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~

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If you put in the work, then it pays off. It's not really a matter of timing. [True, the length of time she's been here would help, but some people who've been here longer still can't do it properly. Shun's exemplar, for example.

As soon as Wendy mentions the borderline is gone, Shun moves to the rear again to keep a lookout.] It shouldn't catch up in time if we're in sight of her house, at least.

[Fortunately, the knowledge of something wicked this way coming has the girl pick up the pace, and Wendy stays with her all the way up to her door before it's slammed shut. Well. That works for her. Testing the swing of the bat, she glances over to Shun.]

So what do we do about this thing?

We'll probably have to lure it off. [Despite the blight covering his hands, Shun's grip on both his sword handle and his mostly empty canteen of blessed water is firm.] My shinki would take a while to track us down, and I doubt your god is going to help much even if we did call them. That doesn't leave us with a lot of options.

[He knows Wendy has no issue with being a nora, but he's not going to be the one to suggest it. It feels too much like leading.]

I mean, you could always nora me.

[Yeah, she'll just.... outright say it as she starts to stretch her legs, eyes focused straight ahead for any sign of the creature.]

But if you don't... Where would be a good place to stick it so it can't bother anyone else?

[Though Shun still doesn't want her to feel pressed into it, it is the kind of situation he'd consider worth a temporary nora. If they drive it off, it could just come back. If he leaves to get one of his own shinki, it could escape in that time, not to mention he'd need to track one or other of them down. And it's targeting kids...]

If you don't mind only being a nora long enough for us to get rid of this thing. I'd rather not risk letting it go back to preying on kids.

[At that, she passes him a flat look.]

I'm the person who made a post about nora on the BBS, and we know each other. Of course I'm fine with it- I wouldn't have suggested otherwise.

C'mon- we don't have a lot of time before it gets here, do we?

I wanted to be sure. [While Wendy has expressed obvious willingness to nora before, Shun still considers it best to confirm. He doesn't want to be one of the gods who disregards a shinki's opinion on the matter.

Still, she's right about the ayakashi catching up, and he lets out a faint hiss as he moves to face her.] If this spell wasn't so long and ridiculous, it wouldn't matter as much.

[But still, he has to do it, so without more than a mild sigh of annoyance as precursor, he begins.] My name is Nekhbet. [...Not the name he usually uses, but he's sort of going on autopilot from his recent naming of Kotori.] Grasping thy true name, I bind thee here. With borrowed name, I dub thee my servant. The name answers, the vessel to sound. I call thee as my divine instrument.

[...For all his complaining, he really does have a suitably dramatic tone for this. ~~It's almost like he's used to reciting overly dramatic monologues.~~]

The name, Wendy. The vessel, Yoku. Come, Yokuki!

[A laugh leaves her at his complaining but, in the end, he goes ahead. That's what matters, right? So she waits patiently for him to finish the saying and takes a deep breath for the exact kind of thing she remembers from Hibiki and Rosie.]

[As the kanji for her latest name comes into existence and her body dissolves into light, Shun will get the very same flash of memories that her last two gods have. At the same time, the light from her zips towards him... and settles on his head.]

...I wasn't expecting something this cute for you.

[Enjoy the new cute headband with furry raccoon ears, Shun.]

[Having his first vision of death in this world be Joker's particularly brutal one has set Shun up quite well for being able to handle seeing shinki deaths. There is, however, a very faint wince as he hears the gunshot - followed up by a silence as he pieces together the surrounding details.

She was trying to kill someone when she died. Trying to kill someone...in a fit of furious revenge.

Well. He'd always thought he and Wendy had similar attitudes when it came right down to it.

Her voice distracts him from that brief reverie, though, and he can feel the weight on his head enough to suspect what the gist of it might be before he reaches up to touch it. Those...are definitely furry ears of some description. He sighs quietly.]

My other two shinki are a mask and a cravat, so I'm less surprised than I want to be. [Cuteness aside, it seems he's doomed to accessory and clothing shinki.]

How have you defeated ayakashi with them before?

[Her and Hibiki have their own way but it's.... Well. Hibiki. Wendy is still separating dramatics and action from that.]

The cravat one has powers that he passes on to me as a vessel, so I don't actually need to use his vessel form to rend. The other one creates some kind of beam that only works if I have the ayakashi in my line of sight. So there has to be a way here, but we'll have to figure out what it is.

[Shun's first instinct is to suggest throwing the headband, since it should at least fly reasonably well if it's done correctly, but honestly he's not really sure how to best go about this one. Which is not terribly helpful when the sounds of the ayakashi's movement are rapidly getting closer.

Shun turns towards the noise, bearing tense.] We're not going to have much time to think about it.

If worst comes to worst, you can just beat it to death with me.

[Yes, that is her solution.]

I'm ready when you are.

Beating something to death with a headband would be just about impossible. [Just pointing that little detail out. Nonetheless, with the bizarre colours of the ayakashi bleeding around the nearest building, they're running out of time a bit here.]

I'm always ready. Do you know what it is you can do in that form? [It would at least give them somewhere to start.]

[Hastily, Wendy thinks. The power she could give to Hibiki had been immediate knowledge, and this is-]

I think you can make shadows- a physical thing? You can control them, or something like that!

[That's something Shun can work with, and he immediately moves out of the glare of the nearby streetlights and into a darkened area. Reaching a hand out, he focuses his attention on trying to draw the shadows to him and form them into something. Preferably a weapon, but on this short notice, he'll take what he can get.]

Then we'll have to hope this works like the other powers like this I've used. [He got a crash course in Reisi's quickly enough, but they also didn't have an ayakashi bearing down on them at the time.

Said ayakashi finally slips fully into the alleyway, getting its bearings and scenting for a moment before it spots them. Its legs bend as it coils itself up, ready to spring in a second or two.]

[At his extended hand, shadows shiver and flow to it like water. While there's nothing in the texture like metal or wood, it is undeniably solid in his hand although it still shifts strangely to settle into whatever he first thinks of. It's also still connected to the original group of shadows that he focused on...]

[Stuck where she is, Wendy at least has a good vantage point to see when the ayakashi shows up.]

There it is- do you think it could make a wall or something?

[Whatever Shun first thought of was essentially something pointy, so the shape it ends up in is something akin to a javelin - a simple, pointed bar. The connection to the original group of shadows is somewhat of an inconvenience, but Wendy's suggestion of a wall gives him an idea, and he brings up his other hand to join the first.]

Better idea. [As the ayakashi leaps at them, Shun focuses his attention on a slightly more specific image than a wall - that being creating a series of similar spikes to the first out of the same group of shadows, all pointing right towards the creature flying at them. It's not dissimilar to a wall, it's just one a hell of a lot pointier than what Wendy was probably suggesting.]

[Well. Whatever works, works.]

[Wendy's triumphant whoop might be a little louder in Shun's head, but she'll apologize later. There's no way to dodge something while you're in mid-air, after all, and she takes a savage little delight in the sound of impact.]

Got it!

...Right?

[Even as Wendy says that, Shun's moving for a decisive follow-up.] If not, then we will now.

[He pushes both hands out, and the spikes that are piercing the ayakashi get larger and longer, practically tearing it apart. The telltale white flash rips through it, and it starts to dissipate even as they watch.]

[Well, that certainly leaves no doubt about anything. Wendy has no shame in feeling smug at the whole event. Her and Hibiki don't often fight ayakashi... so it feels good to get rid of them at a chance like this.]

That went pretty well.

Better than I expected, considering. [Most of the shinki he's had with vessel forms this silly haven't had powers that lent themselves to rending, bar Reisi who was just unnecessarily powerful in general.

After a quick once-over of the area to make sure nothing else was following that creature, Shun inclines his head as if satisfied.]

Come, Wendy. [And as soon as her form reverts, he'll add one more thing:] Yokuki, I release you.

[Apparently that's all it takes to make the name he gave her shatter and vanish.]

[Landing as she takes form again, she pauses with her arms stretched up over her head.]

Wow, you didn't waste any time, huh?

[The frown Shun gives her at that question indicates pretty well that he doesn't understand the problem.]

I was going to have to do it anyway. It might as well be now.

I'm not complaining, you know... [Although she wouldn't have minded much about staying nora, either, but they both know that.] So, what do you plan on doing now?

Continuing my patrol. It's not just ayakashi that are out of control right now. [And he patrols thoroughly under normal circumstances. With things as they are now, it only enhances the need for it.] You?

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