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

[deathsmajesty]

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!]

Comments

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[begmetwice]

"Oh, yes, thank you." Irene gratefully accepted the drink with a winning smile at the bartender in question, before helpfully supplying, "And you know, while we're mentioning safe words -- I'm the proprietress of Dite's, just over there?"

She gestured vaguely in the direction of the shop, a habit she'd adopted some time ago in order to allow her conversational partner the wiggle room to pretend they'd never noticed the island's sex shop. Liliana did not seem that type, of course, but discretion was also more fun sometimes.

"And while I have my own war stories, of course, I hail from a completely unmagical, and thus I'm forever fascinated by all things...mancer," she added, offering a cheeky little shrug on the last word, there.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"Oh! The store with the most intriguing window displays!" Liliana declared, because discretion was a sometimes game and now wasn't 'sometimes.' "I've seen it once or twice, but usually en route somewhere else. Now I'll need to make a point of dropping by for a visit. And if you're curious about magic, you simply must come by the Infinite Consortium. I sell magical artifacts and would certainly be happy to find you something magic of your very own."

A bartender brought them over two glasses on a tray and, trying very hard to look at Irene respectfully. "Are you aware in general of what a necromancer does?" she asked, sipping her wine with amusement.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[begmetwice]

"You just wait until we move on to Thanksgiving," Irene replied with a lift of her visible eyebrow as she took a grateful sip of her drink and favored that respectful look with a curved smile. "I have found so many things to put in the window."

And then, onto all things sexy Santa. Everyone loved sexy Santa, right?

"And, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I had the layman's understanding that you raise the dead?" she prompted.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"Part of it," Liliana agreed easily. "Raise them as undead, specifically. Resurrection is possible, but not with my magic. But, more broadly, a necromancer is a mage that specializes in death magic. Corruption of the life force. But necromancy has various disciplines within it as well. I'm a master of ghoulcalling - that's the raising of undead and binding them to my will that you mentioned, fleshcrafting, lethemancy, and ghostslaving. There's also Stitchery--" Her lip curled with contempt on the word, "--and galemagery, neither of which I am particularly adept at, though for Stitchery, that's out of self-respect."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[begmetwice]

"You really don't like this Stitchery business," Irene observed casually, too curious to keep the observation to herself as she might normally. And while all the rest of it was fascinating -- just the evocative suggestion of ghostslaving had Irene's interest piqued -- the outlier always took precedence. "I'll be so bold as to assume that's more complex than the needlework it sounds like, right?"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"I absolutely do not," she said, sniffed. "Stitchers are...have you seen--" She looked around until she spotted Beaker. "Him! Do you recognize his costume? That book, the obnoxious doctor, that is the truest stereotype of a Stitcher I have ever come across, and that includes fiction written on Innistrad!"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[begmetwice]

"Frankenstein?" Irene prompted, snorting lightly. "Okay -- so that's a no-go because...he's multiple people's parts stitched together? Is that a taboo?"

Irene, predictably, loved a good taboo. And the idea of there being particular veins of necromancy that were viewed as being, well, tacky -- this was just a fascinating idea.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"What?" Liliana shook her head. "Oh no, darling, that's fine. My objection is one of...outlook and intention. And method, I suppose. They take what is an art and try to mimic it in their filthy little labs, stinking of chemicals, sewing flesh together, but for them, the importance is not their creation, but proving their latest theory correct. They have no compunctions about abandoning their creatures if they do not fit their grand plans. They create their abominations as testimony to their egos and their inflated sense of cleverness. I find them wasteful, tedious, and bereft of taste of imagination, and yet, they get lumped in with the rest of necromancy." She wrinkled her nose. "Our relationship is, I suppose, something of a master craftsman and the people who created the kind of trash our shops were transformed into last week, if that makes sense?"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[begmetwice]

"It does," Irene replied with a nod, possibly enjoying this track even more than the idea that it was some sort of forbidden thing. "It also sounds like a case of science versus magic, perhaps? Though there is a famous quote in this universe about the two being indistinguishable -- I tend to disagree. And even in the case of --" She gestured over towards Beaker and his costume once more, "The novel, as I know it, is a reflection on creation and ego and consequence, but interpreting art is a lost cause these days."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

Amusingly, Liliana and Steven would end up having a conversation about the overlap of science and magic a bit later in the evening!

"And that's why I found it so particularly resonant," Liliana agreed. "It felt like someone watching an incompetent Stitcher with an unwarranted god complex fall victim to his own hubris and manage to blame everybody but himself for his own failings, while demonizing his creation that he considered a failure for not living up to his lofty goals that were out of reach of his level of competence. I'm not entirely sure Mary Shelley wasn't a Planeswalker, or knew of of one, the depiction was so realistic." She laughed. "Steven recommended me the book, and I devoured it in a day, yelling at it mightily and throwing it at the wall. And now I'm reading it to Ignis, but it's very slow going, as I have to frequently pause and rail about something in the text that's caught my ire."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[begmetwice]

"Have you done any research into the life of Miss Shelley herself?" Irene wondered, slanting a look over at Liliana. "I daresay, she was your kind of gal, whether or not she was a -- Planeswalker, you said?"

But also, like, Mary Shelley: the original goth girl, losing her virginity on her mother's grave and setting the standard for melancholy dramatics evermore.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"I haven't," Liliana admitted. "Ignis left me a book of planarwide poetry before heading off to New Zealand, so I've been devouring that, instead. And yes, Planeswalkers. Those few about the Multiverse who have the ability to traverse the Blind Eternities without injury and leave the planes of our birth to wander the Multiverse at large. "