Event Annex - The Senate Room

[pumpkinhollow]

CRY HAVOC, AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR.

W

elcome, esteemed guests, to the Senate Room.

The rules of the game are simple. You have a word over your head that you cannot see, and the same word written on a piece of paper in an envelope that also contains a key. There is a door out of this room. Each key opens the door for only one person. You can see the words above others' heads, but you cannot say them, nor can you say any direct synonyms that might give it away too easily, nor can you spell the word or its synonyms. You must find other ways to describe it to allow the other person to guess. More abstract. Get creative with it.

If you believe you know the word, speak it aloud and open your envelope to retrieve your key. If you are correct, you can leave without incident. If you are wrong, your organs will immediately fail and you will die.

Here are the words each participant has been assigned. Players can use them to refer to other players' characters to help them guess, and you can use them to check your answers when you guess, but you can also OOCly know your answer provided you don't use it to ICly cheat. Good luck.

Agent Connecticut

Fickle

Agni Azimar

Traitor (there is an additional document contained in this envelope)

Aloy

Obstinate

Ancient Fuelweaver

Ruined

Anzu Menelikov

Deceitful

Artemy Burakh

Tainted

Capochin Bastone

Inadequate

Cassandra de Rolo

Cynical

Dahlia Leeds

Insatiable

Daisy Tonner

Merciless

Elias Coldwood

Discarded

Ethan Winters

Insufficient

Felix Gaeta

Imprudent

Hector Monaque

Covetous

Jonathan Sims

Hubristic

Lev/Lyubov Morgenshtern

Weak

Luo Binghe

Alone

Marik Ishtar

Megalomaniacal

Mr. Ant Tenna

Histrionic

Papyrus

Ineffectual

Sasavachi Chunome

Misanthropic

Shen Qingqiu

Pretentious

Simon

Selfish

Violet Vespertine

Cowardly

✦Return to Event ✦

Comments

Dr A. T. Menelikov & R' L.V. Morgenshtern | OCs | OTA

[amourtician]

OOC: Those are collapsible text headers! Click them for the actual TL prompts.

1. as frontlets between your eyes

Anzu casts a cold, jaded eye across the room, and snorts, a little too loud to not be a deliberate signal.

"If the demons wish us to break ranks, they have severely underestimated the community," he says, archly. "Suspicion is not a dandelion. It shan't crack paving stones."

But he's got his hand on Lev's wrist, and he does not look at his bridegroom. Whatever Eligos has branded Lev with, he wishes to avoid seeing as long as possible. The rest are deeply nasty and in at least one or two cases, unfair in that they're only technically true. This is a game, he tells himself. This is just an attempt to lure them all into yet another brittle, petty courtly bitchfest.

But he cannot bear to look.

Lev/Lyubov glances around the room, shudders, and moves to take off their glasses. But Anzu's got hold of the wrist of their dominant hand, and when trying to take their hand back, they inadvertently come face to face with their husband. Anzu closes his eyes in time, but Lev/Lyubov's overwhelmed and never the most agile, and so they see the word.

They shriek in dismay, and lurch back, overbalancing. They and the chair both crash to the ground. They cover their face with both hands, throwing their glasses to the floor.

"No," they moan. "No, that— no. No."

If that's true. If it's true. How much is it true? Is it true concerning their relationship? Is it true concerning all the times Anzu has told him he minds not his frailty, his strained nerves, his brittleness?

They're making a scene. They're well aware they're making a scene. They crawl away from the table and the overturned chair, but make little progress.

2. a time to grieve

Later, still shaken, Lev/Lyubov is huddled in an armchair in the corner, anxiously searching the face of anyone who passes by. Their left hand lies limply by their side, the wrist tightly bound with strips of cloth — dislocated. Anzu perches beside them on the arm of the armchair, his arm around their shoulders. He keeps his eyes closed, not wishing to see the brands upon the faces of his friends and neighbours, but his hearing's acute, and on hearing approaching footsteps, he smiles, and addresses the newcomer.

"Darling! Might thou assist us? We're, ah. At something of a marital impasse here."

[not_the_last]

"I'll help if I can." She looks from Lyubov to the man leaning over her. "I don't think we've properly met; I'm Cassandra."

Nyura, she thinks is the name Lyubov had mentioned before, but she'll wait rather than guess.

[amourtician]

Anzu carefully opens his eyes, and looks in Cassandra's direction, but past her shoulder, avoiding looking at her face entirely. But that's not enough — even in his peripheral vision, he can see the brand hovering over this young woman. And yet, compared to some of the words, hers seems curiously muted.

Which probably means that were she to learn it, it would stick in her mind like a harpoon in the back of Silver whale too big to be brought to heel — not enough to wreck her, enough to pain her for the rest of her life.

"Yes, darling. I believe that we've, ah, never been formally introduced," he says. "I'm Doctor Menelikov. Anzu Tamiratovitsh. Ah. Nyura."

He gives her a shallow bow.

"It is not my custom to shake hands with women," he says, apologetically. This is all irrelevant, some part of him, deep inside, says. But following the usual script is a much-needed comfort in this place.

Lev/Lyubov raises her off-hand and waggles her fingers in greeting, but says nothing.

[not_the_last]

She gives a small half-bow in response to his, and brushes aside the apology. "It's quite all right. Lyubov and I met properly for the first time at Merrymeet. How can I help?"

For the moment she doesn't say anything to Lyubov, only nods back at her wave.

[xiaoxiuya]

Oh god.

Swift as a storm, Shen Qingqiu flashes to Lev's side. There is no time for thought or dignity, his only concern is preventing a very ugly public meltdown that will only trouble Lev further. "Lev! Dearest, darling, look at me," he says, gently but firmly capturing Lev's wrists with one hand and cupping his chin with the other. "Look at me," he insists. "It's not real. Remember the evil library? Remember that talk we had, about untrustworthy sources? It doesn't get anymore untrustworthy than the Lord of Treachery, does it? Why should we believe anything he says about us, when we know he wants to make us suffer?"

[amourtician]

Lev shakes his head and turns his face away from Qingqiu. Ineffectually, he tries to pull his wrists free, but he's just freshly woken, and overwhelmed, and does not have the strength. But he leans as far away as he can, and hunches his shoulders, and draws his legs up under his nightgown, trying to make himself as small as possible, trying to withdraw into himself and wall off his heart so he does not have to feel the deep, abiding pain of upcoming betrayal.

But he got a glimpse of the word over his boyfriend's head, too. And so he cannot take Qingqiu's speech seriously — well, not as seriously as he would've taken it otherwise.

Anzu kneels beside him, opposite to where Qingqiu is, and takes him by the shoulders.

"Kitten," he whispers, quietly enough that only Lev and Qingqiu can hear. "We're fine. Thou'rt just fine, sweetness. Qingqiu's right. These are ... ah. They're playground taunts, sweetness."

He tries to sound sure. He has to sound sure, for Lev's sake. But some treacherous little part of him, not deep inside, but bobbing up on the surface of his mind like pondscum, says, but he is all that — both of them. both of them are what the Demon King says they are.

He shudders violently, as if trying to shake the thought off.

1. as frontlets between your eyes

[arcanegrasp]

His attention had been fixed across the table when the crashing of the chair snares Elias's eyes, and he rises to stand, quickly and quietly, trying to stoop down and help as best as he can. He can't possibly fathom what his own word is, but he tries to turn his racing thoughts away from it, to this neighbor's, who's own proudly proclaims...

Elias's jaw clenches, and he lets out a stressed sigh through his nose, before offering a calloused hand to take.

"It's going to be alright. This is what the demons expect of us," he tries to coax softly. "May I help you up? Perhaps we can find somewhere away from the table for yourself and your husband. It's... a bit much to take in, all at once, is it not?"

[medekh]

Artemy's quick to notice Lev's scream, and he almost dashes in on instinct- he gets to standing when he notices others attending to him, and so he sits, leaving them be for now.

He does look over them from a distance. Everything seems to be fine physically from a distance, at least, (no one's stabbed) so it must be psychological- not his forte. Seeing the words over both their heads, and his frown deepens. Cruel and unfair in particular to Lev, he thinks, though he doesn't have context for Anzu's.

He'll approach the two later to check in, noting their refusal to look at each other and even Anzu's closed eyes. This is. Troubling! To say the least. He notices Lev's wrist.

"A fracture?" He asks.

2 - a time to grieve, oops forgot to specify!

[mortifer]

Underestimated the community - words Sasavachi would have heard from his betters, were they here. But he knows none of these people. Trusts none of them, for he's a stranger to them as much as they are to him. Were it between him or their loved ones, they would choose the latter. He knows this and does not fault them for it.

Mortals will ever desire, whispers his other half. The question is, whose desire will consume them?

He'd watched the scene between Anzu and Lev/Lyubov from earlier with detachment. He'd remained at his place near the walls, as if he didn't want to get too close.

But it just so happens he passes by the pair. Sasavachi stops and turns to face them.

"... marital?" he can't help but ask. His visible, golden eye flicks between the two, studying them.