"Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something good to drink!" doesn't entirely rhyme, but that isn't stopping Sloan from repeating it over and over as he walks between bars. He's said it so many times, it has lost its sing-song quality and become more of a protest chant, like he's daring anyone to tell him no.
Still in costume and seated at one of the tables in Persephone's Parlor, Wendelin glances up from the notebook she's scribbling into as Sloan announces his arrival with a demanding slant-rhyme chant. She tilts her head for a moment, then smiles so sweetly and removes a small black flask from her bag, lifting it up even as she rebukes cheerfully, "If you try to make me smell your feet, I'm telling HR."
Given the source, there could be anything in that flask, Sloan.
This is exactly Camilla's shit on any given day of the week, but Persephone's is particularly appealing to her tonight. The Greek Mythology, the ghost staff - it's the perfect Halloween setting. She fully intends to sashay her glowing way into that VIP Elysium party, too, but she gets held up at the top of the stairs, kneeling down to talk to Catriona in an adoring baby voice. Who's the best guardian of the underworld? You are! You are!
Linden is seated at the bar when he spots a familiar face approaching. He sets his briefcase on the counter, undoes its clasps, and pops it open. He glances down at the contents -- hidden from his coworker -- and then back up. "Trick? Or treat?"
Still dutifully making his Allhalloween rounds, Keeley may not've stopped just for a familiar face, but being acknowledged (the other man was talking to him, right?) forces his hand. He glances briefly over his shoulder to ensure that there's no one else Linden could be talking to and then back before hesitantly approaching the bar. He doesn't know if he should be taking part in this small festivity, though. He hadn't even worn a costume. Not unless the simple boutonnière of orange and black easy samba lilies peeking out of his suit pocket counts. And, given Linden's elaborate attire, he very much doubts that.
"You...want me to pick one?" he asks, eyebrows lifting over his too-open eyes.
Fill out your forms here! This will be largely RNGed, with bonus points for especially creative minds!
1. What are you dressed as? 2. Describe the costume! Pictures welcome but not necessary. 3. How long did it take you?And did you make it mostly yourself or did you have help? 4. Talk about how you acted on that catwalk! And rate your performance 1-10
Vegas's Allhalloween festival draws visitors from all over the wizarding world, and as such security measures are taken seriously. Because festivities take place all up and down the wizarding blocks of the Strip, it's difficult to monitor who's entering and what they're bringing with them, so the aurors will need to get a little creative to ensure a safe party for everyone.
While this month's taskforces were being assembled, Everett was insistent that he needed the most manpower for his, and took everyone who seemed remotely interested in helping. Characters volunteering for Everett's team may spend an action preparing security measures, which will also enter them into a mini petition event to be resolved at the end of the mission.
1. How did they contribute to the security measures for the festival? 2. How do they handle spooks and scares? 3. What are their general feelings on Halloween? 4. What's their combat style? 5. Are you okay with your character getting moderately injured?
The Allhalloween festival draws all sorts of people worth talking to, and Arden’s discovered that one of them might have one of the stolen artifacts, to be used as a costume piece. He can’t offer much in the way of specifics, but urges his participants to rub elbows with as many people as they can, and view as many costumes as possible in order to spot it.
Members of Arden’s team spend their one action networking, which will enter them into a mini petition event to be resolved at the end of the main mission.
1. How dedicated were they to partying this week? 2. How do they identify a mark? What kind of people do they find themselves drawn to? 3. How do they approach and talk to people they have not met before? 4. If a potentially violent altercation broke out and they were still “in character,” how would they handle that situation? 5. What are their general feelings on Halloween?
The Grand Masquerade Gala is the final event in the Allhalloween festival, and for the first several hours of the evening everything goes smoothly. Hosted at the Felix Felicis casino and the attached wizarding Fata Morgana hotel on the strip, everyone in the city seems to be in attendance tonight. Besides a few drunk and disorderlies ([Volunteer A] has to eject a streaker, while [Volunteer B] is left to deal with a white tiger animagus wreaking havoc in the pool), there are no major incidents.
This relative peace is interrupted at 11:58PM when an explosion rocks the building, emanating from the basement. In the ensuing chaos, several things happen:
Everett instructs the majority of his team to safely evacuate important guests from the building. He taps Teagan Oddtree and Astrid Weird to accompany him to the lower floors and investigate the explosion.
Keeley Little is tasked with escorting glamorous widow Ava Canny to her room at the Fata Morgana so she can floo home. Her vampire costume is barely a departure from her normal ornate Victorian looks, but she looks less out of place tonight than she has at parties past. Ava is a calm, collected charge, apparently unfazed by the mounting panic around her. On the quiet elevator ride up to the thirteenth floor, Ava offhandedly remarks that Keeley reminds her a little of her deceased husband, Anton.
Once they reach Ava’s hotel room, she thanks Keeley and tells him he can go. But as she’s unlocking her door, he senses something is off. At his insistence, Ava allows him to investigate her quarters. He’s gotten no further than the sitting room when Ava, still in the hallway, is set upon by cloaked attackers.
In the ensuing scuffle, Keeley takes a nasty severing hex to the shoulder, but manages to take out one of the attackers. The other two apparate away with Ava in tow. [Volunteer C] arrives on the scene a few minutes later to patch Keeley up and arrest the third cloaked man.
Meanwhile: Everett, Teagan, and Astrid descend to the depths of the Fata Morgana hotel. Everett does not sound surprised when he notes that it appears to have originated from the hotel’s secure vault, but does go on to add that the hotel had promised to relocate the contents of the vault for the duration of the festival.
As they approach the vault, the lights flicker out. But nobody has to light their wands to illuminate their path – Astrid finds that her potion-stained hands have turned luminous shades of ultraviolet and glow-in-the dark green. The ominous confirmation that her new experimental potion works sets Everett on edge, and he instructs the two aurors to be ready for a confrontation.
They don’t have long to take stock of the blown-out wall of the vault or its potentially missing contents, however, as Teagan spots a cloaked figure fleeing down the hallway. The aurors give chase, and pursue the cloaked figure up an access stairwell. Everett and Teagan pursue closely, while Astrid hangs back a flight to lob spells ahead of the cloaked figure.
Everett manages to get a hand on the figure, pulling the cloak loose and revealing a lanky man in ornate serpent-printed robes. He grabs Everett by the wrist, disarms him, and with surprising strength, tosses him into the staircase well. Thinking quickly, Astrid jumps after Everett and manages to cushion both their falls by breaking a phial of potion that explodes into a fluffy, cloud-like substance beneath them. They are unharmed, but now stuck in the fluff and a good twenty stories below the intruder and Teagan, who is on his own.
The climb is long, and the intruder shows no signs of slowing down; by the time Teagan emerges on the roof, he is two flights behind his target. He bursts through the door with little regard for his own safety, and is rewarded with a sharp pain in the back of his neck – he’s been stabbed by a needle.
Whatever he’s been injected with, Teagan can feel it spread through his veins. He takes a single step before all his joints and muscles lock up and he falls to the ground, paralyzed. The man in the snake robes kneels over him, picking up his head in both hands so he can turn it side to side and examine his facial features.
Although Teagan can’t even move his eyes, he gets a good look at this man’s face. He is perhaps fifty or sixty, well-groomed and in good physical shape, although aged by stress. Up close, Teagan can tell that the embroidered motif on his robe is not merely a serpent, but a basilisk.
“I think we’ll be seeing more of each other in the future,” the man tells Teagan. “Maybe next time we can have a proper introduction.”
Teagan at once feels like his blood is boiling hot and frozen solid. Though he lost control of his limbs first, he can now feeling his lungs stiffening too – each breath harder to take than the last.
“I know it seems counterintuitive, but you should try to relax. The more you struggle, the faster the poison takes hold.”
A second figure comes into Teagan’s view – this one still cloaked and masked.
“What did you catch?” the masked figured asks.
“Another Oddtree,” the man remarks. “Eleanor brought all her brats.”
“We have to go,” the masked figure says.
“Do you have the third vessel?” the man asks, still examining Teagan’s face.
“No,” the masked figured says, followed by a sentence Teagan cannot make out. Then: “But it’s time to go.”
The man is clearly irritated by this news. He drops Teagan’s head, which cracks loudly against the concrete. The two intruders retreat out of Teagan’s field of view.
Moments later, as if summoned, Eleanor emerges on the roof. She hesitates a moment as her gaze turns between Teagan where he is prone on the ground and the intruders where they flee on broomstick. For a moment, it looks as if she intends to pursue. Then, she crouches to Teagan’s side, grabs a handful of his shirt, and apparates him to the nearby Eshmun Extramundane hospital for treatment.
By the time Everett and Astrid make it to the roof, everyone is long gone.
When the explosion hits, the mission is effectively off. Arden, for possibly the first time in his life, defers to his brother and snaps a wand between his fingers as he loudly directs his team that they, too, were to assist getting everyone out safely. The party’s over for the night. They’ll find the missing piece later.
It’s a strange, small turn of fate, then, that Sidney Rucker meets a sobbing, ashen-faced Cinderella at nearly exactly midnight, mask and golden wig askew. “I can’t...find my...my boyfriend.” She shoots back the last of the champagne from the flute she’s holding, makes a face, and spits out a little piece of broken glass on to the ground. This makes her sob harder, but she turns to Sid after, just the same. “Will you...help? He’s Humpty fucking Dumpty, except all fancy. I told him to be Prince Charming…”
It goes on like that for a little while, as Sid puts her arm around Cinderella in the most comforting way she can, weaving her through panicked party-goers in the race to the front door.
It’s Dakota Inoue, though, flying down a stairway from a different direction that spots the giant egg man first. In her hunt for the more ornately dressed folk this evening, this costume stands out even amidst the panic and the other absurdly adorned guests. He’s a young man, with a curly red mustache that he has waxed into curls for the occasion, and was looking very pleased with himself just about an hour ago. His costume’s a huge paiper mache egg indeed, with lavish purple-and-gold shorts held up by velvety suspenders. The crown on his head is falling into one eye, now, but he seems to care much more about the very familiar light green egg on a golden chain that he spins around and around.
The mission’s been canceled, but Dakota figures it won’t matter if she goes just a little rogue. In the perhaps third intervention of fate on this evening, she, Cinderella, Humpty, and Sid bottleneck in the door at the same time. There’s a bit of a collision when Cinderella crashes into Humpty, and Dakota and Sid both reach for the egg, only to get their hands slapped away.
Before they can insist they’re DMLE agents, and he’s in possession of stolen property, another slap rings out. It’s Cinderella’s, and it renders the big egg’s cheek even redder under the rouge and heat that were there already. “You just found me, and you’re worried about your stupid fancy EGG?”
Sid and Dakota tenuously remind them that they are indeed DMLE agents, and he is in fact in possession of stolen property.
Humpty’s in a little of a hurry, scattered already, and now in trouble with his girlfriend. He swears to god, and whoever else, that he didn’t know it was stolen. His name is Robespierre Harlon. He’s from LA. He just found this at an auction, and thought it’d be a cool thing to build a costume around. He shoves it, and contact information, into the two Aurors’ hands and pets Cinderella’s wig right off her head as they leave.
I'M GONNA TAG IN TOMORROW because i need me a hot second to decide on costumes
- paloma is ALL. ABOUT. HALLOWEEN. and has been ecstatic for approx all of october - llewyn is very much looking forward to a ✨ new las vegas experience ✨ to put in his hat
Hiii~ Late to post, but if anyone wants Keeley or Wendelin for a thread, they're around!
Also, Keeley wouldn't have known what costume to wear on his own. So if anyone wants to say your character made that choice for him, just let me know! Otherwise he's just here as 'man with mustache and bad haircut'. :)
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TRICK OR TREAT!
Sloan & OPEN+++
Sloan + Wendelin
Given the source, there could be anything in that flask, Sloan.
Trick or Treat.
PERSEPHONE'S HAUNTED PARLOR
Camilla & OPEN
Camilla & Vig
"Harkawhaaaat!" he calls out, swinging a shiny-booted foot out to try sweeping one of her legs. "Where's the hard party at?"
Camilla & Vig
Linden & Open
Linden & Keeley
"You...want me to pick one?" he asks, eyebrows lifting over his too-open eyes.
Linden & Keeley
Linden & Keeley
Linden & Camilla
Linden & Camilla
FELICIS
COSTUME CONTEST
This will be largely RNGed, with bonus points for especially creative minds!
COSTUME CONTEST: Camilla
COSTUME CONTEST: Vigilance
COSTUME CONTEST: Llewyn
COSTUME CONTEST: Wendelin
COSTUME CONTEST: Sid
COSTUME CONTEST: Sage
COSTUME CONTEST: Linden
PETITIONS!
EVERETT'S GROUP
While this month's taskforces were being assembled, Everett was insistent that he needed the most manpower for his, and took everyone who seemed remotely interested in helping. Characters volunteering for Everett's team may spend an action preparing security measures, which will also enter them into a mini petition event to be resolved at the end of the mission.
EVERETT'S GROUP: Keeley Little
EVERETT'S GROUP: Astrid Weird
EVERETT'S GROUP: Teagan Oddtree
EVERETT'S GROUP: Kit Mulholland
EVERETT'S GROUP: Linden Krup
ARDEN'S GROUP
Members of Arden’s team spend their one action networking, which will enter them into a mini petition event to be resolved at the end of the main mission.
ARDEN'S GROUP: Wendelin Sparks
ARDEN'S GROUP: Sid
ARDEN'S GROUP: Ichabod???
ARDEN'S GROUP: Dakota Inoue
MUCH, MUCH LATER ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT...
This relative peace is interrupted at 11:58PM when an explosion rocks the building, emanating from the basement. In the ensuing chaos, several things happen:
EVERETT'S GROUP
Keeley Little is tasked with escorting glamorous widow Ava Canny to her room at the Fata Morgana so she can floo home. Her vampire costume is barely a departure from her normal ornate Victorian looks, but she looks less out of place tonight than she has at parties past. Ava is a calm, collected charge, apparently unfazed by the mounting panic around her. On the quiet elevator ride up to the thirteenth floor, Ava offhandedly remarks that Keeley reminds her a little of her deceased husband, Anton.
Once they reach Ava’s hotel room, she thanks Keeley and tells him he can go. But as she’s unlocking her door, he senses something is off. At his insistence, Ava allows him to investigate her quarters. He’s gotten no further than the sitting room when Ava, still in the hallway, is set upon by cloaked attackers.
In the ensuing scuffle, Keeley takes a nasty severing hex to the shoulder, but manages to take out one of the attackers. The other two apparate away with Ava in tow. [Volunteer C] arrives on the scene a few minutes later to patch Keeley up and arrest the third cloaked man.
Meanwhile: Everett, Teagan, and Astrid descend to the depths of the Fata Morgana hotel. Everett does not sound surprised when he notes that it appears to have originated from the hotel’s secure vault, but does go on to add that the hotel had promised to relocate the contents of the vault for the duration of the festival.
As they approach the vault, the lights flicker out. But nobody has to light their wands to illuminate their path – Astrid finds that her potion-stained hands have turned luminous shades of ultraviolet and glow-in-the dark green. The ominous confirmation that her new experimental potion works sets Everett on edge, and he instructs the two aurors to be ready for a confrontation.
They don’t have long to take stock of the blown-out wall of the vault or its potentially missing contents, however, as Teagan spots a cloaked figure fleeing down the hallway. The aurors give chase, and pursue the cloaked figure up an access stairwell. Everett and Teagan pursue closely, while Astrid hangs back a flight to lob spells ahead of the cloaked figure.
Everett manages to get a hand on the figure, pulling the cloak loose and revealing a lanky man in ornate serpent-printed robes. He grabs Everett by the wrist, disarms him, and with surprising strength, tosses him into the staircase well. Thinking quickly, Astrid jumps after Everett and manages to cushion both their falls by breaking a phial of potion that explodes into a fluffy, cloud-like substance beneath them. They are unharmed, but now stuck in the fluff and a good twenty stories below the intruder and Teagan, who is on his own.
The climb is long, and the intruder shows no signs of slowing down; by the time Teagan emerges on the roof, he is two flights behind his target. He bursts through the door with little regard for his own safety, and is rewarded with a sharp pain in the back of his neck – he’s been stabbed by a needle.
Whatever he’s been injected with, Teagan can feel it spread through his veins. He takes a single step before all his joints and muscles lock up and he falls to the ground, paralyzed. The man in the snake robes kneels over him, picking up his head in both hands so he can turn it side to side and examine his facial features.
Although Teagan can’t even move his eyes, he gets a good look at this man’s face. He is perhaps fifty or sixty, well-groomed and in good physical shape, although aged by stress. Up close, Teagan can tell that the embroidered motif on his robe is not merely a serpent, but a basilisk.
“I think we’ll be seeing more of each other in the future,” the man tells Teagan. “Maybe next time we can have a proper introduction.”
Teagan at once feels like his blood is boiling hot and frozen solid. Though he lost control of his limbs first, he can now feeling his lungs stiffening too – each breath harder to take than the last.
“I know it seems counterintuitive, but you should try to relax. The more you struggle, the faster the poison takes hold.”
A second figure comes into Teagan’s view – this one still cloaked and masked.
“What did you catch?” the masked figured asks.
“Another Oddtree,” the man remarks. “Eleanor brought all her brats.”
“We have to go,” the masked figure says.
“Do you have the third vessel?” the man asks, still examining Teagan’s face.
“No,” the masked figured says, followed by a sentence Teagan cannot make out. Then: “But it’s time to go.”
The man is clearly irritated by this news. He drops Teagan’s head, which cracks loudly against the concrete. The two intruders retreat out of Teagan’s field of view.
Moments later, as if summoned, Eleanor emerges on the roof. She hesitates a moment as her gaze turns between Teagan where he is prone on the ground and the intruders where they flee on broomstick. For a moment, it looks as if she intends to pursue. Then, she crouches to Teagan’s side, grabs a handful of his shirt, and apparates him to the nearby Eshmun Extramundane hospital for treatment.
By the time Everett and Astrid make it to the roof, everyone is long gone.
ARDEN'S GROUP
It’s a strange, small turn of fate, then, that Sidney Rucker meets a sobbing, ashen-faced Cinderella at nearly exactly midnight, mask and golden wig askew. “I can’t...find my...my boyfriend.” She shoots back the last of the champagne from the flute she’s holding, makes a face, and spits out a little piece of broken glass on to the ground. This makes her sob harder, but she turns to Sid after, just the same. “Will you...help? He’s Humpty fucking Dumpty, except all fancy. I told him to be Prince Charming…”
It goes on like that for a little while, as Sid puts her arm around Cinderella in the most comforting way she can, weaving her through panicked party-goers in the race to the front door.
It’s Dakota Inoue, though, flying down a stairway from a different direction that spots the giant egg man first. In her hunt for the more ornately dressed folk this evening, this costume stands out even amidst the panic and the other absurdly adorned guests. He’s a young man, with a curly red mustache that he has waxed into curls for the occasion, and was looking very pleased with himself just about an hour ago. His costume’s a huge paiper mache egg indeed, with lavish purple-and-gold shorts held up by velvety suspenders. The crown on his head is falling into one eye, now, but he seems to care much more about the very familiar light green egg on a golden chain that he spins around and around.
The mission’s been canceled, but Dakota figures it won’t matter if she goes just a little rogue. In the perhaps third intervention of fate on this evening, she, Cinderella, Humpty, and Sid bottleneck in the door at the same time. There’s a bit of a collision when Cinderella crashes into Humpty, and Dakota and Sid both reach for the egg, only to get their hands slapped away.
Before they can insist they’re DMLE agents, and he’s in possession of stolen property, another slap rings out. It’s Cinderella’s, and it renders the big egg’s cheek even redder under the rouge and heat that were there already. “You just found me, and you’re worried about your stupid fancy EGG?”
Sid and Dakota tenuously remind them that they are indeed DMLE agents, and he is in fact in possession of stolen property.
Humpty’s in a little of a hurry, scattered already, and now in trouble with his girlfriend. He swears to god, and whoever else, that he didn’t know it was stolen. His name is Robespierre Harlon. He’s from LA. He just found this at an auction, and thought it’d be a cool thing to build a costume around. He shoves it, and contact information, into the two Aurors’ hands and pets Cinderella’s wig right off her head as they leave.
OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
- paloma is ALL. ABOUT. HALLOWEEN. and has been ecstatic for approx all of october
- llewyn is very much looking forward to a ✨ new las vegas experience ✨ to put in his hat
Re: OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!
Also, Keeley wouldn't have known what costume to wear on his own. So if anyone wants to say your character made that choice for him, just let me know! Otherwise he's just here as 'man with mustache and bad haircut'. :)