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Hmmmmm. I've still never gotten a chance to play Vampire and I would love to at least app for this. I probably need books though, especially the translation guide. How can I get in touch with you for them? (I don't have PMs.) Right now though I'm thinking about either a vicious criminal who was embraced by a Salubri and is torn between his "innate nobility", his supernatural Beast, and his human one, or a Ventrue or Toreador schoolteacher turning the campus into the beginning of her power base.
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May 22, 2014 00:00
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Oh, yeah, I know the two are the same. Was just thinking in Bloodlines mode for a second, hehe.
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May 22, 2014 01:24
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Yeah, Daeva are Brujah mechanically and Carthians fill that spot flavor-wise, so you put them together and you basically have the same effect. Sorry it's taking me so long, struggling with some computer trouble. I'll have my app up this week.
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May 26, 2014 00:21
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Alicia Bedford I really should have listened when they told me that a double major in history was not going to endow me with many future employment opportunities. After I graduated, I took a trip around the country to find a position at some august scholarly institution, such as perhaps a museum of history. My journey produced quite emphatic results; no such position was open. So, I returned home to New York, all but impoverished, where they were quite happy to accept such an overqualified individual as myself in the history department at Rochester. It is (as recent events have given me cause to consider) not the most unpleasant of existences, but I do not find it at all savory. The vast majority of my students are only interested in fulfilling their humanities requirements. Many further believe themselves to be interested in history, but find themselves thoroughly disappointed when history proves to have little resemblance to popular culture. They are not worth my time, and they take up valuable effort I could be devoting to research, to charting the course of human society and the evolution of our culture - and predicting how it may evolve in the future. Most likely I would have gone mad years ago if not for the company of Mina Grant and her little band of enthusiasts, the only young people in this place who actually share my passion for the past. We have whiled away many hours in my office, grading papers poorly and laughing about how the outlandishness of Peter the Great shaped a century or how many popes perished during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa. It was after one such enjoyable evening that I noticed the man. One of Mina's friends had pulled down a reference book and left it open on my desk. As I tidied, I picked up a folder containing my current research project. An illuminated painting fell out. It landed on the reference book, and I realized with a start that they were images of the same man. Of course, one was a photograph of a captain of industry from the past century shaking hands with Andrew Carnegie, while the other was a painting of Prussian colonel at a council overseeing the modernization of the army, but the face was unmistakably the same. A descendant, I wondered, a direct descendant? What a remarkable coincidence! Could I prove it? The answer was no. I found the face, four more times across the last three centuries, always in some position of power and influence, but there was no genealogy, no link of any kind, but always the exact same visage, beyond even believable family resemblance! Confront Vulnerability I became obsessed with this enigma. It began to consume first weeks, and then months of my life. I neglected my more scholarly papers, my students, my very few dear friends, exchanging even my evenings with Mina's little clique for days petitioning art museums and nights digging through library archives. The final year of my tenure probationary period was nigh, and despite the warnings of everyone close to me, all I could see was that man's face. It was most likely the most meticulously researched paper I have ever written, but when it was all I submitted to the department, a magnificently referenced theory about similar men constantly appearing in the pages of history, they were less than impressed. I had no time to turn the situation around. I had no other options, should my position at Rochester be terminated. I had no future. In the end, I sat in my residence on the campus, my phone turned off, working my way through a second bottle of wine, powerless. Then the face appeared at my door.  Meet your Maker In the depths of my despair, a man came to my house, the same man I had tracked through the pages of history, and so intent had been my search through the past that I had failed to look at the present. His name was - is - Abraham Grillo, and he sits on the SUNY board of trustees. This, he says, is just one of the ways in which he serves our proud community. He told me that while my paper had never reached the eyes of the rest of the board, it had been brilliantly researched, composed, and documented. It had also been correct. He had been there at Frederick's right hand, and behind the money of Napoleon's foes, and across from Carnegie. And I had been lucky and clever enough to notice the pattern, and so he was offering me a chance to join him. What else could I do? "Five rules." He said. "One. You call me Abramo. Two. The blood is life. Three. The sun is death. Four. Control the mind, you control the world. Five. The Beast is always there, but you are stronger." No one had held his hand through the first nights when he first entered this life, Abramo said, so nor would he hold mine. And he grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me, and I felt more alive than I had in twenty years, and then I died. He smiled the entire time. Every motion of his limbs with purpose, every word well-considered and spoken with perfect diction despite his faint Italian accent. Every moment, in control. When I dream, if I am fortunate, I dream of being like that. I sated the hunger of that first night on a pair of sophomores undressing one another at the bottom of the embankment across the street from the staff housing. I looked at the two students, standing there blankly at the force of my voice and the beam of my eye, and I drank from their throats until I was full and they were woozy and trembling. Humans have no words for the depth of that first craving, the night we are born, nor for the rapture of its sating, and as I stood out there, at home in the night, full as I had never been before, I knew what Abramo intended me to do. I went to the board, and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were thoroughly impressed with my work over the past year, and that granting me tenure was merely a formality at this point. I informed them that from now on I could only teach night classes, and that this would not be an issue. I told students to stay behind after classes and then commanded them to stand like statues while I drank my fill. It was all so simple. In short, I grew cocky. Suffer Your Defects Some weeks into my new routine, the date of a previously-arranged appointment arrived. I was scheduled to give a guest lecture at NYU, on the subject of governance in the ancient Greek city-states. Thankfully I was to speak late in the evening. Unfortunately, I realized late that I would have to drive downstate the previous night. By the time I awoke I was thirsty again, and late evening is mid-morning for me now, and I had barely any time to hunt (how quickly that word became representative of the act of finding blood in my mind). This was not my territory, in Manhattan things were too packed together, too many people, too many witnesses. When Edwin Bentley, the aging head of the NYU history department, met me at the lecture hall I was all but starving, and I could barely hear him speak for the sound of his pulse in my ears. The turnout was excellent, he said. Three weeks ago I would have been pleasantly surprised at the number of young people attending one of my lectures for any reason other than their own coursework, but with so many in the audience the sound of their heartbeats was deafening and the smell of their blood was overwhelming. I do not know how I survived the lecture. I do not even remember what I discussed, or if the listeners derived anything from it. The Beast is always there, but you are stronger. After it was over I staggered off the stage, mumbling excuses about feeling unwell, when Bentley asked if I wanted a ride back to my room. “Yes,” I said, or perhaps that Beast said it using my lips, “That would be lovely. You’re such a dear.” Remember Your Victims I liked Edwin Bentley. He was one of the intellectuals, the ones I respected, the ones like me who could be doing so much more than wasting away in a classroom. Edwin, though, never seemed to waste. He smiled perpetually, insisted that both students and staff call him “Ed”, taught classes with a bombastic flair and a spring in his step, neither of which seemed to diminish with his advancing age. He liked me, too, a fact that he had made clear before, and I strongly suspected that one of the reasons he had invited me to fill the slot in the lecture schedule was so that he could have the chance of some time alone with me. He was some fifteen years older than me, but I liked him a great deal, and his age had not robbed him of a certain stubbly handsomeness. When I left for the city I had quite liked the idea of sleeping with him, and had wondered what his blood would taste like. No sooner had we walked through the door of my lodgings then I threw him onto the couch and sank my teeth into his throat. The Beast shuddered and contracted inside me like a singularity. When the sun comes up and I close my eyes, when I am unlucky I see his face, first torn between confusion and pleasure as I climbed on top of him, then surprise, then bliss as the soporific quality my fangs seem to carry took hold of him, then slowly dawning pain and horror as I kept drinking, and drinking, and drinking, until his face was ash grey and my fangs drew only air and worthless fluid. I sat there in that room for a while, looking at Edwin’s body, and then I cleaned myself up, licked the bite marks away, waited until it was the dead of night, dragged him out of the room, put him in the elevator, and sent it into the basement. When they found him the next day, little of my horror was false, and I gave the police literally no choice but to listen when I told them that I knew nothing. I couldn’t even go to his funeral. They held it during the day. Believe Someone Has Answers After Edwin was buried, I took some time off. I told the president I needed a few days to recover from my friend’s death (which was not untrue). I spent the next few nights immersing myself in any source of lore I could find. Any conceivable article on the internet or tome of the occult or the supernatural, anything to find information on my new state. Anything that would help stop me from losing control like that again. The Beast is always there, but you are stronger. There was so little of use. So much confirmation of things I already knew through experience. So many strange stories that did not apply to myself, that I dismissed as myths and fables. I knew that if I asked Abramo for help, none would be forthcoming. There was one image that persisted in some form across various sources; a desperate ghoul squatting in some dark place drinking blood from bats or vermin. The idea that a vampiric undead could survive on the blood of animals, if in dire straits. In all honesty the idea filled me with revulsion even then, but I was determined at least to try. I knew already that I had some strange, Stokerian affinity with animals, particularly airborne ones. One night, I went out onto the campus grounds, listening to the nighthawks squawking in the trees and in the air. I called back to them, and they began to circle me, and when one alighted on my arm, I seized it with my other hand and raised it to my lips. Its blood tasted rank and unpleasant, and when the bird was dry I only felt thirstier. I called out again, and another flew within my reach and I ripped into it; this time I was too hasty and the bird died to the first slash of my fangs, spilling its blood over the grass. I kept calling, my voice growing more and more desperate, and each time fewer and fewer birds were fool enough to remain in my reach, but I kept at it for an hour, until finally I slumped against a lone tree, staring down, and for the first time I noticed the dozen or so shriveled nighthawks at my feet, and the blood and feathers covering the front of my blouse. In that moment I understood that I was not human any longer, that that time was past and would never come again, and I sank to the ground at the foot of the tree, sobbing into a pile of dead birds. Beg Someone, Anyone, to Fix You I went back to work after that, momentarily resigned to my new existence. I grew so dejected that I could not even show interest in Benjamin’s latest catalogical triumph. Benjamin is the campus librarian, a shy, dear man that I have tried and failed several times to have a relationship with. I have considered more than once telling him the truth, but thus far I have found neither the opportunity or the courage. Instead, I made the monstrously foolish mistake of confiding in a young man from Ontario named Jackson Price. He was like me; the first one of our kind I had met directly besides Abramo. Dear God, what a difference it made to be able to have a conversation, not even one about my new state, just to speak of anything without feeling that it was a lie. And it wasn’t just that. He was intelligent, keenly so, interested in literature and ancient mythology and learning more about our condition, and he had no trouble finding blood. He spoke of a church, a congregation of the damned, a place of brotherhood in undeath, devoted to understanding our place in the world, and I am deeply ashamed to admit that he charmed me. A church, I thought, an establishment! Older vampires, perhaps records, a history! So I brought him to the library with me, and he stole the copy of Secret Societies in Western Civilization that Benjamin had finally managed to secure on loan, put it in his bag, kissed me on the cheek, and walked out of the school. I have not seen him again since then, though I have heard of him. I found out later about the Lancea et Sanctum and their hoarding of ancient lore and secrets, and that Jackson was a neonate when I met him, given a trial to prove his worthiness to the covenant. The irony, as usual, is almost hilarious. At that time I was, perhaps, the textbook example of a willing convert, and if he had continued proselytizing for a week or so I expect I would have simply handed him the book and joined the Sanctum into the bargain. But he stole from me. He stole from Benjamin, and he stole from my school. And it was that theft of knowledge that finally awakened an aspect of that Beast inside me that I could understand. This was my school. My home, for the past twelve years. Price had violated my territory. And if I was not content with it, and my place in it, then I will simply reach out and change it. Find Fear There is a killer on campus. We had already known about it for some time. There had been three unexplained deaths; the media had sensationally attributed them to a serial killer they termed “The Junkie”, due to the pinpricks reminiscent of needle marks on their bodies. When the fourth was found, I went to the crime scene, and caught a glimpse of those marks, and it was clear to me that, for once, the media were correct. The scars were not needle marks. They were exactly like the marks left on a person by my fangs before I lick the wound. I began patrolling the campus during the small hours, after classes were concluded, and eight nights after the fourth death I smelled something sharp and foreign and wrong. When I found it, it was crouched over the body of a freshman, a young man. Even to my night-time eyes it was only a shadow against the dark ground. As I approached, it … unfurled, a tall, skinny silhouette, like a spider-monkey. It turned to face me, and as soon as I could see its night eyes I pitched my voice, directed my will, and commanded it to stop. Its mouth opened in a grin. That was when I learned how durable my new body is. The Junkie moved so fast that I literally did not see it cross the distance between us. My feet left the ground. I saw a spray of red. It laid me open from my stomach up between my breasts and cracked my collarbone when I hit the ground, and if the body Abramo had given me were any less resistant to physical injury I would have perished there. The Junkie advanced on me, still grinning like a skull, its face covered in the freshman’s blood, its hands wicked claws, and I saw the face of the Beast; the reflection of the monster inside me that had murdered Edwin Bentley. The true Beast, unrestrained by caution or reason or humanity, an animal that could not even be bothered to cover the signs of its feeding. The Beast is always there, but you are stronger. The Junkie had not been stronger. Leave a Witness I laid there on the grass, my body too damaged to move, as the Junkie towered over me. I still do not know exactly what it was, or precisely what it looked like. I remember something deathly pale, clothed in rags, with a mouth full of fangs that no longer remotely resembled human teeth, and hands that had … mutated into rending talons. Instinctively I pushed blood through my ravaged body. I could feel a burning sensation as flesh and bone knitted themselves back together, but it was not fast enough, and then the quarrel took the Junkie in the chest. The shooter missed the heart, but they made it angry. I could not see who it was - they were dressed all in black, and wearing a mask and dark cap - but they dropped the crossbow (where, I remember thinking, did they get a crossbow?) and threw themselves at the Junkie, spitting epithets, holding a long-bladed knife in one hand and what I realized was a cigarette lighter in the other. It was a tiny flame, but the Junkie shrank back before it, allowing the newcomer to go on the offensive. While they fought, my body had restored itself enough for me to climb to my feet. The Junkie was facing away from me, the interventionist towards me, and in the dark I saw their eyes widen as they saw my ruined clothing, and the fatal wound in my chest that had not yet fully closed. I ran. I know they both survived that fight, because in later weeks more victims were found throughout the county with the mark of the Junkie’s savage fangs, and no body or remains were found on the campus the next day. I do not misunderstand the significance. There is a vampire hunter here, maybe in the surrounding city but most likely here, in the school. They know my identity, but I do not know theirs. That was when I started going to to the firing range. There are two killers on campus, and one of them kills my kind. Embrace a Wrong In the aftermath it has become obvious now precarious my situation truly is. Other things share the night with me, thoroughly unfriendly things that I know do not have the university’s best interests at heart as I do. As I set about shoring up my position, searching for the hunter and guarding against any further attacks, it became so … expedient to simply demand what I needed of people. Controlling the minds of others is very quickly becoming second nature to me... Find Like Minds As one could easily imagine, a college campus is a very attractive location for a vampire. It is a large place almost entirely populated by young men and women, endowed with raging hormones and great appetites for meeting exotic and interesting new people. Jackson Price, the Junkie, and I were hardly the first to feed at the university, nor were we the last. As the nights passed, I became aware of others - playing the role of romantic partners to students, hiding in plain sight amidst the city’s night life, prowling the grounds at night and ambushing unwitting night janitors. These trespasses had fallen off in frequency (most likely due to the Junkie’s appearance) but, as I have learned, it is impossible to keep our kind from a hunting ground for long, and in the nights after the confrontation they began to filter in again, first a girl Kissed delirious after a computer science class, then a graduate student sent to the health office with what the baffled nurses could only describe as anemia. After that last I knew I had to take action before any other students (my students) were harmed and more attention was drawn. So I made a proposal to the Kindred of upstate New York, in no uncertain terms. The University of Rochester is my territory. I take first hunting rights on the campus grounds. Anyone who wishes to feed on the campus will introduce themselves to me first. In exchange, I cover for them. I use my status and my mental powers to ensure that nobody ever notices anything untoward about the little island I have created here. I keep my thirst sated on the student body, ensuring that they are amenable to the feeling of the Kiss, so that no vampire ever has difficulty finding a meal. No long, desperate hunts. No starvation. No violence. No deaths. None of my students are harmed. If these rules are ever broken, the perpetrator answers to me - and to all of the rest of our kind who benefit from this arrangement. Thus far there has only been one violation, and all I had to do was say the offender’s name. Seize the Night There is plenty more left to do, though. The hunter was surely not relaxed his or her vigil as more of my kind appear on campus. The Junkie is still out there, a danger to human and undead alike. And the more I commiserate with the unaligned wanderers of the vampire world, the more I learn about how large that world is. I am stockpiling every bit of information about us that I can. I am looking downstate, towards New York City. And I am making regular visits to the officials of the university, ensuring that none of them can resist my will when I bring it to bear. I am getting stronger. Soon, I think, I will be able to leave my commands behind me when I leave, and between them and the birds I ask to patrol the school for me, I will always have watchful eyes installed on campus. I will be a trustee. And I will find that slimy opportunist Jackson Price and teach him what happens when you lie to me and dishonor my school. And eventually, I will meet Abramo again. Maybe by then I will have decided whether I want to thank him or kill him. --- Well, that took about a billion years. It's real long, but not that much longer than Leo's, and I had a whole lot of fun writing it. My preferred sect will be Camarilla, I think, it appeals to Alicia's personality, but it really doesn't matter to me - she'd side with anyone who leaves her control of the school be. Depending on sect choice and a few other things I'll probably rejigger the merits, but otherwise the sheet is good. I'll get into IRC to talk about it as soon as I can, my main computer is in the shop and I'm on a laptop without most of my books or useful stuff. TehWarsmith fucked around with this message at 08:48 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 08:35
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noooo i dont get to hang out with buddhist death cult vampire That's alright though, this way everyone gets to play! Soonmot, get your bad self into IRC whenever you get a chance so we can hammer this out!
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Jun 3, 2014 05:17
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Alicia's impressions and aspirations: Ricky: Such a dear man. I am indebted to him; as much as I wish my fellow undead would accept the need for order and stability, I know full well that much of the time it is only the threat of his strength that keeps the peace near the school. Ah, well. It certainly helps that he is a delightful man; anyone who is able to make peace with the Beast and remain a decent, functioning, individual has my great esteem. Amber: I do not know quite what to make of Miss Holloway. I fear the world has ruined her without any help from the paranormal. Her talents are invaluable, of course, and she is clearly quite perceptive; a valuable naysmith - or, as they are called in modern times, a devil's advocate. Perhaps Richard and I can be a constructive influence on her. Leo: All I see are questions when I look at Mr. Jansen. What does he intend? How much of it can he actually accomplish? Where could a man such as him originate? And what sort of person could command the loyalty of such a man? I think that if I can find these answers, I will have a very interesting opportunity before me in these coming nights. Alicia: And what do I want? Truly, (though few would believe me) all I want is to be left in peace. I want to observe. I want to watch, at this turning point in the history of Kindred society, and witness events as they unfold. And I want to protect my school. But I have learned enough about our kind in my short unlife to understand that in order to keep my students and my territory safe, it is not enough to remain passive. We are not peaceful creatures. The best teacher I ever had warned me against the idea that history is only something that happens in the past. History, he said, is always being made. It is happening all around us. It is time I participated. Aspirations: -put an end to the Junkie -discover the identity of the hunter on campus -find out who is pulling Leo's strings What do you do for your Sect? For the moment, I command respect among the local Anarch Movement as the mistress of the university campus, and the warden of the Masquerade in the area. Richard and I see off troublemakers, break up skirmishes, and clean up their messes near my jurisdiction - the city is still strewn with entirely too many aimless veterans and rebels-without-causes; the residue, I am told, of the violently militant Sabbat sect. Abbot does not like we unaligned bleeding our strength on one another when the Camarilla are still steadily expanding through the state. Edited with Sect note and self-reflection. TehWarsmith fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Jun 5, 2014 |
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Jun 5, 2014 03:18
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FYI. I am mega sick. Posting gonna be sporadic for the next few days.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:19
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So, are the weird spooky special rules described at the beginning of the scene still in effect? I don't see what they would do now.
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Jul 18, 2014 20:14
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Ugh. I am sorry guys, I have been mega busy and not getting much sleep. A pretty significant post needs to follow up the basement chat and I haven't been in the headspace to write it. I'll get it up as soon as I am, I know I'm holding up the game.
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Aug 17, 2014 10:11
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I am for sure still here. Was in a play whose rehearsal schedule kind of devoured my normal free time, but it is now over so I will get things going shortly.
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Aug 26, 2014 04:36
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