018 | Season Spirits

[godsoffortune]

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~

Comments

[declamando]

I suppose not, no. And it seems like even god powers vary incredibly, so it's hard to say how normal or abnormal someone would have been without them. [Her own power is relatively inoffensive, though she can't help but wonder if that's due to her Gear factoring in somehow.]

[mithrarin]

You know, I forget people have actual powers here. Feels like most of the gods I've seen only use what they had from back home. [For that matter, Dust doesn't even know that he himself has a shinki power.]

[declamando]

I can see why some would. My god power is useful, but it's also not a combative power, so it doesn't come out often. [Healing is definitely something she appreciates having even so, but the last time she used it was during Amaterasu's temple burning.]

[mithrarin]

Mind if I ask? [Rather than just dancing around it!]

[declamando]

It's nothing major - a healing ability. If I touch an injury or the area of one, I can heal it by using my own energy. [Maria gestures slightly with one hand, as if to indicate that it doesn't look like much.]

[mithrarin]

I'm guessing it doesn't work on blight.

[Because that would be too easy. Their biggest threat, and the most common one -- even outside of combat with the ayakashi?]

[declamando]

I haven't tried it, actually. I'd been planning to if the opportunity came up.

Maria has had surprisingly few ayakashi encounters since getting here, and at the firefly viewing, she'd been given a bottle to collect blessed water for that regardless.]

[mithrarin]

I suppose it goes without saying to be careful and not get yourself blighted trying, but -- well, I'm saying it anyway. [Dust can't imagine it working on blight, because blight is so antithetical to them. But it is worth the attempt, so long as the attempt is careful.]

[declamando]

Don't worry, I doubt I'd have to touch the blight directly to test it. And I'm not going to blight myself just to try it out.

[Even the tiny amount of blight from the fireflies was unpleasant enough, so she has no desire to repeat the experience.]

[mithrarin]

That's what I'm worried about. You might not be touching it directly, but using your power is still sort of touching it. It's all spiritual, isn't it? So... just be careful.

[declamando]

I could always ask someone with similar powers. I'm quite sure I'm not the only one here.

[And it probably would be worth knowing before having to test it in practice.]

[mithrarin]

Really? I thought god powers were... unique.

[Not for any reason except intuition, really. It just seems right to think that?]

[declamando]

Not necessarily, though even if they were, there are different kinds of healing powers. They might just come from different sources.

[Maria uses her energy, but maybe others have another healing vector.]

[mithrarin]

Different kinds? I -- don't understand. Healing is healing, isn't it?

[Dust has never had cause to think of 'healing magic' in a nuanced and detailed fashion, so the idea that something might distinguish it catches him by surprise.]

[declamando]

Well, yes, but it can take its power from different things. So while my healing uses my own energy to heal someone else, another might heal by simply accelerating the process using the injured person's energy, or by taking the wound onto themselves, or by drawing the power from another source.

[Most of this is theoretical, since Maria hasn't really gotten into discussion with any of the healers here yet.]

[mithrarin]

Huh. I never considered something like that before. But even so, it all takes some energy from the god to start the process, right? [Otherwise, who would need the god to begin with.]

[declamando]

Maybe not, in the case of just accelerating the healing. For that, it might just be that the god's presence prompts the target's energy to go to work. [It's an interesting thought, and Maria seems to be musing on it even as she says the words.]

[mithrarin]

But if there's not a push, some initial burst of energy, then that power would be on all the time. And if it is... how does it know when to stop working, or where it shouldn't? Does it heal scars? Or -- what are those things humans get, where the skin is dyed? [He's thinking 'tattoos' -- not something Warmbloods do, what with the fur and all.]

[declamando]

[It seems Dust has a lot of questions about this, and Maria smiles faintly, if not a little sheepishly.] Tattoos. When those heal, the ink stays under the skin anyway, so I don't think a healing power would trouble them. And I've tried healing a scar before with mine - it didn't work. But I imagine it would if I instead used it on a new wound that would otherwise have scarred. But you could ask all of these questions about many of the powers here.

[mithrarin]

So if you closed a wound, any dirt or other things that got under the skin would stay there... [That seems to be the logical conclusion, if the power can't remove things deliberately put there. His questions aren't just idle curiosity -- not when a life could literally be at stake.]

...Sorry. I don't mean to be a nuisance about this.

[declamando]

I doubt that would be the case. A tattoo isn't an open wound, so just because it doesn't erase a tattoo doesn't mean it wouldn't erase impurities from something still open.

[Despite all the questions, Maria smiles a bit.] It's fine. I hadn't really thought about it before.

[mithrarin]

Doesn't mean it would, either. But... that's not something too easy to test.

[He chuckles, a bit awkwardly. At least she doesn't seem nearly as shaken as she had, which means he's accomplished his goal here.]

We shinki have it easy, I think. All we have to do is figure out borderlines and put up with transforming.

[declamando]

It is, especially since I'm not even sure wound impurities would affect a god or shinki. [They are, after all, already dead. She hasn't heard about anyone here getting sick in any way besides the recent charms, so that's colouring her thoughts there a bit.]

Well, you do have powers of your own, it's just that you have your god with you to figure it out at the time since it's your power as a vessel.

[mithrarin]

I -- no, I don't have any powers. [Of course, he's wrong, but how would he ever know? Quite aside from the fact that Takumui doesn't call on him in vessel form all that often -- his power doesn't much apply to Takumi to begin with.] Aside from the transforming and Borderlines.

[declamando]

You would, you just haven't used them yet. The newcomer shinki in their vessel forms have some kind of ability they can use in tandem with their god. For example, I once had a shinki who could temporarily conceal me from detection.

[She still misses Hibiki sometimes, but it's better to think he's gone home to something better.]