[OPEN LOG] Turkey Testicle Festival Open Mingle!

[marmoron]

Who: Everyone!
When: Post-Thanksgiving Weekend
Where: Bottoms Up Bar and Tavern
Summary: The annual Turkey Testicle Festival returns to a local Gloucester bar with special events including a turkey testicle eating competition, live music, karaoke … and some unexpected spooks and slaughter themed hallucinations
Warnings: Please put appropriate content warnings in your top levels! General warnings include:
For the festival: Alcohol
For the opt-in aftermath: Slaughterhouses, blood, implied animal cruelty, industrialized slaughter, tactile/auditory/visual hallucinations

Welcome to the Annual Turkey Testicle Festival!

It’s that beloved time of the year, folks! All across the United States, several towns host a much lauded festival called the Turkey Testicle Festival and lucky you, Gloucester just so happens to be one of those special towns that pay tribute to the full glory of the humble turkey. Fliers for the event hosted by the Bottoms Up Bar and Tavern can be seen all around town advertising the momentous occasion. See you there!

Dining & Drinking

Bottoms Up serves up classic American bar foods and offers a wide selection of local beers as well as hard liquors for anyone who wants to get their drink on. Just be sure to provide some kind of ID. Or get someone else to get you a drink -- it’s a party, the bartenders won’t ask so long as you don’t get them in direct trouble. But let’s be real, why are you here eating nachos and chicken wings when you could be eating….

The Balls

Ah yes, the crown jewels of the event, who could forget? Breaded and deep fried to golden brown, crispy perfection these balls are just bursting with flavor! Served with your choice of hot sauce for some spice or creamy white sauce, these delectables are said to taste just like chicken nuggets.

Dare to find out.

Or better yet, join the turkey testicle eating contest! Win glorious prizes such as a twenty dollar gift card to Walmart or a CD signed by Sense of Evan. Please, they have so many CDs nobody seems to want…

Live Music

Looks like a local band is playing for part of the festival. For better or for worse, “Sense of Evan” are a cover and playing all the best meme hits from the likes of Evanescence, Avril Lavigne, Nickelback amongst others. Come jam out to the music, make merry with other festival attendees. Or maybe you’ll just be hanging out by the wall wondering how could this happen to me…..

Karaoke

But just because the live band’s done playing, doesn’t mean the music stops. Nope. Bottoms Up staff have dredged up a karaoke machine! Now it’s your turn to show off your singing chops and wow the crowd! Or conversely break a few eardrums. It’s all in good fun, right?

The Aftermath

…Or maybe it wasn’t all just in good fun after all?

For those who attended the festival , they may wake up the next day with some unwanted side effects. It might start out subtle — the odd sound of a conveyor belt moving along, the occasional electric shock by your neck. Weird bodily and auditory sensations that seem to flit in and out from an entirely different place. But as the day progresses, these strange occurrences seem to become stronger, clearer until the hallucinations really kick in.

Visions of yourself trapped in a steel pen, along with so many others all waiting to be pushed onto a conveyor belt. Perhaps you’re sharing the hallucination with others you recognize, perhaps you’re meant to work together to escape the seemingly endless line of slaughter and industrialized death. One way or another, these hallucinations will last a full day before they gradually taper off in intensity.

Notes:

• The after effects are purely opt-in. You do not have to play with any Slaughter themed elements if your character attends the festival.
• For the slaughterhouse hallucinations, feel free to go ham with the set up. Be as horrible to your characters as you like, please just warn with the appropriate content warnings.
• As per the mod’s notes, characters who choose to investigate Bottom’s Up following this incident, they'll find that the grocery store had a mix-up in their meat order and got something that came off of one of Sable's shipments. The grocery store's usual seller came up short and just bought up what they could find on short notice to cover the holiday rush.

Comments

Keith | Voltron: Legendary Defender | OTA!

[marmoron]

1. Bottoms Up
[ seated at a corner table, keith is frowning down at a paper cup full of turkey testicles. one of the balls is currently speared on the end of a fork and is getting repeatedly dunked into a little container of ranch dressing. looking somewhat disgruntled, keith watches as a loud group of locals seated at an adjacent table chow down on the stuff like they're potato chips. ]

Guess people really do take this stuff seriously.

[ eyes drifting back to the list of prizes, he asks: ]

Are you competing?

2. The Band (cw: implied underage drinking)
[ a little later when the cover band is all set up and playing, keith is seated at the bar seemingly nodding along to the group's cover of "my immortal." there's an empty glass in front of him which might be 80% of the explanation for his apparent bop session here, but he seems pretty clear headed when someone takes a seat next to him. ]

Y'know, I hate music, but this song.. isn't actually that bad?

[ help, emo boy has apparently finally discovered emo music. though next beat his brow is furrowing as he slumps onto the bar, arms covering his ears. ]

Still prefer the sound of silence though. [ nvm, false alarm, edgelord is too edgy for emo music. gaze shifting back to you: ]

Silence doesn't get stuck in your head.

3. Aftermath (cw: mass slaughter, hallucinations)
[ for those who didn't partake in the festivities or otherwise managed to avoid the interesting side effects, if they happen to be hanging around the adi apartment blocks they might happen across keith trying to hide himself in the cabinet next to the office water cooler. whatever's going on with him, he's sweating up a storm and clearly out of it as he mumbles: ]

No, I'm not going!

[ but for those who may be experiencing similar symptoms -- well, a human slaughterhouse sure is a place to be getting trapped in, huh? herded towards a large conveyer belt that's matted with blood and spatters of viscera, it won't be too long before you're the one next to be hauled up on swinging meat hooks. ]

Gotta get out of here!

Wildcard
[ feel free to hit me up with any other ideas! hmu on partraven or pm! ]

the band

[thatsreallygreat]

[Caduceus cocks his head as he looks at the band. Since he's out and about in town, he looks... pretty human, actually. He's still unreasonably tall, and he still has pink hair (with streaks of white throughout and even more at the roots), but over all he's human.]

Silence can get stuck in your head, [he counters.] You ever have one of those moments when it's been so quiet and any sound makes you jump? I'd say that counts.

[He glances up when the bartender comes back around.]

Oh, just water, please. Unless you have tea.

[marmoron]

[ keith glances over at caduceus, brow furrowed very slightly. ]

I..'ve never thought about it that way.

[ of course the femur flute guy would have an odd take on what does and doesn't count as music. ]

But you consider screaming "music" too, don't you?

[ how does that compare with my immortal anyway? half curious, keith is tempted to ask, but the bartender pipes up with a how 'bout a long island ice tea? is that the kind of tea cad's after?? ]

[thatsreallygreat]

[Caduceus beams at the mention of screaming.]

Oh have you heard my flute? [He's got a short memory and a lot of people have been slightly traumatized by that little performance. He tries to practice in less populated areas these days, mostly because it really does sound like someone shrieking until he gets the hang of actually playing melodies.] I mean a lot of things can be music, depends on what you like.

[He blinks at the bartender.]

I'll try it.

[This couldn't possibly go wrong.]

[marmoron]

Yeah. Left kind of an impression.

[ putting it real mildly. as for the wonderful journey into boozy "tea" that caduceus is about to embark on.... keith isn't actually about to stop it. after all, why would it be called a long island iced tea if there's no tea in it? words have to mean something, right?

so while the bartender gets to work on cad's drink, keith goes on. ]

But I dunno about anything counting as music. Sounds like something someone bad at music would say if they're getting defensive.

[ and with a bit of a flourish and shake, the bartender pours caduceus' drink into a glass. that'll be ten bucks, buddy. ]

[thatsreallygreat]

Some people like the sounds frogs make. Or the grind of a mortar and pestle. They might call that music.

[He's just saying there's a lot of diversity out there and he completely misses that it might have been a dig at him and his flute. Which is a great flute, by the way.]

Y'know the best thing about that flute was scaring the bejeezus out of my sister. Snuck up behind her while she was meditating and she went right into a pond.

[He looks at the drink when it arrives and pays without really thinking about it. Expensive, but he doesn't exactly spend money on much.]

Aftermath RIP

[mistersquirrels]

[Eric has made the unfortunate mistake of going to the turkeyball festival and now he's paying the price.

The office water cooler and cabinet do not exist for him, but the large conveyor belt of doom does.

With the way things have recently gone with the dreaming, part of him should be more skeptical of this but it just seems too real.]

Help! Somebody help!

RIP lmfao

[marmoron]

[ the pair of them are likely an incredible sight to behold in the office, but that's something they'll have to come to grips with later. right now? keith freezes when he hears the cry for help.

fuck. he still has no idea where the hell this is or how he got here, but it doesn't take a genius to work out staying here isn't an option. if there's someone else around, he can't exactly leave them behind either. ]

Hang on! [ the enclosure he's in is just high enough to make climbing over the top an inconvenience, but not impossible. he takes a running jump, snags the top and with some effort hauls himself over the top to the next cage over to where eric's been penned up. ]

Hey! [ it's terse, curt and keith doesn't waste much more time with introduction. [ Have you seen an exit? Anyhing?

Aftermath

[aelwyn_aberration]

[Aelwyn was unaffected by the hallucinations, her specialization in abjuration giving her something of a natural resistance to these kinds of spells. Not an immunity, mind, but whatever it was, her... regular feeding to keep her magic seems to have deflected the effect.

Not that she knows that yet.

When she sees Keith, sweating and fearful, she approaches hesitantly.]

Keith? What's wrong?

Re: Aftermath

[marmoron]

[ what's going on indeed.

only partly successful in smooshing himself into the little cabinet, keith freezes when he hears his name, twisting around with his knife brandished like a cornered animal. but if aelwyn's thinking he's on the verge of attack, she'd actually be wrong.

fuzzy as his brain is on the difference between reality and the slaughterhouse, keith does recognize her and that recognition is enough for him to lower the knife and reach out to her almost frantic in his urgency. ]

Aelwyn, c'mon we gotta hide. Get in!

[ into the cabinet that's barely big enough for one person, yes. ]
[ ....

[aelwyn_aberration]

[.... okay. At first she was going to snap at him for raising a knife at her but then he's... trying to warn her?

So something's gotten Keith extremely spooked, but Aelwyn's not going to fall into the trope and just ignore the frantic warnings and get her head smashed in. So she'll awkwardly try to squeeze her way in.

Then in a low whisper she'll try to say.]

...What are we hiding from?

[marmoron]

[ if nothing else, it's pretty readily apparent that keith seems convinced something is there in this completely boring office space based solely on the fact that he's making a genuine effort to squeeze in with aelwyn, despite how cramped it is and how averse to close quarters contact he is otherwise.

cramping himself as small as he can, he pulls aelwyn close to try and get the cabinet door to shut. it doesn't close all the way, mind, but it's about 70% closed. it;s only then that keith seems to pull it together enough to actually whisper an answer back for aelwyn to dissect. ]

The people with the stun guns.

[ it's a quick insistent little whisper, and he goes silent agaiin immediately straining his hearing for the sound of footsteps. ]

They hold it up to your head to knock you out. Then they stick you on hooks and cut your throat, then boil you alive! [ hissed even more urgently: [ Aelwyn, they already slaughtered Martin!

wildcard. ( it's an actual drink ok )

[earthshine]

[ the turkey balls are fine. not arizona fine but that might have to do more with age worn memory enhancing the experience than any actual difference in taste. as for the festival itself? being inside a temperature regulated bar is an improvement over being out in the eighty-something, sun-ridden nowhere of the turkey testicle festivals of years past. his only complaint, he supposes, is that the music could use some tuning. that’s why the bar has an array of drinks to choose from and boy, has shiro been choosing.

sort of.

his current drink of choice is not his choice at all. after having spent far too long signing up for the eating contest -- both from the line and the five-minute circling conversation of put me down as shiro, oh last name? shirogane, no it’s not shiro shirogane, my name is takashi, put me down as shiro, i’m shiro -- shiro with his put-out, vaguely unfocused frown is intercepted by a barmaid offering him a drink. some nice bystander at the bar bought it for him.

huh. must’ve felt bad for him after that ordeal.

it’s creamy, a light splash of yellow to the otherwise milky coloring. a flying kangaroo, that’s what the barmaid calls it. vodka, rum and orange juice – huh. not bad. so the man staring from the bar, waiting for a reaction? shiro sends him a smile and turns away right as the man goes to slip from his seat. time to find keith. he’s easy to find of course; he’s still sitting at the table shiro left him at nearly fifteen minutes ago. ]

Sorry. [ he rounds behind keith’s chair and heavily, without any usual grace, he plops down into his own, setting his drink on the table. ] That took way longer than it should've. [ he tips the cocktail umbrella to the other side and then angles a smile to keith. ] Hope you weren't too bored without me. [ except -- he kind of looks pleased? it's okay for keith to admit he missed him. ]

uhuh uhuh, if you insist

[marmoron]

[ while keith is seated exactly where shiro left him, there are a few new additions to the table in the form of two empty martini glasses. keith for his part was looking a little sullen, but perks right back up when shiro makes his triumphant return from what should have been a two minute side quest. ]

Hey, you're back!

[ so eat shit random dude who said he'd been ditched?? feeling warm and vindiated, keith unfolds his arms and sits up straight to eye shiiro and the drink in his hand. head tilting slightly, he squints: ]

What's that?

according to wicki wacki woo, it's legit. a v trusted website.

[earthshine]

[ shiro’s brain cells aren’t firing with their usual efficiency. the two empty martini glasses? seen but hardly dwelled on. give him two more minutes and maybe the wait-a-minute will set in. until then, his attention is solely on his best friend. ]

A Flying Kangaroo. [ a beat. a frown. ] Dunno why. Kangaroos don’t fly. [ not that there is any written rule dictating that cocktail names need to make sense. as quickly as the befuddlement comes, it’s gone, shiro’s short attention span running out. ]

Some guy sent it to me. [ and now he’ll slide the glass along the table by his index finger, pushing it ever closer to keith. ] Here, try it.

i want you to know i have my face iin my hands.

[marmoron]

[ ... that's a weird drink name, but keith doesn't even get to hold onto the amusement for long before shiro snuffs it out. ]

Some guy got you a drink.

[ right here is where some modicum of self awareness ought to be flashing, but .... tragically there is none. keith instead eyes the drink being pushed closer to him like it's rat poison. maybe the dude who was here actually did have half a point. ]

... then some guy probably meant for you to have it all.

Caduceus Clay | Critical Role | OTA

[thatsreallygreat]

Dining and Drinking

Caduceus arrives looking quite... human. For those that know him around ADI, the long pink hair and the height and the general way he carries himself will definitely call to mind the firbolg everyone knows and side eyes. Anyone from Bonnie's, or who happens to see him out and around town a lot, will definitely recognize the human disguise he wears whenever he's off ADI property.

He heard about all this over the network, and even if he has absolutely no intention of eating anything's testicles, he is kind of curious and it'd be nice to be social. Between a big family and the Nein, he likes a bit of a crowd.

After getting himself a drink, he's happy to hang around the bar or join people at a table.

Later
"Oh, that was not tea."

That definitely wasn't tea. A well-meaning bartender served up a Long Island Ice Tea and Caduceus made the mistake of drinking about half of it. It really isn't enough to get him drunk (definitely tipsy though), but it leaves the lanky cleric feeling a little green. He tries to tough it out at his table, but the noise and press of people is making it harder to really center himself.

He really should have stuck with water. Or done what Jester always did and ask for milk or something. Now he can't really fathom eating or drinking anything.

He stumbles a little as he gets up from his table, and it's hard to miss him given how tall he is. And the pink hair.

Maybe someone could be so kind as to help him outside?

Live Music

Gangly as he looks sometimes, Caduceus isn't that bad on a dance floor. It's unselfconscious movement at its best, and for the most part he tends to hang around the edge rather than getting in the middle, moving around to the beat and enjoying himself. If he spies anyone that looks like they might want to dance but won't do it alone, he'll sidle his way over to ask,

"Hey, wanna dance?"

No reason anyone has to rock out all alone, right?

And if things get a little rowdy, Caduceus is quick to swoop in and help people up off the floor if they go down.

Wildcard

[Catch Caduceus at the bar, a table, or the dance floor! I will also match style, so feel free to use brackets if you prefer them. Ping me at givemedragons or via PM if you want to plot or have any questions.]

Dining and Drinking - Later (cw: underage drinking)

[graveyounglady]

Mercy is having a ball with this. There are people buying her drinks, somehow fascinated by the fact that she seems to be able to outdrink all of them. She's flushed, but she's been holding her liquor for years, and mostly thinks it's funny how easily most people here seem to be down after a few pints.

She's giggling with some people who are examining the turkey balls when she notices someone tall and very pink lurching upward. The look on Caduceus' face is enough to tell her he's in need of the fresh air or a toilet. Possibly both. As much fun as she's having, a friend need is more important.

"Hey there, Big Brother! You're looking a mite heated up. You wanna help a girl outside?" She wraps an arm around him, under his shoulders, offering herself as a leaning post as she urges him toward the door.

[thatsreallygreat]

Thank every god he has a name for. Later, he might feel bad for interrupting Mercy's night, but right now he's just happy to see her.

"Oh, hey Sister Mercy. Outside sounds good."

He wobbles a little and he's immediately glad for her arm around him. He tries not to lean, though. She might be able to handle some of his weight, but he's a bean pole and he doesn't want his center of gravity compromised too badly.

It takes him a second to properly move. Caduceus looks down at the floor like he needs to be very sure where his feet are going and he trusts Mercy to steer him otherwise. His arm tightens around her shoulders when someone careens past them, but they don't topple over so he'll call that a victory.

[graveyounglady]

"Thought a big fella like you'd hold it all in. You get some sort of bad food?" Given some of the fare she's seen tonight, it's a possibility. And with Caduceus not being a meat-eater... maybe that's why he's gone green around the gills.

"We'll set you down and I'll fetch you a water once we're out, no matter."

[thatsreallygreat]

"I think it was the drink," he says as they near the door. Caduceus puts a hand out to push it open so Mercy doesn't have to let go of him.

The blast of chilly air is a relief after the warmth of the bar and he takes a deep breath of it to try to settle his stomach. It's possible he's had something that had meat in it or on it without noticing, but he's been pretty careful and he's never had a bad reaction to that before on the off-chance it happened.

"Oh... that's better."

Dining and Drinking

[mistersquirrels]

He's probably feeling a little too lonely and a little too despondent over the bleak family-less Thanksgiving so he might be enjoying himself a little too much at this weird festival.

He raises his glass when he sees Caduceus nearby at the bar, looking like he's had one too many himself, but it's fine.

It's all fine.

"Hey, you look a lot like that one guy from ADI," Eric points at him, his words crashing into each other a bit. "Totally dead ringer, man."

[thatsreallygreat]

"I am probably that one guy from ADI," Caduceus says cheerfully. "I look a little different off the property."

Since apparently having a tail and floppy ears is a big no-go around here. He's still getting used to having the disguise imposed on him rather than doing it himself - he wouldn't mind, really. It'd be easy and at least it'd be under his control.

"I'm Caduceus."

[mistersquirrels]

"Yeah! That's it!" Eric snaps his fingers, though he's far enough gone that he can't quite get the snap to work, and he just sort of waves his hand enthusiastically at him instead. "That's so cool how that disguise thing works."

He raises his glass to him.

"Eric Matthews. Hope you're having a great time here, Caduceus. I've never been to a turkeynut festival before, though...I didn't even know turkeys had nuts..."

[thatsreallygreat]

"It's a little weird," he admits. "But I'm used to it now."

Sometimes he forgets that people aren't seeing him the way he expects to be seen, but for the most part he's adapted. He lifts his glass of cranberry juice in an answering gesture.

"I didn't know they had turkeynut festivals," he says as he glances over the crowd. "Or about the testicles in general. I guess I thought that was just a mammal thing."