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

[mithrarin]

[It isn't just how long it lasted, but how long it was going to last -- because nowhere in the punishment was the possibility of it being lifted ever written. That crossed the line.]

Maybe if it was natural... Cherry blossoms are just part of the cycle. No one's forcing them not to bloom the rest of the year.

I'm glad the gods could see reason. That... wasn't what I was expecting, to be honest.

[sanzohoshi]

[This isn't the time to argue, really, and Sanzang's not sure she could even explain herself well. In the end, he's not wrong, so it doesn't particularly matter.]

Gods are notorious for getting set in their ways, that's true. I think it comes from being so old sometimes!

But that's a good sign, if the gods are willing to listen to people and change their minds. This Heaven is different from the one I know, but it's nice that they're all still capable of growth and change... Maybe there's still hope for this place yet!

[mithrarin]

Yeah. I was... worried.

[Because if the gods maintained power in cruel and unjust tyranny, he had only one other option.]

It wasn't perfect, but perfect's too much to hope for. In the end, it was done. That's what counts, right?

[sanzohoshi]

Haha, if everything was perfect the first time, it'd be a little boring, right?

[She hums and nods] And Orihime seems happy now. [Curiously she adds:] Does she know it was you guys who did it?

[mithrarin]

Everyone helped. [At least, he doesn't know who didn't help, and enough people rallied behind Orihime during her test or whatever you want to call it that she'd won the approval of the Far Shore.] But yeah, she knows I was the one who started it. She almost begged me not to interfere... I don't think I'll remind her of that.

[sanzohoshi]

[Begged not to interfere? Hm. Well, it worked out for Orihime in the end, so it's probably fine.]

That's good, at least. [If she's indebted to the and knows who pushed to help...]

We could all definitely use one of the older gods on our side! Though since she's been away, I doubt she knows anything too useful about our situation... Still, it's a good start. And more friends and allies is always a good thing.

[Not that she's not glad for Orihime, buuttt. Saznang's thinking about this practically too]

[mithrarin]

[Orihime had been afraid for him. And to be fair, he does owe Fuujin an open-ended favor. Not sure how that's going to play out...]

I get the impression Orihime is at least reasonably well-liked. And she wasn't 'away' so much as just out of the loop, but right now there isn't much of a loop at all. The old gods...

[Well, just look at them. They don't seem to have any plan or unity or even certainty as to what to do with all the new gods and shinki.]

[sanzohoshi]

The old gods are doing their best with the information they have, surely. [Sanzang will say diplomatically, laughing a little.]

It's a little worrisome if upper management does have any actual clue what's going on... Still, if people keep poking the hornet's nest, we should prepare as best we can in case it retaliates, you know?

Not that we should view every ally as some pawn or something, but...

[mithrarin]

But not every ally is a friend, either. [And sometimes the lines are even murkier.] What worries me is less that they don't know what's going on, and more that they don't seem to have much of a response to it. Either they're that hard to move to action... or it's hidden from us.

[sanzohoshi]

That's true! But we should put in a little trust if we want to get some in return. Even if we still keep the at a distance...

Haha! What a complicated dance.

I don't think most of the gods act without Amaterasu-sama's direction first. So if we want anything to get done, we probably have to go through her.

[mithrarin]

[Her dance comment gets a laugh out of Dust. He can't argue with that!]

Mmm, depends. Fuujin was the one we went through to get Orihime some help. There are a few of the old and really respected gods, though I think Amaterasu may be the friendliest of them all.