September Event - Waltz of the Harlequin

[pumpkinhollow]

**Plain text version here.

WALTZ OF THE HARLEQUIN

ACT ONE: MAKE AN ENTRANCE

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: None }

SCENE: Leeds Estate Ballroom, night. Music can be heard from a small string band in the corner. Enter PARTYGOERS, stage right.

The estate is beautifully decorated, as it always is, in vivid blues against dark wood. Flowers made from blue and golden silk adorn the walls and furniture. Candles burn in tasteful centerpieces on the round dining tables. Delicious-looking foods can be seen on the serving tables, ready to be claimed and devoured. A member of DAHLIA’S diligent staff tends an ornate bar near the door and dancers in fine clothes twirl on the dance floor to upbeat string music.

DAHLIA can be seen in the center of the room, wearing a golden gown embroidered with roses and surrounded by her ENTOURAGE, which consists of DAISY, LAIOS, RADAR, and JEFF. All of them wear the colors of House Leeds---- blue and gold. She welcomes the PARTYGOERS warmly.

DAHLIA, going for an appropriate greeting for the person she is speaking to--- a handshake, a hug, a kiss on the cheek.
Welcome. So glad you could make it. You look ravishing. Please help yourself to something to eat, and enjoy your night.

It is a beautiful night. Formal only in appearances, the energy of the Gala is casual and light, if not a bit decadent. All seems well.

ACT TWO: ALL IS REVEALED

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: rotten food, blood, forced body transformation, unreality. }

SCENE: Leeds Estate Ballroom, one hour later. The party is well underway. When the grandfather clock chimes, it sounds strange and distorted.

The sound immediately draws the attention of DAHLIA, who grows concerned. The sour chiming continues. In the center of the ballroom, a plume of sickly yellow smog bursts as if from a smoke bomb, flooding the room and causing PARTYGOERS to stagger and cough. When it fades, the environment has changed.

Enter MENDEL, from the smoke burst.

The decor in the space has changed drastically. Where once the space was deep, cool browns and shades of blue accented with gold, it is now filled with ruddy browns, jaundiced yellows, plummy purples, and searing reds. The bundles of silk flowers are replaced with bouquets of decaying fishing nets, bloody gauze, and rotten fruit which seems to bloom from splitting bruises. Tattered swags in mismatched patterns line the walls, and each PARTYGOER is now in a masquerade mask designed to fit with their outfit.

DAHLIA, lightly panicked.
What are you doing here?

MENDEL, laughing raucously.
Surprise! Oh, I do so hate to cut in, but I simply could not go another year without doing something special for my favorite niece.

He wraps his arms, which look like graying, exposed meat, around DAHLIA.

MENDEL
You see, everyone---- Darling Dahlia here has been lying to you. Her whole life, even! Can you believe it? You see, her father was never Japhet Leeds. The man couldn’t stand her! Jane Leeds was still her mother, oh yes, but her father---

DAHLIA attempts to cut in, but MENDEL grips her tighter, clamping a hand over her mouth as he presents her to the crowd. His claws dig into her arm and her cheek. He continues to snicker as he speaks, and DAHLIA struggles.

MENDEL
Her father is my own baby brother, Prince Aster of the Dark Feast! Isn’t that a funny prank? But I think the joke has overstayed its welcome. It’s time to show your little friends who you really are, isn’t it, princess?

In a swift motion, MENDEL pulls DAHLIA into a twirl, as if dancing, sending her spinning toward the crowd. When it ceases, DAHLIA stands before her gala, changed. Her complexion is blue now, and her hair, raven black. A pair of bat-like wings adorn her back, and a crown of antlers like that of a deer wreath her head.

MENDEL
Ah, no, that’s not quite what I was going for. Let me try again.

With a snap of MENDEL’S fingers, DAHLIA changes again, her body shifting against her will. Her well-kept black locks morph into wiry ashen hair which covers her body. Her face extends into that of a cow-like skull with sharp teeth. Her hands become clawed, and her feet become cloven hooves. Before the crowd now stands THE PINE DEVIL.

MENDEL
There’s our birthday girl!

THE PINE DEVIL (DAHLIA) attempts to lunge at MENDEL, but with another snap of his fingers, his streamers and swags lash out at her like vines and lash her tightly.

MENDEL
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some catching up to do with my darling niece. And you all have a party to enjoy! I leave you in the care of my talented assistants.

He starts to turn away, but then holds up a finger to shake and turns back. Oh, one more thing, I almost forgot. I’ve left all of you some party favors in those masks. Have fun!

MENDEL grabs a bound and helpless DAHLIA and disappears once more in another plume of smoke.

Enter BLANCHE and SEEMINGLY (GLEE MASK), opposite sides of the stage. The pair of them meet eyes, and pantomime tugging on an invisible rope in opposite directions, and suddenly the ballroom expands as if unrolled like a scroll, becoming a sprawling labyrinth of tiny ballrooms, winding corridors, and secret alcoves. The PARTYGOERS are separated from one another. At the same time, the magic in their masks activates, inflicting one of the following curses:

• Leaky Bucket: deprives the party goer of their short-term memory. They know who they are, and why they're here insofar as understanding it's Dahlia's birthday gala, but all new information tends to leave their mind after a few minutes. (Think Dory from Finding Nemo.)
• Amnesiac's Lament: deprives the individual of long-term memory. All new information is retained, but they have no idea who they are or why they're here. How distressing this is can be at the player's discretion. Perhaps they despair at the memory loss and are trying to find a way to escape the ball, perhaps they don't see anything wrong with their lack of context and are just trying to enjoy this weird party.
• False Friend: the opposite of Zone of Truth, those with this affliction will be unable to tell the truth and can ONLY tell lies. Any fact from the most mundane to the most complex can only be lied about. Whether or not the person is cognizant of their new habit is the player's choice.
• The World Revolving: those afflicted suffer frequent bouts of vertigo which makes the space feel as though it is spinning, sometimes very slowly, sometimes very quickly.
• Dirge of Delusion: this particular curse will cause the mask-wearer to struggle to perceive reality correctly. Objects will appear as other objects, people as different people, rooms as some other place, or even the entire ball as somewhere entirely different. These disorienting visions will come and go at times.
• Feeling Funny: the wearers of these masks will find that their emotions are completely out of control, sometimes bursting into fits of laughter, tears, or abrupt paranoia, before going completely numb for a while.

All PARTYGOERS will find their masks incapable of being removed. Those with infernal resistance from NEIL or the HOUSE OF CARDS will find their masks are less impactful, but the resistance is imperfect. However, ALICE DYER and SAMAMA KHALID will find that they have absolutely no effect from the masks at all, due to the BOON OF DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY acquired by ALICE.

The party resumes.

ACT THREE: Dance with the Devil

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: rotten food being eaten, imprisonment, impending violence }

SCENE: a distorted Leeds Estate, time unknown. As the party devolves into chaos, a clandestine meeting is arranged to locate the host.

Somewhere in the distorted estate, ALICE locates JEAN. Once she gets the Golden Wolf Mask in their hands, JEAN will be able to remove their current mask to wear the new one, which has a unique effect---- the ability to see the path of MENDEL through its eyes.

JEAN and ALICE, along with anyone they are able to recruit for help, will find MENDEL and DAHLIA on the second floor, which has transformed into a large theater balcony overlooking the party. DAHLIA is caged, and MENDEL seems to be enjoying the view as he eats half-rotten tomatoes as if they are apples.

MENDEL’S assailants choose how to make their approach. When he is destroyed, the party will end.

GRAND FINALE

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: fire }

SCENE: Leeds Estate ballroom, late night. The stage has returned to its prior state, and we are left to the aftermath.

When MENDEL is at last destroyed, the ballroom is restored to its normal size and coloration, as if the events of the night never occurred. Masks fall away, and DAHLIA stands center stage, looking exactly as her friends and neighbors remember her. However, the memory of what has occurred here tonight cannot be wiped away, as evidenced from all the onlookers around her. Are their expressions concerned? Angry? Fearful? Hurt?

Does it matter?

DAHLIA, quietly.
Get out.

There is a moment of stillness and consideration, before she speaks again, louder.

DAHLIA, shouting.
GET. OUT.

As she speaks the second word, a massive burst of blue flame erupts behind her. Glass breaks. Tables topple. DAHLIA’s hair flutters in the force of the blast. She stands stiffly, unafraid as the hot, raging blue flames consume her ballroom, peeling the wallpaper and cracking the wood. She means to chase everyone out, even if it means bringing the room down upon herself.

When everyone is gone, the flames seem to retreat, as if sucked up into their original blast point. DAHLIA, spent, collapses to her knees in the burnt shell of her own birthday party, and sobs.

Blackout. Curtains fall.

After the event ends, Dahlia will be absent from town and her home only open to close CR until further notice. She will not be answering her sending stone or her phone calls.

Comments

Act II - Dirge of Delusion

[amourtician]

Anzu's lion mask is a little more abstracted, a little more aspirational compared than the bravado of the English lion. But it's a gilded lion mask all the same, and he too hears the sounds of battle ... but more distant. He's inside, after all, in a stately house. He might as well be back in the Winter Palace, and the sounds of pitched battle are distant because they're drifting in through the windows, as the Red Guard clash with the White Guard and the Hundreds, as the barricades are mounted in the Talons.

He hears the distant, anticlimactic rattle of the Maxim guns, and the curiously muted screams. His ears ring.

He clutches at Watson's arm to steady himself.

"I bear not no injury," he gasps. "But ah, darling — we must leave here. We must ... seek shelter. There's someone we need to wait for. Please."

He looks imploringly at Watson, reluctant to tell him exactly who they need to wait for. He needs to get his colleague to safety, before he can explain to him why he's betrayed everyone here, why he's led the Red Guard in.

He rather wishes he'd had laid better groundwork for that, in the weeks prior.

[lightconductor]

Watson looks at Anzu in furious disbelief for a second.

"Leave? I will not abandon my post so long as I can stand on my feet." The very idea is unconscionable, regardless of where he is. "So long as I can manage a few sutures, I stay. Who's your commanding officer?"

[amourtician]

Commanding officer?

Anzu breathes in sharply and tries to steady himself; Watson is wearing not no red armband, but neither is he in uniform. And Anzu cannot imagine, simply cannot imagine that his friend and colleague would be a monarchist — so he must be with the Red Guard, part of the Tzarist army that defected a little way into the trade union general strike.

But is he wrong then? Is this the civil war already, and not still the Febrile uprising? But then why are they in the Winter Palace, why is he in that familiar, hated ballroom?

But maybe it doesn't matter. He just needs to convince his friend and colleague and comrade to trust him, to follow him to where the Red Guard are waiting to take them back to Vyuta, back to the ghetto and back to Judentum.

Back home. Back home, away from the gentry and the court, away from the heirs and the tzar, away from a gentile name and the pretence of a gentile faith.

"I have not no commanding officer," he says, faintly. "I am a partisan squad medic, my remit is the Peripheral Quartal barricades. Please, Friend. Please, darling. We cannot stay here. The palace guards shall find us. "

[lightconductor]

Watson puts a hand to his head, eyes shut ineffectually against the cacophony of sounds in his head, the artillery, the voices. He can't imagine anything further from "palace," this place of blood and mud and gunpowder and infection. He looks harder at Anzu, with some faint flicker of recognition, though he can't seem to get things straight.

"I have patients," he says, desperately, but no, he remembers. God help him, he remembers. "No, you're right, the ghazis will cut off our retreat if we don't move now. Have you seen Murray?"

[amourtician]

Anzu shakes his head, mutely; a plan starts to form in his mind immediately, but he hesitates — a fleeting moment of clarity lets him think about the future, about whether Watson would forgive him — and then the panic and the memories fog his mind again. He tightens his grip on Watson's shoulder.

"We might go looking for Murray, Friend Colleague," he says, not risking to guess the pronoun — many women serve in the Red Guard, and many people like his Leyb, after all. "Might be a good idea to go through the back corridors, nu?"

And where is Leyb? Back in the Talons at the barricades? In Osedka with Gilya? Once they're somewhere safer, Anzu thinks, foggily, he'll call. He'll call Leyb.

It occurs not to him that there was never a time where he was both a courtier and personally, intimately acquainted with the Young Rov of the Peripheral Quartal's little egalitarian shul. Or that that shul wasn't egalitarian yet, not when he was a courtier.

[lightconductor]

His face betrays his current war of emotions. Watson looks over his shoulder, still having difficulty with the idea that abandoning his post is, at present, the best course of action, or whether he is at present a patient or a doctor.

"All right," he agrees, reluctantly. "Lead the way. He saved my life, though. If we see him, we must help him."

[amourtician]

Anzu, unable to stop himself, says, "Barukh HaShem!" louder than a murmur, and it's only because Watson's right by his side that he doesn't cringe or clap his hand over his own mouth. Instead, he grasps Watson's arm firmly. Watson wouldn't let anything happen to him, he's sure. Watson wouldn't grass on him to the courtiers.

"I promise we will, darling," he says, and he does mean it. "Now, come. We should duck out into the corridors—"

[lightconductor]

Watson takes a moment to pat Anzu's hand on his arm, though which one of them he's trying to reassure is a question he's not prepared to answer just at the moment. Does he hear heavy artillery in the distance?

"A fine idea," he murmurs, and starts off in a likely-looking direction, or what seems like it to him, drawing Anzu after him. "Stay close. It would not due to be separated here."

[amourtician]

"No, not at all," Anzu says, vaguely; in turn, he grips Watson's arm tightly, and tries to follow him without looking around, looking only straight ahead.

But it's difficult; especially difficult as every now and then, for mere seconds, he catches glimpses of ... well, of a place quite unlike the Winter Palace. But he says nothing, not until he and Watson are out of the ballroom, in a hallway, or a corridor — he can't quite tell.

"Darling," he says, faintly. "Darling, humour me, if thou would'st be so good? Tell me. What see'st thou, around us?"

[lightconductor]

"Why, Afghanistan--"

For a moment, Watson just turns to Anzu, frowning in astonished disbelief about such an obvious question. Still, as it so often is, the question does manage to shake loose a few lies masquerading as facts, because that's not right, is it?

He stops, starts over.

"I would have said a hospital in a warzone," he says, "but I am not at all sure I should be here. What do you see?"

[amourtician]

"I see the Hermitage ..." Anzu says, distantly; his mind feels suddenly full of haar and ice. "Where is Afghanistan? I have heard not of no such place." He pauses, frowning, and continues in a voice a little more like his usual voice, "I have heard of places named in a manner quite similar, of course. I have hardly memorised the map of the plena."

He looks around the corridor, seeking something to anchor his gaze on, to ground himself. But the landscape paintings and the tapestries and the suits of armour all shimmer as if lost in the mist along with him and his colleague. He shivers, and leans on Watson.

"Blutiker gehinnom," he mutters. "If we see not the same thing, then ... where the blazes— what blazing refuse heap have we ended up in?"