[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]

After drunkenly attempting to herd the non-combatants or otherwise not so useful members of the wedding celebration away from the fog, and finding that task apparently impossible, Adrasteia has had enough.

There are so many broken glasses. Her carefully arranged decorations are mostly ruined. The food has almost entirely gone off as a result of all these shenanigans and she's drunk, she's tired, and she isn't looking forward to having to clean any of this up later.

So.

Armed with her staff (because she's a Warden battlemage, who would travel somewhere and leave their staff behind?) which had been tucked away underneath the table of wedding gifts, Adrasteia hisses at the specter of a small child reaching up at her with no hands, just bloody stumps.

"Get. Away. From. Here." She slashes at the ghost which dissipates in front of her.

[degenere]

Val is unheardable even at the best of times. He has ignored everything but the ghosts and is currently writing in a book, produced from some interior pocket of his finely-stitched tailcoat. As Adrasteia cuts through the child ghost, Val backs right into her.

"Oh," he says as he looks up from his writing, "Mademoiselle Warden! Is this not fascinating?"

Beside them, a pole bearing a large blue banner topples over. Another follows right after it, unseen hands ruining the decor. The banners flutter in an unseen wind, rising off of the stone floor in a whirlwind. Val points with his charcoal pencil.

"Just look!"

[overharrowed]

Julius, like Adrasteia, is hardly going to go somewhere overnight without his staff, wedding or otherwise. It's just as well, because he is able to toss a telekinetic burst at one of the poles about to fall on some of the guests and redirect it.

Having nearly gotten trounced by an aggressive drake in Val's company in the past, he's not surprised at the lack of alarm from the groom. Still, he suggests, "Is the activity responding to us in any way? Has anyone noticed a pattern?"

[lumelume]

There's one person who is doing his very best to sniff out the source of the mayhem, and he currently doesn't look like a person at all. Cowering beside Adrasteia, the little brown-and-white dog has his nose tipped up in the air, his ears pricked forward, and his tail tucked firmly between his quivering hind legs.

They say dogs can sense ghosts, and it's time to find out the extent to which that's true.

[kantikoy]

Mado!the!dog, as Adrasteia's mind is helpfully labeling him, gets a little scratch behind the ears once the ghost is gone (and maybe as a physical distraction to settle herself once Val bumps into her). Her eyes track where Val is pointing, to the unwinding decorations falling over in a row, and one of them nearly falling on someone before it's redirected.

Her heart drops. She knows that Wysteria wanted some elements of surprise to her wedding but this? Probably not what she had in mind.

She wants to sigh, to rub her eyes, to scream, but recognizes that the sighing is about the limit of the appropriate behavior she can show right now, sober or not, and she does the sighing thing a lot around the Messer de Foncé and at some point, he's gonna take note of it and she might have to explain herself to him. So instead, then, she looks over her shoulder at Julius and nods at him in thanks.

"Whatever it is, I don't think it's centered at the dance floor; more of it is happening as we head away from it, but I don't know which direction to start in." There's a split in the archways before them, a little ways away.

[muckspout]

Edgard has been dozing in a chair during all of this hubbub and suddenly starts awake with the child ghost right in front of them. He screams high pitched and leaps up.

"There's a ghost!" He yells helpfully to the crowd next to him.

[lumelume]

The dog shoots him an impatient look.

[kantikoy]

"Yes, we're trying to find the source. Are you up for helping us?" This to Edgard, who is free to say no. Adrasteia won't judge.

Clearly he's had plenty to drink.

[muckspout]

Edgard frowns, sensing a judgement whether or not it is there.

"Yes." He says defiantly. He stands up and crosses his arms. He hiccups.

[overharrowed]

While Adrasteia has this exchange with Edgard, he's heading toward the archways, trying to observe any indication of which way to go. "I'm not sure if..."

Before he can finish, there's a loud clanging sound, as of heavy chains, in the leftmost passage. It doesn't quite make him jump, but it does sharpen his attention. "Well, we may as well start there," he suggests, not waiting for a consensus before moving in that direction.

[kantikoy]

"Come on then, friend." Adrasteia waves Edgard over, just as Julius takes to the passageway. "I suspect we're going this direction, yes?" Does Edgard have his bow? Probably doesn't matter, most ghosts can't be hurt by arrows in the first place.

[muckspout]

Edgard's glower is immediately transformed by Adrasteia's use of the word friend.

"I'm your friend too!" He nearly yells. "Yes, let's go."

He throws an arm around her which causes his bow which is slung on his back to hit her arm lightly. He never goes anywhere without his bow.

"Follow the Julius!" He hollers at everyone else, again, much too loudly.