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The Hakurei Shrine in Gensokyo, on April 17th 2049. The time is 10:16 PM.
Something feels ... off.
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> <-=-
> [S] Cottagesnagged
Far off at the
unfashionable end of a
Japanese mountain range lies the old, decrepit
Hakurei Shrine. Given the general state of disrepair, the effects of weather and so on, the evidence suggests that it has been abandoned for a couple of decades, give or take.
Which is a bit odd, because it was
actually abandoned about a hundred and fifty years ago.
In truth, the
Shrine is a gateway to
Gensokyo, the
Land of Illusion. The premise is simple: if there is sufficient
active disbelief in any phenomenon in the
Outside World, or at least if it passes into legend, it is possible for it to appear in
Gensokyo, perhaps spontaneously. And so it is filled with
magic and
monsters and
youkai of all descriptions, as well as a few species of mundane flora and fauna which are extinct in the
Outside World. Books related to the
moon landings and such things, too, if enough people start believing it was faked.
It was easily-accessible until
Yukari Yakumo, the
Mistress of Boundaries and
Sage of Youkai, realized that as far as magic was concerned,
Earth was going to hell in a handbasket. If nobody did anything, magic might completely die out. Thus, 174 years ago, in 1884 by the
Outside World's calendar ? and so, the year is now 174 by
Gensokyo's calendar ? she and the
miko of the
Hakurei Shrine erected the great
Hakurei Barrier around
Gensokyo, sealing it away from the increasingly-scientific
Outside World. Magic is now preserved, protected, and hidden.
The
Hakurei Shrine is inside
Gensokyo too, of course. This version merely looks like upkeep has been a bit perfunctory lately.
And you?
> -=->
You are
Hakurei Satsuki. Or ...
Satsuki Hakurei, you're always getting the
name-order mixed up. Uh, your given name is
Satsuki, and your family name is
Hakurei. Y'know what, let's just call you
Sacchin.
(As an aside for new arrivals,
red text is for Japanese names in the Western given-name family-name order, and for text which is supposedly translated from Japanese;
blue is for names which are already Western, and for text which was in English to begin with; and
midori is for Japanese names in the Japanese family-name given-name order, and text which is
not translated from Japanese.)
You are in training to become the
miko of the
Hakurei Shrine (the one
inside the
Barrier), under
Reimu Hakurei, your
adopted grandmother, who holds the current title of
shrine maiden despite being in her
seventies. Your duties will include maintaining both the
Shrine and the
Hakurei Barrier, resolving
Incidents (peacibly or otherwise), and sitting around drinking
tea. You are extremely skilled at
that last one.
At the moment, you have completed all necessary
chores and
rituals for the time being, and you finished quickly enough that you now have
a little bit of time in which there isn't anything particularly required of you. You're never entirely sure what to do in one of these temporal gaps; generally, either things just
sort of happen so that you have something fun to do, or the time ends up
entirely wasted. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
Either way, right now you're
pretty much free. What will you do first?
