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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
He is?! Then you should definitely give this to him! I think he'd really like it! Or maybe we can invite him over to help us!
[ Shigeru wants to embrace the spoopyween spirit. But, oh, that laugh and smile are enough to make Shigeru blush and focus back on his own pumpkin with a flustered look. ]
Well I'm just...glad that you think so and I'm glad to help.
no subject
...it's not an unpleasant thought, really. An amusing if odd one but. Stranger things have happened. ] That would be a sight. Although I'm not sure if he'd even attend, he's not very social anymore.
[ Genji finishes carving out an eye and pops out the pumpkin chunk. ]
no subject
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try! You were...colleagues right? I'm sure he'd love to spend time with you again after not doing so for so long. And besides it's...not fun being lonely, I would know I'm not the most social either, and even I...get lonely sometimes.
[ Of course Shigeru's is a different reason for said loneliness but still. Even he liked spending time with his friends and family every once in awhile. Being alone for long periods of time is never fun. ]
Who is it? I can text them and maybe we can set something up!
no subject
He smiles warmly. ] Well, loneliness is not something anybody has to worry about anymore. Not if I have anything to say about it, at least.
[ Genji looks back to the pumpkin and just sort of laughs again, closing his eyes and shaking his head. What's the worst that could happen, really? He's already skulked around outside his balcony... and considering Reyes had apparently met quite a number of people. ]
He goes by 'Reaper' nowadays, usually wears a mask and a dreadful cloak... have you met him?
no subject
I definitely have, a few times in fact! He always seems so lonely when I see him though. It's really nice that you...forgave him and actually want to keep him in your life here. [ Shigeru smiles warmly back at Genji and the pumpkin in his lap. ]
We definitely have to invite him now!
no subject
[ He trails off, biting his lip. Reyes is probably the most lonely of all, really... damn. He thought the man had been dead for five years, never having to think of him in his healthier mental state before. It's— interesting. ]
It was hard to do, for many reasons. But... well, I can't say I regret it. [ 'I missed him' is in between the lines. Genji smiles to himself again. ] Yes, please invite him. It would be most enjoyable.
no subject
It'll be nice doing something like that together again. I'll definitely text him later on then.
no subject
no subject
[ Shigeru dats too pure, please stop. ]
I never...really thought he was a bad person. But I haeven't spoken to him as much as someone like yourself.