"𝐓𝐇𝐔𝐒" ▣ MAY TDM

[saltburnmods]

MAY 2024 TDM

Welcome to SALTBURNT, a panfandom smut/thriller game based off the film Saltburn, where characters are encouraged to indulge their deepest desires. The money never runs out and the liquor never stops pouring, so you may as well indulge from the bounty. Of course, things are rarely what they seem, and the manor itself seems to have a consciousness of its own. Throw parties, trash the house, engage in youthful merriment, but remember — dangers come out at night, and no one, no matter how rich you are, is safe from demons lurking in the shadows.

Threads can be considered game canon, provided the players agree. Players can also start fresh upon acceptance into the game. Prompts on the Test Drive can be used for in game logs.

WELCOME TO SALTBURNT

It's the hangover more than the light streaming in through half drawn curtains that wakes you up, your brain rattling in your skull, your mouth dry and cottony, your stomach churning with whatever it is you drank last night. If self preservation is your strong suit, you might turn over in bed and see a few painkillers laid out for you on a silver dish, accompanied by a glass of water. If it isn’t, stay in bed and wallow — eventually a maid will be in to tear your curtains open, saying, "Breakfast is served," and scurrying out quietly, invisibly. Breakfast? Maybe it’s normal for you. Maybe it isn’t.

You're drawn from the room, either by the mystery, or an undefinable urge that could be supernatural in origin, or could be your hunger catching up to you. It's almost nostalgic, the walk to the dining room — have you been here before? Were you drawn up to this estate in a car? Haven’t you done all this already? Maybe you mosey around a library, maybe you run into your suite mate in your adjoining bathroom. Regardless, seemingly all hallways, covered in priceless artworks and ancient relics from times long past, lead to the dining room, where a comically long table houses the Balfours and their many guests, who seem just as disgruntled and confused as you. No matter. "The breakfast is self-serve," they say. But not the eggs.

If you want to leave, you’ll have to tell Giles, the housekeeper, who will arrange a car for you that mysteriously, or perhaps suspiciously, never arrives. Unfortunately, confronting Giles about it is near impossible, as he’s as good at being invisible as the rest of the house staff. Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t just walk out. The front gates are easy enough to jump over, even if the walk towards them gives you a strange sense of foreboding, or just outright discomfort, as if the ground itself doesn’t want you to leave. Those more sensitive or fragile might find they can’t make the jump, no matter how physically able, or desperately wanting. Still, a strong person could continue on, over the fence and into the lush English countryside. The feeling doesn’t dissipate, though — this sense of wrongness, almost sickness, like a weight on your back. Walk into the evergreen, carry on, but the strongest will make it perhaps a mile or so before the weight of dread and paranoia brings you to your knees, and then to your face, flat in the middle of a dirt road. What were you thinking? Is this really better?

Wake up with a hangover, in a bed, the curtains drawn, the maid saying, "Breakfast is served," before scurrying out. The painkillers are there, just like you remember. In fact, it’s all exactly how you remember, as if you never left an imprint the first time, or any mess you made was cleared away while your back was turned. Walk to the dining room, find everyone there eating away at their breakfast. It’s self serve, naturally. Just not the eggs.

"We dress for dinner," says Portia, with a kind, if discerning smile. "Black tie."

LET THEM EAT CAKE

CONTENT WARNINGS: sex, drugs, alcohol.

Up until now, the outdoors of Saltburnt have seemed immaculately well groomed, landscaped until not a leaf is out of line. However, on the night of a planned party you were all informed of, the grounds have transformed into a psychedelic fever dream before your eyes, with very little resembling the polished exterior you’ve become acquainted with. Large fixtures have been erected around the grounds in a paid homage to Roman architecture, huge columns set up in invitation to the party beyond. Everything is bathed in pastel colors of pink, blue, yellow and green, opulent and gaudy in equal measures, everything decorated with golden filigree. The theme? Rococo. And yes, you’re expected to arrive in costume. (0 points awarded for historical accuracy — this isn’t school, you aren’t being graded on anything but your appearance.)

Vanilla flavored cocktails line elaborately decorated banquet tables, and while alcohol seems readily in supply, any food other than snacking Doritos and caviar with mother-of-pearl spoons is hard to find. Of course, that’s other than the dessert table, which is sorted with an arrangement of confections: macaroons of all colors, cupcakes, cookies, and of course, cakes. Some are imperially designed, with frilly icing decorations and sprinkle pearls on top, but the real showstopper cakes are the anatomically correct ones, shaped in the imagine of naked bodies. On first glance, the lifelike realness of them makes the bodies look like peaceful corpses laid flat against the sugary delights — some, potentially, with an appearance uncannily like a guest like you, currently residing in Saltburnt. But, when someone cuts into one, it's plain to see the flesh is just fondant, the insides all cake and cream and jam. There is enough detail on the inside of the cakes that gives the impression, if you were to cut one horizontally down from head to toe, you'd see the perfect snapshot of the inside of a human body, organs, bones, and all.

Seeking other entertainment? In homage to the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, small diamonds have been hidden around the party, in red solo cups, in full liquor bottles, in plain sight, in trees and bushes. Collect, steal, and pickpocket as many as you can — anyone with diamonds at the end of the party has been guaranteed a special prize from Portia herself, but you'll have to win to figure out what it is. (A replica of the Queen's necklace, lucky you!)

In addition, on the grounds there is a lifesize version chess, alternating colors between light and hot pink. Anyone interested will quickly be informed, this is SlapKiss Chess, where the rules are simple enough to follow. Chess as usual, only when one piece steps on the square of another piece, the first person to step off the square loses the ground and is kicked from the game. You can knock your opponent off however you like, through whatever means available to you. Naturally, things get pretty bloody and pretty PDA, depending on your poison of choice — with the name of the game comes two very frequent weapons against your opponent.

Of course, the night does come to an end eventually. Pass out where you are or drunkenly make your way up to you room in a drug-induced stupor. Either way, you'll wake up hungover, in bed, trying to fill in all the blanks from last night.

A MIDNIGHT'S DREAM

CONTENT WARNINGS: body horror, cannibalism, sex.

Things feel normal, for awhile. The first day after the party anything brewing inside feels like the byproduct of intoxicants ingested, so it's likely you're expecting to feel a little off. The next day, you wonder just how long this hangover is supposed to last. By the third day, something feels indefinably wrong, and you ache down to your bones.

Did you eat the cake? Probably, yes — but did you find it a little… addictive?

There's an urge inside you, to taste it again. What part of the body did you eat before? The fingers? Suddenly, you need to sink teeth into whoever has fingers closest to you, even though you know what'll happen. You'll find flesh, blood, and bone, hardly any of it appetizing. And yet. The compulsion is undeniable, and once you get what you want, you bite down on someone's body where you feel the need and, shockingly, it tastes good. Sweet. Moreover, it feels good to be consumed. Eater and eaten alike, all of you want some more, gluttonous down to your core.

It seems a curse has overtaken Saltburnt, turning everyone who ate cake into cake. Bones turn to cracked caramel, blood into loose icing. Oddly, it seems the only people safe from the curse, other than the people who didn’t eat anything, are the ones who won and wear their gifted diamond necklace, though that doesn't necessarily mean people won't try to take a bite out of them anyway, and it doesn't mean they wouldn't like being eaten too, depending on what they're into. It's all a frenzy, a fever dream. You eat and eat and eat and are eaten, shocked by how much flesh — well, cake — someone can lose.

On the fourth day, you wake up in your room again, as you have every other day, whole and unblemished, offended by the scent coming from outside your windows. Look, and find the sight of rotting cake abandoned in heaps, taking the form of errant limbs, spotted with mold and decorated with buzzing flies. Look for long enough, and you might once again find some weirdly similar to your own body, feeding hornets that flock to your sugary sweet flesh.

Weird dream, right?

DIRECTORY

taken
activity check
setting

reserves
rewards
rules

applications
hiatus & drop
faq

Comments

let's see how far we can get before it's all jossed

[nishtha]

In all times, Lestat seems to remain the same. Of course it's true of all of them, God's unwanted children, but it seems even more true of Lestat. Eternal, just as arresting as the first time they met. And as he was the last time they saw each other, when Lestat departed and Armand was left in the ruins with the pieces of their relationship.

He had, he realises too late, forgotten the shade of Lestat's eyes. The way that cruel mouth could look when it smiled. The timbre of his voice. Inwardly, he feels himself accept the words like physical blows. Outwardly, he remains unmoved, except for a slight tilt of his head. A little surprised that Lestat is so efflusive. And not willing to trust it in the slightest.

"As anyone might miss the storm that destroys their house and allows them to see, through the holes in their roof, the stars in the sky. Fortunately, I've had much to occupy myself with in the meantime." He purses his lips a little, regards Lestat from under the fan of his eyelashes. "And you, Lestat? Did you miss me?"

rubs hands together

[perfectionner]

The dissolution of their affair may have left Armand holding a slight grudge, for which Lestat can't entirely blame him, but simultaneously, he wonders whether Armand ever truly knew, deep down, that theirs was a love not meant to last. It had held its own significance, and he will readily admit to that, but there is a difference between what he felt for the ancient standing before him and what he carries for Louis — the inextinguishable torch that eclipses all his other past loves.

"Illuminating, then, within the aftermath. Isn't that always the way?" It was impossible, Lestat thinks, for Armand to understand his reasons for leaving until now, but a reception like this is still more than he could have hoped for. And, judging by Armand's response, he's had other avenues of amusing himself, which bodes well.

"Naturellement," he insists, looking into Armand's golden eyes — like a cat's eyes, beneath those dark lashes, capable of displaying either pleasure or fury with little advance notice. "I did think of you, while I was gone. And wondered how you were faring in my absence."

[nishtha]

"Not enough to reach out to me." An uncharacteristic slip of emotion, instinctive and hurt, in the heated regard of Lestat's gaze. Armand regrets it as soon as it's out of his mouth, the way it makes him sound like a pathetic child pining for an outstretched hand, a discarded lover who can't let go. He thins his mouth over it, disgusted at himself, but unable to call it back.

Lestat was always so good at unsettling him. At making him think and feel new things, dangerous things. Being older and more experienced had mattered little when it was Lestat's uncanny ability to enrapture him which held him in thrall. He holds Lestat's gaze, wanting him and hating him.

"You thought of me," he continues, as if it hadn't happened. "What did you think of?"

[perfectionner]

For as many years as Lestat has been a vampire — a mere drop in the bucket of Armand’s immortality — he still has difficulty masking his own small expressions, instinctive reactions that betray deeper intent which he so often tries and fails to mask. Armand’s admission, as it comes, earns one of those from him now, a subtle flicker in his mirrored gaze paired with a brief parting of his lips, as though he’s moving to speak without being entirely certain of what he’ll say.

“You’re right.” He won’t concede to Armand on many other things, but in this, Lestat grants the other vampire the position of superiority. “A lapse of judgment on my part, though one that fate seems to be giving me opportunity to remedy.”

How else can they explain this strange place that seems all too powerful in its capacity of preventing them from leaving? There’s no sign of Louis — not yet, at least — nor the other vampires of Armand’s coven, which may serve in Lestat’s favor yet.

“Paris still holds many fond memories for me,” he finally replies, looking up at Armand with a small, almost demure smile. “All those nights we sat in your box together. All the things you let me do to you while you sat in observation.”

[nishtha]

Many nights and many days, in the founding of the Théâtre des Vampires. Hedonistic and wild after the strictures of his coven's previous life, Armand had thrown himself willingly into it all. Had, he knows now, lost himself in it, and been paid in kind. But there's a part of him that doesn't regret it, that will always be that desperate child, that heartbroken lover, wanting only to reach out and find a willing hand clasping his own.

They're alone in the Library, for now. Even if they weren't, Armand wouldn't care. His world, for the moment, is narrowed down to Lestat, and the shape his mouth makes when he smiles.

I would let you do it all again, he says, into their telepathic connection this time, whispered words for nobody but the vampire in front of him. He reaches up a hand to touch his fingertips to Lestat's cheek, gently at first, then more firmly, crooking his fingers so the sharp points of his nails dig into his flesh.

[perfectionner]

Lestat still remembers the night Armand had found him — the performance on stage, one mind above a thousand reaching out until he could barely hear his own thoughts, the riotous laughter of the audience. The vampire had eclipsed all for him in those years, a momentary span by comparison to his entire existence but still one that seems to have left its mark on both of them.

That gentle touch doesn’t hint at the dig of claws to follow, and the surprise of it makes Lestat give voice to a sound somewhere between a sigh and a hiss, the exquisite pain making his fangs emerge as he tips his head into the contact, forcing those sharp points in deeper. When he turns, to nuzzle in against the inside of Armand’s wrist, small beads of blood well up on his cheek.

He places an open-mouthed kiss there, over skin stretched taut over veins; it would be so easy to sink his bite in, to drink as he once had, to feel the euphoric connection that existed between them if only for a moment.

Then let me, he responds, a purr in Armand’s thoughts, not yet attempting to crowd him against the bookshelf but realizing how delicious it would be to do so, here. To take him right up against the tomes belonging to this ostentatious display of wealth and acquisition, leave the remnants of their fucking dripping down the leather spines.

[nishtha]

When Lestat kisses the inside of his wrist, open-mouthed and hot against taut veins and fragile skin, it's Armand's turn to be betrayed by his reaction. His lips part from each other to show the points of his own fangs emerging, pupils dilating, droplets of ink spreading through red-gold. He keeps his hand in place, letting Lestat do as he wishes -- vampire intimacy, baring one's vulnerable skin to a fellow predator's teeth.

He can smell Lestat's blood on the air, three dark beads of it on his perfect cheek. Vermouth and annihilation, he'd told Daniel. Top notes of bitter botanicals and ashes, lower notes of orange peel, caramel, disaster. Heady, addictive for as long as you're drinking from the cup. Mortal blood recycled and corrupted by the vampire's heart.

Armand tilts his hand, enough to drift the pad of his thumb briefly across Lestat's lips, returning the ghost of that kiss. He smears it through the blood, pulls it back to put it bitter-painted into his own mouth, a rich redness of bruised grapes that they can no longer taste. Sucks it clean, then leans in to follow it, to press his lips against Lestat's, to offer him the dredges of himself.

[perfectionner]

How exquisite a moment like this one can be in reminding him of what it used to be like between them. As elusive as Armand often is, having the advantage of time on his side to be able to disguise the swell of stronger emotions, even his defenses can lower from time to time, with those glimmers in his gaze that speak volumes more than Lestat would ever need him to put into words.

The possibility of being interrupted at any moment looms large, but either of them is more than capable of discerning footsteps long before their owner even crosses the threshold into this room. More than that, however, Lestat's attention is all but wrapped up in the vampire before him, the leonine elegance of Armand's features, beauty preserved in the amber of immortality.

Lestat's gaze darkens, distinctly, when Armand deigns to taste his blood — an intimacy shared between vampires for a reason, often an even deeper connection than sex. The kiss initiated, responded to in kind, is hungry, devouring, and yet possesses the familiarity that accompanies the recollection of all previous kisses shared. He sighs, once, tasting Armand, tasting himself, and when the kiss breaks after what could either be an instant or an eternity, he strokes his thumb along the curve of the vampire's jaw, keeping his chin tilted up.

"If they aim to keep us here, what reason do we not have for... enjoying ourselves while we remain?"

[nishtha]

Kissing Lestat is like kissing memories of everyone else Lestat has ever kissed, the molding of a mouth to his own more skilled in pleasing others, or perhaps nobody except himself. He tastes Lestat doubled over, blood and breath, as well as the faint notes of the mortal Lestat feasted on previously, the raw burn of nicotine, all the dirty habits they've never been able to shed down the years. He wonders, in the back of his mind, if he will be able to taste Louis, if he kisses him enough.

Parted again from each other, Armand allows his chin to be lifted by that gentle thumb, uncallused, a sophisticate's soft skin. His gaze lingers on Lestat's mouth for a moment, before lifting to his eyes.

"Only habit," he replies, though his own hands are stealing out from him, betraying, slipping up the lines of Lestat's shirt to find a button to slip, a hem to slide under. "Though perhaps that's enough."

[perfectionner]

For Lestat, kissing Armand is akin to kissing memory itself — but even his present remembrance pales in comparison to the lived experience, a reminder of what has been and what can never be again. So much links them, though, through their origins, tethers that ensure they will never be able to break free of one another completely.

"A poor excuse otherwise," he replies, teasing in a way that could border on cruel were it not for the smile that plays over his lips, his own attention descending to Armand's mouth and lingering in a manner as blatant as a physical caress would be.

Lestat cups Armand's face between his hands, keeping his head tilted back, and then steps in to cover that mouth with his own, slanting, feasting. He'll give Armand enough lead to start unbuttoning his shirt, to begin divesting him of his clothes; for now, he's directly motivated to see what sort of moans he can elicit from the ancient's throat as he purposefully nicks his own tongue with a fang, continues the exchange of blood through their kiss.