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

[hauntedsavior]

[she doesn't know what she expected. or does expect, or will expect. all she knows is that the "furniture" euphemism is fucking weird, but she won't call sayo on it because strangely it does... kind of make sense. for the parts of her life that she's ashamed of, the ones she doesn't want to talk about but that she can't prevent thoughts of from bubbling up. the soul riding alongside her has no reaction to alcohol, to marijuana, to depression so deep that nothing will pull her from it (maybe not that last part), but the main part of anna's soul sure does feel awash in it sometimes.]

You know apps? Like on our phones? ...Few years ago, I ended up with one that I didn't install. It was called Retrospec, and it turns out just having it on my phone meant I was being chosen for this... big soul-merging free-for-all that turned into a massive fight for our reality. Always does, right? [she tries a smirk, but it comes out weaker than she wanted.]

To be honest, I didn't really care at first, but then my city started getting threatened. The people I loved started getting hurt, or disappearing, or forgetting. And I started changing, getting swords in the mail and waking up with robot legs. Kinda figured that it was time to start taking it seriously and fighting back.

[forwantofahorse]

...the more I learn about other worlds, the more it seems improbable that mine was so mundane. [A pause. A sigh. The all two/three-real people tugging at the edges of their consciousness, curious at feeling a presence that hasn't lurked in the Golden Land since before the new Endless Sorceror's time, were proof that wasn't really the case. (Why were they, the reality, the author, the only one unlucky enough to never find a happy ending?)] Although that was simply bad luck on my part, given what's apparently been happening one layer of the story above mine.

It appears that the call to adventure didn't leave either of us alone, though. I can... sympathize.

My entire life, I felt as though I never had a say in anything.

[hauntedsavior]

No, trust me, I understand. It's all about degrees of it, right...? Like, I've met people here who have been through so many things way above my own pay grade that I don't even know how to relate to them.

[kainé is one of those people. she's handling this part first because she doesn't really know how to bring up the next part without bringing down the mood. maybe, she considers, the mood is already down.]

So all I can do is think about how I spent most of my life being tugged in one direction or the other, and when the time came and I could finally start writing my own story... [sigh. people like protagonists with flaws, girl.] I just sat there getting wasted. For five years. It took almost literal divine intervention to snap me out of that shit.

But it's real, you know? [it feels like she's missing something important about all of this, but she doesn't know sayo nearly well enough to put her finger on it.] It's this feeling like you're trapped in whatever the world has planned for you. And I can't even say that at least we're getting a fresh start here because we were all just swept up in the current and dumped into the ocean anyway.

[forwantofahorse]

...I wish I could say something it was abstract as coincidence, or God, or destiny, that left me trapped in my own birdcage.

[How many times had they almost convinced themself to leave, but hesitated at the last moment because what if Battler came back or what if George proposed or what if Jessica realized? How many times had they sat down in the VIP room like Kinzo surely must've done, staring down the ticking hands of the clock and the gold both and knowing there was nothing truly keeping them on Rokkenjima?]

But even after the people who appointed themselves my guardians had me fulfill my "purpose..." It was me who built the bars.

[hauntedsavior]

I mean, yeah. Same.

[she's lucid enough to have these thoughts, torturous though they are, and still just buzzed enough to be okay with sharing. she's just not sure if it's going to be useful, if digging up her own trauma in an attempt to be relatable will ingratiate her with sayo or if it'll just drive her away. she just knows that right now, she wants to be friends with her. it feels like the best outcome after being, in anna's eyes, the reason that sayo's in what must be some kind of pain.]

I still think I could've stopped whenever I wanted and gotten my life back together on my own. I just didn't want to. I thought that it was easier to go through life like... well, like how you're gonna feel once this stuff finishes kicking in. Instead of facing reality and owning up to my own mistakes. Left the door wide open for myself and just didn't want to walk through it.

[forwantofahorse]

...ha. That's also too familiar. I wonder if people like us attract each other like flies to honey. First you and Kainé, then me and her, and now you and me.

Broken birds of a feather waddle together, I suppose. [She lets out a witchy cackle, sounding distinctly unlike herself for a few moments, eyes burning, blazing blue, cruel and distant and longing in equal measure... until Sayo winces, and the bright blue fades, leaving behind what looks like a piercing headache.]

S- Sorry. Looks like she popped in to have her own say. I wonder, is it really Beatrice, or the fragment of her that lurks within me, or just... me?

Fuck, this spice stuff is weird.

[hauntedsavior]

[the cackle's offputting, but sayo's also getting high, so it's probably not as weird as it could be. it does sound like she's talking to somebody else for a moment, and—did her eyes change? it's gone before anna can say anything about it, and by the time it is gone she's reluctant to bring it back up again.]

Yeah it is. I spent... I don't know how long out there just talking to A2. It was nice. First chance I had to talk to her since, like, I came here. [or something like that.] Kind of sounds like you're not gonna have as good an experience if Beatrice comes out to play? But, like, hey. I have no problem being your trip buddy.

[she nudges sayo's shoulder playfully with the flats of her knuckles.]

Broken beasts like us gotta stick together, you know? Nobody else is gonna do it for us now that we're finally coming out of our cages.