[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

[kantikoy]

Adrasteia takes the offered joint with a nod of thanks. "Maybe you don't like to dance."

Or maybe he doesn't like her, in particular; such people exist, after all, but saying so seems... well. If he doesn't like her she's not sure she wants to know.

She's also not sure that he wouldn't have just told her as much, by this point.

The joint is dragged in small puffs. What she's forgotten over time about breathing it in is remembered by the sheer amount of wine in her system and the smoke escapes from her nose, and then she offers it back. "Thank you."

[nonvenomous]

The joint is a grubby little thing on its last leg, lit and carefully stumped out some two or three times over the last week. Waste not -- he takes a quick hit and passes it wordlessly back for her to finish, insistent at a nod, should she be so inclined.

There’s no answer, on the subject of what he does or doesn’t like, and the greyscale of darkvision makes him harder to read while he watches her smoke. He’s a passive presence, lurking out here with his cat, barely even a satellite to the festivities.

More than anything he has the look of someone who might have made to slip out over a low wall, given enough time alone to think about it.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

[kantikoy]

She takes the nod as the permission it's intended to be, puffing on the small joint until the elfroot has run out and she's just left with a little crutch of burnt paper; she licks a finger and puts it out before placing the burnt-out tip into a small, empty bottle she obtains from her pocket.

In the meantime, she holds her breath in before letting it out in a steady stream through her nose. She has to clear her throat when she's done, but otherwise. Decently managed. "I'll have to find you a replacement."

Consider yourself warned, Richard. She's going to give you a gift (of hand-rolled elfroot joints, most likely.)

The music can just barely be made out here, where Richard had tucked himself away, and so she does turn and walk in the direction of the dancers... but she stops long before they reach most of them. Now they are at the fringes of the party, where they can be seen by anyone looking towards the dark edges, but not so close as to be overheard or reachable easily.

"How about here?"

[nonvenomous]

Having fallen along into an easy step at her heel, Richard pauses when Adrasteia does. He has to look down to her from the situation around the dance floor he was surveying over the back of her head. Recalculating.

“If you like.”

The party isn’t so lousy with guests that there isn’t plenty of room to maneuver at its fringes. And if embarrassment was a factor, she would have recommended they dance in the dark under Thot’s watchful eye. So he circles to lift her right hand over the bony hold of his left, arranging himself with the same sort of muscle memory more often reserved for ritual spellcasting.

It’s been a while.

[kantikoy]

She smiles up at him as they set their hands in the proper places and Adrasteia waits for the count of the new song to begin and for Richard to take the first step before they start.

Of course, she allows him to lead. Why wouldn't she?

It's a simple enough dance. The music isn't too rousing, there aren't many complicated steps. Just two people at the edges of a party.

When the song ends she lets go, takes a step back, and curtsies.

[nonvenomous]

Earlier in the same event, he’d told Jone elegance comes at the cost of character on the dance floor, but that hardly precludes him from erring on the side of formality here. His posture is easier for the elfroot decaying in his system, and the stakes are low, a missed step or turn unique to Thedas ceded to Adrasteia’s lead to smooth over.

It’s lazy, but it’s effective.

Arguably he is a better dancer than he is a conversationalist. His hands are warm, and he answers her curtsy with a halfhearted bow, as if only just now conscious that anyone else might see.

It’s late in the festivities. Surely by now people have other things on their minds.

[kantikoy]

Adrasteia smiles, warm even in the half-light where they are. "It was a lovely dance." The most sedate of the evening, actually, but the elven woman finds she doesn't mind that. "So, I'll let you go now," she says, knowing full well that he's likely to leave the entire party behind him as opposed to staying the night. She can't blame him, exactly; it doesn't seem exactly like his sort of scene.

But she's glad he came.

"Try one of the blue-cream-filled spiral pastries before you go, they're very good." She turns to walk away. "If you like sweets, anyway."

[nonvenomous]

The breath he’d taken in to answer is let off empty when she offers to let him go. He nods instead, of course, and holds to watch her retreat. A glance down, a harder furrow at his brow, and he will withdraw predictably back into the recesses she fished him out of.

The better, as she’s surmised, to slither out into the night.