riverviewlogs | 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

Nah, this many ghosts hanging around is definitely weird. Kravitz would be losing his shit right now.

[Cisco's response really doesn't come as a surprise; Taako grins a little, trying to keep the mood... okay, and then promptly gets out two wine glasses and a mostly new bottle of wine from the fridge, leading Cisco into one of the living rooms. The fact that Taako doesn't grab any food says a lot about, well, everything, both how distracted he is and how much the ghosts messed with him.

But he makes it to the couch, pouring two glasses of wine once he's sat down and leaving one on the coffee table for Cisco, as he curls up with the other, his back against the arm of the couch.]

Um, are you okay?

[He knows Cisco probably won't want to answer, but he feels like he should ask.]

[ Cisco follows Taako's lead, sitting down on the couch, but his hands are fidgety and restless in his lap. He reaches out and takes the glass of wine, looking down into it rather than at Taako. He wants to check his phone and see how much time has passed from the three hours, but he restrains himself from doing it. They're safe as long as they're inside the wards, anyway. And Taako said he and Lucretia and Lup might be able to come up with something a little more permanent...

Taako's question is not unexpected, but Cisco still quirks his mouth to the side, shrugging. His answer is quiet and a little blunt, but it's honest. ]

Okay's not really on the table, while he can get to me.

[ There's a finality in that, but it's how he feels. Just knowing Eobard could appear at any moment is casting the shadow of him over every moment, even the ones when he isn't there. Sometimes, Cisco does a great job of tuning that constant awareness out. Other times, he doesn't. Cisco looks up, smiling at Taako, something a touch apologetic about it. ]

I'll be fine. It's like you were saying with Barry. That was only... an incomplete echo of him. So it's not too bad.

[ Which means that it is only awful, and not completely catastrophic. ]

[That response should be one he expected, and Taako winces a little in sympathy and apology for even asking such a stupid question in the first place. Of course Cisco isn't going to be okay, with the man who murdered him haunting his every step.]

I'll get Lup to handle the wards on our place for the rest of the month and I can do yours, yeah? Like, your place. We'll work on some shit so you can actually go out without him fucking with you, but at least you'll have somewhere safe.

The apartment hasn't been an issue, actually. Apparently we're in like, a dead zone for paranormal activity. Or, well, a no-dead-allowed zone.

[ That barely passes as a joke, but at least he's trying to make them. And as grateful as he is for the offers of help (which he is absolutely going to accept, because he's not so terrified of being a burden that he's going to needlessly subject himself to Eobard Thawne), he wants to be sure that none of them are doing more than they have to. Hesitantly, he adds: ]

But, um. My workshop's in another neighborhood, and I'm starting to get kinda backlogged on work 'cause he's shown up there like, four times, so I've just been, um. Not going, a lot.

[ It sounds so cowardly, when he puts it like that. Cisco takes a sizable gulp of the wine, feeling demanding for accepting the offer and even altering it to make a request of his own. Taako ought to be warding himself, too, from the sound of it. But he isn't complaining.

He had apologized once, already, but that had been vague, and Taako had waved it off so quickly. So Cisco continues: ]

Sorry he was like. A dick to you. [ He gnaws at his lower lip. ] You know I don't think of you as beneath me or whatever. That's fucking bullshit. Just his weird... elitist... bullshit.

I got you, bubbale. It's gonna have to be tomorrow cause I'm outta the spell slots for something that high level, but...

[He waves a hand in a you know gesture, encompassing the explanation of needing to sleep and all that nonsense, but the important part is that he'll show up at Cisco's workshop tomorrow and toss some wards on it to keep Eobard out.]

And don't apologize for that chucklefuck, I'm not gonna let that kinda asshole get under my skin, it's like he wasn't even trying.

[There are insults that work on Taako, that can upset him, but I'm smarter than you has never held much weight.]

Thanks, seriously. I owe you big time.

[ He knows that Taako isn't doing it in the hopes of repayment or even thanks, but all the same Cisco is going to think of some nice thing to do or make for him in exchange, considering the enormity of it. Maybe not enormous in terms of how difficult the favor is to perform, but in terms of how much better it is going to make Cisco's life for the time being. ]

It was sort of a weak sauce attempt, huh? I mean... the whole thing is pathetic, like him stalking me and whatever. It's just... kinda sad.

[ Cisco has felt a lot of things about Eobard since he'd found out who he really was. He'd spent a long time feeling heartbroken, and betrayed, and terrified. After a little longer, anger had taken its place among the rest. But it's only just very recently that he's starting to make his way towards scorn, and mockery. To not only think of Eobard as the big bad wolf, but to glimpse past all that melodrama and violence and manipulation, and realize that in a lot of ways he was kind of a loser. ]

Lemme make you a fancy lunch or dinner or something at least? As a thank you?

It's not the sort shit I'd be caught dead doing, that's for sure.

[Get it! Because Eobard is dead!

But he also means that as an agreement with what Cisco is saying; the fact that Eobard, even if this shade version of him, can't seem to let go of hurting Cisco even long after it has a point is just kinda sad and desperate, like someone who can't get over being dumped.]

And you don't like, owe me, my man, but I won't say no to free food.

[He doesn't want Cisco to think any repayment is necessary, but he also gets that sometimes it helps.]

introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

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