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~

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'd hope not. [Komaeda hums thoughtfully.] Something like that happened back in my old life, and it was such a disappointment. When you, or people you like and admire, turn out to be the worst kind of scum imaginable, and you'd completely forgotten about it...

Yeah, I feel that, except also I can't really think about it because if I do I start feeling like the worst kind of scum imaginable in an entirely different way. [His recent memory regain kind of made him scrape against thinking about his past a bit more than he'd like, so he's all too familiar with the feeling now.] I guess at least your person isn't here, probably.

[Komaeda laughs.] People, actually. It was my entire class - myself included. But it's true that none of the rest of them are here...I'm not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved about that, though.

It just seems a little worrying to have shinki forget their pasts after my own experiences with that, I guess. Especially with some of them getting their memories back, like you. Forgetting isn't always a bad thing, and remembering isn't always good...so it seems like combining the worst of both worlds, doesn't it?

[That's kind of a weird thought even with Davesprite having lost his own memories, and he raises a brow slightly at the explanation.]

Sounds like some complicated shit to navigate, dude, and that's coming from someone navigating a whole other school of it. But I'll take not turning into a rampaging technicolour monster over regaining all my memories, especially if they're all as shit as what I got.

[Which they probably aren't, it just really wasn't pleasant to learn exactly why he thought of himself so lowly.]

That's probably the best choice! I can't say anything really good came of the one person who actually regained her memories...I didn't actually get mine back. I just learned about what we all forgot secondhand.

What god do you serve, by the way?

Huh. Still sounds fucked up, but I guess you weren't all getting it thrown back in your face verbatim like shinki do when we roll the memory dice.

[It's not a pleasant experience, as Davesprite can loudly confirm given his last exposure to it.]

Hajime Ichinose, or Neith when we're on business. I'm what they call an exemplar, since she has another shinki.

I'm glad I didn't. I was apparently a very different person before I lost my memories of who that person was...if one were to put it into gaming terms, it's like I'm from a save file made from before making whatever decision turned my character evil! So if I'd actually gotten the memories back, I might have gone back to really being evil...

[He shoots Davesprite a quick, sharp look at the name of his god, but after a moment it fades as he relaxes again.] That's funny...a friend of mine I left behind was named Hajime. Hinata Hajime.

[Well, that sure sounds like a thing. Putting it into gaming terms also helps a lot, just because Davesprite is pretty intimately familiar with those for a variety of reasons.] Okay, yeah, definitely fucked up, you dodged a bullet there, dude.

[Davesprite isn't sure of the significance of the name, though, so he shrugs.] Don't know how popular a name Hajime is in Japan, but unless your friend was a bubbly as fuck teenage girl who likes weird arts and crafts, probably not the same Hajime.

Oh, definitely not. For one thing, Hinata was a guy...and I'd hardly call him bubbly. [He chuckles.] It's not that there's anything similar, it just made me think of him.

[He'd been...pretty definitely into Hinata, after all, so maybe his reaction was a bit more excitable than someone sharing the same name as him really warranted.]

What is Neith a god of? Or goddess, I suppose. [Komaeda's learned that the perceived gender of a god - assuming the god has a concrete gender at all - has next to no relation to their Far Shore incarnation. Hajime's being a girl doesn't necessarily mean that Neith is a goddess.]

Okay, yeah, that makes more sense. The Hajime here is pretty...unique, in that way you say unique because saying super weird is rude as fuck.

[He likes Hajime and thinks she's a good goddess, but seriously. It has to be put on the table.

Davesprite's mouth twitches down a bit at the question, because he's never that great at remembering all the domains Neith has.] Way too fucking many things, but she's meant to be the creator of the universe and shit so I usually just roll with that.

You know, it's strange. You'd think there could be only one creator of the universe, and most religions I know of from Earth had their own deity or being they associated with that. I could believe that it's all the same deity, simply going by different names, but...I doubt that's what Neith is, right? I'd assume the god responsible for the existence of the universe, and thus responsible for the creation of all other gods, shinki, and human followers, would be the one in charge of everything...but I've never heard of there being one central authority in the heavens. And there's gods from every culture and religion I've ever heard of, so...are there multiple gods of creation? And what is that supposed to mean? They can't all be responsible for the same act.

Are some of the gods fake? Or are gods created by people, and not the other way around?

[That sure is some existential ramble on the nature of gods, but thankfully, Davesprite has a good head for lengthy diatribes. He goes off on them himself often enough, so he listens relatively closely to Komaeda's summation of the issues there.

And honestly agrees, because he's had similar thoughts himself. This place in general doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.] I'm pretty sure it's gods are created by people here, though don't quote me on that. But it's the only real explanation for shit like that, and how we've somehow got people still worshipping gods that should have gone bust thousands of years back when their societies did. The closest thing we have to a central authority here is Amaterasu, and even then she's not really one.

Hadn't I heard something about her temple being set on fire awhile back? [Komaeda gives Davesprite a questioning look.] I wasn't here for it, but...

Yeah, it was about... [Davesprite taps his claws on his arm for a moment as he tries to remember the specifics.] ...two months ago, late June. Some fucker must have crept in while we were all out in paroxysms of delight over getting new shrines in our homelands.

Hmm...so the one god closest to being in charge of the heavens has her temple burned down? That seems pretty suspicious, if you ask me...I imagine a god's temple doesn't just burn down because someone left the oven on...

Was that incident investigated at all?

Pretty much. I'd argue that arson in any form is pretty fucking suspicious, but the timing was way too good for it not to be a set up. [It just happening to be when everyone was out of the Heavens visiting new shrines is a bit too much coincidence for him to swallow.]

Probably, but if anyone turned up anything useful they didn't go public with it.

Doesn't that seem strange? You'd think a god with so much power would be able to track down an unsavory element in the heavens...

For that matter...why would someone have enough of a grudge against Amaterasu to burn down her temple? And what would be the point? It doesn't seem to have had any real negative effect on her, and it created a public spectacle that would just draw attention and risk onto whoever did it. So why bother doing it? What did they gain by such a senseless, meaningless action...?

Apparently there's kinda...extenuating circumstances, I guess, but I'm more surprised these advisors she's supposed to have haven't managed it. [Amaterasu being a kid, Davesprite's not really going to expect her to be able to deal with this sort of thing, but the advisors presumably aren't, and thus have no excuse.]

She's been around a while, apparently, long enough for people to have shit against her. Someone's trying to unseat her from the top job, but for now they've mostly just been fucking around and setting shit on fire instead of doing anything that damaging.

Ah...I guess I'm still too new to have all the context. And it does seem like those of us who were thrown into godhood or shinki servitude recently see a lot more of each other than we do of the older gods who've supposedly been doing this for awhile...I don't believe I've ever actually seen Amaterasu, although I've seen people who claim to serve her.

Still, I wouldn't think that unseating a goddess like Amaterasu would be as easy as just undermining her authority...or even killing her! After all, as worthless as I am...I'm still apparently the current incarnation of a god. Wouldn't she just reincarnate into a different person if she was killed? So it's definitely not a case of the killer trying to usurp her, since even if she was killed there's no way they could control who her next incarnation would be or take over her job. But if they can't permanently get rid of her, either, what could they possibly get out of it?

I wonder...if it could be merely for the purpose of causing fear and despair in the heavens...

Yeah, she's not around super often, I haven't met her either. [To his knowledge, at least.] I've seen her post to the BBS a couple of times, but that's pretty much it.

She's a big goddess, so getting rid of her would be a big fucking deal, but I think whoever's doing it is kinda trying to undermine her follower base. They keep spreading these shitty flyers with "down with Amaterasu" on them whenever they decide it's time for some good healthy arson. So I'm guessing the plan is meant to be more uprising and overthrow sort of thing, but who knows how the fuck that would work here.

[It'd be more than Amaterasu having to die to pull that off, that's for sure.]

Hmm..good question. In more than one way, too. I don't know what would happen to a god if they lost all their followers, or all their followers turned against them, although I suppose the god might cease to exist...but who would really gain from that?

And besides, could some mere cases of arson actually weaken Amaterasu's follower base? At best, it might make people think she's not as competent as she could be if she can't even stop some simple arsonist, but that's an incredibly small impact to have for going to all that trouble and risk. And I think it'd take something a lot bigger than that to make someone forsake their god.

Besides, do her followers in the Near Shore even know about that minor unrest in the Far Shore? It seems to be aimed more at the heavens than earth.

I'm pretty sure it'd have to fuck them up in some way, followers seem to be a pretty big deal here. I just don't have the details since, like I said, no direct line to the old gods. [He is kind of curious given this conversation now, but he also wouldn't recognise any of the old gods other than Bishamon if they kicked him in the teeth.

Davesprite waves a hand a bit as if the rest of it is kind of hard to figure out.] If they were gunning to turn us against her, they kind of shot themselves in the foot as soon as they lit up a cherry blossom viewing we were all at. Anyone who wants to sign up with them after that can get stuck in an infinite loop of the door hitting their ass on the way out as far as I'm concerned.

Their methods really don't make any sense...at this point, it's almost more logical to think that the gods themselves are doing it to encourage people to support them by presenting those who oppose them as fanatical 'detractors' who commit meaningless, nonsensical acts of violence. The only reason I can't believe that is because I don't really see why the gods would find such extreme measures of drumming up support necessary.

[They're finally near the fire - which is a good thing, too, because there are sounds behind them that indicate that least one bear might be catching up to them, and that however many there are, they aren't in good moods. Komaeda, however, doesn't even look back or change pace; he simply approaches the fire, a faint smile on his face, and tosses the charms into the fire.

Then he turns to survey the absence of bears behind them.] You see? I told you I'd be fine. I've done far more dangerous things without my luck permitting me to die.

Yeah, it hasn't really done anything to push us closer together, just made us more pissed off at how shitty the old gods can be at handling basically anything down to protecting the person meant to be in charge. So I'm gonna guess that particular conspiracy theory isn't getting the "Illuminati confirmed" treatment anytime soon.

[Though maybe it should. They could use some more Heaven-oriented memes.

Davesprite is definitely looking a little antsy at the sound of impending bears, and Komaeda's apparent lack of giving a fuck, but he rides it out for now. Thankfully, he can hear the sounds disappear once the charms burn, and he lets out a breath he didn't realise he was holding.]

That still doesn't sound like the safest attitude to have, dude, especially if your luck swings both ways.

Oh, it wasn't safe at all! Or, at least, it wasn't meant to be. But my luck won't let me die even if I want to. [Komaeda's smile doesn't change in the least, which is perhaps the most alarming thing about it.] I was terminally ill before I died; I really should have been dead years before, but my luck kept me going. I've been on planes struck by meteors, been part of a mutual killing game, performed amateur surgery on myself, played Russian roulette with five bullets, been kidnapped by a serial killer, took part in The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History...you wouldn't believe the trouble I had to go to in order to actually kill myself!

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