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

[hasaknightjob]

Steven enjoyed this sort of conversation as well. Especially since it was a good distraction from other things best not focused on during a party.

"Right," he said, glad for Liliana's wording. "And when you think about it what's a light bulb if not taking energy and giving it shape and form? Or, er, a candle for that matter? It's just that in my world more people understand how lights and candles work, not as many do spells and the like."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"Ah, but lights and candles work on the same principles every time, correct?" Liliana said. "And work the same way for everybody. But magic certainly doesn't do so. Even if you took two black-aspected Planeswalkers, we wouldn't cast magic the same way, even though we're using the same mana to do so, our spells would be different, and a white mana user and someone without the spark at all wouldn't be able to do anything at all."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"It does seem that magic's much more complicated," Steven said. "And on our world sort of... secretive? Like we've only found out it exists fairly recently. And I think you have to have some sort of talent for it? Innate ability maybe? I couldn't go up to a Sorcerer Supreme and ask for lessons, for example."

Possibly get recruited to work with a special group with a cool name, but not get magic lessons.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"For us, the ability to use magic is innate as well," Liliana explained. "But neither my parents nor my siblings were mages. And being a Planeswalker is...vanishingly unlikely, and there's no genetic component or anything that can be pinned down at all. It doesn't follow any rules or laws or logic."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"How do you find out you're a Planeswalker then?" Steven asked. "I mean - if that's not a personal question."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"Your first Planeswalk is always accidental," Liliana explained, matter-of-factly. "Usually something quite traumatic happens, most usually a threat to your life, along with the intense desire to get away. And your Planeswalker spark alights, and you tumble through the Blind Eternities, ending up somewhere else." She took a calm sip of her wine. "Of course, that's true of most races now. I believe the ancient dragons Planeswalk as a part of just what they are, but that's speculation."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"So you sort of blink and find yourself somewhere you might not recognize without knowing how you got there?" Steven asked.

Not that he could relate or anything.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"A little more than a blink, but yes," Liliana said. "More like an eternity of falling compressed into a single moment, along with all of the panic and fear and horror you were feeling before. But then you're somewhere completely different and hopefully dressed for the weather, though your spark will never let you land somewhere that will actively kill you. One of the other Planeswalker abilities is that you immediately speak whatever languages appear on the plane, so you can always be understood, though things like slang and proper nouns and things for which we have no concepts will still trip us up. Reading, however," she sighed heavily. "Much slower. Hours to days, depending on the alphabet."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"Oh that's handy," Steven said, a little envious. "I've woken up with people trying to kill me. The language thing is a bonus as well, isn't it? Shame about the reading though. But if you enjoy translation maybe it's not so bad?"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"I usually start just trying to read everything around me immediately in an attempt to jumpstart it before I need it," Liliana admitted. "I appreciate how many things on this plane come with pictures. That helped immensely."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"Sounds fun actually," Steven said, in case it wasn't obvious that he was a giant nerd. "But hard if it's not close enough to something you know, I imagine. You have things like that with Earth based languages. I can only imagine how much difference there is when it's entirely different planes."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"I have so much more trouble with languages that use pictographs over letters," she sighed. "Because people see things so differently. But it does mean that I get to amass an impressive library wherever I go."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"And does it mean the thing pictured? Does the picture symbolize a sound? Both? Neither?" Steven had some experience here. "I mean fascinating to find out about but a bit hard to pick up without context, agreed. Not often they leave a handy stone about to walk you through it."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"...That must be a reference to something," Liliana said with a laugh. "Otherwise...stone?"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"Rosetta stone," Steven said. He gestured to indicate the fairly descent size of the thing. "Helped translate hieroglyphics, you see. Had the same message three times. Two in Egyptian scripts, one in ancient Greek. People knew the Greek so that helped suss out the rest. Major discovery for understanding ancient Egypt."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"Ahhh!" Liliana said. "Yes, clever! If planes could start doing that with Dominarian, I'd be ever so grateful."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"We certainly were," Steven agreed. "Well, I mean not me personally. Finding it was well before my time. But after the fact, very grateful. Though now your situation makes me wonder if there's a linguist Planeswalker out there who might think to make such a thing."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"There was, once," Liliana said, some of her sparkle dimmed. "Well, I don't know if they made stones like that, but they did make a study of languages over the planes. I didn't know them well, but their work was brilliant."

You know what Liliana hadn't thought of in a hot second and needed to be reiterated right now? Fuck the Mending.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

Steven of course didn't know about any of that but he could pick up on Liliana not being as brilliant as she'd been a moment earlier. He could certainly sympathize even if he didn't know the cause. "They sound very interesting. Imagine it must have been fascinating for them. Being able to work with all those puzzles. I like puzzles, myself."

Which was Steven offering a gentle change of subject if she was looking for one.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

You lose many people even over a span of two centuries. It just especially stung when you they were people who shouldn't have died - who only were able to die because of the interference of others.

To save the Multiverse, sure, but Liliana was still bitter.

"Oh? What kind of puzzles?" she asked, not quite lunging for the new topic but certainly reaching for it very quickly.

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"Oh all sorts," Steven said, warming up to it. He was after all British and if the puzzle topic hadn't worked he'd have been happy to chat about the weather. "There was a time when I was trying not to fall asleep, you see. So I would try to keep myself awake by doing puzzles and the like. Have you ever seen a Rubik's Cube? Those can be fun, especially if you're the sort of person who prefers having something to do with your hands."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

"I know of Delif's Cube, but not Rubik's," Liliana said with a small smile. "Is it a jigsaw puzzle, or...?"

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"Not like a jigsaw, though those can be fun as well," Steven said, proving how accurate his party animal costume really was. He gestured with his hands to indicate the size of the average Rubik's Cube and how one might manipulate it. "It's a, well, it's a cube as the name says. But it's got different colors on it you see. And you twist and turn the sides to get the colors where you want them to go."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana laughed. "That sounds just like the kind of thing that an artificer mage would create to generate specific types of magic, honestly."

Re: (Eventually) Arrive and Mingle

[hasaknightjob]

"Or to hide it," Steven said, as picturing what she said made him think of the flip side. "Like you have to solve it in order to unlock the spell or something."