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

[slayerskiss]

Thanks, I know. [She pushes her hair back to emphasize how much she knows she's hot. She gives Anna a curious look, only somewhat baffled.] I mean, we've been here for like, half a second.

Don't tell me you're gettin' cold feet?

[She probably shouldn't have framed it that way.

Part of Faith is afraid of what she'll find when digging through the Doctor's stuff, and part of her wants to run right now. She knows he's... sinister. He was sinister. Probably... formerly evil, like her. Maybe he still is. But part of her wants to live in this grey area where she doesn't believe he's done anything wrong here. That he's her friend, that he's genuine, that she's not just a tool to be used for some lofty agenda.]

[hauntedsavior]

Listen, I kind of expected to get flavor blasted with weird shit immediately. I mean, with how much weird that dude's got going on with him and all.

[cold feet. pfft. no fucking way. she almost seems insulted at the idea as she steps further in, closing the door behind them so there's at least nothing immediately off from the outside.]

You know much about him? I mean, like, I know some stuff but I'm like 90% sure he's the kind of guy who shows different parts to different people. [even in this state, even in the face of a hot girl, she will not for a moment divulge teacher's secrets to anyone else. but that doesn't mean she can't gather more information while she's here.] Not a judgment on him or anything, yeah? Just the way that he works.

[slayerskiss]

He's pretty tight lipped about everything. [That's a flag. Might be red. She stuffs her hands in the pockets of her skin tight leather pants, looking around evenly.]

I don't even know his name. I just call him Doctor Bones, 'cuz he healed me once and threw some skeletons at me. [And it's not a position of authority over her, she doesn't feel beholden to him if she just calls him something goofy like Doctor Bones or whatever.] He probably got up to some seriously shady shit in his old life, though. I don't know the full extent of it but I had a friend who was similar.

[Friend, father, whatever.]

But he's nice. So I'm not complaining. We all get a new start here, anyway.

[It's easier to pretend that's true for the Doctor than it is to accept that's true for herself.]

[hauntedsavior]

[could be red. anna could be color blind. (she's not, but that's not the point.) either way, her eye wanders and it definitely isn't wandering towards the shelves. she exhales slowly, quietly, trying to calm herself and remember that she has a girlfriend now who she cares about a lot and who she doesn't want to piss off or do anything to lose. and she has to calm herself down and just learn to appreciate from a distance.]

Yeah. [and a quick shake of her head, like she's snapping out of something.] Uh, right, yeah. No, we all did some fucked up shit back home. I don't know what Teacher's whole deal is, but, like, there's no doubt about it, you know?

[she walks over towards a shelf, trying to get a better look, but her eye's having problems understanding exactly what she's seeing. she raises an eyebrow without bringing much more attention to it.]

I like Doctor Bones. Feels like it's just the right combination of respectful and ridiculous. You know we tried to use his bone powers to explode the leviathan from the inside out? Didn't work, but the principle was there and he looked like he was having fun.

[slayerskiss]

The friend I had was good to me, even if he was pretty awful to the rest of the world. So far Doc's been the same to me, and he helped with the Leviathan, so he's got a step up in that regard.

[The Mayor would have stood up to the Leviathan too, Faith reminds herself. He needed Sunnydale to remain intact for him to keep bleeding it dry. The Doctor isn't the same. He helped her, healed her even. The Mayor helped her, healed her, had her taken care of. The Mayor wanted both a daughter and a weapon.

So what does Teacher want?]

Yeah, I mean... I dunno. Teacher feels too formal, I guess. [Like a position of authority over her.] Plus, it's not like he's teaching me.

[She snorts at the idea of exploding the Leviathan's bones from the inside.]

See, I just went for punching it really hard. Think I actually ate some of it? Fuckin' nasty.

[hauntedsavior]

He's not teaching me a hell of a lot either, but I've heard a couple other nicknames for him and this is easily the best one. Said I could call him "captain" if I wanted, but I'm the one going out there sailing his boat, so it doesn't make a lot of sense, you know?

[whatever. it's not important, really. he is a man of many names, a lot of which anna will keep to herself until she determines how dangerous they actually are. she hasn't yet figured out what the king undying is looking for here, but what she's looking at is finally starting to make sense in her head. she's absolutely looking at a skull of something that is not a human. she can't tell what yet, but there's the overwhelming temptation to reach out and touch it. she can... resist it. for the moment. as long as she's focusing on it, though the other things, the other pieces of bone and vials of blood lining the shelf she's looking at are starting to draw her attention, too.]

Hey. There's, uh. Speaking of nasty. There's some fuckin'... loose bones over here. Probably cursed. Probably real, real cursed.

[slayerskiss]

Yeah, if anyone should be called Captain, it'd be you. [She gives her a cheeky grin before going back to looking over Jod's stuff.

All of it seems predictably extremely dangerous. Like, super dangerous. It'd kill her if she touched it. It reminds her of the Mayor's office when he asked her to fetch the sugar as she nearly brushed against the teapot of infinite madness. She's not too bothered by it.]

Yeah, dude. It's some fuckin' cursed bones. Some cursed everything, I'd bet. [She frowns, sobering up a bit.] Uhhh, don't touch anything. You might, I don't know, turn inside out or lose your ability to form short term memories.

[She doesn't seem alarmed by either of these possibilities. Like, yeah. Of course the suspicious warlock would have that kind of thing on his stuff.]

[hauntedsavior]

You picked those examples way too fast. [she's glad to take any break in the unseen tension that she can get right now; the mist of temptation to touch everything thins around her.] How many cursed objects do you deal with on a normal basis? [the implication is pretty clear, though.] 'Cause, like, I think that the normal amount of cursed objects is zero. Maybe one if you're really unlucky or haunted.

[she suddenly doesn't want to turn her back on these things, so she's sweeping her eye across the line of cursed items and trying to make sure she doesn't let them out of her sight. like they're just going to sprout wings and fly away or something.]

Dealt with the memory loss thing once, though. Not looking forward to that possibility again.

[slayerskiss]

Like I said. I have a friend like the Doc, he dealt with all sorts of creepy shit. [She looks over the stuff, the look in her eyes somewhere between nostalgic and fond. There's a tinge of bittersweetness there too.

She wonders if Teacher would ask her to die too if he was gone.

She glances over at Anna when she mentions that, grimacing slightly and banishing whatever memory she was stuck in.]

Yeah. [She sighs.] Friend of mine died shortly before the Leviathan showed up. Lost all memory of anything that happened in this place. It's a real bitch.

[hauntedsavior]

Hold up. [that cuts right through everything else immediately. because it's the first time she's hearing about it, and goddammit it sounds too familiar. she shouldn't be surprised.]

That can happen? How—[fuck.] This is gonna sound so fucking insensitive and I'm sorry. But how many times did they die before that?

[she didn't have any plans of dying, but she knew that other people wouldn't be so lucky. and her own luck would run out one day, too. memory is... not something she wants to fuck with. especially not now that she has people to love.]

[slayerskiss]

Nah, it's chill.

[She shrugs. It's an unpleasant subject that she's got a lot of feelings about, but she's never been one for beating around the bush.

Or that's what she says anyway, she absolutely sucks at just outright saying what she wants, no matter how reckless she presents.] It was her first time here. But she died once in Deerington. I don't know why she lost her memory, but I think the Doc is helping her.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah? Okay. Okay, good.

[at least she knows she can trust teacher with that. right? probably. if faith trusts him then she probably does too, maybe. god. this is complicated.]

I didn't know he could help with stuff like that. I figured it would be, like, Remina's whole deal. You know, the god? [she balled up one fist and hung the fingers of the other hand down below it, wiggling them like tentacles.] Her whole thing is knowing everything about everything, right? Hope Teach isn't trying to put the local pantheon out of a job.