#cannot emphasize enough that my room is fucking. obliterated

[skrunksthatwunk]

ohhhhh no. fuck my stupid baka life fuck my stupid baka life fuck my stupid baka life fuck my stupid baka life. this shit isn't funny anymore guys!!!!!! it's pretty fucking unfunny and you're still laughing!!!!!!!! god. dammit. literally just run me over with a car what the fuck

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 1, Chapter 10

Or: Do Kindred Dream of Vampire Sheep?

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

St. Louis—March 12, 1994

McCann dreamed. . .

A solitary oil lamp flickered as a cold breeze rustled through the dimly-lit chamber. Huge black shadows, reflections of grotesque stone gargoyles dispersed throughout the room, danced across the sandstone walls. A spiraling arm covered with pictographs ran in a tightening noose around the polished red tile floor. The drawings ended at the base of a wide, raised table constructed of bronze, stone, and silver in the direct center of the hideaway.

A circle of thirteen green wax candles surrounded the table. They burned with a thin blue flame. On top of the platform were dozens of baked clay pots. Each of them contained a fluid or a mixture of fluids.

Alright, sounds like your typical wizard’s study. McCann’s apparently one of the greatest magic-users who ever lived, so this is makes sense.

Two figures standing side-by-side, their hands gripping the table, stared at the largest receptacle. Their eyes burned with fires that matched those of the candles.

The male stood well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He wore a loincloth and a pair of sandals.

Dreaming about only wearing your underwear in public’s a cliche, but wandering around in your underwear was normal in the distant past of wherever this is.

If you can’t already tell, this dream is a framing device for a flashback.

His shoulder-length hair was black as night. His face was lean and drawn, with flat nose, sharp chin, and thin lips. Too-white skin and mystic symbols of black soot drawn on his cheeks emphasized that he was no ordinary man. Or vampire.

He was a Naruto fanboy on Ash Wednesday.

He was Lameth, childe of Asshur, and the greatest Kindred sorcerer to ever walk the earth.

That too.

We were never given much of a description for Dire McCann’s features. All we’re told is that he’s really tall, has broad shoulders, and is generally “big.” Your typical superhero build, but nothing about his face or even hair color. I figured it served to make McCann more of a surrogate for the male reader who will never in real life have a beautiful English assassin french kiss him. But, nine chapters later, we’re finally given something, though McCann likely doesn’t draw on his cheeks with soot these days.

The woman at his side was equally impressive. Dressed in thin garments that fully displayed her ample charms, she was as tall as Lameth but with long, flowing blonde hair the color of the new moon. Full-breasted, with narrow waist and wide hips, she was considered by many to be the most beautiful woman, living or undead, in the Second City. Her wide eyes, knowing smile, and lush lips offered evidence that even death could not silence the passions within her.

Of course she’s hot.

Description of man: “He wore a loincloth and sandals. He had broad shoulders and narrow hips. Flat nose, thin lips. His too-white skin and facial markings emphasized something about his character.”

Description of woman: “Who cares what she wore, just know that it’s very little and framed her awesome tits. She was a perfect ten with a 40-20-40 figure. Her eyes and lips emphasized that she would blow you.”

You know what really gives away that Lameth was designed as a character first and not something the reader is supposed to feel sexually attracted to? The thin lips. Take it from a guy with thin lips, no one gives a sex appeal focused character those.

She was Anis, once princess of Ur, now childe of the third-generation vampire known as Brujah.

Remember her from a few chapters back, when McCann was wondering if she was behind everything going on around him? I told you not to giggle at her name? She’s also one of the other childer of Brujah briefly brought up in Chapter 9; the ones who were rumored to have disappeared in the east following their sire’s death and diablerie at the hands of Troile.

The two begin talking. Their dialogue is written like they know there’s an invisible audience watching them so they narrate things they already know to each other so that audience is informed about them. It’s like a crappy play.

“I worked for two centuries,” Lameth declared, “perfecting this elixir. Many were the times I thought I would never finish.”

“Those were the nights when I intervened,” murmured Anis. “Offering you the necessary courage to continue. As befits two lovers.”

Lameth laughed, a mocking sound. “The part of faithful sweetheart does not suit you well, my dear Anis. You pushed me forward not from feelings of love, but of all-consuming passion. Your motivation came from the desire to live forever, freed from the beast that lurks within all Kindred.”

“Tell me again why you’re making this elixer, Lameth, who is my lover?”

“As you know, Anis, my lover who I think is a selfish harlot, this elixir will free us from the inner beast that infects all Kindred, which is another word for vampire.”

“Yes, it will also free us from the control of our sires, mine who is Brujah, and yours who is Asshur.”

So does anyone want to talk about vampire sex again? Despite the narration saying earlier that McCann “knew” vampires had no interest in sex, here’s Anis reminding his past self how much he liked to bone.

Anis chuckled. “Why so cynical, Lameth? I don’t remember you pushing me away on those nights that I taught you that even the undead can still delight in the pleasures of physical love. You were an eager student.”

As a reminder, here’s what we’re told in Chapter 1:

“hey enjoyed pretending that passion still stirred within their perfect forms. But McCann wasn’t fooled.

Along with food and drink, vampires no longer craved sex. For them, hot blood was the ultimate high. Carnal pleasures meant little to them.

The funny thing is, you can see this as a sort of microcosm of how the subject of whether or not Kindred can have or enjoy sex got so confusing. 

The writers start off by saying that vampires don’t have sex, that their now undead biology prevents it, and in any case such passion is lost to them after the embrace. A vampire might be seductive, but it’s a deception, a tactic they use to lure in prey or manipulate their pawns. Deep down, the only euphoria they need is from blood! They are predators first and foremost! They are monsters, now and forever!

Except oops, they also created all these super hot vampire chicks. And the occasional hot vampire dude, for those that swing that way. And horny players are likely to create more. And few of them can put their libidos aside and accept that these sexy vampires would be uninterested in or unable to have regular no-bloodplay sex, even with a reader-surrogate, player character, or OC. So people go looking for loopholes.

In this case, Weinberg didn’t even write any loopholes. He just wrote “vampires don’t fuck” and then later went “actually they do.” The closest we get is this chapter, where Anis is described as so sexually passionate that not even undeath could chill her out.

Back to the story. Lameth’s unphased by Anis reminding him of what a bottom he is.

“As you instructed many others,” replied Lameth, smiling. “Your lovers are legion, Anis. If I was not sure of your mortal origins, I would suspect Brujah had embraced a succubus as his childe.”

C’mon now, Lameth, don’t talk about your girlfriend/lover/friend with benefits like that. You’re part of that “legion” so it’s not like she’s somehow beneath you.

Lameth has heard rumors that Anis has been canoodling with a certain future diablerizer. Despite her free loving lifestyle, he doesn’t get what she sees in “that rebel” Troile.

One drawback about being a temptress archetype is that once people know you use seduction specifically as a manipulation tactic, it’s harder to convince others you really mean it when you say you love only them. Anis tries anyway. She and Lameth have history, after all.

Anis’s eyes narrowed, and she peered around the room as if searching for spies. “Only to you, Lameth, would I reveal the truth. For despite your accusations, I do love you. We were lovers in life and we have been lovers in undeath. The bonds between us cannot be sundered. You are the one Kindred whom I can trust.”

Luckily for her, Lameth trusts her too, at least with the secret of his elixir. From what he says, though, it’s more because blabbing the secret would get them both killed then out of love.

“If the others discovered its existence, we will both suffer the Final Death. Especially when they learn that I had barely enough ingredients for two treatments. My fate is in your hands. As you said, our fates are bound together. You can trust me with any secret, no matter how forbidden.”

I wonder how long a relationship based on mutually assured destruction would last.

Anis takes him up on his offer. She pours her heart out about wanting to be free, not only from her vampiric bloodthirst but from her sire as well. Or as she puts it:

“...free of the shackles that bind me to the one who made me this way, my sire. I, who once was a king’s daughter of the greatest city in the world, cannot bear to serve another.”

Ur was a Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia. Which would indeed make her Anis, princess of Ur. Anis of Ur. Ur Anis.

Along with whatever this elixir does, Anis plans to free herself from Brujah by killing him. Lameth, astonished, thinks it’s impossible. Brujah trusts nobody, so how could anyone get close enough to kill him?

“Wrong,” said Anis. “He trusts his first childe, his favorite. Troile.”

Lameth looked at her in amazement. “Troile worships Brujah. He treats his sire like a demigod.”

Which makes me wonder how in the hell Troile is considered a rebel.

“Even demigods can be destroyed,” said Anis, her lips curling in a satisfied smirk. “Troile may venerate his master, but he lusts for me. And passion is stronger than faith, my love. Passion obliterates reason. Troile belongs to me.”

Slowly, sensually, Anis ran her hands up beneath her breasts, cupping them in her palms. Her eyes blazed.

...Oooooookay then.

“Soon, very soon, my lover will attempt to kill Brujah. If he succeeds, I am free. If he fails, there are other Kindred to seduce. Many others.”

And if he fails and Brujah gets your name out of him, you’re fucking dead. And it was just established that Brujah only trusts Troile. If he fails and doesn’t snitch, how will those many other Kindred get close to an even more paranoid Brujah? Also, maybe this isn’t the kind of thing you should be telling a guy who you’re trying to convince you love him.

“If Troile drinks Brujah’s blood, he will become third generation.”

“I don’t care,” said Anis, laughing. “Knowing Troile, he will be so overwhelmed with guilt afterward that he will flee forever the Second City. Power means nothing to such naive idealists. It doesn’t matter. Third generation or not, my mark is upon him. Now and forever.”

Time for another lore dump from yours truly.

First, a fun little fact. Nowadays, Troile’s gender is deliberately ambiguous. Early books, the ones Weinberg used as sources, used male pronouns, but certain later books used female ones. Clanbook: Brujah Revised, released in 2000, notes this and says that there are also records that Troile either had no gender or switched genders occasionally. From what I’ve seen, most fans assume Troile was a woman. Which retroactively makes the otherwise super-hetero Anis look pretty gay here. Still a jerk for manipulating Troile’s feelings, but a bisexual jerk.

Bujah Clan vampires are known for being hot-blooded and passionate types; traits they inherited from Troile, their direct ancestor. The Brujah Antediluvian, ironically, was more like a Vulcan. Cold, emotionless, logical, or at least his idea of what “logical” means. Imagine Spock adopting a shonen hero and you’ll get the idea.

Problem was, contrary to what this story says, this all went down in the First City, not the Second, and Caine was still around, directly ruling over his childer. And Caine had forbidden the third-generation from siring more vampires, so Brujah was in trouble. Acting emotionless made him hard to read, and Troile started to suspect that Brujah was planning to “correct” his mistake and kill them. So they struck first. In other words, Troile’s diablerie of Brujah was based on one big misunderstanding. Like a Three’s Company plot, except deadlier and less infuriating.

In that situation, it’d be more appropriate to say fear, not passion, obliterated reason.

I say all that like it’s all strict canon, but a thing World of Darkness writers like to do is make certain details about the setting’s history vague. It adds some mystery to the setting, like what Tolkein did by not explaining what Tom Bombadil’s deal was. More importantly, it gives tabletop players some agency. It’s up to individual DMs to decide the exact details, and tailor their campaigns according to them. So maybe it was all a huge misunderstanding. But maybe Brujah really was planning to kill Troile, so they justifiably acted in self-defense. And maybe, just maybe, there was a third party involved who planted the idea in Troile’s head.

That said, we have a problem. There’s a difference between fan-made stories and official novels. Official novels are canon. By writing that Anis seduced Troile into killing Brujah, Robert Weinberg is saying that this is what actually happened, no room for interpretation. Not helping is that we’re not told how Anis convinced Troile to kill Brujah beyond being good enough in the sack, which you gotta admit is pretty lame. I get the feeling that if this trilogy wasn’t considered non-canon, or if anyone remembered it at all, this plot detail would have inspired many online rantfests.

As for what happened to Troile right after they diablerized Brujah, there’s not much. Caine may have cursed them with their clan’s signature temper and susceptibility to frenzy. Other than that, it seems like they stuck around the First City and was acknowledged as third-gen. Guess no one liked Brujah all that much.

Back to the story. Lameth thinks Anis is nuts, but he sympathizes with her feeling shackled by her sire.

“Asshur demands nothing from me, but I still chafe under his rule. If I could rid myself of my sire, I would.”

“Find a pawn to manipulate,” said Anis. “Remain in the background, out of sight, always. Let your agent take the risk and suffer the consequences if he fails. Whenever possible, Blood Bond your confederates before acting and make sure to command him to forget your role in the scheme.”

“You are the consummate plotter,” said Lameth admiringly.

And just like that, Anis comes up with the modus operandi Lameth will be using from here on out. This, the creation of this elixer, Anis’ plot to kill Brujah, her insistence that she loves Lameth, and all their talk about their relationship. It’s convenient all these important events between long-time lovers happened in such a short single-flashback-length time frame.

Anis pressed close to him. “You are the only one who means anything to me, Lameth. As it was in life, so it is in death. Aid me in my plans. Help me undermine the third generation. Together we can rule the world.”

This after she just got done bragging about how she was manipulating another guy into a disposable pawn. In RPG terms, Anis must have all Social Attributes maxed out to make up for absolutely fucking zero Wits.

Reaching for the container holding the elixir, Lameth filled two cups with the murky black fluid. “Drink,” he commanded. “This potion will destroy the foul hunger inside us. Drink and then we will discuss the future.”

Vampire: The Masquerade fans’ll probably guess what the potion does, but I’ll talk about it more a few chapters from now when it’s directly stated. 

The flashback ends there, but after another “McCann dreamed. . .” we immediately transition to another one. This one takes place much, much later during the Middle Ages.

Two men are talking about then-recent events concerning “the Giovanni upstarts.” One man is simply called “the man in black.” As for the other:

...his swarthy features and dark clothing proclaiming him an Assamite assassin.

Another use of the word “swarthy” here to remind us that Assamites are typically Arab/Persian stereotypes. Great.

After a century of war, the other clans have made peace with the Giovannis and acknowledge them as a true clan, exactly as the man in black expected. The Assamite explains:

“They accepted the inevitable. Augustus Giovanni was recognized as a third-generation Cainite who replaced Asshur by diablerie. The Venetian’s childer were proclaimed true Kindred, with their clan taking the place of the Children of Asshur. [...] The Giovanni agreed to remain involved with Kindred affairs. They swore the Oath of Cain to stay neutral in all clan disputes. And they agreed to cease hunting the few surviving Children of Asshur.”

“Considering that they exterminated all but a handful of the childer, not a hard bargain to take, eh?” The man in black laughed.

Now let’s talk about “Asshur” and the Giovanni.

The clan that the Giovannis killed and replaced were these guys called the Cappadocians. They were lead by Cappadocius, who was unusually active for an Antediluvian in the Middle Ages, most of the others having already fucked off into torpor until it was time to wake up and start eating everyone. They were also known as the “Clan of Death” because they were scholars obsessed with death and the soul. As such, they were the most passive clan, not being ones for casual cruelty, war, or dick measuring contests against the other clans. They just wanted to do their research and philosophizing. In typical World of Darkness form, this passivity made them easy pickings for some real assholes.

The Cappadocians were experts on the act of dying, but they struggled with all the stuff involving what happens after death. To remedy this, they turned to the Giovannis, a Venetian family of merchants and traders who dabbled in necromancy even before they were embraced. Family patriarch Augustus Giovanni actually had several offers to be Embraced from several vampire elders, but the Cappadocians offered the lowest generation at four and were an easily killable wuss clan, so he went with them.

This was Cappadocius’ biggest mistake, and shortly after Augustus managed to kill and diablerize him. ‘Course, Cappadocius also trapped thousands of his own followers in an underground tunnel because his clan grew too big and they couldn’t answer his pop quiz on what value they had. And he wanted to diablerize God. The Cappadocians as a whole might have been chill, but Cappadocius himself may have been a stupid bastard.

After that the newly-sired Giovannis began to wipe out the Cappadocians, like the Tremere did with the Salubri except the Giovannis didn’t bother creating a smear campaign to justify their actions. I don’t know how long the Camarilla clans rebuked them for before selling out the Cappadocians, but it was a lot sooner than a hundred years. The Camarilla promised non-interference to the Giovannis during their genocide campaign, something “surviving” Cappadocians haven’t forgotten.

Now, why does Blood War refer to them as the Children of Asshur, and their Antediluvian by that name? Well it seems the name “Ashur”, one “S”, was used to identify several different vampires. Cappadocius was one of them, though he never used the name himself and some historians just called him that for some reason. That’s an in-universe explanation, anyway. In reality, the clanbooks for both the Cappadocians and the Giovanni weren’t released until 1997, two years after Blood War came out. I’d need a real expert on the game to confirm this, but I suspect before then both clans just served as background lore, unplayable and not that fleshed out yet. Maybe Ashur was the original name the game used for Cappadocius, but they changed it soon after.

One last thing about the Cappadocians. Their clan curse was that they had a corpse-like complexion, meaning they looked like zombies only without the open bite wounds and rotting (usually). The previous flashback taking place in the Second City means the curse was already in effect. That means Lameth, fourth-generation Cappadocian, with his superhero build and who the nymphomaniacal Anis claims to truly love, should’ve looked something like

this.

The man in black observes that the Giovanni got the peace and recognition they wanted in exchange for “a handful of promises that cost them nothing to honor.” Meaning they won’t really lose anything by being involved with the vampire community, minding their own business, and not killing the few Children of Asshur remaining. The peace agreement was completely stacked in the Giovanni’s favor. The Assamite, for whatever reason, takes it to mean the Giovanni won’t bother keeping their promises.

“They have sworn the Oath of Caine,” said the Assamite in protest. “They would not dare violate that vow.”

“I have been a member of the Kindred for more than a millennium,” said the man in black solemnly. “During that time I have witnessed the breaking of a thousand oaths, a hundred vows, a million promises. We vampires are no more noble than the seed from which we came. Mankind never honored its word. Why should the Kindred?”

In the short term, the man in black thinks the Giovanni won’t rock the boat too much, being more concerned with their necromantic pursuits than human or kindred affairs. Long term, though...

“Theirs is a watching or waiting game. But what they eventually plan for the Kindred and kine is a mystery I do not wish to think about.”

The short-sighted Assamite dismisses the idea of the Giovanni becoming a future threat, believing they’re too small in number and focused on things that surely will never matter to Kindred, like money and commerce. Rather than convince his dumbass grunt friend otherwise, the man in black changes the subject.

“No one at the parley expressed any interest in the identity of the vampire who foolishly Embraced Augustus Govanni? Or why he took the risk?” asked the man in black.

It was Cappadocius/Ashur himself. Technically. Augustus’ Embrace was unusual. One of Cappadocius’ fourth-gen childer sucked all his blood out, then fed him a vial of Cappadocius’ blood, but it was all done with the man’s knowledge and consent. But Blood War has a different answer.

The Assamite’s dismissive of this too. No one brought it up, and the man in black worried for nothing. No one cared who embraced the prick, since the fool must be dead now like the rest of the Cappadocians. The Assamite says Augustus’ sire “should have known better than to challenge the will of a necromancer.”

“Perhaps he had no choice,” said the man in black. “No choice at all.”

And Lameth, who used the man in black as his voice and ears, smiled in satisfaction.

Well now, ignoring how it goes against modern canon, this has some interesting implications. Did Lameth blood bind a random Cappadocian and force him to Embrace the treacherous Augustus, going according to Anis’ advice? Or did Lameth himself embrace Augustus, having no choice because he thought it was the only way to ensure his freedom from his sire? And is the man in black just a random Kindred servant that Lameth can somehow use like a walking camera, or is he a body Lameth is possessing like his current McCann identity?

Alright, let’s sum it all up. Anis manipulated Troile into killing her sire Brujah, altering the course of the whole bloodline, just to be free of him. Thousands of years later, Lameth would play a role in creating the Giovanni Clan and their plot to wipe out the Cappadocians to free himself of his own sire, even though he admitted Asshur never demanded anything of him. Lameth and Anis’ participation in the Jyhad show them to be power-hungry bastards that want to rule the world but don’t want to be ruled themselves, like undead Objectivists or some shit, but I also wonder if they were blood bound to their sires, slaves to their will like ghouls are to Kindred. If so, that might earn them a measure of sympathy. But not much.

McCann woke. . .

That’s it for the flashbacks. McCann’s up, it’s almost dark, and he has to get ready for his next meeting with Vargoss tonight. He’s still bothered by his dreams, which he remembers clearly. Unlike me, who forgets what he was dreaming about five seconds after waking up. Those conversations were from “many centuries” ago. Not to mention several millennia apart from each other. He finds it weird that his sleeping brain brought them both up on the same night, and is disturbed by the implication.

He suspected powers beyond his understanding were manipulating his mind. It was not a pleasant thought.

That was when he noticed a small box on the nightstand by the side of his bed.

Remember McCann’s magic security system? The one no Kindred or human could get past without him knowing it? Well it did jack shit this time. McCann checks his defenses and sees they’re intact, but the box is proof that someone broke in and placed it there.

Inside the box is all the mail that was stolen from his office, and the Baba Yaga photos from Russia.

There was no note. Nor was one needed. Resting on the photos was a single green sequin.