riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: RIVER FESTIVAL

Entry tags:

introductory mingle: RIVER FESTIVAL

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and River Festival
when: The month of August; the bulk of celebration will be in week 1, but there is a party and fireworks display on August 14th.
where: Anywhere around the city.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

river festival

In the days leading up to August 1st, residents new and old will notice preparations beginning, a flurry of activity getting the city ready for the upcoming celebration: The River Festival. This holiday is in celebration of the river and the life that it gives to the city, as well as the heat of summer and forming bonds with friends, family, and romantic partners. The celebrations are marked by a community-wide cleanup of the docks and beaches along the river - particularly important considering the recent acid rain - as well as beachfront cookouts and parties (both private and city sponsored) and beach sports tournaments happening on either open stretches of beach or in special clothing-optional beaches, all capped off with fireworks displays on the evenings of August 7th and 14th.

a celebration of the river and togetherness

Following the hedonism of Carnivale, it's time for something a little more low-key and relaxing. The River Festival happens every year in August, and is geared toward community building through cleaning up the beaches and docks along the river and then using all that freshly cleaned beach to gather on. During the first week of August, there are various lightly-themed government-sponsored beach cookouts and parties geared toward family, romantic dates, or casual all-ages get-togethers for meeting new friends; there are also a few more racy parties at clothing-optional beaches around the city. Many private residents also take this time to gather together friends and family, and have cookouts on the beach with all the typical trappings of the beach barbecue. There are also various casual sports tournaments sponsored by community centers, gyms, and sports teams in the city, featuring prizes ranging from notoriety to sports equipment to big bucks. Finally, there are two fireworks displays, one on August 7th and one on August 14th, with free food, and various live performers beforehand.

i. cleaning up

The holiday starts off on a note that is just a bit more sombre than the rest of the season, with the cleanup efforts following late July's strange fog and acid rain blending into the usual tradition of cleaning up beaches and docks along the river. The cleanup is a group effort, with every citizen who is physically able pitching in to comb the beaches, where they pick up fallen tree limbs, garbage, and anything else that's accumulated during the winter and spring, and then raking the beaches to make them clean and ready to use. The cleanup of the docks is similar, with residents sweeping and hosing them down where necessary. This year, there are a lot of repairs to be made to beachfront structures that might've been damaged by the acid rain, so if anyone has some carpentry or building skills, those would definitely come in handy.

This is meant to be a community building effort, so many businesses in the area, more well-to-do private citizens, and the government have pitched in funding to provide lunches, cold drinks, coffee or tea, and snacks to anyone who's helping out with the cleanup efforts. All in all, the cleanup has a very friendly, welcoming vibe.

ii. cookouts and parties

The main traditions of the River Festival involve cookouts and beach parties. On August 7th and August 14th, the government as well as various corporations and businesses in the city, will be providing funds for large beach gatherings. On these days, there will be booths set up offering wares and freebies from various businesses around the city that have helped fund the party, large swaths of cleared beach where residents can don a swimsuit and catch some rays or swim in the river, massive barbecue setups to provide partygoers with all the standard barbecue fare, beach sports tournaments, dancing and musical performances, and fireworks displays (see prompts below).

The holiday isn't just about these big parties, though - many residents arrange their own barbecues, cookouts, beach camping trips, beach bonfires, and other riverside gatherings and outings. Many riverfront businesses offer discounts on services such as canoe or kayak rentals to go out paddling on the river, jetski or motorboat rentals for tubing, wakeboarding, or waterskiing, or mounts to take romantic rides in the surf. Additionally, there is an adults-only section of the beach where any of these activities can be done in the nude in a clothing-optional setting, including the big city-sponsored parties.

iii. sportsball tournaments

Is your character good at playing a particular sport that could, conceivably, be played on a beach? Chances are that during the month of August, a tournament will be set up for them to participate in. The tournaments are pretty standard, generally sponsored by community centers, sports clubs and teams, gyms, and other organizations and businesses in the city, with various levels of specialization, and levels of skill or competitiveness. The prizes also vary, with everything from plain old bragging rights to sports equipment or passes to gyms and community centers, to large lump sums of cash money. Definitely worth it, for characters with a love for sport.

Oh, and a lot of these tournaments are happening on the adults-only clothing-optional beaches, for those grown-up sports fans who like a bit of an extra challenge.

iv. performances and fireworks

On August 7th and August 14th at the end of the large city-sponsored beach parties, there will be evening performances all along the beach. Not as extensive as the musical performances during Carnivale, there are two large-name performers per night, with various lesser-known groups performing at random off and on throughout the day and night. Areas of the beach are cleared for residents to watch and dance to the music, both on the regular and adults-only clothing-optional beaches (acts will switch off between the two areas so both areas get both performances).

Player-characters who are musical artists, DJs, or otherwise perform are free to set up shop around this party and panhandle or put on free performances for publicity.

After the sun goes down, boats will head out into the water carrying a variety of fireworks, and there will be a beautiful display of exploding color in the sky for residents to watch and enjoy. The fireworks are highly advanced, incorporating old-fashioned gunpowder as well as modern technology that result in really beautiful displays that can take the breath away!

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 one of the mod-posted prompts for each Communal Floor. Or if you have an idea for a prompt that isn't in this list, set during the River Festival, feel free to write it up!

visual inspiration

click on thumbnails for larger view

Credit: image i: credit unknown; image ii: Albert Ramon Puig; image iii: Claudio Pilia; image iv: Alan Philips

navigation

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's it, yeah.

[Repeating something back to someone is a good way to make sure it's understood, so like, that's cool.]

Elves are a little more inclined to it, cause of the whole fey ancestry. It helps that I'm fucking awesome, but we had to get good pretty quick, too. Magic goes a long way when you're two skinny kids on the road.

[what is a fey??? he wants to ask but he'd rather try to figure out by context clues first.]

And what other kinds of magic have you learned over the years?

Well, transmutation's my specialty, Lup's is evocation, but we're pretty well versed in most other schools, except divination, that one's a bit washy-washy.

[He holds up a hand as if he realizes that his answer is not very helpful, and is getting ahead of future questions.]

The seven schools are transmutation, turning shit into other shit; abjuration, protection; evocation, damage; divination, hiding shit and seeing hidden shit; illusions, that one's pretty self explanatory; conjuration, making shit outta nothing; and necromancy, fucking around with dead things.

[The seven official schools.]

[he just.]

[explained everything.]

[it took one question and taako just dropped it all like it was nothing. cassian knows there are people like that, but it always surprises him. it's so easy. he's barely even trying.]

[also he's a dead thing, probably, is taako just fucking with him??]

Which is your favorite?

[There's no reason to be secretive about this; if Cassian wanted, he could probably find it in a book somewhere, this just cuts out the middle man.]?

Depends on the circumstances, you know? Evocation and conjuration are good when you wanna fuck someone up, but I got a soft spot for necromancy cause it's saved our asses more than a few times.

[Barry. Lup. Rescuing Magnus. They'd all be dead and gone if they hadn't dabbled in necromancy.]

[talking about himself is just not a thing cassian does! it's always odd when people do it so easily, even if it's not the biggest of secrets.]

What do you mean by - what does your magic do with the dead?

[necromancy and star wars, not really a thing ok.]

Well, like, I was kinda oversimplifying it, but one kinda necromancy spell is, um- [pick a not creepy one, pick a not creepy one] - there's one that lets me kick my soul outta my body without dying. Last time I used it was to help out a friend who got his dumb ass possessed.

[Never mind it was a lich, another undead thing made by necromancy, responsible for the mess in the first place.]

[virtually all of this sounds like nonsense, because the dead stay dead back home. it doesn't even sound like the force.]

How does the body keep alive without a soul?

Stay out too long and it doesn't.

[But, well, magic. Taako isn't science-y enough to know if there's any specific part of the spell that maintains life in an empty body, he just knows that it works, because magic.]

And how long is too long?

[magic sounds shady. useful, but weird. he doesn't know how he feels about it yet.]

Depends on the spell and how good at magic shit you are.

[There's a limit to his helpfulness, and that limit is "he's not actually very good at knowing how magic works"]

I would hope you know your own limits on a spell like that.

[it doesn't sound like anything cassian thinks he'd want to rely on tbh, no matter how useful in theory.]

Oh, for sure, and I don't fuck around with that kinda necromancy much. Mostly it's just hitting dipshits with a fireball, you know?

[That's underselling himself a little, he tends to be pretty creative with spellcasting, especially in a pinch.]

I prefer hitting with a blaster, but I suppose that happens when you don't have any magic.

[not that he has any desire for magic right now either.]

Is it fire you create yourself, or do you have to pull from something like that? [he gestures at the bonfire.]

We're kinda still in the arrow phase of projectile weapons, so magic's pretty useful.

[Well.

They have robots with energy weapons, but that's a rarity and a few of those are powered by magic anyway so he's not sure it counts.

And rather than answer the second question with words, Taako moves his hand through the air, gesturing towards an empty spot on the sand several feet away from them. A five foot sphere of fire appears, swirling slowly. A few nearby twigs catch on fire and quickly burn up, but nothing much else seems to happen. Taako's got in under control.]

[there are some still planets that prefer arrows, but it's getting harder to keep at it with the empire around. at least knives are all the rage.]

[it's years of masking his expressions that keeps cassian from showing too much surprise. he eyes do widen, impressed despite himself if only because it's clear the flames are very controlled - which considering taako seems to have been drinking makes it all the more interesting.]

I suppose pulling it from thin air definitely makes it useful. [listen creating fire can be very important! he's watching the fire though, just in case.]

[Magic and alcohol aren't great combinations, but honestly he's cast spells while in the middle of dying so it's not that much harder to concentrate while tipsy.

He waves his hand lazily through the air, then gestures as though he's tossing something into the air. The ball of fire springs up before popping harmlessly in the air, a few little sparks raining down.]

It's kinda like... I can see magic? So all I gotta do is pull it the right way and bam, fire.

[he goes back and forth between watching taako and watching the fire, because either direction could make a mistake clearly.]

What, it's like an invisible force?

[ah ha ha he definitely means it both ways, even if his feelings on the force are growing more complicated. if it exists, he can't see it, which is apparently similar to taako's magic.]

Like an energy, I guess? That'd be a little more accurate.

[Force, to him, implies a bit more cohesion than magic really has.]

The world I'm from, and this one, has a plane of magic, where all that energy comes from and it's filtered into the prime material plane.

[He pats the sand beside him, as if it indicate that's what he's talking about. The physical world around them.]

[he frowns, more thoughtfully than anything else. it kind of sounds like it could be similar to the force, but it's not like he would know. all he has are stories and mysteries and detachment to it.]

So it's not necessarily out of nothing. The energy is already there, you just have to be capable of finding it.

Kinda! But it takes shit from me, too, there's only like--

[Whatever he was about to say is cut off as a fireball arcs up into the sky a few yards away, and Taako's attention is immediately drawn to it.

He moves a hand through the air, casting something, and then hops to his feet.]

This was super lovely, my fella, but if that wasn't my sister I'll eat my fucking hat. [And it's a big hat.] If you wanna like, ask more questions or whatever, my handle's 'fromTV', just hit me up.

[And then he's off, with a wave and a:] See ya!

[there is absolutely zero surprise at the way taako up and decides to leave. but cassian has enough to go on for now if he did want to find him again.]

[there's no returning wave, no promise of further communication, but he does nod his head.] Don't blow yourself up.

[it seems a fair warning to give, lbr.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

introductory mingle: RIVER FESTIVAL

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject