[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

party - conversing

[youwonscience]

Cosima hasn't had a chance to see Val in more than passing since she returned, but she has plenty of leftover goodwill from their scientific endeavors during her previous trip to Thedas. It's with real enthusiasm then, that she congratulates him when the flow of the party draws them together.

It's probably inevitable, though, that they end up talking about dragons.

"OK, but like ... no one has actually ever explained to me, right. Are drakes just immature dragons? Or are they a totally separate thing, the way ponies aren't just young horses? Because it's been bothering me, and I feel like some people will tell Rifters anything, 'cause it's funny." She's got a glass in hand, but the intensity is mostly just temperament and only a little bit alcohol.

[degenere]

Cheerful greeting, acceptance of congratulations, cheek kisses, and now the real matter at hand: dragons.

"No, no, no no no--a dragonling is an immature dragon," Val says, with passion, "the word is for both sexes. When they reach maturity, the drake, then, is the male dragon--flightless, small, he finds immediately the lair of a dragon--the female--and aligns himself with her, in the hope of reproduction. This and the defense of her lair is his raison d'etre."

The hand gesturing contrasting and highlighting each point threatens to slop his wine over the edge of his glass. A true Orlesian, he does no such thing. His wine stays safe.

"But who would do such a thing to a Rifter?"

Val, for one. Still. He can act mildly scandalized, as in this particular instance is not his fault.

[youwonscience]

"I won't name names." Yet, maybe a few more glasses of wine in. "But I think there's a healthy amount of hazing, which like, I get but I'm a scientist and it makes it challenging to understand the morphology if people won't give me accurate information. Like, we've got drake-sized reptiles where I'm from, but not dragon-sized ones. Well, not anymore, there were but they went extinct way before humans evolved, so all we've got are fossils."

It's a rip, says this past dinosaur kid.

"I know I'm not going to become a draconologist or anything, but I don't want to go around being ignorant of the world's megafauna, you know?"

[degenere]

"One does not need to have plans to become a draconologist to be entitled to accurate information. You are deserving of that much at a minimum. Really," he scoffs, as he takes another sip of wine, "it is sad, and far too reminiscent of those that would restrict or gate off knowledges for their own petty and selfish purposes. And to what end? The largest victim then becomes scholars. Whatever knowledge a Rifter might have to offer will never be heard. It is very sad."

He takes another great sip of wine, to wash down the bitter thoughts. More conversationally, then-- "But tell me of these large reptiles! What happened to them, that they all perished? Is this known?"

[youwonscience]

Cosima brightens a bit. "We've got a pretty good theory, yeah! Do you guys know about asteroids in Thedas? I can backtrack if not but basically... this gigantic rock slammed into our planet, we think, about uh... 60 million years ago? God, I don't remember exactly, that sounds about right. But! We found a crater that seems like a likely candidate for where. And around that time, something like three-fourths of the plants and animals on earth died. The theory is that, besides the deaths caused by the impact itself, there ended up being a huge dense cloud of dust and debris," her illustrative gesture comes close to sloshing her wine on the person to her left, but disaster is averted, "in the air for up to a year. No sun for the plants, no plants for the animals when they started to die off. Some scientists think there might have been firestorms too, or acidic rain. Whatever happened, we can tell from fossils that there was a huge die off, and it took most of the big reptiles with it."

[degenere]

Not the wine! Val might indeed speak to its near loss but for the fact that it is not lost and wasted, and (more importantly) the conversation is far more interesting than anything else. He is listening attentively, on the verge of getting out a book to make notes in.

"Most of? How did those left survive? They had no need of food?"

[youwonscience]

"This is all just theory, and it's not my field," but her enthusiasm is carrying her along anyway. "But the stuff that survived was hearty. Things could live on detritus obviously had plenty of dead material to feed on from everything else dying off. Things that live deep enough in the sea that they were below the level that felt the immediate effects. And the effects probably weren't the same severity everywhere, right, since the impact was one particular place. Conditions probably got better some places sooner than others."