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riverviewlogs2017-10-01 06:14 pm
- !mod post: holiday,
- !mod post: monthly mingle,
- httyd: hiccup haddock iii,
- logan: laura,
- marvel (616): bucky barnes,
- marvel (616): loki laufeyson,
- marvel (616): steve rogers,
- marvel (mcu): loki,
- marvel (mcu): sam wilson,
- marvel (mcu): thor,
- original: shigeru miyata,
- star trek (tng): beverly crusher,
- the adventure zone: taako taaco,
- voltron: shiro,
- ✖ chb chronicles: nico di angelo,
- ✖ dc comics (rebirth): jason todd,
- ✖ dc comics (rebirth): jonathan kent,
- ✖ dctv (flash): cisco ramon,
- ✖ dctv (flash): eddie thawne,
- ✖ dmmd: aoba seragaki,
- ✖ ergo proxy: re-l mayer,
- ✖ ffxiv: x'rhun tia,
- ✖ ffxv: gladiolus amicitia,
- ✖ ffxv: ignis scientia,
- ✖ homestuck: dave strider,
- ✖ kuroshitsuji: ciel phantomhive,
- ✖ kuroshitsuji: undertaker,
- ✖ marvel (616): angela,
- ✖ marvel (616): stephen strange,
- ✖ marvel (mcu): margaret 'peggy' carter,
- ✖ marvel (ultimates): tony stark,
- ✖ miraculous ladybug: marinette (ladybug,
- ✖ mushishi: ginko,
- ✖ original: jamie dodger,
- ✖ original: mordred,
- ✖ original: rin,
- ✖ overwatch: genji shimada,
- ✖ overwatch: hana song,
- ✖ the adventure zone: lucretia,
- ✖ the adventure zone: lup taaco,
- ✖ the adventure zone: magnus burnsides,
- ✖ the walking dead: javier garcia,
- ✖ vikings: ivar ragnarsson
introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING
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
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.
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!
Credit: image i: Olivier Le Gall; image ii: John Watkiss; image iii: unknown (wallpapersfan); image iv: signed (pinterest); images v and vi: unknown (pinterest)
no subject
They'd been gone for long enough though today that he was willing to let Sam try and push him towards sleep. Starting to relax finally, loose limbs and warmth starting to draw him into that pre-sleep doze. At least until there was the shift of movement and the unsettlingly familiar weight of a gaze he'd thought he'd left behind a long damn time ago.
'Honestly Stephen?' The voice was just as quiet as the voices the other ghosts had, for all it was dripping with disapproval in a way that just had the tension drawing his shoulders tight again, jaw working noiselessly as any bit of relaxation or ease was banished as quickly as a candle's flame was snuffed.]
...Right.
no subject
You keep any holy water around here? Or is that kinda thing just some bs the church made up?
[He'll sit here and exorcise ghosts all night if he has to.]
I already looked in the book you gave me, and I didn't see anything about banishing ghosts. [Probably because it's not the sort of magic anyone needs that often.]
no subject
['Do you even hear yourself? I thought you dropped all the magic nonsense years ago.'
It was an interesting thing; usually if someone were to challenge him or voice that sort of skepticism Stephen was more than willing to push back. Hell half of his friendship with Tony was predicated on them fighting about magic. But faced with his father's criticism he instead seemed to be almost retreating, shutting down like he always had when he was younger for all he never really noticed it consciously.
'Always a disappointment when I was alive, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised it's any different after death.']
I don't know if it's that they're tied to me or just the nature of spirits here but so far I haven't found anything that effectively sends them on.
no subject
[Sam could argue with Stephen's father, but honestly? He knows that refusing to acknowledge his claims does more than arguing could. Arguing lends credibility, shows that it affects him. If he just dismisses the whole thing, then there's just some ghost asshole making noise.
At least, that's his reasoning. Whether or not it actually works on ghosts is another thing entirely.]
I hope it's not the kind of thing that's supposed to teach you a lesson. That's always a pain in the ass.
no subject
[It might not work on his father's spirit, but Stephen feels at least a bit better for Sam's refusal to acknowledge the ghost or his words. It made it easier at least a bit, to try and ignore it himself for all he was finding it difficult.]
You'd think I would get a pass on the life lessons at this point.
no subject
[None of Sam's deceased relatives have shown up, after all; he hopes that means they're all perfectly happy wherever they are. It's Stephen's that are proving to be the problem, and there's absolutely nothing he can do except drape an arm over his chest and draw him closer.]
For the record, my parents always love meeting my friends. Though if you ever come over, you'll have to take one of your potions first so you can eat my mom's cooking.
[Not that he's ever introduced a friend of that particular sort before, but Sam gets his friendliness and his chill from his parents.]
Yeah, well, you're never too old to get bitchslapped by life, I guess.
no subject
[Stephen managed a small amused huff as he shifted in against Sam willingly, for once seeking out the comfort of an embrace for all he wouldn't actually admit it if he was called on it. And if the shift had the added bonus of making it a bit harder to see his father's ghost, well that was just an added perk.]
You'd think it's arm would get tired with all the backhanding I seem to be getting lately.
no subject
[Sam drags a hand over his back, gently rubbing his shoulderblades. Stephen rarely seeks out physical contact - that's usually what Sam does - and he's not going to call him out on it when he does. Not right now, anyway.]
I think that feeling seems to be pretty common with everyone in your world. Maybe it has a vibranium arm.
no subject
[It was a good thing Sam was good at reading a room, because Stephen absolutely wouldn't take being poked about his coping attempts at this point. Just shifting to try and let himself relax again under the smooth of the other's touch over his back with a low hum.]
A vibranium arm for every individual person so everyone gets their fair share.
no subject
[Not that Sam's complaining about the way he is. Judging by the example he's got in front of him, things could've been a lot worse.
(Just wait for the rest of the month, Sam.)]
But at least you aren't from the world where Hulk eats people, so you got that going for you.
no subject
[Sam absolutely had the better end of the family deal, no doubt about that, especially with the lurking ghost in all his disgruntled glory.]
Wow, yes my world definitely has that going for it. Yikes.
no subject
[He runs fingers over Stephen's cheek, leaning in for a brief kiss to distract him from the presence of his father's ghost at the foot of the bed.]
no subject
[For once not giving into the self-destructive urge to make derisive comments to hide that this was actually kind of an Emotion Thing. Progress!
And he was more than willing to try and ignore the ghost in favor of affection, even if the increase in the chill of the room and the general sense of disapproval and judgement seemed to increase as it was being ignored.]
no subject
You aren't wrong about that, man. Although the world ground religion out of me, much to my daddy's disappointment.