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Portents and Signs: Prelude

The year is 1094, the place is Madrid. A city only retaken from the Almohads a few short years before, it is a city with a small but thriving mortal populace and a dozen Kindred who live in fear of the night when the Moors -- and their demon lords, the Assamites -- might return. Politically inconsequential at this point in time, Madrid is nonetheless a convenient stop-off point between more deeply entrenched Catholic territory in Spain and the still-contested city of Toledo, to the southwest. Madrid itself still wears the cosmopolitan trappings of the Islamic presence; the Cathedral of Santa Maria is a re-decorated mosque. Geographically divided into a newer, lower-scale eastern half and an older, more traditional western half, bisected by a slow-moving river, walled by fortifications her Moorish captors built against Christian re-invasion, Madrid is a quiet city full of danger by virtue simply of where it is. Every Kindred there, it is assumed, is there because of something -- some failure, some humiliation, some slight -- in her past. At the very least, the sort of risky opportunities open in a city so underpopulated is the most positive thing which can have drawn any of them there. Some few came with the reconquista, and settled, yet even they have hidden reasons for staying put.

On this night, the night before Easter Sunday, 1094, the city is celebrating. Lent is finished, and at sunrise the Messiah will be born again. A feast goes on in the town square, before the gates into the massive cathedral, and the Kindred gather in their quiet Elysium -- a garden attached to the same religious complex, overlooking the river. It is time for the annual ritual of Presentment to the Prince, a Lasombra named Maria Josephina.

Presentment itself carries on as normal. Each member of the city's vampiric population introduces him- or herself:

With introductions done, the Prince asks whether there is business to which she must attend, in court. There is none, although a newcomer with strange, elongated and angular features arrives, leaving his horse tied up outside the garden, and tells the Prince he is a Lasombra, and wishes to speak with her after mass. She agrees, and dismisses the Assembly so she might arrive at the cathedral early for a midnight Holy Saturday mass. Everyone else makes their way out, save for the PC's, who all wish to study the newcomer, now standing by his horse outside the gate into the garden. Rome asks to speak with the man, but gets in return a chuckle and the reply, "No, I do not think that is an option, unfortunately," before a wall of darkness erupts across the gateway, trapping the PC's in the garden's walls. Rome attempts to climb the wall, while the others wonder what's going on, and gets a crossbow bolt to the chest as thanks for his effort -- it doesn't hurt him, but it's a nasty reply. More blackness erupts from the wall around the garden, forming a ceiling; while the PC's react with shock and dismay, the stranger -- beautiful in an alien sort of way -- steps through a hole in the wall of shadow, letting it close behind him, another crossbow bolt sliding into place.

"I'm sorry," he tells them, "But the portents are very bad. It's best this way, trust me. History will be thankful."

With that, he engages them in battle. Celeste tries to cut her way through what she's recognized as some powerful Obtenebration, while Aner, Colin and Rome take on the man at once, doing some frightful damage with swords and a shovel, but watching the wounds close on the man and inky tentacles burst out of his sides, grabbing for them. Constance, seeing what's going on, er, freaks out, and becomes an 8-foot beetle-like creature, racing into the fray. Aner realizes two demons are fighting one another within arm's reach, and tries to go head-first through the Obtenebration over the gate, in escape, knocking himself flat to the ground. Colin gets the heck out of the way, and Rome stares with a bit of disbelief as the giant alien-beetle thing grabs the stranger by the head, the stranger tentacle-wraps the alien-beetle thing, and they start shredding each other where they stand. Eventually the stranger's head produces a spray of thick vitae, and his body goes limp.

The Prince is summoned, hears the tale, and goes over to examine the body. Celeste overhears the stranger when he (surprisingly) opens an eye at the Prince and murmurs, "The first phase is done. How fascinating, that you have passed." With that, he sinks into a pool of shadow which forms on the ground underneath him, the pool closes behind him, and he's gone. The Prince tells the PC's she has no idea what he was talking about, or who or what he was, although she does say that she agrees -- he looked like no Lasombra she has met in her time. Celeste writes to some of her clanmates she knows elsewhere, and Rome and Aner comb the city looking for any sign of cohorts. Colin spots the horse he rode in turning and racing away when the stranger fails to step out of the garden (freed of walls of Obtenebration when he went limp in Constance's grasp), and Constance throws a screaming fit about her damned soul after she drops Zulo Form. No one is able to learn anything, eventually, and the PCs settle into an uneasy curiosity as to what the man meant. Portents? Portents are rarely good.

One ensuing consequence of the evening is the discovery that Millecande possesses sufficient Auspex to see who last handled an object, and the circumstances at that time. Over the next year, in return for her services being on permanent retainer for the Prince, she receives a hefty Domain, and begins teaching Rome to use Auspex 1, as well.

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Looking Through a Glass Darkly, Story I

Murder Most Foul: Chapter One

It is one year later: Easter Eve, 1095. The PCs have come to know one another a little better, and Colin has become aware that the Prince is, on occasion, checking him out quietly. She comes to the tavern where he often spends his evenings, but she arrives silently on the arm of a traveling merchant, never speaking to him but sometimes interacting less directly. Meanwhile, Celeste and Rome have taken up some sort of mentorship of Constance, in many ways. Aner continues working as a member of the Night Watch in the city, assisted in the practical difficulties of being an undead member of the workforce by his friendship with the Captain of the City Watch.

The Holy Saturday feast is, as previously, going on in the town square, and Presentment is scheduled for that night, as usual. The city's Kindred arrive outside the gates of Elysium, one by one, but no matter who rings the bell or for how long, the Prince's chief ghoul, a woman named Julia, fails to appear. Eventually another ghoul altogether comes to answer it, just as Colin and Aner hear the first sounds of a carriage approaching Elysium, on the street, at a break-neck pace. Staying behind, they watch for its approach, while others step inside and look around to see Elysium unprepared for the meeting. The Prince steps through the entrance from further into the cathedral's property, from the other direction, looking worried about something.

Colin and Aner watch with surprise and concern as the carriage approaches, a bundle of rags is thrown at them by the driver, and the carriage blazes past. Aner bends down to open the rags, and sees Julia's head wrapped in the bundle, dead eyes staring back at him. Colin uses Celerity to move and think more quickly, whipping around and creating an illusion (involving sight and smell) of a pack of wolves in the horses' path. They rear back, the carriage loses its back axle, and the driver barely hangs onto the reigns to keep going at a reduced rate, panic on his face. An illusion of a reversed curve in the street later, and Colin, Aner and Rome are racing towards the wreckage -- licked at the corners by flames from the lamps -- and the broken, twisted body of the driver at its top. He's alive just long enough to tell them he has no idea who the woman was, he was simply paid to bring it, by a man named Suarez. Then, his wounds gushing, he expires in Aner's arms after a brief debate regarding ghouling him so he could talk longer (then killing him).

Meanwhile, Celeste alerts the Prince to the situation, and she reacts coldly, masking any sorrow or surprise behind a hard countenance. "Where is the carriage," she asks, and Constance points out the wreckage down the street, towards which Celeste has now started to move, in hopes of helping somehow. Cries are starting to go up from nearby about a fire, and Colin, Aner and Rome toss the corpse back into the wreckage -- which, Colin notices, is completely bare on the inside, rather than all posh, like a proper carriage should be -- and run before it really starts to catch flame.

The Prince tells the five of them, on the spot, that she wants them on this case. For most, it's a form of repayment for the violence a year before in her Elysium, and a vote of some sort of confidence in them, mixed together. They react with suspicion -- it seems to them that the Prince is acting too quickly. She's not showing her surprise at the matter. She does, however, cancel Presentment indefinitely, while she tries to attend to the matters made to be at hand by the occurance -- namely, starting to figure out what's going on, and letting the PCs get about the business of "investigating," as she put it. Unfortunately, she's given zero advice, or direction. Retiring from the meeting, she disappears, and Aner goes to begin questioning merchants who might have seen Julia that morning, at the start of the day.

To make the long story short, the party nails down that there is a man in gold (Gold Man) who may have handed the head off to the dead carriage driver. There are two men, Red Man and Green Man, who were seen leaving the city with Julia that morning (she appeared to be leaving more or less willingly, although she looked dishevelled and bloodied). They left in the direction of the southwest, on the road to Toledo. None of the PCs are familiar with this road, as its ultimate destination is the ongoing war of the reconquista. Eventually they agree to go ahead and mount up, pooling some resources to get everyone who can ride one a horse, and they set off to the southwest.

Before they depart, however, they run into the Nosferatu, who are typically regarded as gossiping snobs and troublemakers. They taunt the party mildly, commenting that "now is a good time to leave Madrid," when asked where they're going with travel gear on their horses. They indicate they, too, will be headed southwest, and off they ride.

Meanwhile, Aner has been seeing squirrels a good bit, for no apparent reason. A street urchin bumped into the party, looked around at them, and declared the squirrels kept attacking him -- squirrels from the river, he said. After scaring the bejesus out of the kid trying to interrogate him, they agree to get their stuff together and meet at the southwest gate of the city the next night, as soon after sunset as possible.

As their journey begins, the party begins to get to know one another a little better, and they find night travel surprisingly quiet, save the appearance of four mortal highwaymen, three of whom die by the blade and one of whom is Dominated into offering himself over to the Church as a servant, as soon as possible. Whee for the Road of Heaven. As the journey continues, the coterie arrives in the first village out, Nibelheim, a six hour ride from Madrid. It's a quiet place of probably a hundred people, with one taproom, to which the party goes. Spotting a stranger there who keeps staring at them, they are eventually approached by a man with bushy eyebrows and slightly backswept ears. He tells them the town is his, and they should leave as soon as the sun sets the next night. They agree, but not before Constance completely drains a grandmotherly woman she connives into thinking that she's lost from her mother.

The next evening, they set off pronto down the road. Five hours away they find the second village, Oro, a slightly larger town with about two hundred residents. It sports a slightly larger church, and a larger graveyard, although still only the one tavern with rooms upstairs. Reserving rooms, they realize that a man in a green shirt, perhaps the Green Man, is sitting at a table, playing cards, laughing it up drunkenly with his wife in tow. As they leave, Rome corners them and says he needs to speak to the man, called Enrique, immediately. When Enrique protests that it is very late, and he has business in the morning, Rome tells him it's a matter of church business. Meanwhile, Colin observes from the doorway, and Celeste and Aner sneak through some shadows to observe more closely, overhearing the conversation in its entirety.

On the other side of the village, Constance plays in the graveyard, finding two fresh graves, one of which has a very old grave marker -- blank, as the vast majority are at the time, but weather-worn. Curious as to why a new grave is with an old stone, she reshapes her hand (love that Vicissitude), and starts shoveling, only to dig up a body in clothes that look like they were Julia's. Running back towards the tavern in town, she departs quickly.

As the chapter winds to a close, a small child walks right up to Celeste and Aner, in their Obtenebration-emphasized shadows, points at the Green Man, and says, "He's a merchant. He lives in a house on the other street over." "Why are you telling me this?" he's asked, by Celeste. His reply: "Just felt like it. Night, lady." And then he turns, and disappears around a corner.

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Take This Cup: Chapter Two

When last we left our intrepid band, they were standing around talking to someone named Enrique, who was perhaps the Green Man, one of the two who had taken Julia from the city on the apparent day of her death. As Rome continued to argue with the man, urging him to please let him speak to him now, as it was a matter of vital church importance, Colin decided the situation was going nowhere fast. Firing off an illusion of Constance's Zulo Form, over where Constance was standing herself (having caught up to the group after making her discovery of Julia's body in the graveyard in town), Colin watched the fun. Rome screamed and fell down; Enrique screamed and took off running, his wife still in tow, up the street. Celeste and Aner decided now was when they should follow him, although Celeste botched her Wits + Stealth roll to follow without being seen, fell flat on her face, and screamed, 'Monster, Demon, Aieeeeeeee,' sort of half-heartedly. Aner had a bit more luck, and saw Enrique and wife slam the door shut behind them on a house/store, in which the lower level was obviously a shop front, and from the second story windows of which pairs of hands were suddenly seen to be rapidly slamming closed all the shutters. A few of the townsfolk had been awakened by the screaming, and gathered around the front of the building while Aner knocked on the door and Rome and Constance approached. Colin and Celeste, meanwhile, snuck around the back, and managed to get the back door open, observing the three stabled horses behind the building. Once inside, they confirmed quietly that it was a shopfront downstairs, and saw stairs leading up, presumably to living quarters. As Aner continued to knock on the door, and the townspeople continued to gawk at the spectacle, Enrique threw open the shutters from a second story window and cried, "Demons! There are demons about! I've seen one myself! Go to your homes, for safety!" Crossing themselves and scurrying, townsfolk started off towards home, and sleep.

As Colin and Celeste had a look around the first floor, they both realized the frenzied conversation they'd heard murmuring away upstairs had stopped, as though they were listening for something downstairs. Cursing their inability to mask their own sound, Colin flipped the bar from the door in front, and let Aner inside. "Is there someone down there?" a trembling voice inquired, eventually. "I'm here to speak to you of the demons," Aner declared proudly. It didn't do much to help.

Again, to make the long story short, they eventually talked the guys -- the Red Man was hiding upstairs -- down the steps, shaking weaponry in their hands. They didn't act like cold-blooded killers, but oh well. When asked about "the woman they murdered," the Red Man, named Tobias, made a run for the back door; Enrique fainted dead where he was. Celeste fired off enough Obtenebration to make Tobias Roetschrek, more or less, and as Aner chased Tobas out the front door into the waiting grasp of Rome, Colin dragged Enrique upstairs and Celeste went up ahead to calm the cowering wife. Eventually they're all bound and gagged, after realizing that the coterie are vampires, and suddenly becoming completely subservient, even happy to be bound and gagged by their enemies from minutes before. Celeste finds a letter from a "Father Dominic," telling Enrique and Tobias that they shouldn't fear the consequences of their actions because they do God's work, and they will be rewarded instead. He signs off that he hopes to see them the next night at Mass, and will speak with them then if they wish. Deciding to cover up their own violence this evening, they break the neck of Enrique and decapitate Tobias, as revenge for Julia's kidnapping, then tie Enrique's wife to a horse, weigh her down with Enrique's money, and send the horse southwest at a gallop (easily accomplished by Aner more or less doing a scary dance at it -- gotta hate not having any Animal Ken).

The coterie starts to put two and two together here, and decide mass the next evening is precisely where they need to be. That decided, they start to make their way to their rooms, with strict instructions to the barkeep/inn-owner as they go past that no one is to disturb them during the day. Aner spots the informative child from before across the street, watching the party enter their inn while sucking his thumb, and goes over to strike up a conversation. Explaining that he does "big people chores," he finds out that the child lives on a local farm, and has to go so he can feed his pigs. Colin's ghoul, Hans, goes to follow the child, seeing him disappear into a barn and not come out for the 2 hours he watched.

Sitting in the church the next evening, they get their first glimpse at Father Dominic, a healthily overweight man of the cloth who enters the sanctuary from a side-door and begins the mass as though it were the single most boring event in his life. He does comment, however, that this evening's service the congregation -- all 200 residents -- should pray for the souls of Enrique and Tobias, business partners in the town's general supply shop, who murdered each other in an obvious quarrel over Enrique's wife. The town reacts solemnly -- it's obvious the gossip was all over town as soon as the store didn't open that morning, and someone kicked in the door.

Deciding to liven things up a bit, Conil decides at random to make the wooden crucifix, crudely hanging behind Father Dominic, glow green while a voice recited Revelations 6:8, saying, "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." True Faith promptly swells from every soul in the church, and the coterie, by virtue of statistically unlikely (to say the least) rolls, all manage to stay in the sanctuary and not frenzy.

The priest reacts with no surprise, and as Rome distracts him after the service with questions as to whether miracles graced the village often, and Celeste further distracts him with a request to confess her sins, Colin slips into the priestly chambers, then into a store room, and then down some stairs behind a shelf and into a much smaller sanctuary, where he finds several small statues of angels with fangs, and a skull under glass, with natural fangs, preserved under the alter as though it were a holy relic. He pockets a statue and bundles the skull up inside a stolen priest's robe from the store room above, while Celeste draws the priest into his study to confess, instead confronting him about what sort of work for the church Enrique and Tobias were doing. At first the priest is coy, but eventually he recognizes Presence at work, and immediately becomes ingratiating, begging Celeste to stay after the service to "celebrate mass" with himself and a few select others -- mainly the alderman who are outside in the sanctuary still, being chatted up by Aner and Rome while Constance plays and watches through a window, out in the graveyard. Celeste refuses, departs pleasantly enough, and strides briskly for the door. Colin slips out through those same priest's chambers, as the priest watches Celeste go lustily, then falls in step with Rome and Aner. Once outside, the five of them decide they must return to Madrid and inform the Prince -- and equally important to them is the growing theory that the Prince not only knows more than she's telling, but might well be wrapped up in it all herself.

Gathering their things from the tavern and preparing their horses, they ride out of town only to find themselves followed by no less than a cute, scruffy puppy. Celeste, Aner and Colin immediately think it should be killed ("it's a spy, I tell you"). Rome reacts more kindly, and Constance insists she be allowed to keep it. It reacts the way an animal would to Aner -- with fear -- and Celeste, Colin and Aner begrudgingly allow it to live. Setting off on the road back to Nibelheim, they wonder aloud whether the village will be different now that an entire generation of its populace has been found dead behind a treeline, and they hope it's interpreted as the plague.

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Sound and Fury: Chapter Three

On the road back to Nibelheim, and Madrid eventually, the coterie convinces Constance that she should feed the dog some of her blood, so it is at least blood bound to her. She agrees, and they make their wending way back to Nibelheim, which is remarkably quieter, even at this late hour, than it was a few nights before. Noticing sprigs of rowan over doorways, they wonder against what the citizens are protecting themselves, and check into the inn (where the tavern keeper is Dominated by Celeste into blurting out that there's fear of the plague in the tiny settlement). Rome and Constance set off for the church yard, so that Constance can play among the graves while Rome awakens the local priest to give confession. Constance discovers a new friend in the graveyard, a tall, silent, disfigured and silent man named Quill. He writes on a slate for her to read, and nods his head or shakes it when appropriate, and the two strike up something resembling friendship (at the very least, curiosity about one another). It turns out Quill lives in Madrid, sort of -- he lives near it, to the northeast. He considers Maria Josephina his Prince, although he rarely if ever makes it to any assemblies, as he's constantly out looking for items of study, as he is a scholar.

Meanwhile, Colin goes out into the woods and fields around the village, makes a damnably good Perception + Survival roll, and manages to uncover a scuffed up section of earth in the middle of the thin woods where he believes the local Gangrel, who warned them away a few nights before, might be sleeping. He seeks to find out more about the Gangrel, you see. So, he stands there and throws acorns at a big patch of bare earth over, and over, and over, until finally a very sleepy, unhappy Gangrel rises from the earth, snarling. A few short, meaningless questions later (his answers involved repeated use of the phrase, "Gangrel like to be left alone," you see), Colin makes his way back to town. Quill meets Rome when he comes out of confession, and admits that he had gone to Oro on the trail of the party, seen them leaving, and spent just a few hours there himself, seeing what was up. He heard the heretic service once it was underway, in the church basement, and immediately turned back towards Nibelheim, and Madrid, to catch the coterie. Rome goes to alert Colin (who returns from his chat with the Gangrel and dons his stolen priest robes from Oro's heretic padre), Celeste and Aner that they were followed, and the four return to find Quill and Constance still chatting. Introductions go warily around, and the suspicions of Aner, Celeste and Colin only grow. Quill informs them he's retiring to a crypt in the town's graveyard, one of the very few such structures -- and very old, bearing the name and date of a family from a wealthier time -- as the troupe returns to their inn. Constance's new pet, however, wriggles free and disappears into the woods, leaving her in a crying jag and Rome and Colin order their ghouls to search the town during the day.

The next night, they awaken to go downstairs and find the taproom completely empty. That's odd. Even the tavernkeeper is gone. Stepping outside, they realize why -- Rome's squire and Hans, Colin's ghoul, and Constance's new little dog, are standing fifty yards down the street, faced by all one hundred of Nibelheim's residents, who are carrying torches, farm implements, crucifices, the usual riot gear. The local priest is at the front, chanting an incantation in latin which Quill, awakening on the other side of the mob, in the graveyard, recognizes as a legitimate exorcism litany. The ghouls, cowering in fear already, hear Rome call out to them, as Colin, Celeste and Aner slip around the tavern to the stable, to grab their horses. Constance runs forward, calling the dog's new name, and (surprisingly), it jumps free from the squire's hands and runs to meet her. The ghouls, seeing their horses being brought around, turn and run as well, as the mob begins to surge forward at a walking pace, holy symbols and torches held aloft. Colin decides it's time for another home-made miracle, and creates an illusion of Christ, on the cross, which appears in the middle of the street. Mouth unmoving, it seems to speak, as a voice cries out, "People of Nibelheim, the knight and his companions are holy men and women -- your priest is a heretic! Destroy him!" With that, the image disappears, and the crowd grumbles in confusion. The priest, shock obvious on his face, stares at where the image had been. And, yes, another wave of Faith washes across the village, driving Celeste, Aner and Quill (who must run around the mob) to flee at all costs. Rome, Constance and Colin are able to stay behind, and Rome pulls open his breastplate to reveal his cross-shaped wound (flaw: Open Wound, as per some book or another) which leaks blood constantly, crying out that the priest is a heretic. The crowd goes insane, with torches and pitchforks and scythes flying as frightened hands simply let go, and people start running in every direction. Some fall on the priest, to kill him, while others fall on them to protect him, and yet others fall on both in the confusion. Taking their chance to escape, the party rides away with Canus (the little dog's name, Constance has decided) held in Constance's arms. The ghouls report that the priest had told them they either were demons or traveled with demons, and that they had brought the plague, and death, and would be driven out by the faithful people of Nibelheim, before the coterie had awakened and gone outside. They also report that Canus had been unfindable all day, until he came running out of the graveyard just moments after sundown, and that they believed he had been found and cared for by the townspeople until the evening was interrupted by a general call to the church. The man standing next to the priest throughout the scene had, it turned out, been the ghoul of the local Gangrel. He had meant it when he said he wanted to be left alone. Much more quietly, Hans reported to Colin that he had found a blood-soaked patch of fur and skin which looked like it might be the little dog, Canus', as though he had gotten in a fearful scrap during the day. The dog, however, isn't missing any fur or skin, and Colin's suspicions grow.

Arriving back in Madrid, the troupe goes straight to Maria Josephina's house, to find that Lydia, another ghoul, is taking the job of chief retainer to the Prince, and that Maria Josephina herself is otherwise occupied but will meet them at Elysium in an hour. Quill takes advantage of the time to copy down a scroll he finds among the very few books in Maria Josephina's study, written in some script far too ancient for him to recognize although the scroll itself is more or less newly made. Constance stays with Quill, letting Canus off his crude leash only to have him race upstairs, towards the private rooms of Maria Josephina and her remaining ghouls, where she overhears an ominous phrase from the Prince's lips, behind a closed door: "I don't care if what you told me turned out to be true. I want you to leave me, my city and my Kindred alone. Out, now!" Constance races downstairs and waits in the lobby, hoping to see who was the object of the Prince's ire, only to wait a few minutes and then abruptly realize the front door had just opened and closed. Disappointed, she goes to Elysium in search of her friends.

Aner makes it to Elysium first, finding the sheriff and the other two Brujah in some intense debate. He interrupts to ask the Sheriff whether anything strange has been going on, and his vague insinuations that something isn't right with the Prince earns him a terse reply that the Prince has been locked away training Lydia to take Julia's place the entire time. Rome arrives shortly, and the same conversation ensues. Celeste, meanwhile, takes advantage of their hour before meeting with the Prince to drop by the home of the Lasombra brothers, Tomas and Ricardo, and make similar insinuations. She tells them, untruthfully, that Father Dominic had told her his heretical services were encouraged by a French Toreador named Millecande, which is of course also the name of the local Auspex goddess and general puppy-dog of the Prince.

Making things really interesting, Colin watches Millecande leave her haven, then sneaks inside and plants the vampiric skull-relic from the church in Oro in Millecande's bedroom before showing up at Elysium himself. Once all there, the Prince arrives, dismissing all but the Sheriff, Lydia and the party. They tell her their story, although the information that Colin supposedly overheard and told Celeste, that they were sponsored by a Millecande, comes as a total surprise to Rome and to the Prince. Millecande walks in, conveniently enough, right about then, eyes going wide and confusion forming on her face. She is Dominated by the Prince, saying she knows nothing of a church which worships vampires, and Lydia is sent by Maria Josephina to search Millecande's house. Colin and Quill follow, and Aner in turn follows them.

Meanwhile, Rome, Constance and Celeste stay behind to discuss their findings with the Prince. Maria Josephina tells them they should find out who is sponsoring the heretical church in Oro, because obviously the priest, if he didn't have a direct vampiric mentor, wouldn't have known who was the chief ghoul of the Prince of Madrid. They agree, and begin discussing various methods, from torturing or Dominating it out of him, to locking him away long enough to let any blood bonds fade, and even just injuring him and seeing where he goes for help.

As an aside, I've yet to know why Celeste, Aner and Colin are avidly working to frame Millecande, but I think they're trying to test the Prince for a reaction. Not really sure, to be honest, although there are grumblings of getting rid of her for some reason or another on the PCs parts. In a tiny town like this, they just might get away with it. We shall see.

As this chapter draws to a close, we find Quill climbing up and hanging onto a second story window in Millecande's house, so he can listen for the conversation which might transpire between Millecande's resident ghoul, still at the haven, and Lydia, the Prince's ghoul, when she arrives to search it. Colin and Aner watch from an alleyway, and hear as well, when Lydia arrives, explains the situation to Millecande's ghoul, and gets an angry refusal to assist her. Lydia disappears into the basement, and a few moments later comes back up to the first floor, calling out to Millecande's ghoul that she's going back to Elysium and he should probably follow with her. He refuses, she starts to leave, he runs down the stairs after her...and Aner knocks on the door just as they open it. Quill still hangs on the side of the house, and Colin watches from nearby, while the rest of the coterie wait with the Prince, the Sheriff and Millecande herself, at Elysium.

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Conflicting Intrigues: Chapter Four

The session began with an ultra-brief rewind, in which Aner decided he didn't want to go knock on the door after all. Colin, on realizing the ghouls had found something and were on their way to Elysium, immediately bolted up the street, ducking into an alley to let them go past so he could follow behind and perhaps overhear their conversation. Aner followed behind him, just making his way back. Meanwhile, Quill climbed into his window from which he was dangling, went downstairs in the house, and started checking around for signs of other people having been there before the ghoul. With an exceptional Perception+Larceny roll, sure enough, he found signs someone had been there before Lydia, moving through the room's belongings much more carefully than the Prince's ghoul had done in her rapid search for incriminating evidence.

At Elysium, the conversation between Rome, Celeste and Maria Josephina continued, as Constance played with some bugs. Eventually they ran out of things to discuss, just in time for Lydia, Michel (Millecande's ghoul) and Aner not far behind to walk back into Elysium. Lydia carries something bundled under cloth, walks forward, unwinds it, and reveals the vampiric skull Colin had planted in the wardrobe in Millecande's haven. Millecande immediately started babbling in self-defense, with hurried words of "Oh my God, what is that, where did you find that, oh Mother Mary, it's the skull of a vampire," while the Prince merely watched, detached. Rome turned to Millecande and asked, "Do you have any enemies who would frame you for murder," to which Millecande simply failed to reply, going on with her babbling instead. So, Rome backhanded her across the face. With a gauntlet on his hand. And a dot of Potence. Millecande's nose shatters, blood sprays across the back of Rome's hand, and she stands there, her head at an odd angle, staring at the ground. Everyone watches and waits while the blood stops flowing, Millecande's nose resets with a sick cracking noise, and she turns to look at Rome just long enough to produce a very, very quiet growl that sends him running in the other direction. Then, to the Prince, she says, "I know of no one who would hold such a grudge against me." The Prince sighs, Rome stops running screaming once he gets about 30 yards away, and the Prince tells Lydia to return to her haven with the skull. The Prince herself will be along shortly to consider what punishment would fit the crime apparently commited, she says, and then she gets up to leave. Quill returns, as well, only to hear what has transpired and see the Sheriff leave, thin-lipped and silent. Quill catches Maria Josephina before she makes her final departure, and asks a few questions about whether or not she believes Millecande is responsible for Julia's death, the ultimate mystery being solved here. The Prince doesn't say much, and departs, having given little indication as to her beliefs except to say that she would be surprised if Millecande -were- behind it, although she does think she's capable of having done it.

Aner steps out just after the Prince to go talk to a couple of people about some of his ideas, and is gone. Millecande and Michel make their way out, stopping so that Millecande can tell Rome he should never return to her haven for another lesson in Auspex. Then, she goes. Quill follows after her, at a distance, going to watch her house. Celeste opts to go home immediately, Constance returns to her sire's home, and Colin (who never returned to Elysium) goes to the Prince's haven so that he might speak with her there. Rome goes home to work on polishing his armor.

Colin's conversation with the Prince turns out to be very, very fun. He approaches her, and tells her that he has no idea why he told anyone that Millecande was behind the heretics in Oro. The Prince asks if it were possible someone had forced him to forget, and now he remembered it? Colin's reply is that, no, he has no idea. The Prince offers to force him to remember and speak the truth, but Colin asks:

"Is it required?"
"No, of course not," the Lasombra Prince replies. "Purely voluntary."
"Oh, good," Colin says. "I think I'd rather not, then."
"Fine, fine," Maria Josephine replies. She pauses a few beats, and adds, "You know, you have a very nice tavern."

Colin weighs the implied threat here, and then says, "Okay, fine, you can make me remember." The Prince compliments him on his team spirit, then Dominates him only to have him say, the first time, that -he- told himself to say it, then that Father Dominic had forced him to say it. Maria Josephina thanks him for the information and sends him on his way.

Quill goes and watches Millecande's haven, overhearing Millecande ordering Michel to go out and find how she should go to get to this village of Oro, because she's going to find out for herself who's behind these heretics, and why they would want to blame her. Meanwhile, she begins packing for travel. One of the Prince's ghouls is spotted by Quill while he's listening in, handing a pouch to a bruiser-type down the street. The bruiser-type immediately starts watching Millecande's house as well, and hours later turns to go in the direction of the Prince's haven, as well.

Perhaps the most interesting bit came when Constance got home to her sire's haven, and started telling him about everything she's seen and heard. When she tells the story of letting Canus off his leash so she would have an excuse to run upstairs in the Prince's house and listen, Victor expresses pride in Constance, rewarding her with information of his own: Colin is a special kind of vampire, he tells her, and she should pay close attention to him because she may never meet another like him again. He also says that he, too, overheard the conversation, except that he was there -- in astral form. He tells Constance (and Rome, when he arrives) that he's fond of going out of body to explore the city, and that night the Gold Man had been the one in Maria Josephina's private chambers. Victor goes on to explain that he doesn't know exactly why, but the Gold Man, whose name Victor says he doesn't know, comes to the Prince occasionally, offering her information which she always refuses to buy. Was he coming to taunt her with the fact that he had known Julia was to be murdered, and Maria Josephina turned him away without purchasing his information when it might have done some good? Who knows.

Aner, Celeste and Colin join up for some sort of private consultations in the tavern owned by one of Colin's ghouls. Eventually Lydia walks inside, carrying a message from the Prince that if they are going to return to Oro in search of more information about the heretics there, Maria Josephina would appreciate them letting her know before they leave. Quill, off on his own again, wanders down into the sewers in search of the Nosferatu who haven't been seen, only to find no trace of Kindred but plenty of dark, damp places to hide for the day.

A new night dawns in Madrid, finding Rome, Constance, Aner, Celeste and Colin in Elysium (after Constance's sire found Canus barking outside their haven, having gotten out in the night), making final preparations to depart for Oro. Quill awakens in the catacombs underneath Madrid, and notices odd behavior by some of the rats in the sewers. Chasing one down, he goes with it to the Prince, only to see it die and then turn to dust over the course of a few minutes. The Prince says she doesn't know what this indicates about the Nosferatu, but she hopes they return soon.

Once Celeste goes home again and gets her things together, making the coterie run about two hours late for leaving, they ride out of town with a promise from Quill that he would meet them down the road eventually. Travelling just a few minutes ahead of them, he brings down some deer and waits a half hour out from Nibelheim, which the coterie managed to flatten with a Chimerstry-inspired riot the last time they were here, with a supply of blood at the ready for the PCs, should they need it. The ride itself is quiet, almost silent, until the coterie meets up again with Quill only to inform him they were full already, and didn't need the blood. A debate ran for a while as to whether they should dig graves there or go on into Nibelheim and hope no one recognized them from a few short nights ago -- Quill reported that Nibelheim is a near-lifeless husk of a town now, with perhaps thirty people in it, the church nearly destroyed, most houses dark and empty. A few lights come from a precious few buildings, but the sounds of the remaining voices are pleasant enough.

Rome opts to be buried on the far side of the village, circumventing it through the woods, rather than go into the village at all. Constance, meanwhile, offers to make sure no one is recognized -- by fleshcrafting them new faces. A few amazing rolls later, she's managed to up Aner's, Colin's and Celeste's Appearance traits by one and thoroughly altered their facial characteristics. Constance turns herself into a little boy rather than a little girl, and goes ahead to scope out the situation at the town's one tiny inn. Sure enough, there she finds Millecande, having a nervous but light-hearted-sounding conversation with the innkeeper and two of the remaining residents of Nibelheim. She and her ghoul, Michel, are masquerading (no pun intended) as brother and sister, and as they retire for a very late night, the innkeeper turns to his friends and, Constance overhears, says, "Isn't it nice to meet some Godly, friendly travellers for once?" Constance The Near-Boy inquires with the innkeeper after banging on the boarded-over front door, whether her/his mistress and guards can have a room for the evening. The innkeeper agrees, reluctantly, and sells Aner, Constance, Colin, Celeste and Hans (Colin's other ghoul) the last three rooms for the night, promising after they insist on it that he won't bother to wake them for lunch. Quill goes off and has a look at the local church -- which is smashed up pretty badly although newly redecorated with rough bouquets of fresh flowers -- and opts for a crypt again. As Rome climbs into his makeshift grave, instructing his squire to sit atop the grave to protect him from any Gangrel or their ghouls, and Celeste, Aner and Colin sigh heavily upon Constance's realization that her dog has, yet again, slipped away just before dawn, and Quill falls asleep in his crypt, the game came to an end with more than one character muttering quietly about just how they would handle Millecande in the evening. Would she be violent? Would they end up having to kill the rest of the town this time, rather than "merely" inspiring them to kill each other? Only the passing of time, and the daylight, would tell.

Back to the top.


Taking Care of Business: Chapter Five

The characters awoke in their various temporary havens for the day -- Rome awakened just as the last bits of light fell back from the sky to his squire (now named David) tapping on his armor with the shovel. Quill awoke in his crypt, with a vague bad feeling about things. Constance awoke with the same bad feeling, in her room at the inn. Celeste, Aner and Colin all awoke, and as the group left the room they found Canus asleep against their door, having returned during the day despite Hans' report that he couldn't find him at all. Hans -thinks- he saw the local (and territorial) Gangrel's ghoul during the day, but that he himself wasn't spotted. Colin and Constance make their way downstairs, and as Celeste and Aner leave the room to make their way out as well, Millecande opens her door -- not recognizing the coterie members before her because of Constance's use of Vicissitude to disguise them all the night before. She nods a polite greeting, and they all go downstairs. Celeste takes up station at a table in the inn's tiny taproom, while Constance, Aner and Colin all eventually make their way out to the stables to prepare their horses. Meanwhile, Millecande tells Michel to go take care of the horses, as she wants to stop at the church in the village and pray before moving on.

In the stables, Michel asks Constance (still disguised as a little boy), Colin and Aner (whom he doesn't recognize, as noted before, due to the Vicissitude disguises) whether they live here. He's curious, he says, because it seems something terrible happened to the village not long before, and none of the natives seem interested in talking about it. Each of the coterie members hem and haw, and otherwise deny any knowledge of it. Eventually Michel makes his way out, and down the street towards the church.

Rome mounts up and rides into the trees, keeping sight of the village (small as it is, he can pretty much see the whole place). He notices a big, scruffy guy come out of the woods and start wandering the graveyard. He also sees Millecande come down the street and enter the church, and a few moments later, he hears quiet weeping from inside. His player's commentary? "It doesn't really matter; the pillars of smoke can't be far behind."

Sharing an advantageous perspective from the rooftop, Quill sits atop the inn, long-bow in hand, waiting to see what's up. He's got, as noted, a bad feeling about things -- although his is less visual than Rome's.

While those at the inn prepare the horses, Rome sees the scruffy guy leave the graveyard and walk to one of the church windows, look in, turn and start heading back into the village, knocking on a door. Michel comes up the road a moment later, on his horse, leading Millecande's behind him, and then the Gangrel's ghoul exits the house into which the scruffy guy just went, going to a door down the way and knocking on it. A hurried conversation ensues, and the ghoul moves on to another door. Another hurried conversation ensues. About this time, Colin, Aner, Constance, Celeste and Hans ride up the street, and Celeste goes inside to pay her respects to God before moving on.

Still unrecognized due to Vicissitude, Celeste kneels at the banister before the alter, at the far end from Millecande. Eventually, outside, the coterie notices the scruffy guy -- who is recognized by Colin and Aner as the local Gangrel -- walking up the road at a liesurely pace. He stops, glances around the coterie, nods. Aner greets him, and the Gangrel asks where the coterie is headed. Aner replies they're on their way to Madrid, from Toledo, but their lady is inside praying. The Gangrel, who had read Millecande's aura and knew she was a vampire (in his turf, no less), ah's quietly, and replies that some friends of his said that the lady inside praying was actually from Madrid, and on her way to Toledo. Then Aner and Constance and Colin realize the Gangrel is giving them the optic once-over, and then he says, grumbling, "Yeah, definitely time to go do some prayin'," before walking inside. He kneels at the alter, Aner following him inside, and Constance as well (her danger sense going haywire in the Gangrel's presence), to look at Celeste for a good, long moment. Then, he begins to pray.

"Our father, who doesn't really exist but what the hell, who art not in Heaven, give me the strength to defend my town, even though you don't really care since you're not actually able to hear me."

Celeste can't help but notice that he's growing claws as he prays, hands folded before him. She begins counter-praying, trying to feign ignorance, when the Gangrel whips around and claws across her chest, sending her flying through the air and out a window.

Millecande stands, and throws open the doors of Presence, making the Gangrel incapable of attacking her as well. Aner, for unknown reasons, decides to go for Millecande and not the Gangrel, and lunges to attack (after making his Willpower roll to defeat Majesty). He fails to wound her, and she screams, pleading, "Not here, not in a House of God," before escaping -- rather quickly -- by going up a wall and out a window of the church.

Meanwhile, Constance, on seeing Celeste attacked, flips out and pops Zulo Form on everyone. Growing eight feet tall and buggy, she lunges for the Gangrel, who lunges at her. They take ineffectual swings at one another before the Gangrel manages to thrust his hand through Constance's carapice and start tickling her heart. Aggravated damage ensues.

Rome, meanwhile, has galloped forward to sit near Colin and Hans, with David not far behind, since he noticed that what few residents of the city were left had arrived, en masse, advancing up the street with torches and pitchforks -- the classic lynch-mob ensemble. Quill, also seeing this, jumps from the roof of the building and starts following the mob. Rome, in a fit of righteous rage (since he still thinks the Christ on the Cross the last time they were in Nibelheim was real), lunges forward on horseback into the mob. Hans flanks the group and attacks the rear, Quill starts firing arrows, David fires his crossbow, and Colin starts whacking people up front.

Celeste, having hidden under some darkness long enough to heal one of her three aggravated wounds, crawls across the ground and up into the window of the church so she can see Aner trying to climb out a window on the other side, in pursuit of Millecande, and the Gangrel and Constance duking it out in the middle of the church's aisle. Clamboring inside, she throws her knife and lands it squarely in the back of the Gangrel, giving Constance the edge she needs to wrap the Gangrel in a bear-hug and flatten him against the ground, his hand still in her chest.

Outside, Colin manages not to Roetschrek from all the torches, while Rome fails utterly. He blows a willpower point to stay in control for one more round, just in time for Millecande, at ultra-high speed, to tear around the corner of the church and...make everyone fall in love with each other?

Quill takes out another torch-bearer on Rome, and shoot a burning flag free from Rome's unused lance, saving him from further chance of Roetschrek. Aner, meanwhile, tears around the corner of the church in hot pursuit of Millecande (still for no apparent reason), grabbing hold of Millecande and trying to bury his fangs in her neck (and failing). While the mob stares around in confusion and Rome breaks free, tearing away at break-neck speed with fangs showing, Colin creates a pretty illusion infront of Millecande to distract her. Hans takes out a few more mob members in the back, and David starts chasing after Rome, his regnant, afraid for his master's safety.

Inside, Constance activates some Vicissitude to turn the Gangrel's rib-cage in on itself, scoring enough successes to pierce his heart and cause half his remaining blood to explode out of the hole created. As blood flies everywhere, both Constance and Celeste frenzy, and leap on the Gangrel. There's one last stifled groan, and then the Gangrel expires as Constance diablerizes him and gets to be shocked by the sensation of a soul shooting through her body before shattering forever.

Rome, just as he's freeing himself of the Roetschrek, realizes he smells blood. He's -covered- in blood. And he's way hungry. So, he frenzies as well, leaping from his horse and wheeling around to see in his line of sight: David, his squire; Quill, his coterie-mate; a mob of mortals, still standing around confusedly.

Around this time, Aner is surprised when Millecande breaks free of his grasp momentarily and says to him, "Run, now, while you can, please!" He responds by tearing her throat open with his fangs. Colin, meanwhile, launches another illusion, this time of someone crawling out of the ground and running toward the mob which is again shocked to feel the sense of love dissipate entirely from the air.

Rome's squire, David, recognizes a vampire in frenzy and leaps into the bushes. Out of sight, out of mind. Rome races head-long back into the mob, fangs bared, screaming, "Blood! Blood! Blood for the Blood God!" That's what his player gets for spending too much time infront of "Chaos Gates." Colin decides he's thirsty, and in the confusion, grabs a random villager, hauls him up onto the horse, and starts drinking. Aner throws Millecande to the ground, and starts drinking, having knocked her into torpor by nearly decapitating her with his teeth in a single go. Inside, Constance ceases to frenzy, while Celeste stays at it, and Constance is forced to hold her down, face-first against the stone floor, until it passes. Quill races into the bushes to make sure Rome's squire is safe, and in the background Canus just barks his freakin' head off.

The remaining mortals in the mob, more or less the folks who had just egged their friends on, see demons in action and decide to run for it. Three of them actually make it away, one of them being the innkeeper. As the dust starts to settle, and Constance feels Celeste cease frenzying beneath her (only to come around with a sudden realization she hates all Gangrel, and they must be destroyed at all costs -- gotta love those derangements as a result of botching a frenzy roll), Colin chases down two of the three escaping mortals, killing them, while the innkeeper sets fire to his own inn and rides away towards Madrid. In the last week, a dozen demons had stayed under his roof. It's in those moments you accept a real life change.

While Aner knelt beside Millecande's rapidly-dissolving corpse, having just diablerized her himself, he starts to wonder what the hell is going on, and what he's going to say to the others, when he feels a piece of wood pierce his back. He gets his hands on Michel -- Millecande's ghoul everyone had forgotten -- but not a split-second later Michel gets the stake all the way in, and Aner crumples to the ground still choking the life out of Michel. Celeste yanks the stake back out, and Aner munches on Michel for good measure. Realizing what they've done, the coterie gets down to covering their tracks, throwing "turbans" (I kid you not) around town and setting fire to some buildings to make it look like an attack. Meanwhile, Constance bone-crafts horns into some of the dead, and Quill shrivels a few into mummy-like corpses to achieve the proper horror movie effect. Aner realizes he feels less convicted in his beliefs now (there was no roll -- he simply lost a point of road, period), although Rome's conscience seems to have held up. The group gets their act back together, drains more blood out of some of the corpses, and rides out of town, leaving a burning village (pillars of smoke and all) behind.

It's funny, really -- the mob never really attacked Rome and Colin. They mainly just got cut down. Oh, there were attacks here and there, but thirty people ought to be able to rush two guys on horseback. Yet they didn't. Hrm.

Hours later, they arrive in Oro just in time to get rooms at the inn where they are greeted with warm welcomes. The innkeeper inquires as to whether they had trouble on the road -- they're covered in blood, after all. Rome tells them a pack of Moorish dogs were ransacking the village of Nibelheim, and while he tried to best them, he couldn't get them all. The city watch, he says, should be on immediate alert. Meanwhile, they tell the innkeeper they'd like to see Father Dominic as soon as possible. The innkeepers tells them that after they've slept (since they've had a night of travel and fighting), they can try to talk to Father Dominic, but surely he'll be running the memorial mass the next evening? Terrible, that, the way a tiny boy and his father were so brutally taken from this world. Everyone knew the father abused the boy, but the boy killed his father in revenge and then..."punished" himself, taking his own life. It's too gruesome to discuss, he says, and says he's rather not speak of it again. Aner is deeply disturbed to discover the dead little boy was Pig Boy, and goes to the barn where Pig Boy worked to find it in disarray, as is the dark, empty house next to it.

Quill finds a crypt to sleep in, and the rest of the coterie beds down looking forward to tomorrow night's mass, so they might yet again deal face to face with Father Dominic, everyone's favorite member of the Cainite Heresy.

Back to the top.


Goldfinger: Chapter Six

Tonight's session was preceded with a big Memorial Day food extravaganza at my house -- Mike & Bascha split the work of boiling up some incredible crab legs and made shrimp cocktail while I made hamburgers out on the porch with a grill and everything. The burgers were good, but the crab legs were the real hit of the evening. Mike described it accurately by saying we just tore into them and had bits of crab meat flying through the air. It's true. At one point, I picked crab meat out of my hair. It was hardcore good stuff. Yum. Once we were all there and fed, we moved inside and sat down for about six hours of vampire, while Kat ate the strawberries. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, good.

The group awakens in Oro, everyone but Quill having stayed in the inn. The group awakens, heads downstairs (or out, as the case may be), and as Colin, Rome, Constance, Hans, David make their way to the church (where Quill, ever the simian, has gotten on the roof), Celeste and Aner head for Pig Boy's house (again). They investigate long enough to find the barn empty, the hay stale, stagnant water breeding mosquitos. There's a pool of blood in one of the stalls, bloodied knives set off to the side and a bloodied whip hanging over one of the stall walls. Inside, in the kitchen area (okay, so it's a fancy hut), there's more blood splashed around, now drying and generally stinking up the place. For a vampire on the Road of Heaven and another on the Road of Humanity, this is a creepy place to be. A trail of blood leads between house and barn, and Aner and Constance make their saddened way to the church, where townspeople are beginning to gather.

Constance (still in the Vicissituded guise of a little boy) meets a little girl who's very sad at Pig Boy's death. "My mom says he's going to Hell now, because he killed someone." The girl is generally unable to be comforted, but Constance (alias Nol) does a pretty good job of it anyway. Briefly debating killing the little girl's parents, Constance instead makes his/her way to a window of the church to listen in on the service. Rome, meanwhile, goes and sits on the very front pew, and makes some chit-chat with one of the aldermen of the village -- one of the six men waiting to speak with Father Dominic when last they were there. Quill starts listening from the rooftop for anything interesting, and Colin goes (in his priest robes) and knocks on Father Dominic's door, off to one side of the sanctuary, hoping to catch the priest before mass. When no one answers, he picks the lock on the door (with the aid of an aural distraction that gets everyone's attention), slips inside, and finds it completely dark. A little Chimerstry fixes that right up, and Quill (peeking through the thatch roof) is shocked that Colin can just make a whole room light up. Is this magic? Witchcraft?

An exploration of the priest's quarters reveal about half his belongings (few to begin with) missing, and a bar across the door into the church storeroom. That removed, Colin decides that whatever they're trying to keep in there, he doesn't really want to meet face to face, but sure, why not let it out? He heads back out only to be greeted by one of the Aldermen, who gets pulled aside for a brief conversation in which Colin reveals his fangs and says that the Aldermen and Father Dominic are about to be in a great deal of trouble for the sort of "angellic visits" which they enjoy on occasion. The alderman starts playing stupid, and says that Colin really should discuss this with Father Dominic, later. Colin agrees, lets the guy go, and heads back into Father Dominic's office to "look for him." He gives the storeroom a whirl for laughs, finds it exactly as he last saw it, and heads downstairs to the theoretically heretical sanctuary in the basement -- only to find it stripped bare of all signs of the Heresy, save the alter with (now cleaned) drains for vitae built into it. Poking around, he finds a letter in the alter which reads invites the "Dear Brethren of Madrid" to visit a man named Suarez upon arrival in Toledo if they wish to speak with Father Dominic, and two suits of clothes -- the clothing the Nosferatu were wearing when they left Madrid.

Meanwhile, Father Dominic hasn't shown up, but the rest of the town has, including Aner and Celeste. Everyone's getting antsy, and an alderman suggests to Aner, when he goes to knock on Father Dominic's door and receives no answer, that the "other priest" lead the mass in Father Dominic's stead. Colin leaps at the chance, and heads upstairs, letter pocketed along with one of the suits of clothing from the Nosferatu. Starting off in Latin, he forgets the service word-for-word (he doesn't speak Latin, after all) after about three minutes, slips into Gaelic, and around when people are really starting to look like they could start a scuffle over this (thanks to some raised tempers brought on by Constance's liberal use of Dementate around the sanctuary), Aner's voice pipes out of thin air to begin the mass over again, running through the same three minutes, from the back of the church. Meanwhile, Quill climbs through the thatch roof and starts investigating in the storeroom and the sub-sanctuary himself, finding multiple scripture passages which have been subtly altered to emphasize blood and its importance to God.

Finally an alderman denounces Colin as uneducated and unqualified, and people start leaving the church nervously. Rome explains to those left that he's a knight of a churchly order, and he can lead the requiem mass if need be. Only about a quarter of the village stays, but they pray intently. The rest wander out into the yard around the parish, some to the grave of Pig Boy to pray, others to go looking for Father Dominic. Rome has an unpleasant conversation with an alderman who insists that Rome's curiosity regarding the good father's personal habits ("is he prone to taking walks at random?") would be best used if re-directed towards joining a search party and actually helping. Instead, Rome sends two local boys to the stables (where Colin, Aner, Quill and Constance are readying the horses along with Hans and David, after Colin said that it was really important everyone leave now) to find out if Father Dominic's horse is still there. Celeste follows the alderman, who stop by the home of one of their number long enough to grab pitchforks and blades, and head back out into the night.

Father Dominic's horse is gone, it turns out, and the coterie decides he must be headed for Toledo because they didn't meet him on their way from Madrid (Colin still hasn't told anyone of the letter in the alter, signed by a man named Suarez). They mount up and ride away, arriving seven hours later in a much larger village -- town, almost -- of 400 people. The innkeeper lets them have rooms, and promises not to disturb them.

Lots of people wake up feeling hungry, and by the time the place empties of vampires, more than one citizen has fallen prey -- literally -- to the coterie. (Constance spooks a cow into trampling the near-empty corpses of the couple she slaughters, wisely, while Celeste frames two local men for having engaged in homosexual behavio [ooooh, listen to the vaguely clinical terminology]). Without even bothering to learn this village's name, they mount up and ride forth again, finding themselves at the end of the night in a tiny village of 100 again.

Quill and Celeste and Canus make for a crypt, arriving there about fifteen minutes before sunrise, in the church graveyard, only to have Canus snap the leather leash attached to his body-harness, and run off into the woods. Celeste and Quill, even with a dot of Celerity, can't catch him, only follow the sounds of the yipping, and eventually even they stop. They do run across a pelt of a dog which they'd swear is Canus', and realize something supernatural is obviously happening here. Back to the crypt they go, and fall asleep, but not before seeing the sun start to rise, realizing they haven't seen real shadow in years or even decades, and feeling the deadly pin-prick of very diffused sunlight against their skin.

Canus returns, of course, found sleeping outside the crypt in which Quill and Constance slept, along with the old dog pelt they'd found on Canus' path the dawn before. Now that Quill looks at that pelt they found, it doesn't look like Canus' fur. It might fit him, were it a doggie fur jacket, but Canus is perfectly healthy and in one piece when they see him the next night. Brief experimentation is done, and Quill decides Canus is of the Fay while Constance becomes convinced she's the proud owner of a vampiric mutt (the first Canine Caitiff Cainite?).

Rome awakens and sets out to find children playing in the yard behind the local church (a much nicer affair than the one in Nibelheim), and finds out the local priest is loved and respected. Colin is treated like a king in the tavern of the inn, still dressed as a priest, cajoled into telling stories and playing the lute. Celeste and Aner go visit the local priest, only to interrupt him in a deeply movinig session of what can only be termed "marriage counseling," and realize he makes them vaguely uncomfortable. They discover that in fact Father Dominic was there a day or two before, but stopped only long enough to take a quick nap in the church before moving on. The local priest didn't like Father Dominic very much, but then he excuses himself, shuts the door on Celeste and Aner, and goes back to his counseling. They in turn return to help gather up the group, and eventually everyone sets out for the short four-hour ride to Toledo itself. Days from Madrid, they come to the outskirts of Toledo (a real city, of perhaps even 20,000 people!), only to find a Christian army camped around the city and the news that the city has only in the last few days been wrested from Moorish control. Aner hooks up with some old army buddies, Rome hangs out with the Baron who's leading the army, Constance takes her first chance to ditch her pony and go for a "real" ride on Quill's much-ignored horse, and Quill, Colin and Constance all make their way into town.

Constance wanders the streets, and eventually realizes the shadows around her are not natural. The street is closed off in Obtenebration, and four figures step forth from pools of black to greet her with a, "Sister?" Coyly, information is exchanged, and she learns that the Gold Man lives in this city. Also, they already know about Nibelheim. "These people have some incredible intelligence," Rome's player declares. Well, they're Lasombra. Constance also learns two men were seen entering the city, and have since been unfindable -- they were of vampiric stock.

Colin and Quill head straight for the Cathedral of Our Lady, a reconsecrated mosque in the middle of town. Quill's saddened to hear that many of the books and scrolls maintained by the Moors have been burned, but gets escorted to the library (or what's left of it), slips away from his watchers, and breaks into some muckety-muck's room or another to find a bunch of writings and texts that have been set aside, perhaps for his personal library. Absconding with them, he leaves again.

Colin, meanwhile, follows the orders on the letter he dug out of the back of the alter in Oro, and goes in search of Father Roberto, who's just now awakened to begin his duties of tending a patch of strawberries in the mid-spring pre-dawn dew-covered gardens. Working by candlelight to check for mold or other blights, Father Roberto tells Colin that yes, the man named Suarez was expecting them, and that he should expect a message after they awaken the next night. Father Roberto even recommends an inn which is "safe for your kind," with a smile. Called the Red Heart, it's about three blocks east of the church. Eventually everyone ends up there, and beds down, although Constance is yet again pissed off because Hans (although Aner lies and takes the blame himself) somehow let Canus slip out of his repaired harness, and he's disappeared. Again.

Upon awakening, the coterie finds Father Robert upstairs (all their rooms were in the basement, how handy); he tells them to be at Suarez's (now generally believed to be the Gold Man, since the dying carriage driver mentioned a Suarez with his final breaths) home in an hour and a half. Some shopping's done, and right before they leave to go to Suarez's, they find Canus sitting on the front steps of the tavern, panting away happily. Off they go, then, to Suarez's house.

At this point, the troupe and I got up, went out to the now pitch-black and mosquito filled back yard of my house, and played out the final scene there. That was fun. The PCs with Auspex got to take flashlights. But now we all itch. A lot.

Upon arriving to find it pitch dark, Colin makes a diffuse light appear in the sky, about ten feet overhead, to light up the area. They hear the click of a half-dozen or so crossbows being loaded, and Colin drops the light. A voice says, out of nowhere, "Please, if you don't fight, they won't shoot you. Just....listen to me."

Identifying itself as Suarez, and later as a Follower of Set, the voice tells them at length that he is not the person ultimate responsible for Julia's death. Although he was, he admits, a part of it. Unfortunately, no one was supposed to figure that out, and now Father Dominic is dead for having failed him, and the Nosferatu are dead for finding out as much as they did, and Suarez himself will die now for having admitted this much to the coterie. So why not keep talking? Sometimes you tell truths to help someone, and sometimes (he tells them) you tell truths because they hurt. They are not the investigative team of the Prince, he tells them. No, Maria Josephina picked six screw-ups from her city, and handed them the job publicly, to make herself look weaker than she is. This, he explains, was to fool her enemies. Then she really assigned the Nosferatu to investigate, but then they got too close. And the coterie got too close. So the Nosferatu were exterminated, but Suarez is leaving the party alive, although he assures them that he is far more powerful than they, and could kill them if he wished. (Constance waves her hands in the air under the voice, and doesn't hit anything, I should note.)

"Now that I've told you this, I'm sure I will die."
"And why are you telling us?"
"Why am I telling you?"
"Because now that we know, we'll die, too?"
"Ooooh, exactly."

He explains that fear drives men more than love, and certainly more than hate, and that his involvement (which included the Prince refusing to purchase information from him, tsk) was driven by fear. Of what? Of a ghost. Whose ghost?

The ghost of the first chief ghoul of the Prince, who's jealous of her other ghouls, jealous of the Prince, and determined to take her apart slowly. A ghost of fearsome power, more than capable of destroying them all, he says.

He also assures them that by the time they return to Madrid, Lydia -- new chief retainer of the Prince -- will be dead.

With these beans spilled, the voice stops moving in a circle around them, and says, "Any questions?" No sooner are the words out of his mouth, than a hole opens in the sky above him, giant claw-like pincer thingies reach out, grab Suarez, and drag him inside. Quill and Aner think that makes it time to get the hell out of Dodge, and the rest follow suit. Constance, Celeste and Colin, however, hear the gateway open again, and five chunks of Setite (big chunks) plop out, hitting the ground. Constance tastes the blood, and sure enough, it's vampiric. Then they book it, and the story draws to an end with them leaving the garden and hearing a cry go up among the crossbowmen, who leap from their posts and descend on the decomposing corpse of their former master.

Back to the top.


Mirror, Mirror, Story II

Shards: Chapter Seven

The coterie steps out of the garden and into the street, with Rome conspicuously watching the sky for more signs of giant monsters while the others discuss what to do. Celeste and Constance think it's a great idea to vacate the city at maximum possible speed and dignity, whereas Colin would like to stick around a little longer. Quill seems disposed towards staying as well, while Aner is more on the home-bound bandwagon. As they stand there talking, however, they realize there's a circle of light shining on them from above all of a sudden, and upon looking up, claws on the ends of giant arms descend upon the coterie. Whatever killed the Setite isn't done.

As they scatter towards walls or dark corners, Aner is grabbed first, while Celeste throws out some tentacles to try and hold the giant claw back. Rome gets grabbed, then Constance (who pops Zulo Form almost immediately). Quill goes straight through the wall of the house across the street from the Setite, while Colin gets out of the way and observes the arms, noting that other than Aner, they've attacked only those who attacked back. Canus, for his part, cowers in a corner and whimpers the entire time, like the little dog he is. Ahem. Eventually, arms get hacked through, or claws get torn apart, although not before almost everyone takes some damage. Dismembered arms begin retracting through the hole in the sky, while new ones descend. Quill, inside the house across the street, grabs a giant iron poker from the fireplace, fires off his specialized Mortis 3 power (very nasty roiling mist that does damage to everything within a ten-foot radius, including himself) and runs back outside, making everybody's skin crawl. Suffice to say, the six arms total which have descended are chopped up or otherwise incapacitated, save the one around Rome, to which he clings as it begins to retract. "It's a hole in the sky, and I want to see what's up there," he says. So, he does.

As the others pick themselves up or dust themselves off, healing wounds and attempting to assess the situation, Rome is pulled aloft and through the hole in the sky, where he sees...the city of Toledo. Only it's decaying, crumbled, rotting. He looks at his own flesh, and down at his coterie-mates, to see maggots crawling from every oozing shred of flesh. He also sees....Julia? Standing behind Quill? And slightly above him, a figure in a black cloak, with the cowl pulled low over his face, hands waving in the air as though he controls the giant claws -- which are just giant, disembodied limbs? As this begins to sink in, he sees Julia lift into the air, screaming, then fly towards the figure in a robe before he suddenly drops back through the hole which shuts with a clap of thunder and he's dumped on the ground.

Meanwhile, back in the Skinlands, Quill realizes he's -hungry-. And there's blood around. And...he frenzies. Back through the hole in the house across the street he goes, racing at the first figure he sees, a well-dressed man descending the stairs saying, "What the hell is going on here?" Quill promptly attacks him, getting his teeth in his neck and a taste of blood -- that's vampiric. Yummy! Celeste recognizing frenzy in the eyes of her travelmate, chases after him, grabbing him with her tentacles while the man underneath Quill sprouts tentacles of his own, screaming for "Lord Lucien." Quill, frenzied as he is, gets held aloft while Aner runs in, and Constance follows. Outside, Rome decides now is a good time to go feed, and runs off for the poorer side of town. Colin, meanwhile, finds a home in the same, wealthy neighborhood they're already in, breaks in, and starts draining the sleeping people.

Inside, heavy footsteps begin descending the stairs, and when Celeste sees a form of little -but- shadow step into view, she immediately curtseys, hitting the floor with that Etiquette stat. Aner made sure the man Quill had attacked was okay, and Quill blew some Willpower to get temporary control so he could try to stake himself (which didn't work out). Constance dropped out of Zulo Form, reverting back to her little-girl "natural" state, not the little boy state, and curtseyed as well. Lord Lucien asks where they're from, and what's going on, at which time Celeste starts spillin' those beans. Telling Lord Lucien that she's from Madrid, as are the others, on a mission from Prince Maria Josephina, and even that she believes Maria Josephina is in over her head dealing with something, she herself is surprised when Lord Lucien replies that he would be surprised by that, given his previous experiences with Maria Josephina. After a pause, he begins talking to Quill, who's still frenzied, and...talks Quill out of his frenzy (I love Dominate 6). Then he asks how soon the coterie will be leaving, and goes back upstairs. Quill is released from the dozen or so tentacles wrapped around him, and put back on the ground by Celeste (through the hole in the wall, with roughness). The man on the stairs, who never gives his name, does turn out to be one of the people who cornered Celeste the night before and questioned her as a newcomer in the city, and listens to her story about the crab claws from the sky (leaving out that they had been to see the Setite named Suarez, aka the Gold Man).

Everyone goes to feed, and Constance goes to play, dismembering and murdering a family of five -very- quietly, just for kicks. Quill disappears into the sewers/catacombs, thinning the rat population and going in search of someone he's been looking for. Similarly, Colin went off in search of someone he's been looking for. Eventually, they found their respective goals, but it meant they were away from the rest of their companions when their companions decided that now was a very good time to leave Toledo. Making their way out of the city, they head to Village Four, four hours away, they get rooms in the only inn in town, and go to sleep, realizing that Canus has, yet again, disappeared.

Quill and Colin, on the other hand, spend another hour finding out some things about Toledo (perhaps very, very wisely), and decide to try and catch up to the coterie after they find out they've left (with Quill's horse). They end up getting most of the way and finding an abandoned barn in which to sleep (under lots and lots and lots of hay). Getting up the next night, they make it into town just on the heels of the rest of their coterie.

The next night, Rome, Constance, Aner and Celeste awaken in the inn to find that Canus hasn't returned like he normally would. Constance goes outside calling his name, and he comes running up the road, running slightly behind his normal schedule. Now's when Rome, Celeste and Aner decide they need to find out what the deal is with Canus. Constance, ever protective, makes sure an argument breaks out, so there's a lot of screaming and yelling. The innkeeper comes outside, an older man, and asks what's going on. Rome explains that the dog may be rabid, and he's going to find out. The innkeeper asks that they "find out" someplace other than infront of his place of business, and Rome tells him it's vitally important that this be done now. The innkeeper reminds them that they are guests at his inn, and should acquiesce to his request. Rome, enraged, tells the man to remember his station in life, and that Rome, as a knight, is his superior. "I am a knight," the man replies, "Retired from the field of battle -- someplace you yourself seem to have left as well." Rome stomps off, Constance gets Canus back, and Colin and Quill gallop and jog back into town to join back up with them. They travel on to Village Three, where Constance and Quill find a crypt (with a 't') about an hour or hour and a half before sunrise. With Canus inside with them, they seal the crypt, and act as nonchalant as possible while they wait for sunrise to find out just what Canus is. Canus, meanwhile, starts scratching at the door, wanting to be let out. Constance, it turns out, used Auspex 3 on the dog that night when he came running up the road, and saw Canus as a big Canus, going from two legs to four. That, and a botch on her second Auspex 3 attempt, had made her scream, making Rome and Celeste and Aner think Canus was attacking her, which is why they reacted as they did. So, they aren't just being randomly cruel after all.

Colin heads to the inn for a room, but Celeste, Aner and Rome go to the treeline within sight of the graveyard, and the crypt in question, and start digging holes to sleep in, with one eye on the crypt. Aner and Celeste decide to sleep rather than try to stay awake, but Rome throws a blanket over himself and peeks out, making a Willpower check to stay awake for a little while after sunrise. When there are no horrible screams in the first minutes of sunrise, he goes to sleep as well, with David working extra-hard to get him covered up.

In the crypt, on the other hand, Quill gets inside a coffin and peeks out of the cracked-open lid, while Constance hides behind her own, watching Canus scratch more and more at the door. Finally he stops scratching, there's a terrible ripping sound, and Canus' pelt flutters to the ground as an athletic African man rises out of Canus, curses in Latin, turns and gets into a coffin. Constance wakes him up, sleepy herself, and says, "Who are you?" "We'll discuss it tomorrow night," he replies, and goes back to sleep.

I was going to end it here. They wouldn't let me.

The next night, they awake inside the crypt, or out in the woods, or at the inn, and Constance finds that Canus -- or the man who was Canus -- is already awake and seated atop his coffin for the day. Quill stands there while Constance questions him, as the others knock on the door repeatedly. Eventually Rome and Aner get the crypt open, while the man -- named Atsu, tells the others that he is a vampire, and that Oro is his home. Two men came to town, told Atsu that they required his assistance, and that others would be arriving -- namely, the coterie of PCs. Atsu didn't like the two men who came before the PCs, so he didn't help them, and decided to study the PCs when they arrived, to assess how much more or less noble they might be. Now that Oro isn't the best place to live, given the amount of attention recently centered upon it, and that he's in this country to study others of his own kind anyway, he decides that he will travel with the coterie. He warns them, however, that he will not be in human form, and he will not appear as the same animal all the time, although he does promise at the very least always to be a bird. Then, disappearing into the woods, he leaves. A few minutes later, an owl alights atop the crypt, and the coterie sets off, strangely happy to have someone along for the express purpose of studying them.

Back to the top.


Reflections: Chapter Eight

The coterie travels most of the night, but arrives in Oro, headed towards Madrid, about three hours before the sun should rise. Colin and Hans break off to go investigate the local church to see if Father Dominic's come back, or what else might be up. At this hour of the night, the church is closed (although not locked -- in a village of 200 people, who's going to steal from a church?) and there are no candles or torches burning. Colin heads inside to investigate, finding only that there's a small prayer-memorial on the desk of Father Dominic, placed there assumedly by someone else. Everything else in the room is covered in dust, and untouched. Leaving Hans upstairs in a priest's robe and with strict instructions to allow no one downstairs with the story that Hans is a priest from elsewhere, come to visit Father Dominic, Colin heads down to the sub-sanctuary, where the pool of stagnant water, the clothes of the Nosferatu, the statues of angels with fangs, and the "alter" with convenient drainage slits at each corner. By now the pool of water is gone, with faint rust-colored stains all that's left on the floor. Otherwise, it is exactly the same, and Colin beds down for the night.

Aner reserves a room at the inn, but then slips out and back to the church, going into the sanctuary and knocking at Father Dominic's door. Hans answers, startled, but when he sees it's Aner he lets him into the storeroom in the back, from which Aner takes some jugs of wine and then he departs, back to the inn.

Constance and Quill, as usual, head for a crypt in the old graveyard beside the church, although Quill heads first to the tavern, posing as a scholarly traveller up perhaps for an early day, reading through the texts of Arab origins he "liberated" from the new "cathedral" in Toledo. Rome talks to Quill briefly about what he saw "on the other side," in Toledo, and then retires. Likewise, Celeste and Aner retire to their rooms, having instructed the innkeeper that David would come downstairs to deliver lunch up to their quarters.

Everyone goes to sleep, and awakens the next night in their respective temporary havens. Colin finds he wasn't disturbed, and Hans reports to him that people occasionally came and went, praying in the sanctuary, but otherwise he was undisturbed (he, too, caught some sleep while he had the chance). Colin picks up two statues of angels with fangs from downstairs, dumping one under Father Dominic's old bed and another in the pews of the sanctuary as he makes his way out to feed. Celeste heads down and out from her room, going to look for Constance and see about getting her horse ready. As she does so, she sees a knight in dark, cross-emblazoned armor ride into the town, dismount, and step through the doors of the tavern calling for a Celeste Castaneda. She goes in, identifies herself, is handed a letter, and then the courier knight mounts back up and rides away, in the direction of Toledo.

Aner gets up and feeds, putting some blood into one of the jugs of wine as he does so before topping himself off. Constance feeds, also, and Rome goes to church to confess to the Father (with a capital 'F,' he noted), finding a statue of an angel among the pews and snapping off its fangs just to be safe. An owl alights near Constance when she returns, and as everyone (except Quill) comes back together they set off for Nibelheim, now a ghost-town, with the knowledge that the town of Oro did dispatch some soldiers and found an ugly, smelly scene.

The group knows, of course, that Quill isn't with them, but they assume that he can catch up, or they can catch up to him, since his horse is also gone. In the meantime, Celeste tells everyone that they should remember that Celeste disappeared in Toledo after getting angry about something. Her friend from Toledo, Isabella, has taken her place. No one's really sure why Celeste has decided to take advantage of her drastically different appearance (at Constance's doing), but they go along with Celeste's request. About three miles out from Oro, they find Quill's horse, tethered to a tree on the side of the road. The group stops, and Constance volunteers to go "tracking" Quill, using Auspex 3 to touch plants and trees along the way for glimpses of where Quill went. Quill, a hundred yards or so off into the woods (where he's been hunting deer, not people, and wisely -- gosh, the gang's gotten a lot of blood out of the 800 or so people scattered between Toledo and Madrid, and that can't last much longer, can it?), can hear Constance coming with his Heightened Senses, so he scales a tree and hides, tying a length of rope into a noose, attaching it to a sturdy branch and looping it around his neck while he waits for Constance to wander up. Sure enough, she does, and (a) Quill fires off his Roiling Mist of Doom to make a rain of leaves descend upon her, then (b) Quill drops out of the tree (glad he made his Stamina+Fortitude check against snapping his own neck) like a corpse, making rasping choking noises. Constance utters a single high-pitched yelp, then just stands there, looks at him, shapes some quick claws out of her fingers, scales the tree as Quill gets out his knife to cut himself down, and gets to the rope as he does, severing it and dropping him to the ground. She doesn't seem particularly frightened or amused, but she -does- like the fact that from the top of a twenty-foot tree she can see further than she could before. As Quill makes his way back to the road, Constance finds a much taller tree and scales it rapidly, ascending fifty feet and gleefully discovering she can see Oro, three miles distant, as a collection of dim light on the horizon.

Celeste and Aner, by the way, decided to ride on after a few minutes, and wandered off, leaving Colin and Rome as the only two people waiting for Quill and Constance. When Quill steps out of the trees, after a distant yelp and otherwise silence, with blood on his shirt, Rome jumps to the conclusion that Quill diablerized or otherwise murdered Constance, and kicks him in the shoulder. Quill isn't hurt, but he is surprised, and steps around to swat the tail of Rome's horse, nearly throwing Rome when it jumps onto its hind legs. Colin stares at them blankly, and when Rome demands to know what's happened to Constance, Quill can only point, since "at missile range, in the treeline" is outside "slating range," as his player put it. Eventually Constance came out of the woods, and verified for Rome that the blood on Quill's cassock isn't her own, it's a -deer's-. Oddly, there's deer blood on her own shirt, as well, but Auspex 3 fails to reveal anything about how it got there. Everyone mounts back up, and off they go, towards Nibelheim.

Celeste and Aner arrive there a few minutes before everyone else, only to discover that what was left of Nibelheim has been burned flat to the ground. All the graves in the graveyard have been emptied of the corposes they contained, and there's a giant pile of ash, wood and bones in the center of town, with a giant cross sticking out of it. All buildings are gone. The church is knocked down. The graves are empty. Aner says, "Hey, here are some handy graves for us to sleep in," since nothing else, quite literally, is safe for them to sleep in for the coming day (they've got a couple of hours). Celeste prefers to sleep in the woods, in a hole she digs for herself, and that's where she heads. Everyone else arrives right about now, and makes the same discoveries. Aner, however, finds out that the soil excavated from the graves burns his hands rather badly, and once he's touched it he doesn't want to go into the graveyard. Quill discovers the same when examining the graveyard from a distance with Auspex 2 on and active -- the place has really been sanctified. Constance uses Auspex 3 on some bones in the former pyre, finding an image of a priest tossing into the fire one of the dessicated corpses Quill manufactured after the final conflict here a week or so ago. She also gets an image of one priest atop the pile of ashes and bones, planting the crucifix in it, while some others chant and sprinkle water around the burnt-out buildings in the background. Colin tells Hans to collect some of the dirt from the graves in a sack, Rome starts working on a hole, David and Hans start working on holes, and eventually everyone beds down for the day with their own grave. David and Hans take the daylight hours in shifts, to watch guard over their Kindred masters (the phrase "Kindred masters" makes me want to do a really bad Evil Overlord laugh; help me).

The next night, upon awakening, David and Hans report that a group of a handful of people -- a couple of priests and some traveling companions (the standard guard or two) came into town, looked around, and left again. Nothing had really been disturbed, so they made a cursory tour without even encountering David and Hans where they stood watch over the sleeping coterie. Everyone dusts off, mounts up, and they ride out to Madrid again, getting there by only an hour or two after midnight, with three or four hours before sunrise. Upon arriving on the outskirts of the city, with the walls ahead of them and the gates just yards away, standing open, the same five gate guards on-duty as when they left, Constance takes off at top speed, glad to at last have her haven in sight (she misses Victor). Atzu, in owl form, flies off after her, having promised to come and speak with Victor.

Colin heads into town, towards his tavern to let Jaycon know that he's returned, finding out that Maria Josephina has been in once or twice to ask whether Colin and the others have returned. Celeste, having changed her name and appearance, shows up at her own haven, much to the confusion of her ghouled maid, explaining her new identity and securing the maid's cooperation and planning the redecoration of her home to complete the ruse. In the course of the conversation, Celeste/Isabella's ghoul tells her that gossip among the ghouls is that Lydia, the Prince's new chief retainer, has been showing signs of something being wrong. Muttering to herself, deep circles under her eyes, complaining of not sleeping enough. Celeste warns her ghoul not to associate with the Prince's ghouls if at all possible. Meanwhile, Aner hangs out with the gate guards, handing them a...jug of wine. And telling them it's a present to them. Rome heads off to home, seeing David starts working on getting the house ready to be re-opened after their absence, and Colin talks to Victor just long enough to secure an appointment with him the following evening before heading to the Prince's house. Constance, glad to be home again, starts telling her sire all about her trip, but ends up ditching a lot of the story to tell her all about Pig Boy/Canus/Atzu. "You met a Laibon?" he asks, amazed. He knows what a Laibon is? Quill, in the meantime, gallops full-speed through Madrid, on his way to his monastery 2 hours north of the city, to speak with his rather gifted exorcist friend about the ghost which is now rather obviously accompanying him on his travels.

Back in Madrid, Colin arrives outside the Prince's home to hear a heated argument upstairs. He can hear Lydia begging, Maria Josephina speaking angrily, and then he knocks on the door. The argument upstairs ceases, and a door slams. Eventually, the front door opens, and it's the Prince herself, not Lydia, not some other ghoul, who answers it. Colin introduces himself as himself, since he, too, looks pretty much completely different now, and asks why the Prince needed to talk to him (having been around to his tavern once or twice, as Jaycon reported). She replies that she was curious to see whether he had returned yet, and did he have a report? Yes, he replies, and she invites him in to give it. He starts telling the story, and gives a no-holds-barred re-telling of the fight in Toledo with the giant crab legs, along with Rome's information about the CrabMaster. Maria Josephina, surprised at this report, asks whether everyone else has returned as well. And whether or not Colin is making some sort of joke. He tells her that yes, everyone else is back, and that no, he is not joking. He even creates an illusion, on the spot, of the giant crab legs coming down out of the sky, to Maria Josephina's surprise. Just then, there's another knock at the door.

The knock at the door is Rome's. Maria Josephine excuses herself to Colin, answers the door, welcomes Rome in, and asks him to give a report. When he, a level-headed Ventrue, corroborates Colin's tale, Maria Josephina is...surprised. When they tell her they had gone to see Suarez, she pauses a half-beat and asks who Suarez is. When they tell her that Suarez told them everything and they know the Prince really sent the Nosferatu -- who are now dead -- to investigate, and is using them to throw attention away from herself, the real investigation, or both, she asks them if they believed a Setite. They tell her no, but they are pretty sure the Nosferatu are dead, since they never encountered them. Maria Josephina tells them it's ridiculous to think she would have toyed with them like that, and points out that to further prove that the Setite lied, the Nosferatu are (a) alive, and (b) back in Madrid. She has a meeting with them the next evening, in fact, in Elysium, and Colin and Rome are more than welcome to be there to see the Nosferatu for themselves. She also mentions that it's interesting Millecande died (tragically, at the hands of a crazed Gangrel, they tell her) in Nibelheim -- there are rumors in the city that in a village not far away, namely Nibelheim, demons rose out of the earth and consumed everyone. And, that same night that they report Nibelheim was razed by crazed locals and a crazed Gangrel, Rosa began to act strangely. Rome asks the Prince if she would like him to observe Rosa for signs of what might have caused her to start acting weird, and she tells him that if he wishes, that would be most welcome information. When they tell her about Canus turning out to be Atzu, and having spied on Maria Josephina (or attempted to, when he snuffled around the house that once), and they describe how he takes the skin of an animal and thus takes that animal's form for a night, she asks, "You met a Laibon?" The Prince knows about Laibon? ...Okay, so maybe she does know what a Ravnos is. In the meantime, Colin and Rome's players absolutely amused the utter hell out of me. They were in perfect form that night, and even as Maria Josephina, super-serious Lasombra Prince, I couldn't keep from cracking up at least three times. Eventually she thanks them for their report and sees them to the door.

As they stand in the street and the door closes behind them, they realize that the ten or twelve people out this early are all looking...up. When they do the same, they see Lydia crouched in a bedroom window above, hear her say, "Please...no..." ...and Colin makes an apparition of -someone- ducking back inside as Lydia plunges from the window, "jumping" suicidally. Rome manages to get over and try to catch her, but it doesn't help -- her skull splits against the ground, and blood begins to pool underneath her. Rome knocks on the front door, tells the Prince her ghoul has fallen to her death, and Maria Josephina walks over to look down at the rapidly bleeding to death ghoul. She looks around as other random mortals stare at the scene, assesses the fact that it would break the pre-Masquerade to feed her ghoul blood right at the moment in hopes of saving her life, closes Lydia's fading eyes, and says to Colin, still in his priest robes, "Father, will you prepare my sister for burial? I must go inside to inform the rest of our family of this tragedy." Rome tells her that there was an assailant inside, and asks if he can search the place, to which she agrees. All he finds are an empty bedroom with an open window, a closed but unlocked bedroom with a sleeping ghoul, and a locked bedroom, ostensibly Maria Josephina's. Downstairs, he finds no one, as well, and tells Maria Josephina through the closed door of her study, over the sounds of sobbing from inside, that he will speak with her the next night.

Colin, meanwhile, gathers up the body, bundles it off to Victor's house (where Victor and Constance have just returned from splitting up to find the owl which is Atzu for about an hour), and gets Victor (who Constance says is much better at Auspex 3 than she is) to try to see who might have pushed Lydia out of the window. He studies her intently, feeling up and down her clothing and corpse, and reports that he sees a woman whom he doesn't know, who "is there and is not there," almost translucent in nature, pushing Lydia. Colin thanks him, tells Victor he'll see him the next night, and goes to dispose of the corpse.

With a massive "meanwhile..."

Aner, who had told Rosa he would investigate whether or not Millecande might have been framed for her connection to the Heresy, goes to Rosa's house to report his findings, ready to lie out the wazoo and tell her that Millecande was murdered by a Gangrel who was obviously wrapped up with Heretics, and that the Nosferatu were also wrapped up with Heretics, and that they framed her for it. He arrives outside her hovel -- she's very poor, and that's no secret, although she is very beautiful and a very gifted carver of dolls. When Aner knocks, Rosa answers -- but she looks bad. Her hair is all stringy and matted, dark circles are under her eyes, she has a bit of a "wild look" to her face. "Aner," she murmurs. "Hello." He asks if she's okay, and she says of course she is, inviting him in. He enters the front room, and sees the stacks of wood, both scraps and unhewn blocks, littering the place like any workshop. There's also a table, with a collection of dolls on it -- and they are exquisite. One is of a woman with long, dark hair and a dark dress. Another is of a man in a suit of armor. A third is of a slightly larger woman with dark hair and black clothing. There's a doll of two men, dressed in black, joined at the feet to form a base for both of them. There are two men in colorful clothing but with no faces, also joined at the feet. There's a doll of a beautiful woman, previously joined to someone else, but the base has been snapped in half. Aner tells Rosa his story, although Rosa frequently interrupts and tells him she already knows this or that (that Millecande is dead, that Nibelheim was destroyed in a riot). "Are these dolls of people you know?" asks Aner. "Yes," Rosa breathes, as she continues working on a doll in her hands, of a man in a robe with a cowl over his face. And, Aner realizes, so does he know the people on whom these dolls are based. There's Celeste, and Rome, and Maria Josephina, and the Nosferatu, the Lasombra brothers, Rosa herself...

"I feel like I should make some new dolls," Rosa says, all of a sudden. "Yes, I should make a doll of a very, very large man. A dark man." But she keeps working on the doll in her hands. And...there's no Millecande doll, no Julia doll. There's a doll of Father Dominic, and Pig Boy, and a little dog, but they're all set off to the side, as though about to be thrown away or worked into something else. Yes, the entire city's -- and entire Chronicle's -- major players are all sitting there on the table, carved in wood, and unbelievably lifelike. Rosa asks if Aner likes the doll of himself, and he replies that it's very good. "I feel like I should work more on that doll," she murmurs. "Yes. I should." When Aner tells Rosa that the Nosferatu are dead, she says she knows, she threw the dolls away, but then they came back, and she carved new ones. "How much would one of these cost," Aner asks, to which Rosa replies, "They are MY dolls!" He backs down quickly, and asks if he can watch her work on his doll. She tells him no, and keeps working on the doll of the man in the cowl instead. When Aner asks if he can come back the next night to watch her work, she tells him, "Perhaps." That's the best he can get out of her. She goes quiet for a moment, closes her eyes, waits. He watches. Then she opens her eyes, lifts a doll of Lydia, and tosses it into a bin of scraps. "Yes, I don't need that doll anymore," she whispers, and then goes back to carving. Aner eventually beats a hasty retreat, asking if Rosa's fed yet tonight. "Of course I went out," she says, like he's asked the stupidest question in the world, and then she sees him to the door, saying, "I think now you leave." On his way out, though, Aner realizes that the pattern in the top of the table at which Rosa's been working is a chess-board design, and that the dolls are all off to the side like pieces waiting to be put in place.

Meanwhile, Rome goes home, Colin disposes of the body, Constance listens to Victor and Atzu discuss the various clans and bloodlines of which they know, learning a lot in the several-hour conversation, Celeste writes letters of recommendation for "Isabella" from herself, Quill bunks down at the monastery, and Aner finds uneasy sleep after feeding again and dumping more blood into another jug of wine. The chapter closes with more than one person declaring they can't wait to play chess with and/or spy on and/or visit with Rosa, who has gone "completely fucking nutters," as I put it. An interesting night indeed.

Back to the top.


Face to Face: Chapter Nine

A new night dawns over the city of Madrid. Everyone rises from slumber in their various havens. Constance, remembering that Colin is supposed to drop by and speak to Victor tonight, tells Victor she's going to Elysium, then sneaks into Victor's study/office/library type room and hides behind the door, between the bookshelf and the wall, tucked away in a shadow with the help of a little Obfuscate. She overhears when the Prince's last remaining ghoul, Consuela, knocks at the door and Victor answers. Consuela is looking for Constance, on behalf of Maria Josephina, but Victor tells her that Constance has left for Elysium. She hears again, when someone comes to the door but she can't hear their conversation. Victor asks the other person to come back two hours before sunrise, and that they can talk then -- although Constance still doesn't know who is at the door, or what they want to talk about.

Colin, meanwhile, wakes up, feeds Jaycon and Hans, and goes upstairs to the tavern to get a little blood back for himself. He's planning on making it to Elysium within a half hour, so he beats a hasty path there, but not before Rome.

Rome, on the other hand, woke that night, skipped feeding, threw on his clothing, buckled on his armor, and went straight to Elysium. Finding it empty, he creeps through the garden and to the other side, onto the church's property, crouching down to listen for the entrance of the Nosferatu (who are coming to meet the Prince, as the Prince told him and Colin the night before). Sure enough, the Nosferatu are along shortly.

Colin engages in some not-so-subtle deception, based on his new appearance (thanks to Constance's Vicissitude). He tells the Nosferatu that he's a new vampire in town, of the Laibon, named Stephen. "Laibon?" they ask. "You are of entirely the wrong....complexion." Colin/Stephen acts surprised, and thanks them for telling him this. About then, Rome can see Maria Josephina coming from the cathedral, so he rises and waits for her at the church-side gate.

While this has gone on, Celeste/Isabella has awakened at home and fed her ghoul, the maid named Marie. Just as she's leaving, Aner knocks at her door and asks to come in. Coming inside, he tells Celeste/Isabella about the episode at Rosa's home, and says that he's afraid Rosa knows he diablerized Millecande and that he might leave town. Celeste/Isabella agrees, but Aner says he's still not sure what to do, and he'll think about it. He leaves, Celeste/Isabella leaves, and then she arrives at the Prince's home, finding Consuela there. She's directed to Elysium, and told she can speak with the Prince at the garden.

When Maria Josephina enters Elysium, Rome follows, and the Nosferatu greet Maria Josephina by nodding their heads. Colin had made Hans take the sacred earth from the graveyard in Nibelheim and rub it on Maria Josephina's throne, which results in a couple of false starts to sit down on the Prince's part before she says she feels like standing, and gets the heck away from The Throne With True Faith. (About this time, Celeste/Isabella arrives in Elysium.) The conversation picks up quickly as Maria Josephina asks the Nosferatu where they've been, and they respond that they've been "south, exploring enemy territory," meaning the Assamites & other clans which accompany the Almohads. The Prince is obviously suspicious, but doesn't immediately tell them she doesn't believe them. Instead she asks if they've been to Toledo, and they say no, they didn't make it that far. She nods, and asks if they were in Oro. They say they believe they "stopped through." Colin makes an illusion of a voice just behind their heads, saying in French, "How does it feel to lie to the Prince?" They snap around and ask one another if the other just said something, but otherwise fail to react. The Prince tells them that if they have nothing of interest to report from their "vacation," that is all, and begins studying the flowers in the garden. Celeste/Isabella approaches to "present herself as a new resident of the city," and gives Maria Josephina the letter of recommendation which Celeste wrote out for Isabella, her "sister." Maria Josephina reads the letter and reacts with happy surprise to hear that Lord Lucien now rules Madrid. "He's my sire," she confides. "You must be a very powerful man," Celeste/Isabella comments, to which Maria Josephina replies, after a pause, "Wherever he goes, he is Prince. Yes. He is a very powerful man." After indicating a desire to write to him, and realizing the Nosferatu are on their way out of Elysium, Maria Josphina turns and calls out to them, asking, "Are your pets...your rats...are they in good health? More than one of them surfaced near my home shortly after you left, aged, withered, and then died before my very eyes." The Nosferatu respond that their pets are perfectly healthy, and then start to leave again. Colin calls out, "Give my regards to Father Dominic," to which the Nosferatu respond they know no Father Dominic. Rome, standing by the outer gate, through which they must go to leave, pauses long enough to intimidate the one he'd beaten up severely in the past, saying that the next time the Prince asks them questions, they had better have answers. The Nosferatu seem unimpressed, and then leave. Colin follows after, finding the entrance into the sewers under the city which they use a few blocks away, and then goes to have his conversation with Victor.

Rome, investigating the Prince's throne, finds that it's -very- holy, and, with the help of some river water and a thick cloth, begins cleaning it very carefully.

Meanwhile, at Quill's monastery two hours northeast of the city...

Quill awakens and goes to speak to his associate, a monk over whom he has little if any control but who is aware of Quill's nature, and whom Quill knows to be a gifted exorcist. Still followed by what must be the ghost of Julia, Quill speaks to Mannuel about the possibility of interrogating Julia on his behalf. The priest agrees, and says he will travel to Madrid with Quill that night. They arrange to borrow one of the small carts at the monastery, since Quill is working on his death-sweat-belching Mortis 4 and can't -really- ride a horse without killing it. Off they go, as Quill works on consuming more of the apparently necromantic work he lifted from the private rooms of a priest in Toledo.

Colin arrives at Victor's house (thinking perhaps he saw Aner just up ahead of him?) and talks to Victor about the possibility of learning Obfuscate from him. They strike a deal, so that Colin will owe Victor "a medium-sized favor" for two levels of Obfuscate -- but not before Victor spots Constance spying on them, throws her out of the room, and she puts on a charade of going upstairs and slamming the door to her room then sneaking back downstairs. Colin, fully aware of the possibility that Constance will just listen from the other side of the door with heightened senses, creates an illusion of jangling bells just outside. Constance, thwarted again, spends a highly amusing few minutes discussing the possibility of using Vicissitude to stretch out her ear and slide it under the door, but decides that might make Victor mad. Their deal cut, they speak briefly of other things -- Victor comments that Rosa has come to find much stability of late, and that this is good. Victor looks at Colin just before dismissing him and says, "One question: did you meet any -other- Ravnos in Toledo?" "What's a Ravnos?" Colin asks. "Very well," Victor replies with a smile, "I'll see you to the door." In the process, Constance realizes that her Auspex could -almost- let her ignore the illusion Colin made -- and thus the race is on between Colin and Constance to see who can accumulate the higher level of their chosen Discipline.

Celeste/Isabella takes her time after being in Elysium to go to Rosa's hovel, finding exactly what Aner described. She approaches Rosa as Celeste's sister, Isabella, and says she wants to commission a chess set. Rosa tells her it will be "a long time" before she can work on anything other than the dolls she's carving. Celeste/Isabella can see some paintings on the wall -- one of Millecande which inspires love, one of Rosa which inspires nothing, one of a handsome man that inspires fear -- and asks if Rosa did them. "I only do these dolls now," Rosa replies. Their conversation is brief, but Celeste/Isabella gets full confirmation of everything Aner reported, and departs for home to find that Marie has started the redecoration, and begins planning a party for all the Kindred of Madrid, during which time she will, no doubt, manipulate everyone she can.

Not long after Celeste/Isabella leaves, Rome knocks on Rosa's door, and finds all the same things. When asking about the doll Rosa's carving -- the man in a dark robe with a cowel over his face, the man which Rome recognizes as the CrabMaster -- Rosa tells him that he has "a match," but she can't find his match. "I don't -want- to find his match. He hates everyone. He wants to kill everyone." She goes on to say that he doesn't want to kill her, but she doesn't know why he doesn't. "You've looked in his mirror!" she tells Rome, exhasperated by her own inability to communicate what she's thinking. Eventually Rome decides to leave, but not before offering to watch out for Rosa. "No! Don't stand outside my door," she tells him. He promises he won't, but she makes him promise repeatedly before he leaves. No sooner is he out the door, though, than he heads across the street and knocks on the door of the opposing hovel. A tremendously amusing scene ensues, when he offers the dirty old woman who answers a single gold coin for her hovel. "You want this house? Why?" Eventually they strike a deal, and Rome purchases the home on the agreement the old woman will be gone the next night. Now, time to find a mercenary he can trust enough to watch Rosa's house from across the street, discreetly.

Quill arrives in town, finally, the wagon having slowed down his progress tremendously. He speaks with the priest along the way about the possibility of the priest helping him with his necromantic ritual he's reading about. "You do this at the risk of your immortal soul. I will not attend," Mannuel replies. They agree to give Mannuel's methods a try, and if they don't work, to try Quill's. Quill then heads for the only safe inn he knows about -- Colin's. Colin is introduced, and then Quill heads out into the sewers upon hearing about the Nosferatu, bent on "killing every rat in this city," then trying to break & enter where he can to gather supplies for his ritual. He gets some of the things he needs, and while Colin waits, Constance makes herself into a young woman via Vicissitude and visits Colin's tavern, just visiting and relishing her ability to hide completely (she had told Victor, after he had given her a brief lesson in how one must sometimes appear honest in order to be successfully deceptive, that she was going out -- Victor had asked her to find Aner if she could and let him know that he would be very busy that night, and to come again another night rather than later that same night, as he had asked to do). Colin has a little fun with Animalism, summoning some bats and telling them to go in search of Aner. They return later, unable to find him anywhere. Quill surfaces again, and goes to the Prince's home to ask if he can bring over a priest who might be able to speak with Julia. Maria Josephina tells Quill that she doesn't believe in ghosts, and would very much like the opportunity to observe this. Quill, knowing the priest has some version of something like Faith, says he doesn't think it's such a good idea, but she insists, and he finally agrees. It's to take place a few nights from then, in Maria Josephina's own home.

Constance, after having her fun at Colin's (which consisted of being hit on repeatedly by drunk men), goes to the Prince's house as well and tries to cut a deal: Constance will become the new person who provides Auspex for the Prince, and in return the Prince will tell her secrets. The Prince asks what sort of secrets, and Constance replies, "Things I don't know, like what the Laibon are, and things like that." The Prince agrees, and tells her to meet her in Elysium in two nights. Another deal struck in the city, Constance goes back home and tells Victor, which makes Victor very happy. He tells Constance a bedtime story, and then goes to his own room for the day.

Rome finds someone who can watch Rosa's house from the hovel across the street, and pays him sufficiently to guarantee that he won't bother Rosa while he watches her haven.

Everyone settles back into bed for another day, at the conclusion of the chapter, having begun some machination of their own to, perhaps, get to the bottom of all this. And so another chapter ends.

Back to the top.


Yet another game session preceded by Bascha making hamburger patties and me firing up the charcoal grill. This time I didn't just set meat on fire over too-warm coals, like last time, which was nice.

Enter Sandman: Chapter Ten

And yet again, a new night dawns on the city of Madrid, and everyone rises from their respective slumbers. It had been looking to be a sort of a slow night, since both Mike (Quill) and Kat (Celeste) were out of town or otherwise occupied, but Kat ended up being able to be there, and Quill ended up spending the night preparing for his necromantic ritual. Yeah. That.

At any rate, Rome awoke in his haven, looked forlornly at his piled up armor, his boots cast hurriedly aside, wished his squire wasn't off watching Rosa's house, and then started hunting for his clothes. Colin, for his part, woke up, remembered he'd blown huge quantities of blood to redecorate his haven with his new, improved Chimerstry, and went out in search of blood (blood! blood for the blood god! er...). Constance, everyone's favorite child-Malk with Vicissitude 4, awoke in her room in Victor's house and ran downstairs after getting dressed to tell him that she was going out to feed unless he had a lesson to give her. He told her that her lesson for the night was to watch Elysium, and see what went on. After all, she's the Prince's new Auspex-in-a-box. Celeste/Isabella awoke as well, fed Marie, her maid, and got the latest word on her house's redecoration. The word was that Marie's almost purchased everything she needs to completely redecorate. "Good," Celeste/Isabella replies, "Because we're having a party tomorrow night." Marie nearly faints with surprise, babbling that she doesn't have time to get everything ready, so Celeste/Isabella hands her a bag of money and says, "Go hire some help." Remembering that part of the duty of this help is going to be putting mirrors all over the house so Celeste/Isabella can see around corners surreptitiously and the like, and that the "help" is more than likely to realize that she isn't casting a shadow, she spikes a bottle of wine with some blood and tells Marie to make sure that the "help" drinks it when they get back. They're going to be permanent help. Allaying potential jealousy from her blood bound servant, she assures Marie that the maid herself will be chief among her retainers, and that Marie will have total run of the help. Marie is thrilled beyond belief, and dashes off to find women who are alone in the world and looking for steady work.

Constance, in her time to feed, goes out and notices some local watchmen knocking at Millecande's long-empty house. They go inside, and so does she -- making full use of Obfuscate. They search the house, then comment that Aner must have been right, and leave. Constance makes a search of her own, digging out Millecande's journal and slipping it into a pocket before she leaves.

Rome decides tonight is a good night to go feed, since he's feeling a bit peckish, and "hands out bread to the poor children," escorting four of them off into an alleyway for brief moments to get a blood point out of each of them. The little sicko. Once done, he heads to Colin's tavern, chatting with him there about the fact that they have zero leads in the case at hand, and that all he really knows is that Rosa's gone completely bonkers. "Yes," Colin replies, "Victor says she's getting much better lately." The little sicko. Colin decides that he really should go talk to Rosa, particularly after Rome tells him that he's hired a man to watch Rosa's house from the hovel across the "street" (more like an alley, but hey). So, off the Ravnos goes to Rosa's house. Once in sight, he creates an illusion of Rosa throwing open her door, grabbing her hair, screaming, cackling, and running off down the street. Sure enough, the mercenary Rome had hired the night before is one the job, and he comes tearing out of the house he's inhabiting in his work, chasing after the illusion as it disappears around a corner. Colin smiles to himself, realizing someone else is also watching Rosa's house (as he noticed David, Rome's squire, inside the observation house as well), waves to them, and goes up to knock on Rosa's door. Initially there's no response, but when he turns around to go knock on the door of the other house, where David is watching, he sees Rosa standing right behind him. Her cheeks are plump and rosy, her hair isn't stringy, there are no huge circles under her eyes. "I can't answer my door because I'm not inside," she murmurs. "Well," Colin replies, "If you went inside, I could knock again, and then you could answer it." "Yes," she agrees, "But I could also just ask you to come inside right now, and then you wouldn't have to knock?" "That would save us both," Colin says, "A lot of trouble." "Okay," Rosa agrees, "Would you like to come in?" "Certainly," grins the Ravnos. As Josh (Rome) said at the time, When the Insane Meet the Confused.

In they both go, and Colin sees the chess table with the dolls in everyone's likenesses spread out on it. Rosa sits down, and Colin joins her, sitting down in the chair so many others have since occupied. The arrangement is this:

---------------------------
| A |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_| B |
|___|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|___|
|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|   |_|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_| E |_|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|___|_|_|_|_|_|_|
|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
|   |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|   |
| D |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_| C |
---------------------------

Colin takes an especial interest in the dolls which match his current likeness and his past likeness. Leaning very close, he says, "My goodness, that's quite a good likeness." Using Chimerstry, he makes the doll seem to have responded with, "No it's not!" Rosa is a bit startled, but says, "That didn't really happen. I know it didn't." A bit of a philosophical discussion ensues, along the lines of 'if something didn't really happen, can it be perceived,' and then Rosa says she knows it happened, but she also knows it didn't happen, and she doesn't know why, and that's that. Picking up the doll of the Crabmaster and starting to work on it, again, Rosa abruptly goes seriously pale, the bags reappear under her eyes, and her hands become significantly more nimble. Colin can't help but notice this, although he doesn't comment. Instead he mentions the dolls of the Nosferatu, commenting that he had thought they were dead. "Yes, they went away," Rosa says, "But then I had to make new dolls for them." The topic turns towards Millecande, eventually, and Rosa says, "You know what Aner did to her. He did a bad thing to her. But I don't have to do anything about him. He hates Aner for doing the bad thing to Millecande." She indicates the CrabMaster. "Yes, well, he doesn't like what anyone does, Colin replies. "I'm afraid of him. He knows I know