Our Story So
Far


Synopses, by Chapter:

Useful information:


A quick note for the historically impaired -- or perhaps blessed. The history of the treatment of mental illness in our culture is not a pretty one. The mind is not something we understand very well, but pride ourselves on possessing. When we see it go wrong for someone else, we can't help but be frightened that the same might happen to us. This fear, in large part, as well as a total lack of comprehension of how the mind works, has led us down some dark and disgusting paths when it comes to treating insanity. While madness may be no enjoyable or enviable state of being itself, it's nothing compared to some of the ways we've thought we could make people better. The therapies the PCs experienced in Chapter One -- fever therapy, hydrotherapy, electroshock therapy and even focal infection theory applied through crude surgical means -- are real therapies which were liberally and enthusiastically administered, often in combination with one another, during the era of "moral management" of the insane. The idea was that through a confluence of "moral training" and "scientific exploration," psychologists and psychotherapists could find ways to cure the body of the illness which led to the illness of the mind, and turn the mind itself into something admirable in the end. Patients were subjected to physical tortures, mutilations, ongoing states of disease and illness, all while being told they were immoral, filthy, unworthy, dangerous and worthless. We were treating our cattle far better at the time, in the slaughterhouses of Chicago, than we were treating our fellow human beings in the halls of our asylums and sanitariums in the first half of the 20th century. It fits rather well with the mood of the World of Darkness -- but we should remember, these things are not fictitious like the supernaturals of the story. The purely human element of suffering represented by these therapies was very, very real.

Let's hope this is one lesson we managed to learn from history.


We Gotta Get Outta This Place: Chapter One

We gotta get out of this place,
If it's the last thing we ever do,
We gotta get out of this place,
There's gotta be a better life for me and you.
--Blue Oyster Cult

The year is 1942. It is April, and America is at war. 850 years have passed since the events of Madrid, and while the coterie has bumped into one another over time, few of them are actively in touch with one another. They live in different cities, with different goals, filling different roles. But they have a common destiny.

Rome, now calling himself Roman Chapel, is an archon of Clan Ventrue. He resides in Northern Virginia, and is a shipping magnate, awash in wealth it would be difficult to deplete. On a night in April, however, he gets a phone call from Marcus Vitel, Prince of Washington, DC, and is told that there are matters dealing with the Sabbat to which Rome must attend. It's unusual that a Prince would call on an archon rather than the other way around, but Rome is given a contact phone number to call upon arriving in the town of Bennington, Vermont, and so off he goes in his car, being driven north on Highway 1.

Constance, now living as an Independent in the San Antonio area, wakes from a dream the same night. The dream is hazy, but it involves familiar faces from the past, and it drives her to go to this place, Bennington, Vermont. She's not sure why, but she simply has to get there. She leaves word with an anarch friend named Mark, and off she travels, headed northeast.

Celeste now goes by the name of Isabella, again, serving as a political advisor to the Prince of Raleigh, North Carolina. He's a small-fry Ventrue named Bob, who has allowed Celeste/Isabella enough power to effectively run things herself. She is the power behind the throne. Bob calls on her the same night, telling her he's been ordered by superiors to send someone to Bennington, Vermont, and that he's chosen her to go.

Aner, in the meantime, is acting as Celeste/Isabella's bodyguard in Raleigh, and of course he decides to go with her. Their histories are intertwined too far already, and he doesn't mind going, anyway. If nothing else, it might be some new things to see.

Quill sits, the same night, at the top of his tower in Port au Prince, Haiti. He's not scheduled to meet with any members of his cabal of supernatural sorcery, the Second Shadow, but one of the voodon priestesses involved in it staggers through the door and sets herself in a chair, asking for a cup of tea. She tells him over the course of her drink that she's had a very troubling dream, about Quill and figures from his past, and that he has to leave right away. He calls on his ghouls to begin preparing his private ship, and he departs immediately for Bennington, Vermont.

Colin, last but certainly not least, sits in Elysium in Monterrey, Mexico, where he fills the role of Malkavian primogen. While he's stretched out on his side of the council table, the Prince -- a Toreador named Elysse -- enters. The other primogen rise to greet her from their various chairs around the room, and begin to gather at the table, as Elysse looks a bit flustered, and this is most unusual. She tells them that there's trouble with the Sabbat in Bennington, Vermont, and that she must send someone to join a group effort there on behalf of the Camarilla. All eyes turn to the supposed kook, and Colin is unanimously elected to serve his city and sect. Soon enough, he's on a train headed for New England.

Each of them arrives in their own time, depending on distance and method of transit, and each has the same experience: they go to a bed and breakfast or hotel in this small, rural town, get a room, try to call their contact, and get no answer. Then they go to sleep.

That was April, 1942.

The next night, when they awake, they're dressed in hospital whites, as though they are patients. They're in strange rooms. Their windows are painted over. Their furniture is bolted down. There are no sharp objects or potential weapons, although there are pencils and paper in the top drawer of the desk in each of their rooms. Celeste and Colin, in their own rooms, both try scratching the pencil across the top sheet, to see if they'd written anything before. They have. The date reads "unknown," and the messages look to be diary entries, revolving around the theme of, "What am I doing here? How do I escape?"

At each of their doors, there's a knock, and a voice that says, "Time for your meal," before a tiny door within their bedroom doors opens, and a hand passes through a glass full of a thick, dark red liquid that smells unnaturally sweet, like cough syrup. They each, in their own ways, refuse the drink -- some try taking the hand off the arm it's attached to. In each case, the drinks are spilled or disposed of or taken away, and the hands disappear before another knock comes. In the meantime, Rome rips open his mattress to remove some springs and straighten them. Quill perches above the door of his own room. Constance stands in hers, confused and afraid. Aner adopts "the thorazine shuffle" in his room. Celeste just gets angry, in hers, but otherwise doesn't try to prepare to fight -- yet. Colin sits down on his bed, and waits.

Each of their doors open, and through various cajoleries and whatnot, an orderly convinces them to come out into the hallway. That's when they see each other -- all dressed the same, all followed by an orderly who holds a plastic tube with buttons on it in their hands. That's also when their orderlies make a few comments like, "You tried that yesterday, sir, and it didn't work then, either," to their various excuses, tricks and refusals to cooperate. Yesterday, too? How many yesterdays have their been, anyway? They are directed, in a vague line, towards the end of the hallway, where an elevator sits. Along the way, though, they notice that in the exact middle of the hallway, and in the doorway leading into the alcove where the elevator sits, they feel a flash of hunger (speaking of blood, it seems they hold infinitely less of it than they used to, but they aren't hungry -- they only have four blood points worth of blood in their systems, but don't feel like they want any more).

Oh, one more thing -- none of their Disciplines work. And they can't pump blood into their physical Attributes.

As they make their way down to the elevator, each trying to figure out in silence what's going on and what the others are doing here, Colin refuses to get in the elevator, and his orderly presses a series of buttons on his plastic wand; Colin's body stands, and enters a stairwell beside the elevator, without Colin's control. The others climb into the elevator one at a time and ride down with their orderlies, being ushered into a big foyer or entrance hall, with double doors at the far end that obviously lead outside. There are tables and sofas, here, and others in similar hospital whites are milling around, with a dozen or so orderlies -- each armed with plastic wands -- standing against the walls, watching everyone.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Rome waits until he's in the doorway, and feels the flash of hunger again. Spinning around on his orderly (who stands about six feet away) he tries to use Presence 2, Dread Gaze -- and it works. The orderly, cowed, takes a few steps backwards. Then Rome fires his Celerity, and leaps out of the doorway onto his orderly. The problem is, as soon as he's out of the doorway, his Celerity cuts off and he nearly falls on his face before managing to tackle the orderly and sink his teeth in -- for some reason, those still work. Interesting.

As he's draining blood, another orderly comes running up the stairs, and the two of them manage to get Rome under control. Down he goes, where the others are.

A giant sign over the door reads: "O'Leary's Asylum for the Mentally Addled."

There's a calendar on the wall. It's open to October, 1943.

There's been a year and a half of yesterdays.

As they mill around in the foyer, they start realizing that there are a handful of other inmates or patients who have fangs, are deathly pale, and generally look terrified. Colin walks around talking quietly in German, and a woman turns to him as she recognizes the language. He gives her a good, hard look, and realizes...it's Rosa. From Madrid. 850 years before.

"You..." she mumbles. "You remember my dolls?"
"Yes," he says, sitting down with her.
"That has been a long time ago."
"Yes."
"Why are you here?" Rosa manages to mumble, in her stupor.
"I don't know," Colin replies.
"I think Joseph told me to come here," she says, whispering now. Joseph. The "Lasombra" member of the Inconnu who visited Rosa and Maria Josephina 850 years ago.

They can tell some of the other patients -- in what is, apparently, an Asylum -- are very mortal, except for one who has sort of pointed ears, beautiful (if now wasted) features, and a sharp nose. They're all borderline catatonic, as well, since no one responds to the others with fangs, or the shirt which Rome is still wearing, stained dark red with blood from the orderly he tried to drain.

A door opens on one side of the room, and three doctors stride through, one wearing a pair of reflective sunglasses. He claps his hands, and says, "Good morning, everyone." The windows high on the wall indicate it is nothing even resembling morning, except to a vampire. "Good morning," he says again. "We'll be dividing up into our group work now. Rosa, you will go to hydrotherapy." The doctor looks at a clipboard, and goes on, saying, "Colin and Quill, you will go to focal infection therapy. Rome and Constance, you will go to fever therapy. Aner and Celeste, you will go to electroshock therapy." A few other patients visibly twitch at the name of each "therapy." The doctor is making no bones about what will be done. "Everyone else," he says, voice ringing out across the large room, "Will go to group discussion and physical activity time." He snaps his fingers, and each PC's orderly steps forward to escort them back to the elevator. Down they go, to the basement.

Storyteller's note: I never should have been allowed to play John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles.

Colin and Quill are taken into a room, in the basement, by their orderlies. The chief doctor accompanies them, and as they're laid down on stretchers and strapped in, the doctor begins examining various crude tools of surgery. "Quill is already familiar with this procedure," he says to begin with, "But it is new for you, Colin. I will explain. What makes you believe you are a hideous creature you call a vampire is in fact, perhaps, an infection in one of your organs. We must remove that infection, so that it can cease to effect your brain. You understand, yes?" Colin makes some smalltalk to show he's not scared, and then the doctor...simply starts cutting. No anesthetic, but oddly, they feel no pain. Quill had noticed stitches in his side earlier, and that he was missing his liver and a kidney. The doctor takes Quill's other kidney -- a dessicated, atrophied little lump of undead flesh -- and part of his left lung, stitching it back shut haphazardly. There is no way a sane doctor could perform surgery in these conditions -- the room is filthy, no anesthetic, just haphazardly cutting them open and removing organs and stitching them shut again. Then he cuts open Colin, takes his kidneys and liver, and puts all the material in individual jars of some clear liquid that smells strongly of chemicals. Upon doing so, he has the orderlies attach IV bags to the two "patients," which seem to be filled with blood. As a tiny pump on the bag starts pushing the fluid into their undead (and thus inactive) blood streams, they realize they're being given blood. "Heal yourself," the doctor says. They just look at him. Colin and Quill raise the point that healing themselves would prove that they are the creatures, and that doing so would undo their supposed therapy, wouldn't it? The doctor grows annoyed, and admonishes them to heal or they won't be released. They shrug and try, realizing they can't burn the blood for it. The doctor tells the orderlies to bring "the healing blankets," and these heavy patches of fabric are laid over them. Suddenly, they can heal themselves. Odd.

In another room, the female of the trio of doctors from upstairs joins Rome and Constance in the fever therapy room. Fever Therapy, she tells them, is the theory that by introducing cocktails of viral infections into the bloodstream of a deranged patient, doctors hope to burn away the madness that got them put in the asylum in the first place. A fever, she tells them, purifies the body of that which makes it sick. The first injection, she says, holding aloft a hypodermic needle full of what looks to be blood, will be typhoid. Over the course of their hour or so of "therapy," she injects them with typhoid and malaria. As vampires, they are particularly susceptible to the contents of any blood given to them, and they've just been given a lot of very diseased blood. The effects are quick -- they both immediately start sweating blood, feeling nauseous, losing consciousness. Strapped into their chairs as they are, they can simply sit there and suffer while the doctor writes notes on a clipboard about their changing conditions. About an hour later, the effects seem to fade, and the doctor releases them from their chairs.

Finally, down the hall in yet another room in the basement, Aner and Celeste are strapped unceremoniously into chairs with metal bands over their wrists and ankles, and a wire is put in their mouth, and a metal cap over their heads. The last of the three doctors from upstairs walks in, nods, and says, "You may feel a tingling sensation." With that, he throws a switch. The rest you can figure out for yourself. When it's over with, they've both been jolted thoroughly, and they can smell burning hair and flesh. Yum. They're given IV bags, as well, and told to heal themselves.

After this bizarre battery of "treatments," they're led back up to the elevator, and taken back up to the first floor, where they're sat down at a table in the foyer for "group therapy," their orderlies tell them. They're still only getting flashes of hunger in doorways or the middles of halls, and their orderlies are still "driving" them when they get out of line. The last two to come up are Colin and Quill, escorted by their orderlies. Quill, standing behind Colin's orderly and infront of his own, grabs Colin's orderly when the doors open. Colin takes the opportunity to step into the doorway to the stairwell he came down earlier -- and his Disciplines come alive. He is -ravenously- hungry, and grabs his orderly and begins to feed. Quill and his own orderly get in a shoving match, before Quill starts to feed as well. His Disciplines still aren't working yet -- for whatever reason, they will ONLY work when one is standing directly in a doorway between walls. But Quill gets a good enough grip on his orderly to sink his teeth in, and start feeding. Black ichor -- very much like the stuff in the glasses they were given upon waking -- starts to shoot, literally, from every orifice. Yum. When the orderlies for the other four, standing around their "group therapy" table in the foyer, realize the commotion and start raising their plastic tubes with buttons (think remote controls here, folks), Colin pauses in his feeding long enough to see if his Chimerstry 6 is still active. It is. Exactly eight orderlies suddenly believe that the remote controls in their hands have exploded and taken their arms off. They start screaming and flailing, and all hell breaks loose.

To make a longish story short, Colin drains his orderly, and hears the doctors from downstairs come running up the stairwell from the basement, behind him. The orderlies in the foyer seem occupied with their own perceived traumas, and Rome, Constance, Celeste and Aner all start grabbing orderlies and trying to feed. When Colin's Obfuscate doesn't work on the lead doctor, and neither does his Chimerstry, he steps out of the way and lets Quill get in the doorway, firing off his high-level Mortis combat powers. No sooner than he does this, the doctor looks at Quill -- through his trademark reflective shades -- and waves shoot out to encompass Quill's form. He starts to spew blood rhythmically from every hole he's made in himself (in an earlier attempt to leak out the ichor sitting in his veins), his heart starts pumping, and he gasps for breath. He, a 900 year old Cappodocian, one of the last of his kind, is alive. Diving down the stairs in a half-attach, half-fall, he manages to impact with the doctor, gnawing on the doctor's glasses before knocking them off altogether. He's starting to get weak -- he's losing blood fast -- and the doctor pounds on his skull for a round before simply disappearing out from under Quill altogether.

Meanwhile, Rome and Aner grab a drained orderly and use him as a battering ram to knock open the double doors (which are far harder to open than they expected). Celeste and Constance are busy feeding, black ichor shooting from them as well, as it's being replaced by real blood, and Rome, Aner and Celeste go running out the front doors, the sounds of screams filling their ears from behind as Colin's Chimerstry -- from the doorway again -- makes a dozen demons pop out of the table and seem to fall on the orderlies (all of whom still believe their arms have been blown off, I might add). Quill drags himself up the staircase on his hands, and Colin and Celeste stick around just long enough to haul him up into the air and carry him, running full-tilt, from the building. As the six of them barrel into the night, down the front drive of the asylum, they hear a few shots ring out from up ahead, everyone fires off their Celerity to aid in the escape...

And all goes dark as the world shrinks to a pin-head of light infront of them, the sound of rushing wind fills their ears, and they realize they are in a different time, and a different place...

Flashback One begins.

Back to the top.


Help Myself: Chapter Two

Chapter Two begins as the group finds themselves someplace entirely different from where they'd originally thought themselves to be: instead of running down the front drive of an asylum in Vermont, they're sitting in various homes and such in Port au Prince, Haiti. The year is 1702, and Port au Prince is a city of squalor marked by one very tiny section of what we would call "downtown," in which the very few whites and other Europeans live. Otherwise, as far as the eye can see, it's little more than a collection of shanties lined by dirt track streets and open sewers sloughing half-heartedly towards the port.

Colin sits in his tower, headquarters of Second Shadow, when a servant informs him he has a guest: a young woman identifying herself as Constance. Sure enough, Constance is here, come to Haiti in search of an ally. Why does she need a friend? She's being hunted, and she doesn't know by what or whom. Likewise, Colin arrives, new in town and having heard that an ancient vampire of disturbing powers lives in the city and calls himself Quill.

As Quill and Constance wander downstairs to the laboratory to talk over Constance's problems while Quill shows her his latest work (trying to create a mega-zombie by fusing together several corpses and animating the mish-mash as a single entity), a bird alights on Quill's shoulder and he hears the familiar voice of Frederick von Huson (temporarily occupied by Rome -- the vampire, not the city) tell him that a meeting of the Shadow is called this evening, that he might deliver gifts from his clan to all who have made his acquaintance.

Elsewhere in the city of Port au Prince, a voudon priestess named Julietta DuBois (whom Celeste is seeing through) hears the same message from a bird that flaps in the window of the shack she calls home, and an Egyptian scholar named Asmon Tekmet (Aner) receives an identical invitation in his home. They begin making their ways to the tower which the Shadow uses as its base of operations, as well.

Meanwhile, Frederick sits in his townhouse, wondering what these gifts from Clan Tremere should be. Odd. He is, after all, the Tremere in Haiti, sent to feel the place out for supernatural power-structures and waiting for the day when the Clan sees fit to send orders that he establish their first Chantry on the island.

Once everyone makes their way there, Asmon takes a particular interest in the mass-zombie which Constance and Quill have put together, and Colin stands upstairs speaking to Julietta. Frederick is taken downstairs by one of the servants while Asmon manages to talk a ghost into inhabiting the massive zombie that Constance has flesh-crafted together while Quill studied her work. As it starts to move about, Frederick comes through the door and (he's been a little paranoid lately anyway) recognizes what looks, as far as he can tell, like a Tzimisce vozhd, or war-ghoul, coming to life infront of him. Terrified, he runs upstairs while Quill goes after him to explain that it's not a vozhd and this isn't a Sabbat invasion. Colin confuses things a little by using Chimerstry to make it seem as though an Obtenebration tentacle has just dropped out of the back of his pants, and as things generally go downhill from here, they eventually all end up at Frederick's townhouse, where he sits within Movement of the Mind of his various magickal stakes and tools while the others assure him that nothing is horribly wrong. (One of the terribly amusing bits is when the matronly Juliette waves says to Colin and Frederick, "You boys stop bickering in here, and if I have to wave a wooden spoon at the two of you, woe betide you both!")

After Frederick/Rome is calmed down a bit, he and the others make their way to the docks. Colin produces a chimerical Quill which walks with them while Quill pops Obfuscate and drops back, charging up his various powers because damned if he isn't suspicious of a boatload of gifts from Clan Tremere, which come with the requirement that they get on the boat in order to receive their gifts.

Once everyone is there, the Captain of the ship and his crew appear to be heavily, heavily Dominated (understandably), and mechanically start pushing big crates out of the hold and scooting them towards their intended recipients: Julietta/Celeste, Asmon/Aner, Frederick/Rome, Quill...and there's a crate for Constance, and a crate for Colin. The two of them look around and wonder who in Clan Tremere could possibly know that they were here in Haiti, given that they'd arrived a few nights ago, at most, and want to give them gifts. Danger Senses start to go haywire, and someone opens a crate -- which promptly explodes in a ball of flame, setting off a chain reaction. Constance, Frederick, Asmon and Juliette are all thrown from the ship, into the water, blazing. Colin manages to get down the ramp and back onto the dock before the explosion, so he's okay, as is Quill (who was Obfuscated and hanging back, anyway).

In the ensuing moments, Constance walks to shore on the bottom of the port, Quill dives in to save Frederick, Asmon manages to swim to shore, and Juliette takes off swimming for her hovel, without a thought for the safety of the others. Colin runs up the street to grab some fast food for those who've just been burned and, simultaneously, all the other crates on the deck, and apparently more found below deck, explode in quick succession, cracking the ship (sent from Clan Tremere, remember) in half and sinking it in a matter of minutes. As everyone anywhere near the port comes running out of their houses at the noise, Colin creates illusions of ghosts and other spirits screaming up the streets, terrifying the mob back into their homes and out of view of the vampires grabbing prey left and right and trying to heal their wounds and sate their hunger as the fear starts to leave them.

Frederick, carried back to his townhome by Quill and Colin, swears he doesn't know why Clan Tremere would send everyone a crate of...whatever that stuff was, and that he'll never be loyal to his clan again. ("This," his player says, "Is how Anarchs are made, mind you.") Quill, that same night, dives under the water of the port (where the top mast of the ship still stands above water and the nearby mortals are afraid to approach because of the ghosts seen zooming and swooping up the streets at the time of the accident), and finds the body of the captain (or what's left of it). Using Auspex on an unexploded crate at the bottom of the waters (convenient, how vampires can just walk around underwater), he sees an image of someone in a black cloak or robe, speaking intently and staring into the captain's eyes, while the crew loads crates into the ship's hold. He recognizes the docks on which they're standing, too -- these aren't any German docks, they're a dock in Portugal, where Quill originally founded Second Shadow. While the others ruminate about this information (as time gets a bit herky jerky), everything goes black, the world collapses into a pinpoint of light ahead of them, and suddenly everyone is their normal self, running down the front drive of an asylum. Only, everyone (including those who weren't actually in Haiti in 1702, meaning Rome, Celeste and Aner) remembers the flashback -- those three remember it from the perspective of their players' TPC's for the flashback.

Weird.

The three guards at the gate don't stand a chance, and get taken down with a minimum of effort. Everyone shoves the gates open, and Celeste (wondering why she remembers having been a mortal voudon practitioner in Haiti 240 years before) seals the lock shut with her nifty Obtenebration 6 power (a modified version of a Shintai power from Kindred of the East).

As they start to bolt from the front gates of the asylum, they hear police sirens in the distance, and look out across what appears to be a small, New England town. Celeste and Aner quickly make for a car, to break into and hotwire it. Constance runs off down the street in search of a temporary haven, and Quill heads towards the middle of town (Rome had pointed out the domed & towered Town Hall and said, "We'll meet there tomorrow night," before running off with Colin in search of a phone). As Colin and Rome find a payphone at a corner service station, Constance picks a house that has some toys in the yard and a nice car, and remembers its location for future use. Rome makes a quick phone call to the Justicar (it's good being an archon), and then he and Colin bolt down the street in search of a home to call their own. Finding the front door unlocked on a house in an average block, just around the corner from the asylum, they go inside, make quick work of the sleeping couple in its master bedroom, and decide to call this their base of operations. Colin makes a small, glowing inscription on the door ("Sabbat Haven, Do Not Disturb"), and Celeste and Aner get to have the fun of watching three cop cars screech up outside the asylum gates, officers leaping out to assess their surroundings, then hearing one side of a radio conversation in which the officers are told that it was, apparently, a false alarm (it's good being friends with a Justicar).

A few moments later, in possession of a hotwired car, the two of them notice the glowing script on the door of the house as they drive past, trying to figure out where to go. In they slip, as does Constance, and those five start taking turns with the telephone, calling the people who sent them to Bennington, Vermont, in the first place, or their various superiors/allies/friends, or both.

Quill, meanwhile, breaks handily into a home, kidnaps an entire family, pumps his strength to 6 (having been turned mortal by Dr. X-Ray Specs abruptly wore off the minute he stepped through the gates of the asylum), and then breaks into Town Hall itself, depositing his duct-taped-together family of mortals in a storage room and bedding down in a heat duct.

As the night draws to a close, the other five (Colin, Quill, Constance, Celeste & Rome) make their way into the house's storm basement, where they dig themselves in and prepare to sleep for the day, hoping no one finds them before sunset.

Back to the top.


Foundation: Chapter Three

A new night dawns over the tiny town of Bennington, Vermont, and Rome, Celeste, Aner, Constance and Colin all rise from their slumber to find they haven't been disturbed once during the day. They go upstairs, and Constance (who had spent a little time the night before devoting her attentions to becoming an exact duplicate of the woman who had lived here until the night before, via Vicissitude) finds something to wear other than hospital whites. Celeste and Aner go out to check on the car they had stolen (from right around the corner, Celeste heartily reminded him, thankful that Colin had used Chimerstry to change its appearance and tags before they all went to sleep), and Constance goes to check on the house she had selected for her own uses. Rome, Colin, Celeste and Aner all pile into the sedan Aner's hotwired the night before, and Constance tells them to go on, she'll be right behind them, as she gets more blood for herself and steals a second car. Just as she's leaving her target house, though, she sees Dr. X-Ray Eyes coming around the corner, holding up what looks like a big, fat flashlight. She pauses and flips on her Auspex just long enough to hear the doctor telling the policemen (and his orderlies, all of whom are now wearing badges) that the device in his hand will help locate his missing patients, and how much he appreciates their kind assistance. Perhaps worst of all, trailing behind them, are these metal...things that look like dogs.

(Storyteller's Note: I never should have been allowed to read Snow Crash, either.)

Constance drives calmly down the street, getting around a corner and making for the town hall, where the others have already gone, to meet up with Quill.

Speaking of Quill, everyone's favorite one-man shambling horde awoke in his heat duct thoroughly unmolested. Upon looking around the town hall a bit, though, he's realized his kidnapped family of blood dolls is gone, and so he makes his way up and into the tower of the town hall to get a look around. Bennington is small. At best guess, it has a couple or three thousand residents, and he can see the asylum to the north, on a hill overlooking the little town. He also spots the doctor, cops, orderlies and "dogs," and sees a (pink) sedan tearing its way down the street towards Town Hall. He figures that's probably Aner behind the wheel, and makes his way down to the entrance. Funny, though -- when he opens the front door, he gets a jolt of Danger Sense, and Auspex shows what must be something...magical? Hanging as a sheet in the door frame? He shakes his head, damned if he's going to walk through that, and opens a window to climb out just as the cars pull up outside.

Colin, Celeste, Rome and Aner start to make room in their sedan when they see another car pull up behind them. It's Constance, having turned herself into the man she's just killed (whose car she, in turn, has stolen) for blood. Nobody recognizes her, and when she lifts up the back of the car to keep the others from tearing off and leaving her in the dust, screaming, "It's me! Constance!" then Rome shoots her with the rifle he took off a gate-guard the night before. She drops the bumper, the car tears off up the street, and Colin (who's gotten out of the first car) and Quill help her into the car she's stolen, and tear off after them. As the two sedans make their way hurriedly through town, almost everyone notices as they scream through an intersection and see the good Doctor and his buddies not fifteen yards away, up the street which intersected with their own. Colin and Aner (drivers of the respective sedans) both notice a silvery blur tear away from the doctor and start chasing them down the street, and as they push their engines to the max, they realize the "dog" is (just barely) gaining on them. As they roar past the last buildings and houses and hit Vermont Highway 9 out of town, and the dog continues gaining on them -- a trail of sparks shooting across the pavement where its "paws" touch down -- Celeste throws up a wall of Obtenebration across the road, they hear a muffled boom, and a plume of oddly colored smoke (vaguely in a mushroom cloud shape, but none of them would know the importance of it anyway, and it's infinitely smaller than a nuclear blast) rises behind the wall of Obtenebration. Everyone finally relaxes, glad to be escaping from the place of their torment, and their last hurrah in Bennington is when Colin puts permanent horns on the family pictured on a billboard, reading, "Now Leaving the Happy Town of Bennington, Vermont -- Drive Safely!"

With only minor events (a stop for gasoline that involves killing the old man who owns the place and making it look like a robbery) to delay them, the group rides across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan (where they had told various contacts and allies they were going, to get access to money, havens, rest and assistance). Everyone but Colin (who has an apartment here already) checks in at the Waldorf=Astoria, where they're a bit surprised that the desk staff, upon giving them the optic once-over, blanche and hand them all impersonal notes from someone known as Belinda, welcoming them to "her" city, and advising that they contact her at their earliest convenience. Rome does so, and before long it's arranged that the Prince will be arriving soon to meet them. Gulp. (It's a known fact that in this case I'm going with the modern-era "canon" of the Prince of New York City being a 7th generation Ventrue with the right to Embrace childer at will, to keep throwing them at the Sabbat in the on-going land-war for NYC.)

It's important to note here that Constance has followed the advice given to her by a friend in San Antonio, and called "Spike," an anarch Brujah of New York who "doesn't ask questions." When she does so, she finds that he's an anarch mercenary currently in the employ of the Camarilla, against the Sabbat. When she asks him if he's interested in seeing some action in Vermont, he's not interested. When she offers to convince her friends to stick around with her -- her 900 year old, low generation friends, that is -- and help out Spike for a few nights, in return for a fly-by run to Vermont, he's very interested.

Meanwhile, Aner goes out and breaks into a pawn shop to steal some guns for himself and Celeste, and Quill arrives at the Waldorf=Astoria to find that his Lamia bodyguard/retainer is already there, waiting for him.

When the Prince's representatives show up -- rather than the Prince herself -- everyone's a little suspicious, but James, Bradley and Bill (who all look almost indistinguishably alike) assure them that it's merely a precaution. He quickly finds out their names and clans, and then conducts them all (except for Celeste, who insists the hotel staff wake a seamstress and fit her with "the best dress they have, but better," before she goes to see the Prince -- damn those Lasombra antitribu) and Colin (who's still back at his haven, making a few phone calls here and there).

So the four of them (Rome, Constance, Quill and Aner) get in a car with James, and Bradley and Bill follow them in another, and they drive off to the Empire State Building, where they're conducted inside and into an elevator. When the doors (finally) re-open, a blast of wind hits them and they realize they've gone to the very top, and are standing on the observation deck, where a middle-aged-looking woman and a middle-aged-looking man are staring over the side with binoculars, and various ghouls are using various phones and/or writing on various wheeled chalkboards. All the boards are snapped around, out of view, and the woman turns to say, "I am Belinda. Welcome to my city." She introduces the other man as Joel (and the players all grown aloud, as they recognize him as Joel from Red Moon Rising 1/2), Toreador Primogen of New York City. The talk is short but poignant, as she encourages them to avoid the Sabbat, and avoid the areas marked off by her ghouls as no-entry zones. The war is at a deadlock, but that's better than previous Princes' jobs -- who all lost territory to the Sabbat. Joel warns Quill against his interest in "finding some Giovanni," but when the Prince hears the others mention the possibility of helping Spike and his brood in their mercenary work, the Prince replies that if the others are interested in taking up the war for a few nights, she's more than happy to show them where to go (after all, as Rome reasons, if the asylum held them for a year and a half, its destruction can wait a few more nights -- and everyone needs to work out some pent-up aggression before they can think clearly to take on Dr. X-Ray Eyes).

As the group gets, then, to see the chalkboards (which are strategic/tactical maps of the Five Burroughs, marking Sabbat, Camarilla, 3rd party and Uncontrolled territory, including known havens), and Constance inquires about getting a haven of her own here at some point in the future, Colin and Celeste arrive up top as well. Colin is dressed as, well, a big, furry bug. Celeste is dressed in something long, black, unspeakably tasteful and, most of all, expensive, from Christian Dior. More introductions are made, and the Prince seems happy enough to accept that a Cappodocian and a Lasombra antitribu are both in her city. Maybe she'll take anything that's willing to fight for her side?

When the night concludes, everyone retires to their havens or, mostly, hotel rooms, with the Prince agreeing to meet the coterie at the Waldorf=Astoria the next evening, when the Justicar and Rhys, the new Prince of Monterrey (and a Ventrue), who volunteered to come up after receiving Colin's call.

Upon waking the next night, Celeste finds that her "maid" (translation: ghoul assassin and hair-dresser) has arrived. Constance spends the first part of the evening making herself into a beautiful man and phoning an old friend, and the others make their way to a dark corner of the hotel lounge downstairs. Eventually, all but Constance are down there, when a man best described as "creaking," "mechanical," or merely "inhuman" walks in and introduces himself, with a thick Scottish brogue, as Rhys, Prince of Monterrey, home of Colin. Quill sees that there's a ghost in a kilt following Rhys around, and bugs it a bit before the meeting begins. A few moments after Rhys arrives, a gregarious fellow in a tuxedo strides into the room, walks over (surprising everyone as he just exhudes power, like it's coming off him in waves) and introduces himself as Hardestadt.

Yeah, okay, so it's not all according to canon, in terms of the NPCs. Bite me. Question nothing, have patience, etc.

The conversation goes quickly, as Hardestadt informs everyone that if they are of a persuasion "not normally loyal to our cause," as he tactfully puts it, he would appreciate that they obey the Traditions in this operation, as long as they're acting as a unit. In return, he offers his services for any "clean-up" that might be required in Vermont. He's very worried about the breach of the Masquerade, and wants this asylum business done with as soon as possible -- although he expresses support for the coterie sticking around NYC long enough to kick some Sabbat ass. Rhys says that he, too, will be going along to Vermont -- if his help is desired. As everyone agrees that they're glad to have some big guns around (and Rome points out that, since Disciplines didn't work in the asylum, "big guns" are exactly what they need, very literally, to take with them, and Hardestadt says he'll see what he can do), Hardestadt excuses himself, just as Belinda and James (or Bradley, or Bill, who knows?) walk in, and the childe of the Prince unrolls a map of the city on the coterie's table.

(Just as clarification, here, the group is securing assistance in returning to Vermont and taking revenge against the asylum and Dr. X-Ray Eyes, by spending a few nights in New York City and helping the Camarilla fight the Sabbat. It's fun, it burns some aggression and, as Aner's player cried out during the game, "C'mon guys! Side quest!")

"Alright," James says, looking around at them. "If you're going to spend a few nights in the city, fighting the Sabbat, we should talk about where you're going to go."

Back to the top.


Kum Ba Yah, M'Lord: Chapter Four

The chapter opened after much sleepy-headed yawning on my part. New rule: do not lay in bed reading until 4am the night before a 10am vampire game, even if you are reading about nifty Discipline stuff and rituals the Sabbat can use.

The game starts exactly where we left off -- as I pass around maps of New York, James (childe of Belinda, Prince of NYC) unfurls a map of the city and says, "Let's talk about where you'll go." The long and short of it runs like this: tonight is Halloween, and a full moon. The Sabbat will no doubt be out in force, having their fun at the expense of the mortal masses (who will be eager to celebrate, given it's one of the few opportunities to throw on a mask, roam the streets, and forget the war overseas). James' information points to a Sabbat attack on mortals at the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, and a high likelihood of a Sabbat ritual/party going on in a park on Staten Island -- Fresh Kill Park (which actually exists -- you can't make stuff up that's this good, I'm telling you). Rhys offers to go along, and James says that, unfortunately, the Prince can spare no support staff. Constance reminds everyone that Spike, her Brujah anarch-mercenary contact, will be going as well, so they figure everything is a-okay. It's time to go meet up with Spike, and rumble with the Sabbat on their own turf.

As everyone is preparing to go (and describing the various outfits they're wearing, given the night -- Colin has a fantastic ensemble of jester costume: light and dark swaths of red and blue, forming a jester suit, covered over in a green trenchcoat and priest's robes, complete with swirling purple patterns on the back of the coat, whereas Celeste is dressed up as a ninja), Rhys begins to strip off his suit, revealing a body-suit of what we would consider primitive armored padding, in solid black, with a white coat-of-arms stitched into the center of the chest (a buck, antlers held aloft, with a banner reading 'Si Je Puis'). His ghoul appears, producing a Claymore, and the group gets into various cars in order to depart for Spike's bar (except for Constance, who would rather "walk," she says, and then proceeds to run Obfuscated through the streets, to the bar, having a snack here and there along the way). On the way, Rome has his driver stop the car, and he, Colin and Rhys all feed (thanks to Rome's quick thinking and a bag of candy). In a separate car, Celeste and Aner pack in the two drunk businessman which Aner picked up from the bar in the Waldorff (aided by some nasty Obtenebration which Celeste whips up to keep them bound), and they do a little feeding as well, along the way.

Once they get to the bar, they find a half-dozen or so older men sitting around nursing beers or drinks -- it's down by the docks, where there's also some drunken Halloween revelry going on -- and one vampiric bartender. Their discussion here is equally short and sweet -- the plan is formed: Colin, Rome and Quill will come at the Sabbat while they're in the park, doing their ritual, and try to bum-rush them, hopefully scaring them towards Celeste, Aner, Constance, Rhys, and Spike's brood (Spike and the Spikettes, as they quickly come to be called out-of-character). Spike's brood consists of four of his childer, who spend most of the conversation sitting at a card table, playing poker for bottle caps and gas ration stamps. Spike tells them it could be a pretty crazy fight -- maybe as many as forty or fifty vampires of the Sabbat, many of them the older, more powerful ones, as the younger ones will be out having their fun with the mortals on Halloween. The group just nods and smiles and sort of metaphorically pats him on the head, and they all posse up to go do some carnage.

Fresh Kill Park is on Staten Island, which has by this time served as an industrial center, a landfill, and now a series of suburbanite neighborhoods and mini-towns. The park is more or less smack in the center, and covers about 400 acres (as a rough, rough, rough estimate); in reality, it's a landfill that's scheduled to be closed by December, 2001, but in our game, it's a "park" that's been built on top of a landfill that filled up 60 years ahead of schedule. Yum. On the way to it, the group drives through the more suburban, small-town neighborhoods of Staten Island, seeing far more children out on the streets and far fewer adults occupied with anything other than chaperoning children as they trick-or-treat. This is when Colin's Chimerstry gets really wonky, and he starts making things like orange balls of light that turn into jaguars that run off into the distance, glowing blue alleyways, zombies accompanying children down the street (much to the children's delight, I might add), and such-like, as they move down Richmond Avenue through Graniteville and Bull's Head, towards Fresh Kills Park. As they approach the park, though, the population thins out, the houses get a little nicer and further apart, and the lights on in any of them become fewer. By the time they get to the park, almost every house on the street is pitch dark, with a "for sale" sign in the front yard. As Aner put it, "And that's a murder house, and that's a murder house, and so is that one over there, and...you get the idea."

Fresh Kills looks to be dense with trees, although Spike has already let everyone know that it's got a smallish clearing in the middle. As the group pulls into the main drive and to a small parking area, they spot a variety of cars, some clearly damaged in front, rear and sides by a little demolition-derby action, others pristine. Celeste slashes a few tires for good measure, and Quill starts powering up his various Mortis abilities. Constance, as she's looking around, spots a few figures using Obfuscate to hide in the trees, and when she looks at them, they start to back away, then run, leaping from branch to branch with talon-feet and flapping their arms as they go. Everyone is alerted, and they decide there's no time like the present to get to it. Aner drinks some of his drunk prisoners' blood, to prepare himself for some drunken boxing, and the groups split up as listed above (Colin, Rome and Quill in one group, to ambush them from the side, and everyone else in another, to go straight in). They dive into the woods, throwing all worry about making noise to the wind, and start tearing towards the center, where the clearing is supposed to be.

Once they get there, Colin, Rome and Quill start the fun. Colin's massive Chimerstry causes eight (8) Sabbat vampires, all of whom are standing around, shouting and cheering and having a blast while others leap over and/or through a bonfire beside a small pond, to suddenly believe they've been engulfed, bodily, in flames. As they start to screamand flail, Quill comes racing out of the woods, towards the throng. Rome fires a magnesium flare into the chest of a vampire who's in mid-bonfire-jump, and drops him with a spectacular fireworks display. Aner, about 135 degrees around the clearing, unloads into the crowd with a tommy gun, and Celeste fires off some Obtenebration to put out the bonfire rather abruptly. General confusion goes up, as Colin covers the warning screeches of the City Gangrel antitribu that had spotted them in the parking lot by making shrieking noises and bright lights shoot out of the woods. Constance keeps her vision trained on the crowd, searching for the two main leaders a contact of hers had told her to watch out for, and spotting one of them, then popping Zulo Form and racing across the clearing in search of her prey. Rhys goes tearing by, a blur of movement, screaming out in Gaelic, "Death to the worshippers of Lucifer!" with his sword raised over his head and spinning in a circle. Spike and the Spikettes blaze past, as well, headed to jump into the fray, and off everyone goes, into battle.

To make the extremely long story short, it wasn't as hard as Spike had thought it would be -- although it does take both Constance and Celeste to take down one of the two leaders on whom Constance had gotten some information beforehand. Colin does wonders demoralizing the Sabbat troops in attendance at the Ritae, by making occasional illusions of a few random vampires, on fire and running for the woods, and at one point employing the rather elaborate illusion which Celeste had described for him (based on her knowledge from living with The Man and his brood and their broods a few hundred years before): Lasombra, himself, rising from the earth and rending a few equally illusory Sabbat members (Celeste, for her part, enters the fray at the same time, screaming, "Protect the Antedeluvian!"). Over the course of the battle, he tops it all off by making a few of them even belive they see the sun rising on the horizon, which causes a couple of them to Roetschrek.

Aner gets crazy with some knives, at first, then shifts to drunken boxing. Rome wades in with his sword, as does Rhys, and Quill starts fumigating a dozen or so of them while running around smacking and biting and punching them. The whole fight only lasts three rounds (there's just too much surprise, damage and terror going on), but the Sabbat vampires in attendance do have the wherewithall to get in a few punches of their own. At one point, Quill is left to struggle as nine (9) of them jump him at once, all trying to dig in with their fangs (and promptly dissolving, but hey, they tried). As Constance and Celeste take on the City Gangrel antitribu priestess who's popped Mega-Zulo (Vicissitude 6) on them, the other figure of whom Constance has been warned rises from the fray to start hacking apart the Spikettes -- an enormous african-american vampire, most probably a Brujah antitribu. Moving with blazing speed, he proceeds to take out all of Spike's brood over the course of the battle, as well as survive multiple attacks before Celeste and Quill finally do him in, once and for all, Celeste's tentacles grabbing him by an ankle and flipping him into the fire (started again as soon as Celeste dropped her initial Obtenebration, and the embers re-kindled themselves with the addition of a couple of bodies of kindling. A couple of vozhd with gills even rise out of the water, although Colin and Rome make short work of them (Colin manages to take one of them out before it gets a single swing in [note: it sucks to roll a bad initiative against a vampire with Celerity 2], and Rome dispatches his by firing another magnesium flare down its throat).

By the time the smoke clears and everyone realizes the battle is over (I might add that I did my best, here and there, to keep this scene confusing out of character, since gods know it would be in), everyone is hurt to some degree or another, except for Colin, who made darned good use of his Disciplines to prevent himself from actually getting physically involved until the end. Quill and Celeste both have some serious aggravated damage to deal with, Aner is starving, so is Rome, and Rhys is staring in disbelief as the Zulo Form (one of several in the fight) currently engaged in dodging Spike's on-going if weary assault turns back into Constance (currently in male form, and calling herself "Vic").

Spike is still alive, but only barely, and his entire brood (save the bartender) is dead now -- so much for his whole gang going to help in Vermont. Rhys has weathered the affair without much difficulty, although his body armor (really just padded layers of fabric) is a goner. And, on the bright side, two major leaders of the Sabbat in New York City are dead, as are around forty lesser members. Everyone realizes, though, that the cadre of elders they had expected simply weren't in appearance -- everyone went down a little too easy. Quill, of course, has an experience of his own; he chases the last few Sabbat into the woods when they run for it, and find that the faster he runs, the slower he moves. By the time the plants are tripping him up, he gives up, and walks back.

As everyone starts discussing their various needs to feed and heal, and Aner and Celeste turn to walk back to their car, let Aner feed from his drunks, and then go get Celeste some sober blood, and others are busy healing themselves...

Everything goes dark, the world collapses to a pinpoint of light, everyone hears a sound like wind rushing past their ears, and they suddenly realize that they are in 1894, in a whorehouse, in Annapolis, Maryland. Colin, Rome, Aner and Celeste are all there, as are Quill and Constance -- although as someone other than themselves.

With that, Flashback Two begins, and Chapter Four ends.

Just another night in the city, eh?

Back to the top.


Shadowplay: Chapter Five

As the "flashback 'Sliders' tunnel" opens up again, Colin finds himself sitting in Elysium, Annapolis, Maryland. The year is 1894. Celeste is also there, tending to the night's business -- Elysium is a well-to-do brothel owned by everyone's favorite Lasombra antitribu. Colin is puttering around with her, and Rome? Rome is standing at the front door, lifting a door-knocker.

Quill, for his part, is a Nosferatu neonate who has no particular political power in the city, but does frequently serve as a general information-merchant-for-hire. Constance finds herself in the form of the Toreador primogen, a man named Raphael who supported Colin in his bid for Prince four years before.

As the door opens, Rome is led inside by the butler. He introduces himself as quietly as possible as "a special guest," and is led back to Elysium, where he walks in to find the others there. Colin, thanks to a little Chimerstry work, doesn't look like himself at all, although Celeste, Aner and Rome all do recognize one another immediately. Colin initially introduces himself as a Lycanto, but then the name of Colin's "bloodline" rings a bell, and Rome realizes he's dealing with Colin from way-back-when.

The night's business is light, to say the least. Rome's arrived, in his role as Archon of Clan Ventrue, to inspect the city and make sure everything is being run to the Camarilla's satisfaction. Colin needs a little refresher on the ideas of "strictness" and "the Masquerade," but otherwise he pulls through just fine. It's not his fault there's an unusually high percentage of mental infirmity among local police, students at the Naval Academy, and, well, just about everyone else, or that herds of bats and cats sometimes follow people when they walk alone, is it?

The only other business is a letter of introduction from a new resident, who says he will be by Elysium that evening to present himself. It's actually from said resident's ghoul, and states that he will be there to present his master. Raphael/Constance's Auspex reveals an image of a man writing the letter with a coffin in the background, and the others shrug it off and decide to go for a walk. After all, Colin needs to show Rome around the city, and he and the others need to do some catching up. Out they go for a leisurely stroll, during which Colin shows Rome a couple of the niftier tricks he's done to create safe-escape-zones and hidey-holes for the vampires of Annapolis (about 30 in number; overpopulation's a bitch).

Upon their return, they find that, indeed, the ghoul is there, with a sealed coffin (twist-bolts hold the lid clamped tightly in place all around its edge, although there's a tiny hole just large enough for a string to run up to a little bell in a miniature steeple -- the fear of being buried alive in the Victorian Era was rampant, and made coming out of torpor significantly easier, in terms of alerting allies, for the average vampire). There's also a random Tremere neonate sitting in a corner, reading his book. Colin, Celeste, Aner, Constance/Raphael, Quill/Rosemary, and Rome all start asking the ghoul questions (really, Colin asks them, and Constance/Raphael and Quill/Rosemary just keep muttering suggestions in his ears; the others do have some measure of respect for it being Colin's city in the first place). The ghoul tells them that his regnant is a Ventrue who was ambushed by the Sabbat in New York City a few nights before; he had ordered his ghoul to take him to Annapolis, and to write the letter, before slipping into torpor so he could hopefully heal, since there was no blood of his preferred type available on such short notice (African-Americans, although given the era, he refers to them as "Negroes"). Eventually, upon being ordered to do so by Colin, the ghoul agrees to crack open the coffin and let them see his master, since they're suddenly completely suspicious of this. Sure enough, there's a badly injured man, embraced in his late 40's, perhaps, lying in the coffin. Colin asks the Tremere neonate in the room to determine the veracity of the ghoul's claims by testing some of the vampire's blood. The ghoul, quite obviously out-powered by those around him, acquiesces, although not without a twitch or two (it is, after all, to further the goal of executing his master's orders). The Tremere reports that the vampire is indeed 10th generation, and a Ventrue. Rome starts grilling the ghoul on his master's lineage, and the ghoul eventually produces one which Rome, step by step, realizes he has heard of before. Everything appears legitimate.

This whole time, Constance/Raphael has been trying to convince Colin that this vampire should not, by any means, be allowed to stay in the city. Meanwhile, Quill/Rosemary has been arguing just as harshly that he should be allowed to stay. Colin decides that he's not going to make a decision until he's talked to the vampire -- the vampire wanted to be here? He can be here. Off they send the butler (an Elysium ghoul) to obtain some blood acceptable to the vampire in the coffin, so they can try to wake him from torpor. Once they have the blood, the ghoul pries open the vampire's torpored jaw, and starts pouring blood into his mouth from a funnel. All that happens, though, is the blood runs back out the wounds. The others realize that to raise a 10th generation vampire from torpor immediately, they're going to need some darned strong blood -- such as their own. But they're all caucasian. Damn.

Fortunately for Colin, Atzu (remember Atzu? aka Pig Boy, aka Canus, aka a bird of some sort, aka the Laibon neonate who lived in Oro, Spain, to observe Europeans and their Kindred?) currently lives in Annapolis. He's sent for, and he agrees to feed some quantity of his blood to the vampire in question. Once he does so, he the vampire starts to wake up, and once he sits up and looks around for a few minutes, being asked a variety of questions by the others, he simply...melts. That is, he turns into a giant blob of inky blackness, sprouts a dozen tentacles or so (one of which wraps around the ghoul -- as Quill/Rosemary blurts out in a "burp" in the time-stream, "My orderly!" -- and shoots through the ceiling. All attempts at pursuit fail, and the troupe is left standing around wondering what of value they had revealed to this vampire.

As these thoughts stick with them, they feel the "Slider" effect again, and rather suddenly they're standing back in the middle of Fresh Kills Park, Staten Island, New York City, at the end of their battle with the Sabbat. A few look up to realize that right before the flashback, the moon was full; now that they're out of the flashback, there's just a sliver of waxing moon in the sky. In fact, they watch the shadow reappear over it. Just in time for the Lasombra (who had all hidden themselves the instant they realized a battle was coming) to step out of their shadows and start attacking.

To make a long story short, everyone is already down on blood, and most are wounded, but they start fighting again as tentacles fly fast and furious, and a section of ground infront of the troupe starts to spin in a slow spiral before disgorging....a stone golem? Something like it, at any rate. It's huge, it's made of stone, and it's fighting them, as are a dozen Lasombra. Eventually they wear the enemy down -- or, at least, they kill the Lasombra, while Constance sits there, Obfuscated, and uses some mega-Auspex on the Lasombra who are still fighting, discovering there's someone very powerful named Tom, capable of killing them all "however he chooses." Despite her best efforts, though, she's not able to find this Tom anywhere around. In the end, it's everyone facing off against the giant stone thing, which manages not to take any damage (oh, it's been chipped here and there), and causes both Rhys and Rome to shatter their swords. Aner's run off to the cars to get his two drunk guys and drain 'em, only to find the tires slashed on all the cars in the lot. Damn those Sabbat. As everyone else beats a hasty retreat to the parking lot -- thanks to a brave and ingeneous distraction method of Rome's, namely, running around the stone golem and keeping its interest -- the golem starts chasing after them, tearing trees out of the ground to clear a path for itself. Rome makes it back to the parking lot along with everyone else, and as everyone tries to get their respective shits in gear and ready to go, Aner jumps behind the wheel of the car he stole (flat tires and all), and tears off back up the trail, ramming the car (can you say, FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP go the tires?) at top attainable speed into the golem (but jumping out the door, with Celerity 6 on, just beforehand), causing a huge explosion. When he looks up, the golem is gone.

Simultaneously, Rome looks down at his sword hilt, and sees his sword never shattered in the first place.

Everyone shakes their heads, and the chapter ends.

Back to the top.


Twenty Questions: Chapter Six

Chapter Six opens with everyone standing in the parking lot of Fresh Kills Park, watching a fireball erupt over the trees in the distance. A few seconds later, Aner steps out of blur-form with Rhys' sword, grinning from ear to ear. "This is great!" he cries, thrilled to find something interesting to do after 800 years of relative boredom. Everyone looks around to realize that Quill is simply gone, and with a collective shrug, folks start to make their way back to Manhattan.

After Celeste and Aner break into one of the upscale houses nearby that has a for sale sign in the yard, they find the evidence of what looks like squatters -- but there's no food in the refrigerator. The place has all the markings of having been a temporary Sabbat haven. Yay. They call two cabs, kill the cabbies (and throw them in the Sabbat haven), then drive off to Manhattan.

Here's where I cut a long story short: Constance and Colin decide to "have some fun" with some kids still out on the street (at this late hour), and end up drawing police to the scene, but not before Aner crashes a party happening in the apartment building nextdoor. By the time the night is through, everyone's back at the Waldorf=Astoria, and over the course of this evening and the beginning of the next, various people report in with the Prince, letting her in on what went down. Everyone's a little worried since Spike merely up and walked off after the battle, not speaking to anyone, but Rhys hazards that he's gone to mourn his lost childer. Everyone's more worried after that about the fact that means Spike can't go with them to Vermont, and the Prince isn't sure she can supply them with any help when they go back. Rhys, however, says he is willing to go. That's something.

That night and the next are a long and complicated and fairly jumbled affair in my memory, so let's hit some high points:

When the night is over, the chapter ends with:

Rome and Aner sitting down in a late-night cinema to watch the show.

Celeste being surprised by a knock on her balcony door, as Joel (Toreador primogen of New York City) comes in and asks to hear the tale of what happened in Vermont as well (telling her, when she asks why, "Because it is my job to know things").

Colin, Constance and Rhys stepping off the sidewalk and onto a path that runs into Central Park, realizing that, while they can still hear the sounds of cars and people on the streets around the Park, they can't hear anything but silence coming from within.

And here, Chapter Six draws to a close.

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Friggin' Huge Lights: Chapter Seven
Translations: Chapter Eight
Into the Lion's Den: Chapter Nine

Okay, so I suck. Basically, work has been hell due to everyone's panicking over the possibility that the year-2000 rollover would cause society as a whole to come to an apocalyptic halt (I work for an ISP). So, I haven't updated the synopses in a really long time, and I'm just throwing in a big huge synopsis here of Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine. Next game, after the holidays: Sunday, January 9.

Rome and Aner are sitting and enjoying That's Right, You're Wrong, starring famous bandleader Kay Kyser and featuring a blonde-headed Lucille Ball in her first film appearance, as the chapter opens. Rome's busy laughing his head off and eating popcorn, while Aner glances around a bit more self-consciously. And what does he spy? A member of the desk staff of the Waldorff=Astoria, sitting a few rows behind them in the movie theatre and watching them, not the film. He tells Rome he needs to go to the bathroom (heck, it worked once 900 years ago), and gets up to make his way to the lobby. Sure enough, the desk attendant follows him, but upon seeing Aner simply standing in the lobby, he hurriedly feigns unnotice of Aner and makes for the restroom on his own. Aner follows him in, striking up a conversation and pretending not to be himself. When the desk attendant comments that Aner looks, well, just like someone staying at the hotel he works at, Aner nods his head and sounds interested, but otherwise continues to keep up this weird little ruse. Eventually he leaves the desk attendant in the restroom, although as he leaves, just before the door closes behind him, he hears a sound like a massive gust of wind. He stops in the lobby, just long enough to see the desk attendant walk outside, look around confusedly, then head out the front doors for the street and hail a cab. Upon confronting him (a complicated effort involving a taxi cab, a rear view mirror, some Dominate, and the command to sideswipe the desk staff's own cab), they get out of him that he has no idea what he was doing at the movie theatre; the last thing he recalls is being at the Waldorff, on break.

Meanwhile, Rhys, Colin and Constance head forth into the forbidden zone of Central Park, not knowing what they'll find. Rhys' damnable curiosity has convinced the other two that it's a good way to kill some time before Colin's Malkavian friends show up from Texas. Once they get inside, they realize there is no animal life around -- the park is utterly silent (although not supernaturally so, a la Quietus -- it's just reeeeeally quiet). Constance starts wandering around using Auspex 3, and gets a lot of interesting images: families gathering up their children and heading for the exits moments before sundown, as though subtly afraid of something, then bums pouring into the park after sundown and converging on some central point. These visions guide the threesome's way, as off they go in search of trouble. Eventually, Auspex leads them to a small pool (20 feet in diameter, or so) which appears to be bored into solid rock and heads straight down. It's deeper than it initially looks, as well. Wanting to know why Auspex shows the bums jumping in, glazed-eyed, the three of them do what looks best: jump in themselves. Down they float, pushing the air out of their lungs so they'll sink faster (and getting that nice choking feeling when their lungs fill again, harmlessly since they're vampires, with water). About a hundred feet down or so, they hit bottom, and find it's completely dark. Some Chimerstry helps them light it up, but a variety of factors (including dueling Chimerstry when Colin and Constance start playing around) cause Rhys to bail out on their little exploratory mission, swimming and clawing his way back up to the surface. That leaves Colin and Constance, looking around and finding little niches in the wall filled with skulls -- more than a few of which are apparently vampiric, given their fangs and rapid rate of erosion. They also find what appears to be a tunnel, leading off and away from the bottom of the well/pond/thing, and start heading down it.

Begin big-huge-synopsis-amalgum-thingy.

The long and short of it is this:

Constance and Colin explore the cave and find evidence, both physical and Auspexual, that the Blob lives down here at least part of the time and is capable of drawing prey to the mouth where they get dragged in (including the Gangrel primogen of NYC and her brood, missing for a year now and assumed dead by Sabbat hands). The others come take a look at things when Constance astrally projects to tell them about it, and they find, oddly enough, evidence that Maria Josephina was here at some point in the past (at least, that's how Constance interprets it). They also find a bunch of books and a bunch of scrolls. Colin dumps the books into the water (there was an air pocket and an inhabited space waywaywayback down a tunnel off from the big pond-hold-thing, but they keep the scrolls: ten of them, in various languages, describing various myths/legends about objects of great power that bestow those powers upon the wielder. Odd.

Everyone ends up posseing up to go to Colin's haven and read the scrolls, including Aner (the walking Universal Translator) except for Celeste, who hangs out with Rhys, perfecting her big-scary tentacles and teaching him a little Obtenebration while she's at it. The Prince and Joel show up at Colin's, and Joel recognizes one of the scrolls (as Aner had) as being something called "Enochian." an ancient tongue said in legend to have been spoken by the first humans. Joel can't translate it, though, and neither can Aner. Joel makes some copies, Colin and the Prince have a brief disagreement regarding a gunshot in the stairwell outside his apartment, and to make a long story short, Colin sets off on a mission to break the Masquerade as vividly as possible using Chimerstry, Obfuscate, a few dead bodies, a couple of grand theft autos and a scene in which he feeds from a little old lady while looking like Hitler in the middle of an intersection at 7pm in New York City (he barely escaped torpor when one of the Kine spectators flipped out and tried to hit "Hitler" with his car).

The next night, the Malkavians on whom Colin had called (with those dots of Allies he bought) show up in New York. They include John Aluwel (Malk primogen of Dallas) and his associate, Dr. Netchurch, and two companion Malkavians (apparently childer of John's?). The four of them tend to be serious but occasionally outgoing and all-around well-composed sorts, and vaguely annoyed when Constance tries to play with them. Everyone also gets a serious dose of paranoia when the Prince calls to apologize for not making it to Colin's the night before to see the scrolls, as she was in conference with Joel and the other primogen. She expresses her thanks for the scrolls that were sent over by Colin, and wishes them all luck on their trip to Vermont. Um, everyone says, you were at Colin's. Oh shit! Someone's impersonating the Prince! Ah, but once they start really examining their own minds, they start to realize they've had their memories erased and replaced. The Prince was never there at Colin's -- but something that looked like Maria Josephina carved in ebony was, and she was reading the scrolls and telling them all to remember the Prince being there. It goes a long way to explain some odd behavior from the Prince that night, and lets everyone realize that yes, it really is Maria Josephina, Prince of Madrid 850 years before, they face. And she can Dominate them all, at once. Not a fun lady to pick a fight with. Off everyone goes, packed into cars, to Vermont, with a stop by Rome's Brooklyn shipyards to pick up some cases of weaponry Hardestadt had promised Rome he would provide. There are a few handguns, a couple of small machine guns, a couple of tripod-mounted machine guns, and a mortar. Yeeks! They cram that in the cars with them, and off they ride, sleeping for the day in Massacheusetts, in a farm house they clear of residents by staging (just for the fun of it) the capture of a German SS officer (played by Colin) by an American agent (played by Rome).

The next night brings them to Bennington, Vermont, where they race head-long into town (after stopping to put together a plan of assault), opening fire with machine guns and shelling the hell out of the building. The Man with the X-Ray Eyes puts in an appearance, firing lasers from his fingertips out a window of the building while orderlies try to gun the coterie down. Patients and other staff pour out of the building in every direction, and although many people declare their intention to shoot staff only, they end up gunning down just about all of the patients, too. One of the few left standing when Celeste, Rhys, and Colin start for the building from the rear, and Rome, Constance and Aner start for it from the front is someone they recognize: Rosa, standing in the remains of the front door, dramatically back-lit, looking confused. Aner shoves her aside to run inside, downstairs, to the room where he was put through electroshock, and he starts smashing stuff. As the chapter comes to a close, Aner looks over his shoulder in the electroshock room to see Maria Josephina race past the door, headed for the stairs out of there. At the same time, Colin goes into a frenzy amidst all the blood and, hungry as he is, starts ripping up the back yard while Celeste, Rhys and Constance close in on the building as well. Finally, Rome reaches the front door, throws Rosa over his shoulder, and looks inside to see:

The chapter closes as Maria Josephina apparently swallows the stone she's caught (all at hyper-speed) and is enveloped in ropy layers of shadow. Coming next week, Rivers of Blood, Years in Darkness: Chapter Ten.

There is no dark side of the moon. The truth is, it's all dark.
--Pink Floyd

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Confessions of a Knife: Story II

Rivers of Blood, Years in Darkness: Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten opens with everyone in the midst of battle with the Technocracy's forces in an asylum in Bennington, Vermont, USA. Rome, standing in the front doors with an unconscious Rosa over his shoulder, sees Maria Josephina burst out of the stairwell leading into the main foyer area of the asylum, and the Man with the X-Ray Eyes throwing a stone through the air, which Maria Josephina catches and puts in her mouth. Aner mounts the stairs right behind Maria, seeing the same thing. Meanwhile, Colin is in the middle of frenzy in the back yard, while Celeste was shooting out tentacles, wielding weapons, and preparing to go into the building herself. Constance, meanwhile, was in Big-Bug Zulo Form and running up the front yard towards the asylum proper from the opposite side. As the rock lands in Maria's mouth and she swallows, however, shadow starts shooting out of the floor around her and forming a ropy sort of cocoon around her.

And, thusly, the chapter begins.

Those outside can't help but notice the way the shadow cast across the moon by the Earth itself is receding rapidly -- it's going from a bare sliver of moonlight all the way to full in the span of three or four seconds. Meanwhile, those inside see that the shadow around Maria Josephina is growing and forming a sort of protective shell around her, working its way up her body -- but it doesn't just look like shadow. It's like watching ebony be spun into existence. Shadows are darting across the room from every corner to add to it, and the light is growing significantly brighter. Rome decides it's time to get the hell out of Dodge, but Aner goes right around Maria Josephina and straight for the good Doctor in charge of the place (who has a new pair of sunglasses). Moving faster than the eye can see, he manages to body-slam the doctor and sink his fangs into his neck, and a shot of blood that's red-hot (think distilled haban~ero, cooked up and injected intraveinously, here) squirts across his tongue. He wants more. Lots more.

Celeste comes crashing through the back of the building just in time to see a snake-headed tentacle shoot out of Maria Josephina's ever-growing shadow-carapice for Rome, and two of them latch onto him. Meanwhile, Maria Josephina's eyes have rolled back in her head, and truth told, she may not be entirely conscious in there. Or something. The shadows continue to climb up her body, regardless.

Constance arrives at the front door and starts trying to rend the tentacle-snakes that have latched onto Rome, while Celeste takes one of her own tentacles and starts swinging at Maria Josephina, getting one of them wrapped up in one of Maria's own. Aner drinks some blood, loving what he's getting out of the mage, who protests weakly. A shadow-snake-tentacle-thingum latches onto the other side of the mage, and Aner gets worried that Maria Josephina expects him to share.

Celeste whaps on Maria Josephina with a couple of swords and her tentacles, while Rome runs straight at Maria Josephina with his honkin' great new sword, bringing it down right on the middle of her forehead. Constance decides to join the fun, and while all of them dodge the occasional (note: occasional?) tentacle, Constance uses her utterly terrifying "Rend the Osseus Frame" move on Maria, causing gallons (note: gallons) of blood to shoot out of Maria's various bodily openings (nose, skull, ears, carapice where it hasn't finished covering her over completely, etc.) at once in a giant spray. What hits them in the mouth is unbelievably powerful blood. The only comparison is when they were all mortals, and tasted vampiric blood for the very first time...

Aner gets a nasty surprise when the blood flowing into his mouth turns to raw flame and he takes a couple of aggravated wounds (right to the face, no less). Celeste notices that the same happens to Maria's tentacle which has snaked onto the mage's back, and it dissolves in the fire. Meanwhile, Celeste, Constance and Rome take another round of turns just beating on Maria Josephina. While Colin starts to come out of his frenzy, in the back yard, Aner bolts with the mage and dives through one of the few remaining windows into the back yard, to finish off Dr. X-Ray Eyes for himself. This stuff, after all, is yummy.

Rather abruptly, Maria Josephina's eyes open and focus on Rome, but they all feel a wave of mental force when she bellows (in a voice that doesn't quite sound like her usual tones), "REMEMBER THE GLORY THAT I WAS," before letting her eyes roll back in her head again. They all get a tug at the back of their brains, sort of like when Hardestadt made them realize they'd had memories covered over by Maria Josephina at Colin's haven in New York City, two nights before, but then they take another round of swings at her. Celeste caves in the back of Maria Josephina's skull, Constance grabs hold of Maria Josephina's head and pulls her bodily up out of the ever-growing carapice by a few inches, and Rome swings so forcefully with his sword that he takes her head off. Immediately, shadow starts receding from the carapice, the lighting in the room starts to return to normal, and the light outside starts to darken. Aner and Colin, both outside, notice the shadow growing back over the moon, and the carapice begins to collapse on itself until it finally shrinks down to simply be a sort of pointed, triangular rock on the floor. Celeste reaches down to pick it up, but it shocks her hand, and she can't touch it. There's a sort of dome of force around it.

And, from outside, there's a great big "Boom..."

Aner and Colin are both wounded when the mage, in his death throes in Aner's arms, simply explodes. A fireball rolls across the back yard from the explosion, then a wave of sadness follows after it, and then another jolt of surprise as both Aner and Colin start gasping for breath and hacking and coughing -- because suddenly they're mortal again. (Yes, the Techno's 3 highest spheres fired at once as he died.)

The sound of an air-raid siren cranks up over the otherwise quiet town of Bennington, and while Constance and Colin whip up some Chimerical suggestions (ahem) that Nazis might have been responsible for an attack on the asylum, the others get the wounded to the cars. Dr. Netchurch and John Aluwel seem relatively okay, although their childer are both passed out cold, eyes rolled back in their heads. Rhys is curled up in a ball, gasping for breath and sobbing his eyes out (with real tears of real water, not blood). The three of them are propped up in the back of one of the cars, and Aner and Colin both realize they are starving for real food. It's decided that it's pretty safe to go to a diner, given that the three police officers who make up the entire force in Bennington have their hands full and the air-raid siren will actually keep people from noticing a break-in at a diner, so off they go so that those two can eat and the group can try to put together some of what happened.

Right before they go, Celeste gets out a scarf and manages to scoop up the rock in it, carrying it with them. Thus, they leave.

ST's Note: There's one big question here that no one's asked. Just so you know. Yes, we will be coming back to it.

Once they're to the diner, Rosa speaks up long enough to turn to Celeste and say, "Do you remember going to Jerusalem?" When she says the name of the city, for a brief instant, Celeste is standing in the old Elysium in Madrid, and it's not long after 1095, and Maria Josephina is addressing the five of them and several other vampires, although all she hears is the same word, "Jerusalem." She tells Rosa that no, she doesn't remember, and Rosa asks again, "You don't remember being asked to go to Jerusalem by Maria?" Again, there's a brief flash, although both Rome and Celeste remember now standing in the old Madrid Elysium, and Maria Josephina sitting on her throne, saying, "I'm asking you to go to Jerusalem."

Celeste asks Constance to delve into the depths of her mind, in search of more knowledge of what apparently happened in the past, and as Rome blows willpower to remember, he sees himself handing Maria Josephina a sack that contains the same stone they've picked up now, with Maria Josephina telling them that she's very grateful, and how she will uphold her promise to protect them -- forever -- in return for the stone in question. Then he sees the five of them walking through the gates of an ancient city (Jerusalem! he remembers), and then finally he sees the five of them standing in the old Elysium, months before, with Maria Josephina standing before them in all her Princely posture, saying, "I'm asking you to go to Jerusalem for the good of the city of Madrid. In so doing, you will acquire for me an item which will protect this city and its Kindred, for all time, from the ravages of barbarism which tear at cities around us." She pauses a moment, looking behind the five PCs -- Rome remembers there being a huge crowd of neonate rabble in the back of Elysium that night, a low-level sort of on-going heckling happening -- and then she says, "You will receive further information from me, should you accept my request. In return for doing this, I will protect the five of you. Forever."

And there's a pin-point of light in the distance, the sound of rushing wind, and Constance, Celeste, Colin, Aner and Rome all find themselves watching from the backs of their own heads as Maria Josephina dismisses them from Elysium to the on-going heckling of a crowd of 11th and 12th and even 13th generation rabble.

Over the next few days, the five of them receive letters telling them that there is a legendary object of great importance and power to Kindred, which they are to find in Jerusalem. Maria Josephina merely identifies it as an item which legend says was given to the first of the Lasombra clan by Caine himself. She says nothing about its powers or why it's of interest to her for anything other than material or temporal wealth. She again reiterates that she is doing this for the good of the city, and that the five of them will be remembered forever as saviors of Madrid.

Celeste remembers the item Maria is describing, incidentally. It was whispered about later, during her days in Lasombra's castle, and it was a story told to her when she was a very, very young neonate, before the events at hand. The legend is that Caine gave Lasombra a stone which was important for some deeply personal reason. The stone was rumored to do a variety of things -- increase how much blood a vampire could consume and use, enhance their powers beyond their wildest dreams, allow them to Dominate sires, free them from Blood Bonds; you name it, there was a story claiming it. Interesting.

Meanwhile, Aner continues to build his loose network of ideological exchange between the rabble-rousing neonates who have begun to flood the city since Victor's death. They're weak-blooded, most practically still warm from the Embrace, talking lots of high talk about overthrowing the old Princes of Europe and establishing a different sort of Kindred society. Most of them probably just want to overthrow the old Princes so they can become the new Princes themselves, though. Meanwhile, Rome and Colin, separately but with the same intention, remove a neonate here and there, as has become their habit, when a neonate raises too much of a ruckus in Elysium.

Given a large sum of money by Maria Josephina, that they might procure a ship for their journey to the Holy Land, the five set off on horseback for Lisbon, Portugal. Along the way they stop for a few nights in Toledo, where they had gone once before. The Prince of Toledo is still Lord Lucien, but he rarely leaves his own haven these nights, and the rabble there have grown even more loud and numerous. The PCs remove a few from unlife, and chastise their primogen in Toledo, and generally receive faint praise and feigned disregard for the sudden jump in neonate population in Spain. Colin has the most disturbing moment of his years as a vampire, potentially, when he encounters three Ravnos neonates living in Toledo, and all three of them attempt to lecture him about how he needs to find a purpose in unlife and that purpose should be the establishment of some new order in the city of Toledo. They're locked into a static way of viewing the world, and Colin is disgusted.

Off they go for Lisbon, where they find an old philosopher Brujah is the Prince of a city that comes the closest to a democratic society of vampires as they've ever seen (or ever will see, their current minds think in the back of their past minds' heads). Over the course of the few nights spent getting a ship, captain and crew together, they discover two Salubri are in hiding, two Lhiannen are as well, along with a Lamia, a Laibon, and three Caitiff who exhibit "strange powers of magic." The general out-of-character consensus is that this is a city that doesn't survive the end of the Dark Ages, and their current selves remember where they each were when they heard of the fall of Lisbon to the Sabbat, three hundred years later, after two members of an ancient blood-worshipping bloodline turn on the Prince and sell out everyone inside. (And thus, blood-powers similar to Ogham appear in the 3rd Edition Guide to the Sabbat.)

They get on their ship, drink from the crew over the course of their journey, and a month later arrive on the shores of Damascus. They ride through the desert night the thirty miles to Jerusalem, refreshing their memories on who are their contacts (a Lasombra known as Pacifico and a Malkavian named Brother Bernardus). Constance and Colin split off to find Brother Bernardus, and encounter his retainer, another priest who is apparently mortal and somewhat high-strung. Aner and Celeste head for a leper hospice in which Maria Josephina said they could find out where to find Pacifico and the vampire who works with him there (Maria Josephina implies she might be a Salubri, but then, Lasombra are known for implying anything and everything that might somehow seem useful). Meanwhile, Rome splits off and goes to church, where he encounters Brother Bernardus. Brother Bernardus apparently recognizes him as a vampire, telling him, "These are dark times for us, my son. Come, we must speak." Off he takes Rome, in the direction of his haven, where Colin and Constance await. Meanwhile, Celeste and Aner are given an address by a woman who seems to be in charge of the leper hospice and knows who Pacifico is. She tells them it's a hotel where their "special needs" will be met, and that Pacifico will come to them. Sure enough, they're packed into a basement room, and as they unpack their belongings, there's a knock at the door. A sleek, merchant-class man with an Italian accent introduces himself as Pacifico, and says, "Might I come in? There is much we must discuss. I am very glad to see you here at last."

Brother Bernardus, back at his haven, introduces himself to Colin and Constance, and says, "It's so good that you are here. There is a matter of grave importance before us, my children. Sit, and we shall speak of matters at hand."

Next chapter: Into the Lion-Hearted's Den, Chapter 11.

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Into the Lion-Hearted's Den: Chapter Eleven

Here's the quick-n-dirty synopsis:

Brother Bernardus tells everyone that there are missing Kindred (mistakes, made in heated moments without forethought, he tells them). They had all gone down a well in the southern part of the city, in search of some great item of power there, something the city had lost, something the city had tried to destroy -- the stories are numerous. The group posses up, goes down there, and finds...a few starving vampires who stand around blankly saying, over and over, "Blood, blood, blood, blood, blood," in their native languages. Eventually they work out that there's a rock buried under some stones and gravel in a little underground chamber off from a river. The rock has some funky side effects, and the vampires down there (whose eyes were solid white or solid red) want that rock real bad. Knowing something funky is going on, everybody makes a run for it, and the group heads back to Madrid, giving this rock to Maria Josephina, who promises to offer all of them protection for the rest of their lives. Then she Dominates everyone into forgetting the whole deal, a couple of weeks later, and disappears into the night, never to be seen again. The Sabbat overruns Madrid in the absence of a Prince, and the flashback ends.

(See, I told you it was quick and dirty. For more information on Jerusalem, and on the pre-planned storyline which I heavily modified to run this session, see Fountains of Bright Crimson, a StoryTelling module written for Vampire: the Dark Ages. It's yummy stuff.)

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Confessions of a Knife, Part II: Chapter Twelve

It's another quick-n-dirty synopsis. Yay!

Upon coming out of their flashback, everyone finds themselves in the diner in Bennington again. The air-raid siren is going, and police cars fly past on their way to the ruins of the asylum. Also, John (Malkavian primogen of Dallas, TX) is sitting across from Dr. Netchurch saying, over and over again, "Blood, blood, blood, blood." Meanwhile, Rhys, still outside in the car, kicks a door open to let himself out and starts chanting the same refrain, as do John's childer. The group manages to restrain them, and Celeste in the process takes the stone from the scarf she'd wrapped it up in. Oh, my heavens, but she can touch the stone now. And Rhys and the others all immediately become obedient to her. Desperate to know more about the rock and what it might do, they decide to take advantage of the few hours it's going to take any FBI agents to show up to investigate a supposed Nazi air-raid on Bennington, and head back to the asylum. The cops are taken care of, and everyone goes through the wreckage. Rome finds the X-Ray Eyes man's files, and gathers them up. Eventually, everyone decides to pass the stone around and see what happens, since when Celeste holds it, shadows start climbing up her dress from all around her. Aner, when he holds it, sees time more or less stop, and everyone else ceases to see him at all. Colin is able to make illusions appear with utter ease (and he realizes on some basic level that history must take its course, and he will be unable to control the others forever, for some reason, with no explanation of what any of that means). Rome, when he holds it, turns into a stone-covered man with "Destroy" written on his forehead in Hebrew (golems, anyone?). Constance is not allowed to hold it at all, by the others' choice. The obvious fact is that the stone takes anyone's highest Discipline and starts to max it out altogether. Er, fun, right? Not really. Although Aner faces serious temptation to put the stone in his mouth, as they'd seen Maria Josephina do, he ends up not letting himself. Instead, they all drive to Massacheusetts, find an on-duty airfieldman, Dominate him into flying them out over the ocean, shove the rock in Rome's driver's pocket, cut his head off, drive the sword (which weighs 40lbs) through his torso, and kick him out of the plane to sink his corpse and the rock to the bottom of the Atlantic. The plane makes it back to the Connecticut shore a half hour before sunrise, and everyone makes arrangements (in their own ways) to pass the day. End of chapter.

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Taking Care of More Business: Chapter Thirteen

Yet another quick-n-dirty synopsis. Do you sense a theme? Like maybe I did this all in one night, because Kat said I wouldn't get it done, and my pride requires me to do so now?

Upon waking up the next night, Aner and Celeste hit the highway for New York City, while Colin, Constance and Rome head back to Massacheusetts to pick up Dr. Netchurch, Rhys, Rosa and John Aluwel. They get there to find that the pilot was a snack for them, but Rhys and Rosa seem to be okay now. John is also okay, although when locked in the trunk with his own childer, he diablerized them. Oops. Dr. Netchurch pulls the PCs aside and explains that after the plane took off the night before, Rosa (whose eyes had turned completely clear) had started calling herself Zillah; Rhys (whose eyes were completely red) had started calling himself Irad. John, on the other hand, had started calling himself Enoch after his own eyes turned solid white. Rosa and Rhys had spent some half hour or so trying to destroy one another, for no apparent reason, with no particular luck on either side. Now neither remembered it at all. Everyone, being 900 year old elders with Vampire Lore out the wazoo, realized the significance of three vampires at random deciding they were the 2nd generation, in the presence of the stone, and quietly thanked themselves for ditching it so thoroughly. Off they went to NYC.

Folk there were fascinated to hear the story, in the many and evasive versions it was told (only Rome told the truth of what had happened, and he only told Hardestat). Rome read through the files he'd gleaned from the good doctor's offices, and lo and behold, they detailed how Maria Josephina had shown up on his doorstep some three hundred years before, give or take a few decades, with this rock. Her deal had been simple: if he would study the stone, she would provide him with study candidates for his own researches into the supernatural and its cure. He'd had some measure of success with the rock; he didn't know what it did, how it worked or whence it came, but he was able, "under laboratory conditions," to reduce or negate its ability to bestow powers upon its carrier.

Celeste goes and speaks with Joel, as an utter aside, telling him she's willing to give him Constance, if she's willing to find someone to teach her Temporis. He tells her he has no idea what this discipline would be, but he'll ask around if she likes. He also says he has no particular desire to go after Constance right that moment, but he appreciates the offer, and thinks a deal of some sort can definitely be struck. Then, in true Lasombra fashion, Celeste goes to Constance and informs her that Joel is plotting to have her killed. Constance, in a fit of paranoia, decides she cannot leave the city until Joel is dead, or is proven not to want her dead any longer. A conference is called, and everyone (including Rome, who's decided to tender his resignation from the ranks of the archons of clan Ventrue, that he might wander the globe again with utter freedom) agrees to help kill Joel to save Constance. At that point, I issue a warning that I know how perfectly in-character and justified all this is, but that Joel's one big bad mofo, and if they fight him, it's almost certain at least one of them will die. They accept this, but they keep debating their options: kill Joel, take the city of NY for themselves (shah right), move on to another town they can make their own, enter torpor for a few decades and see what happens, frame Joel for the breaking of the Traditions in some major ways -- you name it, it's tossed out.

And with that...the story sort of dies. They've gotten rid of the stone way ahead of my predicted schedule. I have one way of returning it to the storyline. And they aren't sure what to do. So now we're sitting back and discussing our options. More as we decide it.

As another aside, I'll be running a Technocracy one-shot. Kat will be running Shifting Breeds and Kindred of the East one-shots. Josh is considering StoryTelling again, and Bascha and I are contemplating combining the storyline of Madrid by Cold Moonlight and her Sabbat game, somehow, and jointly ST'ing it. So there's plenty of gaming to be done, not even counting Corwin's kick-ass Trinity game in which Josh and Kat and I play (it's VERY fun).

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The Truth: A Conclusion

After the game wound down, a few questions remained, and this is what I sent to the players, via email, to fill them in. Right now, Josh is running the Changing Breeds game instead of Kat (I play an Ananasi, Bascha a Mokole, Eric a Nuwisha, Corwin a Gurahl and Kat a Bastet), and Kat's preparing the Kindred of the East one-shot, in which Josh, Bascha, Eric, Corwin and I are going to be playing a single wu. And, I'm contemplating running more Vampire, possibly in Josh's Triangle by Night setting, after the Technocracy one-shot I'll be running and Corwin's Demon Hunter X one-shot. Yummers. In the meantime, here's the truth about Madrid by Cold Moonlight. Enjoy!

From michael@metalab.unc.edu Wed Apr 19 00:41:09 2000
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 23:12:54 -0500 (EST)
From: Michael Williams 
To: Madrid Chronicles Players' List
Subject: The Madrid Chronicles:  The Truth
------

So now that the game is over, and we've discussed people's futures (Aner's
gradual acceptance into the True Hand, where he runs back into Quill,
Rome's resignation as a Ventrue archon and retirement to Norway to pursue
Golconda, Constance and Celeste joining forces to pursue the death of
Joel, and Colin moving to Santa Fe to overturn its political scene and
make himself Prince), you might as well know the truth behind it all (with
convenient, interspersed quotes from the soundtrack tape).

"Forever and ever is only for you..."

	As you already know, The Arrangement was the agreement by which
Rosa, Maria Josephina, Syria and Victor had made the city of Madrid their
own, and had cut off the influx of neonates, leaving them to rule together
in peace.  Maria Josephina was the one saddled with the public
responsibility of Princehood, although any one of them could have held the
position.  In return for mutual cooperation, they agreed to leave one
another alone.  They each turned their powers to protecting the border of
the city:  Syria used her influence in the region, among the Brujah, to
keep them at bay.  Maria Josephina used her sire to keep most Lasombra
out.  Rosa used Auspex, as well as the information network of the Inconnu,
to warn the others if anyone was approaching the city.  Victor...well,
none of them quite knew -what- he used.  Generally, though, he would
assault them before they ever got within sight of Madrid, disembowel their
minds, and leave them drooling in a ditch to wait for the sun.
	There was only one problem with the arrangement:  Victor.  His
paranoia and suspicion that everyone in the world was insane except for
himself left him incapable of trusting the others with their parts of the
bargain.  Still, though, he didn't want the position of Prince for himself
-- he would much rather rule from the shadows.  He decided Maria Josephina
needed a power-boost to make her outweigh Rosa and Syria, scaring them
from the city (he assumed Maria, no matter what, would still be
controllable).  Thus, he brought her a copy of an ancient document which
described, he told her, an item that would give her all the power she
could ever desire, and in which she should, by birthright, be
interested:  the Stone of Lasombra.
	Where did he find out about the Stone of Lasombra?  Maria
Josephina's sire, Lord Lucien, whom Victor had known /in life/, when they
were both members of the Roman Senate.  
	There was, yet again, one problem:  Maria Josephina politely took
the document and ignored Victor's screwball legend about a rock that
would embue her with the power of Caine himself.  She tucked it away in
her library, not able to read it herself, since it was written in
Enochian, and promptly ignored the matter.  This was the same scroll Quill
copied but couldn't read.  Yes, the Stone of Lasombra storyline was
planted even then.
	
"It wasn't fair, 'cause I was me."
	
	So what happened?  Victor got royally pissed that his offer was
snubbed by Maria Josephina.  Letting his anger simmer, he bided his time
and waited for her to forget, letting her believe the legend had been
another passing whimsy of a madman.  A few years later, his plans were
made:  he would kill off Maria's servants, driving her mad and/or making
her turn to him (he believed) for help.  At that time, he could remove her
as Prince, take the role for himself, and find another Lasombra somewhere
who would obtain the Stone and use it to do Victor's bidding.  
	But, we all know what came of that.  Victor died at your hands,
and so did his plans.
	With his death, though, and Rosa's leaving, neonates started to
pour in.  This -did- drive Maria to desperation, and so she approached her
sire, Lord Lucien, with the document Victor had given her.  He laughed and
assured her it was true, but not worth pursuing.  He had been warned of
its ultimate side effects by his own sire, who was a childe of Lasombra
himself.  Maria didn't heed the warnings, though, and sent you after the
Stone, which you found and returned to her hands.

"She's wearing black again, and I'm falling down again..."

	The night you returned, she took the stone home and started her
observations and testing of it.  Within a few nights, having poked and
prodded it with no results, she finally obeyed the growing urge to stuff
it in her own mouth.  
	The next thing she remembered, it was the next night and the cold,
blood-drained corpse of her last ghoul was across the room.  The stone
itself was also on the floor, and Maria was starved.  Over the rest of
that week, she learned to control herself with the Stone -- or so she
thought.  The fact was, the Stone gained potency when it was outside the
grasp of a vampire, and that stone had lain untouched for five years.  It
also gained potency from the generation of the vampire using it.  When
Maria Josephina used the Stone, the Stone used her.  At the end of 2
weeks, she was unable to remember 90% of what she'd been doing with it,
but she knew she had some sort of destructive urges.  Trying to save the
city she'd built, the city where she'd gained independence from her sire,
she ran.
	The city fell to the Sabbat.

"He's walking Spanish down the hall..."

	Lord Lucien was informed of his childe's sins by the Lasombra
brothers of Madrid, and knew two things:  Maria would try to destroy him,
and Maria would be almost unstoppably dangerous.  So, he went into
hiding.  The problem is, though, you rarely get away with just going to
hide, especially when your sire is a Methuselah with other plans for
you.  So, with the help of his sire, Lord Lucien, Lasombra elder,
disappeared from history, and Marcus Vitel, Ventrue elder, was born.  The
Camarilla provided a good place to hide, since the Sabbat was in the
vampiric spotlight at the time, and that was that.

"It's a game that you can't win:  The Hunger"

	Maria Josephina, quite frankly, spent most of the next 850 years
either in a blood frenzy or plotting your deaths, Rosa's death, Marcus
Vitel's death, Syria's death...she would have brief flashes of clarity,
which were largely filled with regret.  She chased Quill to Portugal, and
then forced herself into torpor in a moment of clarity (picture your
former prince beating her own head against a stone wall outside Quill's
haven until she's unconscious; it wasn't pretty).  After waking up, the
Stone took over, and she Dominated the crew of a ship sent by the Tremere,
so that rather than deliver the supplies and gifts sent from that clan in
its attempt to establish a foothold in Haiti, and eventually take it over,
they would deliver explosives.  It was crude, which would only serve to
insult Maria's opinion of her own subtlety, which is what the Stone --
angered by her rebellion against its urges -- wanted.
	
"Rivers of blood, years in darkness..."

	A hundred of so years later, Maria arranged to have herself end up
in Annapolis, knowing she could find a handful of you, at least, in that
place.  Again she knocked herself into torpor, thinking if she woke up in
Annapolis, she'd have at least a few moments of clarity to beg you all to
kill her.  But, she was wrong -- the Stone's urge was to have her kill all
of you.  When she did awake, she was in control just long enough to force
herself to leave by the most expedient route:  through the roof,
disappearing from your lives again.

"How do we tell the people in the white coats enough is enough?"

	So why did she trap you all in an insane asylum?
	In one of her ever-more-rare moments of clarity, Maria sent Marcus
Vitel, her sire, a letter and begged him to help her.  Unwilling to risk
his own childer or allies, and believing (wrongly) that the Stone couldn't
affect a non-vampire, Marcus made use of channels available to him to see
that a Mage became aware of her location and her powers and the object she
used.  This was a member of the Progenitors, known as
Dr. Daystrom.  Tracking Maria down in the 1910's, he battled her into
torpor, transported her back to his facility in Bennington, Vermont, and
removed the stone from her body.  Then, using a substitute for blood which
he had been developing in, ah, "other research," he kept Maria his
prisoner while he attempted to study the stone.  Realizing her situation,
Maria quickly changed her situation from one of imprisonment to
partnership.  She offered Dr. Daystrom other vampires to experiment on, if
he would help her discover how to -control- the Stone.  He agreed, and
Maria saw that each of you was summoned to Vermont.  
	Meanwhile, Dr. Daystrom tried to learn less how to control the
Stone and more how to prevent it from functioning, using -these- results
to assure Maria that he was learning to help her control it instead.

"Ignore the noises that you heard, it's just the beast under your bed, in
your closet, in your head."

	When you attacked the asylum, Maria had been hoping you would
instead return and confront her verbally, ready to fight but not desiring
to do so.  Instead, you attacked (which was a far smarter thing to
do).  She was forced to use the Stone, which Dr. Daystrom tossed to her,
understanding also that it was probably his only hope as well as hers.  In
years of not being used, it had gained tremendous power, and the minute
she consumed it, it consumed her.  Unable to keep it from trying to
destroy you, but battling it with her own will nonetheless, the Stone
finally had enough, and consumed her from within while you watched.  It
had gained so much power by that point, that it was able to instantly push
each of your highest Disciplines to 10.  In Aner, rather than pushing him
to Celerity 12 (which is possessed as a "clan discipline" only by Arikel,
not by Troile, who, as a childe of Brujah, possesses Temporis), it pushed
him to Temporis 12.  Had he tried, he could have moved through time at
will.  It gave Celeste Obtenebration 12 -- she could have embodied the
Abyss and plunged anyone she chose into it, eternally.  It gave Rome
Fortitude 12, making him the strongest of all unnatural entities:  a
golem.  It gave Colin Chimerstry 12; he could have changed Reality at
will.  Had Constance been allowed to hold it, it would have given her
Auspex 12, and she would have been able to know anything she wanted to
know, past, present or future.
	However, it also manifested its other properties more rapidly.  It
made Rhys become Irad, The Warrior.  It made Rosa become Zillah, the
Beautiful.  John became Enoch, the Beast-King, and he consumed his own
childer.  Immediately, they began acting out the original machinations of
the 2nd generation.  

"I hope this serves to clarify...I hope you die."

	Why did Joel figure in Rosa's visions?  Not because he could get
it from the bottom of the ocean, but because, had you returned with it to
NYC, Joel would have summoned forth the Sabbat and the Camarilla to take
it from you, then use the Stone and his new army from New York to find and
awaken the Antedeluvians, his ultimate goal as a member of the True Hand.  

"There's been too many times...that I've stuck out my neck."

	What else was going on?
	Well, if you'd at random called up Marcus Vitel to tell him the
tale of the Stone, he immediately would have moved either to have you
destroyed (to protect his own secret) or to help you enter hiding however
you wished.  
	If you'd stayed in New York, you would eventually have been chased
down by the Sabbat, one by one, until you were all in torpor.  Then you
would have awakened in the electric room of the Empire State Building, in
1997, being discovered by snooping anarch neonates.  The Prince, wanting
the Stone to help her wipe out the Sabbat, and asking Joel's help, or
Joel, wanting to get the Stone to awaken the 3rd generation, would have
taken care of that.
	If you'd struck out as a group and wound up in Chicago, Joel would
have left all of you alone, to focus instead on trying to find the Stone
on the floor of the Atlantic (and failing).  In Chicago, you would have
found Elysia, the original Prince of Monterrey, when Colin was summoned to
Vermont (remember how she disappeared?).  There, she would have been the
Toreador who took over as primogen, as as pawn in the war between Menele
and Helena (Chicago by Night), a 4th generation Brujah and a 4th
generation Toreador, respectively.  You would have gotten sucked into that
conflict as pawns of the Methuselahs.
	What if you'd tried to blow up Joel with dynamite?  It would have
worked, but the Camarilla and Sabbat would have fallen apart, and the city
would quickly have been taken over by the Giovanni and the Setites (who
would have welcomed you to stay, and tried to snack on you).

"Exquisite dead guy, rotating in his display case, exquisite dead guy,
swear I saw his mouth move."

	So what happened instead?  You split up, which would have been
more realistic anyway.  You each know the separate ways you went.  In the
meantime, Joel sighed a sigh of relief, and set about trying to find the
Stone.  That is, until Celeste and Constance dropped the dud nuke on the
Empire State Building, and killed him.
	Marcus Vitel personally saw to it that any opposition to Rome's
retirement was silenced (permanently, in fact), and let him walk away,
unaware of the risk he had posed.
	Quill and Aner would not see any of the others again, as they were
trained by the True Hand, until they were eventually sent to try and kill
one of the others, probably Constance, as a show of loyalty.  Who knows
what happened there?  I don't.
	Colin?  In 1999, when Ravana was killed by the sun in Bangladesh,
and the Ravnos clan went insane for a week, Colin went with them.  Oh, he
survived, along with 99 of his Ravnos brethren, but there's one big
difference between my game and Time of Thin Blood:  Reality accepts
vampires; people accept vampires, on some level, or their powers, which
are so clearly magical, would cause Paradox.  But if Reality accepts
vampires, then it has accepted there being 13 antedeluvians for 10,000
years or so (notice how every time a member of the 3rd generation
has died, someone has replaced them, in every single case?).  The death of
one would cause a HUGE Paradox backlash, and at the end of the Week of
Nightmares, Reality would reset itself to something as close to where it
started as possible.  What does this mean?  A 1% chance that at the end of
the Week of Nightmares, Colin woke up as the new Ravnos Antedeluvian...

"You're lost, little girl..."
	
	So I can only think of one unanswered question:  who chased
Constance through Europe and America for 400 years?
	Ghouls Maria Josephina made in a moment of clarity, and ordered to
find and contain Constance -- for her own good.  Maria was, again, trying
to save the six of you from herself.

	And that, ultimately, is the truth.

Michael, Madrid Chronicles ST.

Michael G. Williams                          "Me and my friends single-
http://metalab.unc.edu/michael               handedly keep Robert Smith 
michael@metalab.unc.edu                             in hockey jerseys."
ICQ:  38687895                                                   --Josh


From michael@metalab.unc.edu Wed Apr 19 00:41:48 2000
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 09:43:42 -0500 (EST)
From: Michael Williams 
To: Madrid Chronicles Players' List
Subject: Re: The Madrid Chronicles:  The Truth


Aw, shucks, Mike -- yer gonna make me blush.  :)

A quick explanation:  the True Hand exists to serve the Antedeluvians, and
avenge their deaths.  Thus, Tremere, Brujah, Lasombra, Giovanni and
Tzimisce are rarely if ever trusted enough to be allowed in, since
generally they have to be willing to turn against their entire clan
history in order to satisfy the aims of the Hand.  Old Clan Tzimisce,
Lasombra antitribu, True Brujah, Cappodocians and Salubri, however, are
highly, highly prized by the Hand.  You would have been welcomed, as a
Cappodocian who has it in for the Giovanni.  Aner would have
(eventually) been trusted, especially if he was willing to learn Temporis
and adopt a stoicist approach to things; the only reason he would have
been considered would be the True Hand's (perhaps incorrect) perception
that he had spent a couple of hundred years protecting a Lasombra
antitribu (Celeste).  So yes, they would have been thrilled to have you
show up with a vial of Cappodocius' blood and a desire to get rid of the
Giovanni.  I've actually discussed on the vampire-l list that an
interesting alternative to the Time of Thin Blood storyline, in which the
Ravnos ante gets cacked, would be one in which a Cappo member of the True
Hand was raised to 4th generation by diablerie and then, with the Hand's
help, snuck into Augustus' haven through the Shadowlands (which is where
the True Hand's base of operations is located) and snacked on Augustus, in
turn, re-establishing the Cappodocians as a clan and reducing the Giovanni
to a hunted bloodline.  

Oh, there -is- one more question I realized late last night I hadn't
answered, and that is, was the Stone of Lasombra -really- the rock Caine
used to kill Abel, and in turn gave to Lasombra saying it would make him
just like Caine?

Yep.  It sure was.  

Michael G. Williams                          "Me and my friends single-
http://metalab.unc.edu/michael               handedly keep Robert Smith 
michael@metalab.unc.edu                             in hockey jerseys."
ICQ:  38687895                                                   --Josh

So there you have it. The Stone was real. Freaky, eh?

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The Extras

A quick review of NPCs:

Locations:

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michael@metalab.unc.edu
Cast | Quotes | Resources
Red Moon Rising 1/2
Madrid by Cold Moonlight
1999

White Wolf Games Studio
©2001 White Wolf Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.