Birthday Party

[peripheries]

Who: Paul Atreides and all his CR
What: Throwing everyone’s favorite Duke a surprise birthday party
When: Forwarded dated to April 1st
Where: Bone House in Gaze

Content Warnings: Drinking, underage drinking, drugs (both fictional and not), drawings of space worms, skeletons, will add further warnings if necessary



When you arrive at the house in Gaze, (affectionately known as Bone House), a skeleton will open the door and offer to take your coat if you have one. No need to take your shoes off or anything!

The large house has been decorated with black streamers and confetti. In the entryway and hung on the railing to the second floor that overlooks the entrance to the great room are large banners that say “HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL” (though one looks like it used to say “Jaune” but was just painted over? Whatever).

In the Living Room, there is a large board and various colored markers for people to write messages to the birthday boy. There is also a table full of bottled water and various couches, chairs, and beanbags to collapse into if the party gets to be too much and one needs a quiet place to rest or a place to chill if you’ve imbibed too much… well, whatever you had.

It is also where all the food and drinks are.

There’s an extremely large charcuterie board with the usual meats, cheeses, and olives as well as an extremely eccentric collection of snacks ranging from individual sized Cheez-it bags, to humungous bags of Doritos and salty chips, as well as nearly every kind of Oreo one can imagine.

There are also various cakes, all angel food. Some are misshapen, some have an attempt at being frosted with whipped cream and fruit, one even says “Happy Birthday Ka-” before that was hastily covered with a bunch of strawberries jammed really close together.

At the island, a skeleton is playing bartender. Surprisingly, it can seem to take and understand individual orders, but there’s always a constant flow of tequila shots being made and sent out to the great hall to be served by another skeleton.

And, no, of course it’s not going to check your age to see if you’re legal. It’s a skeleton. Why would it care?

The Great Hall is the center of activity and where everyone is encouraged to mingle and have fun. There is a skeleton on the grand piano in the corner gleefully playing piano covers of the hits from the Shrek Soundtrack with the occasional cover of “DaRude’s Sandstorm” when it has another one to help out.

In another corner, on huge piece of paper that spans nearly 6ft wide and 8ft tall is drawing of an Arrakis sandworm and it’s giant maw. The game is Pin the Tooth on the Sandworm and it’s… very easy… because the worm maw is most of the board. Even if the skeleton spins you as you’re blindfolded, it’s pretty hard to lose. If you manage to do it, which is likely, the skeleton running the game will award you a tequila shot! If you lose, the skeletons will award you a tequila shot (but it’s rail).

(It’s a drinking game, isn’t the point to drink?)

There’s also a table that has many candelabras on it, numbering up to seventeen. They’re still lit and burning even though there is a sign that says “make a wish!” even though it almost looks like a shrine for the dead.

…It’s maybe clear that the concept of “birthday candles” was greatly misunderstood.

There is also a skeleton dealing out small doses of “Spice”, a psychoactive drug straight outta the Duneverse. However, you must check in with this Skeleton to get a dose. There will be no “permanently melting your brain with ancestral memories” at this party!

Teacher’s/God’s/Jod’s/The Emperor Undying’s study, adjacent to the main hall, is closed and locked. Though, the lock is fairly easy to break if someone really wanted to get in. There’s not even skeletons guarding.

That said, many things are warded with eerie runes of blood and bone.

So, fuck around and find out.

The upstairs is generally off limits. Party goers can climb up the stairs, and it’s encouraged if they want to look over the Great Room from above, but all of the bedrooms are carefully guarded by more skeletons who will SCREAM VERY LOUDLY if you try to enter and will become hostile if done by force.

Of course, this won’t happen if you are with someone who lives in the house.

Enjoy the party! Mingle away!

((ooc: if you have any questions or anything, please hit me up at worldtype)) or via PM.))

Birthday Board | At the Party | The Morning After | IC Party Games | Spice Dealer

Comments

The Emperor | The Locked Tomb | OTA

[necrolord]

i. the skeletons. (general mingle)

[ So: this house is full of skeletons.

There are skeleton servants. There are skeletons guards. Batcat skeletons sit as silent sentinels along the front wall and gate. You swear you saw the white shamble of a Nightmare skeleton among the gnarled trees at the property's edge. Even in the foyer, where the marble flooring has cracked or broken, someone has patched it with eerie whorls of off-white.

Maybe you muttered a comment. Maybe you've been caught staring. Maybe a skeleton brushed against you in the hall and you whipped around and screamed.

One way or another, a voice comes from just behind you-- warm and human, a little amused: ]

I promise they don't bite.

ii. locked door: the study. (possible hand trauma and resulting h/c)

[ So you've decided to fuck around and find out.

God's own study is guarded by nothing more than a flimsy door lock. It is the only locked room in the house. Should you jimmy the lock, or force your way inside, or break in by magic-- maybe you're here on a dare, maybe you're suspicious of the nameless man with all-black eyes and a million undead-- you will find...

A boring study. Cluttered with paper, notebooks, and abandoned mugs of tea. But there are interesting things on the shelves: vials of blood that still roils like something alive. Lengths of bone that seem to whisper to you. The skull of something horrible: the skeletons of Beasts.

The stuff in here is cursed as fuck. The stuff in here is the Trench equivalent of a horrifying biohazard. Even touching some of it could tip a person into Beasthood. Of course, upon close inspection, each is surrounded by a tidy ring of blood runes. The magically-inclined can tell that this place is warded to hell and back.

Crossing a necromantic ward line isn't recommended. But maybe you're very curious or very stupid. ]

iii. off-limits area: the upstairs. (fight or stealth!)

[ If you're not a resident, and you climb the stairs-- to snoop around, to hook up, whatever-- you will be stopped on the landing by the skeletons. There are at least two in your path, a livid red spark in each eye socket. When you move, they turn their silent skulls to look at you.

If you brave that undead stare and squeeze past them, they will each begin to scream.

Scream isn't quite the word. It's a low, inhuman wail that builds and builds from within each skull, til the skeletons shudder with sound. It's like some kind of necromantic air-ride siren. It is horrifying, and probably deeply embarrassing.

If for some reason this doesn't send you running, the skeletons will try to scruff you and usher you back down the stairs. But they never do harm. They are unarmed and fragile; if you shatter one, it goes down in a pathetic pile of bones.

So: what are you going to do? ]

iv. wildcard!

[ Find me at ochrona or Rona#7132 if you need me! ]

ii

[justoscar]

[Oscar cared enough about the effort that was put into Paul's party that he kept his reservations about their host to himself. Paul was gifted with a type of foresight that Oscar was still learning-- and, if Paul sensed no danger to his person, then that was fine.

However, Oscar couldn't just forget the man's uncanny eyes. Even now, over a year after the fact and after witnessing the effects of her being culled half a dozen times, Oscar still sometimes saw her eyes in his dreams. The endless darkness within them, like a boundless abyss, was lit only by the crimson that hearkened back to old adages he had heard. 'Red sky in morning...'.

The fact that this man's eyes glimmered coldly, like the arctic sun as observed from the bottom of an abyss, haunted him. And, spotting the ostensibly locked door, Oscar found himself saddled with the most curious of questions:

What would Dipper do?

Waiting for a moment when the party seemed especially raucous, Oscar deftly broke the knob in a manner that could have only been known by someone with a carpenter's skill-- or years of practice stealing into locked chambers. Biting his lip, Oscar scanned around for witnesses before slipping inside

...He had no idea what he expected, but it wasn't this.

For a second he felt like he had been transported into one of the horror novels he had read while on the farm, with the villainous scientist keeping a shadowy lair that was lined wall to wall with vials and specimen jars of unknown substances. Sucking in a breath, he pressed forward into the study.

He needed something tangible to prove to himself that this man, this Teacher, was no more dangerous than Salem. Oscar knew that he would recognize his target on sight-- and that he needed this proof to rest comfortably at night.]

[necrolord]

[ Around him are several incriminating options. The bleached-white bones on the shelves whisper with an eerie shudder of sound, just below his hearing, possibly in the back of his mind— somewhere just askance of where Ozpin's presence hums calmly to him from across Gaze. They are grouped into neat rows of inhuman skulls, huge and horrible femurs, shards and splinters and claws left arrayed together. There are jars of what must be meat, but it seems to shiver as though with the movement of something living within the flesh.

And then there is the Beast's blood.

It bubbles with constant, sickly motion. It roils, restless in its confines. The stuff looks nearly like tar, except for the reddish and rotten sheen to its surface, and there are three flasks of it— two large, one a tidy little vial— on the shelf behind the desk.

Nothing stops Oscar as he approaches. The only traps are upon the items themselves: nothing will harm him until the moment he reaches out to touch. ]

[justoscar]

[He's curious, but he's no fool. Those wards were fearsome-looking, and one of the lessons he had learned from Dipper within the last year was no touching weird wards.

At least, with his bare hands.

Frowning in concentration, Oscar pulled a multitool out of his pocket and unfolded it to reveal the simple pliers that were easily accessible. He knew better than to go for the roiling, bubbling vials full of what looked to be blood--

But, the bones...

Moving cautiously, he gingerly reached for one of the smaller bones with his tool. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to try his hand at psychometry or scrying, like he had seen other Palebloods do.

Anything, to learn a little about how this man even functioned in the world.]

i

[loopsbian]

[ when satoko turns to face the emperor, it is with the look of a child who's been accosted at the cookie jar. to be entirely fair, she does have more reason than most to assume she's in trouble; rather than being panicked by the skeletons are turning up her nose at them, she's been steadily getting more in their way and watching how they react. by the time celestial kindliness has approached her, her badgering has gotten to the point of shoving her fingers into a skeleton's mouth and watching it curiously.

"a pity that they don't," she very nearly says. instead, she withdraws her fingers and turns to face the man. ]

Ah, um... My apologies. Where I'm from, this isn't a common sight.

[ it'd be easy to believe her on sight alone - she can't be any older than fifteen, and there's a lisp she hasn't quite trained out of her voice yet courtesy of a snaggletooth.

if only she didn't carry several thousand deaths' worth of thanergy all throughout her. ]

[necrolord]

[ It is, admittedly, pretty funny to see a kid jam her fingers into a skeleton's mouth. The skeletons bear all this with a blank, mechanical grace. He could make them snap like bear traps; he could make them comically drop their jawbones in a clatter on the floor. Instead he just smiles at her, indulgent, and looks at the bizarre marvel of her soul.

There's a lot going on here. He doesn't understand it, which is getting to be a more familiar situation than he'd honestly like. ]

It's alright. They take some adjusting if you're not used to them, I bet. But they're only constructs; not big on thinking for themselves.

[loopsbian]

Is that so? They're hardly much different than my schoolmates, from the sounds of things.

[ she delicately dusts her hands off. it's a surprisingly polite motion, coming from someone who was just probing the inside of an undead's mouth. ]

Allow me to be clear, I'm not particularly frightened! [ obviously. ] More curious than anything.

iii!

[grice]

[ oh no. and here falco thought they’d let him pass, but— as soon as the skeletons begin to wail once he’s squeezed past them, falco jumps and makes for anything could grab a hold of. railings, furniture, table legs— he hooks one arm into any of those things while the other coils protectively around a oval bundle in a sash over his chest. the egg in question is sadly startled with the sirens and the skeletal frames coming for them, adding a horrid, crying shriek into the mix. ]

I-I just want to find a room for him! He’s tired! Please—?!

[ maybe he was tired, too. a boy with too young a face, younger than anyone here. there’s too much drinking and spice use for him and his little egg friend going on downstairs, and there are two reasons why he doesn’t simply leave: one, it was mildly dangerous to go back home alone at this hour, and he didn’t want to bother anyone to go with him. second: these mad lads are going to need hangover remedies in the morning, if not help to clean the whole place up. ]

[necrolord]

[ The skeletons are unyielding. They stare and him and wail, loud and horrible; then, when the Togepi begins to shriek, they shift their attention and wail at it. The hallway is a nightmare of skeletons and noise. It is, incredibly, even more stressful than being downstairs with all the space drugs.

(Downstairs, someone catches the sound. He feels the phantom vibration through senses humans aren't meant to have, and keeps half an eye on that situation, eyebrows quirked. If the alarm system isn't enough to keep someone from the bedrooms...)

There are three paths before Falco: back down the stairs to the gentler chaos of the party, or down the hall to the bedrooms. Left to Paul-and-Kaworu's, or right to God's grand master at the end of the hall. ]

[grice]

[ oh, dear. confetti might know some basic attacks, but . . . it's still a baby. it's still a little thing that needs to grow, and all these skeletons honing their screaming right at him gets the fairy egg's big wide eyes to widen further, tear up, and cry his heart out in a chirping wail. falco does his best to shield the togepi against his chest and drown out the siren screaming with his arms.

his best chance was making a run for it, and so he did. he knew there was paul's and kaworu's room, kaworu had just earlier offered it to him for this very occasion. but which door was it—? in a rush, falco turns right, flinging the door wide open and slamming it shut, holding an arm against it and then his back, to keep his weight.

in the meantime, confetti still cried, and only after the door didn't rattle or anything alarming, did falco push his back against the wall and cradle the egg, trying to soothe him with shhhs and, what was it that rose showed him? rocking, like babies tended to soothe to. ]

i

[the_obedient_servant]

[Chara looks up at him. It's not as if they're unused to his Skeletons, they have been learning from him for a couple weeks now. Still, they had been staring rather intently at them, almost irritably.

Fucking... skeletons.]

So long as they don't make puns or attack me in the HUD, they can bite all they like.

[necrolord]

[ John is, at this point, used to this kid saying absolutely bizarre shit which might be from a game or might be from a bafflingly strange interaction with reality. He cracks a smile as though there's no difference. ]

Oh, these guys are too polite for any of the above. I handle the puns around here. Though if you know any good ones, I'm always adding to my collection.

[the_obedient_servant]

[Hmmm.

* The thought of Sans (or Papyrus) and this man having any sort of interaction fills you with pure dread.]

I suppose it'd depend on what you'd define a good pun as. Speaking personally, eye socket jokes. [Entirely deadpan.]

i

[dohaeris]

[sansa stills (she was only looking at a skeleton. perhaps a corpse so neatly rotted away didn't have anyone left to miss its bones? she hopes so, for all their sakes). anyone speaking with authority about the skeletons is likely to be one of the necromancers kaworu mentioned. perhaps she might find out more about how this magic works and where the skeletons come from. but she must be careful. alayne stone doesn't know about the night's king. alayne stone thinks the white walkers are just a story to get children to behave. she affixes a smile to her face and turns around, doing her considerable best to look guileless.]

Forgive me. I suppose I heard too many stories about strange things that snatch up naughty children when I was small. My nurse could be very frightening.

[all true, except she is not sorry.]

There is much here that's new to me.

[necrolord]

[ He reads nervous tension in her, but nothing worse than that. It's not like he can fault her for balking at a house packed with the undead; most reasonable folks would get a little twitchy, having never met a walking skeleton before.

Or who've been on the wrong side of one. ]

I get it. If you aren't used to them, they can seem a bit... spooky.

[ His smile is small but encouraging, and he makes an absentminded gesture with his free hand, a little wiggle of the fingers at spooky. In his other he holds a glass of red wine, which goes with the undead servant but not so much with his rumpled black shirt and otherwise totally mundane appearance.

Well— there are his eyes. Fire-white on black sclera, and eerily, supernaturally unpleasant to behold. But the smile-lines around them crinkle like any man's. ]

But they're very handy servants. Well-mannered and kind to children, naughty or otherwise.

[dohaeris]

[let him reassure you. make him think he's put you at your ease. sansa doesn't like that littlefinger's voice seems to be back in her head. she lets her eyes widen and affects a look of concern for the skeletons. it's not so very hard.]

Oh, I shouldn't like to offend them at all. Truly, I didn't mean to stare. They seem very capable.

iii. NOT HERE

[hearthebell]

[This isn't the first time L's been in the study tonight, technically. This is his first time doing so completely alone, with absolute intent to take something.

He remembers what happened when he tried to reach past a ward earlier and his fingertips had started to shrivel, as though aging very rapidly. It had reversed itself when he'd withdrawn, but he knows better than to just reach for the bigger fish in this study without a backup plan. That's why he brought a set of salad tongs he'd pilfered from the kitchen, that nondescript and plain leather-covered journal shining like a beacon.

Not touching it means something to wrap it in, and he hadn't been able to find a dishcloth or potholder large enough. Quickly, he goes about undoing all of his layers, stripping out of his jacket, waistcoat, shirt, and undershirt.

The undershirt gets lain on the floor, and, still shirtless, L reaches for the book, pulling it into the makeshift wrapping like it's a live grenade. Not the first time he's handled something related to Tisketkenchak-Folgraboto that way, of course.

He uses the tongs to wrap it, just to be safe, transferring the whole bundle to his sleeper backpack before getting dressed in his remaining garments again. He looks no different on the outside, at least, since he arrived with wrinkled clothes anyway, and so it stands to reason that no one should be the wiser.

L is so pleased with the successful heist that he doesn't mind his jacket carefully enough, or his habit of tucking hotel soap into the pockets before leaving wherever he's staying on his paranoid and temporary basis. As a result, a wrapped bar topples out, unnoticed, and lands just beneath The Emperor's desk.

The label has a printed design of a summer berry-laden garland, and in a fancy centered font, Compliments of the Symphonia Blanc Hotel. Like a certain guest, it smells strongly of strawberries.]

[hearthebell]

[His cheeks are warmer, now. Illarion's omen, the mothbird Iskierka who has grown increasingly familiar and comforting to him, is perched on his scrawny wrist near his latest full drink. He's a few shots in, and L's next never-have-I-ever takes a bit of a different turn.]

Never have I ever eaten human flesh.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Iskierka--her faceted eyes a little hazy with the spice high she's on--tips her head this way, and that, at L's assertion.

Then she dips her beak in his drink like a dime-store novelty bird.

is she playing for her sleeper, or--]

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul starts to lift his drink, then pauses, the process of internal debate clear behind his somewhat hazy eyes - then shrugs, and completes the motion. Lazarus would have been specific if he meant to exclude auto-cannibalism.]

[hearthebell]

[L laughs, maybe a little too giddily, at the sudden shift in his peripheral vision.]

You? Or Moonsight?

[lipochrome]

[ gideon does not drink because she's not a weirdo, but she does add, perhaps a bit too loudly: ]

Oh man, I am so glad Ianthe Tridentarius isn't here.

[ famous last words ]

[hearthebell]

Who?

[Since this world seems to like bringing people from their world in (and L assumes that "Ianthe Tridentarius" is from their world), this seems pertinent to know.]

[necrolord]

[ Well, that's deeply rude.

Maybe Lazarus, given his hawklike attention— given the encyclopedia he is cultivating of God's flickers and flinches of emotion, the faintest shifts in the lines around his horrible eyes— will see it. Ever so slightly, those black-hole eyes go brittle. There is a distant, bitter sheen of ice at some depths beyond his smile.

He drinks. ]

Not uncommon among flesh magicians, if you'll believe it. The Third has gotten a bit... enthusiastic in their customs, I understand.

[ This he says in the same good-natured tone he's said everything else. To those really, truly looking, it doesn't match his eyes. ]

[hearthebell]

[L cannot not notice. Maybe he asked for just this reason, to see what else the man he'd seen with infant bones woven through his hair had done to trespass against flesh and innocence.

They're both corrupt, terrible, ruined. L knows it, wants The Emperor to know it, too.]

I'd believe a great deal, you'll find, given proper evidence.

[The smile he wears is honeyed to counteract the bitterness of the alcohol that doesn't play well with his unusual mind or lightweight body.]

Does "Ianthe" mean anything to you? I'd heard that name, quite recently.