riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

Entry tags:

introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Introductory Log and Feast of the Dying
when: Feast of the Dying from October 1st-8th; various other prompts over the whole month of October.
where: Anywhere around the city.
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

feast of the dying

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.

celebrating the transition from life to death

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. 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. ghosts from the past

During the 10th month of every year on the moon, due to a complex series of chemical, electromagnetic, and magical forces that no one has ever exactly distinguished or completely understands, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead are weakened almost to the point of nonexistence. During this time, residents of the moon are able to see and interact with the dead - ghosts, manifesting in ways that run the gamut from being a strange sense of being watched or being visible or audible all the way to more corporeal spirits that can affect the world around them. The barriers are weaker in some parts of the city than they are in others, with some areas experiencing little to no ghost activity, while others are so populated with these ghosts that residents can barely go a few feet without running into one. The ghosts are generally the unsettled dead, people who died violently, or who were lost, seeking a place to call home, and their behavior is as varied as it was while they were alive. Some ghosts are angry and vengeful, some are simply lonely and lost.

While some people tend to interact with the ghosts only a little and as necessary, others avoid them as completely as possible, and yet others actively seek out souls who are suffering and try to ease that so they can stop coming back year after year. There are other people who have found that ghosts from their home worlds have come through with them, following them through the portal when they arrived, even if they did not die on the moon...

Whether facing death or making peace with those who have died, this is a time to reflect.

A Few OOC Guidelines:
● Characters may see or interact with ghosts from the Quarantine's past. These people will be as varied as the NPCs, from a multitude of different worlds, and characters are welcome to either engage or avoid, as players wish.
● Most Quarantine-based ghosts will have died in either the Great War with the neighboring reality or in the Pandemic that wiped out the population of the Abandoned City years ago.
● Characters may also see or interact with ghosts from their own or other characters' canons, providing the character in question is dead in canon and is not currently being played in the game.
● Canon-based ghosts should not be simply transplanted into the game as they were in canon - they are ghosts, and therefore 'not quite right,' and should not be used as an excuse to NPC a canonmate for a month. These ghosts are there to be used as plot devices to open up new avenues of CR, to create angst, to help a character make peace with their past, or other similar reasons.
● Ghosts should not be complete corporeal physical presences indistinguishable from living people, but barring this, how strongly the ghosts manifest and how much they can interact with the world around them is up to player discretion. Ghosts shouldn't be present the whole month straight, but can disappear and reappear at random times.

● Mod questions and plotting regarding this prompt can be found here.

ii. the feast of the dying

The month's holiday is named after a long-standing tradition in the Quarantine - the Feast of the Dying - that starts at sundown on the first day of the month and continues until sunrise on the ninth day. The Feast of the Dying is a costumed masquerade-style party that is continuously available for the entire week. Set up by volunteers specializing in both magic and science, the Feast of the Dying is hosted in a large conference center that has been decorated and magically altered to provide a very formal, intensely creepy atmosphere. The decor can run the gamut from fancy and classy decorations featuring iconic skeletons or ghosts to incredibly realistic catacombs or any other frightening settings that you can think of. Rooms often become more and more foggy the more people enter them to mingle, and in many rooms the air pressure will be slightly played with to make the atmosphere seem more oppressive and spooky. Costumes and masks are required, and anything from a Halloween-style costume to a formal outfit with mask is acceptable.

Players can feel free to go wild with ideas for decor at the Feast, including linking to inspiration images in their posts - it is, essentially, like having a Masquerade ball inside a disturbingly realistic haunted house.

The venue the Feast is held in includes several large rooms intended for dancing with different themes and decorations that can change off and on throughout the week, two large dining rooms where feasts will be held at mealtimes and snacks or drinks (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) will be promptly served to anyone who sits at one of the tables, and a plethora of rooms meant for mingling and relaxing. Additionally, there are a large number of smaller lockable rooms set up for sleeping or private encounters.

iii. escape rooms

One of the fun and more commercialized aspects of the season are the many Escape Rooms that pop up throughout the Quarantine. Residents are encouraged to test their survival skills by grouping up with friends or strangers to escape difficult and scary situations together by solving a series of puzzles.

Escape Rooms can be either physical, set up inside buildings with realistic decorations, or they can be Virtual Reality, where the players don VR masks and cooperate in a virtual world. While the former can be more challenging and realistic, the latter provides for higher stakes. Physical Escape Rooms are generally set up to avoid any kind of physical harm to participants, but the Virtual Reality Escape Rooms can simulate pain and injury quite handily, and therefore can put participants in more dangerous situations.

While players can make up an Escape Room that uses whatever theme they like, some prompts are below:

● Zombie Attack
● Torture Machines or Traps
● Cannibal Warlock
● Wrongly Convicted: Escape from Prison
● Escape from Sewer Monsters
● Mad Scientist Experiments

iv. tests of courage

As mentioned before, there are certain parts of the city where the ghost activity is much stronger than elsewhere. These are places where terrible things have happened - 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. Every year during October, these places are shut down or vacated (unless they were already sitting empty) and entrance is allowed to people wishing to partake in a traditional Test of Courage - to enter these deeply haunted and dangerous places, and stay there as long as possible, sometimes even overnight.

In these particularly vulnerable and terrifying places, ghost activity is intense and almost constant. Characters will encounter strange sounds, smells, and visions; will encounter ghosts that are capable of throwing items or people; and most of all, they will experience powerful and realistic hallucinations due to the sheer lack of boundary between the worlds of the living and dead in these areas. Whether the hallucinations are manifestations of their own worst fears, the ghosts retelling their own tortured stories, or any other kind of terrifying vision, they feel very real. While characters will not be injured by the hallucinations, the sensations of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, or other sensations will be almost impossible to tell from the real thing until the hallucination subsides at daylight.

While the haunted locations are highly unlikely to kill characters, whether or not they experience serious injury due to physical actions they do while under the influence of a hallucination (eg. falling down a flight of stairs) or attacks from ghosts (eg. an angry ghost throws books at a character) is up to player discretion.

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: Olivier Le Gall; image ii: John Watkiss; image iii: unknown (wallpapersfan); image iv: signed (pinterest); images v and vi: unknown (pinterest)

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1: ghosts from the past
[For who he is and who he has been over the past several decades, the presence of the deceased doesn’t bother him in the least. If anything, it’s a feeling he has missed since he was whisked away to this strange place with all of its odd ways and people. The atmosphere that has come over the city the past several days is almost a welcome addition, putting him back in his element, something he understands quite well.]

[Despite the haze, he can see them here. The spirits of those long gone weave in and out of view in this place, some flickering like flashes of lightning and some lingering, wandering to and fro like he himself has been doing. He moves among them silently, ignoring them for the most part. At best, they receive a curious glance, but they pay him no more mind than he gives them, and so he leaves them be.]

[One, however, catches his full attention. A man steps closer, pale and translucent. Through the light sheen that seems to cover the spirits that wander about, it isn’t hard to see he once had short, dark hair and dark eyes. He wears a sharp suit and a deep red tie, and under one eye is a single spot of a beauty mark. He smiles, silent, but Undertaker does not smile in return. In fact, the sight of this man has taken the humor right out of him in his surprise.]

[The figure is only there for a minute or two before turning to walk away, and as he does, Vincent vanishes from sight, going on to places Undertaker can’t yet visit. Undertaker stands there several minutes longer. It’s the third time in the past several years that something has truly shaken him. Absently, a hand reaches for his waist where his chain once hung, only to touch the cloth of his coat. Then, he turns quickly and steps away, brushing everything else aside. The grin is back now, unhinged.]

2: the feast of the dying
[It’s not the funeral parlor, but this is his month, he has been preparing for it, and he is letting himself enjoy it thoroughly. Undertaker has gone over the top with his own costume and can be found in any room in the building, appreciating the decor, dancing with himself, enjoying the food and just being himself.]

[There is something comforting about it all, now that his own life is technically over - almost a freedom. The afterlife is no longer an unknown, no longer an anxiety to him; if anything, it’s become quite boring. But the joy of prettying a dead body, the amusement at seeing the newly dead’s faces when the realize what has happened. That never gets old. Strange that he never has felt more alive than he has while dealing with the dead.]

3: roommates or wildcard
you know what to do

Edited 2017-10-02 03:55 (UTC)

[He's not surprised, he's really not, at how Undertaker throws himself into the celebration. And Ciel knows, with everything already starting in the city, it's going to last the month. A few months ago, that would have bothered him, it would absolutely have grated on him in England, but now? Not so much. He'd even returned to the apartment with what decorations, and some candy, that he could carry.

So it's even less surprising when he spots Undertaker at the feast and dancing.

Ciel has managed to put together a very simple devil costume, not trying to stand out, and stands off to the side to watch. He's trying not to smile, shaking his head a little. No, not at all surprising.]

Edited 2017-10-03 01:27 (UTC)

[He has been at this for a little while now, waltzing with himself and some invisible partner to this world's curious music, weaving smoothly in and out of the crowd to get from one end of the room to the other and back again. He doesn't mind the lack of a partner in the least.]

[And then he spots the young Earl on one of his passes, shaking his head over there, and spins himself over to the boy and into a deep bow. As he straightens, he offers out a hand, grinning like this is the best thing to happen tonight.]

Care for a dance, milord?

[Oh! He's not expecting Undertaker to quite literally waltz up to him and reach out a hand like that. Suddenly all his dancing lessons leap to mind, his clumsy steps, his teachers comments about him having two left feet, Sebastian's comments on his skills and poor attempts at teaching him.]

I, ah... [He doesn't want to humiliate himself in front of all the people here. A nobleman should be able to dance, after all.]

I can't dance.

[He moves his hand closer, but doesn't yet take the one not offered in return. This is going to be fun.]

Ah, don't trouble yourself with those concerns. I've been dancing since long before you were born. You'll not be the first partner I've had the pleasure of teaching a thing or two.

[He does reach a hand out, very unsure. Undertaker is tall, just like his butler, and that hadn't worked too well for him before. Then again, Sebastian's methods of teaching were... questionable. The sting on the palms of his hands hasn't been forgotten from his Latin lessons.]

I've had a few teachers say I'm hopeless... [It isn't a no though.]

[That Ciel isn't backing away from him, prideful thing that he is in the great outdoors, is surprising. He had expected a little bit of a fight for this dance and now it looks like his partner will be a willing one. His grin widens and he curls fingers around the boy's. No getting away now.]

Then they gave up on you. I've all the time in the world. Come, milord.

[He had been tempted. Ciel really is bad at dancing, he's done so willingly only once before and that was for Elizabeth. And now, if questioned, he'll try to justify it in the same vein. In case Elizabeth ever comes, he can say. He won't be as out of practice. Yes, that's sound enough.]

You haven't seen me dance yet. [He scoffs, almost tempted to try reclaiming his hand but isn't that what being here involves? Living life, a new life? Different from the one he'd fit himself into.]

[Oh no, that hand is staying with him now that he has it. And he sets about positioning them, hands on shoulder and waist where appropriate.] I'll see you dance now. Allow me to lead until you get the idea.

[The music around has picked up considerably, something that he's not at all familiar with, but he moves them slowly enough to let the boy get his head around it, counting out the rhythm as they go.] Not so bad is it?

[Ciel's skills are as good as he said, maybe worse, stumbling as he tries to keep up, sometimes stepping on Undertakers feet, even watching their steps.]

I think I changed my mind. [He's not trying to stop though. He is prideful, just as Undertaker had thought, and in his mind, Ciel considers it almost a challenge, the teen trying to memorize each step.]

[Despite the missteps and the stumbling, he moves them along, hardly seeming to notice. His hold on the boy is delicate, but firm, ensuring Ciel doesn't end up kissing the floor before the night is through - at least not while they're on the dance floor.]

Do you think you have it now? We'll switch and you lead.

[Wait, what?]

L-lead? [Him? Almost immediately, he stumbles again, more out of surprise. A part of him would rather just stop and avoid making a fool of himself, he's sure he will if left to continue dancing.]

I'm not so sure I do.

[You heard him.]

That's right. Practice makes perfect and all. [He repositions their hands once Ciel has his footing again.] I think you know more than you think you do. Give it a go. Let's see what you've got.

Wait-

[Except Undertaker is already switching the two of them an no amount of objection can save him now. His grip tightens immediately and his steps remain clumsy, sometimes shorter and doubled to meet the length of what each of Undertakers steps would be.]

[This really is amusing, but to his credit, he's actually trying not to laugh. That's not exactly easy for him.]

Don't worry about my footing, milord. It's my job to follow now. Remember how it goes.

[At least he doesn't have to deal with much laughter at his dancing skills. Not from Undertaker, hard to speak for anyone watching though.]

Your steps are larger than mine though. [Comes his complaint but he's trying. He really is.]

[He's not paying attention to the people around them beyond where they are in the room so as not to bump into them. The lesson isn't over yet.]

It's good that you're being considerate about your partner, but you're still leading. Let me follow you. I can keep up.

[He stumbles again but he still tries, glancing down at their feet a few times and trying to imitate the steps Undertaker had taken. It's not too hard, and Undertaker is better about it than Sebastian. Or his teachers back home.]

Is... this any better? [All the doubt in the world in his own abilities.]

[He follows along easily enough, not concerned about the stumbles, impossible not to notice though they are. He wasn't lying when he said he would keep up with the boy. This is the easy role.]

You haven't managed to end on your backside yet, but I wouldn't let that happen. Try not to look at your feet so much. You can while you're learning, but once you've got it, chin up.

[At least having a set distance between them, steady and mostly unchanging, makes it easier for him to judge his steps when he glances down. And Undertaker isn't making it as difficult as Sebastian, a welcome blessing.

There is still a little grumble, something about 'tall' but he doesn't voice it more than that. Where is he supposed to look with such a tall dance partner?]

[He can't help it that Ciel is so short, but he won't mention it just yet. The grin on his face at that grumbling should speak for him well enough. Maybe the eyes would be a good start?]

[The movements are easy enough to follow, if a bit awkward, but he takes it in stride with a grace one wouldn't expect from someone like him.]

[Maybe everyone else is just freakishly tall.

And he can't help how awkward his steps are. It doesn't help that Ciel has never been fond of dancing but he is trying. He's trying to be sociable, he's trying to be a normal teen- or as much as he can be. And dancing is one of those things he should become more used to.

So Ciel does glance up towards his face, lips set in a stubborn line as he tries to take each step without glancing down. He doesn't trip this time at least?]

[He lets Ciel continue on, watching the room around them and the the boy's footing and... just about everything, really.] There, you see? Not so hard, is it?

[The softest huff, the teen continuing the steps and his grip on Undertaker easing up a little as he becomes a little more confident.]

I suppose there are worse things.

[Now that Ciel isn't white-knuckling their dance, it's a bit easier on him in kind, not that he would complain. It wasn't hard to see the Earl's certainty growing and he really rather liked it.] Like tripping on yourself, or tripping on your partner? So far, you've done neither, but I can't help but notice you seem like this isn't something you would indulge in often in our world.

Undertaker | Kuroshitsuji aka Black Butler | OTA

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