middaeg | MASQUERADE: Noveur 7

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MASQUERADE: Noveur 7

WELCOME TO THE MASQUERADE

I. Arrival

The event starts early evening, Noveur 7, thanks to the help of several hands. They had worked for a couple of days prior to the start to get the large ballroom decorated to everyone's liking. The day of the event, earlier on, a few may have appeared to do some final touches. Those who had stayed behind to help with some last minute decorating, Louis had cleared out and advised to leave so that they could get ready for the masquerade.

a. Outside

When you approach, you will find that the outside of the building is a perfect location for a masquerade. There's a large ballroom, granted to them for use by the Coven. They had been kind enough to allow them to have the space and necessary supplies in order to throw such a party. And, it's clear that they took every advantage of the granted space and land around them.

There's a gorgeous, outdoor fountain, and lights underneath the water to give it a pleasant, warm glow through the water. If you watch it long enough, the lights seem to shift colors. There's gardens surrounding the building, as well. The gardens, like the fountain, have low, warm lighting around them so that the plant-life will be clear well into the late night.

There's benches outside as well, with a clear view of the fountain - so if someone needs to step outside or take a break from the indoor events, they can enjoy the fresh air and the warm, calming feeling from the fountain and gardens. This is a perfect place to escape when you want to relax away from the bustle of a party.

b. Inside

The entryway has open curtains, gold - and tied back with a burgundy rope. There to make everyone feel as though stepping inside, they are making an entrance of their own. Once you step inside, you'll notice the grand ballroom with high ceilings is fully decorated. It is clear that a lot of effort and time went into this, thanks to the help of many different people and several sets of hands. The colors that seem to be continually present are gold, reds, and purples. Though from time to time there may be splashes of other colors and personal touches from those who had helped in places - mostly in the form of masks hanging on the walls, or balloons scattered in places away from the main dance floor.

From the main ballroom entrance, straight ahead, is the main dance floor and to the right - refreshments. Near the refreshments, there are a several standing tables to set down a drink or stand around to socialize with friends or people you've just met. In addition to the standing tables, there's a couple of dining tables and chairs so that you can sit and eat, drink, or chat.

Inside the main ballroom there's a few gaming tables scattered around - including card games with some dealers around where you can gamble, and pool tables. Make a wager or play for fun, it's all up to you. Additionally, on the floor Kaito will be performing magic tricks to entertain individuals and small groups throughout the floor. You'll be able to catch him periodically through the night.

There are a few hallways leading to several rooms, and it all depends on what you're looking for, but no matter what it is, you can probably find it.

One of the rooms has the silent auction. Here, you can look at some of the things that are up for bidding. There's several interesting, enchanted items including: weapons, jewelry, books, instruments. They are protected, as well, so they can only go home with the winner.

Don't worry - there's signs posted everywhere so you will be able to find what you're looking for.

c. Enchanted Masks

You're welcome to have brought a mask that you had picked out for yourself, or - if you prefer, you can pick up an enchanted mask near the entrance of the party itself. These enchanted masks will conceal all distinguishing features, whether they are as simple as horns and scales, or as large as a set of wings. The only obvious features will be what a character is wearing, whether it is their attire, mask, or both.

You aren't obligated to wear them, of course, but they do provide the total anonymity that is often part of the excitement at a masquerade such as this. These effects are only present when one is wearing the mask. The moment the mask is off, any distinguishing features are immediately visible.

It's a perfect opportunity to have a little fun and engage with someone you may not have spoken with otherwise.

This enchantment will wear off the next day at sunrise, so you may keep the mask you pick out for yourself at the party.

d. Photobooth

Near the front of the ballroom there's a neat looking photobooth set up thanks to the work of both Omi and Prompto. There's props so you can take fun or silly pictures with your friends or date for the night. The backdrop for the photobooth is magical, of course. With a quick flip the background can be changed to one you desire whether it's a different color, an entirely new environment. The photobooth will be available through the night.

Additionally, you'll be able to find Omi on the floor catching candid photos of the attendees. Smile!

II. Refreshments

Away from the dance floor are several tables with matching, deep purple, table cloths. On top of the table are a variety of foods - some brought by the attendees, others brought in thanks to the aid of the coven. You can expect to find at least something that you'll absolutely love when exploring the options. There's everything there - from healthier options like fruits, vegetables, and dip - to less healthy options such as cupcakes, and truffles. Food on sticks, and easy finger foods seem to be a very popular options.

While many of the options wouldn't even require a plate, there are some plates and utensils in shades of blue and gold available to use.

Next to the food there is a table featuring three punch bowls with three different flavors. One seems to be a fruit punch, one seems be purely berry flavored, and one - seems to be a bit of a surprise. It tastes a little bit different to everyone who tries it, but so far - there have been no complaints. Next to them, if you would prefer, there's pitchers of water.

Near the back corner, there's a bar with a bartender, there to serve those who would like a drink. Ask for a surprise, or your favorite drink, and you can have something mixed for you. Next to the bar, there are rows of the most popular bottles of alcohol. Though you won't be stopped if you take one, please tell the bartender so that they can keep their stock replenished for the other guests.

Drinks, of course, come free to those who are able to legally drink. Anyone underage will be met with a powerful enchantment that is acting as a method of preventing that from happening.

III. Dance

a. The Lock Box

Maybe you want to find a new dance partner. Maybe you want to find a new Bond. Maybe you just want to talk to someone new. The Lock Box is near the entrance of the ballroom. It's inaccessible thanks to both a lock and enchantment that are on it.

It's set up neatly on a table, with only it, paper, and a pen so that names can be written and added to the box. When you enter your name, another name will be produced from the box. It is clearly enchanted, of course. Once you're given a name, you and your new dance partner will be compelled to be near one another. This will last for about the length of a song - long enough to dance, or have a conversation.

Usually, only others who have put their names in the box will have their name drawn, but sometimes those who didn't put their name in the box will have their name drawn and will feel compelled to seek out someone who drew their name.

Sorry to those who didn't volunteer, magic isn't always the most predictable! Though you may get lucky and just find your next friend or Bond, so it's hard to get mad about it.

b. Song & Dance

Whether you picked your dance partner yourself, or were compelled to dance with your partner thanks to the Lock Box, the dance floor is ready for you. The music is enchanted, to provide a feeling of calm, relaxation, and joy. Characters will feel at ease, and even those who may not typically dance will want to get out on the dance floor.

Thanks to the talents of several Mirrorbound and collected records you'll have a variety of music all through the night. While much of it is upbeat, as it is encouraging individuals to dance. Whatever your mood, you will find a song that you'd love to dance to, as long as you want to dance.

IV. Gaming

Throughout the venue, there are a variety of gaming tables. There's poker tables with a dealer available so that you can play a game, place a bet - maybe you'll lose some cunes, maybe you'll win big. That's all up to how good you play the game. Note: Dealers (and the party host) are not responsible for any losses that occur when gambling. Play responsibly (or not).

There's also some pool tables available to those who wish to play. These table are open to anyone, and they are free to play. There's only a couple of tables available; however, they are scattered throughout the venue.

Set up near the bar are three long tables with only an array of cups and a printed set of rules for a game that some may recognize as none other than something very closely to beer pong. In place of the ping-pong balls there's a small, plastic coin that is used. Have fun drinking with friends while playing a game. What's not to love?

Are you looking to play a game in a quieter space? Down one of the hallways there's a couple of game rooms where you can not only find decks of cards and a pool table, but also a variety of popular party games such as charades. You'll also be able to find a room for those who want to settle in for a game of chess or checkers.

V. Late Night

The lights dim, just a bit more as it starts to turn into a late night, though there doesn't seem to be any sign that the party is ending. Small, glowing trinkets are brought out when the party seems like it should otherwise be dying down. These trinkets are - of course, to your taste, whether it's a bracelet, a ring, a necklace, or just simple something small that almost resembles a wand. This will glow up to a month, so you should like what you pick: whether it is for for you or is to act as a gift for someone of your choosing.

The music is meant now to entice you to go a little wilder than they may have been earlier in the evening. Most of the food has been replaced and only small, quick snacks have been brought out for those who were still wanting something a bit to eat. Alcohol is still readily available to each and every person who is able to legally drink, of course.

You're welcome to - quite literally - dance until the sun rises or until you just can't stay awake any longer.

Note: Please see the questions thread if you have any for me - don't be afraid to ask. Please assume all characters received fliers this year, and anyone who would have wanted to work would have had the opportunity to help setup. As there are a variety of performers through the night, I did not note any specific ones and will leave that up to the performers discretion.

Please place any warnings, including 18+ content, in the subject line! Thank you!

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The jab hits hard, and leaves a sour taste in Jin Zixuan's mouth. Or, no, wait. That might just be there anyway, after all the liquor he had drunk.

Either way, he waves a clawed hand in a dismissive motion, talking over the tail end of Jin Guangyao's words. "Yes, yes, fine, perfect, but we both know father would have held onto his position as long as he possibly could have. No matter how perfect an heir he might have had, he would have dug his greedy claws in and held onto the sect with his every last breath."

He pauses, glassy eyes, looking down at his hand now, still absently waving.

"Heh... Who's got claws now?"

Oh good heavens, don't remind him of those bird talons. The dismissiveness is another irritant, and Jin Guangyao's tail curls around him. His brother can come around and say kind words, then turn right back around and be the arrogant, aloof peacock he is.

"Oh yes. To his last breath, with one of the city's ugliest old whores riding him." Jin Guangyao is still smiling a little, but it's unpleasant, spiteful enough in his drunkenness to coarsely spit it out. "You say it wasn't right, but even the favored son didn't know half of what our father was responsible for."

Were he sober, Jin Zixuan would not snicker the way he does at the reference to their father's scandalous death. He would play the part of a dutiful son and treat the incident with the grave seriousness that societal pressures dictate it deserves.

But Jin Zixuan is not sober, and so he gains a smile of his own, eyes lighting up with a wicked fire as he shifts on the stone ledge of the fountain to look Jin Guangyao squarely in the eye.

"Tell me." His grin is mischievous and bordering on a manic glee. "Tell me the worst of his misdeeds. I'm never going back there; No one can make me pretend to respect that lecherous... ass, ever again!"

"You wouldn't go back, regardless. You're dead," Jin Guangyao points out factually, casual enough to emphasize his point with a raised finger, all the while less sure how to feel about this sudden shift in mood. It's true that Zixuan had helped keep the peace between Jin Guangshan and Madam Jin before he died, but he didn't expect quite this reaction.Combined with how tightly some of those misdeeds are tied to Jin Guangyao's own woes, the feeling in the air is strange, here.

"Listen. You deserve to know the truth, after all," he says, the phrase overemphasized. "Don't you? I have heard it enough by now. Where does one even begin? If you were Da-ge it would be how he flirted with demonic cultivation as much as he would a beautiful woman. Giving people like Xue Yang whatever they wanted if they got results. Even Mo Xuanyu. I used to have such a collection of things I gathered for him, years ago.

"But. There were things even I didn't know until it was too late. Oh yes, he went whoring, drunker than we are now." Actually that part might be debatable, because standing up straight is difficult, but at the same time Jin Guangyao is filled with too much emotion to rest his body fully at the fountain's edge. "Yet somehow even that wasn't enough for our dear sweet stallion of a father. Why should he ask anyone's permission, when he could just take?"

Jin Zixuan rolls his eyes, swaying slightly with the effort of it. "Yes, well, thank you for the reminder. It was so sorely needed." Not.

The gossip is juicy. It's more than Jin Zixuan would normally allow himself to engage in. There were many, in the halls of Carp Tower, who would gossip about one thing or another. Indeed, Jin Guangshan's antics were often a source of whispers between the servants and lesser disciples of the Jin Sect. Jin Zixuan had never stooped to their level, holding himself to a higher standard, above and apart from the lowly rabble.

But the lowly rabble isn't here. And neither is Jin Guangshan. As A-Yao pointed out, he is dead, and never to return to their world. There are no repercussions for engaging in lowly gossip now. He leans in, on the edge of his seat metaphorically and literally, hanging on Jin Guangyao's every word. He nods, enthusiastic, feeling a heady power in this small rebellion.

"He did take. He took and took and would never stop taking, if he had his way. We fought an entire war to stop Wen Ruohan from taking over the cultivation world, and what did he do after that, but plan to position himself at the top instead?"

He'd tried to make himself useful, helpful, done every thing to try to earn their father's approval; which Jin Zixuan had, and yet here he was just as eager to hear tell of their father's wrongs, as if he could possibly have been just as wounded by the man.

"Worse than that. Far worse. I tried so hard for his... acceptance. I wouldn't have spoken a word about any of the things if he'd only seen me. I would have been a better son to him than you, listening to me say these words now." Jin Guangyao rises up on his tail a little higher, thoughts muddled and irate, only to lose his balance and topple backwards, catching his human half on the edge of the fountain, but the snake part left lying belly-up, black-speckled cream scales instead of the tawny ringed top half.

Belatedly, Jin Zixuan tries to lunge forward to try to catch his brother as he tips over backwards, but he too loses his balance for the sudden movement, overcorrects, and falls backwards, skidding off the fountain's edge and dropping his arms back into the water to stop himself from falling in completely. Groaning, he drags himself upright once more, shaking his waterlogged sleeves.

"What a pair we make, ah?" He takes a deep breath, moving more slowly this time to stand and stepping over to offer a hand to Jin Guangyao to help pull him upright. It's not his fault that that hand is a talon. "We'd both be laughed out of Lanling at this rate. ...If we weren't hunted down for being what we are now."

Caught between distaste and indignity, Jin Guangyao is regretfully forced to accept the claw-hand's assistance, wobbling upright and flipping at least the bulk of his snake-y half right side up.

"Monsters that we are, indeed," he murmurs, staring blearily at his half-brother's awful feathers. "I suppose it's fortunate that naga are no so poorly looked up here."

Jin Zixuan stands in place long enough to be reassured that A-Yao isn't about to fall over once more, before he steps back and runs his clawed fingers through his feathered hair, pushing it back into place behind his pointed ears.

He can't help the wry smile that comes to his face at Jin Guangyao's comment. "If anyone had to turn into a snake, I'm glad it was you." At first, it doesn't seem to occur to him just how that sentence came off sounding like an insult, but after a minute's pause, he shakes his head and continues. "You always were skilled at making the best of a bad situation."

Even that rings oddly for Jin Guangyao. Yes, he had tried to, even to the end. But being a decently regarded monster felt like hardly a small blessing at all, and more of a curse.

"Yet it is still a bad one, though I might be alive. You had a grand life, with what affection our father did have for anyone." The words slip out unbidden, slurred in complaint. "Don't I deserve a break for once? It is not enough to be disgraced, be forced to give up my title, die at my own sworn brothers' hands? Now I must more serpent than man?"

Yes, he's being disparaged, but that is not what Jin Zixuan focuses on, out of Jin Guangyao's words. He has just learned another tidbit of important information about the future. One no one had thought to mention before.

"You died?" He doesn't look apologetic, sympathetic, or even mournful. He looks somewhat betrayed, that no one would think to tell him this detail. "When? When did this-- When will this happen?"

Yes, that was where he had started, wasn't it, Jin Guangyao thinks blearily to himself.

"Years. Years and years later. After even my marriage, which was sullied by our father too. Well after his death, after I had become Chief Cultivator, and had thousands of watchtowers built to help the common people. But nobody here would have spoken of that, would they? There were crimes, yes, but what of the good I accomplished? Instead they would rather make up stories, as if the things I did do where not enough."

He'd discussed with Xichen the other visitors, the idea that there were different worlds with the same people, and that things could have changed between them. But so full of bitter vitriol, sharing that in the moment hardly seems worthwhile.

More and more, Jin Zixuan is learning he still doesn't know nearly enough about everything that happens after his death. Marriage? Chief Cultivator? Watchtowers? What?

He's too drunk for this.

"A-Yao... A-Yao, A-Yao slow down, I can't follow you." He needs to sit down again, so he does, taking a deep, steadying breath before looking back up at his snake brother.

"What stories did they make up? What are you talking about?"

"These stories of some second flute," he replies, his tailtip lashing back and forth a couple times unconsciously even as he sinks down into his coils. "How is it that you are still left so far behind? It's unfair to expect me to fill in every detail of years, especially when so many details are too unpleasant to revisit. Even things that had happened when you were still alive, only to be uncovered later. Should I say it plainly then, that our father was a rapist? Even I was unaware of that much for too long."

At that complaint, Jin Zixuan gets mildly offended. Okay, a little more than mildly. "I tried to get myself caught up, but we all saw how well that little plan worked out!" As in, it was a complete and total disaster.

Whatever he's about to say next dies on his lips when Jin Guangyao goes on to mention their father. He takes a deep breath. Then another. He wishes he could say he was surprised, but...

Damn.

"Curse him." It's muttered angrily and half under his breath, but then he repeats it again, louder. "Curse him! He only existed to make life harder for everyone around him. Always focused on his selfish desires, never once thinking about the needs of anyone else!"

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MASQUERADE: Noveur 7

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also I suppose cw: some mention of past rape

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