Dionysus (The Bon-Vivant)
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Name
Dionysus
Also Known As
Daring Dean Devereaux
on MUX as
DeanArchetype
The Bon-VivantOccupation
DEFIER OF DEATH!Apparent Age
Late TwentiesPlayed By
Brad PittFaction Membership
Stunt Rider/Escape Artist/General Daredevil
Victorious
Panic! at the Disco
I'm like a scarf trick, it's all up the sleeve
I taste like magic, waves that swallow quick and deep
Throw the bait, catch the shark, bleed the water red
Fifty words for murder and I'm every one of them
My touch is black and poisonous
And nothing like my punch-drunk kiss
I know you need it, do you feel it?
Drink the water, drink the wine
Don't Threaten Me With A Good Time
Panic! at the Disco
Alright, alright, it's a Hell of a feeling though
It's a Hell of a feeling though
Who are these people?
I just woke up in my underwear
No liquor left on the shelf
I should probably introduce myself
You shoulda' seen what I wore
I had a cane and a party hat
I was the king of this hologram
Where there's no such thing as getting out of hand
Hallelujah
Panic! at the Disco
All you sinners stand up, sing hallelujah (hallelujah!)
Show praise with your body
Stand up, sing hallelujah (hallelujah!)
And if you can't stop shaking, lean back
Let it move right through ya (hallelujah!)
Say your prayers
Say your prayers
Say your prayers
(Hallelujah!)
Emperor's New Clothes
Panic! at the Disco
Sycophants on velvet sofas
Lavish mansions, vintage wine
I am so much more than royal
Snatch your chain and mace your eyes
If it feels good, tastes good
It must be mine
Heroes always get remembered
But you know legends never die
The Good, The Bad, and the Dirty
Panic! at the Disco
If you wanna start a fight
You better throw the first punch
Make it a good one
And if ya wanna make it through the night
You better say my name like
The good, the bad, and the dirty, oh
The good, the bad, and the dirty, oh
The good, the bad, and the dirty
One of the Drunks
Panic! at the Disco
Never dry, every day you're thirsty
Bourbon high, sip it 'til you're tipsy
Night's young, searching for a feeling
Big fun, dancing with the demons
Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, grips you like a pistol
Wet the whistle, wet the whistle, abyss of ice crystals
Every weekend with your friends
Every weekday when it ends
Damn it's all good, I guess
High Hopes
Panic! at the Disco
Mama said, fulfill the prophecy
Be something greater, go make a legacy
Manifest destiny, back in the days
We wanted everything, wanted everything
Mama said, burn your biographies
Rewrite your history, light up your wildest dreams
Museum victories, every day
We wanted everything, wanted everything
Say Amen (Saturday Night)
Panic! at the Disco
There's nothin' that's there for me at my door
All the people I know aren't who they used to be
And if I try to change my life one more day
There would be nobody else to save
And I can't change into a person I don't wanna be, so
Oh, it's Saturday night, yeah
I pray for the wicked on the weekend
Mama, can I get another amen?
Oh, oh, it's Saturday night, yeah
Swear to God, I ain't ever gonna repent
Mama, can I get another amen?
Oh, oh, it's Saturday night, yeah
This is Gospel
Panic! at the Disco
This is gospel for the vagabonds
Ne'er-do-wells and insufferable bastards
Confessing their apostasies
Led away by imperfect impostors
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh (Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh)
This is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my heart
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh (Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh)
This is the beat of my heart, this is the beat of my...
Don't try to sleep through the end of the world
And bury me alive
'Cause I won't give up without a fight
Make My Cult!
It isn't that long a stay
Life is a cabaret, old chum
It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret!
And we still don't know. Oh, sure, there've been theories. Millions of people have died over them! And yet: millennia, and no one's pinned it down.
So fuck that. What we do know is this: we've each got, what, maybe 70, 80, 90 years? A century at the outside, and all that's if you're lucky. Might die tomorrow. Might die in ten minutes. All you're promised is one life. All you're promised is now. But that's still a hell of a promise.
Eat the cake. Drink the wine. Smell the flowers, climb the mountain, watch the sunset, blast the music, kiss that new friend, take a chance. Life's for living. Live the shit out of it until it makes you stop.
Because it will.
Today you shall party, for tomorrow you'll probably die. Live life to the fullest, enjoy every last thing you can, and always leave a fabulous corpse. The world is ending - drink up!
Role in Carnival
Coming to America
Dionysus arrived with the New Smyrna settlement in Florida, 1768; always the wanderer, he wandered to California by 1769 and inspired the first vineyard and winery out there — but the Catholic missionaries horned in and took it over, which probably did him a little damage. Still, while the priests were a problem, he made headway amongst some of the connected laypeople, who continued the slow increase of the grape and wine out there. Meanwhile he headed back across the country, and while grapes only seemed to flourish there while he was present, sugarcane did a good deal better. Mead and beer had already been folded into his repertoire over the centuries, and as his people encountered other spirits, so were they: in this case, rum.
Still, it didn't last long. By the time the settlement dissolved, Dionysus was restless in any case. He spent the next century exploring the developing country. In 1802 he was in Ohio, where the local Catawba grapes were found to make good wine; in 1820, a man in Connecticut founded the Church of Bacchus and declared himself high priest. After some pleasant time soaking up that worship, his travels took him across to Los Angeles, and for the following decades he made a bit of a circuit, building up the nascent wine industries up the West Coast, in Ohio and the Finger Lakes area, and various points throughout mainly the southern states, where the weather was kinder to the crop. His cult picked up strays as they went, as it was wont to do, American wine began to move from merely existent to actually quite good, and for a country that tended to consider itself Christian, he could have been doing a lot worse.
War was never much Dionysus's concern. Prohibition, on the other hand, was a different story. Some might expect it to have been an unalloyed disaster, and in fact it destroyed the quality (if not necessarily the quantity) of the country's wine for decades to come. But on the other hand, the spirit of the time became a more rebellious one, claiming freedom and celebration. Speakeasies, a greater fascination with mysticism, and all that bootlegging and rum-running — well, worries about the grapes aside, it wasn't too hard to maintain a little base of worship. It was also a hell of a lot of fun. By the end of the decade, he'd moved on from the exciting world of illegal production and transport (go on, let him drive) to running a small speakeasy ('The Bacchanal') with his cult in New Orleans. When the building that housed it burned down in late summer '32, he'd declared he'd been getting restless in any case, and a month or so after that, their paths crossed with the carnival's. The rest, as they say, is history. Or possibly mythology.
The God That Comes
Big Top Performer
[...the rest after I sleep, I hope.]
Daring Dean Devereaux
Faces (DEFIER OF DEATH!)
Stuff needs to be written here. By me, unfortunately.
Sheet
| Brawn: Normal | + Enduring (Positive)
Be it a punch, fatigue, or far too much to drink, he can take a lot and keep on going. Very little seems to slow him down.
|
| Finesse: Normal | + Escape Artist (Positive)
You can't keep a good god bound. He's always been able to get out of just about anything, and okay, maybe there's less supernatural power behind it these days, but he's got the knowledge and flexibility to make up the difference.
+ Daredevil (Positive)
He's got a knack for things that ought to be — and sometimes have been — prefaced with "Hey, y'all, watch this!" Is it up high, moving fast, about to explode, on fire, liable to attack him, or similarly unwise? That shot of adrenaline always has him at his best.
+ Agile (Positive)
Quick and well-balanced, whether it's a matter of dancing, climbing, or just getting the hell out of the way.
|
| Brains: Normal | - Distractible (Negative)
When Dionysus gets bored — and he does — focus goes out the window, and anything he finds more interesting can easily distract him. Anything enticing enough has a decent chance even if he wasn't deeply uninterested in the first thing.
|
| Spirit: Good | + Charismatic (Positive)
Poets called him the 'joy of men' and 'much-cheering', and he's always drawn a crowd. There's just something about him people tend to find magnetic, and it can make all kinds of things seem like a much better idea than they are.
+ Animal Ken (Positive)
Animals like him too. Those with ancient connections to him are the most cooperative — bulls, goats, all the big cats, serpents, deer, foxes, bats, bees, and dolphins (though the last are probably unlikely to turn up) — but they all tend to be positively disposed toward him. Except owls. Fuck owls.
+ Strong-Willed (Positive)
A god is hard to intimidate or sway from what he's decided he wants... for better or worse.
- Capricious (Negative)
Gods do as they wish. And what Dionysus wishes can change from moment to moment, some days. It's made him adaptable, over the centuries, but over the hours it can be a real pain in the ass. Or wherever.
- Hedonist (Negative)
If it feels good, why aren't you already doing it?
- Attention Please! (Negative)
The guy's gone everywhere with an all-singing, all-dancing, all-frenzying entourage for millennia, entering towns at the end of that procession for most of it. In a chariot pulled by panthers. The most famous instances of his wrath center on insufficient adulation. He ain't exactly a shrinking violet.
|
Perks and Quirks
Gallery
It's a popular misconception that the cult of Dionysus is all about wine, women, and song. Not that there aren't plenty of all of the above, plus spirits, men, and dance besides. But those are as much symptoms as ends in themselves. The true core of the cult is freedom — the freedom of the chaos of nature, before and still beneath the strictures civilization placed upon humanity. Those who join the Iobacchoi are those who chafe under the restrictions and expectations placed on them by others and themselves — the rules imposed by family, society, church — and in every land it touches, his cult has provided some liberation for those marginalized by their society, whatever aspect of their identity might be the cause.
In the old days they attended him as members of his thiasus, now more often seen as an entourage (and, should he manage to hold out a few more decades, probably later to be groupies). Over the years, the ratio of nature spirits to simple mortals has shifted, as nymphs and maenads and satyrs found less and less belief to sustain them. These days, all but one member of the group are mortals, and that one lingers on the edge. [will finish this later, I've been failing at writing this sentence for ages now]
Cy Lennox
Role: Ex-Tutor, Companion, Foster FatherAge: Ancient
Played by: Jerry Garcia
The oldest, wisest, and most drunken of the followers of Dionysus, Silenus was once more than mortal himself. A forest spirit, he was said to be the father (or maybe grandfather, it's so hard to keep track of these things after so long) of the satyrs. Been rather a while since the last time they saw a satyr now, though, and that same fading of belief has reduced him to his current state: indistinguishable from any mortal except that he's still alive after so many years. He'd like to stay that way.
He's absolutely devoted to Dionysus, always has been, and a staple in the thiasus for... ever. In the carnival, he goes by the name of 'Cy Lennox', and he's broadly in charge of the bar tent. Used to be he spoke prophecy when he was drunk, but people are happy enough for sympathy, and maybe a little wisdom now and then. It sounds even wiser when they're drunk too. When the carnival passes through dry areas, he tells stories, instead.
The Lovely Zelda & Imelda
Role: Performer's AssistantsAge: Early 20s
Played by: Nancy Carroll
Identical twins — or so they claim, at least, and they do look an awful lot alike — [...and this is another thing I'll finish in a bit. Honest.]
