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

Paul Atreides | Dune (2021) | OTA

[terriblepurpose]

[Content warnings: underage drinking, drug use, body modification]

1. rice libel | any time | OTA

I was rinsing rice. I know you don't strain cooked rice, and doing it with your bare hands? That's ridiculous. It was also once. One time!

[Paul's hands flutter illustratively through the air as he offers up this smiling explanation...or elaborate cover-up of his rice-related crimes.]

2. worm facts | early evening | OTA

[When Paul first put together what was going on in a burst of sound, light, and projectiles, a person might have been able to capture a glimpse of an unusual sight: the young Duke Atreides blinking and flat-footed, entirely disarmed.

But Paul is nothing if not adaptable. It doesn't take long before he has evaluated the altered environmental conditions, identified new key strategic objectives, and formulated a revised plan of attack for the evening's festivities.

This is why he is currently accepting a shot of tequila from a skeleton with a blindfold pulled down around his neck and the first buttons of his carefully pressed black formal shirt undone. It's not his first, but he trusts in the calibrated metabolic efficiency of his liver. He raises the shot glass in a toast to the next person he makes eye contact with, then gestures with it to the illustration of the sandworm he's sunk another tooth into.]

They're called Shai-Hulud, on Arrakis. They're fascinating lifeforms.

[His blue eyes blaze with the relentless enthusiasm of someone bearing great and terrible trivia, a myriad of factoids unfolding out endlessly into the dark oceans of the evening yet-to-come. Then his face breaks into a grin, and he downs the shot.]

Your turn. Pin the great beast of the desert, if you dare!

3. bone head | mid-evening | OTA

[The resident solemn arboreal memorials (Paul Atreides and Harrowhark Nonagesimus, respectively) quiet consultation and brief adjournment to the upstairs takes place mid-evening, and may be missed by most party-goers. Uniform black is functionally camouflage in the house that necromancy built, after all.

Paul's return about half an hour later is harder to miss. It's not that he's departed from the monochrome, but how he's rearranged it. Paul comes down the stairs with his blue-green eyes lined lightly in night, his formal button-down exchanged for a t-shirt sized to fit loosely on someone shorter and slighter than he is and composed of some slightly shiny dark fabric that had slipped over Paul's fingers like water as he rifled shamelessly through his bunkmate's belongings. Under his silver-buttoned black vest, it fits Paul less loosely.

These cosmetic differences are slight compared to the object of his original departure. Paul smiles at a tilted, dreamy slant as he slips back into the party with his four new bone studs, two to an earlobe, still red and aching in their newness.

His ultimate destination is the impromptu dance floor, but he takes his time getting there, and he may or may not be angling his head with a certain attention-seeking precision.]

4. spice spice baby | late evening | closed to close CR

[As the evening winds down, Paul is gauzily intrigued to discover the limits of his body's processing capacity. This is to say that he finds himself sprawled loosely on a couch with his eyeliner smudged, his hair hopelessly tousled, and a gentle warmth perfused through his blood.

In spice-heightened empathetic awareness, his breath slows to the rhythms of the tidal whispers of feeling in the house. He looks at the ceiling through half-closed green eyes full of drifting contemplation.]

Do you feel that?

[He doesn't turn his head to ask. He knows who's there, an individual presence close enough to gleam even in a sea of soft light.]

5. wildcard

[Please feel free to reach out to me at terriblepurpose or via DM to come up with alternative starters if you would like to!]

spice spice baby; MHA spoilers

[wannasmash]

Out of concern, Midoriya has always wondered how his Paleblood friends felt when their powers or the "blood weather" fluctuated. Spice sounds like that. He trusts Paul. The dab of spice on Midoriya's tongue seems so insignificant. He sits quietly with a serene expression, half his hair mussed, forest green eyes large and looking at nothing while he sees everything. He does feel it, the undisturbed well sprawled still and deep next to him. Everything is fine. Except--

"You'll get an ear infection," Midoriya murmurs a half-forgotten thought. "Your hair."

He plucks in his jeans pocket and snaps the few threads lightly holding something to the seam since December. A hairpin, well-hidden for emergencies. He produces more, while coordination still remains. Each thread breaking is a loud, amplified note. In the back of his mind, an urge has come forward: There's an injury, and he must keep Paul safe.

He rolls on his side, the moving color-bloom of the room immaterial compared to the still, black-swathed figure next to him. He breaks the usual caul of reservation he places around even friends and reaches for a lock of hair above the shell (and now bone) of Paul's ear.

[terriblepurpose]

The shared sense of ease between them is only lightly stirred by Midoriya's soft apprehension about the state of Paul's ears. Under other circumstances, he'd demur, wriggle away, insist that he knows his own immune system and its keeping well enough to avoid anything as trivial as an infected piercing - and that even if he's wrong, it's nothing that couldn't be fixed.

Paul tips his head to one side to give Midoriya better access to his hair, draping one hand across his own stomach as he smiles fuzzily at his friend, who is more relaxed than Paul may have ever seen him.

"There's so much of you," he says, absently, submitting to these caring attentions. It is his birthday. He's allowed to let people fuss over him.

Spice, Spice, Baby

[peripheries]

Mmmm.

[Is the reply from the angel-turned-boy, half curled up on top of Paul and half wedged between him and the back of the couch. He feels curious, buzzed and excited, a desire to run around and the same time as he feels content to stay curled up here, trying to match his breathing to Paul's.

So Kaworu can't quite answer the question. He feels all of those things. He feels Paul's heartbeat reverberate in his ears and in his body. He hears a distant voice far in the distance and he can't place even though it sounds like his own. He hears the sound of the sea, the crashing of waves against rocks, and the rumbles of the deep.

Instead, he reaches up and idly brushes some of Paul's out of his face, tucking it behind his ear, examining the curious new studs.]

I feel you not keeping your promise to dance with me.

[Was there even such a thing?]

[terriblepurpose]

[Kaworu always thrums. It's only moreso now, a true resonance in Paul's chest that might be distressing for the way it overlaps his still-so-human heart if he were thinking too much about biorhythms.

He's not thinking about biorhythms. He's not really thinking about anything, for the first time he can remember since he came here, and he thinks that if not for Kaworu's grounding weight he might be the one prone to floating away.]

I didn't say when.

[His hair sticks slightly to his skin as Kaworu brushes it. It's a fascinating fascination. He can see (feel?) the attention on his ears, which brings his own attention back to them, still throbbing with his pulse and his pulse only.]

You can touch them if you want to. It's okay.

spice spice baby |

[ezra_of_lothal]

Someone has to be the sober one, right? And besides, Ezra doesn't like not feeling in control of his abilities. Even on the streets of Lothal, he was never one for dabbling much with intoxicants.

He's had a couple of drinks, and that's plenty. Just enough to dull the roar of people with lower inhibitions around him, a little.

"Which part?" he murmurs. "I feel a lot right now, but I've been trying to tune it out some."

[terriblepurpose]

Paul raises his hand towards what appears to be a light, turns it this way and that in his field of vision.

"Anything. All of it." He shrugs, as if that's somehow coherent, useful communication.

1

[onekindsoul]

[Hey look. Ruby is listening and is entirely empathetic of Paul's plight.]

Gosh! It's so rude that they're doing that too you.

I've been there though.

You put cheese in a blender one time while making lasagna and suddenly you're not allowed in the kitchen anymore.

Oscar has never let me live it down.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul has developed his own, new sense of empathy for Ruby's besmirchment in turn - and if not for the fact she admits to it, he'd even have been willing to convince himself Oscar (wherever he is) was exaggerating for dramatic effect.

The second best thing, he decides, is an open mind about it.]

Why did you put the cheese in a blender? I didn't ask him about your logic.

wildcard! (pre-party cooking!)

[grice]

[ lucky for paul, falco had learned more than a thing or two about cooking, both at south sister (where it became a pastime) and santa rosita. after hearing about . . . straining rice with your bare hands, paul, falco had decided it was under his care to take his elder brother figure in as his pupil. that’s right: falco’s going to teach you how to cook. every month, three times a week and then some, if paul wanted more. falco would stay more than occupied, which was great— he would watch videos all over the omni and prepare easy to go to notes. today, there was cake involved. and more, since falco wanted to prep many things for the true birthday man.

he’s good at faking it. he’s very good, ironically, at making sure he blends in and seems earnest when he’s, in fact, lying. it’s all part of once being a warrior candidate, but for now, he didn’t have to think about any of that. he could just simply be a child, excited about paul’s birthday and keeping it a surprise.

the challenge: a layered vanilla confetti cake, where the confetti is actually fruit. this one’s a toughie, but falco has managed to bring at least every utensil needed in the kitchen for whatever recipe he wanted to try. including something to strain rice (he doesn’t exactly mention yet that this kit is part of his gift. he’ll figure it out later, he supposed). ]

Okay, um— we don’t have an electric mixer, so we can take turns with our hands after.

[ and egg beaters, of course, or two forks held together, as falco would teach ye old ways of cooking when technology wasn’t all the rage yet. with most of the ingredients prepared in separate plates and bowls, it’s time for a bunch of egg cracking. six egg whites and two egg yolks, it says on the listed steps. falco brought the eggs. and a friend he’s delighted for paul to meet as soon as he wakes up from his nap. for now, eggs! ]

I can show you how to separate them. I’ll just need the ones in my bag.

[ falco points at the main flap with floury white fingers close by; there’s a container with eggs, prodding right out. and also a massive, ostrich sized confetti egg. ]

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul has been reluctant to have Falco in this house. He'd be lying if he were to say that he still isn't. It's not so much concern, any more - although that's always there, especially considering some of their resident guests - as it is the sense he has that Falco doesn't belong in a place like this. He suits his little cottage, not a sprawling mansion full of skeletons and secrecy.

But it became too much to keep saying no, especially as excuses ran dry. So this is the compromise that Paul makes with himself: Falco is welcome here, and Paul will simply never leave his side while he is.

This is, fortunately, not a wholly literal proposition, or else Paul wouldn't be able to get the eggs.]

The smaller ones?

[It should be an obvious distinction, since the one egg is larger than the bowl they're mixing batter in, but Paul is learning that one of the fundamentals of baking is even stricter precision than cooking.]

Or... [He glances at Falco with a slight smile, a hint of teasing.] Is it a confetti egg, for the confetti cake?

texts from right now | l lawliet

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul marks a particular absence at the party only after a through investigation of all the potential nooks, crannies, and warded rooms that he can imagine a certain individual finding his way into unexpectedly - and then he checks them all again, just to be sure. Investigation concluded (with, admittedly, a handful of detours on the way), Paul coaxes his Omen to his palm to dictate a message.]

Lazarus,

I know you don't like parties - or maybe you do like parties, and I never asked, but I am inferring from prior evidence, yes, put inferring from prior evidence, it's funny. He'll think it's funny. I'm not asking for notes. Inferring from prior evidence, you don't like parties.

However, we do have cake, which I made, and I'd like you to try some before Ruby manages to eat what's left. No, that's not right. Lazarus, I'd like you to come because I'd like to see you. Too much?

Lazarus, I'd like you to visit and try the cake, because we're friends, and someone told me you have to forgive me since it's my birthday. I promise it's safe. No, that's worse.

Lazarus, please come to my birthday party for the cake. Just send that.

texts from right now

[hearthebell]

[L fully intended to spend tonight altering his state of mind and blithely forgetting all the things happening elsewhere that he could ruin.

He was going to imbibe a little bit, even, necessarily alone, because that's what people do when they look for comfort anywhere but in the words and minds of others.

It hadn't gone quite like that, because though L had covered his bases and sent a note and a gift, he'd received this message, and suddenly everything is thrown into a different perspective.

Everything is different.

His response comes late, considering that it's a party, but not actually too late.]

I like parties, and also cake.

Sorry I'm late.

If you're sure (and you can revise your surety) I'll be there by 9:00 PM. There are some things I don't know, if you'd believe it.

Yours,

Lazarus

1.

[floatsaway]

[Ochako is...disturbed. Extremely disturbed, and it shows visibly on her face the way her nose wrinkles and lips turn in an almost affronted looking scowl. My god, whoever introduced this man to rice must be weeping. Or keeling over dead.]

If... [Ochako clears her throat a little bit, trying not to look like she's about to be ABSOLUTELY condescending. Trying. She's really fucking trying, okay?? Give her some credit.] I-If you need lessons on how to cook rice... I-I, um. I'm really good at making it. It's, um...it's a pretty common food where I'm from.

Back home.

In Japan.

[Sips drink loudly.]

[terriblepurpose]

You're from Japan?

[The flush of color in Paul's cheeks offers a partial explanation for why he brushes by Ochako's apparent visceral distress at his rice-misadventures. Another part of the explanation lies in the brightness of his mood beyond that. It inclines him to a certain magnanimity.

The rest lies in his very sincerely attempted attempt at making use of the Japanese his good green-haired friend has been tutoring him in.]

Where I am from, we have rice. We make it.

[Then he switches back, relying on the ambient translation to make sense of his native Galach (although it always misses key tonal stresses, he's noticed).]

I didn't use to cook much of it myself, but I do know how it's supposed to be. I'm not a barbarian.

bone head;

[laniidae]

[Contrary to...pretty much every other formal engagement she's attended since her arrival in Trench, Renfri does not turn up to the Birthday Rager™ wearing her spangled crimson gown from Madam Generosity. She'd been given ample warning about this little affair, and based on what Kaworu had described, she'd been able to make a reasonably fair guess about what type of tone the get-together was going to strike, and so when she does turn up, it proves to be a surprisingly rare moment where she actually comes off comfortable in her own skin.

Everything about her reads as "bandit queen", and it's all there in a single glance — comfortably fitted trousers, supportive leather that gives the suggestion of armor without outright being so, her dagger worn openly on her thigh instead of coyly hidden beneath a hacked-up skirt. There is a drape of cloth that wraps around one hip and gives at least a pretense of the sort, but it also has the distinct look of something that could be removed to allow the wearer to fight — or use it as an accessory to combat in and of itself — on a moment's notice.

Also, she genuinely seems something in alignment with happy. Or if not happy, then at least confident. Sure in her own skin. The sort of person who hunts, rather than is hunted, and better yet can choose not to engage in a hunt at all, if she doesn't want to.

Of course, that's got nothing on kohl eyeliner and ears double-pierced with bone studs, now does it.]

Look at you, fishing for all the attention you can get.

[SHE SEES YOU TOSSING YOUR HEAD AROUND LIKE THAT, MR. ATREIDES.]

Now I wish I'd gotten here sooner, just to see who it was that managed to talk you into all that. I'll have to track them down and shake their hand before the night is out.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul rakes his eyes over Renfri head to toe in the way of someone admiring a fine work of armor, even though is as far from armored as he's ever seen her, oft-shredded red dress included. It's a very important gesture of respect to look suitably impressed.

Then he extends his hand with a certain regal dignity only lightly undercut by the smeared black ink on his knuckles that suggests a word that once started with the letter S.]

I'll hold you to that. [He says, with great gravitas.] And if I'm fishing, what does it say about you that you took the bait?

2. worm facts

[unphase]

[Tinya didn't know him at all, but she heard the word "party" and had to be there. she's seen Paul around the network and got the general sense of a serious young man who could use a little fun. or a lot of fun.

that's what birthdays were for, after all. an entire day, devoted to you and what you wanted!

at least it would have been back home. but she's not thinking about home right now, she's not. nor is she counting down the days to her nineteenth birthday with a certain amount of dread.

tequila helped get rid of the dread. and she was surprised to see the birthday guy down a shot of tequila with a worm without hesitation, grinning.

well. the least she could do is help encourage him into a party mood, so she gave him a playful grin]

Done. [she takes the shot with the worm easily, tossing her head back as she did so. and she chuckled a little] Did I just drink a sentient lifeform?

[terriblepurpose]

[The concept of a birthday as a day where you get to do anything you want is one of the things that had to be explained to Paul that he still doesn't fully believe, though he's getting there. Tinya is not wrong about the boy needing loosening up, and watching in amazement and teenage delight as someone willingly swallows a worm is a helpful part of the process.]

What? No!

[Paul laughs, a low chuckle like water bubbling over stone.]

That's some kind of moth larvae. Not sentient. The real worms aren't, either.

1

[hauntedsavior]

Hey, if you don't know how to prepare rice, that's totally fine. My girlfriend got on my ass for not knowing that allspice doesn't have all the spices in it—which, like, why is it called allspice if it doesn't, right?

[she isn't leaning too hard on this, but man, it's fun to tease him for it.]

But I don't think you'll get lucky and have people think that being food stupid is hot. So I guess you'll just have to get better at making food, dude.

3. bone head | mid-evening

[thisislife]

[it was strange, going to the birthday party of a guy she didn't even know, but back home she'd gone to countless parties without knowing the hosts. Lexi was trying to look at it in that light. and from that light, it made sense.

the two tequila shots she had done probably helped make it make sense.

she was hanging out on the sidelines of the dance floor. dancing had never been her strength, holding up the wall with the rest of the wallflowers was. but that was home, not here. maybe the Lexi of here could be different?

it was worth trying, at least? so when she saw the young man she assumed was the birthday boy approaching the dance floor, tried to catch his eye and smile like her sister would have done. usually, that was all it took, but Cassie and Lexi were very different people. so Lexi walked over to meet him halfway to the dance floor]

Um. Hi? Happy birthday. And cool new piercings. [a pause] I'm Lexi.

worm facts

[dohaeris]

[sansa allows a trace of amusement to show on her face and nods politely. she glances briefly at the worm and its teeth. is this yet another dart game?]

Perhaps you could tell me more about them while we're dancing.

[honestly it would still be a step up from the vale.]

Oh, Worm?

[foulhussy]

[ Kainé is already, to put it politely, vibing at a higher level from that spice. It goes great on cheese and crackers, by the way. That's why she finds herself listening very intently to something she may not ordinarily pay the least amount of attention to: namely, some poshy nerd talking about giant worms.

Okay. She doesn't question it. She's only taken this much and she can already feel the cosmos. ]

Wait, you're telling me that the shit I've been putting in me comes from their babies?

Wildcard

[detonating]

[All he did was stop to find himself a fucking bottle of water, and somehow he's managed to lose that broccoli fucker in the two god damned seconds it took to lean down! Katsuki's pretty pissed, not just at the fact that he lost Izuku to the noise and sea of people (it's not that bad, he's just anti-social and to him it's just way too many), but also at the fact that he's...

Decided to stick around to babysit that bastard all of his own accord. He definitely blames the other teen for making pretty bad decisions, but Past Katsuki wouldn't have given a shit at all, he wouldn't have even come to this. And he's kinda missing Past Katsuki in the light of him caring enough to make sure that Deku is gonna be okay. Safe. It's fucking ridiculous. All of it. Deku getting drunk, his stupid range of complicated feelings on him. He's gonna kick his ass, first chance he gets. Probably after some hard earned sleep... and when he's sure that Deku's over the worst of everything.

Katsuki, who doesn't know anyone here aside from the friends from home, doesn't think anything of or pay any mind to the guy in his proximity as he scans over unfamiliar faces to search for his childhood idiot of a friend and grumbles to himself about him at the very same time.]

Where the fuck'd you go now, Deku.... you fuckin' asshole...

spice spice baby

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon is sprawled -- no, chillaxing on the same couch. She is also solving a mystery. The mystery is: what's different about Paul? He's certainly more relaxed, but that's a pretty low bar to meet, considering that Paul is the most tightly-wound person she's ever met, after Harrow.

To any onlookers, Gideon's detective work looks like an awful lot of dopey staring. It's only after Paul says something that she's jolted into some semblance of coherent thought, snapping her fingers in a very cool a-ha move. ]

Yeah, man. You've got more bones.

[ She means the earrings. She's very smart. ]