
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Back to the top.
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.
Back to the top.
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.
Back to the top.
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.)
Back to the top.
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.
Back to the top.
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).
Back to the top.
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!
So there you have it. The Stone was real. Freaky, eh?
Back to the top.
A quick review of NPCs:
Locations:
Back to the top.
We Gotta Get Outta This Place: Chapter One
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
"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.
Help Myself: Chapter Two
Foundation: Chapter Three
Kum Ba Yah, M'Lord: Chapter Four
Shadowplay: Chapter Five
Twenty Questions: Chapter Six
Friggin' Huge Lights: Chapter Seven
Translations: Chapter Eight
Into the Lion's Den: Chapter Nine
--Pink Floyd
Confessions of a Knife: Story II
Into the Lion-Hearted's Den: Chapter Eleven
Confessions of a Knife, Part II: Chapter Twelve
Taking Care of More Business: Chapter Thirteen
The Truth: A Conclusion
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
The Extras
michael@metalab.unc.edu
Cast | Quotes | Resources
Red Moon Rising 1/2
Madrid by Cold Moonlight
1999