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

[incomingchoppers]

The sound pings around Radar's skull. It bounces off Edgar's thoughts and the unsteady, shifting landscape that's trying to swallow them both. And like a bat echolocating its surroundings, Radar can see, even with his eyes closed as tight as he can.

They're pushing through the densest crowd he's ever been in, everything cold and stinking of too much humanity in too-tight quarters. The thundering he's heard this whole time isn't choppers -- it's the roar of the same train car as earlier, swaying and bumping as it rolls, rolls, rolls forever, its ceaseless motion the only thing keeping all of them alive. He glimpses faces with each name Edgar rattles off. A taller, gaunt guy with a heavy beard and the same empty-but-piercing stare as the 4077th's worst POW cases. A broader woman screaming for her child. Someone old enough to be his grandpa, missing an arm and a leg, who's got a look somewhere between a college professor and Colonel Potter. The more Edgar talks(thinks), the more they all come into focus; the more the noise starts to cohere into a single image.

He's right. It makes sense Radar can hear everyone shouting when they're all packed in like this. He makes himself breathe. Every exhale mists in front of his face and tries to make his glasses fog up, but that doesn't stop him from seeing, either.

"How much further?" he shouts.

[hate_gettin_older]

"I dunno," Edgar calls back over his shoulder. "We gotta get to the," Front, no -- "the front door, I guess? Or the big hall where we all started?"

(More faces. A young man with soft dark eyes and nothing else soft about him, words tattooed across his skin; a scrawny older man with wild curly hair and a wilder stare, his right arm flickering from whole to half missing and back again; a young girl with straight black hair and a thoughtful gaze that turns impish as she holds out a hand for her payment. Grey. Andrew. Yona.)

"I dunno if they'll try to stop us or what, but if we just keep moving forward ..."

[incomingchoppers]

The whole world might as well be contained in these train cars. Radar thinks he sees it for a second, what the ballroom might look like if you squashed it into a distant car way ahead of them, the imagined opulence contrasting sharply with the filthy conditions of -- the Tail, some thought that isn't his supplies. That's where they are.

Okay. Okay. Better than not having any idea where they've stumbled into. Well, no, that's not true, Edgar obviously knows, he's moving so confidently through the crowds that Radar's kinda relieved all he has to do is hold tight and follow behind. They squeeze through the door leading to the next car.

"Yeah," he echoes, "so all we gotta do is get to the Front. Okay. That's, that's gonna take a while if we're all the way back here, but..."

The girl -- Yona -- falls in step just behind Radar. Nobody there, he hears her say in Korean.

"[Nobody there,]" he agrees, his own Korean halting but passable, then switches to English to say to Edgar, "I don't hear anything bad yet."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Okay," says Edgar, low and trying not to be tense. "Safe to keep moving then. You do hear anything, let me know, right? And we can figure out if it's real."

The floor takes a slow ponderous turn, and he braces carefully before taking the next step, making for the next door.

[incomingchoppers]

"I will. Promise."

The crowds have thinned in this car. Still way more people than Radar can ever remember being around, but it's easier to breathe, and to listen. The train gives an unpleasant jolt beneath their feet; quickly, he tightens his grip on Edgar so neither of them fall.

When the noise starts, he thinks it's the beginning of another feedback burst. The same pressure, the same hiss like a teakettle before it shrieks. Behind him, he feels Yona tense up.

Then Edgar touches the door, and the transmission connects, echoing and growing and amplifying until --

"Don't open it!" he and Yona cry in unison.

[hate_gettin_older]

He snatches back his hand, his gaze snapping back over his shoulder.

(He doesn't hear Yona's voice; how could he? But he remembers it, remembers the gate sliding open on the heel of her shout, the row upon row of masked men with axes waiting for them.)

For a moment there's silence as he stares at Radar, and mouths What d'you hear?

[incomingchoppers]

He picks up the words like Edgar said them out loud. Shakily, Radar exhales and tries to listen harder to the other side of the door.

"I dunno," he whispers. Frustrated, "I mean I do, I dunno how to explain it though, it's -- something's there. It's gonna be bad."

Like a flame, something's flickering and crackling at the edge of Radar's hearing. A fight; Edgar, swinging an axe. Edgar dying. That can't be it, and part of him knows it isn't, but the sense of foreboding doesn't fade.

[hate_gettin_older]

Whispering this time rather than just mouthing: "Can we sneak past it? Or fight it?"

(On the word fight: red sparks, torchlight, triumphant shouts, Edgar swinging an axe.)

[incomingchoppers]

Radar sure as heck knows what he'd rather do. Edgar's the combatant, not him. He can feel Yona's eyes on him, expectant and fearful, as he tries to decide what to say.

"Try to be quiet," he whispers back.

Maybe that'll give them a chance to sneak past, if only a slim one.

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar nods.

Be careful, he mouths, and over his shoulder that gaunt bearded man says the same words.

And slowly, slowly enough to be silently, he reaches out to grasp the doorknob and turn it, eases the door open.

Behind it: a long broad hallway, lined with empty portrait frames like shuttered windows, dimly lit and high enough for the ceiling to be lost in the gloom.

[incomingchoppers]

Cautiously, Radar steps through. Yona and the gaunt man follow. The picture frames want to shift to darkened windows with every other step he takes, like they're between row after row of dead houses -- or passing by mile after mile of dead, cold land. He shivers, rubbing his arm with the hand not holding onto Edgar.

As they start to pass by each frame, he makes himself look. Turns out most of them really are empty, but a couple hold mirrors that throw their shadowed reflections back at them. Edgar looks grimy, ragged, a soldier freshly arrived to the OR after a hard battle. Radar wears his olive drab and corporal's stripes.

And the monster that suddenly looms into view behind them both looks like it's made of half a dozen pumpkins held together with congealed blood and rotten meat.

Radar freezes for half a second before he screams, "RUN!"

[hate_gettin_older]

If that order had been given in a different voice, he might have run -- or at least started to -- before he could think to do otherwise.

But it's Radar's voice, high and terrified, and what Edgar does before he can think to do otherwise is instead to wheel around and throw up a protective billow of fire between the two of them and the monster.

And that's all that keeps one or both of them in one piece at the moment, as the clawed limb that would have torn through them instead recoils back from the heat. The monster gives a hideous burbling scream, of pain or fury or both, and bobs back and forth on the other side of the already-dying flame.

[incomingchoppers]

Radar screams again, but at least some of it is just surprise -- he's never seen Edgar do that before. Frantically, he clamps down tighter on Edgar's arm and casts around trying to find an escape route.

An odd flickery feeling hits him. Ghostly afterimages of the monster stutter to the left before snapping back into place. He knows, as soon as it happens --

"Go right, it's gonna go to the left!" he yells.

[hate_gettin_older]

It doesn't occur to him to ask my right or its right? He breaks right (his own, also Radar's) a moment before the monster jerks to the left and lunges for him.

Claws that look like twisted pale wood or bone miss him again, and score furrows into the wall. Edgar throws another bolt of fire and lands rolling, holding his breath against a billow of smoke, and fetches up against one of those enormous portrait frames.

The idea's in his head abruptly full blown; he turns, kicks at the frame, wrenches at it, heaves it off the wall to smash against the floor -- and comes up with a long piece of wood, satisfyingly heavy, jagged along one edge with splinters of glass.

It's not an axe, but if there's one thing you learn in the Tail, it's how to repurpose junk into tools.

cw: emeto mention

[incomingchoppers]

Radar's clinging so hard that he gets dragged along with Edgar for a few steps -- just enough for both of them to get clear of the monster -- before Edgar's arm rips free. Radar gasps, stumbling, as the scenery jolts and stutters again, rotor noises slamming back into his ears alongside the creature's roars. He drops to his knees to avoid another swipe.

C'mon. Focus. There's Kling -- no, Edgar, it's still Edgar panting behind him, then a crash, the smell of smoke and burnt rotten meat that makes him want to dry heave (burn patients are the worst, they always have been), the rough dragging sound of the monster's claws and belly. Radar shuts his eyes. Another roar dopplers upward and to the right.

If he can't trust his ears, what else can he trust?

"Duck and stay to the left!" Radar scoots until his back collides with the wall behind him. "Um, um -- " Listen. " -- it'll circle and try to get behind you, just, just keep moving!"

[hate_gettin_older]

He stays low, shifting to the left like Radar says -- but when the monster leaps at him, instead of ducking, he swings.

Edgar's never heard the sound of a cleaver chopping into a squash that's gone punky in the middle, but growing up on a farm, Radar probably has. The sound of Edgar's makeshift blade hitting the thing in the side isn't exactly the same, but can't help but bring it to mind.

emeto mention again

[incomingchoppers]

Oh, ugh, like he didn't wanna barf enough already -- Radar cringes at the squishy noise and a fresh wave of rotten meat smell as the monster's innards quickly become its out-ards. It screams, a weird rattling noise punctuating the cry --

"Watch the claws, your two o'clock!"

-- and lunges to try and slam the weapon out of Edgar's hands.

[hate_gettin_older]

The warning gives him just enough time to whirl out of the way to his left -- and maybe it's the spinning motion, or the stench of the monster's guts, or something else altogether, but the sickening dizziness sweeps back over him and sends him staggering.

"Christ," he mutters, "not now, not -- get behind me!" he shouts to Radar, and braces himself with the hunk of wood, and sends out a spreading wave of the hottest fire he can manage.

[incomingchoppers]

Edgar's voice distorts, and for a second it sounds like everyone in camp and everyone he's ever cared about on the island is hollering for him to do the same -- GET BEHIND ME!
-- which is the only reason Radar's able to jolt to his feet as fast as if the whole floor kicked him in the backside. He sways, staggering with the blowback of Edgar's dizziness. Ghostly bobbing light trails streak away from both the monster and Edgar and wind themselves into tight, tangled knots, distorting the entire room. He can't tell where to go until, five seconds before the fire erupts, one of the streaks coils tighter and lands in an outstretched hand, hot and bright as a coal.

There. He stumbles behind Edgar and grabs his shoulder.

The wave of fire slams into the monster as hard as a body blow. It screams, and keeps screaming, its individual pumpkin segments igniting one by one as it writhes and scrabbles against the ground.

[hate_gettin_older]

He grips the length of wood, bracing harder as the smell makes the dizziness worse, waiting for the monster to come at them again.

Waiting, as it lurches and writhes, and ... begins to collapse.

Ah thank Christ, he thinks blurrily, but what he says aloud is "Wait, just -- wait till it stops moving, it might be shamming."

[incomingchoppers]

Confused, a little shrill: "It might be what?"

But Edgar doesn't need to clarify. The monster tumbles apart like nothing was holding it together at all, its pumpkin segments rolling a few feet away from each other. The limbs sprouting from them twitch erratically, and one spasms like it might be trying to reach for the pumpkin that used to be its midsection... but the movements slow within seconds, and finally stop after half a minute more.

Radar wheezes out what feels like the longest breath of his life as he thuds his forehead against Edgar's shoulder.

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar huffs out a long breath too, and sags in place.

"All right," he starts to say, "let's --"

And he breaks off, as the far end of the corridor seems to dissolve into mist, the blur first slow and then swelling rapidly like they're heading into a tunnel --

-- and almost as rapidly clears, into the restored ballroom.

(UNMASK, UNMASK)

[incomingchoppers]

The mask has pressed so tightly against his face that it almost hurts when it loosens and begins to drop away. Radar fumbles to catch it -- and stop it from knocking his glasses off his face, too -- before he realizes what he's doing and drops it like a hot potato.

His ears ring in the sudden silence. The air feels cool against his damp, fevered face. Gingerly, he rubs one ear like it's gotten stuffed up, not entirely sure if everything's gone quieter for good reasons or bad ones.

"...Are we out?" he breathes.

[hate_gettin_older]

"Think so," he whispers.

Others are here. Everyone seems to be here, scattered around the room, in various states of dishevelment and distress. And their hostess, standing stiffly in the center, looking exactly as she's looked all along.

Edgar glances from her to Radar, back to her, back to his friend.

"So, uh," he says, and has no idea how to continue that.

[incomingchoppers]

The way Radar's looking at Dahlia, pain and disbelief and worry knotting up his expression, so much worry above all else --

He hasn't really told anybody how he feels about Dahlia. Or that she feels the same, and they're just trying to... figure out if it works for Radar. But anybody with eyes could see the way he was looking at her when the gala started, let alone how he's looking at her now. Edgar probably noticed ages ago how cheerful Radar was on the days he came straight to the ranch from Leeds Manor.

He swallows hard enough to make his throat bob. "Yeah. Uh," he manages, all his attention still stuck on Dahlia. Why does the room still feel like it's spinning, even with the masks gone?

Dazed, not quite thinking, he goes on in the thinnest whisper, "I think I knew and they made me forget."