Greetings!
I, Arazni, Harlot Queen of Geb have had a brilliant idea for a party. But, my darlings, I need your help, because who wants a party when they could instead have an adventure?
I'm holding a masquerade ball in the capital of Golarion's favorite necromantic realm, but instead of wearing costumes, my arcanist nobles and the powerful undead aristocracy will be wearing the most interesting and beautiful people by way of magic jar spells.
But, my question to you is, what else can I have going on? Hmm...
Greetings!
I, Arazni, Harlot Queen of Geb have had a brilliant idea for a party. But, my darlings, I need your help, because who wants a party when they could instead have an adventure?
I'm holding a masquerade ball in the capital of Golarion's favorite necromantic realm, but instead of wearing costumes, my arcanist nobles and the powerful undead aristocracy will be wearing the most interesting and beautiful people by way of magic jar spells.
But, my question to you is, what else can I have going on? Hmm...
Bobbing for Adam's Apples?
(Sorry, just got up <G>)
Flesh golems/gentle repose-d zombie animals with parts removed/hollowed out to act as mobile refreshment stands.
"Light shows" featuring aerial acrobatics performed by swarms of shadows and ghosts.
Drink bars with various species of creatures suspended by chains and pumped full of different intoxicants to provide a range of flavors.
Skeleton percussion bands who play instruments crafted out of other skeletons, possibly hollowed out or metal plated to provide the proper sound.
Complicated statuary created out of living beings with flesh to stone spells, constantly altered by artisans with stone shape spells and then reanimated with stone to flesh before being changed again.
Chandeliers supported by corporeal flying creatures like vargouilles.
Flesh golems/gentle repose-d zombie animals with parts removed/hollowed out to act as mobile refreshment stands.
Or... We could hollow out zombie animals and fill then with sweets and miniature magical nicknacks. Upon having them released into the crowds, the guests will have to smash the zombies to flinders to acquire the treats inside!
What else, what else, my dears?
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Furniture (chairs, tables full of snacks, etc.) created from bones lashed together by sinew and animated. Some lazy sorts might have litters and divans that crawl on bony legs, carting them around from place to place, and the 'snack bar' comes over when called and skeletal arms fused to the table hand the decadant partier whatever drink or sweatmeat is called for.
Unseen servants bound to the room (a necromantic variant thereof, that is visible as wraithly attendents), that fetch items, or perform pageants for the amusement of the elite.
A bloodsport arena where the guests can temporarily possess various slave creatures, some beautiful, some terrible, and 'ride them into combat,' leaping free after getting their host creature killed in senseless melee. Survivors will just get possessed again, probably by another guest, using the Magic Jar item created for the day's festivities, and 'ridden to death.'
Different chambers to appeal to different sensibilities. A room where the vampiric guests congregate will have attractive hanging vessels, infused with different liquors, spices and / or drugs, to elicit different sensations in the imbiber, while the room where the ghoul elite gather will have similar 'tasty morsels,' with a Cleric attendent or magical item capable of regenerating flesh consumed from the living 'snackbars.' A particularly 'tasty' or exotic specimen, say a Vudrani holy man, might end up losing the same limb to 'taste-testing' a half-dozen times during the course of the evening, only to have the tissue regenerated by the magical Ring of Regeneration-eque enhancement on his magical manacles, again and again. The incorporeal undead, wraiths, spectres, ghosts and shadows, will have their own room, full of pageantry and shadow-plays of illusion, but no blood or gore, since 'that's not their thing.'
Music could range from sepulchural to heavy and ponderous to piping and ethereal, sounding more like the wailing of mournful winds than instrumental music. A 'chorus' of slaves might moan and wail in synchronized harmony, each voice rising at a precise point after the last, like some macabre version of 'row your boat,' with their notes ending with the sudden death of the 'singer.' Those that succeed in holding their note until silenced by having their throat slit have been promised rebirth as undead retainers of the lesser nobility (and who knows, maybe this promise will be kept?), while those who falter and 'spoil the song,' are thrown to the ghouls to be fitted with Manacles of Regeneration and used as a 'neverending feast' as above.
Feasting will definitely be a theme, thanks to the dominance of the Urgathoan clergy, and they might be the source of the Shackles of Regeneration, or even the Magic Jar items (since they allow the undead, including liches, wights, wraiths, spectres, etc. to take on living forms and feast to their hearts content, possibly to levels of engorgement that will be fatal to their host bodies, as they stuff themselves with great abandon, enjoying the sensation of physically eating food and drinking wine again, after possibly decades without).
Mock hunts might be staged through the halls of the palace, with servants being set free, and even perhaps provided with items such as flasks of holy water, to 'make it interesting,' while the undead stalk the prey through the halls.
To make them more interesting, undead nobles might Magic Jar into human bodies, either willingly, to enjoy the sensation of betraying their fellow human 'hunted,' or unwillingly as a punishment (Duke Raban, a Ghoul Blackguard of some repute, has been found unworthy of retaining his status, selling forbidden lore to those thrice-cursed Nexians, and so he is forcibly Magic Jarred into a comely human slave, who is then hunted, terrorized and finally chained to the wall in the vampire room and used as a snack-bar for the rest of the night. The Magic Jar used to transfer his essence is permanant, and when the slave-girls body dies, his soul goes to the Hell it so richly has earned.). In a twist, perhaps the undead to be sacrificed is tricked into thinking that he has won some contest can gets to stalk and slaughter a bunch of human slaves, while the rest of the nobles watch via a blood-filled scrying pool (that contains blood from each of the human slaves, and thus can be 'tuned' to watch from the viewpoint of any of these humans). Unknown to him, each slave has been snuck a single item that can harm him, such as a flask of holy water, or cold iron weapon, or whatever, and he'll realize quickly that he's not the hunter, he's the prey, and that the nobles are eagerly watching *his* death, not the massacre he was expecting.
Human bodies possessed by ghouls and vampires might be wracked by severe illness if their hosts attempted to dine on their standard fare while in this living bodies, and a former vessel might spend the rest of the night retching up the blood of fellow slaves, assuming that the vampire's idea of a 'good time' in his body didn't leave him in far worse shape...
sweatmeat
Ewwwww!
Stuffed, animated piñata (or one done with Create Undead if you want to see the fear in its eyes).
