April Training

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone
What: Information and Training
When: November 6th
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 rear of 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 a much nicer room than the warehouse where the last set of new gods got their informational speech. It's a smaller meeting room, with tatami floors and a small dais at the front of the room where the speaker stands. 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.

Butterfly spirits are swarming the flower garden to one side of the dojo, fluttering across bright pink late-blooming cosmos. Shinki who want to practice more precise borderline aim can try using them to gently herd the butterflies one way or another, or, if their borderlines aren't quite that good yet, they can try to catch one with a net. Just be careful! It would be a shame to hurt them.

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.

The animated training dummies are missing this week, although the mundane ones are still intact on their stakes; the white-robed shinki who has previously been seen looking after them is wandering among the mundane training dummies, muttering, making notes to himself and swearing under his breath. Anyone who stares at him for too long, god or shinki, newcomer or established, is going to find him marching over and assigning them a task. Measure the air temperature in each square foot of the dojo, determine the exact height of each dummy and the location where it's most likely to be hit by opponents of different heights, hook an accelerometer to someone's sleeve while they smack a dummy around -- there seem to be hundreds of little, fiddly measurements he needs, and he's not taking no for an answer.

Rest and Refreshments

There are casks of fresh, cold water near the dojo to make sure no one gets dehydrated, and a fresh autumn-themed lunch will be served a little after noon. Rice with mushrooms, salt-grilled fish, roasted sweet potatoes and fresh fruit are on the menu; the shinki will try to accommodate any special dietary requests, and both the new arrivals and more experienced volunteers are welcome to partake.

One of the white-robed shinki has a whole pack of half-grown puppies that she seems to be trying to train. A few have mastered sitting, a few have figured out how to fetch, and all of them are young and excited enough that they're dashing off in all directions at the least provocation. Watch out! Dog incoming! Maybe she needs some help with that?

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
• Play with the dogs
• Spectate if you want
• Have fun~

Comments

[unlucky7]

I hope you find him soon enough or he finds you.

[Ginia considers her own arrival as she looks around the familiar grounds. It's the third time she's come to one of these training sessions. Funny how time can fly. Funny how much things can change within a span of a week, once so excited and anxious to meet her god, and then...]

I hope it goes well.

[letteropener]

As do I. Thank you.

[She can't help but be slightly skeptical. Not because she believes she'll be matched with somepony utterly unsuitable, but simply because her shinki have disappeared twice now. Though logic tells her she can't be at fault, nonetheless it is an uncomfortable pattern.]

[But she will continue on nonetheless, as she always does.]

[Unconsciously, her thoughts have gone down a line not terribly dissimilar from Ginia's, and after a moment she voices a question.]

Can you tell me what it is like, from a shinki's perspective?

[unlucky7]

[Ginia's immediate instinct is to say it doesn't matter and wave off the question, but she curbs the urge and mulls on the question as she eats her small pile of fresh fruit.

Would her answer be different if she'd been assigned Caster from the start? Or even Celestia or any other god she'd met that day? It was hours before she met Nona, and while she appreciates and misses her first god, her life in Nona's care and Caster's have been drastically different.]

It's not very fair, is it. We're told we're dead and that we're here to serve someone we've never met before and help them. And then we have to hope our god shows up in a timely manner. After that, it's hoping our god is someone good or someone who will take care of us.

[Ginia picks at the bits of mikan pith under her nails as her message plays, adding on to her message after it finishes playing.]

Wouldn't it be better if shinki could choose their gods instead of being assigned?

[letteropener]

[This -- is a difficult perspective to offer, when on a personal level she quite agrees with Ginia. Nevertheless, duty and respect bind Celestia to speak what she has gathered.]

[She bows her head slightly, not quite looking at Ginia.]

The reason shinki transmit emotions to their gods, and the reason shinki sting gods when they feel guilt... It is to keep the gods from becoming monsters. They are old, they lose perspective of time, in fact they may never understand how mortal minds work to begin with. Shinki are the check on that behavior. If shinki chose their gods, then the ones who might need that restraint would no longer have it.

The system was never designed with the desires of the shinki in mind. [Celestia looks back up at Ginia, sadness all through her smile and showing in the slight droop of her ears and wings.] I think for the new gods and shinki, it would work very well, but I am not sure the Far Shore can change that way. Not so quickly as we are forcing them to operate.

[unlucky7]

[It's bullshit. It's not like shinki asked to be the moral compass to their gods, it's not like they even asked to be shinki in the first place. It also raises a question around soulless shinki; are they meant be nothing more than weapons if they can't serve as a compass?

But it's bullshit because it's not like the new gods don't have an understanding of mortal minds and lives. Most were - are - human themselves. But such is the system created by the old.

Ginia looks out at the other shinki around, so many garbed in white-robes, so happy to serve and do their duty. It's not that she isn't either; so much has changed in the short time she's been Caster's shinki. He's a good god, affectionate and caring, so laid back and yet so fierce in battle. He was a choice she made on her behalf and he accepted her. Is it fine because he already has two other shinki as his guides? That it doesn't matter if she's a broken compass because there atw two others to point the way?

How does a god find perspective when there are hundred of compasses all pointing different ways?]

It's a flawed system. If a god becomes a monster, let them die. It's not like there are a shortage of gods around.

[letteropener]

It may be... it may be that nopony set up this system. That it is simply the way it is, for gods and shinki, much in the same way we have rules of life we accept such as eating and breathing.

[She hates to say it, and saying it to Ginia hurts double. Celestia agrees. The system is poor from top to bottom, unfair to the shinki and ineffective at keeping the gods any more than neutral in the affairs of people and even the Far Shore. But to rip it up injudiciously would be dangerous indeed, and likely would require the consent and aid of almost every god there is.]

[Quite unlikely, when the gods gain the benefit of servants from it.]

I am sorry.

[Sorry that she can't just agree, sorry that she has to think about these things in such depth. Sorry, in a way, for being her, because this is not the quiet support and agreement Ginia is seeking.]

A god who becomes a monster might die, in time, but I worry how much harm they might cause in the meantime. I have --

[Here Celestia stops abruptly, almost biting down the words. She'd almost let slip what she always vowed not to.]

[unlucky7]

[Her statement is one of anger, but even now Ginia knows killing a god-turned-monster is not as simple as it sounds. If a god does fall, is the fault of the shinki - who can only live as they know how to live - or some other factor? What is a monster and who is the one deciding that?

Ginia glances over as Celestia obviously cuts her words short, waits for her to continue, looks away when there's nothing more.

At the end of the day, Celestia is a god and Ginia is a shinki.

And they are so, so, many ways to hurt a shinki.]

May your shinki be a good compass.

[And with that, Ginia packs up the remains of her lunch to leave.]