player-suggested mini-event: A STRANGER'S BED

[riverviewmod]

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Player-Suggested Mini-Event
when: August 26th - August 31st
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

a stranger's bed

As a lead in to September, Riverview's ♥ Month of Romance, this is a completely optional mingle that will cause affected characters to end up in each other's beds. There are various options for both established and new CR. While it's easiest for characters still living in Communal Housing, anyone who has moved to their own homes can be affected and end up finding their way to Communal Housing, or within their own housing.

Residents of the Quarantine may notice that various businesses selling food and drink - cafés, diners, bakeries, restaurants, and other such establishments - are heavily advertising a new flavor that's supposed to be the biggest thing since pumpkin spice. A flavor additive that's said to subtly change the flavor of whatever the diner is eating or drinking to optimize the dish, drink, dessert, or any other food item it is added to for each person's individual taste, it's been selling like wildfire and is the latest trend.

After the cause of the rash of amnesia was revealed to be plant-related, sellers are keeping the origin of the secret ingredient very close to their chests, since it is a derivative of a recently-discovered plant dubbed chameleonis. Depending on the method of ingestion, this additive can have a variety of unexpected side effects, but only once the person who has ingested it becomes sleepy. Methods of ingestion include:

● Ingestion: Beverage: When ingested as a flavor shot to drinks ranging from sodas to coffee to alcoholic beverages, it can cause a desire for closeness to a particular other person. Affected characters end up crawling into bed with that specific other character when they become sleepy.

● Ingestion: Food: When ingested as a flavoring added to a baked good or other meal, it can cause an intense desire for body heat when the character becomes drowsy. It won't matter to an affected character who is providing the body heat, so long as it's someone, and they will end up sleepily crawling into someone else's bed for warmth.

● Inhalation: When inhaled ether from a steaming hot beverage or soup, or as an essential oil or aroma from a bakery, it can cause disorientation when a character becomes sleepy. Affected characters either aren't sure which bed is theirs and simply crawl into the closest one, occupied or not, or become convinced that another character's bed is their own.

Feel free to post up a top-level for your own character either affected and invading a random bed or unaffected but open to having their bed invaded by affected characters, or tag around to other people's top-levels.

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Comments

[tenthousandmiles]

Maa...there's something I want to check on. Call it a hunch.

[A hunch with very little evidence to back it up so far, and maybe it really is harmless. Snake oil peddling at worst. Even he's engaged in a little of that from time to time, when he needed money for food or shelter.

But the part of him that's been a mushishi for far too long can't help but find this all too suspect.]

How do you feel now? Have you noticed anything strange since eating it?

[alchemyfreak]

Something to do with that network post you made?

[He's starting to sense a one track mind here.]

I'm fine. Have you just been questioning everyone?

[He hasn't tried to sleep yet, so he has no idea what's coming.]

[tenthousandmiles]

[Look Ginko is basically the ancient aliens guy but he's actually right like 95% of the time, don't judge him like this.]

Could be. The timing is pretty convenient for it, anyway.

[And things don't just individualize for specific people like that unless there's something Fishy going on. He's reminded of that man who supposedly produced "medicine" for pain relief when he was really using a kodama for a much more sinister purpose, or the island with the "living god" that the head priest claimed could cure anyone's illnesses. These people don't know enough about mushi to abuse them intentionally, but if they're capable of seeing them and stumbled upon an effect like that...well, Ginko wants to make sure that using them isn't actively harmful, at least.]

But you're the first, actually. The shopkeepers wouldn't tell me anything, so I thought I'd try another approach.

[alchemyfreak]

[As if Ed has any place to judge anyone else.]

The timing also came after amnesia plants, so maybe this place is just fucked up.

[He doesn't sound very interested in Ginko's theory, but truth be told Ed was interested in any angle that might make sense of the weird things that went on here.]

What are the chances those things were here before you arrived? The portal opens up on other worlds more than once all the time.

ftr the second eyelid is a metaphorical/spiritual thing, he doesn't have an extra pair of them lmfao

[tenthousandmiles]

Could be. But people weren't trying to sell those plants, either.

[Meanwhile, he's been around just about long enough for someone to discover mushi with the advertised effect and start using it on a wide scale like this.]

Anyway, I'm not sure. If mushi were native to this planet, they'd be here in much larger concentrations than they are.

[He's been able to spend nearly a month in the communal housing without needing to leave yet. Normally he can only do that in areas where the soil is very poor and thus largely barren of mushi..]

Besides that...I haven't been able to sense the presence of the River of Light.

[Sometimes, when he closes his second eyelid, there's a bare flicker at the edges of his awareness, but usually....he just finds darkness there. It's unsettling.]

But it's certainly possible that the portal has been to my world before.

[alchemyfreak]

No one had any idea what was causing it, but I'm sure if some idiot did they'd try to find the market.

[How do you market amnesia plants? Sounds like trouble. He waves a hand at the comment about them being native, as far as Ed was concerned nothing was native to this place.]

I don't know anything about a River of Light, but if the portal brought these things in before you arrived they might already be to blame for the crap that's been going on.

[Maybe, anyway. What does he know?]

So, what can you do? Test the food for it?

[tenthousandmiles]

[That gets a faintly amused grin from Ginko.]

Probably, yeah.

[He shakes his head at the question, though.]

There isn't any kind of catch-all test for the presence of mushi, no. Sometimes the presence of the mushi in the food itself isn't even required for there to be an effect.

[Like how food cooked using the false fire of the kagebi took on its properties.]

But if I could find out where this additive is coming from, I could see for myself.

[He really misses having access to the Karibusa archives right now tbh...he could do some Research to find out if this sort of thing had ever been reported before.]

As for the River of Light...it's the source of all life in my world. Life itself, in a sense.

[Even when he wasn't directly passing through the path of one of the light veins in his travels, he could always feel its presence, though he knew better than to actually look into it for long. There was something comforting about that. This place, though. There was something almost...empty, without it. Bereft, hollow. He tries not to think about it, when he can.]

[alchemyfreak]

[Ed shrugged at that, sounded like a dead end to him.]

They’re claiming it’s a spice. Sounds like a plant to me. You’d think after the amnesia this month people would be more cautious, but I guess not.

[He doesn’t know anything about indirect use, like the false fire. Have a quirked brow at the river comment, because does not compute. What the fuck is your weird world, Ginko.]

Is it some…. Sort of spiritual thing, or is there a physical river somewhere?