and 8th this year.

i. feast of the dying traditions

Much like any culture, there are a few traditions and events that happen every year in the Quarantine, to celebrate the Feast of the Dying. In-depth information on these traditions and events can be found on last year's Feast of the Dying post, and include:

● Ghosts From the Past: Characters will see ghosts of the deceased in various places around the Quarantine, with some areas, where the boundaries between the living and dead are weakest, being heavily infested with these ghosts, while other areas are nearly ghost-free. These ghosts can be from characters' canons (with limitations - see last year's post for OOC guidelines) or from the Quarantine itself.
● Escape Rooms: Horror-themed escape rooms pop up all over the city, augmented with tech or magic to make them seem more menacing. The difficulty levels and scares range from easy to incredibly difficult, and they feature themes from Zombie Attack to Prison to Torture Traps to Mad Science Experiments, and just about anything else you can think of.
● Tests of Courage: In various places around the city, there are establishments where the boundaries between the living and dead are so fragile as to be barely there - hospitals that treated the ill during the Pandemic, insane asylums or prisons where inmates were mistreated, homes where terrible murders happened, places exposed to dark magic, and other similar places. During October, these places are shut down except to those who wish to stay the night as a test of courage. Characters who stay the night will encounter hordes of ghosts and experience extremely realistic hallucinations that may result in injury (which is up to player discretion) in the name of proving their courage.
● Doom Dates: This year, with the amusement park open for business, there is an event called Doom Date, a spooky themed night at the fair featuring haunted houses, costumed actors, and free rides with the price of admission. More information on this prompt can be found on the September Test Drive Meme.
● Feast of the Dying: A week-long masquerade-style party that is open from sundown October 1st until sunrise on October 9th. Sort of like a formal ball inside an incredibly realistic haunted house, the Feast of the Dying is the tradition that the holiday is named after, and features dancing, party events, plenty of food and drink for everyone, and private rooms for resting or engaging in...private activities with close friends.

ii. creepy chaos

This year, there's something a little different going around the Quarantine. The influx of refugees, the Frysh, that recently arrived, have brought a few new spooky traditions with them - while their celebration of horror usually happens in the dead of winter, they've shared the custom for the Feast of the Dying. And what is that custom? Dressing up as monsters, ghosts, demons, and other terrifying creatures! Considering how many other worlds and universes have similar traditions, it's caught on quickly, with costumes incredibly varied in subject matter and level of intricacy, from standard run-of-the-mill costumes pieces purchased from the local costume shop to intricately detailed costumes featuring holographic accents - and, of course, the 'sexy' version of everything. The culmination of the Frysh tradition is the tenth day of the month, where everyone dresses as something or someone scary, and brings treats (handmade or purchased) to give to family, lovers, friends, coworkers, classmates, or anyone else. It fits with the Feast of the Dying theme quite smoothly, reminding residents that joy and togetherness can come even from frightening situations.

All well and good, but someone has other ideas - enter Phineas, a rather notorious mage who's just recently gotten out of a year-long stint in prison. Elderly, a bit of a codger, more than a bit eccentric, and extremely powerful, Phineas has decided to put his own spin on this particular spooky tradition by casting a powerful citywide spell. On October 10, anyone who puts on a costume to participate in this particular celebration will find themselves turning into their costume for the evening. Dressed up as a werewolf? Prepare to howl at the moon! Dressed as a vampire? Be prepared to get a serious taste for blood. The possibilities are endless...

OOC Note: Please remember that Riverview does not allow non-consensual sex, and that game mechanics are not put in place to encourage sexual assault, or to 'trick' characters into having sex that they would not normally have. If your character's costume is the 'sexy' version of anything, feel free to play with aphrodisiac effects or lowered inhibitions, but keep this rule in mind.

emergency in the agricultural district!

iii. hog wild

Residents of the city may or may not remember a particular patch of fertile ground that was scouted over a year ago, and the highly-intelligent and territorial alien hogs that were protecting it because the soil's fertility stems from it being a alien hog graveyard. After that revelation, the city had abandoned the project for the foreseeable future, as digging up an intelligent species' graveyard is more than a little beyond the pale.

That would've been all well and good, had the alien hogs stayed in their territory. However, after being disrupted by two teams over the course of a few months, the hogs (who have an excellent memory for this kind of thing) have started to get a little restless. It's not enough to be left alone - they want revenge. And with the summer winding down into harvest season, they've figured out how to get that revenge. As September winds down and October starts to dawn, the powerful and intimidating hogs have started on stage one of enacting that revenge - they've been making concentrated runs at the fences closest to their territory, hitting it in the same spot over and over again, herd mentality at its strongest, trying to make a dent. And they're succeeding.

The big problem here is that, on the inside of that fence, is the bulk of the Quarantine's agriculture sector. Fields full of livestock and crops that are meant to make up the majority of the winter's food supply are in danger of being wiped out if that fence falls, and if that happens, it's going to be a cold, hungry winter, no matter how many supplies the Capital World manages to send up to the moon.

Since September 20th, residents have been being called into service whenever they were willing to, at first to try to repair the damage to the wall and keep the hogs from bursting through, and after September 25th, to help stem the damage being done by the rampaging hogs. As September ends and October begins, the fight is still underway, and residents haven't managed to do much to stop the creatures encroaching on the agricultural district, so more help is always welcome.

A full write-up of this situation can be found on September's Test Drive Meme.

iv. drift compatible

As October continues on, the situation with the invasion of hogs and all the other creatures that are coming through the massive breach in the outer wall of the Inhabited City is starting to get really dire. As a last-ditch effort, the government is pulling what remains of their fleet of three-story-tall mech suits out of storage. Longer-term residents may remember these mechs from last January, when a herd of behemoth monsters was attacking the city. Since then, the five remaining mechs were taken over by a private tech company, improved upon to some extent, and then sold back to the government, where they were reverse engineered into something new and a little different, and more were manufactured.

As of now, the government is holding on to a fleet of around 40 smaller, more maneuverable mechs that are still quite powerful, but most importantly which still need to be piloted by two people. Considering the emergency the city is facing, the government has released the fleet of mechs to the Perimeter Guard, and is calling for anyone with piloting experience, or even people willing to take a quick course in it, to help man the fleet and head out into the battle, backing up fighters on the ground to try to push back the tide of creatures flooding into the vulnerable and very important agricultural district.

Mechs are piloted by two people working together - while it's not exactly drift compatibility, the two characters need to act together, with one directing where the mech goes and keeping an eye on the terrain, and the other one manning the guns and keeping an eye on the mech's defenses and energy and ammunition levels. This takes a lot of concentration and cooperation, and this day is bound to forge a lot of new friendships....and probably a few mortal enemies. On top of the difficulty of working with someone who may be a total stranger, don't forget this new fleet of mechs are in beta-testing and are only being used as a last resort, which means they have a bad tendency to break down in unexpected ways.

Each mech is fitted with one large canon-style gun that can be semi-automatic or automatic with a limited amount of ammunition, one plasma sword, and a force shield that can take four serious hits before it is depleted. They have a finite amount of energy storage and are able to be in continuous use for 3 hours maximum before shutting down. Out of the fleet of 40 mechs, the mod expects only about 5 to still be functional at the end of the month, so feel free to destroy or seriously damage them in threads.

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 Feast of the Dying, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view; images may contain disturbing themes

Credit: image i: Logan Preshaw; image ii: Alejandro D'Marco; image iii: Jeff Jumper; image iv: Johannes Mücke; image v: Davey Baker; image vi: David Edwards

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i. feast of the dead

a. tests of courage
When one is haunted by the spirit of one's dead father, who has been insisting every time he decides to manifest himself that Dorian has been doing nothing but biding his time, wasting away in this place instead of enacting any real change, that he was doing nothing but squandering the position he'd left to his son, that he hadn't lost his tendencies towards decadence and excess, and that it would spell the end of anything he'd hoped to accomplish. That he was a disappointment as he had always been...and so on, one such as Dorian decides he needs to prove himself.

A necromancer by warrant of it being the most difficult specialization, what better place to prove his worth than one of the most haunted locations in the Quarantine? If no one approaches this particular insane asylum, rumored to drive all who attempt to spend the night within mad, he's just going to do this alone. After the few months Dorian's had, caution seems to be the least of his worries. He does have a notebook with him that he seems to be reading, a confident smile on his face.

"Spirits reputed to drive any trespassers mad, you say? I don't fear these spirits."

b. the feast
After a fruitful shopping excursion, Dorian will be attending this year's Feast of the Dying dressed to the nines, with a splendid mask to compliment the ensemble. Does he lament not having someone to attend the ball with? Perhaps, but that's all the more reason to shine so brightly. Give them the old razzle dazzle, as the saying goes, and Dorian is old hat at precisely that thing. He can be found on the dance floor, always open for a partner, at one of the many refreshments tables helping himself to yet another glass of wine, or anywhere in between, should someone wish to take his arm, or simply catch him as he makes his way around. He seems to be in high spirits, of course, laughing or joking, smiling his charming smile. Whatever could be the matter, really?

v. wildcard
(If there's something in particular you'd like to thread, or something unrelated to the above, hmu here! Or you can shoot me a like at

vikael or on discord at prettyvikael#0221)

Look who else is helping themselves to more wine. Why, it's Hawke, surprise surprise. And oh, Dorian, while you're pouring yourself a glass, Hawke will hold out hers to be poured next. Fair's fair, right? Since he didn't bring her a glass the other night and she had to drink out of the bottle like some Fereldan heathen. She smiles blithely as she waits.

"You know," she remarks, "I wasn't sold on that mask of yours. But I find it's growing on me. It certainly suits you, at any rate."

You know, Hawke, he's so pleased that you've bothered to find where the glasses are he simply it without question, though there is a teasing smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth as he does so.

"You're aware by now, of course, I can make anything look presentable, aren't you? It's true you were absent from the proceedings at the Winter Palace. Honestly, I'm uncertain who designed the dress uniformed of the Inquisition, but they're positively ghastly."

She's not that deprived of class, Dorian. Just when she's at home. Because why dirty a dish when you don't have to? But here, people are watching and someone else will be washing the dishes.

"Careful. I'm going to start bringing home the most horrific pieces of cloth and shoving them on you." Because Hawke is incapable of hearing something like that and not think that's a challenge I must rise to. "I don't think the Inquisition even got that far, from what I remember last. That ball wasn't happening for some time yet, last I checked, so I never saw the uniforms. What did they look like?"

"Only pieces of cloth?" A devilish grin touched his lips as he sipped his wine before continuing. "So eager to see me in scant clothing, Hawke? I can't say I blame you."

He shook his head at her question, though. "Ah. Military dress uniforms of reds and blues with gold accents. Beastly."

Okay, she walked into that one, but she's more than fine with it. She laughs, shrugging a little. "You've got me. And what can I say, it's been awhile. At this rate, I might even take seeing the blond beefcake that is Cullen just wearing strips of cloth." Which objectively she'll admit Cullen's hot as hell, which in some ways just infuriates her, but hey, she won't complain if she catches him shirtless. It has been awhile.

"...oh, Maker." Now while Hawke's not a fashionista by any stretch of the imagination, even she knows just how gaudy that is. She even grimaces. "Not a lot of people can pull that off. Maker, Iona's pretty but I don't think even she could wing that successfully. And I can't even imagine why they'd let Ilia don it. No redhead should wear that." Which includes Leliana. "Were they just... purposely wanting everyone to look awful so they didn't one-up anyone there?"

"I wouldn't call seeing Cullen in such a state a last resort, certainly." And he nods along with her revelation. "I wouldn't be surprised. Our Ambassador is quite apt at her position." He shrugged. "Perhaps they just wanted us to be taken seriously...as a heretical religious organization, that is."

"But you two actually get along relatively well. He and I can't say the same most of the time." They really do butt heads. Of which Hawke bears some blame, and she'll admit it. But she's not sorry for it, either. "I mean, if you're going to be heretics, you might as well do it right. And by that apparently it means not remotely in style."

"Yes, well, he is no longer a Templar, and I refuse to be cowed like the southern mages. Cullen and I tend to keep our topics away from such things regardless."

He laughs. "Maker, yes. Have you seen the southern Chantry? They wouldn't know what to do with a well-dressed and intimidating stabilizing force."

"Not all of us are cowed by them, thank you very much." Excuse you, Dorian. "We usually avoid those subjects as well, if it can be helped. It's just... I don't know. Too much history. Too much of seeing him as a templar and supporting Meredith, knowing what was going on. Too much... well, too much a lot of things." Bitterness, anger... only off-set by the fact that he stepped up and did the right thing in the end.

"They don't know what to do with much unless it's belittling and marginalizing elves and mages."

"When one is raised wearing a blindfold, it's difficult for them to adjust to seeing the world as it is, rather than as they were taught it to be. Cullen has. Have you?" Even after nearly three years, most southerners assume he has ulterior motives by merit of being Tevene, after all. He knows how difficult it is to change perspective.

"They're learning, and as their leaders it falls to us to teach them. People are marginalized for more than race and ability, after all."

"Are you accusing me of being raised blindly?" She was raised too aware of things, if anything. She knows not all templars are bad. She's met a few good ones. Her father got to meet her mother and later escape thanks to one. And she's not saying Cullen is bad. There's just a lot of old baggage and history to sort through.

"Are they willing learners or are they just playing along until they're in a position to get back to business as usual?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing before shaking his head. "No, Hawke. I was accusing Templars, and one specific one, of being so. He has since opened his eyes."

He tilted his head slightly, raising an eyebrow. "Tell me, what do you believe the answer to be, this business between mages and templars? How is it solved? You realize there must be a resolution, don't you?"

"I got that part, but then you asked 'Have you?' which sort of implies that the same." She waves it off. "It's not important. Cullen and I butt heads over more than just our history. It's a personality thing, too."

And his lack of sense of humor, the butthead.

...then he asks that question and she kind of wants to go back to the other topic. That's a lot easier than what he just plopped on her head. Hawke huffs out a sigh. "There's a big difference between what I believe should happen and what the resolution is likely to be."

"Well, yes, that's true, in a way. Mages fear Templars in the south, and with reason. I've seen what they can do, but they are also people, just as they fear what mages are capable, who are also people. It's all very complicated."

He chuckles. "Cullen is far more openminded than you give him credit for. I believe something...happened in his past he likes not to discuss."

He smirks at her response, nodding. "People, in general, have placed a great deal of faith in you, Hawke. What you believe will influence decisions, but that also wasn't my question. Regardless of what will happen, what do you believe should?"

"It's about as much credit as he's willing to give me." Which isn't entirely true, there's a lot of bias, especially on her side. But she's not entirely wrong, either.

Hawke blows out a sigh. Honestly she kind of hates talking about this, because it just feels pointless. They're not in Thedas, and she has no say in how things turn out. No one's going to ask her opinion on it and take it into consideration. But Dorian seems bent on discussing it. "I think mages shouldn't be treated like prisoners. I think we still need places of learning, and that the Templars need to be around for when the worst of the mages go wrong. It'll always happen. But that shouldn't mean mages can no longer see their families and basically cease to exist from the outside world. It shouldn't mean that Templars can do as they please. There needs to be far stricter oversight over the Templars, and I'm not convinced the Chantry should be the ones to do it. But I don't know who should then."

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monthly mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

Dorian Pavus | Dragon Age

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