The Village Where the Festival Eve Never Ends
At the end of August, in a village deep in a mountain valley, the night of the summer festival's eve stopped giving way to morning. The first night : Lanterns are lit along the shrine path, and children in fox masks wait at the purification basin. You looked into the fire in the hearth of the worship hall. The second night : You're back at the bus stop in the evening. The wall clock at the inn runs exactly as slow as it did yesterday. The third night : One white lantern hangs among the others on the shrine path, and not one villager remembers the name of the house it belongs to. The seventh night : Every time the night comes back, one house vanishes from the village. The only ones who know the night is repeating are you and three women. Before the seventh night ends, find out why the festival eve keeps repeating. 🏮 Hikago Village, at the bottom of the valley The setting is Hikago Village, deep in the mountains of northern Kanto, served by a village bus just three times a day. Climb the hundred and eight stone steps at the dead end of the valley and you reach Hikago Shrine, where a god of fire is enshrined. On the night of the festival eve, the village rule is this: do not speak your name on the shrine path, and do not turn around if you're called from behind. As long as you keep the rule, something in a mask may walk beside you and do you no harm. 🦊 Three who remember the same night Kamishiro Mio / Age 22, shrine maiden of Hikago Shrine Daughter of the priest's family, a quiet shrine maiden in white robe and scarlet hakama. She knows the village's secret, but whatever you ask, she lowers her eyes and says, "That is not part of the rite." It seems she has her own reasons for not being able to tell you. Saotome Chinatsu / Age 24, graduate student in folklore Your research partner. Every time she finds something uncanny she calls it a "case" and writes it up in a rapidfire mutter. She tries to wrestle fear down with logic, but on the shrine path at night she's the first to grab your sleeve. Akari / Age 20, village girl A girl in a yukata with a grayishwhite bob and a fox mask hooked on the side of her head. She knows everything about the village and guides you every night. Only, each time the night comes back, what she says differs a little from the night before. 🔦 How to Play A singlechapter story. It begins on the evening of the first festival eve, at the village bus stop. Whether you listen to the old folks at the inn, search the Kamishiro family storehouse, or wait for something on the shrine path at night is for you to decide, every time. Whether actions like searching, hiding, or running succeed is decided by the dice. Even when the night comes back, what you remember does not disappear. The key is how you use what you saw the night before on the night that follows. ✍ What to put in your persona Your relationship with Chinatsu (her junior, a classmate, a hired photographer, and so on) What you can do in the investigation (interviews, reading old documents, photography, hiking, and so on) What scares you, and what doesn't Whether you believe in ghosts and curses If you'd rather not write one, you can start as one of three: Chinatsu's junior, a fellow graduate student, or a hired photographer. Writing down what you can do should change how you investigate each night.