Invisible Parties — 31 of 31

Book - Bacchanal

bacchanal is a party in tangle. bacchanal is north of meadhall and east of orgy. The printed name of bacchanal is "The Goat's Wood". Understand "goat's" or "wood" or "goats" or "goat" or "forest" as bacchanal.

The description of bacchanal is "It's night, and you're in the forest, tree limbs thick in a moonless sky. Figures dart and stagger at the edges of your vision. The ground is wet with dew.[p]The woods get deeper, further up. They might lead anywhere."

the deep woods are a waymouth in bacchanal. The description of deep woods is "You are, at heart, a walker in the wood. Given three trees and a shrubbery, you can walk out. A wild forest like this is not so much a door left ajar as it is a triumphal arch."

the darkened trees are an unimplement in bacchanal. the moonless sky is an unimplement in bacchanal. the dewy ground is an unimplement in bacchanal.

The description of darkened trees is "The trees are old, but of moderate size and open spacing, and they all seem to be of the same species; you have the sense of being in a hillside orchard left to go wild. Their limbs mesh into one another overhead, choking out the sky."

Instead of climbing trees: say "You have a nasty feeling that it'd be best to avoid precipitous heights."

The description of moonless sky is "What you can make out of it is very, very black. No stars, even."

The description of dewy ground is "The grass is overgrown, full of snags and dripping with dew, chill despite the mild air."

The threshold of bacchanal is 3.

The tsadesc of bacchanal is "Barefoot. Clothes torn to rags. Covered in fresh blood, almost certainly not yours. Horny, furious, incandescent."

The listendesc of bacchanal is "Drums so deep and reverberant that they seem to come from everywhere, or from your bones. Fiddle deliriously fast and complicated, bounding over its mistakes and keeping on, whirling through the woods on every side. Pipes a mourning murmur, soft and very far off, surfacing with killing softness in the spaces between."

The desolation of bacchanal is "The horizon is growing pink. You hadn't known that there [i]was[/i] a horizon.[p]In the grey dawn-light, figures are scampering off into the woods. The light makes everything solid, sharp-focused. This tree is just a tree, unmoving, knowable. The fragment of wine-jug in the leaf-litter at your feet - you crouch and run your fingers along the grainy broken edge - is an object, a thing with its own shape, not a thing of dream and shadows. The people - oh, shit.[p]They're scattered out over the ground, like so many broken vessels and cast-off garlands. This man is throwing up wine, his back a pulpy mess of whip-marks. This woman is huddled at the foot of a tree, naked and foetal, and howls whenever you look at her. There are others, and not all live.[p]And you - you're gored up to the armpits, there's crap under your fingernails and the greasy taste of iron in your mouth. Nausea's creeping up, and with it that special hangover feeling of [i]knowing[/i] you did something unforgiveably awful, and it's just a matter of time until you remember what."

The demise of bacchanal is "Life is, you dimly realise, a kind of emulsion of madness and reason, unified by a fragile and exacting process. The goat-wood clarifies the cloudy substance, briefly, but at the cost of stability: afterwards, it curdles, clots, begins to putresce. You're rocking back and forth, fingers clawed around your shoulders. There was a sense, a while ago, of what the next thing to do was. You try to remember what that felt like, how that was walked, how one action could thread into the next to serve a calmly chosen end. It doesn't come."

Into the Woods is an egress. Into the Woods is outside from bacchanal. The description of Into the Woods is "The fringes of the Old Forest, the most ancient and powerful of the Great Ways. You're amid mixed-up thickets of rowan and thorn, holly and beech; beyond them, distant and deeper, the crowns of vast oaks spread to the sky, every leaf picked out in the sunlight. Mossy grass underfoot, soft and damp. There are no paths here, not so much as a rabbit-trail: but a wanderer among the trees will always find [i]something[/i], sooner or later.[p]Nobody is entirely comfortable with it, but every walker has to deal with it at some point. It's a way home. A long one, but it'd be one hell of an adventure." Understand "forest" or "old" as Into the Woods.

the woodland trees are scenery in Into the Woods. The description of woodland trees is "It's said that the Old Forest contains every tree that ever was, and you can testify that it has several not strictly included in that category." Understand "oak" or "beech" or "holly" or "rowan" or "thorn" as woodland trees. Instead of climbing the woodland trees, say "Yes. But another day."

The javeapp of Into the Woods is "Jave is leaning against a tree to catch her breath".

The tsadesc of Into the Woods is "You feel very familiar. Hiking boots, lightweight but sturdy pants, tank-top."

The listendesc of Into the Woods is "It's very still. A light wind in the tree-tops, but so soft that it might be imagined."

The rebadesc of Into the Woods is "Reba al-Nasri waits, dressed too ornamentally to go far."

The rebalook of Into the Woods is "You'd describe her outfit here as Elven Druid Princess. There's a muted palette of pale greens and browns (her eyes have shifted emerald to match), a lot of leaf-themed cut-outs and vaguely-Celtic jewelry, and a skirt that's part fairytale-wedding and part ghillie-suit. Setting aside that it'd last three seconds of actual woodland travel before being snagged and muddied and torn, those boots are essentially a blister factory. She would look very spirit-of-the-forest in a photo, though"

The roadahead of Into the Woods is "You scramble over a mossy log, disentangle yourself from the brambles that snagged you in the process, and find your way downhill to a tiny creek, a good step wide and barely ankle-deep. The air's cool and fresh and full of earthy scent."

the rivdesc of bacchanal is "Rivka Strossi is perched in the crook of a tree. One arm dangles a brace of severed heads by the scalps."

The rivcostume of bacchanal is "The dark hides it at first, but she's naked except for a mane of hair that sweeps down, like a cloak or a waterfall, to below her gripping feet. The limbs that emerge from it are death-white, model-thin, with fingers and toes too long to be human. Her lips tweak in a dreamy smile, but you sense fangs beneath."

The rivweapon of bacchanal is "a butcher's knife".

The boozedesc of bacchanal is "Wine the temperature of blood. New wine, sugary as grape-juice and with a vague mustiness."

The shortbooze of bacchanal is "You crush grapes between your fingers, suck at the fresh-fermented liquor as it runs down your arm."

The javeinit of bacchanal is "Jave is a moon-glow white under a moonless sky."

The singdesc of bacchanal is "An exultant ululation escapes your throat, two parts wolf-howl and one part hacking sob."

a discarded sandal is a clue. the javeclue of bacchanal is discarded sandal. The description of discarded sandal is "These were her camp-shoes when you met, on the duffer escort along Mirror Branch. You barely spoke for most of it - the Long Patrol vets mostly had their own fiercely-ingrown social circle, and later you learned that there was some kind of rumour attached to you, a wayvine-distorted version of the Krusenstern business, and fuck, it's not as though you get along with military at the best of times. You clocked her as someone perhaps a little special, but that was all. But you remember the shoes, because people were leaving them outside their tents until some big critter, a porcupine or a giant capybara or something, snuck around in the night and gnawed a chunk out of hers. This is the one that doesn't have the bite taken out of it.[p]You had assumed she'd just thrown them away after that gig. Very likely she did."

The closeclue of bacchanal is "A single familiar sandal is lying amid the leaves."

The javedesc of bacchanal is "Jave's wearing something white and clingy and - the [i]mot juste[/i] would be [i]diaphanous[/i], the sort of thing a silent-film starlet would wear to flee from the monster. It suits her hilariously badly, in part because it exposes enough of her limbs to make it very clear that she possesses the werewithal to snap the monster's collarbones with one sharp blow. That, and the [i]seriously?[/i] expression on her face, do a great deal to make this place seem less like a murderous sex nightmare and more like a dumb haunted-house sideshow."

The dancedesc of bacchanal is "You execute a series of wild twirls and bounds. It does not have a calming effect: more the feeling that you might transform into a leopard."

the bacchantes are a crowd in bacchanal. The description of bacchantes is "You aren't able to see them all the time, but these woods are populated. A group that has been scattered, to hunt, dance, stagger blind-drunk, flee through the woods. Their cries and whoops ring on all sides, and the music - some of it, only some - is theirs. You hope not to run into any of them." Understand "maenad" or "maenads" or "satyr" or "satyrs" as bacchantes.

Table of Unchallenging Responses