THE MISTRESS' FEAST

[loveskulls]

With the return of the winner of the Fuckfest, the Mistress has formally announced an important and exclusive feast--and decreed that all of her extra-dimensional pets (that means you) are to attend. This news is delivered by the guards, both native to this world and otherwise, who are also tasked with distributing butt-plugs that have the words "Congratulations on not dying of exposure" engraved in their bases.

If you try not to attend, you will be forced into it anyway. It is compulsory on pain of death. Sorry. However, upon being escorted/invited into the great hall of the castle, you are welcomed by a fantastic and bustling scene. Music plays, performers dance, and the smell of food hangs in the air as platters are carried around by servants who take the time to offer portions to each guest. Not to mention the wine! The ambassadors and other guests in attendance are in varying states of undress, but no one is completely naked—and at least those who come close are not sitting on top of the table or anything. There is almost a sense of decorum to this particular event.

At the very head of the table, clad in an extraordinarily expensive-looking set of BDSM lingerie and her horned crown, sits the Mistress. Flanked by two of her highest ranking guards, she laughs and smirks at the chatter of the ambassadors sitting nearby, paying no attention to anyone else except those who have already earned her good graces.

Regardless of your job, you will all be seated all together at the very end of the table, furthest away from the Mistress. Yenh, the fuckfest winner, gets the honor of being at the end, but there’s a lot flowers and statues blocking the view anyway. She's out of earshot for whatever dinner discussions you'd like to have—but her loyal guards, servants, and the less-well-received ambassadors are not.

Once the feasting winds down, the Mistress rises and climbs the steps to the throne at the end of the room. She settles in and only now lays her eyes upon the Kingdom's special arrivals.

"Come and claim your rewards. Don't be shy."

She turns her gaze toward Estinien, the sole person who did not participate in the Fuckfest while it was ongoing, and grins. "You, too."

Once the dinner is over, nothing stops you from milling about to socialize, get caught up in an ambassador's after-dinner sex party, or to just leave with your shiny new prizes.

Comments

[shieldofrohan]

Gladly!

[Éowyn smiles, actually looking enthusiastic for once. She feels a lot better about home, now she's confirmed that she isn't truly abandoning her duties there.]

What would you know?

[crimsonlight]

[That enthusiasm is contagious, and the look on her face warms quickly.]

Anything at all! Though I know such a broad question does little to narrow it down, and I shall listen if you chose to offer a schoolbook take, but that isn't necessarily good conversation.

So, tell me: what are your favorite things about it?

[shieldofrohan]

[She laughs, shaking her head a little, at that comment. Yenh's right, that doesn't narrow it down much.]

[The question helps. She considers a moment, then answers, a certain dreaminess in her voice.]

When the sun goes down over the halls of Edoras - where my uncle reigns and I have lived since childhood - the light catches the rooves, and turns the thatch to beaten gold. And it catches the carvings, too, carvings many centuries old, and picks them out more clearly, and all the walls seem alive with them.

[crimsonlight]

[Yenh closes her eyes as she tries to imagine them, glad that the gift from her deity isn't forcing her to look at those memories. Without much reference, her mind fills in the gaps with the places she's seen—a little bit of Aymeric's and Estinien's home for the carvings, a little bit of the still-living thatch on Gridanian forest homes.]

That sounds truly lovely... what manner of scenes are carved there? [Surely not images of dragon fights.]

[shieldofrohan]

[Éowyn smiles, her own eyes half-closed.]

The tales of our ancestors. Of Léod King's death in taming wild Felarof, of the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, and the Oath of Eorl...

And other carvings more abstract: of horses running, and birds in flight, and many other things. Trees and flowers wind along the lintel of some doors.

[She laughs.]

And beneath the rim of the sill on the kitchen window, my cousin Théodred carved his name, but I think few have seen that addition.

[crimsonlight]

[She can't help but join Éowyn in laughing. It was good that some things were true of cousins, no matter where you went.]

That sounds lovely! I should have liked to see them, were such a thing possible. [Without involuntarily invading Éowyn's privacy, anyway.] I've seen many a mural in my travels, so I've grown a fondness for them. 'Tis wonderful campfire talk, if naught else, to gaze at them and chatter at length about the scenes depicted.

[shieldofrohan]

And such were many conversations at our feasts, when lords and merchants of other lands should come, and wonder at histories, and be told tales and tell their own in return.

In which spirit I should ask thee: what of your home? How was it there?

[crimsonlight]

[A sheepish look spreads across her face.]

When I think of home, I confess my thoughts no longer go first to my mother's hearth and the chatter of my sisters and aunts... terrible of me, but I've always been restless.

Home, for me, has become less a place and more a feeling. I'm welcomed into the homes of friends and allies, I'm welcomed to companies on the march, I'm welcomed into their camps...

[An ambassador who happens to be walking past interjects "I bet you were." and continues walking. Yenh is mildly startled from her reverie.]

[shieldofrohan]

[Eowyn mutters something at the ambassador's retreating back, which doesn't sound very complimentary but also isn't in a recognisable language, and turns back to Yenh with pursed lips.]

Ill manners, from a man of standing.

But I think I know it, that sense of... restlessness, as you say. I love Edoras, as myself, yet it felt so oft a prison. I have felt more at home among my brother's men than ever in its walls, would feel more at home in the thunder of hooves and the song of steel than in the gentler pleasure of the hearth.

I can scarce call such thoughts terrible, without denying myself.

[crimsonlight]

[With timing being impeccable as it is, the very gift Yenh won back also lets her understand the spoken word no matter what the tongue. She tries not to betray that she understands, but her lips twitch briefly.]

Ah, my friend... a warrior at heart. You're too right, I suppose. Perhaps there is no shame in leaving those things in the past.

[shieldofrohan]

There is shame only in forgetting them, or so I believe. But that, too, I fear.

[crimsonlight]

[Yenh nods in agreement, even as an indiscernible crosses her face.]

Why do you fear such a thing? Is it a possibility that such a thing could happen, or the product of musing?

[shieldofrohan]

But an idle thought.

...It pains me, to be away from those who ought to be my duty. Those whose lives are mine to protect, whose fealty must be repaid. It pains me less tonight, for what she has told me.

I fear the day it pains me no more.