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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[ He just nods.

The front door of Harry's house opens into a narrow hallway; to the right is the room he's outfitted as an office and laboratory; straight ahead the kitchen is visible, and to the left is a single large room that has been furnished with living room furniture in the front and a small dining table and chairs in the back. The furniture is all good quality, if plain. Harry waves toward the sofa. ]

Please, make yourself comfortable.

[ He goes to the kitchen to put the kettle on and comes back shortly after, rubbing a hand through his hair and rendering the curls even more disorderly than usual. ]

You have not been much afflicted, I hope.

Nah--I mean no, I haven't. Like there are some ghosts that have followed me around a little but they're just kind of lonely? They like it when I listen to them talk.

[ She's got the bucket balanced on her knees now while Pheobe eats, wobbling now and then as she hangs on to its base and the lizard moves around. ]

...Have yours been bad?

There have been a few in the morgue like that—lonely and bored. I won't deny that I was quite frightened when I saw one for the first time, but they are not so bad.

[ A heavy sigh. ]

But I did not think I would meet ghosts here from my own world.

Yeah. It's kinda like the magic thing, isn't it? [ She sets the bucket on the floor and draws her feet up, hugging her knees against herself. ]

They've got no reason to be here, but they're here anyway.

Perhaps our presence here is the only reason they need. Iron filings to a magnet, as it were.

[ And the prospect of certain filings drifting in is the stuff of nightmares. Reflexively he glances out the window, and freezes.

He's been lucky; none of the ghosts have entered his house. But they show up at the gate, standing there like hesitant visitors, before fading away.

Here's a tall man with dark waving hair that was probably glorious once. He's gaunt, hollow-eyed, wax-pale. There are streaks of blood at his hairline. His Royal Navy uniform is in disarray, coat hanging open, neckcloth slack, shirt half-buttoned. There's blood on the shirt too. And somehow, worst of all, his boots are gone, his feet bare.

You might not know to look at his shade, but James Fitzjames was once the handsomest man in the Royal Navy. ]

Harry--?

[ She sees where he's looking and gets up so she can see, freezing as she spots the specter standing on the sidewalk.

He looks like some kind of actor in a gothic horror movie, all done up and ready to scare some unsuspecting homeowners. Except she can see right through him, and there's something about his eyes, about the empty sadness in them, and something about the fact that he's missing his shoes. That, coupled with the look on Harry's face--there's a story, a real story to this man. It makes her hair stand on end.

She walks over almost reflexively to take Harry's hand, her eyes still locked on the apparition. ]

Is that one of yours?

[ Harry's hand is ice cold. He doesn't turn to look at her; he couldn't turn away from Fitzjames's ghost if he tried. ]

Yes. [ He closes his eyes for a moment. Maybe he'll go away. But when he opens his eyes the ghost is still there. ]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't there. [ Breathed out, barely audible. ]

[ The ghost smiles then—a look that was almost rakish in better days, but which now only underlines the extreme privation they all suffered in the end. He raises his hand in a gesture that might be benediction or farewell, almost a salute. He turns away, and as he does so, fades into nothingness.

Harry's grip on Athena's hand slackens, and he draws a deep, shaking breath. ]

Edited 2018-10-10 02:42 (UTC)

[ That ghost is going to stay with her. She knows that, instinctively. It's the kind of memory you wake up to in the night. She's got a few. She knows Jeff has more. Does Cam?

She's never wondered before how many Harry must have.

So she does what she would do if this were Jeff, or Cam. She hugs him. Maybe it's not proper or something, for a girl to hug a guy she doesn't plan on marrying, who knows, who cares. Athena just knows if it were her, seeing someone she cared about looking like that, she would want a hug. ]

[ He's not expecting the hug. Alex had done it too, of course, but still, it's ... not a thing that's done, where he comes from, particularly not between men and women, unless they're engaged or family. And for a moment he just stands there, arms out slightly and looking down in bewilderment at the top of her head.

But he feels his racing pulse start to slow, and warmth return to his hands, and he realises how grateful he is for the comfort, just as he was when Silna came to him after Morfin was killed. Slowly he lowers his arms, draping them loosely around Athena's frame, and he sighs. ]

Thank you.

[ She gives him an extra little squeeze before she looks up at him. ] You're one of ours. One of mine and Jeff and Cam's, I mean. You don't have to thank us for anything. Well, you don't have to thank me, I don't know what manners says you have to do for them.

[ Athena tries for a smile, though it's a little awkward. ] So, y'know. If you ever need another hug. I'm good for it.

[ He gives her shoulders a light squeeze—realises then that somehow, Jeff and Cam and Athena have slipped into slots in his mind analogous to those occupied by his brother John, their friend Edward Forbes, and his sister Jane. And he realises as well that he had resigned himself to an existence here without a family, but despite that, he seems to have been claimed by one, all unawares.

Tears prick at the corner of his eyes, but he smiles. ]

I am fortunate beyond words to have you as friends.

[ She ducks her head, embarrassed. ]

I mean, I wouldn't go that far. [ Quieter, not quite a mumble: ] Besides, we are too. Lucky. I....

[ DEEP BREATH. She's still not looking up at him. ]

You help make this place feel more like home than. I don't know. Whatever it is.

A kind of exile for some, I suppose. For some of us ...

[ He doesn't want to call it an afterlife, even if that's what it is for him. ]

A second chance.

[ That's one way of putting it. ]

[ That prompts her to give Harry another hug. She's gotten the scoop about the whole Franklin Expedition Thing from Cam--it was hard to get him to stop talking about it, after a certain point.

It makes her kind of sick... no, really sick, knowing that Harry was pretty much lost at sea. He deserves a lot better than that. ]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad it's that second part, at least. Not so sure about the first part.

[ She looks up at him, hesitation clear on her face. ]

If there was a way to do it, would you want to come with us when we go home? I mean it's fine if you like it here, and everything, if you want to stay that's cool, but I don't want... I don't want to just leave you.

[ Harry looks at her in astonishment.

He has brooded often on what it means for him to be here, to have this chance that he is manifestly certain he does not deserve—he, a suicide and likely murderer, whose faith in humanity had been all but demolished at the end there. There is, he has mostly decided, no meaning; it is a freak twist of fate, and all he can do with it is to try and live the best life he can, as the man he thought he once was, or wanted to be. And it works, most of the time, but sometimes it feels like a dreadful sham.

And then Athena comes along and welcomes him like a brother, and he doesn't know what to do with it. ]

I—I don't—

[ Wait, no. ]

Athena, I—I an honoured that you'd even make such an invitation. I ... I don't know what to say.

Just think about it. And then say yes. [ Her grin is back, easy and unapologetic. Smiling is better than being nervous about it, anyway. Smiling about it is better than thinking about Harry here by himself--it doesn't even occur to her that he must know people other than her and Jeff and Cam, though it should be obvious. It doesn't occur to her that he might be as close to them, or closer, that he might have reasons to stay here. This place is a temporary state, as far as she's concerned. An accident, a halfway house for extrauniversal drifters.

Harry is one of theirs, she's decided, just like Peter. Except Peter has somewhere to go home to. For now, anyway.

Peter. How did she not think to ask Peter this same question? He's going to die back home, he knows it, so why shouldn't he come home with them, too?

She's going to have some explaining to do for her aunt, but there's a surge of hope in her for the first time since finding out about both Harry and Peter's situations. She could actually help fix this. She could help them both. ] We'd have to figure out all your animals, but. Cam can probably swing it. He's good at fixing things.

I promise you that I will think about it.

[ And no matter what she says, that yes is contingent on the output of those thoughts. But he's not going to say that right now; it's obviously implied in any case. ]

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monthly mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

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