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

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[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.

[necrolord]

They won't take it personally.

[ He looks distinctly amused at the implication. ]

These guys don't do a lot of thinking for themselves.

[dohaeris]

[she wills herself to show no reaction outside of mild curiosity. be likable. do nothing to appear suspicious. she pictures littlefinger watching this exchange, amused. it's not very helpful.]

Are they magical constructs, like the imps?

[necrolord]

In a way. [ He tips his head, thoughtful. ] They were just fragments of spare bone before magic built them back up... but the little lamp guys have a sort of sentience, best we can tell. There's no soul here among these bones. No self, no spark of life. So: nobody to get mad if you say a word wrong, except whoever's holding their strings.

[dohaeris]

[she concentrates very hard on seeming innocent and uninvested. don't let him see how clever you are, but don't play stupid enough to arouse his suspicions. she smiles as if she were talking to some particular lord of the vale she needed to impress.]

And who's holding the strings?

[most of them could never resist a chance to show off, least of all littlefinger.]

[necrolord]

[ It's a funny disconnect, the tension he can read in her through necromantic senses— like a tightening in his peripherals— and the wide-eyed curiosity that seems so genuine. Maybe it's her magic smoothing the gap, or maybe it's his age: he doesn't look too hard. ]

We have a few necromancers in town... but these guys are mine.

[ The nearest skeleton chatters its teeth in a sudden, comical clatter. God winks. ]

They're good company, for puppets.

[dohaeris]

[it's not hard to force a laugh. after all, it would be funny in a puppet show. they are puppets. they're puppets made of paste and wood, and you are alayne stone.]

Is it darkblood magic? It seems very complex.

[necrolord]

Of a sort. [ This he says with intentional, polite vagueness; he waves a hand as though to release a servant from attention. The nearest skeleton goes clattering away. ] Necromancy is the magic I brought from home... myself and a few others. It's as normal to us as breathing, spooky as it may seem to everyone less familiar.

[dohaeris]

[she watches the skeleton walk away, in order to sound extra casual as she asks the next, crucial question.]

Oh, did you bring the all the bones from home, too?

[fake bones, wood and paste bones. at least the human ones.]

[necrolord]

Mostly. [ Mostly is vast overstatement, but he says it like it's of no consequence. ] I didn't wash up with much of anything... not even the clothes off my back. Not a graceful entrance, let me tell you. Harrowhark [ and he gestures to the skull-painted girl passing across the room in the far back, looking generally discomfited by the concept of a party ] was a bit luckier in that regard.

[dohaeris]

[mostly is not quite good enough, but she's not about to let that show. instead she smiles in the direction of the girl, who can't help but feel a pang of sympathy for, though she thinks there's a good chance it's misplaced if the girl is also responsible for puppeting dead bodies...unless the dead bodies agreed to be puppeted in life, as some people burn their dead and some people bury them?

regardless, she turns back towards the man with a small huff of laughter.]

You didn't even get a bag? Paul said I was unlucky to have to win my things back.

[necrolord]

Oh, I got the bag, but there was very little in it. A rock, a notebook, the usual.

[ He smiles as though this is a funny inconvenience. As though there was no more reason for it than bad luck.

As though he didn't wash up naked because he'd been wearing nothing, back home, but the robe he'd pulled off a corpse. Not a graceful entrance is a funny way to put it, but the honest truth is, he'd risen out of that water spitting mad.

That's where the skeletons come from. ]

Still... at least no one made me play skee-ball for my shirt.

[dohaeris]

[odd, but not overly concerning. she laughs.]

Oh, Paul won my things back for me. All the Wakers were very helpful. They gave me old bedsheets for my petticoats at the inn.

[she'd asked for stays on the beach, and one woman brought her daughter's old ones to her at the inn. everyone washed up naked. it's perhaps unusual that this man would make particular mention of it.]