thenearshore | 018 | Season Spirits

018 | Season Spirits

Who: Everyone!
What: Season spirits and spooky things
When: IC August 1-15
Where: The Near Shore and Far Shore
Summary: It's the time for spirits to get a bit more 'lively'.

August is a spiritual season in Japan with many people preparing for the Obon festival but many others get into the spirit in another way. All across Japan, people have begun to share their favorite summer ghost stories. Movie theaters advertise the hottest horror flick of the season, teenagers challenge each other to do trials of courage, haunted houses begin to pop up, and it feels like you can't change the channel without switching to some ghost hunting urban legend special. All of this talk about spirits comes at a cost, though.

July comes and passes easily enough but it's almost as if as soon as August begins, so do the incidents. There's an increase in spiritual activity and shenanigans on both shores. Some of them are harmless spooks but others are much more sinister. Arm yourselves with all of the ofuda and omamori you can find and get out there and restore peace!

Possessed Possessions

Inhabitants of the Far Shore may awaken to find their sheets trying to strangle them and shoes stomping on the floor around them. Others may go about their day and find out their teapots suddenly only serve lukewarm tea or their weapons are trying to take swings at them. They're just playful spirits that will abandon their hosts if you shove any ofuda/omamori at them or yell loudly enough. They aren't malicious spirits... they were only just trying to have some fun.

Spirited Festivals

There's a festival every weekend and some of them have set up haunted houses for patrons to visit. You have your standard haunted house thrills... costume make up, jump scares, special effects smoke, the usual! But it looks like some real ghosts have made themselves at home here. Visitors are going in and emerging hours later absolutely traumatized. It looks like once you enter, the real spirits walk you around in circles and give you real scares. There are some spirits here just to have fun thrills and these are spirits that can be chased away with regular ofuda. But it looks like the more violent ones are actually ayakashi out for vengeance. Be careful in there!

Cursed Charms

There sure are some weird trends out there, huh? The latest one is buying cursed trinkets off the internet and passing them off as gifts to unsuspecting victims whether it be to prank a friend or get revenge on an enemy. Cursed mirrors, dolls, fake ofuda, VHS tapes, and so on are being passed around the Near Shore and spreading all sorts of curses.

Bad luck. As long as you're in possession of the cursed item, you'll be followed by bad luck to varying degrees depending on the quality of the charm.
Fear. Holding onto this charm results in intense, crippling fear. The fear can manifest as an intense paranoia at all times or being frozen with fear in the face of danger. Some say you can even die of fright...
Sickness. This charm is pretty straightforward. Having this charm just makes you feel incredibly under the weather and your health will worsen the longer you have the charm.
Evil. Holding onto this charm results in you being followed attracting evil instead of warding it. Suddenly, you feel as though you are always being followed, as if something is stalking you and clearly out to get you. You begin to run into smaller ayakashi at first but they keep growing in strength and number until you can't fight anymore.
Bad romance. Someone's meddled with a romance charm so it ends relationships instead of making them! People stuck with this charm are suddenly hyper aware of the faults of others. Everything gets on your nerves and you can't stand being around that person because they're just that annoying. It doesn't just work on couples! It also works on friends and relatives too.
Bears? An oddly specific curse. It looks like someone has taken a protection from bears charm and made it so now you attract bears where ever you go. Some of them are nice but others...

You can try to destroy the charms but you will find that unless you have purification powers or rend it, the effects last. It looks like most people have been able to shake off the effects by simply disposing of them at temples and buying another charm to counter the effects.

Haunting Hour

There are reports of violent attacks at night-- people being pulled into alleys and attacked, school children being chased by slashers while walking home from school, homes being broken into-- and all of it is done without a single clue left behind to explain who did it. People are warned to be careful at night and as the sun begins to set, something happens. The hour between sunset and dark is supposed to be the scariest hour them all. At this time, the shadows are suspiciously bigger and darker and you constantly see things just out of the corner of your eye. Suddenly, the wind blows cold and there's a rotten smell in the air like blood. It's Oumagatoki, the hour evil spirits meet. Small time ayakashi and spirits on the verge of becoming ayakashi spill into the streets and begin to terrorize others. Protect the people of the Near Shore and watch your own backs.*

* These are just generic ayakashi! Nothing special, nothing specific. Feel free to make up and NPC your own two-bit ayakashi.

THEN WHO WAS PHONE?

In the evening, everyone will receive a set of coordinates and a message from an Anonymous sender,

I want to talk about the
mysterious things that have been happening
lately.
OF course, i
NEED
EVERYONE to come. so don't be
late! see
yoU.
:)

Everyone receives it and there is no way to track where the message came from. If you follow the directions, you'll arrive at a small temple on the outskirts of a city. A sacred fire is lit on the grounds for people to dispose of any cursed or old charms they may have collected. Hang around a bit and it'll become obvious that no one knows who has gathered all of you here tonight. The only ones around are gods and shinki. It doesn't look like any evil spirits are around so other than being invited to the middle of no where at night... there's nothing to worry about. If you wait around, nothing will happen. So while you're here, you might as well discuss the strange happenings! Or tell ghost stories around the fire.

Wildcard

Choose your own adventure! Feel free to make up your own prompts. Ronald Knox's player (

diehardreaper) has offered up their temple as a test of courage in the Far Shore for those who want to try their luck. Check out their description under the Baron's manor.

In Summary:

Beat the heat by feeling a scary chill
Deal with cursed and spirit-imbued items
Keep the Near Shore people safe
Chat about your scary encounters
Have fun~

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

You are correct. It does not. Does that make it permissible for us to simply accept the fact?

[Rarely does the Valkyrie speak of anything that is not duty, training, her own focus. Perhaps you should treasure this moment, Shun.]

[While Shun isn't a patient person overall, nobody asking questions has pissed him off enough yet not to answer them. The more people who know what they're doing, the better off all of them are.]

It attacked eventually. The ayakashi did something to him when it was summoned, so by the time we defeated it, he was out of commission as well. I didn't keep track of what the Heavens might've done with him after that. But no, he wasn't an ayakashi, even if he managed to control one.

[If he had been, then he should've vanished when they won rather than just collapsing.]

If you've already lived it once, it's hard not to accept it. It's not a good thing, but it's not always avoidable. [As much as he's noticed this seems to be an emotional issue for her (at least, compared to her normal demeanour), Shun can't afford to get caught up in it again. He's already seen it and taken on about as much trauma as he can concerning it.]

That's fine. If you can't trust someone you've investigated a murder with, you'd have to be even more paranoid than I am.

[One of the rare times Shun admits he's a little on the paranoid side, even if he also considers it entirely valid anyway given his background. The dry tone of the comment makes it kind of hard to tell whether it's meant to be entirely serious, too.

A somewhat disbelieving side-eye gets cast at Lavi.] If you do that sort of thing normally, then you're already worse off than both of us.

[That just makes Shun raise an eyebrow, because he doesn't really see the amusement here. Given it's fairly plain by cravat standards, it's not all that different to wearing his scarf.]

Joker carried throwing daggers and Munakata carries a saber. If they're not cut out to be weapons, nobody is. [Granted, Shun's reasoning here for being cut out to be weapons is being experienced in combat, but still.] It wouldn't make much of a difference. If I had an actual weapon shinki, I'd be wielding them in combat instead of my other weapons anyway. [Not that he wouldn't still be carrying the others, but he doesn't need all of them at once.

A slight tension crosses Shun's face at the mention of the risk.] His vessel ability seems to be sharing his natural powers with me. It's a hell of a lot more power than I've had to contain before, and it sounds like I need to wield it with a clear head.

[Which wasn't a problem last time, but could well be if he ever has to use it against anything that's harmed anyone he cares for and can't manage to keep a lid on it.]

I have never lived it, so perhaps that gives me a different perspective. Observing mortals while apart from them is unique -- perhaps less so here, but I do not believe any of the gods or shinki have stopped viewing themselves as mortals, even given their new position. [Which is not surprising. Perhaps in years, but not over the course of days or even weeks.]

[ One never expects the blind ex-dragons.

Ao did hear footsteps, though he had decided to just ignore that for a while. A lot of people tended to just ignore him either because they were from the Near Shore, or they didn’t want anything to do with the swearing man. ]

Hah? What? With what?

What the fuck?!

[ Intercom? He has no idea what that is. All he knows is that suddenly, there’s a voice even though there definitely is no other person around. ]

[ Being unable to actually fight the ayakashi on his own is a great annoyance to him. He doesn’t want to depend on or work with a god. But that means that he stubbornly has been learning other things that he actually can do on his own. ]

This isn’t a fucking battle skill, it’s a damn wall.

Alright, yeah, probably a good start. Who the fuck knows how they're going to react if we break the curse then try pointing them back the way they came. Not that I have any goddamn clue where that is.

[They're in a fairly built-up area, so how they got this far in besides "curse bullshit" is beyond Davesprite.]

There were today. Fuck "If you go down to the woods today, you're in for a big surprise", today it was "if you go down to the corner store, or to the Near Shore at all, or hell, probably even the door of your temple, just don't fucking risk the teddy bear picnic".

[Davesprite is still a little rusty on his Japanese legends, though, and while he knows enough to be aware that Urashima would be referring to him with the "tengu" thing, he sits up a bit and swipes his tail as if musing.]

Alright, let's make a deal: I'll tell you the story if you give me a refresher course on what tengu are.

[While Davesprite doesn't look in any way concerned about the fire himself, he's still keeping a bit of an eye on the surrounding crowd to make sure nobody's getting too close. At the accusing question, he goes from raising his hands to spreading them as if for a standing ovation.]

Guilty as charged. I'm in for harmless trolling, but once you busted out something that could do real damage if you lost your shit I figured we'd stepped across that line in the sand. In my defense, I assumed the English and then shittily written Japanese and Western movie references would've given me away earlier. [It's not his fault Yata was easy to fool, clearly.]

Aliens is exactly as valid of a theory as anything else I just said. [It's hard to tell how serious Davesprite is about that statement, but he certainly sounds it. The other theory gets a dry little laugh out of him.]

Yeah, whoever it was didn't know how to use the fucking shift key, so I don't think I'd even be surprised if it was a bear. Kind of a waste breaking the curse of going after my ass if they didn't try to follow up with some kind of superior ass, but I'm guessing you and yours didn't have any close encounters of the bear kind today to tell me if that might've happened.

[Drawing another borderline behind them just to make sure any stragglers get their asses caught up as well, Davesprite swoops towards what he assumes is Garry's home base shrine. He used Hajime's to get here, but it wasn't nearly as close as this one.]

Right behind you. [And preferably out of here, because he's pretty sure ayakashi can't cross Shores without help.]

I'd probably have to do some research to get you a comprehensive list, but to start, anything with the name Hitchcock or Kubrick on it is a pretty solid bet, Jaws, Blade Runner if you like navel-gazing sci-fi shenanigans, the early Alien and Predator moves before things got shit, any of those monster movies I listed earlier...you can start looking at other shit by the same directors if you're really into the style of any of them.

[While this is mainly off the top of his head, there's definitely some kind of logic to it. Prolific franchises and prolific directors give him a good stepping-off point if he wants to dive further into the pits of classic cinematic hell.]

[He would totally run that by her again, because bears, but as it is, he just rolls over in vaguely her direction and watches at length as she throws the soiled tissue into the fire.]

Okay, I'm guessing the anti-bear charms weren't the only ones cursed into opposite day mode, because I'm pretty sure I remember seeing charms for good health with the asshole who handed mine out to me.

[And she sounds pretty fucked up, especially for the middle of summer. That's the kind of cold he'd be expecting to see way later in the year than this.]

[ Lux pauses when she hears the boy musing to himself, blinking a few times before looking down at her own phone. That wasn't actually something she considered, but now that he mentioned it, this really was all too convenient. ]

...You don't think that it's some sort of trap, do you?

[ Okay, but what could a phone actually do to them? Nothing, right?

...Right? Oh gods, she's almost certain she's seen a movie that started like this. ]

[ Just an old cowboy/train&bank robber who really isn’t suited to being a god. ]

Yeah, I am, an’ I been workin’ with ‘em my whole life ‘s well.

That ain’t it at all.

[ Also, he doesn’t give a damn about if they’re shoplifting or not. He’s a bank and train robber. ]

Most people ain’t used’a seein’ bears at all, so seein’ em in a store’s goin’ to scare ‘em.

[ Misaki, wheee isnyoyr aense of danger? Your thirst for heart-stopping suspense? These haunted houses are almost never haunted, be brave for once!

Although...

How long had she been wandering through the halls of this supposedly not-so-haunted house without any sign of another person. This should have been an easy in and out, five minutes and done. But now...

Who gets lost in a haunted house, this is just embarrassing. Rounding a corner, her head down as she checks her watch for the time, squinting hard in the dim light in order to see, the blond shrieks as Misaki seeks to suddenly appear. ]

Ahhh!

[ She might not have a heartbeat, but it definitely feels like it's racing. ]

Wh-who's there?!

Depends on who’s stealin’t an’ for what. [ He would be a hypocrite if he actually said that stealing is bad, considering his past as a robber. But even robbers can have their morals. ] An’ askin’ for permission first ain’t stealin’.

[ That’s a question. And he already explained the thing with his smoking to this guy. ]

I am, far as I’m awares I speak English all the time, less I choose to speak Spanish sometimes.

[ Roll with what you wish. ]

[ Yeah, that sounds off. ]

Some people ain’t got that sense. Don’t mean ya gotta sit round with it less y’want.

[She's only a step and a half behind him, her smile turning wry and skeptical as he boasts. His good mood is definitely infectious, she'll say that much-- as difficult as living with two teenage boys is proving to be in some ways, Ryuji is great for morale.]

Oh I will, will I?

[They'll just see about that.]

Hey, it would have been rude to say no! I'm not afraid.

[Probably. It's probably fine in there, right?]

Lost your balance? You did?

[ The heat of Hakkai’s forehead is not the only thing that makes him increasingly concerned. ]

Man, you’re not well. You need to sleep and get a proper meal in you. You can’t just keep working and working, what are you, a workaholic?

[ Not that he can’t picture Hakkai as one, but still. Even gods have their limits, even if they’re sturdier than normal people. ]

So home? That I can work with.

[ Which means! That D2 shifts Hakkai over in his lap, so he can wrap one arm around Hakkai’s back, and the other under his legs. He pushes himself up to his feet, Hakkai in his arms. ]

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018 | Season Spirits

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it's a pretty quality icon

Ring ring ring~

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A!

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