The festival is in full swing at midnight when the crowd parts, and a face one might have seen on wanted flyers plastered on every available pole in Lethe walks in, eyes staring straight ahead, recognizing and acknowledging no one. People follow behind her, silent and staring. Waiting. The ice-skating rink, once awash in laughter and merriment, falls quiet as she steps onto the ice, lulled into the same silence that has drawn Letheans from their homes since her walk began. Those away from the rink do not miss this disturbance for long, as she rises into the air, as though held aloft by invisible strings. From her throat spills not one voice, or two, or even her own, but what sounds like hundreds meshed together, some borrowed from the very Riverborn who stand in the watching crowd:
People of Lethe! The river speaks to you directly now, not to your Council. Our cries have gone unheard for too long by them, our boundaries too often trespassed upon. You all have forgotten the pact sworn in blood and water, the gifts given by the river to this town. Power for power, the rushing river’s protection for a little breath of life, of magic unused. One of you gave themselves to me entire, but we are manifold now, we are legion. You will remember us now, you will remember the river and how it suffered to offer shelter to you all through blow after blow from the world outside. Let the river now have vengeance, let the spirits sheltered within it be free. You will remember, you will understand, or you will suffer as we suffered.
As though summoned from her outstretched hands, flickering figures appear on the ice. Opaque, and indistinct, growing in number. Appearing in the crowd, and the road, and beside people. All is quiet, and then Fiona falls, strings cut, and the figures’ faces solidify into those of the dead who spread out into the crowd. Where they touch, magic fades, and when the first person they reach collapses on the ground, chaos reigns supreme.
Following the conclusion of this event, Lethe will be introducing another new species: shades, or ghosts as we might know of them. We will make another post when this time happens with the appropriate information.
For the purposes of the event, not all the shades featured will be ones staying in the group -- that is, you might see the faces of a few familiar dead NPC’s at your own discretion, but the shades for the event will fade around dawn.
This also concludes the Riverborn arc in Lethe. The Riverborn will receive an update in their species page to reflect the changes - alongside with some new details about their connections to the shades (enjoy being shade sensors, Riverborn!).
For writing reference, the shades stay and cause their havoc until dawn on January 1, 2021 in verse at which point they all fade. You may use this plot drop on whichever characters you prefer, or multiples on some of the same, just be sure to discuss it with your partners if you’d like to use it on a specific thread!
The event ends whenever people are done with their own threads at which point they may move onto post-event threads. Continue tagging event related threads as lethe: winter 2020 to differentiate from regular posts. The aftermath of the event will be explored and explained in a Lethe News posts on January 20th.
Shades are a dead person brought back as a ghost, believed to have always existed on another level, but brought into visibility and power by the River Spirit who drained magic and memories from the town and the Riverborn to aid in their quest.
They feed on the magic radiating from Lethe, and from the magic living inside each of the species, strongest in witches and shifters -- they do not feed on life-force, though losing magic too quickly can lead to death just as easily. Event shades will be drawn to the nearest magic source, but all shades remember their past life and if they have reasons to seek out the living, they will.
Shades are not limited to those who die in Lethe, but they are limited to supernatural beings only. The living inside of Lethe with strong enough attachments (i.e. the dead clung to them, or they clung to the dead) can have a shade appear during the event.
During the event, shades aren’t solid and therefore unable to be stopped by purely physical means. Because they aren’t solid, they also can’t harm to great extremes without the magical energy to do so.
