March Training

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone
What: Information and Training
When: October 25th
Where: Outside the Meeting Hall, the Far Shore
Summary: Training and informational sessions for newly arrived gods and shinki



Gods and shinki arriving at heaven's meeting hall are, should they allow it, guided to the Meeting Hall, where a traditionally styled dojo and training ground have been made available for the day. The gods and shinki are free to take their time during this day to learn about the details of their new life from Amaterasu's shinki or from the many veteran new god and shinki volunteers.




God Training

Newly arrived gods are escorted into what looks like an old, large warehouse behind the Meeting Hall for an informational meeting covering the basics of proper god behavior. Several chairs have been moved in, but they're squeezed together between packed shelves and boxes of old ritual clothing, scrolls and rusty or chipped household goods. A minor deity is giving the speech, and none of the white-robed shinki enter. They are encouraged to discuss the information with each other and ask questions of more experienced gods, as well as instructed to guide their new shinki appropriately.

Shinki Training

Various shinki in the white-and-gold of Amaterasu's hosuehold are stationed around the dojo, passing out helpful informational pamphlets. They will be happy to instruct the newcomers in the use of the borderline as well as offering an explanation of what is expected of a shinki and the importance of teamwork with other shinki and with gods. Shinki are encouraged to work together to practice what they've learned and discuss their perspectives.

Back copies of the "From Ama" magazine, including puff pieces about new or rising gods or successful shinki, advice columns for resolving problems between gods and shinki, temple photographs and other articles of interest to gods and shinki, have been brought out in boxes and piled up next to a table holding a few remaining copies of the shinki questionnaire for any new shinki who want to keep one around until they can answer the included questions.


What is your name?

What is your god's name?

How do you see your duties as a shinki?

What is your favorite part of life with your god?

What is your least favorite part of life with your god?

What advice would you like to give your god?

Do you wish to be assigned to a different god? []Y []N

Physical Training

The dojo is stocked with a wide variety of practice weapons, traditional and modern, to offer some practice opportunity to gods who, for example, find themselves with a sword shinki but are at risk of cutting off their own toes. It's also useful for veteran new gods wishing to train with their current partner shinki. Several magically animated straw-stuffed training dummies, many of which have been carefully mended and patched with neat black stitching, are set up on the lawn with a white-robed shinki hovering nearby to watch over them. They make good training partners, although anyone who comes too close risks being targeted for a sparring match whether they wanted one or not.

The white-robed shinki are still busy cleaning and preparing the Meeting Hall for the big annual meeting of the gods. They'll recruit anyone who looks as though they're not too busy in order to help scrub floors, weed, sweep paths and walkways, and shoo away any unwelcome little spirits that are hiding away in dark corners of the hall. Heavy lifting is good exercise... right?

Rest and Refreshments

There are casks of fresh, cold water near the dojo to make sure no one gets dehydrated, but for those who've finished working, hot tea and enough seasonal treats are available to make it look as though the Heavens bought out an entire sweet shop. They're being distributed by a few shinki in indigo-blue and plain brown robes with the sleeves tied back, who aren't above teasing the newcomers a bit.

Young shinki are playing in the nicely manicured garden, trying to catch crayfish at the lake edge, dashing around playing tag and hide-and-seek. Just be careful you don't get caught in the middle of a game of "Kagome"! If you do, you'll really be stuck until you guess someone's name.

In Summary:

• Get all the information you can handle
• Veteran new gods and shinki are welcome to volunteer showing the ropes
• Get in some training
• Enjoy a traditional tea
• Spectate if you want
• Have fun~

Comments

[sweetdeath]

The pamphlet covers most of the useful stuff, I'd say. Besides that...

[He trails off, considering the question.]

How are you doing with the phone so far? Some people don't know how to use those when they show up.

[He still doesn't think he's mastered all the extra functions.]

[lightninglobster]

[The pamphlet covers all sorts of things... but that's not helpful for someone who was alive in a world that uses magic and 'it works because it does' style technology. Ryoma and the pamphlet will have several long nights together, brow furrowed and pages well-folded and smug with their treasure trove of information.

Tsuzuki, in the moment, presents a much more interesting conundrum.]

... what is a phone?

[sweetdeath]

[Well, that sure answers that question. Tsuzuki sits back on his heels, brushes the dirt off his hands and pulls his phone out of his pocket, displaying it.]

This thing. They've made them really small! You can call other people -- uh, I mean, it lets you talk to anybody else who has one, as long as you know their phone number, and you can use it to write and read what other people write, too.

[Explaining the Internet is also really hard.]

[lightninglobster]

[In Ryoma's country, they would've burn Tsuzuki for a witch dark mage. Ryoma dusts his own hands off and comes to kneel at Tsuzuki's side, watching him fuss with the strange little brick--phone--with all the suspicious puzzlement one would usually reserve for the broken pieces of an enemy's trap, or a long forgotten artifact.]

I see.

[Only in a very literal sense, of course. Figuratively, he's blind and in the next room over, swearing at a lamp.]

How do you find these... numbers and writings?

[Reluctantly, he'll produce his own 'phone' out of a pouch hidden somewhere within the lobstery folds of his default getup, holding the thing between his gauntlet-clad fingers as if he expected it to explode, start biting, or both.]

[sweetdeath]

[And that's without his even getting into the actual dark magic he casts.

He turns the phone so that Ryoma can see its screen, tapping slowly through to his contact list and scrolling up and down.]

Yours ought to have all these numbers in it too! If you tap on one it'll let you talk to whoever's number it is.

You can try calling me if you want.

[lightninglobster]

[Great. Tsuzuki is a double witch, which means he'll need double the burning to make sure he doesn't poison the well, enthrall the people, and make them write 'Hoshido sux' in public spaces with hard to remove paint.

... in less tangentially related news because Ryoma doesn't remember anything anyway, he watches Tsuzuki dutifully, tapping at his own magic brick and frowning when it fails to respond because he's still, for all intents and purposes, wearing metal gloves, which is the least like flesh a glove can be.]

Mine appears to be broken.

[sweetdeath]

Can I see? [He reaches over to snag Ryoma's phone and prod at it for a moment. Nope, it's responding fine.]

Huh. Maybe...

[tap tap tap]

... have you tried taking your gloves off?

[lightninglobster]

Should I have?

[What kind of magic brick needed flesh to work? Ryoma was eyeing it with a hint of feudal suspicion once more, still wholly uncertain as to what the true price of using these odd devices was. Maybe this shinki and his goddess were in league with whatever dark powers controlled the magic phone bricks...

Or maybe Ryoma was just old fashioned. Either way, he removed his gauntlets with a minimum of grumbling, offering a now bare hand out to the mercy of the brick.]

Are you certain these 'phones' are harmless?

[boneofsword]

[Archer sighs.]

I said that he should consider settling here. Even if his own tale is finished, this place can be a second chance.

[sweetdeath]

Yeah, they're fancy, but they're just machines. They'll break if you step on them or get them wet.

[Not just harmless, but kind of fragile. Tsuzuki hands the phone back for Ryoma to practice.]

They work better if you touch them with your bare skin. I don't actually know how they tell...

[lightninglobster]

[Machines are for people who weren't born in ye olde Fantasy Japan-analog. Mechanists are the closest thing Ryoma might kind of remember if he squinted, and they used fancy but terrifying puppets on strings to do their bidding. It's a good thing phones are fragile--Ryoma prefers to have the ultimate option to break things when stuff starts going awry.

He takes the phone back, letting it rest flat on his palm as he proceeds to poke at it like someone's eighty year old grandfather. He's very proud of himself for not jumping when the screen flickers to life.

Dark magic is afoot here.]

That is incredibly strange and specific.

[... but Ryoma doesn't know enough about phones to really dispute it with Tsuzuki.]

So I touch which part of the screen to find the numbers, again? And then I... 'call' you?

[Somewhere a million voices went silent, as if a million beleaguered teenagers being forced to explain modern technology to their hard-of-hearing elders were suddenly wiped out. They cried for Tsuzuki, for his plight. Run, run far away before he gets to the stage where he understands wi-fi as a word but not a concept.]

[boneofsword]

[Archer notes that his apathy seems similat to aftereffects of staying in Henir's temple core. It's not reassuring. Neither is this shinki's god disappearance. Someone got two shinki in the same day?]

What's his name? [hopefully Ain won't mind Archer's rudeness. At least he's fine with staying here and chatting.]

[swordofzero]

[He's very practical. He takes his mark too.] Set.

[He smiles again, this is silly. But it is fun and it's definitely making scrubbing the floor less tedious.]

[swordofzero]

Thank you. [He glances over to where the boy has been working] So have you.

[A pause] What's your name?

[lightninglobster]

[It wasn't that Ryoma minded doing his... part in proceedings, it's just it was a little much to shove somebody with exactly half a clue what he was doing at a task.

Apparently, it wasn't even the normal task he was expected to do. The pamphlet remained half-read and somewhat untrusted as to the veracity and usefulness of its information.]

What sort of dead things do we normally do?

[He might've been half-smiling, if you squinted and were very generous with how much lip actually had to quirk to be considered a smile. At the next bit of information though, that smile turned into a bit of a wince.]

I was wondering about that. Good to know.

[He took it out on a not-that-innocent patch of crab grass. It was definitely all the grass' fault.]

[swordofzero]

[You could ask your god to release you? That surprised him but he just nodded. Four gods in less than four months was a lot, that was a high level of disappearances.]

Don't trust them? Do you think they mean harm?

[swordofzero]

Yes making sure everyone knows what they are doing is for the best. [Especially if people were arriving and disappearing all the time. It would be quite chaotic in an emergency.

Terrifying? Suzaku thought about that. It wasn't. He didn't think. He felt a bit lost. But not frightened. He could deal with whatever happened.]

[nopixiedust]

[The God is fine, kids, she's just herself. Wendy sighs.]

You're stuck there until you win.

[nopixiedust]

I am a very reliable person across the board. [At least her smile is a bit playful as he redirects the birds, and she creeps a little closer.] Do you like birds? Besides vultures, I mean.

[unlucky7]

[Ginia returns a bow of her head. She's in no rush to go anywhere, but if the conversation is over, she's not going to keep him and waste his time. So with nothing else to say and waves and departs.]

[swordofzero]

[He smiles and waves too. Watching for a moment as she departs. She was friendly, though as the first person he had spoken to it wasn't like he had a comparison. But he was sincere when he hoped she found the answer to her question, it sounded like it was weighing on her mind quite heavily]

[clothes_make_the_man]

It's all right, it was my fault. And your tail made for a soft enough landing.

[Forrest manages to laugh only slightly awkwardly.]

[clothes_make_the_man]

[The lack of recognition is all Forrest needs to know to peg Ryoma as a shinki. He manages to mostly hide the small sigh that follows his response, never breaking his own smile.]

I can help if you like. My temple has plenty of flowers, so I've gotten used to doing this sort of thing.

[all_seeing_eye]

[Futaba takes a big handful, popping several into her mouth at once. Not even shy about that. And with her mouth half full of candy:]

So, what's with the cloak?

[unlucky7]

[Suit yourself. Ginia glances from his knife to the birds as she opens up the topmost box. Four colorful lumps of mochi sit in little wrappers, two of them with decorations to make it look like a rabbit. How cute. She bites one rabbit mochi in half in a single bite, chewing the sticky sweet furiously.]

You've seen more of these than I have, but I think it's fine. The distractions.

[She looks off at a group of white-and-gold garbed shinki. They're all young children, the oldest no more than eleven, twelve, the youngest maybe four or five. But they're laughing and playing as they chase each other, practicing their borderlines. Ginia lightly tosses the half-eaten piece of mochi in the air, easily catching it and tossing it into her mouth.]

Maybe I've had mochi before. Maybe I haven't. But I know I've had it now and I know I want more. Let me have this memory when I don't have anything else. Let me have the distractions before I go back to my usual day to day.

[It's the most she's said in one go and even Ginia seems a bit surprised as her words settle in her lap, quickly busying her hands by cutting more pear pieces for the birds.]