[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

[poleaxed]

That... probably means she was too titled to give a shit, which summons an itch of dread into the back of Jone's mind. She was fine toying with respectability when it was likely low and easily wounded. A confident noble is something to be wary of; you never know when and where their power will rise up to smack you.

But this woman has no titles here. Didn't she just say that? Jone forces that thought to the forefront. This woman does an excellent forgery-- good work for a cryptographer-- but she isn't from here. She can't step on Jone; in more ways than one, she hasn't the height.

"Bowing 'cos I oughtta to begin with. But- not if it ain't worthy," Jone says, but it's in an uncharacteristically light voice. Careful or respectful, she isn't sure. Knowing something and feeling it is different, but Jone is determined to fight this newly discovered instinct. It's never been laid so bare until now.

Fuck Orlais.

Her expression, somewhere between carefully blank and genuinely confused, melts easily back to amusement when the woman speaks. Fuck marriages, too. "You know 'em well? All I know's the bride's underhand serve."

[ipseite]

“We are colleagues,” Petrana says, offering Jone her hand to shake, instead, which she has clearly practised and still does in a way that clearly indicates she is much more accustomed to having hers taken and kissed. That is definitely not what she is trying to do right now. “I would no more ask you to bow to me than you would expect me to greet you with all the fanfare of the Orlesian empress.”

A telling comparison, though she doesn't think on it.

(She is not without influence, not without danger. But it isn't how she wishes to be seen within Riftwatch; she has not been the ambassador, now, for longer than she held the post. She has no authority, and only the influence that she earns.)

“Who I know almost as well as the couple,” is a rueful joke. “I am not greatly acquainted with either of them, though I have spoken with Miss Poppell a time or two and I find her a quick mind. She is sensible, to understand that this is our home, now, and we must make our fortunes here. It is wise to have ties that bind; to embrace what is before us, and not cling so much to what's behind.”

[poleaxed]

"Ma'am, where I'm from, we hail the empress by booing her." Jone gives a wink, just as practiced but a bit more fluid. The handshake felt odd, but Jone isn't one much for handshakes to begin with. Making peace by showing you haven't a weapon? Checking for thieve's marks? That ain't her business.

Jone takes that, considers it. This is now our home. Jone doubts she'd handle being taken from Thedas with nearly as much grace, and she hates most of it that she's seen. "That can't be easy," Jone admits, unpracticed and unheeded. "Is it hard, at first? Or- s'pose it must be. Daft question, that."

She hadn't missed the comment about the Starkhaven mage and a Fereldan lover. You don't end up with that on your first month in the Gallows, maybe not even your first year.

[ipseite]

“I did not find it so,” she says, and there is something particular about that honesty; that it is not dissembling, that it is honesty. That she chose, specifically, to say it and to do so without flinching — the difficult part, for her, had been that it wasn't. That she was glad. That she was relieved.

So many people had been kind to her, about what they assumed she must have lost, and it had choked her when she couldn't yet even admit to herself what she hadn't.

“But I understand that in most cases, you are correct. And I can understand how it must be — I had, when I arrived, already grown accustomed to the idea of reinvention, I suppose. Of great change.” That isn't all of it, but it is about all that's appropriate to get into casually with a stranger at a wedding. As an afterthought, “That was 9:43.” Her arrival.

[poleaxed]

Jone's eyebrows shoot up, but she really doesn't have anything to say to that, except, "impressive. A veteran, you are."

Who needs a congratulations, you assimilated? Least of all, who needs it from the bloody Monster of Denerim? Someone, Jone suspects, far worse off than this woman here.

"Where you're from-- not much different than here? Horses, gods, all that?" Or is she just good at reinvention? Honestly, Jone has no clue what that means in this context. She lets herself chew on the detail, metaphorically speaking, before she asks further. You can only pry so much at a time, and for all this woman's kindness, she's too compact to be pushed about. Jone strongly suspects the dog is for show, and the woman who owns it has no difficulty protecting herself with whatever sharp words she needs.

That's the real key, anyway. In a contest of strength, Jone is heedless of fear or doubt. But hold yourself the right way, have the right accent, the correct manner, and Jone knows better than to argue.