The VtM part of my brain thinking about BG3 again even though brain activity should have more important things to do rn: 'Cazador's set up and most of his childer scream 'Tremere,' but Astarion himself wouldn't be great at existing within the Pyramid.
'...Hey, what if Astarion's Ravnos, his siring was revenge/educational and Cazador's the adoptive sire.'
The clan has CtD ties; elf. Arcane Trickster -> Chimestry. The clan curse/ban could be any number of his vices (being cruel and spiteful for the sake of it springs to mind), but I think it'd probably manifest as a fundamental inability to obey hierarchy and orders (which is not the same thing as the Brujah temper and clan cultural inclination towards rebellion).
Like a lot of people I tend to try to awkwardly avoid the racist shit built into the origins of the clan, but moon elves are not sedentary peoples so there's a really fucked up aspect to this in there if you start converting to the real world shit and bringing it into play.
(I am always on my WoD bullshit, I should probably tag it for filtering...)
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Now that we know Ford owned Beethoven records, there's a part of me that's imagining Stan on his birthday, getting drunk and skeet-shooting his brother's classical music collection. Every time he picks up a record, he takes a swig of cheap whiskey, reads the title, making certain to insult it before hurling the thing into the sky and blasting it to bits.
"Egmont?" Stan slurs, frowning at the wild-haired, stony countenance glaring at him from the cover. "More like egghead."
With a wild, staggering movement, Stan slings the disc, cover and all, into the starry night. It takes him a few tries, the pop-pop of gunfire piercing the veiled, shadowy horizon of trees teetering dangerously from side to side, like one of those rickety pirate ship rides on the Jersey boardwalk. Stan takes another large swig from the bottle, some cheap shit he liberated from behind the bar of the only watering hole in Gravity Falls, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve as the shotgun in his other hand weaves a shaky figure eight before finding its mark with the satisfying crunch of vinyl.
"FORE!" Stan yells, flinging his arms out to the side with a maniacal cackle. The exaggerated movement overbalances him, Stan wavering on his toes for a suspended moment before crashing to the ground, shotgun and bottle still firm in his grasp, any pain from the sudden impact buried under thick, gauzy layers of fourth-rate booze.
"Ugh, that's gonna leave - it's gonna - " Reality spins on a crooked axis as Stan claws his way to his hands and knees, dirt settling into small crevices under his fingernails, khaki paints splotched in various shades of earth.
Stan lets his head droop, the accumulation of a miserable, muggy summer's eve coalescing like tributaries on tip of his nose, sweat dripping from his face in large globules onto the pile of remaining records. The young, dark-haired Beethoven staring back at him almost looks like he's crying.
"Stupid nerd. Stupid poofy nerd hair. Stupid nerd frown. I bet you wore glasses, too, you arrogant son of a bitch."
The lettering at the top of the record cover is worn, Stan squinting at the dated font superimposed over a dark triangle-shaped hat adorned with three tall feathers.
"Erotica Symphony," Stan incorrectly reads, picking up the record as he struggles to his feet. "That's some real fucking culture, Sixer."
The man on the cover is long dead, his story kept on life support by a small cottage industry of nerds and wealthy elite. This man with the curly brown hair and dour expression who was supposedly a genius but was now nothing more than a distant memory copied onto aging skin and a coded message etched into vinyl grooves.
Twenty-nine years.
Stan gulps down the last of the whiskey with a vicious swallow, hurling the empty bottle towards the Shack where it shatters into a thousand jagged pieces. He stares at scene, effect taking the circuitous route to catch up with cause, Stan swearing under his breath as he realizes he's going to have clean that shit up tomorrow.
"What do you think, Beethoven?" Stan asks the record, exhaustion rushing into the space adrenaline left vacant. "Is it even worth having a tomorrow?"
No answer is forthcoming. Stan takes a few minutes to reload his shotgun, Beethoven's surly countenance his only unwilling conversation partner, the record perched against a tree trunk as if it were a child's doll or a puppet.
"No opinion, then. You just don't care, do you?" Stan swallows over the hard lump in his throat, grip tightening around the shotgun in his hands.
The record has no response.
Stan gives a humorless laugh as he lurches to his feet, taking the record in one hand, holding it up to his face to look it eye-to-eye.
"Well, it's a damn good thing I care enough for the both of us."
With that, Stan launches the record into the air, the summer's midnight symphony a passing, crackling storm of plasticine showers.
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