27 - The Gods' Meeting

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: The Meeting of the Gods is here at last.
When: October 30
Where: Heaven's Meeting Hall
Summary:







Pre-Meeting

Guards at the front door are carefully checking each god who enters off on their list of attendees, and taking the names of each of their shinki attendants.

Once the participants are past the doors, they are guided down the hallway to a huge meeting room by one of the guards, who will announce them by divine title, and each of their shinki by whatever name they gave. It's an open question as to who's actually listening, though, because the room is swiftly filling up with gods and shinki. As well as the newcomers, old gods are here, some in human form attended by their uniformed shinki, others in stranger shapes -- giant bears, round-bellied tanuki, turtles, dragons, and more. There's even one tricolored tabby cat in a small blue cap, seated majestically in the arms of a uniformed shinki and chatting with another god.

Buffet tables bearing every kind of food and drink imaginable are set up at one end of the room, and a dais with a podium is at the other, draped in bright gold and white bunting and emblazoned with a chrysanthemum emblem.

Early Announcements

Finally, the socialization comes to an end, and the meeting itself begins as Ookuninushi grabs the microphone and steps up to the podium. The year's most popular gods are named first: Hotei, one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, is in third place, Tenjin in second and Ebisu in first place. Each steps up to bow and accept their accolades in turn: Hotei is a big man with a wide smile, Tenjin a tall, ascetic man wearing old robes and concealing his smug expression behind a fan, and a tired-looking younger man in a business suit announces himself as representing Ebisu, who is watching over the Near Shore during the event.

Next, the most popular new god is announced: Ookuninushi has to stop and wrinkle his nose at the name for several seconds before he pronounces it-- Nekhbet, a new arrival in the Heavens.

He moves on to call for a moment of silence recognizing the difficulties of the last year. Many gods have faced reincarnation and returned wearing unfamiliar faces! The Heavens can't yet explain the cause of these changes, but Amaterasu herself urges them to welcome their friends' new incarnations as brothers and sisters in the Heavens.

His final announcement is that, after the successful resolution of the trouble associated with some recent deaths, Orihime has been restored to her place among the eight million gods.

Fortune Weaving

Announcements finished, the main activity of the evening begins. The white-robed shinki bring in huge baskets filled with wooden prayer plaques, setting them down all around the room, and the gods begin to form into circles around each basket. The older gods will gladly explain to any confused newcomers that they're weaving fortunate connections between mortal lives as they spread the plaques out and tie strings off together with great care. All the plaques have names written on them; some are filled out with prayers, some just with notes, and others adorned with pictures of flowers, animals or favorite characters.

Gods and shinki are given blank plaques to inscribe with their own names, too, in order to give them the chance to make fortunate connections as well. (Not necessarily romantic, the other gods will assure them! There are many different kinds of fated connection.)

Help out, take the opportunity to chat, and make some fortunate matches for yourself as well as these hard-working petitioners.

Midnight Disaster

Just shy of midnight, while the gods are still matching up plaques, finishing the last of the banquet, and getting into drunken arguments over who to connect to whom, a shinki in a dark suit torn at the shoulder comes dashing into the Meeting Hall.

"Calamity!" he cries-- and tells the assembled Heavens that a mysterious blight has fallen across a sleepy residential community in the Tokyo suburbs. The blight, a huge circle covering about two blocks, is sucking the life out of everything inside it: plants are wilting, and people and animals have fallen into deathly slumber. As if that weren't bad enough, it's also attracting big, dangerous ayakashi. Ebisu and his shinki are there now, but there aren't enough of them to fight the ayakashi and move the people trapped inside the blighted circle to a safer place before they die.

Volunteers will need to fight ayakashi and rescue the mortals trapped in the blight -- once they're outside its edge, they'll begin to wake up and recover on their own.

In Summary:

• Enjoy the banquet before the announcements
• Hear about the most popular gods
• Help make fortunate connections for the living
• Respond to a disaster
• Have fun~

Comments

Fortune Weaving

[replicatedform]

Magic, I suppose.

[Yamanbagiri idly guess, looking at the blank plaque in his hands. Looking up, he blinks for a moment when he see it's D2.]

Or something powerful like that.

[smilingbullet]

Ah-...

[ He wasn't technically talking about that....though maybe he meant that too. ]

Hhmmh, yeah, I guess it might be something like that. Even if I'm not entirely sure if the original gods would call it magic.

[replicatedform]

[He tilts his head, thinking.]

Probably... Gods are like a force of nature? Magic probably isn't the best term for it.

[This plaque isn't going to write itself, but does he want to?]

Are you going to do this?

[smilingbullet]

Yeah, they are.. Sometimes they're even representations of nature.

[ But he's come to think more of his own religion than this. He sends a beaming smile Yamanbagiri's direction. ]

I guess I ought to at least give it a try.

[replicatedform]

[He nods and look at his plaque again.]

I would mind trying it. It just feels strange to make these... connections for people.

[He's a shinki, not a god.]

Or for myself.

[smilingbullet]

It is strange, yeah, and feels a bit like invasion of privacy, sort of, but if this is who it works...

[ Yet he's not entirely comfortable with it, yet he knows that this is the way it works. ]

It feels like cheating to do it for yourself?

[replicatedform]

That's what I'm thinking but...

[He looks at D2, and then at his plaque.]

... Is it cheating if both side agrees to it?

[smilingbullet]

Hmmm...

[ D2 scratches the hairline at the back of his neck. ]

I guess that depends on who you're asking? But I'd say a bit of yes and a bit of no, maybe?

[replicatedform]

I think so? Both of them would agree to it, but it doesn't exactly say how their fortunes together will end up.

[So that makes it... only a "little" cheating in his mind.]

[smilingbullet]

I'm not sure we can determine that either way, at least entirely. I have no doubts that a lot of these things or couples or whatever will just fizzle our or something, it'd not for someone to decide what a person actually feels. But if you want to create some sort of trigger that might lead anywhere I guess that's what you could do? Even if you're not sure where it'll go.

[replicatedform]

I guess... I need to think about this a little more. I'm not really sure if a shinki can do this. But...

[He glance around. Both gods and shinkis are doing this activity, so it's okay?]

It's... I need to think about it. Even after talking about it, the idea is still strange to me.