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

[redotiertwo]

Yeah, I didn't really count her since her only godly role right now seems to be getting fucked over by the other gods.

[There's a slight hardness to that statement - he still isn't too pleased about the situation those two lovers are in.]

[letteropener]

That is, unfortunately, a very accurate statement. [If a bit -- eh, she's made her point on that and is going to let it rest if she can.] And yet some of the newer gods are not doing quite so much, without similar punishment.

[redotiertwo]

I guess they know we'd all ride their asses if they pulled that shit on a new god, but it's not like she or her dude deserve it either.

[But a tradition is going to be a lot harder to do anything about than a current lack of action. It has a holiday and everything.]

[letteropener]

If we would do that for a new god, are we not obligated to do it for an old one?

[Holidays can be repurposed. Take Nightmare Night and the Summer Sun Celebration, for example.]

[redotiertwo]

I think the tradition angle is kind of hurting it since a lot of the people here seem to be either Japanese or lived there long enough for it to be a thing in their minds. Kind of abstract, you know, like it's a thing that's just a given and has been for a long time.

[Not that things like that can't be overthrown and changed, but it takes some doing.]

[letteropener]

If you cover a stain on the floor with a carpet named tradition, the stain is still there. [Which says it all, to her mind.]

[redotiertwo]

I'm not saying it isn't, I'm just saying it sure as shit isn't going to be as easy as stomping some feet and waving some pitchforks and getting what we want. [He'd like to help Orihime and Hikoboshi as well if he could, but he's being realistic here.]

[letteropener]

Of course not. There's a rug in the way.

[Celestia acknowledges the difficulty, but at the same time, she's quite used to societal change -- having enacted a great deal of it over time. And time is something they seem to have.]

[redotiertwo]

Well, you should probably start gathering the professional rug-movers among us if you want to really get to work on that.

[Look, it's a functional analogy, okay. Davesprite is working with the line of thought they're rolling on here.]

[letteropener]

If we are gods and shinki, then it seems to me that we must all concern ourselves with these rugs. For we walk on them, and may be covered by them in turn.

[So's she, man, so's she.]

[redotiertwo]

Spreading rug awareness is the first step, then, right, not everyone's gonna know that whole deal is actively happening here.

[Orihime had put out a public message, but she hadn't seemed sad at the time, so some people might've missed the implications.]

[letteropener]

That is very true. Do you have suggestions as to how it might be accomplished?

[This is how Celestia works, part of her grand plan: rather than take on the duties herself, she prefers to get others involved. Giving a pony an apple versus teaching her to take care of an orchard, you see? And Davesprite seems like he could benefit from being part of a campaign to raise awareness about the needs of others.]

[redotiertwo]

The usual thing you do for that is posting out something on the BBS, but we kinda have to consider how offended the Heavens might get if we just front them about it straight-up like that.

[The higher-ups all seem to have access to the network, so Davesprite isn't entirely sure how well a message about Orihime's situation would go down. Rallying support in person first might work better.]

[letteropener]

Do you believe the older gods actually look at it? [Celestia, for her part, has not seen one that she is aware of acting on that network.]

[redotiertwo]

I've seen them on it before, Amaterasu posts sometimes and her advisors have been on there like. Maybe once before to announce something. [Though it's been a while since he saw Suijin on there.]

[letteropener]

Hmm, and yet, they seem to pay very little attention to most things being discussed there... That is something to think about.

[redotiertwo]

Yeah, pretty sure they leave most of it to us unless some serious shit starts going down and they need to step in. [And even then, this murder stuff going around recently doesn't seem to have gotten their attention.]

[letteropener]

I have noticed that they are remarkably absent from all of these duties that tie up the rest of us. [She doesn't see any of the older gods helping bears go properly back to the forest, for example.] Do you know how old they are?

[redotiertwo]

No fucking clue. I don't think any of us know shit about them except that they're here, they're lording it over us, and they're kind of shitty at running an afterlife.

[Clearly some very important points there, but they're going to need a little more than that to really know what they're dealing with.]

[letteropener]

Are they the ones running the afterlife? Or are they merely playing their own roles in it?

[redotiertwo]

I didn't say they were running it, I just said they were lording it over us. [A small, but significant difference that implies they might not necessarily be deserving of that lording.]

[letteropener]

Well, you did say they were poor at running it. [That isn't exactly what he said, but Celestia is a magic pony princess and thus is going to capture the sentiment in her own words.] And I do not think we have really identified who, exactly, is 'running' all this.

[redotiertwo]

Yeah, no, past Amaterasu we haven't really gotten anything, and I dunno if she's the actual top banana or if they're still lurking somewhere in the murky background. There's got to be a shitload of gods here we haven't had anything to do with yet.

[The Japanese pantheon alone is way bigger than what they've seen of it.]

[letteropener]

And yet, how can that be? How could they keep themselves so hidden?

[Not that she doubts it to be possible. But it does raise questions.]

[redotiertwo]

I'm pretty sure they just don't really do much. This is a big place, it's not like there's gonna be a lack of places for gods not us to hang out.

[He scopes it out overhead pretty often, and he's not even sure he's covered all of it.]