Eucephalus had prepared everything. The first publication of Glorious Muttonchops Quarterly would be printed in the coming weeks. To generate interest, Eucephalus had spent many sleepless nights detailing the most excellent pre-release soirée. He had rented a goodly sized hall—dark wooden beams punctuating the space. The walls were painted eggshell white for the party, banisters of Mr. Birchlangshire's radiant head were hung on the walls. From the entrance, the left wall held a single high window—tall and narrow—glazed and casting a grid of the evening light upon the hall. The effect was that of a small gathering with friends, though the scale was quite greater. He had spent far too much on caterers. They were artisan chefs that made beautiful though barely edible food. Their talent had more in common with a sculptor than a cook.

Finding his accounts quite starved by these preparations, the brass band hired could barely keep a tune. However, they were so numerous that the din could be mistaken for music at times. Considering the master's financial situation, the head manservant took it upon himself to retrieve a sommelier before the festivities began. The situation was dire, all trained wine stewards had been booked or outside the budget. In desparation he grabbed a lout off the street; one with jaundiced eyes and covered in bruises. He slipped this repulsive creature some coins and ordered him dressed in livery. Eucephalus wouldn't know any better and he wouldn't be ruined by this party.

It was a good evening. Warm currents of night air blew through the streets and evaporated doubts. The sky was a geode encasing the world. Not a drop of rain fell, and Eucephalus breathed easy. The guests were beginning to arrive, the tables were set and noises sounded from the brass band. Eucephalus grabbed a glass of claret and sipped at it.

Sitting off to the side, under the window to the left of the entrance, Madam Quillington sat untouched by the pooling light, draped in the cool shadows as she sipped her claret with blistleberry red lips. She was not sulking per say, women of her status do not sulk, but she was rather put out... She'd arrived earlier than she'd intended and as such had ruined her chances of arriving 'fashionably late' as was proper. Now her only hopes of salvaging this unbecoming situation was to steal away for a moment or two, perhaps attempt an appearance of aloof mystery before mingling with her peers once they arrive.

And she did portray quite the mysterious figure: draped in shadows, her dark blue brocade gown seeming to absorb the light even as it glint off the gold thread of her embroidery and her dark eyes as she surveyed the crowd, fanning herself languidly. Her grand entrance may have been spoiled, but that did not mean she could not enjoy herself; sipping her drink with little nips to hide her smirk of appreciation as a rather toothsome young man walked by to vanish in the crowd.

Dull as ever a reason to throw a party as fine as this, the paper had certainly drawn in a hansom crowd, and Gladys was perfectly content to observe from her seat... for now. Holding her glass in a half extended hand, Quill beckoned a passing servant to refill her drink with a regal motion of her gloved hand.

Possessing neither a set of glorious muttonchops or the social standing that a guest at this party was likely to have, Campion was an odd guest at the party. But of course, the draw of free food was precursor to any social anxiety and Campion was here to further his practice in the fine art of stuffing canapés into canvas bags. Not only that, he had secreted away a set of his very best political cartoons intending to at least persuade the editor of the publication to glance at them if not devote a small portion of the back page for the occasional printing. Being a new magazine Campion had of course no way of knowing just how political it was, but people with mutton chops must read cartoons as often as people with somewhat ratty mustaches.

Not only did Campion have this mission in mind, he also had an apprentice of sorts in the form of Charlie Ewing, accompanying him because two sets of hands were better than one when snatching snack cakes.

“It’s always best to accost the caterers when the party is in full swing,” said Campion, shoving his rumpled shirt haphazardly into his trousers. “I lived for a week on the remains of a fundraiser for the Vienda school of Confisalto a few weeks back. How do I look? How’s my mustache?”

His mustache, naturally was terrible but there were sores on his top lip, ugly red clusters of inflamed skin that were slightly obscured by the ratty strands of primarily blond facial hair. His suit was a strange bric a brac find, too big, too blue a shade of blue tweed coupled with a pink cravat making him look like some kind of human spiv stereotype, Margaret sitting pride of place on his head doing little to deviate from this caricature- he ought to have twiddled his mustache and spun a pocket watch on a chain as he walked, had his pocket watch not been very obviously stolen by a little human boy some weeks ago.

“Don’t answer that,” he said to Charlie coming to his senses. He looked around the room, recognizing a lot of the sophisticated golly set. If he hadn’t known for a fact that his father had fainted headfirst into a jelly and was at the country home recuperating with his mother then there was no way he would have considered this, but there were a few people he definitely knew.

“Maybe we should have a signal too? If I see someone I don’t want to talk to, anyone from my Mother’s bridge club for example then you could call me away for something important or vice versa.” He thought for a minute, “Can you do a chrove impression?”

Charlie, thankfully, had not grown much, if at all, in his past few years away from Vienda. As such, the set of nice jackets he'd owned from school funtions that had not been sold were still in decent, wearable condition. They were very surely out of fashion, of course, but not so drastically so that he would attract overmuch attention. So he hoped, at any rate, and besides all that, with Campion as his erstwhile companion he was the very picture of fashion. Campion, Charlie had observed, seemed only to grow more repulsive as time wore on. It was really quite fascinating-- they were in similar states, socially, and yet Charlie had managed not to look like something one finds in a gutter, bloating from the rain. Life is full of little mysteries.

"Very dashing." Clearly he was practicing for the rejoining of galdori society-- never, ever tell one's companions the truth about any state of their dress. The both of them were looking around, though Charlie liked to think he was doing it a fair state more discreetly. He, too, could see people he knew here and there. It had been many years since he'd seen them last, and most were friends of his parents'. He hoped very fervently they wouldn't see him, and thus could not tell either one of them he was in town. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come after all? There was just so little Charlie could do to resist the allure of food someone else had paid for, and liquor besides.

When asked if he could do a chrove impression, the look Charlie gave Campion was quite similar to the look teachers had bestowed upon him after particularly stunning examples of his complete and utter lack of relationship with the mona. In other words, like Campion was some special breed of idiot. "I think the standby of 'I see someone you need to meet' would suffice, really." Charlie was also keeping an eye out for the host-- one look at him and he would know that Charlie's invitation was clearly a mistake.

Being possessed of an inherently contrarian disposition was, Shrikeweed had to admit, occasionally very trying. He had considered the difficulties at length that morning as he held his razor, his now very philosophical razor, and inspected himself in the shaving mirror. What he saw was more or less the same face he'd been seeing ever since his return to Vienda following his decade-long educational exile. There were the same anonymous and slightly rodent-like features -- though they must have been those of a distinctly superior sort of rodent, possibly one with an education and a number of impressive letters after his name -- the same no-color eyes, the same satirical eyebrows, and of course the same luxuriant side-whiskers. He'd worn them for years now and he was quite attached to them; they were is old friends. In the ordinary course of things he would never have given any serious thought to shaving them. Indeed the very idea would have been unthinkable just a few days ago, but that was before the arrival of the invitation.

When he had met the sender of the invitation, one Eucephalus Ogden-Birchlangshire, he was not quite sure what to make of him. On the one hand, the man might be nothing more than a deeply silly, vain, and possibly stupid fellow with not an idea in his head beyond the whim of the moment. Certainly there was a foppish, scatterbrained quality to the man, and his vanity was plain for all the world to see. Shrikeweed understood vanity, understood it very well. It could not be denied that he himself had a strong affinity for that vice, though he flattered himself that he indulged in it largely as a private rebellion against the public image of a clerk. Yet Mr. Ogden-Birchlangshire appeared to be vain for vanity's own sake, which might be supposed to be a kind of purity one seldom saw in vices. Still, Shrikeweed could not entirely shake the feeling that Eucephalus Ogden-Birchlangshire was not in fact a possibly very deep and subtle satirist, poking fun at the deplorably as wretched state of the Viendan reviews and periodicals.

Glorious Muttonchops Quarterly forsooth! How could such a thing possibly be believed? Who would buy such a thing beyond a single edition? And yet here was proof, in writing no less, and on distinctly superior stationary. What did it signify? What was the purpose of it all? He was in no way clear as to what the answer might be, and so had resolved to do the civil thing and find out. And it was this decision which had lead him directly onto the silver toasting-fork of his current dilemma.

He ran his fingers through his side-whiskers and cogitated further. Part of him screamed out for the application of the lather and blade as the only correct thing to do. What could be better than the arrive at such an event freshly shaved and lacking the very articles for which were, in some small way, to be celebrated? Not shaving, he considered, would be giving in to the easy path of agreeableness. However, said another part of him, shaving off the luxuriant things would render you so unrecognizable that people staring directly at you would fail to notice your appearance. Do you really wish to return to being stepped on by passers-by? It was a knotty problem, and one without an easy answer.

In the end, it was the soap which answered for him. By some oversight he'd not laid in a new cake of the stuff and so had barely enough to perform the usual tonsorial ritual. He was not sure how he should take this turn of events, he suspected he might be cheating in some vague and mysterious way, but he bore up with admirable philosophy.

Now, as he stood partly concealed by a species of enormous samovar, he considered not the state of his whiskers, but rather contemplated a curious puff pastry containing something green which he did not entirely trust. He was about to ask the bean-pole of a man who stood a little way off is he had any notion of what the puff might contain when he discovered that he recognized the man. It was Mr. Luccullis looking perfectly wretched and sporting the most insipid of mustaches.

"Mr, Lucculis," he said with some astonishment, "now this is an unexpected surprise. I had come to believe that you had fallen off the face of the world, and yet here you are. I trust you are . . . well? " He did not look well, Shrikeweed considered. In all honesty he looked ill fed and worried, as though the pastries at the Pendulum all those many weeks ago had been the sum total of his diet. Still, it would not do to raise the issue of his appearance at this stage, it would not be the civil thing. Instead, he gestured toward the mysterious green pastries and inquired, "Have you tried these mysterious things?"

Magister Atlas Delphinae and Mrs. Delphinae arrived at the party with no fanfare, their upscale-yet-modest attire subduing them within the rising tide of socialites dressed to impress. It was the congressman's philosophy that one should aim to impress with one's words and character, not one's dress.

Mira saw no reason not to do both. The eccentric young woman looked as if she were shopping her parents out of house and home in her one-of-a-kind gown, blending elements of Bastian, Hessian, and Mugrobi high fashion. The low-cut, sleeveless bodice and long, spiraling sarong met at the gold-colored wrap around her hips. The fabric that hung from the sash was nearly as long as the longest portion of the sarong, which reached just above her left knee at its shortest. Her upper arms were wrapped in gold bands, and her lower arms were draped in white fabric fastened by gold ribbons about her wrists and just above her elbows. The entire thing was white with gold trimmings. Around her neck she wore an intricately carved necklace fashioned from a singe plate of gold, and on her feet she wore leather sandals whose laces wrapped about her calves. Her mainstay onyx piercings remained in her ears and nestled beneath her lower lip, but her hair was done up for this occasion, with a few locks curling down loosely near her shoulders and back.

Her father had begged her not to wear her goggles in addition, a request to which she obliged only to please a father she had earnestly missed. It clearly hadn't been too long since the last social affair: he still realized that he needn't get too dressed up for these things when his daughter would grab all the attention for him. In her usual manner, which was too say with a smug look of boredom painted on her face, the pampered teenager led the way in, prepared to leave her parents to their elbow-rubbing in search of the most interesting people she could spot. An initial scan of the company revealed nothing of much interest excepting the horribly vain tapestries all around the room. This was either going to be very boring or wonderfully hilarious.

The taste of the claret offended him. If he were to describe it, he would say it started with the strongly astringent taste of tea brewed in a filthy bathtub, followed with a gallon of the cheapest fortified gutter wine. He brought it from his lips to inspect it. The surface looked oily, a sure sign that this was far too strong a drink for a cocktail hour. Under the influence of this beverage, the guests would be all too willing to sign away fortunes for a subscription.

He decided to make his tour about the hall, exchanging pleasantries with various guests. On this occasion he chose to wear immaculate black calfskin balmoral boots. The expense of owning and maintaining these boots had prevented him from wearing them in; Eucephalus was quickly discovering how uncomfortable they were. Years of dressing as a dandy have given him excellent control of his own expression, and on such an occasion he had no trouble disguising the discomfort his latest outfit produced. He saw a familiar face out of the crowd. A fellow wearer of Muttonchops, Mr. Shrikeweed, was making conversation with a repulsive creature.

Eucephalus approached and made a slight bow. "I am glad you could join me for this momentous party, Mr. Shrikeweed. Have you had a chance to subscribe yet?" He made an effort not to overtly glare at the furry thing resting on Campion's lip. "I do not believe we have been introduced, sir. I do not mean to alarm but I believe some small rodent has taken up residence on your face. You should certainly have it pay due rent, at the least." Mr. Ogden-Birchlangshire took up several glasses of the gutter wine from a passing footman and handed them to the repulsive stranger, his less corpse-like colleague and Mr. Shrikeweed.

Eucephalus was completely oblivious to their blatant state of unfashionable dress. To him, everyone looked slightly out of fashion, and their particularly decrepit appearance did not elicit any sort of warning in his mind.

The strong, almost astringent taste of the claret upon her tongue clashed quite unpleasantly with the sweet taste of the blistleberry upon her lips. Although the only expression of her displeasure could be seen in the slight puckering of her lips and eyebrows as she gracefully set the sully stuff to the wayside table at her elbow, in the constant tally of respect kept in the socialites mind this whole engagement had gone down several notches in her esteem simply in that gesture alone...

Still, for all the ruinous evening this had been, Madam Quillington was not yet ready to abandon this event as a lost cause- this was, for all intents and purposes, the latest and greatest occasion of the year. And although that could swiftly change, it would not do to turn up her nose and huff away prematurely, and the night is still very young.

Speaking of youth and its whimsy, her eyes were soon drawn towards a singularly striking young lady, bedecked in a gown that surely cost a pretty mint. For all the extravagance of the ensemble, it was done quite becomingly and the older woman was quite impressed. Such youthful daring and talent simply had to be encouraged and properly praised. As the child unwittingly drew e'er near to where she sat in the shadows, Quill opened her fan with a quiet snap slowly wafting the air about her face to hide her approving smirk.

“My dear child,” her smooth tones rolled out of the shadows like warm amber incense, coloring the air as suitable for her mysterious image she'd taken such pains to create, “If you did not but seem to be a bit too young to be outside the hallowed halls of Brunnhold, I would feel the dire need to chastise whatever soul that has been keeping such a lady as yourself so well from the grand circles of Vienda that I do not yet know your name. As it is, I believe introductions are quite in order, don't you?”

Standing in a singularly feline manner, Gladys moved in a fluid pace of soundless steps that brought the older socialite halfway out of the shadows to stand by the girls side, a dainty tip of her head sending the light spilling onto her face and illuminating eyes that spoke of mischief briefly as she bowed her greeting.

“I am Ms. Gladys Jessamine Quillington. Widowed to be exact, but do try not to fret... I am well over my grieving I assure you.” The slight upturn of the far corner of her lips seemed to emphasized the last as the elder woman's eyes strayed to follow the passing of a remarkably dandy looking fellow with blond muttonchops as he walked by, before with a breath she returned her eyes to her new protege-hopeful, “And you are...?”