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

[reformedsinner]

Not like this, they won't. How do you feel about exorcism, Sanzo-sama?

I can hold the barrier for...

[He looks absent for a moment as he tracks the expenditure of energy. The paper, unpleasant as it is to be grabbed by, isn't particularly strong or heavy. It's just paper. There's no major force against his barrier at all.]

... hours, I think, if nothing more threatening shows up.

[bussounoshima]

An exorcism I can manage, but if we're here for hours, I'll burn the place down.

[Sharak strides forward, leaving Hakkai to either keep up or fall behind. This is what he gets for being substitute Kouten Brigade. For what it's worth, the streamers make a few reaches for her before hesitantly falling back.]

But I'd rather find those children first.

[reformedsinner]

[Ah, a new and exciting challenge. Holding his shield while walking.

She probably doesn't think of it as a challenge, considering her own, significantly more powerful barrier magic, which is enough to convince Hakkai not to object. He matches her pace, a step behind, holding his shield with an effort of will that leaves him a little paler.

It's something of a miracle that he doesn't walk into the frame of the door they're coming up on, and he doesn't say anything until the paper streamers have been left behind and he can, at last, drop the damn thing.]

It might be easier exorcising whatever's in here first, but very well.

I can't sense them; they're human.

[And he doesn't have Goku's nose, or any correspondence coursework in indoor tracking. He leaves the end of the sentence open, just in case her unquestionably superior training has also left her with superior methods of tracking down lost human teenagers.]

[bussounoshima]

[Hey, she'd get her own barrier out if she thought Hakkai couldn't handle this. She believes in you, Hakkai, don't let her down.]

Not necessarily... [How easy the exorcism would be depends on how attached the spirit is to it's current existence. She'd rather not have a couple of kids caught in the middle of that. Sharak keeps walking into the next room, where the walls have been lined with ornately dressed dolls- probably by the actual students. When Sharak enters, they all turn to look at her and she ignores them.]

We'll track them down first. [With her unquestionably superior skills, of course. Sharak takes a deep breath, puts her hands together... and then raises them to her mouth to amplify her voice.]

Mika! Tomoe!

[Give her credit, she's loud enough.]

[reformedsinner]

[He stares at her, as the dolls begin to jump off the shelves and toddle helpfully towards them, little ceramic hands outstretched.

As the first kimono-clad doll reaches his ankle, he kicks it into the other wall with a swift gesture.]

Ah, that's one way.

[And kicks another doll. The crash as it hits the wall echoes, and a girl begins to scream desperately, somewhere.

Help! Help!

Hakkai turns his head sharply, trying to track down the sound. Somewhere ahead, he thinks. Ahead, and... up?]

Second story?

[bussounoshima]

If you can do something the easy way, do it.

[There's your Sanzo philosophy of the evening, Hakkai. A doll tugs on Sharak's robes and she nudges it away gently. She tilts her head to listen to the screaming and resumes ignoring the dolls. They're not really doing much but clinging and getting weird substances on her robes.]

It seems so. Now do we find the stairs or just break through the ceiling?

[Sharak, chill.]

[reformedsinner]

If there are spiders in the light sockets... I think we should find the stairs.

[Imagine what there'll be between the ceiling beams? They might find the big one after all.

He eyes the dolls clinging to Sharak's ankles and the hem of her robes with disfavor -- what is that blackish liquid they're oozing? It could be rotting blood -- and kicks another away from his own feet. He's not quite so tolerant.

He's also not really a fan of doing things the easy way, but everyone has their quirks. He starts towards the far door, ruthlessly ripping down the curtain of finely cut black paper strips covering it. He's had enough haunted paper for one evening.]

[bussounoshima]

Tch. Kill joy.

[She wanted to break through the ceiling... But perhaps she should take her own advice and just use the stairs. The other option is teleporting, but doing that in an unfamiliar building where they're not sure where they're going sounds like a bad idea even without the spirits messing around.

Sharak follows after Hakkai, nudging the dolls away and picking up one particularly stubborn one by the arm as she goes. She gives it a shake and puts it down on a shelf as she passes.]

[reformedsinner]

It's funny how Sanzos seem to think that. I see myself as 'practical.'

[He watches her set the doll back on a shelf, smiling faintly as he brushes black paper fragments off his own palms. She's much more gentle with the spirits than he is. He wonders if she's seeing something he isn't -- if she thinks they're redeemable -- but doesn't speak the question aloud, instead disappearing into the next room.

This one has been done up as a living room, with an ancient cathode-ray TV set sparkling with static in one corner and a sofa drawn up in front of it. The back of someone's head is visible, sitting on the sofa: long dark hair, not very tall. Hakkai pauses, watching them.

Slowly, the girl's head turns towards them. She's pale, with a face mask hooked over her ears and hiding the lower half of her face, and she speaks from behind it. Her eyes are vacant, focused somewhere over Hakkai's shoulder.

"Am I pretty?"]

[bussounoshima]

[Well, their efforts at killing her have been pretty weak. They only really tried to strangle Hakkai. Sharak has less reason to be annoyed at them.]

I think I'm practical. [Some might argue otherwise, but they'd be wrong. Sharak stops behind Hakkai when they enter the next room, a little impressed by the creepy vibe inside. A lot of this is from the spirit, undoubtably, but Sharak thinks the students should be given some credit for their decorations.

After a moment, she walks past Hakkai to get a better look at the girl. Is she pretty, huh?]

... Do you care?

[reformedsinner]

[Her features are finely drawn and elegant, at least as much of them as is visible over the gauze mask as she turns her face away from Hakkai and towards Sharak instead.

Her head tilts in the other direction, and she repeats, "Am I pretty?"

Hakkai's expression is only curious as he crosses around the sofa and gets a closer look at the girl. She's dressed in a standard high-school uniform, but her hair hangs as loose as a ghost's, tangled and long enough that she's sitting on part of it. In her right hand, she's clutching a pair of rusty scissors. Her knuckles are white with the force of her grip.

He says, mildly, experimentally:]

Yes, you are.

[The girl's attention snaps back to him, and she pulls down her mask, revealing a face that's...

... normal? At first Hakkai thinks there's nothing wrong with her face at all, but then he can see a gaping, blood-crusted wound splitting her cheeks wide open to show teeth and tongue in the darkness of her mouth. And then nothing, again, a girl's face -- a woman's face, gashed -- a girl's face.

She smiles, and the smile is normal and pretty for an instant before it becomes a horror.

"What about now?"]

[bussounoshima]

[The girl seems a bit more interested in Hakkai, Sharak thinks. Because he's a man or because he's playing along better? Either way, she decides to stay to the side and let him take the more direct approach. Her eyebrows do shoot up when the girl removes her mask, but it's more surprise than shock. Sharak was expecting something a little more, with all this set up and everything else in the house. Not the face of a normal teenage girl, clean and unblemished. Plain, really. The smile is a little off-putting though.

There's a delay before the girl speaks again. Sharak wonders if something was supposed to happen.]

[reformedsinner]

[Hakkai stares at her, thoughtfully evaluative.

What a very strange question. It feels as though there's a trap hidden in it, as if she's asking if he really sees the ghostly disfigurement....

... which he does, but he isn't about to admit it. After a moment, he clears his throat.]

Hmm. Well, let's see. I think you're of average looks. Why?

[She scowls in visible confusion. Hakkai casts Sharak a glance -- and she only looks mildly confused, not concerned in the least. Can she see it? He smiles to the girl, and bows politely before starting for the next door. If she's one of the missing children, that's one thing, but he's certain he heard those screams from upstairs.

Besides, he wants to be out of earshot before he asks Sharak what's going on.]

Excuse me, we have something to do tonight. Shall we, Sharak?