[OPEN] FRIGHTENING FESTIVITIES

[heirring]

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Celebrating a totally 100% legit wedding.
WHEN: Summerday
WHERE: Edlingham Hall, the Vinmark Foothills
NOTES: cw: Spectral Violence and Ghostly Gore; if you don't want to deal with the spooky ghost adventure half of the evening, feel free to say your character went back to Kirkwall early rather than staying the night.

PARTY;

A few hours' journey from Kirkwall, the great old shape of the house known as Edlingham Hall rises up from out of the Vinmark foothills. In the decades (ages?) since it's abandonment, what must have once been a very imposing stone structure built in the mountain's shadow has given way to age and the elements. What remains is unequivocally a ruin, albeit a stunningly elaborate one. It's a place of columns and alcoves, gutted passages and weather worn stairs leading to the skeletal remains of old towers and chambers, with everything turned to varying shades of brown and green and as it's been grown over or into by the surrounding landscape. There's hardly a roof remaining to be found in the whole of the place.

Luckily, this particular party doesn't require one. In what might have once been the titular hall, a series of tables and benches (borrowed from the Gallows, thank you very much) have been set up around a stretch of cracked tiles which has been more or less cleared for dancing and everything has been lit amply by a collection of merrily burning braziers.

Party-goers will be treated to a host of entertainment, included but not limited to: at least one speech (thank you, Provost Stark), a half dozen toasts, a rather impressive spread of Orlesian-styled cuisine (no doubt prepared by someone devastated to be expected to do so under such rugged conditions), quite a bit of rather good wine, music, dancing, and a few more avant garde Rifter-influenced party games including a vaguely wyvern-shaped pinata and some heinous game called Snap-Dragon.

And if none of that sounds like a good time, then there are ruins to explore, discreet alcoves to investigate, and a campground pitched in the ruin's shadow where one might retire early from the party with only a stock level of scorn.

AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT;

An eerie mist begins to stream from the cracked tiles of the dance floor. Riftwatch does not count a fog mage among their midst. Was one perhaps hired? Is this a trick of some science? A peculiar feature of the weather in this region? Such murmurs begin to circulate as the mist continues to thicken, and rise, and sour to a sickly pale yellow. It clashes with the decorations. Its touch seems to wither the impossibly sumptuous meal, curdling cream fillings and souring fine meats.

And then the screaming starts.

In the stone frame of an upper window, see her: a woman, in a long pale gown, with a horrible wound around her neck. Her slippers peep over the sill. Blood begins to drip down her front as her mouth opens, and opens, and opens, until her jaw rests upon her bloody chest.

Guests seated at the table will feel some creature bumping against their legs--something big, and solid, and hot, and hairy. When they pull away in horror, they will find nothing at all beneath the table. But the growling will not stop, nor will the crunching of teeth on bone.

The twisted figure of a man rises from a pile of tumble-down stone. His limbs hang at loose and unnerving angles. One arm has been crushed and droops down too low, brushing at his warped knee. His face is a mask of pain, and his left eye bulges as if ready to burst. Pressure has thrust his circlet of gold low on his brow, cinching his balding head. He shuffles toward the party, reaching with his ruined hands for human flesh. Or perhaps a cup of wine.

A headless body comes running out from the rotting main keep. It is wearing armor but is otherwise without identity. From its stump of a neck sprays a great geyser of blood, spatting party-goers and the ground and the food and whatever else is in its way. Its graying hands are reaching, but without a head, its path is random and monstrous, trampling over anything and anyone without regard. Or it would, if it weren’t spectral.

The ghosts must be stopped. Find the source of the haunting or this marriage will be ruined.

Those not interested in tracking down the source of the haunting will soon discover that the fog which has wreathed Edlingham Hall has become quite impenetrable. Attempting to escape the grounds will result in being impossibly turned around and eventually spit any would-be escapee back into the ruin. Solving the mystery may be optional, but experiencing the haunting by the aforementioned ghosts (and any other thematically appropriately specters your heart might desire for the convenience of creeping out your characters) apparently isn't.

Comments

Byerly, ota

[bouchonne]

i. party
[ Byerly is drunk, and he is playing the fiddle magnificently. Absolutely magnificently. No matter what you think about the man, he is a talented musician, able not just to play a reel or a ballad or, hell, improvise something at a moment's notice, but to sometimes even do so while participating in the dancing himself. As long as the steps are familiar, he can skip them lithely, participating in a gavotte or a quadrille without missing more than a note here and there. ]

Hey! [ He cries at the end of a song, and then throws back a glass of wine in two gulps. ]

ii. ghost
[ By the time the ghosts show up, Byerly is properly shitfaced. And so his reaction to this spookiness, this truly terrifying monstrousness, is to grin and laugh, and say confidingly to his neighbor: ]

You know, I feel a bit like this is a metaphor.

iii. wildcard
[ you know how it goes. ]

i

[lumelume]

Hey! [is echoed by the drummer, whose shirt came off a long time ago-- never mind why-- and he's a grinning mess of sweat and curly hair as he shakes his hands out to ease the soreness from hours of keeping the beat.]

[bouchonne]

Well played.

[ By is breathless; he wipes a sheen of sweat off his forehead. ]

I didn't know you had this much talent.

[lumelume]

There's much you don't know about me, amico! [Spoken cheerfully, as Mado rises to stretch his back.]

You, too, are amazing! An athlete as well as a musician.

[bouchonne]

[ Preening: ] I'd say I've worked very hard to become so, but I'll be honest. It's natural talent.

[ By grins and winks. ]

What else can you play?

[lumelume]

The lute, the pipes, lots of things I suppose!

[Left alone with any instrument, Mado will figure out how to make sound with it.]

But my true love is in percussion. It's everywhere! You don't even need a drum!

ii

[kantikoy]

[ Adrasteia was in the middle of eating a cream puff, when the fog rolls in. She tries casting it away, but chalks up her inability on the fact that she's had... quite a lot of wine for her small stature.

And then she has to immediately spit out the cream puff into a napkin, pulling a face. ] Eugh.

[ (It's a wedding, and supposed to be a celebration. She's been here since the wee hours setting up for this event. If anyone has a problem with the Morale Officer being drunk, they can take it up with her when she's sober.)

In the moment between that and her spotting the nearest specter, Byerly's words catch up to her wine-soaked brain, and she looks up at him with a frown. ]

For the marriage?

[ Wysteria has just started shouting. ]

[bouchonne]

Perhaps. Perhaps for marriage in general.

[ He gestures towards the horrible specter of the terrifying woman up in the window, her gaping mouth. ]

Perhaps she's representative of lovers past. What do you think?

[kantikoy]

No.

[ Adrasteia makes a cutting motion with her hand out, palm flat and facing the ground. ]

My marriage was wonderful and short. Very short. Which, I'm sure someone could say is the key to a happy marriage and I'm not exactly in a position to disagree.

[ So. Take from that what you will, Byerly. She follows his gaze towards the ghost in the window and frowns sharply. ]

Pretty gorey for all that.

[bouchonne]

[ He nods thoughtfully. Then - and he would ask this if he were more sober, though at least a little more delicately: ]

Divorce or widowhood?

[kantikoy]

[ Adrasteia nods. ]

I imagine that there is a divorced Grey Warden or three somewhere, but I am widowed.

ghosting;

[archademode]

It is not.

[For all their talk of desired action, Gabranth hardly intended for it to be so soon, much less— this.]

On your feet. [It’s a coarser tone, the one employed as he moves in beside Byerly with purpose, no heed paid to their differing statuses: when need and drink combine, the end result is that Gabranth would rather focus on having a grip of the situation over propriety itself.

Though gods know he wishes he’d maintained propriety only a day prior.

Regardless, if there is an exit to be found in the midst of this dawning chaos, he's determined to see Byerly to it.]

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly doesn't seem particularly bothered by the brusqueness of the command. There's no offense in his voice or his face. He does, however, seem to be slightly dismayed by the command itself. Plaintively, he asks: ]

You're not going to make me fight them, are you?

[archademode]

[The answer is no, of course. Not even if the shades and grotesquery could be dispersed with hash hands and bared blades. There is an order to things in Gabranth's mind, after all, and it dictates those with titles must be kept safe before all others around them.]

In your state the only man you would hurt is yourself.

[Somewhere nearby, so loud as to be jarring, a glass tray is toppled by nothing visible, spattering the flooring with shards that look like stars. Combined with the scream of a woman who lacks a face, it’s a far cry from jovial music and wedding celebrations.

A little more industrial grunge, perhaps.]

[bouchonne]

Dreadfully rude. I've lost plenty of fights without getting hurt. It's an art, you know.

[ Then he puffs out his cheeks and squints at the kerfuffle. There are people in there, he thinks, who can't defend themselves. Not that he's in that much better a position, but - ]

Come, good man. We must help them.

[archademode]

Byerly-

[It’s the start of an argument that never fully forms. Selflessness is an overriding cause, even if Gabranth's own instincts would have priorities reversed for the sake of directorial security. Instead he exhales, turning his attention towards broken dining ware and guests fenced in by mist and hunched specters. The way some rush fearfully in flocks away from contact they can feel, not see.]

If you remain set on this task, I must demand to see you rise, and hold yourself steady.

[Because if you can’t, Byerly, he’s approaching this another way.]

i.

[littlemissfutility]

[ Beth doesn't know the steps to any of these dances--they're nothing like memories of high-school dances or friends' parties out in the countryside, back in the years before the world ended. But there's an energy to them that draws her, bringing up far older recollections, of wedding receptions full of two-steps and square dancing.

They didn't usually have a violinist who could play and dance all at once, though. It's so fun to watch him that she doesn't even mind hanging back at the edge of the dancers, clapping when the song ends. ]

That was really good.

[ What a weird way to get to know your boss, watching him slam back wine after playing like the devil challenged him to a fiddle contest for his soul. But maybe an okay kind of weird. ]

[bouchonne]

Mademoiselle Green!

[ By sets aside the glass of wine and the fiddle and grins at her. It's nice to see her cheerful, smiling, drawn out of the shyness he'd sensed from her a great deal of the time. And he wonders how far that lack of shyness could go. ]

Are you going to favor us with a song?

[ He holds out a hand to gesture to the makeshift little stage. ]

[littlemissfutility]

[ Beth's eyebrows go up at the request. ]

Um.

[ She'd like to think she hasn't been shy so much as cautious, and it's hard not to retreat into that sense of self-preservation right now. I don't know any of the music here is on her tongue, along with other excuses. I don't know any party songs.

But singing in front of people's supposed to be part of her job now. (Easiest job in the world, or at least the best one she's ever had. It's not like she's given to stage fright.) And when you're one of the only sober people in the room, it's not that hard to do a good job, right?

So, coming up to the stage, she asks in a low voice, ]

How quick do you think you can learn one?

[bouchonne]

Like that.

[ He snaps his fingers. Then he squints slightly, and confesses - ]

Well, I've had rather a lot of wine. So maybe like - [ A beat, and then after that pause, a snap of his fingers. ] That.

[ Then he fetches up his fiddle, and says - ]

Teach it to me.

[littlemissfutility]

[ Beth laughs--but she's thinking fast all the while. Something long enough that he has time to catch on. Something that you can at least kind of dance to. Is a slow dance okay? She can't think of anything upbeat off the top of her head. ]

Okay, okay. I'll teach it to you.

[ It doesn't sound like this. Beth's voice is too much of a flutter, octaves up from the recording she used to listen to over and over again. But the sentiment of it remains. ]

They bought a round for the sailor.
And they heard his tale
Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we'd never heard.
A song of a little bird
That fell in love with a whale--

[ Halfway through, when she remembers it's about being away from someone you love, it occurs to her to wonder if it's appropriate for a wedding. But it's too late now--and it's about love, at least. ]

ii

[muckspout]

[Edgard has also been drinking. He points with a bottle.]

No, [He wags his finger.] That's definitely a ghost.

[bouchonne]

[ By squints. ]

It can be two things.

[muckspout]

[Edgard whips his head away from the ghost and toward Byerly too quickly, he has to close his eyes a moment.]

Alright. [He muses.] Tell me about this metaphor.

[bouchonne]

Well -

[ He points at one of the horrible specters. ]

So, every marriage is haunted by ex-lovers.