morden garrard is older than he looks (longevitas) wrote in at_the_gates, @ 2012-02-10 21:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | !plot: london burning, alice munroe, edward belville, ephraim sullivan, furtur, gremory, jacques nicolson, jocelyn makepeace, morden garrard, talia sullivan, vivi leon |
Thread: Group Party
Who: Morden Garrard and his party guests.
When: Backdated to Late on Thursday evening, continuing off into the embrace of eternity.
Where: The Circus, at an indeterminate place in London...and, more generally, in space and time.
What It's Morden's 444th birthday! Which means that good times are to be, as he throws the party to end all parties. As it turns out, it's also the party to end all civilisation as we know it! Expect loud noises, flashing lights, accidental damnation and other such nastiness as the most hedonistic shindig in England kicks up a notch.
Warnings: Well, nothing too bad at the moment. But anything goes, as the old song says, and things could (and hopefully will!) get bad fast.
The party was in full swing by the time most of the guests arrived. In truth, not least because it was Morden Garrard’s actual birthday, the party had started approximately fifteen minutes after sunrise, when he’d poured his first glass of gin. He’d kicked it up a notch at around noon, with the introduction of one or two classier whores and that boy who hung around the supermarket and asked people if they knew Dennis (though, regrettably, the actual location of Dennis himself could not be divined by the time of the party itself.) They served as entertainment until the real guests arrived, and would probably serve as decidedly final ingredients once the enchantments started to run low and needed topping up - but that moment was not now. That moment was hours away yet, separated by a chasm of alcohol, dark magic and poor life choices.
For the moment though, everything was delightful: surrounded by friends, well-wishers and acquaintances broadly categorised as ‘neutral or better’, the birthday boy swam through an ocean of bonhomie. Mostly, the atmosphere was still stable: a few small, isolated explosions of bizarrity but given the wide range of powers and temperaments currently packed into that tent, it was a thorough bewilderment that the entire place hadn’t simple collapsed in on itself and killed everyone present. If it had, of course, it would have been a terrible waste of the most creative use of bunting since the last Jubilee - Morden had hung it from every available vantage place, along with cheery -but cheap- paper streamers and a few sad-looking balloons. Of course, it was all a vanity, an irony: on top of all of that real, tangible decoration, Morden had woven enchantments, invoked glamours, and sacrificed a few crows and burned their feathers to infuse the tent with a charm to elicit goodwill amongst the party guests. Given his plans for the evening, Morden knew that they were going to need that good feeling once the dust had settled - he’d had this planned for days now, was going to give himself a birthday present to remember. He looked out over the throng, catching the eyes of his two partners-in-crime (those gorgeous, tricksome little vixens, how he adored them!), silently inquiring if they were ready for the fun to begin. Little marks of assent from both, and a broad grin to each in reply.
And so, under the realistically swirling galaxy of stars that hung just above the revellers’ heads, Morden clapped excitedly, throwing back his head for a throaty laugh before extricating himself from the arms of a rather buxom lady he’d couldn’t quite place the name of, and so had taken to calling ‘Hattie’.
“My lords, ladies and beasts! May I have your attention for the briefest, the meanest of moments!” His infectious glee infuriated as many people as it charmed, but here under the night sky of the Palace of Dreams, with everyone full of magic, booze and every other illicit substance that could be sourced from both worlds, it had a sweet little sparkle to it. It almost, but not quite, glazed over the rotting core that lay at the heart of the old bastard. “I simply want to thank you for attending, and to promise you that I have such glorious, glabrous gadzookery planned for thy delectation! I ask only that thou perform for me one favour: with eyes open or closed, focus on one memory. Be it bad or good, whichever gives your dismal or shining souls comfort best in this hour, take that thought and hold it close in your bosoms. You will need it later tonight, when the stars align.”
Morden giggled again, and looked upwards to where the galactic tableau above them had begun to shift, a certain pattern of stars shining brighter than the others. They formed a distinct mark, a sigil perhaps, that made the eyes water to look at it even for a moment - and that was fortunate, for anyone not of a demonic persuasion staring at it for longer than a moment would find themselves both blind, mad and dead, though possibly not in that order. Alone under a spotlight, he began to sing - a formless, wordless song that seemed to reverberate with power. It tugged at the strings of reality, rewove them and unpicked vital stitches as though the very fabric of reality was nothing more than an long-owned jumper. Around the guests, the world began to change: only subtly, enough to cause merriment but not damage anything substantially - no, that would come later, when his accomplices added their voices to his unholy choir and showed the world who the true powers on this Earth were. But the languid tendrils of his voice began to unfurl and burrow under the surface of the universe - causing the tiniest cracks where they forced their way in, cracks that his friends could abuse later on. For now, everything was golden and nothing hurt. Later, though...later, everything would hurt.
Possibly everything would also be golden, but not in the nice way.