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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.
bastien | ota
Bastien spends most of the evening behind either a cello or a lute, draped across a chair and around the instruments with a casual, lazy-looking affect that belies both how good he is (very) and how seriously he takes this unpaid volunteer role (extremely). He keeps wine at his feet, one eye on his more freewheeling and athletic bandmates, and his other eye on the energy and mood of the attendees. But despite that eye-crossing multitasking, he can carry on a conversation if someone has a seat nearby. Especially during the more sedate songs. Especially-especially if someone would like to bring him a plate of food.
And he isn't literally chained to the chair. He can be intercepted on his way to fetch himself seconds on the food, and maybe thirds. When others have the music covered well enough without him he might slide up next to a wallflower to ask, "Do you dance?" And when there's a lull in the dancing, he spends a decently long break strolling through the ruins, enjoying a cigarette and making a game of finding and throwing stones through each of the crumbling windows he passes.
haunting.
The same way his first instinct when he's hurt is to smile, his first instinct when the screaming figure appears—pushing his growing wariness at the fog over the edge into proper alarm—is to laugh.
That doesn't last long.
There's a knife in one boot and a dagger in his cello's traveling case, to which he rather calmly returns the cello, like the precious treasure it is, before thinking about anything else. Just as he shuts the case, the headless body careens past, spouting blood. Bastien steps back and holds up both hands in its wake, splattered and looking about the same level of aghast most people would demonstrate if a carriage had thrown mud—but for him, that's a big display.
"Shit," he says. A quiet, I'm not made for this, frightened sort of shit.
wildcard me.
party.
Like most Orlesians who learned Trade later in life, Florent speaks much faster in his native tongue, which isn't so much skill based so much as the way the language itself operates. Each word strung together in a cohesive stream of sound. It's nice to return to, now and then, and so Florent addresses Bastien as such as he arrives nearer. He is dressed for the party in draping, shimmering articles of clothing, shades of bright blue and violet, and dustier dabs of matching colour in the corners of his eyes.
With a plate of food, too, which he hovers up a little like he will be playing keep-away before lowering it down for the other man to take from. On it is a selection of bite-sized morsels, but plenty of them, and only half of them is cake.
So that was nice of him. "All of the hard work," he explains, glancing out towards the party where people dance and speak and laugh over the subtle song being played currently, "none of the attention."
no subject
"If you were a musician—"
What he has snatched involves puff pastry and soft cheese, and it doesn't go into his mouth. He's strained that note to its breaking point. He needs his fingers again. So he holds the pastry precariously between two knuckles while he progresses toward the next note he can abuse.
"—you would be the kind with attention. A solo every night, center stage, glittering so much people would have to shield their eyes. No?"
no subject
"Maybe so," he says, words a little muffled with the last of his mouthful. "I had a good argument once with a musician. He said that his artform was higher than most, because through the manipulation of wood and string and metal, he could express his soul in its purest form."
He picks up a speared olive, rotating it around his fingers.
"I said it was a pity he wasn't very good, then, and everyone laughed. But do you believe that, of music?"
no subject
He puts the second bite between his teeth while he has the chance, then makes up for the long slow note with a tricky little flourish.
"Better for dancing, though."
haunting;
Fear is a palpable thing: it makes itself known in the tightness of cinched shoulders, the hoarse catch of syllables spoken at a near whisper. Too often he is expected to draw it out— but in truth, he finds he much prefers quelling it these days.
Thus, broad and grim-cast, he moves to Bastien’s side, that helm sparing a sidelong glance wayward spatter. A pity he’s no kerchief to spare.
No pockets.“Keep behind me. They’ll not trouble you.”
Can he guarantee that? No, not truly. They are apparitions, after all, capable of ignoring matter as they please. But if conviction counts for anything, he certainly sounds convincing enough to be believed.
no subject
On the other hand, he looks like—like that. He has looked like that for the entire evening, of course, while Bastien was watching the party around the neck of his instrument. And he has looked like that around the Gallows, where Bastien notices everyone as a matter of course. That is just how this rifter looks. Armored and ominous.
Different, though, isn't it? To look like that in a fog-soaked ruin, when a bloody headless suit of armor has just gone sprinting by.
Bastien still falls in behind him. The nerves smooth off of his blood-spattered face. The only sign of them is that he tries joking, the same way he laughed at the first ghost: "You have a head in there, ouais? All your limbs attached?"
no subject
He asks, one arm outstretched, bearing the broad hang of his cloak like a curtain to more fully mask the man at his back in pure shadow. No blade in hand, emptied palm held at angle: there’d be little point in it, no specter would feel its edge regardless of how deftly he might choose to employ mortal weaponry.
Somewhere nearby something heavy topples, scattering the ground with debris— whether by apparition or the panicked response of someone incapable of maintaining composure, it works to draw Gabranth’s attention away for one lone, lingering beat.
“They cannot touch you,” said not unkindly, though kindness is a relative term for Gabranth’s delivery, truth be told. Always a touch too flinty, a little too stolid for matters of warmth. “I have already attempted to fell them without success. They are no more tangible than air.”
“Yet the same cannot be said for their influence on our surroundings.”
paaaarty
And when one does:
"I dance," says Alexandrie with a broad smile and an eyelash flutter.
no subject
It's an entirely genuine smile. He hasn't been avoiding Alexandrie. He's been avoiding the combination of Alexandrie and Byerly. Sometimes that has meant avoiding being near either one of them, separately, to leave plenty of space for them to become a combination without making them feel they're running him off—but he hasn't been avoiding Alexandrie in principle.
But Byerly is nowhere near now. The sound of the violin is coming from the other side of the ruined hall.
"I have heard that about you," he says. "Something about, uh... grâce éblouissante and little clouds beneath your feet."
no subject
She has tried, too, to make room. It is simple enough when the two men are both playing. It will be simple enough once they all return to camp as well. The gown, the slender golden snake threaded through the braided crown of her hair, rings and runed bracelets rather than gloves: Riftwatch is celebrating a marriage tonight, and so despite his notable absence Alexandrie is here with her husband.
But right now she is here with Bastien, and so she stretches out her hands and wiggles her fingers impishly in invitation. "Shall we see if I am still graceful now that the little clouds have gone out of style?"
hello I've returned from the mod wars
"Unless the fashion for shoes now is iron and lead," he says, "I don't think that is really in question. And even then..." She'd be graceful, his eyebrow raise says, and he leads her into the churn of dancers. Or walks backwards and ahead of her into the churn, in any case, whether there's any leading involved or not.
They catch the step without hesitating, because of course they do.
no subject
In this case mischief means that at the top of the next section of the song she makes a quick half turn and attempts to take over the lead.