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magisteriaexe2024-09-02 06:49 pm
magisteriamods) wrote in magisteriaexe2024-09-02 06:49 pm
Agrarian Enclave Mingle: Oca Street Bathhouse
This is another mingle set in Magisteria's Agrarian Enclave, or the Agriculture District. For maximum thirst, it can be combined with the first Enclave mingle, specifically the ambrosial honey. Visitors are welcome to play it as their characters exploring both, either individually or together!
Known throughout the district as a haven for relaxation and wellness, the Oca Street Bathhouse features luxurious hot springs, invigorating steam rooms, and therapeutic pools infused with herbal extracts, all housed in/among rooms with soft, ambient lighting. Visitors may select from among a wide number of "Aqua Aromatics" to produce different sensory experiences.
The Oca Street Bathhouse also offers an impressive number of massage options derived from Otherworlders' ancestral cultures. Whatever your desire, every aspect of the bathhouse is fully customizable for all patrons, lending to a wholesale self-care experience.
[Below are some ideas to get everyone started, though players are of course free to make up their own massage options, bathing rituals, and aromatics! A world like Magisteria would of course have options beyond those from Earth history, but I kept it simple here. Again, feel free to add more!]
Massage Options & Bathing Rituals
Elemental Stone Massage: This unique massage technique incorporates smooth, heated stones placed strategically on the body's energy centers to promote deep relaxation, balance, and a sense of grounding.
Aromatherapy Massage: Using a blend of carefully selected essential oils, this massage focuses on soothing the senses, relieving stress, and enhancing overall well-being.
Thai Herbal Compress Massage: A traditional technique that combines gentle stretching, acupressure, and the application of warm herbal compresses to stimulate energy flow, release muscle tension, and promote detoxification.
Shiatsu Massage: Based on Japanese acupressure principles, this massage involves rhythmic finger pressure applied to specific points on the body to restore balance, relieve tension, and boost energy levels.
Deep Tissue Massage: Ideal for those seeking targeted muscle relief, this massage utilizes firm pressure and slow strokes to reach deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue, releasing chronic tension and promoting flexibility.
Hinoki Wood Bath: Inspired by Japanese traditions, the Hinoki Wood Bath combines warm water and fragrant Hinoki cypress, known for its therapeutic properties. It rejuvenates the body and mind, relieves fatigue, and promotes a sense of tranquility.
Moroccan Hammam: Experience the purifying and exfoliating benefits of a traditional Moroccan Hammam ritual. This steam-based cleansing ceremony invigorates the skin, leaving it refreshed, smooth, and glowing.
Ayurvedic Abhyanga: Drawing from the ancient Indian healing system of Ayurveda, this ritual involves a full-body massage using warm herbal oils tailored to balance the body's specific dosha (constitution). It aims to restore harmony, improve circulation, and nourish the skin.
Turkish Ottoman Bath: Step into a world of opulence and relaxation with the Turkish Ottoman Bath ritual. Enjoy a sequence of hot and cold water treatments, exfoliation, foam massages, and invigorating splashes, all designed to cleanse, revitalize, and refresh the body.
Aqua Aromatics
Blissful Lavender: Extracted from lavender flowers, this herbal extract promotes relaxation and stress relief. It has a soothing aroma that calms the mind and helps to create a tranquil atmosphere in the bathhouse.
Revitalizing Eucalyptus: Derived from eucalyptus leaves, this extract has invigorating properties. It releases a refreshing scent and provides a cooling sensation, revitalizing the body and mind.
Enchanting Rose Petals: The extract from rose petals adds a touch of luxury and romance to the bathhouse experience. It has a delicate and captivating fragrance that promotes self-love, sensuality, and emotional balance.
Soothing Chamomile: Chamomile extract is known for its calming and soothing effects. It is perfect for those seeking relaxation and relief from anxiety or muscle tension. It helps to create a serene and peaceful ambiance in the bathhouse.
Invigorating Peppermint: Peppermint extract offers a refreshing and uplifting experience. Its cool and minty aroma stimulates the senses, providing a burst of energy and clarity. It can also help soothe headaches and improve focus.
Grounding Sandalwood: Sandalwood extract has a woody and earthy fragrance that promotes grounding and centering. It creates a sense of tranquility and aids in meditation and spiritual practices.
Energizing Citrus Blend: A blend of citrus extracts, such as orange, lemon, and grapefruit, can provide an energizing and uplifting experience. The vibrant and zesty scents help to rejuvenate the body and mind, boosting mood and vitality.
Nourishing Oatmeal: Oatmeal extract is known for its nourishing and soothing properties. It can help moisturize and soften the skin, making it ideal for individuals with sensitive or dry skin. It provides a comforting and gentle bathing experience.
Purifying Green Tea: Green tea extract has antioxidant and detoxifying properties. It can help cleanse the skin, leaving it refreshed and revitalized. Its subtle aroma creates a refreshing and purifying atmosphere in the bathhouse.
Harmonizing Jasmine: Jasmine extract is often associated with relaxation and harmony. Its sweet and floral scent promotes a sense of balance and peace. It enhances the overall sensory experience and encourages self-reflection.
Left: This woman currently manages the bathhouse. She goes by Tai. She will be happy to accommodate clients.
Right: Yokai clans comprised one of the groups that founded the bathhouse. Murals can be seen on the walls.
Pleasures of all sorts may become quite real within the sensuous sensory-rich environs. Citizens of diverse backgrounds visit this place. Waterfolk of various kin, but also mundane normie humans, elves, faeries, and even some on the tech-forward side.
PCs are free to handwave interactions with amorous locals or with workers at the establishment, who are trained in full-service massage+pleasure work. Random one-off NPCs can be made for this purpose in the location, so go wild! ♥
At some point, Otherworlders might encounter a worker who looks a little uncertain. She’s conversing with elf guy (likely also a worker there).
Otherworlders may overhear the worker say that lately certain of their clientele had been behaving a bit strangely. Unfamiliar women arriving and … there was talk of induction into some group. Otherworlders will overhear her saying she did manage to collect digital business cards for certain individuals/the organization.
If Otherworlders listen closely, they’ll hear concern: these people were kind of giving off… culty vibes.
PCs are free to approach and ask about those business cards... Simply reply to "Plot Key" below.
[Note: This plot clue relates to an ongoing game plot in the works. It may be a little confusing to new players, but any are free to ask into the clue/pursue details.]
Right: Yokai clans comprised one of the groups that founded the bathhouse. Murals can be seen on the walls.
Pleasures of all sorts may become quite real within the sensuous sensory-rich environs. Citizens of diverse backgrounds visit this place. Waterfolk of various kin, but also mundane normie humans, elves, faeries, and even some on the tech-forward side.
PCs are free to handwave interactions with amorous locals or with workers at the establishment, who are trained in full-service massage+pleasure work. Random one-off NPCs can be made for this purpose in the location, so go wild! ♥
Plot Key
At some point, Otherworlders might encounter a worker who looks a little uncertain. She’s conversing with elf guy (likely also a worker there).
Otherworlders may overhear the worker say that lately certain of their clientele had been behaving a bit strangely. Unfamiliar women arriving and … there was talk of induction into some group. Otherworlders will overhear her saying she did manage to collect digital business cards for certain individuals/the organization.
If Otherworlders listen closely, they’ll hear concern: these people were kind of giving off… culty vibes.
PCs are free to approach and ask about those business cards... Simply reply to "Plot Key" below.
[Note: This plot clue relates to an ongoing game plot in the works. It may be a little confusing to new players, but any are free to ask into the clue/pursue details.]
no subject
That sounds fucking impossible. Lucy's pretty sure she's capable of being in the present, but her present is constantly dogged by her past and her future. Thoughts of Night City, of David, of Maine's crew. Of Arasaka. Thoughts of potential future, and the code she stole from the Fractured, and the White Phantom -- problems she's willingly taken on to distract herself from everything else. Every still moment is a moment that some other thought is intruding. Night City never had encouraged stillness, not unless you grabbed it for yourself, not unless you found yourself on the top of a skyscraper at midnight, watching the moon and the office building lights and the lone car on the road far, far below.
Letting it all go, she thinks, must be an art.
She won't say no to a drink, though.
"Trade?" she offers, holding out her verve vape. Maybe she can distract herself from thoughts of missions and running, and bury her mind in the soft slope of Musashi's biceps, the droplets of condensation on her skin.
Once the two have been traded, Musashi takes a sip of the Ambrosia. It is preem. Nice and smooth, a fuckton nicer than the bottom-shelf stuff she usually picks out of habit. The glass is fogged from the steam, and it feels luxurious in a way she's never really felt.
"What do you normally do to relax? To... let it all go?"
no subject
It's intoxicating no matter what. So is watching Lucy down the ambrosia. She's not shy about looking either.
"Hmmm?" For a moment, she wasn't aware that Lucy was asking a question. "What do I do? I go hiking." She says. "Some place green, and far away from everyone else. Finding little hidden paths through trees, forgotten places. Wandering the roads in Japan-" Any Japan, pretty much any era you can think of, "I'd find little shrines off the roads. Good place to settle down for a time and just reflect. On nature, my place in it, the world. The path I was on. Or any place I could see the sky. You get some really good starscapes out in the deserts, don't you Lucy-chan? Ride out a bit, wait for the sun to go down, then lie back and let the universe put on a show for me. Those little spots of peace between the maelstrom." If her head was too busy, too worked up, she'd watch the stars instead.
"Seeing the vastness of it all...the beauty in infinity, helped put me in perspective. Helped me focus. Something about the desert always captivated me." Maybe that's just because it was the first place she traveled after leaving her original timeline.
She takes another hit off the vape, then laughs. "Admittedly that's a little bit harder here, but I'm managing." Magisteria isn't entirely without its green spaces however, and she's been known to wander into them for a good part of the day, especially if last night's shift was a rough one.
"You know you're welcome to join me. Drop you a text next time I plan on going out?"
no subject
The offer has her half-smiling. "'kay." It would come off as cold and uninterested if not for the hint of warmth in her tone.
She trades Musashi's alcohol back to her, and tips her head back to rest on the stone edge of the bath, idly tracing a fingertip over the surface of the water.
"I used to look at the moon a lot," she finally offers wistfully. "I guess that was my version of relaxing. I used to watch it and think about the people on there, and how far above it all they must feel, and... I used to wonder if they still had problems all the way up there. Or if they could just look down at the Earth and remember how high up they were, and how petty all their arguments are."
no subject
Does she mean date in the romantic sense, or the more platonic? Yes.
She passes the vape back in return for her glass in turn, giving Lucy her complete attention as she describes the hold the Moon has on her. It makes her smile to hear the way she talks about it.
"I'd look up at the sky, at the infinite tapestry laid out in front of me, and I'd feel comforted by all that vastness." She starts, once Lucy has finished. "To know that, no matter what...it goes on. After me. After wars, or plagues or whatever it is we do to each other, it all continues. Being part of something like that always put me at ease." It goes on, life, the world, infinity, bigger than all of them. Maybe some people wouldn't find that comforting, but she did.
She pours another glass of alcohol. "So, did you ever get the chance to find out?" She asks curiously.
no subject
The question makes her expression shutter. She shouldn't have talked about wondering about people on the moon, that was stupid, too vulnerable, too close to everything she's keeping close to her heart. But there's no maliciousness in Musashi's question, those blue eyes are clear and open, and... if there's anybody here that she can trust, really trust, it's Musashi.
To cover the faint shaking in her fingers, Lucy takes a hit off the vape again.
"Yeah. It... totally failed to live up to expectations." A pause. "And it was everything I'd ever wanted."
In the end, all she'd wanted was someone to share it with. Someone whose hand she could take as they ran weightlessly across grey moondust. Someone whose joy she could watch, highlighted in the naked sun. David. He'd become such a big part of that dream, and in the end, he hadn't been there. The distant Earth had still been beautiful, the rugged desolation had been inspiring. But David had been missing.
She tips her head upward, where she can see the sky beyond the walls of the open bath. Magisteria's three moons aren't visible right now.
"I'd still like to go back," she murmurs. "Maybe it'd be different next time."
no subject
As Lucy covers with the vape, so too does Musashi, shifting around and resting her elbows along the edge of the pool, chin on hand, smiling.
"Sounds...amazing." She says after a moment, as Lucy turns her gaze up wards. "I can't imagine it." And it's true, she can't envision what it would mean to stand in moondust and look up at Earth, or stand at the bottom of a lunar crater, to walk across the dark side, to fight across the Sea of Tranquility (she's a big believer in irony). "You've got me there, Lucy-chan. I've been all across Earth, but I've never stood on the moon."
A shame Magisteria's aren't out tonight, but the cloud cover is thick right now. "If you do, would you take me with you?"
She doesn't know her words are a mirror of someone else from Lucy's past, who swore to take her as Musashi now asks to be taken, someone so important to her Lucy took on the Hollyhock Mon alone to try and save. But her voice is full of wonder and her eyes are wide at the prospect.
no subject
Turns out her problems had followed her there.
She's half-lost in memory when Musashi speaks, and for a nauseating moment, all she can hear is David. He's there in the pool with her, arms spread out cockily along the edge, that big grin on his face. She blinks, and it's Musashi, confident and curious and bright-eyed, and Lucy's chest heaves so suddenly in grief and fear that it comes out as a low, cracked noise.
Oh, god. She can't do this. Not again.
"No. You shouldn't ask me that."
It's a lie. It's a horrible, terrible lie, because for a split-second all she can think about Musashi and the moon and how beautiful it would be, and all she can do is heave herself out of the water, vape clattering to the ground, falling from nerveless fingers, forgotten. The air is cold, goosebumps rising on her skin, but Lucy barely feels it, static screaming in her ears as she leaves the bath and heads indoors. She's not running, but only barely, determined to get away.
no subject
But instead it all comes crashing down. Lucy stares at her with an expression Musashi can't quite identify, and then comes that heaving, rasping...noise. Musashi has heard death rattles in her time, far too many to count, grown used to and even desensitized to a dying man's last whispered breath, yet somehow the broken, grief-wracked noise that comes out of Lucy is the worst thing Musashi thinks she's heard in a long time.
Before she can even muster an apology for overstepping, Lucy is hauling herself out of the bath and walking away. It's clear only her sheer force of will is keeping her from running.
Musashi can't leave it like this, so she's up out of the bath too. "Lucy-chan, wait-!" Her foot nudges something and she looks down, sees the discarded vape and without thinking, picks it up and takes off.
She's halfway to the dressing rooms, which Lucy is already disappearing into, when Musashi remembers she's still completely nude. And this...is probably not the sort of thing she should be nude for. Cursing, she turns, jogs back to the bath, where the Ambrosia they'd both been enjoying only minutes earlier now lies unattended, and grabs her discarded towel, wrapping it around herself as quickly and securely as she can.
And it's not enough. By the time she makes it to the changeroom, Lucy is already gone. And Musashi knows that, even if she didn't mean to, one thing is clear.
She fucked up bad.
The next morning, when Lucy emerges from her apartment, there's a small wrapped bag by her door. Inside is the vape, carefully tucked away and cushioned within a small box, and a folded piece of blue paper. On the inside, in script Lucy will be able to identify as Musashi's, are two simple, but heartfelt words.
I'm sorry.
She'd thought about saying more, that she'd be around, or Lucy could reach out, but in the end Musashi knows settled for the purest truth she knows, and trusts when Lucy is ready, she'll reach out.
But the least Musashi could do is make sure her vape made it back safe.