June Announcements

[godsoffortune]

June Announcements

We sincerely apologize for the delay in this posting and the event due to multiple mod illnesses.



Happenings

The Near Shore

Summertime is heating up on the Near Shore!

• Rice-planting culminated in May, but that means that a variety of local festivals are celebrating its completion during the first half of June! The most celebrated one is in Otaue on June 14 at the famous Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine in Osaka, Japan. It's said to be a favorite of Lady Suijin's.


• While June is home to many seasonal flavors, a growing trend in Tokyo is Matcha Dessert Buffets! Don't miss out on these delicacies!


• Love cats? All throughout the month of June in Naramachi, a section of the city Nara, hosts the Nyaramachi Neko Art Festival. There are giant cardboard cutouts, pottery, capsule toy machines, artwork, clothing, and jewelry all available for purchase in local shops! For the felines themselves, there's local initiatives spaying and neutering the strays, while attempting to find homes for them, and many a cat can be found at cat cafes. There's even a beauty salon which will apply makeup to customers to make them resemble performers in the play Cats.

The Far Shore

June in the Far Shore will not be quite as muggy as the rainy season in Japan down in the Near Shore, and for many of the gods it is being viewed with the solemnity of an Equinox, a transitory time period. Which kind? Who can say.

• In the wake of the accusation of Sabimei by Sotero and Votelli, all of Amaterasu's shinki have been held within the temple grounds. All communications go through Koten or Kiten, part of Amaterasu's retinue, as they stand guard at the gates for messages. They allow no one in or out. Rumor is that Ikuten, her exemplar, is taking this very seriously, while Sotero and Votelli have been allowed to linger just beyond the gates.


• In the same conversations where Sotero and Votelli's names come up - and with greater frequency - another question surfaces: "Maybe they're staying with him?" Then another: "What do you even call the place where he's been banished to? The Far Far Shore?" The answer is usually variation on the theme that places go nameless to keep them out of such conversations, and that applies to the people who live there too.
  
• The reports of missing items continue, increasing in frequency. While the items continue to be categorized as "bound volumes" - books, papers, pamphlets, etc. - the focus on the traitor has taken everyone's attention.

Noteworthy Ayakashi

• Hippocampus-like ayakashi are appearing around beaches. Since they look like horses, they are drawing in amused children, some of whom can't get back to the beach due to the undertow. Can you save the children while fending off the pods of aquatic ayakashi?


• Little Dicks are the unsubtle nickname given to a variety of small ayakashi that are hovering around mass transit like trains and cabs, making polite people act rude and rude people get much worse. While the size of normal insects, when viewed up-close they more closely resemble the statues being carted around for certain phallus festivals, or more accurately a certain crude meme (cartoony NSFW). They have a source ayakashi somewhere; defeat it, and all the little tendrils will go limp.

Weather

Here you can see the weather starting on June 1.

Event

Cultist Arc Finale/Epilogue

We are going to have top-levels that are IC-ly spaced out over approximately 48 hours, but are all posted at the start of the event, and deal with the remnants of the Cultist Threat. We hope that this will help rebuild CR and introduce more opportunities for new CR in a team-like situation.

• Cutting Ties! All of the rank & file NPC Cultists need to have their ties to The Far Shore cut; this will erase the NPCs' memories of their spellcasting skills, loyalties to the Cult, and disdain for Heaven. This can be done between god & shinki pairs, or your shinki character might consider trying it with a Soulless Shinki.


• Blight Circles! One of the Cult's efforts to draw powerful ayakashi to them was by creating these circles in various parts of the world. The areas with these spellworked circles need to be cleansed and the ayakashi near them destroyed.


• Cult Hubs! 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.


• 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.

  Example abilities might include: hover-style flight, lite elemental resistance, green-thumb plant growth boost, etc. - they're just tied to the item.
  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.

  Any character who tags into the event (top-level or response) will be eligible for a gift basket, ICly delivered a week after the event.


• IC Date: June 2nd 2017


• If you have any questions, or suggestions for Team-Based Wrap-Up Efforts, feel free to reply to the comment marked 'Event' on this post.
• To participate in the event, you will just need to comment to the event log after it goes up on June 5 at 7PM EST.

Past Happenings in the Heavens

Major Events

July Announcements	August Announcements	September Announcements
October Announcements	November Announcements	December Announcements
January Announcements	February Announcements	March Annoucements
April Announcements	May Announcements	June Annoucements
July Announcements	August Annoucements	September Announcements
October Announcements	November Announcements	December Announcements
January Announcements	March SOTG / Additional Details	SOTG Response
May Announcement

• Last month on May 2, Suijin held an exchange of information about various metaplot aspects related to the Cultists. Notably, characters insisted that Votelli and Sotero were not acting of their own volition when they attacked the Heavens.
• On May 8, new arrivals were brought to the Meeting Hall for orientation and training. We introduced the prospect of other Temples hosting the training next month and received enough interest to move forward with this direction.

Player Plots

If your characters have been up to anything this month that other characters may have noticed -- parties, ayakashi attacks, violent rampages through the Far Shore -- leave a comment on this post to let your fellow players know what's going on!

SOTG Follow-up

Gamewide Changes Post-Cultist Finale

Once the Cultist Arc is finished, we will be putting the finishing touches on the Game Design Changes:

• Post the Setting Page (Formerly God 101 + Shinki 101)
  
• Post the Game Timeline
  
• Add available applications for Native Shinki characters
  
• Add available applications for Canon OCs
  
• For the upcoming TDM, we'll include an OOC Workshopping top-level. If this takes off, we'll consider an entirely separate entry for it!
  
• Monthly Activity will now include TDM links for up to half of the submission. Details pending, but they will be added to the Monthly AC page plus the Activity Check Guidelines linked from those pages and the FAQ)

With these things accomplished, we will be posting a game-specific Enable-Me-Please as well as an ad on the community-wide EMP explaining that we're in a relaunch phase.

Up Next in Plot and Events

Mod Contact will be updated with the conclusion of the Cultist Arc as Kohaku formally steps down as World Mod, Rynn steps up to replace her, and Fae joins the mod team as a Plot Assist mod - mainly someone we'll bounce ideas off of, to help spread out the duties of creative idea generation.

• Next up will be a fun filler arc in July and August, to give players and mods both a break.
  
• Starting in September, we will have another metaplot relevant event, but after that we will alternate every other month, so the next metaplot relevant event won't be until November, then January. On the off months, we will focus on CR-building, Slice of Life, or otherwise non-metaplot related monthly events.

Comments

Questions?

[godsoffortune]

[unlucky7]

Will there be a continuation of the Face to Face thread or at least a final summary of how everyone reacts? Several characters are asking direct questions or otherwise reacting to the situation. Without knowing how it all ends, it's difficult to thread or have characters discuss things.

+1

[kagenonadeshiko]

A final summary of the NPCs responses and actions would suffice. I don't think it's necessary to thread this out in minute detail; it's only going to drag the conclusion out longer than it needs to be and add extra work/pressure on the NPC players going into June. At least with a summary, the participants will be able to summarize their own characters' reactions in turn and move forward.

Re: +1

[godsoffortune]

For sure, we'll try not to drag it out. Ideally it will be enough information to feel conclusive going forward.

[kagenonadeshiko]

Thanks, mods!

[godsoffortune]

Yes we're absolutely planning to respond to that thread again. Illness suck, etc. etc., but we'll absolutely address several things yet in that thread.

[unlucky7]

Thank you, mods!

[priforprince]

This is stupid, but here goes. If the cult had its hooks deep enough into Fujisaki that said cult's disbandment would negatively affect the company, Hibiki wants to uh. Attempt to take Fujisaki over. Out of spite that they wouldn't let her buy it earlier. (She would mostly delegate the tasks of actually running said company to any competent employees who remain, so it shouldn't affect said company too much. They just might suddenly have fancier decor. And small, adorable officemates with wheels.)

Is that a thing that is possible, because I totally understand if it isn't. In which case The Company Shikyoin Hibiki Couldn't Buy can just become a running gag... If there are alternative plans from other characters with more...legitimate...grudges against the company, I'm OK with them getting dibs, too. Hibiki is just petty.

[godsoffortune]

Considering the amount of confusion that some employees - especially upper management - will experience by having their ties cut, it is entirely possible that Hibiki could swoop in to purchase the company during the chaos.

We approve this audaciously IC response, no matter how petty! ^_^b

While we have you: are you interested in hosting the Training Log for June?

[priforprince]

Splendid, thank you very much! I’ll include something to that effect in Hibiki’s contributions to the event log so there is an IC paper trail too, so to speak.

Also, I am exceedingly interested in hosting for June! Should I have the log prepared ahead of time for mod review, or do I just put it up at the usual time for the IC intro?

[godsoffortune]

Mod review would be appreciated! We'll provide you the code template as well.

[priforprince]

Sounds good! Thanks again. I will try to come up with fun (and, in spite of Hibiki being Hibiki, useful) activities for everyone!

[smilingbullet]

I'd just like to ask for a little bit of elaboration or clarification, on how cutting ties and taking care of blight circles is to be done. If a god or shinki needs to be involved, if a god can do it alone without a shinki or if a shinki can do it alone without a god? Do you cleanse the circles by just spilling holy water on them? How do you actually cut someones ties to the far shore?