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[OPEN] FRIGHTENING FESTIVITIES
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.
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.
no subject
He is not his elder brother, though not for lack of trying. Yet the thin mask of courtesy and dignity worn to evoke memory of his twin is only just that— draped about his shoulders like a cloak, it does little to conceal his own nature fully. He is at times a touch more sardonic. Less graceful in his conversation.
Thankfully, of course, no one here knows Basch fon Ronsenburg. And without him, there's no comparison to be made.
Still, he rights himself a moment later.
“Marriage is oft a decision borne out of advantage or necessity. One can hardly be blamed for seeking assurance that the groom's half of this concord will not be one of uselessness and indolence.”
That helm shifts, taking in the sight of the guests and their jovial exchanges.
“Yet if what you say is true, I suppose I’ve little cause for concern.”
no subject
Silas hoods his brow in reversal of challenge -- what do you mean why does he think -- and is rewarded for his silence with wedding eve hot takes dispensed through menacing slots smithed into Gabranth's helmet. He seems wholly less concerned about the possibility of disaster himself, more concerned with his wine, and the exit, and the strangeness of this steel golem having caught him mid-retreat.
His own life is already a disaster, far be it from him to stop these two from committing to one together.
“What would you do if you did have cause?”
Asking for a friend.
no subject
And besides, he knows full well the sort of image he cuts.
“I would have words with him.”
Stern, carefully chosen— and very precisely delivered words. “Those that might remind a man where his duties lie.”
no subject
There’s a winding cinch at crow’s feet seldom-used for smiling -- a show of his eye teeth at the leading edge of black humor at the knight’s expense. He is reinvigorated, defense in his posture venting aggravation through a huff of air he stops short of a chuckle. Maybe there is something for him at this party after all.
“I am a notoriously poor judge of character. Perhaps you should make the stakes known to him before he has an opportunity to poison Miss Poppell’s ocean.”
Surely a man so concerned with duty wouldn’t pick up a snake at a wedding and throttle him.
no subject
If not for the fact that he’s already had more than enough ally-inflicted throttling this week, and much like a poor bout of indigestion, isn’t immediately inclined to inflict more.
But his tone does drop as his focus reaffixes itself, clearly drawn once more towards that very distant silhouette threaded just in the midst of a wedding at the height of its glory.
“Mind yourself.” Talk of poisoned oceans is a very dangerous game right now, sir.
"The favor granted to you by way of Jone of Denerim only counts for so much."
no subject
He has a very casual way of asking, here in the steady stir of wedding guests convecting in and out of the party’s fringes. Intent, curious, steady pressure applied at arm’s length like a finger through one of those eye holes.
no subject
“If you long to see the narrow thread of your life made thinner, know that I am more than honored to oblige.” voice kept low and humming, Gabranth turns as he speaks, painted with the sort of exacting movement employed by predators sensing prey. There’s nothing disarming in his posture any longer— or in distance itself— as he moves with heavy footfalls to cut away dead space. Intrusion is its own threat, and it fits him as keenly as any blade, regardless of whether or not he's heeded.
Though perhaps it would be best to.
“All I require is your own consent, by way of your decision to continue talking.”
no subject
Silas is just exposed, raw, another Rifter at the end of a meaningless rope, here alone in a natty coat with a cup in his hand.
“Would you be honored?”
Proximity makes for quieter conversation in more intimate quarters. There are fine little nicks in this snake's face here and there where his skin has been split over the bone, wine on his breath, bowstring tension twisted up tight between his shoulder blades. He’s been struck before.
“To humiliate yourself here on my command?”
no subject
His fangs are bared, he requires little more than to strike, and the metal of his gauntlets across thin skin and brittle bone would make for a fine addition to that assembly of narrow scars.
—but the faint scent of wine carried by way of exhale, sinking in beneath his mask, reminds him of memory he’s not yet been able to shake from his mind. The knowledge he’d hurt someone he cares for, and that the act itself— disregarding shame— wasn’t wholly undesired.
So no, he thinks. The thought like fingers tugging on a tether.
Not here, not yet.
“Beg for it,” he breathes in dismissal, sound catching in his throat like a growl as he withdraws no more than the span of a few retreating steps, still measuring the make of the man braced just before him. “and perhaps I’ll consider granting you all suffering you desire.”
It wouldn't take much, if prior conversation serves as prologue.
“For now, I’ve a fledgling benedict to speak with.”
no subject
He glances down, and it’s gone.
Mostly.
His blood-pressure has peaked in his ears, red in his face and behind his eyes, and he turns to clip sharply away into the dark. A well timed rise in the music all but masks the glassy whip and smash of his cup into some blind corner as he goes.