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

[ Loki waves his hand flippantly. It's true and he sees no reason to deny it. He wasn't in the mood. His other self was upset, Steve was upset and Loki . . . well, Loki was still Loki. He didn't feel the pangs of grief and loneliness the way others do. For him, loneliness is his normal. ]

I like the theme. I don't see the need to disturb it too much.

[ A lady shrieks as she finds spiders in her hair. Loki grins shamelessly. ]

[Taako manages to (mostly) stifle his laughter behind a hand as he watches the dramatics.]

What, you're into all this spooky atmospheric shit? [So much sarcasm, but it's a fond kind of sarcasm.] I'm kinda digging it too. I mean, listen, Carnivale is gonna stay my favorite, but this is pretty great party.

[It's a different kind of over the top, but still one he can appreciate.]

[ His lips curve in wry fondness. The masquerade was still a strange crowning achievement for Loki, even when he tends to dismiss it. ]

Of course. It is an fertile ground for mischief. I used to put beetles in Thor's soup. And he had not hit puberty yet so his screams were quite . . . loud.

[Now he definitely laughs, not bothering to hide it.]

Lup had a fucking shriek on her when she was little, too.

[Speaking of beetles, though, Taako moves a hand through the air, casting an auditory illusion somewhere amongst the crowd, the sound of skittering legs. A few people glance around, trying to determine the source of the sound, and Taako looks rather pleased with himself.]

But we never really had shit like this. There are mourning rights and days to honor the dead and shit like that, but this is uh, this is a lot.

[ Loki makes a quiet sound, lapsing into a fey moodiness. It has been years since his mother died, but what are years to a God? And his mother had dogged his footsteps of late, always always with that teary bright smile, as if Loki wasn't the cause of it, the final nail in her coffin. ]

We placed our warriors in barges as we let them drift into the expanse. The men would raise their arrows and set the barges on fire. They would become stardust and lifebreath. A silent whisper to the universe. For the most noble, people would carry orbs of memories. Thoughts. Hopes. They would lift those to the dark to light the way.

[There's something here, that much is obvious even to Taako, so his expression softens as Loki talks. Everyone's lost people, no matter how much they pretend to only care about themselves, and it isn't surprising that a time like this would dredge that up.]

I've heard of people doing barges, but not uh, memory orbs. Sometimes people can leave behind echoes with magic but that's usually an accident.

I do not know whether they truly worked or not. It is merely a belief.

[ Asgard was technologically advanced, but its aesthetics were simple. Not meant to be analyzed deeply. Loki preferred going deeper, of course, which is why he never quite fit within the system. ]

I guess it's meant to help? Like the lantern bullshit they did here.

[It didn't help; rites and rituals of mourning don't bring the dead back and they don't make the loss any less painful. Taako can't think of a single thing that helped, when he thought Lup was gone.]

Possibly.

[ Loki had raised a light for her. It would have to do. ]

I would have liked the option, at least.

[Affection is a funny thing, with Taako, and he knows it's complicated for Loki, too, but he feels like he needs to do something, so he shifts a little closer and leans his head against Loki's shoulder, just something small.]

You've got a ghost, huh?

[It's gentle, something that can be answered with just a yes, without needing any more information, Taako just wants Loki to know that he understands.]

[ His body goes still as stone before he sighs, a great breath escaping his body. Talking about Frigga still seems raw. Seems wrong, especially when Loki had a hand in her death. When Thor used him to get revenge but wouldn't tell Loki she died. ]

The Queen. Thor's mother.

Your mother.

[It's a risk to make the correction, because he knows that family is far more complicated for Loki than Taako can even really wrap his head around, but... they're friends. And this is what friends do, they tell the truth even if it's not what the other person wants to hear.]

[ Loki merely closes his eyes. There's little point in getting angry and lashing out against that statement. But he's tired of hearing it. He loved his mother. He grieved for her. He didn't get to see the last expression on her face. But she lied to him as much as Odin did. Her kindness, her desire to smooth things over touched a bitter place and brought out old habits.

But Loki hates that she's doing this to him. He hates the reminders. It should feel like a second chance, but all it does is continue to fill the well of regrets. ]

You do her no kindness by calling her that.

[Taako weighs his response carefully, because the first thought for how to word this feels dismissive and that's not really what he wants to sound like.]

It's not about being kind, bubbale. You loved her, seems like, and I bet she loved you too. That's family, blood or not, you know?

[ It was like a switch. Any kind of calm Loki possessed vanishes as if it was a trick of the light, another skin Loki puts on. He seems almost reptilian in nature, distant and cold, his voice a sharp sibilant hiss. ]

Do I?

[Oh that's... a reaction. Taako straightens up, not quite leaning away but just carefully removing himself from Loki's personal space; he's never really been on the receiving end of Loki's anger, though he knows it exists.]

Sorry, I didn't- uh, I wasn't trying to overstep.

[It's not quite hesitation in his voice, because he's not scared of Loki, but it's quiet and apologetic all the same.]

[ His fingers itch. It is hard to push anger down and in most cases, Loki simply doesn't want to. And it stung, to be fed these little sweetened words, as if Loki didn't know better. As if he exists, unaware of the semantic nature of his own statements, doesn't live out his lies for a reason.

( no it stung because it was taako and taako was on his side. he had to be )

He looks away. ]

No. You were trying to help.

[ He can't help the barb. It's cruelty, but Loki is cruel. ]

[It'd be easy to be hurt by that, or to get mad about it, but Taako understands that this is a delicate area for Loki, that while the anger isn't really deserved, it's understandable.

Taako takes a breath and lets it out slowly, the same way he does before he meditates, calling on a little stillness. He's calm when he responds, his gaze focused on some distant figure in the crowd, rather than on Loki.]

I'm trying to be a friend. I know I'm not like, great at it, but I'm trying.

[ He inhales sharply, the need to lash out still rising within him but that simple reply brings back clarity. Neither of them were good at them and that's why they functioned well. They never needed to display any kind of performative typical friendship, even if they adhered to certain principles of them. ]

I'm tired of being told that love is enough. It was not enough for them, why should it be enough for me?

[There's part of him that wonders if Loki would feel better if he was given the chance to lash out at someone, to yell and be mad and get all of this out, but Taako is too selfish to himself be the focus for that sort of catharsis. At least when it comes to people outside of Lup.

But that doesn't make this conversation easy, not just because he's worried about upsetting Loki, it's just so wildly beyond his own experiences. Taako never had parents to love and so they never had any kind of power over him. The only person he really, truly loves is Lup, and there's no universe where that love isn't enough for either of them. He can't understand this pain.]

It doesn't have to be, if you don't want it to. [It's also not what Taako said, but that's not really the point.] I shouldn't have like, assumed. I'm sorry.

[ It is unlikely. Loki's anger can be cathartic, but it's also self-destructive and consuming. Even now, it burns in corners of his heart. Loki has only learned to be smarter about it, but he certainly hasn't learned how to be better. He digs his fingers into his palms, letting it cut into the skin. ]

Everyone has some assumptions. It is normal.

[Taako reaches out, lightly resting his fingers on Loki's hand, an offer if he wants to take it.]

I keep running into thugs I've killed, turns out they're kinda pissed about it? Who'd have guessed, huh?

[He's not sure if there's anything more he can say on this topic without stepping in more mines, so he's changing the topic, offering a distraction.]

[ His answering lacks mirth, but it also lacks the sharpness of his smile as Loki allows Taako to take his hand, turning his palm upward.]

Certainly not me. I probably would not have been able to tell them apart from the rest.

[Taako tangles their fingers together loosely, just holding on without wanting to be too much, but he's relieved that he seems to have fixed this.]

If Brian pops up I'll have to introduce you two, pretty sure you'd like each other. He's got a good flair for the dramatic which we both know you appreciate, since you're friends with me.

I cannot believe you would malign me in public.

[ But the tension slowly bleeds away. To anyone else, it was like it was never there. ]

introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

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