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

[nopixiedust]

I guess so... but ignoring all the deeper stuff- [Because Wendy has a feeling she could go on about a lot of stuff, especially that second bit.] -is the bar that low? Just basic human decency?

[onehandsomeslickninja]

It's a start. [Let's be honest: does everyone meet that standard? Here or elsewhere?] But there's a difference between saying something, even believing something, and then fighting for it. Words aren't actions.

[nopixiedust]

So you want someone.... [She taps her fingers along a plaque.] Proactive?

[onehandsomeslickninja]

At the very least, willing to back up what they believe with action. That's often if not always on a battlefield of one sort or another. Even around here, if someone could just watch an ayakashi go after some people and say 'not my problem', that would be a deal-breaker.

[nopixiedust]

And what's a battlefield to you, then?

[onehandsomeslickninja]

Good question. I'm used to fighting with sword and shuriken and ninjutsu, so I think of it instinctively as that. But there are other options, aren't there? In the Far Shore arguing politics with the gods is just as challenging and just as important.

[nopixiedust]

Mhm, that's right. So you'll want to keep an open mind, huh~?

[onehandsomeslickninja]

It's a good point. But there's a certain... spark, an energy, that someone has. A drive to live up to their convictions. I think that's really what it amounts to. And I think it will shine through, regardless of the bartlefield.

"bartlefield"

[nopixiedust]

So, basically, you want someone who's active, with a goal. Does that sound about right?

excellent, I use my terrible writing to distract from my terrible RP :)

[onehandsomeslickninja]

I think that's a pretty good start! It's not that simple in practice of course, but it sounds like someone like that would catch my eye for sure.

[nopixiedust]

Then I think the obvious solution is to find a cause to fling yourself at, and see who else jumps in with you. Two birds with one stone!

[onehandsomeslickninja]

As soon as I find one that isn't so morally grey I can't fling myself at it so much as tiptoe in, that's a great idea!

[nopixiedust]

Well, good luck with that. [Wendy goes right back to matchmaking.] Sometimes things aren't so clearcut.

[onehandsomeslickninja]

And sometimes they are, if you don't let yourself get bogged down. But around here, 'fight ayakashi, help the living' is a pretty easy cause to get behind in general. So I'm not too worried.