[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

also for julius.

[luaithre]

Marcus is behaving, for the record.

There is no cause to do anything else, really, save to hover near the people he knows, make quiet conversation with them, ponder tiny Orlesian foods, feed some of it to Vysvolod, and otherwise take modestly from whatever the evening has to offer. It is probable that he could be content on the sidelines the entire time, not so much out of anxiety or dislike of the gathering, but because there is plenty to simply watch, from the musicians to the collisions of people and personalities.

Eventually, maybe after a second glass of wine, and while Petrana de Cedoux is entertaining elsewhere nearby, Julius will sense the other man step nearer to his side, Marcus reaching beyond him to set his emptied glass down on the nearest available flat surface. The music has turned over, the end of one song fluidly shifting to another, politely paced enough that those out there have divided into twosomes.

"I'll ask you to dance with me," he says, "if you're willing to show me how."

[overharrowed]

He surprises Julius in a smile, warm and genuinely pleased. "I'd like that extremely," he says. "Though I've never taught anyone before, so I suppose we'll both of us see how much I've retained." He sets down his (mostly empty) glass as well and offers Marcus his hand.

It had occurred to Julius well before they left the Gallows that this is the first Riftwatch social occasion that the three of them have attended as a set. He had privately entertained ... not worries, exactly, but concerns that he might misstep or misjudge. But in fact, he's found the evening thus far extremely pleasant. There being three of them means circulating without worrying about leaving either of the others too long at a loose end, the ability to pleasantly circle back to either of them or both when he's ready. It's new, but he's found he likes it extremely.

The dance being a slow one makes it a bit easier to use as a learning experience. As they begin, Julius says, "Once you've mastered it, perhaps we can switch off who leads, sometimes. Most dances with a leader assume the taller partner takes the lead, but we're close enough I don't think it would be too difficult to do the other way."

[luaithre]

Marcus takes the offered hand, and it is a matter of fact sort of taking—a solid clasp that leads into pulling him along behind and out into the fray. Yoink.

Of course, once out there, that's about as far as Marcus' confidence gets when it comes to being sure of what he's doing, but he is less concerned with looking foolish than one might expect of him. He lays a hand on Julius' shoulder, lets his other hand be held, head ducked to check what their feet are supposed to be doing before looking at his face.

"Good thing I started with you," he says. "I can't in good conscience, then, ask Petra to lead."

Though that would be adorable. There's an innuendo somewhere in there, but he isn't so much an innuendo person, and besides, they've begun to move. Backwards, in his case, which feels odder than anything else about this, and it takes more than a few steps to begin to trust where Julius moves them.

[overharrowed]

"She is extremely adept at leading while following," which isn't not an innuendo, but it's more or less incidental to the more literal meaning. After all, she successfully taught Julius to dance with more than a foot of difference in their heights.

"I suppose it will not surprise you, entirely, to learn that my largest challenge with learning to dance was relaxing properly. It's not enough to appear so; your partner will feel like they're fighting you if you're too rigid." The difference between appearing relaxed and actually relaxing is, in fact, the place Julius lives a great deal of the time. At least he's self-aware. But at the moment, Marcus can feel the ease in Julius's motion, for all he's still hardly an expert himself. In this, and not only in this, Marcus is benefiting somewhat from lessons Julius learned with Petrana.