gooseberryhigh | TREE DECORATING PARTY

TREE DECORATING PARTY

Bright and early in the morning, Outdoor Exploration and Equestrian Club have breakfast and pack up camp, so they can make it back in time for the annual Tree Decorating Party. Fir and pine trees are hitched to sleighs or the strongest horses, and the campers make good time through the forest, arriving back at school in the early afternoon.

At 6 PM, the whole school gathers in the huge, maze-like Gardens for the party. The winding paths have been swept free of snow, and the leafless trees and hedges have been dressed with magical lights. Dinner is set up on long tables in the courtyard at the center of the Gardens, and charmed lamps bathe the area with warmth, so students can enjoy an outdoor winter buffet featuring all kinds of holiday favourites. Vegan and kosher options are provided. Choir Club mounts the risers to sing carols for their classmates, and there's enthusiastic applause when Antonia Papadakis performs a stunning solo of Silent Night.

At 7 PM, tree decorating officially begins. The courtyard is the only safe area. At the north, east, south and west ends of the Gardens, four trees have been raised for the four houses. Scattered throughout the Gardens' maze-like paths are waterproof boxes containing various tree ornaments, and everyone is given the go-ahead to rush out and claim boxes for their house. Houses are allowed one hour to create the Best Christmas Tree in Gooseberry.

At 8 PM, the teachers will vote on a winning tree, and that house will be rewarded with bragging rights and a wizard cracker for every member of the house.

TREE DECORATING RULES

Anything goes for tree decorations, so long as no one gets hurt. Over the years, the "anything goes" rule has translated into students staging raids to steal ornaments from rival houses, but you are no longer allowed to destroy anything, after the calamitous Tree Decorating Party of 2008. (Mr. Elmasry could tell you stories, but he's afraid of giving you ideas.)

Prefects will be trusted to maintain order and judge what is or isn't an acceptable tree ornament. Staff is present in the courtyard, although ever since the disastrous Tree Decorating Party of 2010 when Ms. Rhee and Mr. Merrill got way too competitive, teachers are strictly forbidden from contributing or telling students what to do.

Anything that makes sense as a Christmas tree decoration can plausibly be found in the supply boxes, e.g. magical lights, tinsel of every colour, ornaments shaped like corgi dogs. With caveats: there won't be any electricity, and the boxes were filled by the teachers, so you're not going to find NSFW things either. However...

Students are permitted to bring or craft their own tree decorations. Please use your best judgment on what is actually practical for your character to bring to school with them.

Magical ladders are provided to help people reach the topmost branches of the trees. What does magical mean? It means ladders which are magically less likely to let you fall and break your neck. Please, children, don't die.

People who currently have detention will served it in the hours before dinner, so everyone can be present for Tree Decorating! The event isn't mandatory, but if you want an excuse for your character to take part, you can say their Head of House urged them to join.

How is the winner calculated? When a participating character posts to their house's tree, a mod will RNG a score between 1–50 for each character. A house’s score is the total score of all their participating members, and the highest house score wins. You have until Monday, December 12 at 11:59 PM MT to post to your house's tree and have your character be counted.

» Dinner: Everyone gathers in the garden courtyard for a delicious feast and a performance by Choir.

» South Tree: Ebonhide

» West Tree: Ribbonfin

» North Tree: Azurcrest

» East Tree: Coppertale

» Gardens: The winding paths of the Gardens create a maze, and boxes of Christmas ornaments have been hidden all over.

» Courtyard: In the center of the Gardens is the courtyard. During Tree Decorating, this is the only safe zone, i.e. no one can throw snowballs at you or steal your ornaments.

» OOC - Questions, comments, concerns!

POINT TOTALS
EBONHIDE	RIBBONFIN	AZURCREST	COPPERTALE
516	547	468	521

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Cricket appreciates it and quickly calms down once she realizes she made a bit of a scene. Composure is key, Cricket.

She blinks back her tears and takes a deep restorative breath, before offering Bailey a wobbly smile. "Thanks for checkin' on me."

Coming from Teo's mouth, this line of logic sounds incredibly reasonable to Ennis. He trusts in Teo's sage wisdom because everything he says just comes out sounding deep and wise beyond his years.

Ennis is a sheep. But now he's a sheep with a bit more confidence in his step and he ups his pace to walk right beside his friend. "I feel like that when I walk through the forest. Like it always leads me to where I need to be." Or maybe because he knows the paths like the back of his hand. Whatever. It's mystical.

"Something like that," Isaiah agrees with a wry little smile. "Though I think Coppertale will win on the end. We aren't aggressive enough to stand up to their raids."

He plays a few notes, not looking, and then the first few bars of the piece he's been working on obsessively for several years now. He's not really doing it consciously. It's a thing to do with his hands while he thinks. Then, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Diego looks like he's been caught red handed, even though all he's guilty of is a little sulking. "Nah, it's just... Standard emotion bullshit, you know how I am."

Diego sighs in defeat. He's never sure if he wants to talk about it, but he doesn't know many people steadier than Isaiah. The notes he plays are calming, and the music room is familiar and safe.

"There's this person I've got serious feelings for," he begins slowly. "But they're dating someone else. I already said I wasn't going to do anything about it, but sometimes I just don't feel up to watching them together. There's a limit to how long I can pretend I'm okay. I needed a break."

Isaiah listens to this without comment; in fact, he doesn't comment for at least a minute after Diego has finished speaking, just plays idly and thinks.

"That really sucks," he says finally, cracking a smile just to show Diego that he's mocking himself by using that language a little bit. "I'm sorry, Diego."

Can we take a moment to appreciate that Coralee won this for Coppertale both be showing up and doing well and by yelling at Cole about theatre so he didn't show up to help Ribbonfin? Because I certainly am.

omg coralee you devious bitch, THAT IS KIND OF BEAUTIFUL.

SO BEAUTIFUL.

Lach has been knitting ornaments (http://www.gisforgift.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Screen-Shot-2014-12-02-at-8.36.56-AM-e1417729128505.png) in preparation for the party for a few weeks. His last one, which he was proudest of, was a blue jay with holly (http://intheloopknitting.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/il_570xN.382492809_950w.jpg) that he placed on the tree with a flourish.

SO CUTE RIGHT??

An spends most of her time trying to block anyone from stealing any of the Ribbonfin decor, but does add a couple (http://homeincomekitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/hawaiian-christmas-decorations-rjbzgbnh.jpg) that remind (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/29/c3/f1/29c3f1c7ea9249dc839127ea309680d3.jpg) her of home (http://www.tropical-plants-flowers-and-decor.com/images/HawaiianChristmasOrnament.jpg). She thinks they're silly but fun, and the sea theme works for the fishes, right?

Lachlan rolls a 21!

Vic is too short to do much good, but would be happy to sit on someone's shoulders to help add the higher up ones. She was also secretly adding some...extra charms to the trees. Because she and Garrett are the worst.

She added fox ornaments (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/cb/46/de/cb46de7d1e13d340fe292a739c68d699.jpg) where she could reach and was excited for the pranks to play out soon.

Anuhea rolls a perfect 50!

yessssssss

Vic rolls a 19!

Antonia was HORRIFIED when the tree caught fire but also super grateful that at that point she had only been monitoring and following the lead of other people who wanted help decorating. Since it seemed they would have to start over is when Antonia pulled out her case of ornaments that she had been working on. Unfortunately no one else could help her put said ornaments on the tree because they were all charmed to BITE and CLAW anyone who wasn't Antonia when touched.

All of the ornaments were bears that had something about them that represented each of the students. Sometimes they were subtle things that people would have to guess. Other things were much more obvious. When they weren't being touched, they were engaging in activities. Some of the bears were reading, some of the bears were chasing each other, some of the bears were dancing, and so on.

Other ornaments she made said BERRY CHRISTMAS and those could be stolen, though she doesn't know why anyone would want to. EVERYONE in Ebonhide was warned not to touch the bears unless they asked Antonia first to which she would alter the charm that she put them. Anyone who didn't asked had to have her remove the bear or see a staff member. Who likely came to hunt Antonia down because it's her handy charm work.

Antonia rolls a 35!

omg I love her bears~ ♥ how clever

Atonia is so amazing and if Cricket wasn't busy having a pity party/narcissism fest over her own broken ornaments right now, she would be squealing with delight at all of Atonia's ornaments.

I didn't realize until just now that I hadn't commented under the OOC - Questions, comments thread. But, retrospectively, if there was ever a time for Cricket to HAVE HER OWN MOMENT this would be it.

Di is not like super enthusiastic about this, but #housepride, so she participated anyway. She was too lazy to try to find ornaments in the maze so she took some old costumes from her trunk and cut them up into snowflakes and brought those with her. They were charmed to be stiff so they didn't just lay there like limp things. HEY, SHE CONTRIBUTED, OK.

*_* thank you.

She feels so bad for Cricket! If she wasn't hell bent on Ebonhide winning she probably would've devoted her time to hunting down the people who set their tree on fire and exact revenge on them for making Cricket cry.

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TREE DECORATING PARTY

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Ennis & Teo

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Re: NORTH TREE: AZURCREST

I NEED THAT PENGUIN PATTERN IMMEIDATELY

Re: I NEED THAT PENGUIN PATTERN IMMEIDATELY

Anuhea

SCORE

Vic

SCORE

Re: SCORE

SCORE

Antonia.

SCORE

Antonia.

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Diana Gam.

Re: SCORE

Re: Antonia.