[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

[ipseite]

It is not entirely unusual to catch a man up short with commands intended for dogs, so it isn't something that immediately catches her attention when he pauses — as it will, obviously, become clear a moment later what she has done — but then he speaks what sounds to her ear like old dvorya and it is rather striking.

(To the dog, too, who sits down on his haunches like the good boy he is when his mistress is looking and gazes soulfully up at the stranger who speaks sounds he recognizes as shaped like command.)

It is clear that she's parsing him with some effort, but she says — “Little, mayhaps?” and the dialects don't line up perfectly, but there is a certain amount of comprehension. To him, he may find the words she chooses and the way that she shapes them unusually archaic, and all the more obviously so when they are not being directed briskly at a dog.

[rezni]

Strange. Strange but not necessarily bad, once Nikolai has parsed out how exactly such a thing came to be. It was his understanding that Ravkan was incomprehensible to the people here.

"Would it be very forward of me to ask you where you hail from?" is spoken in trade, lapsing out of Ravkan for something more easily understood. With a glance to the dog, Nikolai closes the space between them.

There's clear intent in it. He's interested, enough so that his trajectory towards the dance floor has been entirely discarded.

[ipseite]

Perhaps her accent, too, had sounded strange; it is distinct when she answers in trade, “Originally,” with some slight caution, “Lamorre, a nation of a world that I knew to be Sulleciel.” It is severely unlikely that he, too, hails from there, but for a moment she considers that it is not utterly impossible.

A great deal had remained out of reach about the histories of Sulleciel that had been unwritten; even the rebirth of witch courts had not granted them what had been consigned to fire. But it is more likely that this is something else, and that is interesting for another reason entirely.

“The language that I speak to my hound in is known to me from — my father-in-law was an avid student of old Dvor. He utilized this language for his hunting dogs and I kept the habit, after he passed.”

[rezni]

None of the words are familiar to him. In spite of everything, there is a flicker of disappointment.

And what would he have done if they were? Another Ravkan here changed nothing of his predicament, nor would it have changed anything of hers.

"Do you have command of it in it's entirety?" Nikolai asks, before grinning, shaking his head. "Forgive me. It's rude of me to interrogate you this way without even offering you and your companion an introduction."