41 - Cultist Arc Finale

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
When: June 2nd 2017
Where: Mostly the Near Shore
What: Tracking down cultists to remove them as threats to Heaven, erase as much of their presence from the Near Shore as possible, and consequences of such







With it being made clear that the cult's influence was scattered throughout not just Japan but spread far and wide, the gods of the Far Shore have been asked to assemble in the same place where Conclaves normally happen. Bishamonten is assigned the task of rallying the old gods, while Orihime is given the same duty for the new gods. Essentially, the old gods will be working in Japan and the new gods elsewhere. Both Bishamonten and Orihime have a long list of individuals and their last known locations with vague descriptions, collected by those who went out hunting them on Heavens' behalf when everyone was last gathered. ("A Different Sort of Hunt")

Orihime gathers the new gods at her home along the river. Outside her small abode, there are several soulless shinki pulled from their temple. Ostensibly, they are to help any new gods who don't have a shinki available to create the Cutting ties or Rend effects, but no one is there to stop a shinki from commanding them as well.

Orihime will direct the gods to many places in the Scandinavian countries of Europe, south as far as Italy, west to the United Kingdom, and east as far as Belarus and Ukraine. Meanwhile, another contingent is sent to Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the South Pacific / Oceania islands around there. There's even some scattered across the Americas - north in Alaska and the Yukon as far south as Chile and Argentia. Getting to any region requires the permission of a Near Shore god with a local shrine there to teleport, or a much more mundane plane trip.

Since this is all taking place over an extended period of time - roughly 48 hours - new gods are welcome to jump around the regions at their own choosing, not restricted to just one place.

Cutting Ties

Tracking down the cultists won't be easy. Some of their last known locations just confirmed their home addresses, work addresses, school addresses, etc. It's not like there's a GPS on them! However, with the address being specific to a city and country, along with a description of the person involved, it's possible to track down the rank-and-file cultists in these places beyond Japan. Many of them you won't even need to speak to, just find them and use a shinki to cut the string of fate that binds them to their cult activities, spell knowledge, and awareness of Heaven.

It's possible to run into other gods and shinki, though! Especially in major hubs of regular human activity, the cult was able to thus recruit more people to their causes. Maybe you can team up, swap information based on who you're looking for, that sort of thing.

Blight Circles

Where the human cultist recruits favored larger cities, their blight circles are much farther into countrysides - where they were less likely to be disturbed while the cultists crafted them. These circles are fairly simple in their lasting impressions: spellwork in a large circle on the ground, dead or dying flora for double the diameter of such a circle, and powerful ayakashi drawn to their vicinity. Strike down the ayakashi gathering there, purify the area if you can with magic or holy water, and physically break the circle's symbols. Particularly large blight circles might have been crafted near a Vent, increasing the likelihood of powerful ayakashi being there.

The larger and more powerful an ayakashi, the more Rend attacks it will take to bring them down. Maybe you can survive a long battle with one, or maybe you work together as a team with another god / soulless-wield shinki? The choice is up to you!

Cult Hubs

In the true cultural capitals of the world, there is a single Cult Hub - a physical building that was under the governance of a higher cultist official, where spellwork training and other informational sessions took place. Note that these hubs are not always the capitals of their countries, as with New York City or Los Angeles, Toronto or Munich, Sydney or Quezon City. The physical structures where cultists met have a wealth of inventory to look through and either dispose of or use in future efforts for the Heavens. It might not be glamorous work, but it could offer surprising rewards.

Event Bonus:
A thread of 10+ comments earns a character a random item that would have been stored at the cult hub. As with other missions involving "random item" rewards, players can give the mods 3 choices for review and we'll reply with a comment about any choice which might be too powerful / not suitable, or players can ask for the mods to give them 2-3 random items and pick only one as their reward.

Between Scenes / Afterward

As everyone returns to the Far Shore between their major efforts on the Near Shore, recovering from the battles, enlisting backup, or simply looking for another assignment from Orihime, you might still bump into one another, particularly around Orihime's home or down the river in either direction. Feel free to use this as a kind of catchall space or a place to look for healing, food, and sleep with your fellows from the Far Shore.

Alternatively, this could all happen when the last assignments have been handed out and people start to disperse back to their own temples.

Event Bonus: Gift Baskets!

For Gods and Shinki alike, Orihime will provide a gift basket to each and every character, customized as much as possible. This will include, among other things, an article of clothing with a wondrous power unlike any she's made before. Players can request what these items are OOCly, kind of like book requests in the library, but we hope it can to be something you as a player truly feel like is a reward to your character for having come this far.

To claim this reward, simply reply to the Orihime OOC comment below with your desired item and its ability to begin the discussion. Remember: Orihime would avoid granting items that help in battle; rather they're meant to enhance the character's everyday life, make their hobbies easier or more fun, that sort of thing. Example abilities might include: hover-style flight, lite elemental resistance, green-thumb plant growth boost, etc. - they're just tied to the item.

An IC week after the event, gift baskets will be delivered, along with an Epilogue announcement on the BBS.

Event Bonus (all prompts):
A thread of 10+ comments will gain 150 followers / 15 exp per thread.



In Summary:

• Travel the world
• Hunt down the last vestiges of the cult's influences
• Get goodies
• Await the epilogue announcement
• Have fun~

Comments

[hypomeneo]

[Waver blinks, expression suddenly owlish.

UM. He sure could have asked for help. Ahhhh... er... uh... it was in the way and he just didn't think and started pulling.

His cheeks flush pink and he scratches the back of his neck.]

Oh. Sorry. Got carried away.

Next time?

[B rank strength sure trumps E rank strength, even though he can buff it up with Reinforcement magic and his own God power. Not that he's complaining. It's still more strength than he was ever allowed before the fusion.

There's a military grade steel cup that's a testament to the fact he's still learning how to wield it. He's better now than before, but still he slips time to time.

Waver peers down the hole and the stairs descending into darkness. His fingers touch the edge of the wall. The energy is faded, but it's old. How old? It'll take a few more moments to know, but everything presented here shows that the cultists are taking advantage of the location. That'll factor into how much resistance they'll face as they go deeper into their lair.

The flicker of firelight in the distance is foreboding. Why is nobody stopping them? Surely they've been noticed by now.

Waver hopes they aren't walking into a trap. More dust comes out on the palm of his hand, and Waver blows it forward on a magecraft enhanced breeze to help detect any magical traps before them.]

Potential trap? It's suspicious that there's been no reaction to us...

I know the lower level cultists can be blinder to us than normal mortals, but either we've not been noticed yet or we've been expected.

[And yes, what the hell are they burning? The more this goes on, the more on edge he becomes.]

[towards_okeanos]

[Iskandar just laughs...and it's not his brightest idea because that means he inhales more of the smoke and the stench and ends coughing while trying not to breath in more of this filth.]

There's nothing to be sorry about. I'm just happy our training is bringing results.

[Not in actual strength. That would or will not improve depending on how much they're are susceptible to physical change as gods. More in awareness of the strength. Waver acknowledging, even if only to himself, that he's capable of such actions. Teaching Waver technical side of fighting is one thing. Showing him what he's truly capable of is Iskandar's real objective. It is in moments like this that he sees his efforts are not in vain. And that makes him glad.

This place does not. Iskandar looks down the stairs. There exists another possibility. It's true that if this is a cultist hide-out or a workshop they should encounter opposition. As they do not, it might as well be that the owners abandoned it believing they don't have enough strength to defend it. Considering the fire burning down below, it could have been quite recently.]

Trap or not. There's only one way to find out.

[The walls of the staircase are covered with reliefs. Most of the worn with age and countless people touching them while seeking support in their descent. No wonder, the stairs are small and steep. The reliefs themselves don't look like any other art he saw on the surface. Iskandar wouldn't call them primitive, the lines are too elegant, just ... simple. It starts with birds near the entrance, then the fish, dolphins - or at least creatures that resemble dolphins - but the lower they go the stranger the shapes on the walls become. Animals, yes, there are no people, but still creatures he would associate with myths rather than any living thing. Long, thin legs, joints in weird places and tentacles. A whole lot of tentacles. People here truly must have loved their sea creature if they choose to depict them here so high in the mountains.

When it ends it opens to a small cavern. A natural one, no doubt enlarged by human hands, filled with milky smoke. There are ghastly shadows of surprisingly modern furniture on both sides but what's really interesting is a burning pile right in the middle. There is no corpse that Iskandar suspected to be the source of the stench.
Just a pile of ... things? Feathers, something that looks like a feather crown or a headdress, a feather mantle, and a small mountain of ropes. With many knots of various shapes and sizes on them. More importantly, made from human hair. All of it generously doused with gasoline.]

There is no dead body but someone definitely was destroying evidence here.

[He has no idea what to make of it.]

[hypomeneo]

[Waver smiles brightly at that for a moment, that wary expression fading away, before coming back full force as they step into the darkness.]

Indeed.

[It's a quiet descent and Waver studies the reliefs as they pass them with the same intensity as he studies the darkness. Looking for clues in both about motive and the situation they are steadily striding into. They're easily recognizable at first - birds, animals, fish - but as they go down, Waver has to rack his brain to place them. Are the motifs depicting a descent to the underworld? That would invoke Supay - the Incan pantheon's god of death, who did reside underground in the underworld called Ukhu Pacha, and also the leader of a race of demons.

Granted his knowledge of Meso-American religions and culture could use a brush up and Waver would prefer not to make any conclusions until he has further evidence of what's going on in the progression. That pantheon is large and there are plenty of deities that aren't depicted as human.

Waver's face scrunches up as they reach the fire. Hair. That explains the stench. But the modern furniture... This place... a meeting place or a safehouse? Waver runs his eyes over the surroundings as he walks around the fire to begin to investigate the surroundings.]

And nobody seemingly around to monitor the burn. [Key word: seemingly.] Makes me wonder now if they're trying to escape and set up again somewhere else, without leaving any traces for us to follow.

You think they were tipped off?

[Which would make sense with the cultists' cell structure to their organization.]

These all look like things that would be used in Inti's ceremonies, among other things. The feathered objects of clothing look like those that are worn by priests of the Incan religion. The knotted ropes... well... I've heard that the Incans used a sort of set up like this for record keeping and data management. Including that of ritual.

Quipu, I believe they're called.

The question is... what were they doing with these things before?

[towards_okeanos]

[Tipped off? They might have been. He talked to many people. Some of them might have been cultists and he hasn't even realised.]

It's possible. [Iskandar lets out a sigh. That's why he always had scouts do that kind of work for him. That's not his speciality. It's as probable he said something as it is that the cultists figured it out on their own.]

I asked questions. Some of them very specific. Maybe I asked the wrong ones or directed them at the wrong people.

[Iskandar looks up. There's a rustling sound he's hearing from the moment they entered this cave. At first, he was sure it's the flames but as they came closer the sound didn't change. Now he's almost sure this is not the fire. As if someone was dragging a bunch of dried leaves on the rocks.]

The owners might not be at home but I think we're just to meet their defence system.

Keep your bow ready. There's something crawling on the ceiling.

[hypomeneo]

[Not good. Perhaps they left some personal items in the cave for Waver to track? Their orders from Heaven were very clear. Root out the cultists and neutralize the threat non lethally by severing their connections to their memories of their practices and activities.

(which says a lot about other matters when it comes to shinki and their memories. it makes him angry.)]

Maybe. Or they got a call from another lo--

[Waver stops short and listens. The point about a high level leader in the know tipping off another location, despite the cells being purposely as isolated from another for security purposes is forgotten for the moment.

An arrow forms in his hand as he notches it on the bowstring. Not a vessel power per say, as a bonded soulless doesn't receive one, but more a feature of the weapon Eirene has become. He aims at the sound, eyes narrowing at the dark.]

Figures. Things were too easy.

[One hairy leg... one massive hairy leg slides out to the edge of the light...]

Oh...

I hate spiders.

[Who invited the ayakashi cousin of Shelob from Lord of the Rings anyway?

Still... better than snakes.]