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

Pre-Meeting

[replicatedform]

[Between all the gods and their accompanying shinki in attendance, Yamanbagiri immediately spot Celestia. She just seems to stand out to him. Maybe because he previously know her?

Or because she's standing there and causing traffic. He could make out the confused, and maybe annoyed expressions from the people behind her, before they try to walk around her. Feeling concerned, he walks over towards her.]

Hey. Are you alright?

[letteropener]

[Being addressed is all she needs to shake her out of her sudden fit of mood; she blinks once, quickly, then turns to face him with a smile that shows nothing of her inner thoughts.] Oh, my apologies, I'm blocking traffic, aren't I? I'm quite all right, thank you.

[replicatedform]

[He gives a nod.]

Yeah... [They should probably keep going. She's smiling right now, but he wonders if she's really feeling alright.] Do you want company?

[letteropener]

I'll never turn down company. [At least, certainly not here and now. As for how she's feeling, well -- he's right to wonder. Celestia is excellent at hiding her inner thoughts when she wishes to do so.] Would you care to go to the buffet first, or mingle a bit?

[replicatedform]

[She's not opposed to it. Which is good. If she decline him, he would be worried but respect it.] The buffet sounds good. You can count on them to host good food here.

[And maybe eating delicious food might help a little?]

[letteropener]

Perhaps the food will have a little more diversity now, too. [As an herbivore, that would be very nice.]

[Celestia leads the way towards the table, since her bulk is more suited towards making a path through the crowds and keeping it open.]

[replicatedform]

They usually have a lot of different food.

[Seeing as she's a horse... pony... unicorn, he's thinking back to all the food he remembered being served at previous gatherings. Fruit, vegetables... Hm, does she eat the same type of food as horses?

He follows after Celestia, looking at her. He's a little more used to her, but it's still a little amazing to see a winged horse to him.]

[letteropener]

Not quite as much as I'd like. A lot of them have meat mixed in, to some extent. I don't mean to complain, but I can't eat that.

[She likely could if she assumed a human or other animal's form, but the psychological barrier is simply too great.]

But now I think I am not the only herbivore here.

[replicatedform]

Have you thought about letting someone know? And they could pass it onto the chefs for next time.

[Before long, they arrive at the table of food. Yamanbagiri moves to stand next to Celestia, his eyes glancing over at the food. Since they just talked about it, he's checking to see how many vegetarian dishes there are.]

... Did you see someone?

[letteropener]

I saw many of the old gods here. [She flicks her head over to the assemblage at large, particularly with the many who have animal forms.]

[replicatedform]

[He looks over and see the gods. And most notably, the number of animal gods he can see from here. Ah... that's probably the case?]

All the animal ones, right?

[letteropener]

Precisely so. [Though the line on which creatures are 'animals' is a tenuous one at best.] It does raise a number of questions.

[replicatedform]

What kind of questions? [He turns to look at her, foregoing getting something to eat for a moment.]

[letteropener]

Why is the balance of new gods so heavily weighted towards humans, for example? Why are the shinki entirely huamn?

[replicatedform]

[He thinks for a moment.]

... I'm not sure. I know that it's mostly humans we're working with. If it's that, it makes sense. [But Celestia isn't a human.] Otherwise... there's probably another reason.

[letteropener]

It is more complicated than that. All of these gods are gods of the Near Shore, which is exclusively populated by humans. So clearly humans can have nonhuman gods.

Why do they not?