it's a dead man's party

[self_composed]

The guest list winds up being pretty huge.

To start with, there are now eight Bells. Pattern isn't bringing anyone besides herself, and Aegis no one besides herself and her Whistle, but everyone else -

Between Alice, the Joker, the rescued Queenie, Kas, Micaiah, and Sue, plus Ghosty who Amariah picked up on her way home, that's seven Whistles. (Stella thinks ahead: there is a soundproofed orgy chamber away from the main party awning. With a few nodes off of it in case more than one orgy forms; she can think of at least two other likely ones.)

There's an equally absurd number of Sherlocks and Tonies if you count them together. They have Juliet's matched set, Shell Bell's matched set, two other matched sets from Bell-less worlds (one with souled vampire, one both human), a stray Tony, and a stray Sherlock from Downside.

Amariah grabbed a random Libby on top of the random extra Whistle, but at least she's not incorporating anyone from home.

Golden's bringing much of her family and many of her friends - although Edward is staying home, that still leaves Elspeth and Jacob, Alice and Jasper with little Brandon, Rosalie and Emmett and little Henry, Nathan accompanying his mate and their child Kerron, Esme and Carlisle and their Lily, Addy, and Elena who'll get to see her brother. Golden claims that this is a conservative list and she could easily have produced another twenty enthusiastic guests. Stella doesn't doubt it. She puts up a few signs reading Please Conduct Adult Conversation Only Via Brainphone. Little Half-Vampires Have Good Ears And Perfect Memories. As a last-minute surprise, Golden has taken Elspeth's suggestion to bring Edward's deceased mother Elizabeth, too.

Juliet has, on top of her boyfriend and his - progenitor? - her tiny Libby, James, a tagalong thereto called Virginia, and a ghost called Minnie, plus Giles.

Angela's list is more modest: her, her husband, and their friends Alleluia and Caleb.

Shell Bell is responsible for half the Sherlocks-and-Tonies all by herself, a tagalong called Pepper, and also someone called Darcy and also Matilda. (Shell Bell is also the reason Angela is not inviting her brother-in-law.)

Stella herself is responsible for inviting Libby, Orfeo, Chris, Mary, Anna, Sandy, Eights, Chainsaw, Lazarus, Kolya (who is informed that it would be awfully inconvenient for a majority of Bells to all have to coordinate on pretending he doesn't exist when only one of them has even met him to be able to identify him in the first place, so he can simply stay home if he's planning to be hidey), and Bridget.

Stella sets up a name tag system. Everyone will have a tag stuck to them. Solo persons - a minority - will just have their names. People with template names and nicknames will have both stamped on automatically. ("Hi! I'm a Bell, and you can call me Stella!"; "Hi! I'm a Whistle, and you can call me Alice!" "Hi! I'm a Sherlock, and I don't have a distinguishing nickname yet but as soon as I pick one it will appear here!")

She conjures up a nice buffet of food and beverages which will stay its correct temperature until consumed, and assorted synthetics for the vampires (labeled not for human consumption), and dishes and flatware (all glass; even some of the food-eating guests might dissolve anything else) and fusses with the awning opacity until it lets in just the right amount of sun, and, what the hell, she throws in a stage in case Angela wants to sing or she decides to play the flute or someone decides to pentagon some other performative skill to entertain the crowd. She makes sure there are enough bathrooms for all the people who still need bathrooms.

She puts out a few tables here and there with little bowls of squares and triangles - a mix of her glowing red and Alice's shifty black - in them for everyone's convenience. She accumulates coins in those sizes faster than she generally uses them and has a great many, so there are plenty for anyone to dip and wish if something comes up. She double-checks to make sure the Martian ground rules prohibit any misuses available for those size coins.

Jane gets one of those high-tech holographic projectors, on wheels, which she promptly manifests in, drives around the floor, and makes faces through.

Comments

[prima_sequentem]

"Can you tell me anything about the rest?" inquires Slipstick. "My information isn't exactly complete."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Sure. Besides Mama and Stella and Juliet, there's Shell Bell, who's already taken over Atlantis and was the one to discover Downside by getting assassinated. There's Amariah, who's a witch and lives in Alethia which is the only world we know about that isn't attached to Downside now and everybody there has an external usually-animal-shaped soul and it's contagious if you go there so that's something to consider, and she has an artifact that dispenses objective truth but only within Alethia, and she hasn't taken over yet. Angela hasn't taken over either, because she lives in a theocracy and even though it turns out the god is a spaceship and not a real god she's waiting for the last Archangel to finish out his term - that's her, up on stage, with the other angel, I think they're going to sing! And there's Aegis who's from the future, maybe not as far as Angela but we're not quite sure about Angela's history, and she's younger than all the others and she's an admiral and she got a hostile alien species to surrender and last I heard she was going to see about getting democratically elected to be something called Hegemon. And there's Pattern who is called that because she has no distinguishing features yet."

[prima_sequentem]

Slipstick nods along to this explanation.

"Pattern's the dead one, right?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Shell Bell and Juliet are also dead," says Elspeth. "Or that would be Pattern's distinguishing feature."

[prima_sequentem]

"The one who was dead when the rest of them found her," she amends.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"The one who was dead and just plain stayed that way without caveat until earlier today," says Elspeth, "yeah, that's her. I think she's looking for a mint-helper."

[prima_sequentem]

"That, I cannot help her with," says Slipstick.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Not personally, maybe, but Libby, I think I heard that you helped Stella interview for her extras when Alice went missing?"

[prima_sequentem]

"I did!" says Libby. "Apparently they've got a couple of alts around here somewhere - I saw them chatting before they went to join the Whistles."

"Interesting," says Slipstick. "Sure, I could lend a hand there. If she hasn't already got one by the time she leaves the party."

[neverbeatme]

"So," says James, looking between Libby and Elspeth and Orfeo and Jacob, "what's with the escorts?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Jake is my wolf and Orfeo is Libby's," says Elspeth. "I didn't bring my pamphlets with me but - ooh." She dips into one of the bowls of squares and conjures up a few complete stacks, and hands James one on wolves.

[neverbeatme]

"Ooh," she says dryly. "A pamphlet."

But she does read it.

[dont_look_back]

"Her Highness does good pamphlets," laughs Orfeo. "Short version is I took one look at Libby and I was all magically gone over her, likewise Jake and the Princess."

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah," says James, "there's a lot of that in your world, isn't there."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Well, two kinds of it," says Elspeth. "Stella's precog Mary has been helping with the wolves, and now that Aunt Alice has cleared up her blind spots she can do it herself - and she was already keeping a lookout for problematic instances of the vampire version."

[neverbeatme]

"That sounds convenient."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"It's much better than having it happen at random. I'm happy to have Jake, but it was alarming at the time."

[dont_look_back]

"Libby handled it like a champ," says Orfeo loyally.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Elspeth was five and wasn't sure if her mother was alive at the time, and -" Jacob begins. "But - man, you know well as I do that Whose Imprint Is Best fights never get anywhere."

[prima_sequentem]

Libby smiles fondly at Orfeo.

Slipstick looks between them and grins. After a moment, so does Granny.

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elspeth pats her wolf on the arm. "So he's my bodyguard, although the title is less essential now that we've got wishcoins going spare," she says. "Mama barely uses hers anymore except when she's at formal meetings with human governments and wants to be shadowed by an entourage."

[prima_sequentem]

"Happily, bodyguards are not something my template generally needs," says Libby.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"In my case he's also handy for safety reasons that don't directly involve taking bullets for me or anything," Elspeth says, "because he's a very good target for my truth power on subjects that have to do with whether I'm safe."

[prima_sequentem]

"I'd like to register general envy for everyone here with a magic aunt," sighs Granny.

"Are you going to drag yours out of storage?" inquires Slipstick.

Granny nods. "Soon. And your mothers?" she asks, looking between the rest of her template.

"It's on the to-do list," says Libby.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Your aunt might be magic, Grandma, witches happen in Aurum," says Elspeth, "mightn't she?"