introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

[riverviewmod]

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)

navigation

Comments

i!

[spellslots]

[Taako's been a little wary about going out, considering the ghosts, but he's braved it today just for the hell of it, finding a spot by the water to practice a few spells.

At some point, he was joined by some ghosts, a small family of mongoose who seem pleased to see him, one of them settling into his lap as he weaves spells through the air. People walk nearby occasionally, going about their daily business, but he doesn't think much of it until he hears a familiar voice.

She's a little distance away, so Taako hops to his feet and makes his way towards her, his ghosts following behind at a lazy pace, apparently not too worried about losing track of him.]

Hey, Beverly, you good?

[dancingmd]

Taako...

[Her brow furrows.]

Did you call my name just now?

[He didn't. She knows deep down that he didn't, but it's hard to acknowledge. This is the easier explanation.]

[spellslots]

I said it like a whole five seconds ago but not before that, I heard you talking first.

[He has a feeling that he knows what's happening here, but he isn't going to push Beverly on it.

A ghostly mongoose reaches Taako's legs and starts climbing up him to settle on his shoulder, but since it weighs literally nothing, he doesn't pay it much attention.]

[dancingmd]

[He may not notice bit she certainly does. Her eyes widen at the sight of the little ghost.]

Um...Taako?

[spellslots]

[It takes him a second; but he follows her gaze to the mongoose and shrugs, his shoulder moving through the ghost a little.]

Oh, this is, uh-- [He straight up fucking chitters, like an animal would, because that's the mongoose's name, in its own language.] He's chill, but are you good?

[dancingmd]

[How is he so casual about this???]

... no, because not only am I hearing voices I'm also pretty damn sure that you have a ghost mongoose sitting on your shoulder right now even though that should be impossible.

[spellslots]

[It takes him a second, before he thinks he figures out what the issue is here.]

Beverly, darling, the grim reaper is in love with me, ghosts aren't anything new.

[dancingmd]

[She has no idea whether to take that seriously or not but after a moment she decides she better.]

Well they are to me!

[Obviously.]

[spellslots]

Guess that's fair.

[Taako says something in that animal language, to the mongoose, and then holds out his arm towards Beverly, allowing it to sort of hover/clamber along his arm until it's close enough to sniff Beverly's jacket.]

Welcome to ghosts, let's start you off with a nice one. Say hi.

[dancingmd]

[How can a ghost smell anything, she wonders, but she stays still and lets the mongoose do its thing. It is very cute at least.]

Hi.

[This is so weird.]

Um. Nice to meet you.

[spellslots]

[It hasn't quite realized it's a ghost.

The mongoose makes a few little low sounds, almost a purr, before jumping over to Beverly, climbing up to her shoulder.]

We met these guys in the first world we landed on, they're uh, sentient? Like they're... they use tools and have a society and shit.

[dancingmd]

Oh! [She exclaims, surprised when the mongoose crawls over her. It leaves her with a strange cold sensation but otherwise, it's as if it isn't there at all. She actually manages a small pleased laugh.] I must have made a good first impression, hmm?

[spellslots]

[Taako's smile is easy, a little warmer than his usual sharp grins, because this is... sad, in a way, the reminder of their second world lost, but he has a lot of good memories associated with the family of mongoose they befriended.]

This dude was the first one brave enough to come say hi to the weird fur-less animals that turned up outta the woods one day, so he's pretty fucking adventurous.

[dancingmd]

[She offers him a soft and sympathetic smile in return. It must be difficult to see them again like this. Though admittedly, the little guy seems a lot more chipper than she'd expect of a ghost.]

Sounds like he'd make a good Starfleet officer.

[spellslots]

[The rest of the ghostly family seem content to hang around Taako, a little more cautious than the youngest of them.]

Don't tell him that, we'd never hear the end of it.

[Sometimes it's weird to think about what stuck with him, even after his memories were gone.]

And probably like, not great on a space ship? They'd get into the wiring, for sure.

[dancingmd]

Maybe he'd learn how to fix it instead!

[Could be handy, having crewmembers that small.]

[spellslots]

I dunno if they're quite at that level, it's, like... [Taako kind of vaguely gestures with one hand, trying to find the words.] They're not very advanced, or weren't until the light landed on their planet.

[dancingmd]

Ah. Well - [But she doesn't get to finish her thought, because there it is again, the eerily familiar voice calling her name. She turns around, trying to pinpoint the source, though it sounds like it's coming from everywhere.]

Please tell me you heard that.

[Her voice is plaintive, desperate to know she isn't the only one.]

[spellslots]

I heard it.

[He reaches out to rest a hand on her arm, wanting to reassure her without crowding too much.]

Is it someone you know? We can go, if you wanna, it's okay.

[He's not going to judge.]

[dancingmd]

It's...[She shakes her head, eyes wide.] my husband.

[spellslots]

[Oh, sweetheart. Taako's expression immediately softens.]

Do you wanna see him? I can go or we can both go, totally up to you, ball's in your court.

[If she wants some privacy, he can leave. If she wants to avoid this all together, he can take her away.]

[dancingmd]

I...

[There's a look of helplessness on her face - something very, very unusual to see in her.]

I think I need to see him.

[spellslots]

Okay, uh-- [He's bad at this, a little better when it's a close friend, but his instinct is to immediately bail to avoid dealing with someone else's uncomfortable emotions. What stops him is the fact that Lucretia and Beverly are close, and that makes Beverly an extension of his family, in a way.] Do you wanna do this alone, or like-- I'm not-- I mean, I can stay, if you want.

[dancingmd]

Please. [Her expression is pleading as she grips his hands in hers.] I know it's... awkward, but I don't... know how to deal with this sort of thing. With ghosts.

[And he's Lucretia's family so she trusts him.]

[spellslots]

Cha boy's right here.

[It helps to at least have an idea of what Beverly wants right now, and if that's company, he can handle that.

He says something in mongoose to the little family of ghosts, and they head off to play somewhere else, since he thought they might be a little distracting.]

Not all of 'em are as strong as others, don't, uh, try not to have too many expectations for how this is gonna go.