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

[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.

[dohaeris]

[a startled look, back and forth between them.]

It can't count! What if you were to bite your lip, and it were chapped?

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Iskierka cranes her neck from where she's perched on L's arm, looking over (looking through) Sansa.

Something playfully malicious sparks in her faceted eyes. She taps her beak against the detective's glass with a declarative tnk.

drink. she expresses cheerily. It counts!]

[hearthebell]

I'd pull off the dry part and throw it away, of course, or pocket it until I had the opportunity to burn it if I was worried about someone taking it to analyze the DNA.

[hearthebell]

Did you know that if you never eat pork, and then taste human flesh, even if it's done unwittingly, your body will reject the meat?

[This is probably not true, but my goodness doesn't it sound like it could be?]

[terriblepurpose]

What? That's not -

[Oh. It's a joke. Or possibly a joke, or even true where Lazarus comes from, or stems from some other esoteric cause Paul is slightly too fuzzy to perceive.]

Why is that?

[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.]

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul nods in agreement with Iskierka, giving Midoriya a thumbs up in the hopes of providing some additional reassurance. He adds, in a similar whisper:]

Neither would nails. You can eat as much hair and nails as you want.

[That is in no way whatsoever what anyone was concerned about.]

[wannasmash]

[ They're dead things pushed out by flesh, but not of it. That tracks. He sets his drink down and gives the two of them a grave double thumbs up. ]

No thank you, the hair was gross. Super gross.

[ He admires his mentor for a lot of things, but that's not one of them. 0/10 would not eat All Might's hair again. ]

[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.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Her antennae droop as he speaks of her missing Sleeper. Some of the antic energy drains out of her.

thanks. She believes him; it's laced through the melancholy thought.
But it has already been days since her last contact and she doesn't know what that means. Trust in her Sleeper's friends is absolute; trust that circumstances will be all right--that's harder.

The mood and the grief last moments and pass suddenly. (Like a breeze forcing clouds from the sun.) She leans over to beak Lazarus' bangs from his face, preening him in the same hopeful-fruitless way she does Kaworu (does Tabris). good. clever.]

[hearthebell]

Has something changed?

[He lets her groom him, this gentle little half-soul who tries when her arbitrarily-named sleeper doesn't have quite enough life in him to justify a full one.]

Can you show me some of the others who got notes, too? I'd hoped I might connect with some of them here.

[So she knows he isn't only here to steal things from studies and drink with teenagers.]