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

[Ginko didn't mean to see. He was just passing through when he came upon Taako and his ghosts, and normally, he'd turn around and leave. It's not really his business, and Ginko generally respects a person's privacy when possible.

But he's also never been the kind of person that can just walk away from another's suffering, and he knows from experience these things can be more complicated than they seem.

He steps in between Taako and the ghosts as something of a barrier, and places a hand gently on the other man's shoulder, as if to steady him. Carefully, he asks:]

What happened?

[Perhaps speaking of it could bring rest to these poor lost souls, too.]

[As soon as Taako registers Another Person in his peripheral, and realizes that new person is a stranger, he does everything in his power to slam down on the rising panic. His nails dig into his palms and there's a tightness in his jaw as he desperately tries not to look at the ghosts.]

Nothing, it's uh, uh, mistaken identity, or whatever. I'm not a fucking ghost expert.

[The ghosts are saying his name but this person doesn't know his name, so that's an easy lie to get away with.]

But we should like, go? We should go.

[And he's going, ignoring the fact that the ghosts are following him, not quite caring if the stranger does too.]

[There's really just a mildly raised eyebrow as the only sign of skepticism here. Ginko supposes it could be mistaken identity, though this man's reaction makes him doubt it somewhat. Directly challenging someone on that kind of thing isn't his style, though, so when Taako says they should leave and then turns to flee, he simply nods, and follows. He doubts telling the man that these spirits don't seem to mean any harm would be helpful in this situation.

...Especially since the ghosts are definitely following them. Ginko attempts blowing out some of the mushi smoke from his cigarette in their direction, to see if it will repel them, but unfortunately, nothing happens. He continues in silence some moments longer, glancing behind them on occasion, before he speaks up again--]

Looks like it may be some time before they wear out the energy to maintain their form.

[Taako's shoulders are practically up around his shoulders, betraying how tense these fucking ghosts are making him, how much he really, truly does not want to deal with this. When Ginko speaks, drawing his attention to the fact they're still following, Taako steps, jaw clenched tight.]

Close your eyes if you don't wanna go fucking blind.

[That's about all the warning Ginko gets, before Taako turns sharply on his heel back to face the ghosts, points the umbra staff towards them, and casts sunburst. Bright, radiant light flashes from a point centered within the ghosts, which... essentially destroys them, because Taako doesn't fuck around.

If Ginko didn't close his eyes, he might want to make a constitution saving throw to ensure he isn't blinded (it only lasts a minute).]

[He closes his one functional eye immediately upon the warning, but he doesn't really have enough time to process it enough to think to cover the hollow of his other eye with his hand. And the thing about having a mushi of perpetual darkness living inside you? It doesn't much care for having bright and radiant light shot directly at it.

The pain isn't nearly as bad as the time he tried to step into the River of Light as a child, but it still manages to tear a groan from his throat as his hand flies up to cover the left side of his face.

He lets out a breath when it's over, glancing around. Sure enough, there's no ghosts in sight.]

That was a bit excessive, wasn't it?

[Any other time and Taako might have been aware enough to care about having apparently hurt this guy, but he's at his worst when stressed or upset, so he barely gives Ginko a second glance.]

Not like they're real, who gives a shit.

You don't think they're real?

[Well, that's certainly possible. Mushi could play tricks on the mind, at times. But at the same time...he doesn't think his mind could make up some of the things these "ghosts" have been telling him.]

If a ghost can escape from the astral plane and travel into another reality, I'll eat my fucking hat.

[It's a big hat.]

They're echoes or some shit like that, necromancy isn't my thing.

introductory mingle: FEAST OF THE DYING

ghosts i. i hope that's ok for new cr!

:|b

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