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

[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's already a little jarred at how many people are drinking to this.

Delighted, the way only a detective could be at hearing about so much depravity, but it's frowned-upon to be too open about that. Not only that, he doesn't want Paul to be a depraved cannibal.]

Is... it true that it tastes like pork? Everyone says that.

[The other cannibals he's talked to, anyway.]

cw: auto-cannibalism description

[terriblepurpose]

It was dry? A little leathery, by the time I got to it.

[Paul's face screws up with the unexpected difficulty of describing the experience. He runs his tongue over his teeth before he can think about how that might look, in context.]

It was my old skin, when we'd all been shedding. Pa- someone told me that eating part of it might revert me back, so I tried it. It did work.

[hearthebell]

Oh!

[There's a kind of rare, genuine surprise in L's response.]

So that counts! I couldn't do it... I can't even eat pork.

[terriblepurpose]

Really?

[The surprise is mirrored back.]

I'm sure that you could, if you had to. Eat pork.

[peripheries]

[-100 Favorite Human points. Not because of cannibalism but because it was OLD. AND JUST SKIN. Not even regular food. Good god, sir.

Kaworu just groans and collapses onto his back, looking seriously like he might need to toss his cookies after hearing that one.]

[wannasmash]

You too, Paul-kun? [ Midoriya blurts out. ]

[terriblepurpose]

It was my skin.

[He really should have specified.]

And it wasn't even as if it tasted good enough to go back for more.

[wannasmash]

Well--yeah--Don't worry, I'm not judging, I really can't...

[ He frowns mildly over at L, because it's rather gauche to ask that at a celebration. Then he looks down at his drink, looks back at L, puzzled, looks at his drink again. He leans in towards Paul and tries to whisper quietly: ]

Does hair count?

[unsheathedfromreality]

[no. expresses a snoopy mothbird.

Iskierka is the authority on flesh-eating. Fur and hair are NOT flesh, and are also bad eating.]

[hearthebell]

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

You? Or Moonsight?

[unsheathedfromreality]

[She tips her head back to swallow her drink; answers in a gurgling trill.

One of them's a cannibal (for a wide definition of the word) and one's an opportunistic scavenger. But: me. is the impression that comes across the line.]

[hearthebell]

[He shakes his head and laughs quietly, in a way that's easier than it's ever been when addressing anything with a face.]

Could you nod once for other bugs, and twice for others of your species specifically? Either way, you seem so proud.

[And he can't help but find that a little endearing.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

[She considers that one--what even is her species? Omen? The natural kind she resembles? Shrike, like her Sleeper (like her soul)?

One little claw comes up to tap against her beak, a gesture so clearly affected it echoes Illarion's. The texture of her considerations flavor the air, humming-warm with spice buzz--a little parade of hazy shapes of things she has and hasn't eaten.

Two out of three, she decides, is a majority vote. She puts her foot down and nods twice.

ate. And why shouldn't she be proud? She was the one who survived to do the eating!]

[hearthebell]

[His brows raise; he's impressed, not just at the more definite definition of "cannibal" being apparently true, but at how endearing Iskierka continues to make this.]

I was moved from the Pale Sanctuary, but... when I woke up I found your note. I'm worried for Moonsight, but you did the right thing by giving it to me. If someone's out there alive, and I'm involved, they'll come back safe.

[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.]

[lipochrome]

The worst person in the entire Nine Houses, duh. She's a creep and a weirdo and does not belong here.

[hearthebell]

"Duh", as an expression, should be reserved for something that a person would be willfully ignorant to not know. I contest the fairness of using it in this case, considering I have no reason to know who she is or that she's the worst... but I'll take note of that reputation, in case it becomes necessary.

[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.

[necrolord]

Of course. [ He settles in as though unbothered. ] She's one of my own.

[ Like Harrow; like Gideon; not quite like Paul, though that question hangs unspoken in the air between them. ]

She's not in town, though of course I'd be delighted... but you're right that she was Third before she joined my House. Brilliant flesh magicians, the Third. And a delight at parties.

[hearthebell]

[How much of it is a secret really, L wonders, and not just the Emperor's typical tendency to front unconcernedly when someone gets close to his fire, pulls his long spiked tail, tries to jab a needle into some sort of soft underbelly on the rare occasions it may be exposed?]

Right... one of your own, from somewhere you're a king.

[Not here, is the gleeful implication.]

What a shame she isn't here. I would have liked some delight.

[He's found it, and he does like it very much.]