deathsmajesty | Halloween Party, Creepy But Nowhere Near Abandoned Mansion, Tuesday Night

Halloween Party, Creepy But Nowhere Near Abandoned Mansion, Tuesday Night

After basically being dared to do it by Tony Stark (and putting in six weeks of renovations, bless Hannibal for the contractor), Liliana, dressed as an empress, hair pulled back in a profusion of curls by her angelic headpiece, was ready to throw her first Fandom party. Sure, it was for a holiday she didn't really understand, but she'd heard enough about it to make due: there was supposed to be candy and people were supposed to be in costume. Done. Everything else was just the same as a regular party, right?

Granted, the last party she'd hosted had actually been for a bunch of vampires and that had been seventy years ago on a completely different plane, but bah, details. You had food to eat, music to dance to, dark corners to sneak off to, and either enough witty people or enough alcohol to keep the conversation flowing. Liliana was hoping that there would be plenty of the former showing up, but just in case, she'd made sure to stock plenty of the latter.

Though her newly refurbished ballroom was actually very light and airy, she had done her best to recreate some of the spookiest elements she'd seen in her travels. The dancefloor was covered in about a foot of heavy fog that swirled and eddied with every movement. While most of the chandeliers were shrouded in fabric and false webbing, she personally found the main chandelier was decorated in something she much more unnerving. Black and red candles flickered about the room held by ghostly hands, dripping skulls, and the occasional elegant standing candelabra. One of the few concessions to magic she'd used tonight was to have the candles lit with tongues of false fire, which provided light but no heat. And they glowed blues and greens and purples, which was a nice effect. Red roses were placed upside down in vases, while more questionable arrangements sat in decorative vases. Out of deference to her guests' ~~squeamishness~~ sensibilities, all creepy critters, skeletons, and dead bodies were all cunningly crafted fakes, not a single real bone or drop of blood in the place.

Other than, of course, what her guests brought in with them. And should they leave with fewer of either than they'd come in with, well, that was hardly her fault. Probably.

Arrive and Mingle / Photos / Dark Corners [NFB] / Refreshments / Dance / Gardens / OOC

[~~Please hold for~~ OCD up! Do the thing!]

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See? Comments she wasn't making out loud!

"Indeed," Liliana said. "It's an island, so blue is very strong, but green, white, and black are surprisingly abundant as well. And red isn't absent, even if it doesn't exist in the strength as the others."

"Setting up a specific kind of pathway that needed to be unlocked for the mana to flow through and power it," Liliana murmured. "That sounds exactly like something that Urza or Mishra would build, honestly."

Liliana shrugged. "We are made up of our experiences, and experiences cut deep," she said, dismissing his insistence he was trying not as unimportant but unnecessary. "I am a lethemancer and I can assure you, the memories of things someone has learned are nowhere as deep or complex as that which they have experienced."

Especially traumatically.

"To be fair, Sith do like to use 'that kind of magic' to subjugate and/or murder a lot of people," Atton noted. "It's just that when the Jedi show up to stop it, they don't exactly make things better. Historically."

"Indeed. And finely woven. In all, an excellent acquisition." For somebody. Who may or may not be the person who acquired it.

"Mmm, I look forward to being absolutely surprised by it when it comes around and putting in exactly no effort into knowing when the next one will occur," Liliana said with a laugh.

"I will admit, I have no idea what this plane's timescale even looks like," Liliana said. "Or how far back their recorded histories go."

War was brutal. Even having enemies called skin-witches and the like didn't change the tenor much. It was always gruesome.

"It was quite the interesting backdrop to grow up against," Liliana said, her tone sounding like they were discussing the weather or a particularly fine up of tea. "I was never on the lines - far too young and not a warrior besides - but I was a cleric. A healer. So I saw much of the aftermath of battles."

"And what do the people who are neither Sith nor Jedi think?" she asked.

This sounded much like the clashes between vampires and werewolves in Innistrad, honestly. Both of them eternally at each other's throats and neither particularly good for the human population. As a necromancer, Liliana stood outside their ancient enmity, though she was at least nominally allied with some vampires.

After all, they threw much better parties.

"That'd be nice if we didn't have a galaxy-spanning religious war that set fire to all of our homeworlds for at least a little while," Atton said, faux-brightly.

Liliana blinked at that. "Well," she said a moment later. "I suppose one must congratulate you lot on both ambition and scale, if nothing else."

Galaxy-spanning wars?

Atton snorted. "Thanks," he said. "I hate it."

"Oh yes, it's terrible," Liliana agreed. "I believe the only Multiverse-spanning threats we've faced were 'natural' disasters - or however you'd categorize threats that are the consequences of terrible actions but still had no driving sentience behind them - and those were horrifying enough. I couldn't imagine something like that but with an agenda."

Fortunately, she wouldn't have to! In a few years, she'd get to witness it instead!

"Well, imagine lots of dead people and planets exploding. Or imploding. Or both, for extra points," Atton said, and really wished he had a drink all of a sudden.

"And all the while a handful of other people are monologuing."

Steve winced. "I'm sorry you saw that."

Liliana immediately glanced away and down and if Atton were feeling particularly perceptive, he might guess that she didn't need to imagine it.

Or perhaps he simply might think she was squeamish! Who knew?

"Yes," she said quietly. "Because what that situation needs desperately is commentary." And for no reason at all, she followed that up with, "Can I get you a drink, darling? I'm about to summon a bartender over with some wine."

Atton was always perceptive; it wasn't something he could turn off. But he knew better than to bring anything up.

"Tempting," he said. "Sure, wine, why not."

He probably wouldn't finish it, but he still couldn't help but put on the pretense.

"I could say the same for you, darling," Liliana said quietly, her eyes a little distant. Not the kind of stare that suggested she was reliving any of her memories, but more the type that she suggested she was almost taking stock of them. "That war was longer for me than yours was for you, I believe."

There had been others, of course. There were always wars.

"What does red do?" Stark asked.

He liked the sound of blue, of course, but he always liked blue. "Or...any of them, I suppose."

Had they talked about this before, the day of the fire? They might have but most of what he remembered of that day was the fire.

Liliana gestured to the bartender for two and then turned back to Atton with a serene expression firmly in place. "So, if you're both Jedi and Sith, what does that make the Dean?" she asked, bringing the conversation back to where it started.

The bartender hurried over, carrying a tray with two glasses on wine on it, both reds.

Much the same for Liliana. She remembered he liked the Dukhara peafowl and that was pretty much it.

"Fire and lightning are the most iconic spells of red," Liliana explained. "Red is good at haste and damage. It's the color of chaos and passion and impulse. It's damage and destruction all at speed, very much the color of 'a good offense is the best defense.' It's the primary color of goblins and dragons, and is the color most aligned with the philosophy of freedom through action. Don't wait, do. No subtlety, but you don't really need subtlety when you're swinging a brick at someone's face."

Steve nodded. "I was only in it for about a year before I went on a suicide mission."

What a fun party conversation topic you've chosen, Steven!

"I went under the ice, came back out 70 years later."

"Under the ice?" Liliana asked, unaware that that was a literal phrasing.

Steve held his hand like an airplane and swooped it down towards the ground. "I crashed in the North Atlantic Ocean," he explained.

"What about the other colors?" Stark asked.

Look. He was very clearly not magical at all but magic was interesting.

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Halloween Party, Creepy But Nowhere Near Abandoned Mansion, Tuesday Night

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