"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

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setting

reserves
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rules

applications
hiatus & drop
faq

Comments

[nishtha]

Whatever temptations Daniel is currently wrestling with -- and Armand doesn't doubt he's putting up a good fight, Jacob with his angel -- are clearly not enough to stop his sharp journalistic instincts. Armand is almost disappointed to have to return to such a practical subject. He doesn't move to sit down, standing with his towel in his hands and water darkening the concrete under his bare feet, letting Daniel look at him, framed against the pool and the windows beyond, the green lawns and the deep forest. Armand has little time for apologies when penance can serve just as well.

"The servants are providing for us, so far," Armand replies, a rare piece of honesty, since he assumes Daniel will find out about it soon anyway. He leaves the manner of their aid up to Daniel's all too active imagination. "But Louis and I are not the ones you need to worry about, Mr Molloy. Though I'm glad to hear that Lestat hasn't discovered you yet."

Assuming he would have mentioned it. Assuming that Lestat wouldn't have left him alone, if he knew.

[break]

"Lestat de Lioncourt?" says Daniel, snapping sharply away from all other thought. The house, the apology, the span of Armand's bare shoulders and elegant arch of his feet — forgotten. He sparks with immediate interest, pushing himself back up from the pool chaisse. "He's here? Alive?"

That this might be dangerous for Daniel, or bad for Louis and Armand both, is all a secondary concern to the possibility of a third primary source. He has to meet this guy. He has to. Daniel gets the impression Lestat likes to talk about himself. Even without his laptop, Daniel is capable of being a very good listener.

So up he gets, about to go throw himself into the Wolfkiller's maw.

[nishtha]

Daniel may not care about his personal safety, but Armand has already invested a significant amount in this old man and isn't about to let him go running off into the lion's den. He doesn't step into Daniel's path, but he doesn't move, either. He remains still, exerting the subtlest power he knows -- to capture, with a single glance, the attention and obedience of a mortal mind. A light touch, only. Marius had called it the Spell Gift.

"Daniel." Armand's eyes are coppery discs, reflecting the glimmer of the pool. He holds up a hand, palm out. Calming, forbidding. "It would be a mistake to seek him out. If he knew that you had been told everything that Louis has imparted upon you.. he would kill you without hesitation. He is.. unpredictable at the best of times. Caged by whatever it is keeping us here? He will be far worse. I can't let you go to him yet."

[break]

Daniel sits back down in the chair heavily, and Armand gets to see his expression when he isn't fighting and hiding his attraction. Transfixed, he looks upon Armand as his whole world, a sworn atheist finding God. It's the echo of the want and awe of his youth, matured, fixated.

"Yeah," he says with a dismissiveness that can't hold up as sincere when he's staring at Armand like this. "I won't. I'll be careful. Though you'll have to teach me how to make sure he doesn't just pick it outta my brain."

[nishtha]

Such a look is as intoxicating to receive as it is to give; Armand can't quite help the smile that crosses his face, pleased at the sight of pleasure, content to be adored, if only for a moment.

The singular drawback of the Spell Gift, as Marius had taught him, is that it's impossible to convince a mortal of anything they haven't already considered. It can only manipulate the truth, not create it. But it may be a small, hidden truth. To do more -- one needs to be more powerful. And willing to deal with the consequences.

He tucks his towel into one hand as he steps closer to Daniel. The pool water has dried somewhat on his cool skin, but he still leaves damp footprints on the concrete floor.

"Good boy." Indulging himself, he reaches up to touch a single fingertip beneath Daniel's chin, lifting his face a little more. Then he withdraws again, but remains standing before him. Pulls back, just slightly, on the Spell Gift. "Lestat's powers are formidable. But he is easily distracted. And I will do what I can to make sure you are unharmed."

[break]

"Thanks," comes the unsurprisingly flat reply, though it's a little too breathless to be begrudging, Daniel's pupils flared. He's thinking explicitly about putting his mouth on the clinging wet fabric of the swimwear to try and taste what's underneath. Thinking about Armand holding his head in place for it. Not thinking much about Lestat at all: apparently Daniel is also easily distracted. It's kinda new, for him, to be derailed from a story by something so menial as just.

Armand is close enough to touch, but even with his desires surfaced, Daniel keeps his hands rigidly in place, wound together to avoid shaking. As the fascination of his mind fades he regains his usual masked expression, too, reins himself back in under control. Struggling with this awakened sensuality, at odds with his aging body. He doesn't even argue with boy, which he should hate.

"Planning to keep Louis from him too?" he finally asks as his logical brain starts to come back online. The interview was just as dangerous to Louis, he remembers that, clear images of vampires scaling the side of a skyscraper. He didn't get the end of the story, but given Louis was living with Armand he didn't expect a reunion and reconciliation with his maker to be in the script. "Lestat can't read his mind, so there's probably no harm in it." Except for the obvious risk of letting Louis spend time with his old flame. His blue gaze is watchful. Part of having Daniel's absolute attention is now Armand is the one he'd like to take apart for the pleasure of putting back together.

[nishtha]

The direct question is rewarded by a rare flicker of true vulnerability across Armand's expression -- though this, too, is expected, allowed. Daniel has earned it. Earned it in San Francisco, earned it in Dubai.

Armand glances aside, dropping his burnished gaze to look at the wall of the pool house, damp eyelashes fanned across his cheek. He folds the towel between his hands, then loops it around his neck, as if rediscovering that it exists. His mouth works, briefly.

"I cannot," he says, the words wrung from him. That said, he looks back at Daniel, as if harnessing some inner well of conviction. "I wish that I could. I wish that I could whisk him away, back to Dubai, and keep him safe there. But I cannot. Louis would go to him, even if I.." He shrugs a little bit, attempts a brave smile. "We have tested each other enough. What he seeks in Lestat, I cannot always provide. I've made my peace with it, over the years."

[break]

The look Daniel gives him is the same one he's given to Louis many times, unmoved by his emotions, unswayed by the noble tragedy of it all, calling bullshit. Armand is not a man who gives way to the inevitable. If he's ceding his king, it's because he's played out the whole chess game and decided it isn't worth his time - but this feels more like sacrificing a queen because the pawn is at the point of transformation.

"You've been controlling his life across multiple continents for seventy years," he says, shifting his position and tucking a leg under him, sat forward on the seat like it's a floor pillow rather than a pool lounger. Unlike with the discovery of Lestat, he's letting himself ogle Armand and argue with him at the same time. "Aside from a relocation, what's changed?"

He knows the answer as soon as the question's out of his mouth. "Actually, don't answer that," he says. Wonders if this is why Louis invited him to Dubai in the first place, to have someone to share the burden of Armand's attention. Common tactic by abused wives. Daniel looks up at this beautiful, troubled angel of the swimming pool sorrows and sighs. "Healthy people live full lives. You guys for a longer time than most. You can't be someone's everything. This is good."

[nishtha]

Strange and ironic to receive relationship advice from such a source, the bleeding heart of the boy from San Francisco who interviewed drug users and hookers in order to tell their stories still somehow beating in this old man. You can't be someone's everything. Armand almost allows himself a wry, sad smile, a tiny private curl of his mouth more real than the previous.

"Have you lived a full life, Daniel?" Back on solid ground, now. Armand runs his hands through his wet hair, well aware of the impact of the movement on his pectorals, the flex of his rib cage. "Married twice. Daughters who won't take your calls. Drugs in your past now turned into domestic life, the drone of your neighbor mowing his lawn on a Sunday morning while you lie in bed and contemplate whether it's worth the pain in your back to get up and go to the bathroom."

He raises his eyebrows, as if to ask whether Daniel wants to continue this line of discussion.

"Aside from a relocation, what's changed?"

[break]

"Nerve cell death in the brain, that's a biggie, or so I'm told," Daniel says, still watching Armand so closely. Overcoming his initial embarrassment at knowing Armand is aware of the weight of his gaze and just letting himself look. Captivated by way more than just the movement of muscles beneath the skin — as always.

He brushes past taking any of that personally, narrowing his eyes. Throws some darts in the dark, blindfolded. "Do you think I'm boring? I think, after five hundred years, you gotta be wondering what that's like. Feeling your body failing. Content in what you built for yourself, even if you made mistakes. Knowing it isn't just a quiet moment before the next storm knocks it around again — there won't be another storm."

Except there had been, with two vampires inviting him back into their lives. Daniel is egotistical enough to imagine he's what's changed for Armand and Louis — the book, that is, the documentation of memory. But they've shaken him out of — well, Armand makes it sound a little more suburban than living in Brooklyn manages, but he's still thought it was the final rest before the big brass finale.

[nishtha]

"The pull of the fire," Armand agrees, coolly. He studies Daniel. "You've read about it in Claudia's diaries. The old world vampire who walked into the flames in front of her rather than face another empty decade, another century, another millennia. Immortality is no blessing. We are not meant to live so long. It drives us mad, after enough time. So we choose the fire, or we lose ourselves in eternal sleep in order to escape it. We seek the quiet moment, the purposeful death."

He shrugs, a tilt of his head, a rise and fall of one bare shoulder.

"It's true. Sometimes, there is the urge to do.. exciting things. To create the storm rather than wait for it. To orchestrate and witness that which we have forgotten. Mortal pain, suffering, pleasure, joy. Fear. Devotion. The intensity of living." He gestures out at the pool and the house beyond it, warming to his theme. "We cannot ever remove ourselves from humanity, or risk starvation and madness. So we are shackled to it, forced to continue living in this world alongside mortals in all of your drama and discount goods and Taco Tuesdays, garage sales, three drink minimum hangovers. Bound to watch, from a distance, what we can no longer have. No wonder we go mad."

[break]

Daniel wishes he had a tape recorder. That was a succinct summation of the kind of themes he's been accumulating information around, marking pull quotes for. Vampires come from humanity, live alongside humanity — and because they have to kill humanity to live, they like to hold themselves apart from it. Be powerful and secret and special. Who wouldn't? The Masons have been doing it for longer.

Of course, Armand's fully bought into it. Probably did back when he lead a coven; Daniel would need to know more to be sure, makes a mental note to ask Lestat.

"You could have a garage sale," is all he says, unable to stop himself. Mostly he's irritated that he's not going to remember that quote exactly, and Armand probably wouldn't let him use it beside, and... he really needs to stop thinking about the book when he doesn't even have his laptop.

[nishtha]

He's surprising, their boy from San Francisco. Armand's eyebrows inch upwards and his expression brightens with a genuine smile of amusement, showing his teeth. He laughs lightly, turning to walk back over to the edge of the pool.

"Yes, and sell the Basquiat on the street, next to the television sets and the old newspapers?" A derisive noise, before he settles again, becoming more sombre. He spends a moment in thought, then returns his gaze to Daniel, the lambent copper disks holding steady.

"Is this what you wanted to talk about today, Mr Molloy? Nerve cell death? Garage sales?"

[break]

"Sure," Daniel drawls, lightly sardonic. He didn't really come here with a topic in mind, just wanted to break the silence. Things got weird in the study. He's still under the impression he hurt Armand's feelings, and this is how Daniel apologises, by showing up and easing up without ever actually saying he was wrong.

"I should go get breakfast, while the getting's good," Daniel decides, beginning the laborious process of getting up from the chair. "You should know, your boyfriend's agreed to turn this into a working holiday. Since we're here, and he still has more to say about Paris."

[nishtha]

"He did?" Light, casual, betraying nothing. Armand's very good at it. He studies Daniel, watching him force his mortal body upwards, thinking about what lies ahead in that retelling. Where had they last ended? 1948? The coven, Claudia's rebellion. What lies ahead --

"Louis trusts you, Mr Molloy," he says, eventually. His expression is opaque, reflective. "He has lived with these ghosts for a long time. It is.. good for him to talk about them. I hope that it will help him. But I'm yet to be convinced that the outcome will be worth what is required for both of you to tread those paths."

Unspoken but clear in his bronzed eyes is the threat, the slender knife laid on the table between them. The stifled air of the room with the floor that slopes to the north. Don't make me regret it.

[break]

Daniel reaches up to scratch his jaw, itching at the phantom of a hand on his face, thumbing below his ear. Again, it's not that he's not scared of Armand. It's just that some time in his life he stopped letting fear get the only seat at the table. Just like he won't be moved by attraction alone.

His hips crackle as he gets to his feet. "You know, one of my daughters went to rehab when she was nineteen. Spent six months and a lot of money... and then this guy she started dating while they were in there, he invited her to go backpacking in Europe. Now, you know, and I know, that a backpacker hostel in Amsterdam isn't the best place for staying clean." He steps forward, moving into Armand's space, though not to touch. "I love my kid. But my loving her doesn't mean I get to decide how she lives her life. I got to make my mistakes when I was that age—"

He cuts off, abruptly, the story faltering as a tide of memories tries to wash over him again. Mistakes. Yellow light through the newspapers. Shouting. He breathes through it and it passes, the memory slipping away even as he blinks himself back to the bright poolside where he's trying to play therapist to a five hundred year old predator in a tiny swimming costume. He swallows.

[nishtha]

Witnessing that memory play out through Daniel's mind is like listening to someone singing in the next room. Muted, fuzzy with recall. The gift isn't always predictable in how much information it provides, simply due to the nature of memory itself. Armand has a subscription to a biomedical science journal, an attempt to keep up with the world and its efforts to replicate that which comes naturally to his kind; he's read articles about memory being stored in cells, in the fingertips and hair follicles, and doesn't think that it's surprising when the fish hook drags into driftwood.

Still, Armand watches him, watches his face. The words don't really matter. He gets the point.

"And when your daughter made her mistakes, when she was getting high in some small, stuffy room off the Oudekerksplein and thinking about how much she wanted to fuck that young man, you felt no compulsion to go after her? To stop her? Imagine what it is like, Mr Molloy, to feel that compulsion and know that there is nothing stopping you from going through with it. To know that if you wanted to, you could have followed her, and reached out and taken that boy's throat in your hand --" He tilts his head, just slightly, and listens to the tidal throb of Daniel's heart in his chest. "And snuffed out his life. And that you could have saved her from the mistakes you made, if only you had done something. Anything."

[break]

The urge to push the vampire into the pool is immense, but pointless. He doesn't. "There's a lot I could have done. Still had an EU passport, had some high up connections over there, and this was just before the divorce so I had money." His gaze is a little distant, expression sad, Armand's description of his daughter in the same kind of predicaments he used to find himself in awakening the old scars of parenthood. "But I love her. Unconditionally. Even when she makes shitty choices. If I'd made that choice for her, or taken it away from her, then who would I be loving: her, or me?"

His gaze sharpens as he brings it back around to the point. He's spent his life writing about people's right to live free of surveillance, the power of individual autonomy, in America and overseas. It probably isn't a surprise that this is his stance: Louis deserves to tell his story no matter what anyone thinks or how much harm it does him.

[nishtha]

"She is part of you. You are part of her. Why concern yourself with the difference?"

It's a pathetic attempt at an argument, unconvincing even as he says it. Armand gets the point, but he doesn't like it. He trusts Louis, but he cannot trust him the way that Louis wants him to. He loves Louis, but he cannot love him the way Louis needs him to. Failures layered on top of failures, eating away at his soul. So he overcompensates, tries to wrest control out of an ultimately uncontrollable situation. Attempts, in his foolishness, to build where there can only be ruins.

He knows it, in his heart of hearts. But it is hard to accept. Hard and cold in his chest. He gazes at Daniel, defiant against himself, against the old man who knows that Louis deserves better.

"I have come close to losing him," he adds, a lurch of guilt making him honest. "Too close. I cannot do it again. If the story reaches the wrong people.. they will come for him. They will take him from me. This is the fear that I live with."

[break]

The thought that blossoms deep in Daniel's id is: you've got me now. Embarrassing, stupid, the thought of an eager twenty year old rather than the man he is. It's not true, or its not a truth he's ready for, and his higher brain functions bury it again.

"I understand," is what he says instead. That sympathy isn't gonna pull any promises from him, though. A streak of coldness in him: he's too far into it not to see it through with Louis. Whether that turns into a public work... he doesn't know anymore. The pause of this place has him doing cost benefit analysis.

"He made a choice knowing that," Daniel says. "Maybe you need to work out with him if you're losing him anyway."

Armand looks troubled, which a deep animal part of Daniel says is his cue to stop marriage counselling and get the fuck out of there. Let him swim it out. He takes a step back.

"But what do I know?" he adds cheerfully, "I've been divorced twice. It sucked. It still sucks. Regrets, I have a few. But I wouldn't really change anything."

[nishtha]

"No?" Armand looks at Daniel steadily, seeing the wariness in him, the inner conflict that rattles his sharp mind. Seeing, behind the lines and aging mortal body, the young man he was. Lonely, lost, aching for the quiet. All of it still within him. Pity and sorrow shine together in Armand's copper eyes.

From within the house there's a rising chatter and the sudden sound of something breaking, a crash of porcelain against a hard floor. A burst of laughter and shouted implications from a group of voices. You broke the fucking jug, idiot and I'm too hungover for this. Spell broken, Armand's gaze flickers towards the noise. His mouth thins with distaste. He turns away from Daniel, pulling the towel from around his neck and tossing it onto the sun lounger as he approaches the pool.

"Thank you for your advice, Mr Molloy," he says, over his shoulder. "I hope you enjoy your breakfast."