[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

[heirring]

"Nonsense. Unless you mean to trod all over my feet, I have every confidence that you will be a perfectly fit one. Almost no one is a good dancer, Mister Holden. Merely an enthusiastic one. If you are enjoying yourself, and you will for despite my assertion just now I will have you know that I am a singularly excellent dancer and so a rare exception which proves the rule,"—(no she isn't)"—If you are enjoying yourself, then that is all that really matters."

This Wysteria manages to say all in one great breath as she steers him around to a safe edge of the dancing presently queuing up.

"Now, this one is quite easy. Here, give me your hands. Yours goes here, and mine here and then we clasp these two together like so. Once the music starts"—it is beginning already—"We will rotate on a wheel with those two other couples there. And then there will be various calls by the dancing master, I believe that is the Ambassador at this present moment, to cue the step changes. I will show you everything. It is not so fast."

And then, very seriously even as she is beginning to lead him into the first steps of the dance: "But truly, if you trample me I will be cross. These shoes are new for the occassion and I am very fond of them."

[acreage]

"I will," he promises, "be careful."

And besides that is happy to let her drag him to an appropriate place to begin the dance, and position his hands accordingly. He isn't a bad dancer, really, but he's certainly not too familiar with the kinds of dances that are popular in Thedas, that Wysteria would know from Kalvad. Jamming in a future space club when he was still 20 is very different! But you can't get by working in space by being uncoordinated — so, as they start, he manages to avoid stepping on her shoes.

"Is this from Thedas, or Kalvad?"

The dance, that is, the music.

[heirring]

"Oh Thedas. I've never tried to teach anyone anything from Kalvad," she says at first. And then in the following beat amends with: "Well--no, that isn't true. I have shown de Fon--Valentine how to do some cross stitch patterns which came from there, but we discovered very quickly that there are only a few which were not in the little pattern packet from here only called under some different name. I suppose that's hardly surprising. There are only so many ways to make X's with thread. But I believe Warden Adrasteia means to begin putting on some Rifter holidays for the sake of morale so perhaps soon we will explore all sorts of strange possibilities, Kalvadan reels among them."

As for the music, the less said about that the better. If she wished to share Kalvadan music, she might have to recall her music lessons and there is no force in the world which might compel her to do so. Why, she doesn't even mention it aloud lest it warrant some reasonable follow up question through which she might be forced to suffer.

"Is music and dancing very different where you come from?"

[acreage]

He nods as he listens, as they move, considering that he now knows more about cross stitch than he did before entering this conversation, or ever.

"Do you think that'll help with morale?"

But — that's the question of a man who doesn't feel much when it comes to holidays. Bobbie or Alex might care about some equivalent to the day of Martian independence, plenty of religious people on Earth or in the Belt who'd be happy to see a tradition represented.

"You could say that." He considers, briefly, trying to explain rock, or bhangra, or jazz to Wysteria. Or grinding, Jesus, to a woman with Jane Austen sensibilities. "There's a lot more variety. A lot of dance music."

[heirring]

"Do you play any instruments? You should try to explain the sound of it to Monsieur Royan and the Ambassador; they both have the spirit for that sort of invention. And if the songs are pleasant, that would be an excellent minor stream of revenue or a clever way of building Riftwatch's reputation as being a place of a kind of novel culture. Sheet music in reproduction is very popular, you know. And Monsieur Royan keeps a printing press. I think it would be very lovely if Riftwatch's could be known for something other than fighting demons or being an island filled with--Well, I personally have no complaints, as I rather enjoy the wildness of the company. But it must be noted that our companions are hardly the most politic collection of people."

Surely that's putting it kindly.