jigokulogs | May 2022 IC Mingle

May 2022 IC Mingle

1. WELCOMING COMMITTEE

The influx of fresh Lost Souls means the factions need to have a little welcoming party for them. The leaders realize things have been chaotic in the city. So some recreational activities are in order. All Lost Souls will receive a message from their respective faction leaders with orders to go have some fun.

The Shuten Clan are given an advance on their first paycheck and told to go to the Celestial Phoenix Casino. A big sign on the half boarded up door proudly proclaims UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. What happened to the old management? It doesn't matter and stop asking questions! The important part is that all games and machines are half-price and there are special prizes available in exchange for your chips and tokens. Games range from the traditional Western style (poker, roulette, slots) to Japanese favorites (cee-lo, koi koi, cho-han).

As for prizes, they have a selection of designer goods, including some particularly nice bracelets, necklaces, and watches!

The Tamamo Clan are given a considerable number of drink vouchers for Crimson Moon Karaoke, where they can sing their hearts out and while absolutely smashed. Private rooms are cheap to rent and they even offer a special discount for groups of two or more. The karaoke machines have any songs you could possibly want, which is a little suspicious, but don't question it! Just get drunk and have fun. By all means, extend your time as you wish and drink up to get in the proper mood. This is an important bonding opportunity.

Oh yeah, as an important note: the rooms are soundproof. You can get as loud as you like, be it with singing or... something else. Don’t do anything Tenko-hime wouldn’t do!

Members of The Sutoku Alliance are given tickets to Fiance of the Funeral Procession at the Pluto Theatre and Cafe. The tickets include free food at the cafe, including beer. Sure, the star may not be a Sutoku member but that doesn't matter too much: getting butts into seats at Sutoku-owned theaters is what’s important. The Daitengu rented the theater out for the day, so there is plenty of time to mill around both before and after the show.

Make a day, or night, of it!

A funeral-based romantic comedy melodrama as the viewing fare is probably a tasteless joke on the Daitengu's part. But hey, y'all aren't still mad that they crashed their own funeral and then took off laughing, right?

Right?

The Department of the Enma members are told that they're going to be doing a team-building exercise. What exactly does that mean? That's right, it's community cleanup time! You get to clean up cans and trash in the street! You get the honor of using a department-issued bike with an attached cart to wheel around the city and pick up trash! How exciting! Teamwork is encouraged, of course. Teams that collect enough garbage will get one (1) voucher for mini-golf.

Please be aware of the local homeless population as you work, they won’t be happy to see you. They normally collect the cans in the mornings as a meager source of income that you’ll be dipping into. They're probably just not happy with Enma officials in general though. Sorry!

2. IT'S RAINING, IT'S POURING...

By the time you're done with your faction-sponsored fun, the sky has decided to open up. Hope you brought your umbrella! The rain is bad enough that walking home might not be an option right now. So take refuge in one of the many nearby nightlife spots.

Not in your faction's home territory? Doesn't matter! Make some friends outside your group or maybe get into a fight and cause some trouble. There's always the third option of ignoring everyone and drinking yourself silly instead! The rain has to let up eventually… right?

Hopefully you aren't caught near one of the cursed Haniwa figures that have been popping up around town. Their aura really dampens the mood and may even start to cause some dramatic and frightening hallucinations if you and your rain-stranded friends stay near them for too long. But remember! Do not break the figurine. Just try to move it somewhere else? And hopefully not get drenched in the process.

Welcome to the IC mingle!

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He's just passing by, keeping his own wide berth from the haniwa (his own senses jar near-instantly when he even gets near one of the things; he couldn't stop noticing them if he tried) when someone backs into him. He practically leaps away like a startled cat, almost stepping in a puddle as he goes.

He's too on edge, too wary. The figurine's terrible negative aura grates on his mind and he wishes he could do anything at all to shut it out. (Maybe he does need an eyepatch.)

"No, I think not," Kimmuriel replies warily, taking a few steps back and reaching into his pocket. He doesn't have much more than a switchblade and his kinetic barrier at his disposal, but more than that, fighting in the rain means he'd get soaked through and doing laundry is such a hassle.

"Oh come on, how can you not see it?" she said, turning to regard the, hmmm... what was he? She looked him over for just a second. The skin tone and hair were great together. Good sense of style to the look. She gave an approving nod before remembering what she was on about. On the upside? She wasn't waving her bokken around threatening, but gesturing at the haniwa.

"They're leaving these little vessels everywhere, and they affect people's moods. Oh, someone out there definitely wants a fight, and they're banking on us hunting them down. Bet you it's a bored youkai somewhere." Which? Maybe she was right, but she had to stop thinking this place was Gensokyo one of these days.

He relaxes a little, realizing she's talking about the ultra-cursed object and not just like, wanting to throw down in the street. Okay. That's easier to deal with.

(The implicit and completely inexplicable approval of his appearance is passed over by him just like. Briefly looking bewildered and then letting it go. Sure, this might as well happen.)

"You mean to say these are...bait?" He steadies himself against the inevitable spike of mental pain as he takes a few steps closer, squinting a little at the haniwa. Ugh, bad vibes. "Surely it would be more reasonable to leave bait that does not move by itself."

He's seen a few of the cursed things just...show up in random places, and then appear elsewhere. Wasn't the point of bait to stay in one spot?

Hey, she was entirely willing to throw down in the street for no good reason, but ... yeah, it was about the cursed doll things. That was definitely the intended topic anyway. For the moment, she focused on them and frowned, folding her arms before shivering. There was that heebie jeebie feeling. She didn't have an urge to break it, though. She knew better. Those things had spirits in them where she came from. Very annoying spirits who made little armies of equally annoying spirits and got into extremely annoying fights.

"They might be bait, but they might be intended to make everyone depressed, because someone's feeding on the bad vibes. Or someone might be reminding us of the old ways by throwing them in our faces. They might actually be foot soldiers of some invasion ready to go off. I really don't know what plan's involved here. It's kind of outdated crap, but it has power." A shake of her head. "The whole hunting them down thing's just par for the course. Nobody's this obvious if they don't expect to get caught eventually."

... "Well at least where I come from they aren't subtle enough for that."

Please conduct your throwdowns in the street with two or more willing participants that do not, at any time, include him, thank you very much.

He's a bit lost in the utter familiarity of how she talks about all this but he sure isn't going to show it! Or, at least, he's going to try not to. The headache the haniwa is giving him is making it hard to be his usual stoic self, though.

"And where do you come from, then?" is the only question he can think of to ask, in the face of all that. He could ruminate more on the possibilities presented by the haniwa, but there's another throbbing spike of pain that's preventing him from that. "You seem well versed in their tactics."

"Heaven, actually." There was a momentary pause and she looked around Jigoku for the duration, as if tryin to pin something down. Eventually, she frowned and folded her arms, a disturbing thought coming to her. "Well, my heaven anyway."

"All of the youkai put themselves into a valley tucked away behind a magical barrier... forget how long ago. So they're away from most humans, bored and kind of crazy. They're always getting up to hijinks. There's this whole legion of those things over there. They take on human form to fight. Never actually goes well because they stink."

Mayumi would likely take offense to the insinuation, but she didn't care. She wasn't here. "The youkai here are ... they're similar, but not the same. They're more like humans' old stories of them than what I know. Most I know take a kind of human form."

"Then this must be a significant change for you," Kimmuriel comments, looking a little more interested at the mention of heaven. This is the first person he's met who hasn't spoken of it in a theoretical, faraway sort of way. Though...even when separated from humans, it seems that they still take human forms regardless. Another oddity.

"...I would have thought that if you disliked humans so much, you wouldn't take their forms, however." What other reason would they have to seal themselves away, is his thinking.

"Not really, except I'm in hell... and there's a whole lot less gangs back home?" Yeah, the whole gang thing was new. That was the main clue she wasn't in Kansas anymore when she arrived.

"They don't hate humans. They're fascinated by them, and a bunch used to be human once. More of the rest exist because of humans and their screwed up emotions or mistakes. You'd have to ask a priest or exorcist for the whole story on it, but they're more tied to them than you might think and they only locked themselves away because humans stopped believing in them." A shrug and she shook her head, frowning while she looked at the Haniwa, squinting. Huh... some of the people she saw in the distance were starting to have faces just like those. Ok, that was officially creepier than back home. "I don't know if my assumptions are going to end up a problem. It's like looking at Haniwa that aren't exactly Haniwa."

"Interesting. I cannot fathom why all of you continue to be so interested in humans, but I suppose it would be more obvious if I was one of your kind." Belief, being human once, or because they were the result of human error...it seems like just more reason to cut away from such dependency, but perhaps they couldn't after all.

He glances at her, and then where she's looking. He can't quite see it...yet, anyway.

"What do you mean by that?"

Edited 2022-05-22 15:15 (UTC)

"Well..." She thought about it for a long time, closing her eyes. This actually took more thought for her because she really didn't think about this sort of thing. Her lips pursed into a frown and she groaned before finally sighing and nodding just once, thinking she had an idea. "Think of it this way. They're the spawn of that emotion, that bad feeling. So that is what they are. So, say some youkai pops into existence because it's a drum humans neglected to play. All it can think about is that it's a drum. It wants to be played. Play me! Play me! Fine, I'm going to screw up your day until you pay attention to me. I'm not supposed to exist. If you played me I'd just be a happy drum people are playing. Really? You're not playing me? I'm going to ruin your life. Will you notice me now?"

She snorted. "Youkai are really whiny like that. Pretty sure Reimu'd say it was kind of tragic." She really didn't know how to put it well. She wasn't the most empathetic of people explaining the tragedy of a youkai's existence.

"In my world, the Haniwa have all taken on a personified form as an armed legion. You'd still see the clay statues, but you might see the spirits within, in old-world styles of armor. It's similar but not the same. These... almost seem without a real soul."

"So they cling on from desperate spite," he concludes, after absorbing that for a moment. "I suppose that is logical enough, as reasons go." What a way to gain an existence, though...it seems a bit miserable, even to him, to have that be a focal point to base your life around.

(Not that most drow do much better with their lives, but at least they're not thrust into existence because of it.)

He frowns at the mention of souls. "I thought as much," he replies, almost half to himself as much as actually replying to her. "They seem to have no minds at all. If they did, I would have heard them by now."

It was extremely miserable. There was a reason that many true exorcists, as opposed to her, actually felt little more than pity for a lot of youkai. Though that wasn't always true for every one of them. "Yeah... that works for a bunch of them, though it varies. There's tens of thousands of kinds."

"Oh, you deal in that sort of thing? I'm guessing based on what I can see, and that isn't much. These seem more like they're enchanted with energy or a curse. Definitely not the same as a real Haniwa." A pause and she frowned. "Those are more ... vessels for spirits to serve as a guardian. Think of them like magical soldiers guarding places."

Totally golems. Absolutely clay golems.

"Tens of thousands," he repeats, thoughtfully, digesting that and falling silent for a moment. It's a lot to take in.

"...I admit I had not considered they were guarding anything," he says, after a moment as he stares at the haniwa. He glances up and startles when people walking by briefly have the same faces, and then scowls at the thing. Man he hates this already.

"They seem to be here purely to make their maker's displeasure known, as far as I can tell. I have some experience with guardian statues, but they are not normally so...small."

When the word was basically a catch-all for 'spiritual monsters' there could be a bit of variety. It definitely got a little dizzying at times. "You're right," she muttered, folding her arms and staring at the thing, ignoring the constant nagging sensation that the curse within was screwing with her head. Nope. Not looking at other people's creepy faces right now. Nope. "These aren't guarding anything, much less guarding a tomb. They're not doing what they're supposed to be, and they feel almost empty."

A shake of her head. "They're only small until they manifest in my world. Then they're full sized people. But that's there, not here."

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May 2022 IC Mingle

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