[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

[nonvenomous]

There’s a plea for understanding in his pause, exasperation lined in fine around his eyes. He’d thought, maybe.

“It’s nonsensical,” he assures her, after a beat. “Forgot I mentioned it.” More to her point:

“If they weren’t ‘getting hitched’ with a war on, Riftwatch might not have cause to carouse until next Satinalia.”

[poleaxed]

She sees that, at least, and knows she's missed the shot. Where, she isn't sure. She isn't accustomed to speaking in metaphor. She frowns, chewing his words over, trying to fix it, and she can't make sense of it.

They're all fibers in a cloth. Even if they hate each other.

Tentative, she reaches out, hand hovering over his shoulder until she decides, yes, she's all in. If he doesn't like it, he can bloody say so. She grips his shoulder through the rough fabric of his coat.

"You ain't enjoying this one bit."

What did he say about Satinalia? Who cares; she's disposing of it. That pleading look, however brief, is more important, world-eclipsing.

"Let's scarper."

[nonvenomous]

She’ll feel him square to drop anchor when she does, as if in anticipation of being guided rather than merely reassured --- manageable resistance, for a Jone of Denerim. In the same way she’d be easily able to manhandle a reluctant dog into water for a wash, she can move Dick Dickerson whether he wants to be moved or not. He knows it too, weary warning hooded up at her now from beneath his brows. What did he just say?

She can steer him where she likes, but it’d be much easier and more discreet to do it with his cooperation.

“If you promise me you’ll return.”

[poleaxed]

"I meant-" She wasn't clear. Of course she wasn't. No wordsmith. "We could go together. If you ain't having fun."

She looks back at the dance. Her hand lingers on his shoulder, not moving or gripping, just resting on careworn fabric. "I'll come back if you like. Dunno why, but I'll promise you."

If that's what he needs, and in this moment, in her mind, that's all that matters.

[nonvenomous]

“I don’t want to leave.” A pause, and he closes his eyes to clarify -- more honestly, in repayment for her effort: “I don’t want to leave this early into the evening.

“But I will step outside with you. For air.”

People go outside for air, that’s a thing they say they do. Even if the mountain breeze has free rein to weave through crumbling walls and cracked tile open to the sky, here.

[poleaxed]

She opens her mouth, closes it, unsure what to say. Silas is a creature of contradictory desires, and more and more she's realizing what she reads on his face, in the line of his shoulders, the angle of his spine, doesn't at all line up with whatever's between his ears.

But if he's making a decision, that's a start.

"Yeah, it'd do me good." An arm around his shoulder, attempting to transmit the warmth of companionship through sheer stubbornness. "Don't actually want to get fully soused tonight."

She'll save questioning-- how do you phrase something like why are you sad to a fucking adult-- for later.

[nonvenomous]

There are odd traces, nerve endings spidered out between idiosyncrasies -- stubborn tension ebbs from his shoulders when she wraps her arm around him, lapels lifted slow over a sigh. As there are doors, there are also just stretches of open countryside where a wall fell over in a past age.

Finding moonlight and a place to sit outside won’t be difficult.

He’ll even snag up a pair of fresh drinks along the way, a little mechanical in his forethought.

[poleaxed]

Jone finds a place in soft, thick grass, and immediately begins fiddling with a stalk. In due time, she's made a shrill whistle from it, and blows an off-key tune into the half-light.

Wherever they end up, she lies back in the grass with her head not far from his his hip, like a loyal dog unwilling to bother its master with dirty paws on finer fabrics.

"So," she says, deciding she's exercised enough caution for the day, "we're all fabric, ennit? Except you. How's that work, Si?"

[nonvenomous]

The walk alone seems to have improved his mood. He watches the business of her assembling her whistle with interest, and the lax slope of his shoulders carries over into his elbows rested on his knees once he’s sat.

“I’m missing something that I believe most people have.”

He’s broken off a grass blade of his own, but with wine in one hand, there’s little for him to do with it past examining the leaf structure.

[poleaxed]

Jone reaches up to his blade of grass, slowly twisting it into the shape of a whistle. She hands it back to him.

"Reckon it's something a bit more'n enjoying shite parties."

[nonvenomous]

“This is a perfectly serviceable party,” Richard says, as he takes the newly minted whistle. “I’ve seen you dancing.”

Rather than test the device for himself, he investigates the twist of it, much as he did the capillary structure of the blade previously.

“I don’t know what it is. But they seem to detect its absence.”

[poleaxed]

"You don't dance 'cos a party's nice. You dance, and it makes the party better."

She watches him inspect the whistle, marveling at his uniquely critical eye. He's a critical sort, our Silas, and Jone finds that invaluable for a person like herself, who smashes through everything without a thought. If only she could keep up with his mind.

"You're saying... people know you ain't having a good time?"

[nonvenomous]

“Were you dancing because you wanted to dance, or because you wanted to liven up the place?”

His suspicion is a little sly, out of step with the downtrodden wilt to his shoulders. He suspects it to be the former, the plume of his whistle turned light between his fingertips.

“Something like that,” is his answer for her question in turn.

“I’m envious of your ability to cleave into emotional connections with others.”

[poleaxed]

"Half of one, six dozen of the other." That's how the saying goes, anyway. "It's not about me bloody dancing, anyroad."

She suspects the point they're trying to make is at odds, and doesn't want to lose that thread, and then- he just tells her. Her heart warms, not for the first time, with affection for him.

"Mate, Si me luv, if all Riftwatch sunk into the bloody ocean, I'd only mourn the loss of you and Gabranth. And maybe that bird with the dog and the fantastic tits, but that's for another reason."

Such a genuine admittance require a joke, or she'll die of pure, unvarnished emotional poisoning.

[nonvenomous]

"I am -- " he pauses to process the scope of that assurance, "confident you’re unique in that prioritization. And certain you would be more widely missed by Riftwatch if you sank into the ocean."

Matter-of-fact in this as he is in most things, he drinks as he frowns down to thread his whistle back in among the grass stalked up around his ankles.

“People respond to you. They trust you.”

[poleaxed]

"Only folk from the gutter as I am," Jone says, thinking of Edgard and Barrow, who, admittedly, she'd miss more than a little. "But it ain't about me, luv."

She moves on the hill, sitting up and moving to sit properly next to him. He accepted her arm before, so she tries it again, a half-embrace. "How long you been so lonely?"

[nonvenomous]

Silas is slight in silhouette beside her, lines all crisp apart from the slope of his shoulders, kempt and clean. Tension creeps taut across his ribs at her nearness -- he’s more cognizant now of her intent to comfort -- but he doesn’t shift away. Tolerant.

It isn’t terrible.

“Long enough to understand it as an inevitability.”

Thot the cat has followed them, long legs picked up high over the grass, her approach silent beneath the hiss of the wind.

“I am fortunate to have found friends here.”

[poleaxed]

So Jone keeps her arm in place, careful not to encroach further until she deems it necessary. He seems somewhat more at peace. "Si, you're me best mate," she says, "next time we have one of these bollocks parties, I'll stick by your side longer. If that don't help, we'll think of something else. Nothing's inevitable, save dying."

Seeing the cat, a black on black shadow at the corner of her eye, she raises her free hand as she's seen some do, wondering if the creature will come by for pets. Jone is no lover of animals, but Silas' creature has begun to fascinate her.

[nonvenomous]

He polishes off his wine while he listens, brooding limited to the fuzzy grip of his frown and the furrow of his brow, his chin turned down and the glass held out aside. Empty.

“I haven't been able to understand your commitment.”

With just the two of them talking on a hillside in the dark, near enough the party for the sound of the band and the low murmur of conversation to carry, honesty comes a little easier. The wine helps. So does the palatability of this particular truth.

“You remind me of someone from home.”

She had an easy in, he means. Their shared dream already had material to work with when it threw them in Tevinter together.

Thot adjusts her course for the hand Jone has raised, her spindly tail shivered in greeting.

[poleaxed]

"You remind me of-" no, that's not right. She rejuggles her thoughts while she tries to pet the cat with two careful fingers, right between the voluminous ears.

"Me brother got taken to the circles when he were twelve. He were me twin, only friend, all of it, just gone." She sighs. "Likely dead, now. You remind me of... who I'd want him to be, if he'd grown up."

She squeezes his shoulder lightly, trying or comfort. "That don't mean you have to act a certain way. Just want you happy."

[nonvenomous]

A sharp breath out might pass for a laugh. He cranes a look away into the moonlight, masking a show of his teeth at their shared expense.

The last several months are snapping into clarity upon rapid review.

“I’m sorry that happened,” he’s able to say, more seriously. “And a little sorry to have sullied your impression of the mage he might have been.” By being a reptilian. Professionally. He is squeezed, as Thot steps up to invite herself into Jone’s lap. “You should know that I believe I might be incapable of happiness as you understand it.”

[poleaxed]

Jone snorts out a laugh (impression of the mage he might have been, classic Si) which distracts her just long enough for a bony black void of a cat to crawl into her lap. Jone takes a moment to carefully pet Thot, as though trying to please a totally alien creature. She's never had much contact with mousers, as she doesn't like to be around mice, but she's more than sure this animal is different, magical, a cut above.

Like Silas.

"We all feel like that sometimes," she says, "least, I do. How's it go for you, if you don't mind me asking. For me, it's, well-" a huff, it might be laughter- "I done too mant terrible things, and I'm too lowborn, y'know. Typical bollocks."

She assumes Silas' reasonings are more complex, because Silas is more complex, but she also reckons anybody could feel like they're less alone in this moment. And that goes double for Silas.

[nonvenomous]

“My people have more in common with the Qunari than they do the humans of this plane. They’re cold by nature. Dispassionate.”

This he shares very reasonably with the big ginger hugging him to her side. She’ll feel him sigh to himself against her while Thot twists and arches beneath more careful contact -- sleek, bony, and insistent.

“Fortunately for the two of us, birthright probably won’t factor into our role in the fate of this world as you know it.”

[poleaxed]

Jone considers that a moment, keeping her eyes on Thot. The creature is far more friendly than she'd initially feared. In that way, the odd little cat reminds him of Silas.

"Didn't know you weren't human, Si. But I reckon you can feel happy, if you can feel lonely. Don't make sense to gut only the good feelings."

She doesn't comment on birthright. It's more complicated, she thinks, for her, and nobody wants to hear about that.

[nonvenomous]

There’s an impulse to deny or deflect from how quickly she’s arrived at the idea of his otherness, offset by how little it seems to bother her. In the end he says nothing, the empty glass in his hand let to rest at his knee while Thot burbles (strangely) and purrs, her ears flattened back just before Jone’s fingers smooth over them.

Eventually she’ll roll over into a goblinoid toss of limbs and teeth and tail.

Eventually also, Silas will toss his glass down the hillside. It bounces twice before smashing itself against a jut of rock.

“The someone you remind me of was a princess.”