It's a pleasant late afternoon in the city. Scattered clouds drift across a sunny sky and a calm breeze from the sea tinges the air with salt. People fill the streets happily going about their lives, enjoying the relative peace in these war torn lands. But the mood swiftly changes as the sun begins to set behind the mountains. Long shadows creep across the city and a familiar cold wind descends from the west. With dread, people look to the distant peaks, and a growing dark cloud. The cloud begins to approach, preceded by the sounds of flapping wings and high pitched shrieks carried upon the wind. Citizens flee for shelter from a cauldron of thousands upon thousands of large, black bats, wingspans as wide as a man is tall, red eyes glowing dimly in the fading light, collective shrieks drowning out all other sounds. They fill the city streets and alleyways mere feet above the panicking crowd. Yet as quickly as they appeared, they depart, leaving confusion and hundreds of letters drifting in the air in their wake. The old parchment is folded closed, with a violet wax seal depicting a heart pierced by three blades. Breaking the seal, the letter reads: [quote][i]Lady Nil of Autumn Kindly requests the Pleasure of your Company at a Grand Masquerade Ball For the Diversion and Entertainment of the People of Offtopic To be held at her Mansion in the Volariden Mountains this coming Thursday on All Hallow's Eve Festivities to begin at Seven in the Evening Masks or Costumes requested![/i][/quote] Looking again to the shadowy mountains, where the Witch Queen's mansion has sat silent and undisturbed since her defeat last winter, the light of a fire flickers in the darkness... [spoiler]This is just a prelude, not the RP itself, but feel free to react, prepare, investigate the invitations in your batcave, or adjust your fedora and sniff it to determine what I had for dinner last night! Anyway, I've been working on this for... far too long honestly. It's actually a conglomeration of several ideas I've had shelved, some from before the Apocalypse last year. Things haven't been the greatest and I haven't had the time or energy to invest in much lately, but enough of that! I'll drop the thing next week.[/spoiler]