25 - Troubled Waters

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Alleviating the troubles caused by conflict in Heaven
When: October 10
Where: Orihime's meadows in the Far Shore, as well as various places in Japan, China and Ireland
Summary: Orihime has been tasked by the Heavens with resolving the conflict caused in the mortal world by the new gods' struggles against one another. Several gods have been killed recently, and their violent deaths have led to dangerous corruption being released in the mortal world. Help Orihime expunge the corruption and return the human world to a peaceful existence.







Orihime's Meadows

Before traveling to the Far Shore, gods and shinki can meet and make plans near Orihime's modest home at the edge of the Southeastern District. Her dwelling is too small to accommodate even one team of gods and shinki arranging something as serious as this, let alone several. It is obvious she thought about this fact, and has crafted four cloth tents out in the meadows surrounding her home. The sounds of the milky way river are now joined by rustling fabric in the wind, for each tent has a flag mounted atop it and standing in front of it:

• The blue tent belongs to the team for Ksitigarbha. It has a sigil in black on the flag.
  
• The green tent belongs to the team for Li Tieguai. On its flag, a mortar and pestle in white, but the visible part of the pestle resembles a staff crook.
  
• The red tent belongs to the team for Cu Chulainn, with an impressive reproduction of a two-headed dog celtic knot in shining silver.
  
• The brown tent belongs to the team for Loki. Its flag bears a two-headed snake in gold.
All four tents are spread out in cardinal directions. Near each tent, she has a few stacks of wooden prayer tablets related to each of the problems, as well as maps and supplies for those who might need them.

In the center of all four tents is a simple chair and table where Orihime herself is generally sitting, talking to others nearby, or writing notes based on those conversations. She does a lot of listening when people ask her for new supplies she hadn't thought of previously, but has only been supplied with four shinki runners to get those supplies, one per group. Additionally, she cannot teleport down to the Near Shore herself, nor can anyone use her home to teleport down to where each of the troubles are; that is a problem for each group to solve on their own, with Orihime only able to mediate and provide suggestions.

Child's Play

Kshitigarbha, protector of children and of hell beings, is one of the recent casualties. Without his protection, it seems that babies' fears are giving rise to new and awful ayakashi throughout the city of Xi'an. Shadows on the wall above the crib, oversized stuffed animals, monsters hiding in the closet or rattling the windows at night -- all the fears of earliest childhood are taking real, malicious form. Babies are panicking, parents are exhausted, and all this stress is pulling in even more ayakashi! Someone needs to lure out these nursery nightmares and defeat them before the situation gets worse.

As gods and shinki work to rend the ayakashi tormenting children, they may notice a strange shadow passing by in the street outside, or scratching noises at the nursery window. Something more seems to be waiting outside....

Flu Season

With sky-high living costs and limited space, Tokyo has a large homeless population. Li Tieguai, protector of the poor and patron of medicine, was another recent death: now, winter's coming, and without his protection it seems like everyone's getting sick at once. They're suffering from everything ranging from plain old head colds and 'flu to more serious things like pneumonia or infections. Help pass out tea, soup and blankets, make sure they get the right medications, and get the sickest people to the hospital.

Carrion crows crowd close around the sick and croak, watching the gods and shinki helping them.

Wild Hounds

As if honoring the fall of the Hound of Chulainn, stray dogs have begun to form into large, dangerous packs in rural and suburban areas of Ireland, and even well-trained housepets have started breaking their leashes and joining them. They're starting to chase and bite humans, and it's only a matter of time before someone gets killed. Gods need to defeat the ayakashi possessing the "leaders of the pack," and get the pets back to their worried owners.

The groves of trees where the dogs are lairing seem unusually dark and shadowy, and footsteps seem to echo those of the gods and shinki tracking them down.

Prank War

Teenage pranks are turning unusually cruel and dangerous lately: with Loki gone, a few groups of bored kids have coalesced into more serious gangs in Chiba, and they've been seen setting fires, tormenting animals, vandalizing businesses and intimidating or robbing people walking alone at night. Someone needs to stop them from causing trouble, put them on a better path, or turn them in to the police before someone gets badly hurt.

Even as they're working to stop the teenagers' mischief, something seems to whisper to them and encourage them to join in and cause a little trouble. After all, it's just some fun....

Boss Battles

Those who helped to resolve the problems caused by the gods' deaths have one final enemy to face. Four dangerous ayakashi are behind these conflicts. Each character can participate in one boss battle, but it's fine for characters to form multiple different groups (i.e. multiple threads under one boss's comment.) To ensure that the NPC knows when to respond to your characters, please indicate which characters will be in a thread in your first comment.

Kshitigarbha - Child's Play

Li Tieguai - Flu Season

Cu Chulainn - Wild Hounds

Loki - Prank War

In Summary:

• Check in with Orihime and your new teams
• Save scared children
• Help the sick
• Tame stray dogs
• Stop pranks from going too far
• Watch out~

Comments

[kokuyoyo]

[The noise Chikusa makes is long, drawn out, and low.... the closest he can make right now to an "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeh".]

[That sounds like work to him, sir.]

[redotiertwo]

Come on, dude, one of the perks of being a bird is the wing thing, you're missing out on the best part.

[Then again, flying isn't always work for him considering he has additional levitation powers, but the point stands.]

[kokuyoyo]

[Another sigh, and Chikusa eyes a higher up perch warily. Finally, with apparently great reluctance, he starts to flap his wings and scramble up there. It's not exactly the most elegant thing, but he's done it.]

[redotiertwo]

[Not that it makes the effort any less, but at least Davesprite follows him up as well. He doesn't really need his wings for this height, though, which is probably good considering they both have pretty sizable wingspans.]

[kokuyoyo]

[And just for that show of worse effort than him, Chikusa leans over to try and peck him again.]

[redotiertwo]

[He's just going to use his ridiculous length to dip away from that peck and off to one side.]

Hey, it's better than tangling our wings up, don't judge me for having occasionally superfluous limbs.

[kokuyoyo]

[There's another annoyed huff of air from his nostrils before he gives up. Getting Davesprite is too much effort right now. Instead, he jabs his beak in the direction of a regular pigeon nest, and then at the crows.]

[redotiertwo]

Are you trying to get me to throw the nest at them, is that what this is.

[Davesprite's reasonably sure he's actually referring to a potential nest of the crows, but let him have his moment of being a contrarian shithead.]

[kokuyoyo]

[No response.]

[Just a long dead eyed stare.]

[redotiertwo]

I mean, if you have any theories on where a maybe-ayakashi-maybe-not crow nest would be, feel free to throw them out there, but I haven't spotted anything from on high yet.

[Just jumping topics as if he hadn't made the shitpostier remark in the first place.]

[kokuyoyo]

[So nothing that even Davesprite has seen... Settling down to take a rest, his legs hidden underneath his feathers, Chikusa eyes the surrounding skies warily for anymore crows and huffs in frustration.]

[So no leads on the source.]

[redotiertwo]

[Davesprite remains hovering, curling his tail up and looking over the area.]

I dunno that we're gonna get anything else productive done hanging around here. [If there is the chance of a nest somewhere, they're going to need to go out searching.]

[kokuyoyo]

[He really doesn't want to, especially if they've found nothing so far... but Chikusa guesses there's no helping it. Letting out a slow breath, he jabs his beak in Davesprite's direction and points one way, before lowering it more towards his own bod before pointing to another.]

[redotiertwo]

Sure, let's split up. [Davesprite can't even pretend to not get a charade that obvious, and there's not a lot of point in both of them covering the same area.] Tell Hakkai to send me a text if you find anything, unless you can operate your phone with bird feet.

[kokuyoyo]

[A nod.]

[Trust him. He's tested this.]

[redotiertwo]

I'm just not gonna ask why you're so sure of that. [Especially since he won't really get a straight answer anyway.

But since he knows now, he waves a hand and starts to head out.] See you around, then.