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

[smilingbullet]

[ Yup, it totally does. ]

Ooh, I’m guessing we’re supposed to go that way!

[ He pulls him along. ]

[mithrarin]

What gave it away?

[Dust doesn't need to be dragged all that much, though he's keeping himself ready for the next scare.]

[smilingbullet]

I’m great at solving mysteries?

[ Nah, probably not. He has no idea. ]

[mithrarin]

Next time I lose my phone, I'll keep you in mind.

[That's happened once or twice.]

[smilingbullet]

Oh, Do you do that a lot?

[ They’re hit by a very cold draft, and there’s the sound of something shattering against the ground. ]

Sound effect...

[mithrarin]

Enough --

[Dust winces, because the sound of shattering evokes that sort of reaction even if you know it isn't real.]

...Haven't broken it yet, though.

[smilingbullet]

Broken what? The sound barrier?

[ What sound barrier. ]

[mithrarin]

No, my phone -- that was just an effect, right? It sounded real...

[smilingbullet]

Your phone?

Yeah, it should be a sound effect. They can record sounds and play them up, it can sound real that way.

[mithrarin]

I know that, but -- was it?

[smilingbullet]

You think it wasn’t?

[ He taps his cheek thoughtfully. ]

I guess there’s a possibility that it wasn’t.

[ And that’s when a sudden, freezing draft makes a door slam nearby. ]

[mithrarin]

[Which again, makes Dust jump.] This place is doing its job way too well. I'm actually starting to feel really on edge...

[smilingbullet]

[ He pats Dust on the arm. ]

Don't worry, I'll protect you if something happens, I have holy water with me.

[ Which won't do very much in case they need to actually beat an ayakashi, considering they are both shinki, but a squirt gun with holy water might be good enough to shoo them off at least. ]

[mithrarin]

...Wait, you think it might actually be something dangerous in here? [The thought hadn't even occurred to Dust up till this moment.]

[smilingbullet]

[ He shrugs. ]

I dunno, but this seems like the thing something might try to sneak into, doesn’t it?

[mithrarin]

...I guess so. [No, the thought hadn't occurred to him till this moment.]

[And it makes him frown.] Is nothing safe?

[smilingbullet]

No, nothing is safe. [ But that’s a very negative thing to say. ] But you can’t let that get you down or stop you from living your afterlife. [ He pats him on the arm. ]

[mithrarin]

I mostly meant just from ayakashi. But even limiting it to just them... living my afterlife means stopping them from ruining others'.

[smilingbullet]

What we're doing is important... But some of these thigns are over the top and limiting.

[mithrarin]

...What do you mean? [Is this really the appropriate place to be having this conversation? Clearly, Dust thinks it is.]

[smilingbullet]

We’re not given a choice, we’re robbed of a pretty huge part of our identities, we can’t think or talk about it too deeply, we hurt our gods if we feel guilty, and if we don’t have a god we’re vulnerable so we have to have one.

[ So he may have some issues with the whole system, and with the Heavens itself. ]

[mithrarin]

Oh... yeah. All of that.

[It's all he remembers, and somehow he'd come to accept most of it without question. Not the memories part -- that he hadn't given up on yet, though he'd made more peace with it than he'd initially felt. But the rest...]

Some of it isn't a problem. I don't intend to feel guilt any time soon, for example...

[smilingbullet]

[ He’s accepted it....sort of. He doesn’t try to pry in who he was before. But it’s still annoying and the disorganization and impracticality of it all is a bit of a bother. ]

No, I don’t either, but the risk is unfair. The gods don’t really have that. They can’t defeat ayakashi alone either, but they don’t have those other risks on them. There's the risk of us blighting them, and not telling them, but they have...themselves. And, you know, stuff.

[ He can't really describe what he means with that last part. ]

[mithrarin]

Life isn't fair. ...But that just means we have to fight hard to make it fairer.

[He couldn't say where this impulse comes from, because he doesn't know anything about who he once was. But he also knows that this drive is part of him, even if sometimes it feels like two separate drives -- like the desire to fight and the desire to put things right only coexist in uneasy truce because they can both satisfy themselves that way.]

There are plenty of shinki here, and gods, who don't have my strength or quickness. And there are some of us who can't even say we've seen another of our kind since we came here. Everybody's got something for someone else to envy even if you set aside all the god and shinki stuff. So... I'm going to make the best with what I have.

[smilingbullet]

I know that.

[ Where to start is a bit hard. The Heavens doesn’t exactly trust them, so they’ll be trying to make changing things harder. And the attacks that’s been happening doesn’t help either. ]

Yeah. Settling won’t be satisfactory in the long run though.