riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

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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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[It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem wrong either. And Undertaker is the last person he could argue with about it but he'd never even thought about his parents having a clue about what he'd done. The dead were just that, after all. Dead. Beyond him and those who were still alive.

And now they looked at him, with almost living eyes. And the sadness...]

They looked disappointed. [He's not sure what about though. His decision to sell his soul? Taking his brothers identity? Both?]

[So that was the way of it.] Far be it from me to say how they feel about your recent doings.

[He looked back to where the figures had last been and wasn't surprised to find them still very much gone.] If I might offer my suggestion, you shouldn't run from them, milord. Might be a source of anxiety and shame for you to face them if they come back, but remember who they are. They're not out to hurt you.

[And yet, he feels Undertaker might be the only person in a position to speak of their feelings. He knew Vincent, after all.]

I can't stand them looking at me like... [Like he'd hurt them. His aunt had once told his that this isn't a life his mother would have wanted for him and he'd wanted to deny it. To the point that he hadn't even thought about that conversation since Madam Red had said as much. And now they had been looking at him and confirming it.]

[He grins and turns and wanders out into the middle of the street, for the sake of stretching his legs and conveniently walking a small circle around his roommate.] Then by all means, don't look, but don't run. How do you think it makes them feel to watch you flee from them like that?

[It's easier to follow Undertaker circling around him than avoiding looking at the spot his parents had been standing. This isn't any better though, Ciel realizes.]

They died, they shouldn't feel anything. [That's what he tells himself.] What else am I supposed to do with them?

[That gets a chuckle from him in his own brand of laughter as he keeps circling, slow and leisurely.] Ah, milord... It doesn't work that way. People don't cease to be once they die. Things just change. It's like moving to a new country, we'll say, only you've left all of your belongings behind and you can't get them back.

[That doesn't help and he stops trying to keep an eye on Undertaker, instead turning his gaze to the ground. And it's hard not to feel uneasy at the idea of his dead parents still keeping watch over him.]

So they come and watch. [And make those left behind feel things they'd rather not.]

Some of them do, some of them go wherever they're needed. It's all up to them. What would you do if given the chance?

[He keeps circling, taking it all like a walk in the park, one wrist in the opposite hand. All the while, he keeps his gaze wandering about, searching for glimpses of the other spirits that must surely be here, somewhere.]

I-I don't know.

[He's never thought about anything after his own death, considering the method. There wouldn't be anything for him after, if his consciousness even persisted.]

I wouldn't haunt anyone. [Probably. He looks back up at Undertaker, trying not to frown at the man.] Are you just going to keep circling me?

[Truth be told, he hadn't thought of it much either... until he crossed the border himself. Hindsight is a bitch.]

Wouldn't that be fun, though? Even if they can't see you, the things you could learn about someone just by observing them freely. [Such as a child's bond to a demon in the name of revenge. What a surprise that must have been. He tilts his head toward Ciel without actually looking at him.] Long as you stand there. It's better than keeping in one spot while the dead are restless.

[It's horrifying to think of his parents knowing about the contract. If they'd been with him all this time... they'd have seen him make the deal, the placement of the mark, the things he'd done, and his disregard for most anything and anyone that impeded his goal of revenge.]

I... I wouldn't call it fun. [He doesn't want his parents seeing that. They'd left behind a shy boy who couldn't even play outside, who never left his twins side.]

Not everyone does. It's quite possible to know someone too well. [Like the way their heart feels, literally. Or what they ate the night they died. Y'know, the pleasantries of being a mortician with a side hobby of experimenting with the dead.] Still, these are your parents in your concerns. If you see them again, my advice would be not to run from them. May be they have something they'd like to say to you and it could be your only chance to hear it.

I'm sure I know what they'll say. [That look had told him so much. And he wonders if they'd have looked at his brother like that. A part of him says 'probably not' but he'd survived.]

It's not as if I can do anything. I can't find who killed them. Or who sold us. And no matter what I do, I'll probably never see them again.

[He turns and starts walking the other direction, widening his radius from the boy as he does, but he's not far enough away that they can't talk casually and not hear each other.] You say that, but are you? We can't do anything about that here and now, but what if their killer came here? And what will you do when you return home? These are things that could yet happen. You look so much at what you can't do, milord. When did you become like this?

[And he watches, face flushing in frustration.] I don't know who did it though, I can't find out here.

[He's frustrated, he's tired. He has no way to fix anything. He wants everything to go back to how it was, he was revenge and doesn't want it.

That last question makes his blood go cold though and his expression go blank. When had he become like that? He couldn't quite place when, the closest he can place it while he'd been in the cage or sometime since he met Sebastian.]

I... What am I supposed to do?

[He keeps walking, unbothered by the boy's distress.] No, you can't. This isn't our world. Way I understand it, not many of them here are native, but I'm sure they had their own lives to live before they came here. Do you think they had something they needed to do in their own worlds as well? What do you suppose they can do about it here?

[For a moment, the teen stays silent and then lets out a soft:]

Nothing. [And he wonders just how and why Undertaker can disarm him so easily, why he doesn't let him run from his past or hide from it? He makes everything harder, makes him question everything he'd spent four years convincing himself of.]

I could never do anything.

[He shakes his head and finally stops in his surveillance to turn and look at the boy again, grin ever present.] What makes you say that? You say it so often, but here I see everything to the contrary. Why do you tell yourself these things?

I... [Actually, he doesn't know. He really doesn't. Even as Ciel tries to think back, he can't really think of a why. Being sickly and cared for may have contributed but he'd never felt it weigh on him then as it does now.]

I don't know...

[He stays as he is, back to the woods, watching the boy, ever intrigued.] They see what you let them see, don't they? Ever consider that maybe what you want them to see isn't what you think you want them to see?

Maybe?

[He doesn't want to be seen as weak or scared though. Nor does he want to be his brother entirely. He doesn't know what he wants.]

They're ghosts though. Does it matter what they see now?

[He shakes his head.] Not just your parents. Think more in the here and now. Everyone you know.

Ah-!

[That's a good point. He frowns, more at his own behavior than much else. The last time he let himself act like a whimpering child like this had been in Germany. Even if he hadn't quite let himself then.]

Nobody else will see this...

[Certain nothing else would come around, at least not for the moment, he stepped closer.] Not now. I don't think they'll come back tonight. The dead have their moments, but they're mostly brief, which is why you should listen when you can.

I'll- I'll think of something.

[Some people already knew his parents were dead. He's sure he's told Jason at least. Details beyond that though? He hadn't let many details come to light, and he doesn't know what he'll do if they say anything in front of anyone he knows.

He knows he can't hide away though.]

introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

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