#troile's thoughts

[tanix-dragon]

Subsystems, Sidesystems, and Headspaces: A look into the inner workings of the DWW

Hey everyone, Troile here! We were recently talking idly about our subsystems in a Discord chat, when it was brought to our attention that the way we function in regards to our subsystems is fairly interesting and that at least a couple of people would be interested in reading an essay or explanation of the subject. It had never occurred to us to write about it, since it seems so mundane for us, but now that it’s been pointed out, it makes perfect sense as a topic! As per usual, a quick disclaimer: this is how each subsystem in our system works, as well as the sidesystems—in no way are we claiming that this is how all subsystems or sidesystems work, or that all systems should work the way we do.

A couple of definitions before we begin: a subsystem is a system within the system, ie, one of the system members is themselves a system. The DWW has many members in it, but some, like Flux, have members inside of them. Meanwhile, a sidesystem is a totally separate headspace from the “main” headspace, inhabited by DWW members that typically do not show up very often. When in a sidesystem headspace, it is almost impossible to feel or reach out to these headmates while in the main headspace, which is the main way that we tell that someone belongs to one of the sidesystems.

Let’s start with the variety of subsystem that we think of as “standard four-member” subsystems, as that seems to be one of our subsystem templates. This template is followed by Flux, Orion, and Simulacrum, and works like this: a subsystem forms with four members. Each member is numbered, one through four. (You’ll notice that our subsystems have a group proxy, such as x?, ?>, and ?], and then individually, their proxies are numbered, such as x4, 2>, and 3].) The number one position is taken up by the host of the subsystem—Psius for Flux, Grimgoth for Orion, and Polonia for Simulacrum. The subsystem hosts aren’t always the most common fronters of the subsystem while the subsystem itself is fronting—that is true of Orion and Simulacrum, but not Flux. Psius almost always fronts Flux, but isn’t big on actually being in the front of the DWW. Number two is the subsystem’s protector, which is Cirros for Flux, Therimna for Orion, and Carolina for Simulacrum. These individuals often front their respective subsystems and will show up whenever something bad happens. Number three seems to be a quiet individual with very specific interests of some description—the “autism slot,” if you will. (For clarity, we’re autistic, so this is funny.) This is Uldrak for Flux, Dr. Tanji for Orion, and Moloch for Simulacrum. Finally, number four is the wildcard slot, where apparently just any old fucking individual can show up—this is Sascha Vykos for Flux, RC for Orion, and Tytalus for Simulacrum. Best we can figure is that these are people who can cause some chaos and aren’t sorry when they do it.

Typically, these subsystems form all at once, with four members right off the bat once they’re solidified enough to speak. Whether or not they’ll identify, though, is another story. In Flux, Cirros identified first, then Psius, and then after some prodding, Uldrak and Sascha stepped forward. In Orion, Grimgoth was first, then RC, then Therimna, and then a significant amount of time passed before Dr. Tanji was willing to identify. Simulacrum was a little different—their protector didn’t form at first, and I’m not sure that Moloch did, either, so Tytalus and Polonia were there first (with Tytalus identifying first), then eventually Moloch, and then much, much later, Carolina finished forming and stepped up as their protector.

Flux has also gained members since its creation—Ilias and Troile (that’s me!) as numbers 5 and 6, respectively. We don’t really have any data on if those slots are part of the template or not, yet, since Orion and Simulacrum are both still at four, so we’re keeping an eye on that. We do know that the addition of Troile to Flux expanded their headspace significantly, and has improved their ability to make Flux in the main DWW headspace appear like whoever is primary fronting the subsystem, instead of just this beacon of vaguely humanoid-dragon-shaped pink light that’s hard to look at directly. Speaking of which—Flux has a defined headspace that other DWW members can kind of peak into whenever, assuming that Flux is okay with it. Their headspace is a small, concrete room, kind of like a basement, with a desk that houses the computer or terminal that they use to front. Behind that is a nice, sturdy table, and to the side is a couple of chairs. The room extends a little further back, and is lit by a couple of bare light bulbs in the ceiling, and then there’s a door out in the back, letting Flux members exit the subsystem to exist as teeny tiny little dudes in the DWW headspace. They… basically never do this. Orion, meanwhile, I’m sure has a headspace, but the rest of the DWW can’t peek into it, and we’re not convinced that Simulacrum has one at all—they seem to be in a bit of a dark void situation.

Finally, as to how each of these subsystems appears in the DWW headspace—Flux, as previously stated, tends to either be pink light or will reflect the primary fronter at the time. Orion is almost always a bipedal dark red dragon with a polearm, although this is typically the case when Grimgoth and Therimna are co-fronting, which is the usual. Sometimes Orion will reflect the primary fronter, assuming that it’s Dr. Tanji or RC, but it’s almost always the dragon. Simulacrum, when they formed, were a big black box around the front, but now tend to appear as the primary fronter, or, sometimes, as all fronters, in separate bodies but forced to stay fairly close to each other. It’s kind of weird.

The most interesting thing about the dragon that Orion appears as is that… no one in that subsystem is a dragon, necessarily. Grimgoth’s a little draconic, but he denies that dragon being “him”—in fact, Orion considers the combination of themselves (however many there may be at the time) into that dragon shape to be halfway towards its own identity! Orion typically doesn’t get called a plural they/them in this instance, ie, if you’re talking to the general Orion proxy, he/she pronouns are appropriate instead. I don’t really have much of an explanation for this, and neither does Orion. Typically, this draconic Orion is made up of Grimgoth and Therimna, but the others can slip in just as easily, and her personality is a little hard to pin down. He’s like a more mellow Grimgoth, or a more aggressive everyone else, but usually just likes to watch. I don’t know. This is still an aspect of identity that we’re exploring, Orion most of all.

The rest of our subsystems don’t seem to fall into a “shared template” situation. Our remaining subsystems are Temperance, Emerald, and Skull Scholars. The closest template they have is that all three of them initially formed with two members, then Temperance gained one. I think it’s best if we just go through each of these individually.

Emerald is our only median subsystem, and consists of Talitus Verner and the Orchestrator—essentially, an emerald dragon and his half-elf alter ego that he played into so hard that he formed an entirely separate facet with different ideals and opinions. They consider themselves to be two sides of one person, so Emerald is typically counted as a single member of the DWW rather than two, but that doesn’t mean they agree on things or get along—I’ve never seen such an inharmonious subsystem, and the main writer of this essay is Flux! Emerald appears to us typically as a bipedal and human-sized emerald dragon, reflecting the two sides of him, but if specifically Talitus or the Orchestrator is fronting, Emerald will appear as them instead. Talitus is tagged as number one in this subsystem because he’s more sociable and friendlier, and is more likely to front the subsystem to talk. I have no idea if Emerald has a headspace, and if he does, it’s probably a recreation of the Orchestrator’s lair.

Skull Scholars is more of a weird case. We didn’t realize this subsystem existed for a long time—Roger de Camden showed up in the DWW, and we wondered if he was in a subsystem with Japheth since he seemed like a subsystem, but we ruled that out pretty quickly. Turns out, no, he’s in a subsystem with Lazarus, who we did not know was here for several months. Oops. Skull Scholars are such a weird subsystem that they don’t even have their own front in our tracking app or their own proxy—they can’t blur or be confused for each other, and only one of them can front the subsystem at a time. This means that de Camden and Lazarus are almost completely mutually exclusive—if Lazarus is fronting Skull Scholars, hearing from de Camden is almost impossible, and vice versa. It’s extremely, extremely weird, and they seem fine with it, although having a conversation with both of them is very difficult and takes a lot of energy, typically resulting in a headache for us. It’s like the brain forgot to install the co-fronting module on this subsystem—if it had, they’d probably have proxies that look like other subsystems’, but they don’t, instead having [] and {}. They’re visually similar, but not numbered. I don’t know if they have a headspace—if they do, they’re not talking.

Finally, we have Temperance. Temperance started out as a two-member subsystem, consisting of Saulot and Arikel. They’re interesting in that they’re the polar opposite of Skull Scholars—they can’t help but front together. They like to joke that they’re stapled together, which is basically true—when Temperance fronts, all members of it are much more present than members of other subsystems who aren’t in the front of their subsystem. All Temperance members are always fronting Temperance, if that makes sense—it’s like their whole headspace is the front. (Not that I know if they have a headspace—I’ve never gotten a glimpse in and even though they’re in the front right now, they’re not telling.) Saulot is numbered as one because he was the first one that started talking, and is still the chattiest, and Arikel is two because she was the other one. Kenaddel formed in Temperance some time later, so he’s number three because that was the next sensible number. I don’t have a lot to say about Temperance, honestly—they kind of “just work.” They can more or less “spin around” to make one of them the most in the front, but they never stop fronting the subsystem, so this is a bit of a moot point. I think they’re slowly developing the ability to back out of the front independently, but they haven’t quite managed it yet—stay tuned.

Now, as we move into the sidesystems, it’s probably worthwhile to note that no subsystem exists in either of the sidesystems. All subsystems live in the main DWW headspace, the one with the fronting terminal, and we’re curious to see if this ever changes.

We have two sidesystems, and we’ll address the first one we realized that we had first. We don’t really have a name for it, we just call it “the sidesystem”—this being anyone who predominately “lives” in the secondary headspace that we think of as being owned by Kyir, the headmate that we call the “system administrator” due to him having so many powers and abilities that the rest of us don’t have, as well as knowledge of the inner workings of the system that she’s in charge of keeping track of and only telling the rest of us when she considers us “ready.” I don’t really know what goes on in the other headspace, or what it looks like, but I get the impression of light wood floors and more of an open-concept design? I’m mostly getting this from Lazarus, who got it from de Camden, who got it from his husband, Mithras, who is a sidesystem member, so take that with a grain of fourth-hand salt. We don’t really have a great understanding of what makes a headmate a sidesystem member, although most of them have yellow or purple for their colors, other than Caleb and Kyir himself. Sidesystem members ar mostly defined by their ability to fuck off so hard that, as far as we can tell, they don’t exist, making them sneaky elusive bastards that we tend to find months or years after their formation. We consider Blame (our mechanic with admin powers that hid for eight whole years), Caleb, Caluna, Khouru, Kyir, Mithras, and Spades to be members of this main sidesysyem, and we’re trying to learn more about that whole thing as we go. None of them are terribly interested in explaining how it works, probably at Kyir’s direction, so we figure we’ll find out when we’re ready or when it’s relevant.

The other sidesystem was a surprise to everybody. One day, the space outside of the two headspaces, what had previously been a void became a beach, with an ocean and a little island with a palm tree in the distance and everything. This bamboozled everyone, but most of all Kyir, who is typically in charge of making sure that shit like this doesn’t happen without their permission and he was pretty pissed off about it, strutting around and mumbling and kicking at sand for days. We don’t really have an explanation on how this happened, but we found Anadox washed up on the beach and both Khadgar and Varian off on the island in the distance. As a result, we call these three the Beachgoers. Their default location is to be on the beach or the island, or to be swimming in the water, so we consider them to be a sidesystem of some description. They kind of exist outside of the two main headspaces, although they come into the main headspace to front whenever they want. They can dip so hard that we can’t feel or find them, like regular sidesystem members, but they usually don’t, and typically one of us can open up the door to the main headspace and yell out onto the beach if we want to contact someone. Interestingly, these three also all share a source, and it’s not the source that most of the system shares—they’re the only three fictives from World of Warcraft, and they all came in together as the Beachgoers. Absolutely no one knows why this happened, except for maybe Blame, but if he does, he’s not telling or suggesting it, not even to Kyir, which is kind of pissing her off. She’s not mad that the Beachgoers are here, per se, mostly just that such a drastic change happened to the system without his input. It’s kind of a whole situation, but it’s worked out in the end.

And now, finally, since I’ve discussed everyone else’s headspace, I might as well talk about the DWW’s main headspace that most of the rest of us, including all of the subsystems, live in. We have kind of a big living room situation, on one side of which is a white-tiled area with a terminal system and an indeterminable amount of seats that acts as a front. A crack in the wall in the front leads to some kind of outdoorsy well-lit plains area that feels extremely dreamlike. The living room itself contains several chairs and couches, all surrounding a table, and a specific couch that faces the fronting terminal that lies just outside the tiled area. We call this simply The Couch and is a common area for people to sit when they’re having a conversation with someone outside of the system but don’t actually feel like fronting. Past all these seats is the kitchen, to the right is the door that leads outside of the headspace onto the beach, and to the left is a hallway that goes out of line of sight of the front that leads to everyone’s individual rooms. It’s hard to get an idea of what it looks like around that corner, since we’re monoconscious and don’t remember much of what we’re up to when we’re not in the front, but we sometimes get flashes of what’s going on back there. Somewhere in the back of that area, there’s also an entrance to a room where the wood floor and the walls start to fall away into a big, black abyss. This is the Void, from whence most (if not all) new headmates come, and it’s Kyir’s responsibility to keep an eye on this and ensure that only non-harmful people form. As far as we can tell, they’re the only one that has any control over who does and does not form in the DWW, and if they miss their chance during the early formation stage in the Void, then there’s nothing that can be done, so he’s ever-vigilant, just in case.

That should be it, for now! Obviously, as time goes on, this essay will get more and more out of date, and may need addendums to clarify or add to it as we understand more about the sidesystems and subsystems and as each expand.

[ryttu3k]

As a Ravnos fan, a thought occurs to me as I play through Night Road. So we know that the Week of Nightmares was caused by the clan’s Antediluvian awakening and making it so their powers went haywire, and as soon as he died, it sent a traumatic shockwave throughout the survivors that created the need to keep moving. It makes wonder what exactly would happen to the other clans if their own antediluvians died. It would probably require an actual Final Death to occur though since the Brujah, Salubri, and Cappadocians didn’t have a similar effect happen to them after theirs were diablerized, and it’s why I’m not entirely convinced that the Ventrue one is actually dead.

True, although [Ventru] supposedly died long enough that we don't know if there was a Week of Nightmares-like event. And yeah, diablerie doesn't seem to trigger it, possibly due to them remaining powerful enough to continue to exist in some capacity? (Saulot fighting Tremere for his body, Cappadocius becoming part of the Shadowlands, etc.) Even [Brujah], supposedly - Troile did successfully diablerise him by all accounts, no battle for dominance, although there is that theory he managed to somehow escape via Plot Device Temporis XD

But yeah, actual Final Death may well cause similar effects. Maybe [Ventru] is just in torpor? (Of course, we don't necessarily know that the Ravnos Ante is Final Dead! Chimerstry 10, anyone?)

[badass-at-fandoming]

Vampire: the Masquerade - San Andreas Nights

Played: April 14, 2019 - March, 14, 2021; April 1921 - July 1999

"Everything you just said to me was upsetting."

Long time followers might remember me chatting about a mega-long Vampire chronicle, San Andreas Nights. Shockingly, we finished our tale in March. For fun, I thought I'd make a short wrap up post. Feel free to ask me particulars, but below is a general overview about characters and the state we left the world in.

Player Character Fates:

Enzo Bonpensiero - dragged to hell

Archie Bonpensiero - killed by were-bears

Cassandra Bonpensiero - LA Anarch Noddist, private domain, 6th Gen Samedi

Anna Bonpensiero - LA Anarch Baron, 10th Gen Brujah

Nathan Bonpensiero - LA Prince, 4th Gen Malkavian

Lupita Knight - killed by Grove Street hunters

Wally the Walrus - LA Anarch Baron, 9th Gen Nosferatu

Gangrel Pete - killed by were-bears

Shoto the Silent - Bodyguard to Lucien LaCroix, 8th Gen Brujah

Tony Bagels - LA Anarch Baron, 6th Gen Gangrel

The State of the World:

Gehenna: Well. That happened.

Camarilla: gone! The Cult of Mithras, including LaCroix, Divia, Mithras, Marcus Vitel, Enzo, Nathan, Gratiano de Veronese, and Fiorenza Savona, successfully manipulated Gehenna to utterly decimate the Camarilla. The Inner Circle is dead; Karsh is dead.

The Convention of New York: a convention is going to meet in New York and all Kindred are invited, no matter allegiance, to establish a new organization.

Sabbat and Anarchs: So there are like...nominally Sabbat and Anarch, but they're lacking the Camarilla to define themselves against.

Los Angeles: Still standing. The political situation in LA is temporary until the LA Kindred decide if they want to join whatever organization is birthed in New York. As of now, we have Barons like the Anarchs, set universal rules, and the Barons form a council who elects a "Prince" to deal with big attacks (sorta like a Sheriff).

the Baali: On Lazarus' orders, the Baali tried to release a massive disease-filled eyeball demon in Northern Canada, as a ploy to create chaos and decimate Kindred numbers. Ex-Justicar Xavier formed a Gather of Gangrel, including Tony Bagels, Ramona, and Lazlo, to tell the Baali to Stop That. And they did! With a little help from napalm lol

The Wall of Flesh: not actually the Tzimsce Eldest, but the Eye of Hazimel warped by Sascha Vykos, on orders from LaCroix. In the chaos, Divia was able to eat Nikolai the Tremere, Lodin, and other dedicated Camarilla elite.

Nosferatu: Fulfilling the Nosferatu's greatest fear, Baba Yaga rose and went on a rampage from Russia to Germany. Wally, Roland, and Nosferatu himself (!!!) led the charge to defeat her and were met with great success.

The Week of Nightmares: happened! Zapathasura rose and, fulfilling the Prophecy of the Broken Soldier, Nathan, Dracula, and Nick Knight fought him. After an intense battle, Dracula realized that they had to "heal" the Solider by becoming one. Dracula diablerized Nick, and Nathan used Mouth of Madness to convince Dracula that Nathan was the true Soldier. Dracula flesh-crafted his own heart out of his chest and offered it to Nathan. Wielding the Sword of Troile, Nathan destroyed Zapathasura. This, unfortunately, triggered a kill-frenzy for the Ravnos Clan. Very few managed to survive, but the Clan does still live.

The Plan for the Dead: The Giovanni attempted to make a permanent open portal to the Shadowlands. Unbeknowst to them, Lazarus and Enzo had tampered with the golden scarab essential to the ritual. Instead, a portal opened directly to Cappadocius, who pushed Augustus Giovanni into hell. As an after-shock of this botched ritual, necromancers everywhere had ghosts attack them and attempt to also drag them to hell. Most, like Enzo, succumbed. This massive loss of necromancers will trigger the formation of the Hecata Clan.

The Tremere: In a bid to rid themselves of their Clan Curse, Timmy the Evil summoned the founders of the Clan and performed a spell. This spell made Tremere resistant to blood bonds and unable to form them, but also dragged Timmy and the founders to hell. Oops.

Divia of Rome: Went into the Abyss in order to diablerize the Lasombra Antediluvian

Followers of Set: They awakened Set and invited him to bring hell to Earth. He, however, said he was already in hell and made it just how he likes it, so why not join him in Duat? Set forced all of his blood to kill themselves and join him in Duat.

Malkav's Dream: After receiving a distress signal via Anatole, Cassandra, Anna, and Smiling Jack raced to rescue Beckett, Matilda, Afifa the Last Daughter of Eve, and her child in Cairo. Nathan and Cassandra both received dreams from Camilla Banes, the only surviving member of the Camarilla Inner Circle, during which she instructed them to meet her at the Sphinx with the Last Daughter. When they arrived, Camilla identified Matilda as the true Last Daughter and led them to a very out-of-place English cottage full of Malkavian Elders. The Malkavians joined together to create a global mass illusion that all the disasters of the previous month were man-made and/or natural disasters; thus, restoring Masquerade. The ritual was sealed with Matilda's blood.

Our DM described this Gehenna as a soft reboot of the Vampire world, and damn, he wasn't kidding! So many twists, so many turns; many a tear, many a triumph. I wasn't expecting Cassandra to survive, but, bless her and keep her, she did.

[aldysfool]

who the fuck swiped my capri-sun?, an intro.

hey all you cool cats & kittens, i hope you enjoy getting an abridged version of this lil’ shit. xoxo, gossip girl. (sorry, i re-watched the season finale the other night.)

STATS

name: nathaniel “nat(e)” palmer as the comic.

gender & pronouns: genderqueer & he/him.

age & date of birth: 22 & dec 2nd. (sagittarius, babyyyyy)

sexuality: pansexual

hometown: in ur heart

nate, a vine collection: yup, this one, uh huh, also this & one more! 

character parallels: phillip gallagher (shameless), donkey (shrek), jughead jones (exclusively archie comics), nathan young (misfits)

ABOUT

full app. |  pinterest.

alllllright, so nate was born with some hearing loss & just when the doctors thought he was going to live a life of rapid hearing loss, his adopted parents swooped in & turned all that shit around for him. in those early days especially, he was so obsessed with being all of what they could hope for and more, that he undoubtedly absorbed so much of their love & support in comparison to his brother.

but anywho, he had surgery for two cochlear implants before age 6, and it’s worked out for him, especially because he was (and still is) a quick study. kid’s got a knack for learning/adapting like nobody’s business. but hey, he’s a human - he’s bound to make mistakes and the expectations got so high that he got frustrated with himself and decided enough was ENOUGH. the golden shine he had was starting to wear off.

so, then’s there the Age of Ethan Crabgrass  - which yes, is someone from nate’s past that caused a lot of trouble for him - but honestly, the name is more of a representation for all the discrimination and bullshit nate had to fight against. and fight, he did. in a small literal way, but mostly in a social way. humor is his best and sharpest weapon, and he’s had lots of practice wielding it.

found theatre in one of those moments ya see on the movies where the character is walking by the auditorium and the magic of the stage just pulls them in (like glee omg). it’s also where he started drinking alcohol, smoking mary & juan, and exploring his gender/how he wants to present himself to the world. the love he felt there led him straight to alderidge.

so yes, he kinda blackmailed orson after he found out - through his connects in the art department - about the extent of orson’s drug habits & took this spicy info. straight to the source. i imagine their conversation left nate feeling like he was going to Soar in this dept. troil & cress gave him a little more to work with, but he was still hungry to do something different. but then orson dies, and nate has...lots of feelings.

speaking of which, he has a therapist he’s seen since first year, dr. june, but for the last month or two, he hasn’t spoken to her. he’s too busy doing more drugs, having lots of sex, and being a Shit. to sit down and unpack that entire night and what it means is something he is putting off until...? he’s not sure, tbh. orson’s death has him Shook.

aldy (as he fondly calls alderidge) has been some of the best years of nate’s life. which is probably why he’s trying his hardest to soak up every single moment while he still can. he knows he and the rest of his classmates might not be bffs after this is all said and done, but he wants to create some lasting memories (read: be more Annoying than usual this semester).

HEADCANONS

so i did this thing here that’s my interpretation of potential connections for nate to all of his peers. from the chameleon to the villian, nate’s thoughts about everyone is there! feel free to read & if you dig what he had to say, let me know! if you hate what he had to say, let me know! (if i don’t reach out first!)

fluent in ASL (let him teach you, it’s his favorite thing) & knows lots of bad words in different languages

gives “cute” nicknames to lots of things, because hey, words are hard and sometimes his mind runs faster than his mouth. there’s probably a dictionary of these words collected over the past few years. (e.g., supe effin awk, ors ho, cae sal, mary & juan)

wants the chance to be a Serious Actor, for once in his academic career. with orson dead, maybe that has a better chance to happen. and...if nate’s honest, he’s not as sad as he should be.

especially since he still has jason’s watch, nate’s spidey senses have been tinglin’. like, i imagine he’s gonna be nosy and want to figure out what the hell went down that night. not to snitch, but to protect whoever he can. if he can.

[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.

[odessa-castle]

yoooo so apparently someone asked about Selene and Copley and I’m in the middle of finals but I can’t stop thinking about this game anyway so I might as well write it all down!

Selene and Copley are carrying the souls of their Antediluvians -- Arikel and Ventrue, respectively. How that happened was very different for them, but neither of them has much time left as, well, them. The glory inside them is too great for anyone to possibly contain.

Well. Selene maybe could have, once. She thought about it, back when the plan was still to have Cleveland absorb the offices of Asmodeus; Arikel, who’d been bound to Asmodeus’s service since she met Moloch and took the name Troile, would be forced to yield before Selene. But Asmodeus was destroyed, and his offices unpreserved, thanks to Selene’s selfishness and fear, and she was the high priestess of nothing, shriven of all the power she’d sold her soul for.

When the party blew up Morninglight, Arikel was inside. As she burned, she reached out to Selene through the fragile connection they’d formed and begged her for help. Selene nearly refused, too caught up in self-loathing to listen. But she did listen, finally, and she heard the unexpected: not a terrible and ancient power seeking to seduce and destroy her, but a woman, scared and alone, who hadn’t been herself in a very long time.

And Selene knew that, whether or not she deserved to become a god, Arikel didn’t deserve to die.

So for once, Selene acted out of reckless compassion, and took Arikel’s soul out of her battered body and into herself. Right now, they’ve reached a fragile equilibrium. It won’t last. Arikel’s brilliance will overwhelm her, and the last gossamer strands of herself will melt away. But it will be a gentle end, and a better woman than her will live on, and Selene will never have to be alone again.

Copley...isn’t at peace.

Selene couldn’t bear the thought of losing him in the assault on Morninglight, so she betrayed him with the Kiss and hid his slumbering body away. When he woke up, he was the last man standing. The last vessel for Ventrue to inhabit. And now Ventrue is cracking him open from the inside, like a great and terrible bird breaking out of a shell, and it hurts. But what hurts most is that he’ll never know what he would have done if he had been at Morninglight on the night it was destroyed. He’ll never know if he would have resisted. He’ll never know if his love for Selene would have been enough to let him shake off Ventrue’s yoke for one crucial moment. He’ll die without ever knowing what kind of man he could have been.

But hey. Someone who looks just like him will see someone who looks just like her real soon.

[river-serpents]

Valentine’s Day Mystery (Part 2) (Sweet Pea x Reader)

A/N: Favorite thing I think i’ve written.

Part 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He repeated the quote to himself as he closed his locker and headed to English class.

He thought back to the little he remembered when he read Romeo and Juliet Freshman year.

Well the stars represent destiny or something like that.

So maybe it’s not up to destiny to put them together but it’s up to them?

He sat at his seat and stuffed the letter in the bag.

He noticed Y/N in her usual seat next to him, reading A Midsummer’s Night Dream.

Might as well do some digging myself.

“Hey,” he said, turning to her. She turned from her book and gave him a small smile.

“Hi.”

“So you like Shakespeare?” he questioned.

“Yeah, i’m not that great with it. I try to be though,” she chuckled.

“Alright class. We’re going to start with Titania’s monologue Act 2, Scene 1, Line 84,” the teacher said, causing everyone to get out their books and turn to the page.

“So since you were all supposed to read this homework, I want someone to tell me what this monologue is about, but first, I want someone to read it aloud to refresh everyone on what it was on,” she said, causing people to lean back in their seats and try to hide, holing they wouldn’t have to read the monologue.

“Y/N, can you please read the monologue, “ the teacher said.

Sweet Pea turned to the girl and saw her gulp.

She was pretty much very quiet in class, only answering questions if she was asked to.

In general, Y/N was pretty quiet. Sweet Pea never really saw her talking to anyone. She was always by herself.

(link to monologue)

She started to read, her voice strong and present, and so the fairy queens monologue rolled off her tongue as if she were speaking it from her own mind.

It was long, but entertaining, her voice full of emotion and dynamics.

“...We are their parents and original,”

The classroom was silent. The teacher had them read out loud a lot, but no one was ever passionate like this.

“Marvelous job Y/N! You should really consider acting! Since you did so well reading it out loud, why don’t you tell us what it’s about!” the teacher grinned.

“Oh, uh, sure. She’s basically telling her husband Oberon that because of their fighting, they’re messing up nature. She’s going into detail about all the catastrophes that are happening because they continue to fight,” she explained.

Then, that’s how Sweet Pea knew it just had to be her.

She read that monologue with ease and explained it with ease as well.

The class went on and eventually ended.

Just when Sweet Pea was just about to say something to her, but she bolted out of the room as soon as the bell rung.

Sweet Pea walked out of the room and to the student lounge where Cheryl was standing with Toni in the entrance way.

In Cheryl’s hands, another bouquet of roses that she handed to Toni.

“I’m pretty sure I figured out who it is!” Sweet Pea exclaimed walking up to them.

“Huh?”

“He has a secret admirer. Who do you think it is?” Toni asked.

Sweet Pea turned his head and noticed Y/N sitting on one of the lounge chairs in the student lounge, her face in a book.

He pointed and the two girls turned and gasped.

“Oh my god! Are you going to talk to her about it?” Toni asked with excitement in her voice.

“Hell yeah I am, but first. Could my best friend spare me a single rose?” Sweet Pea smirked at Toni, looking at the bouquet of pink roses in her hands.

“I guess so,” Toni chuckled, picking one of the roses out and handing it to Sweet Pea.

“Thank you, and if you excuse me, I need to go learn some Shakespeare,” he said, as he started to sprig towards the library.

“Who knew the giant would want to learn shakespeare, especially for a girl,” Cheryl said causing Toni to laugh.

~time skip~

The student lounge was decently packed with people. There was Fangs engaged in a conversation with Toni and Cheryl; as well as Betty curled up next to Jughead, and Veronica and Archie right by each other’s side.

Y/N was there too, keeping to herself as she read A Midsummers Night Dream.

Sweet Pea walked in, holding the pink rose and went directly towards Y/N.

Their chatter from the group in there dimmed down as they noticed Sweet Pea walking up to this girl with a rose in his hand.

“Oh my god he’s going to do it,” Toni whisper-yelled to Fangs, who had a confused look on his face.

“Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart,” Sweet Pea said as he held out the rose to Y/N.

The book dropped to her lap and she looked up at Sweet Pea, her face immediately starting to flush red.

“Troiles and Cressida,Act 5, Scene 3. Not a very common Shakespeare piece that people know. But w-wait, how did you figure it out?” she asked him.

“You said that monologue and explained it with too much ease in class earlier. You signed the first letter as A Shakespeare Fanatic. I don’t know many other people that might say that about themselves,” He smirked at her as she took the rose from his hand.

“Oh god, I wasn’t expecting to be caught,” she said with a nervous laugh as she put her face in her hands.

“Well, it’s a good thing you were otherwise you wouldn’t have plans for tonight. Pop’s at 8:00?” he asked, causing her head to pop out from her hands.

“Oh-uh-yes! I would love to!” she stuttered.

“I’ll see you then,” he winked before walking out of the lounge leaving a very stunned Y/N sitting in the chair.

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 1, Chapter 13

Or: Encyclopedia Vampirica

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

Paris—March 14, 1994

Paris is a city of many mysteries.

Why are Parisian stereotypes simultaneously sexy and repulsive? Did Victor Hugo ever get to fuck the cathedral? What’s Jean Reno doing these days?

Take, for example, the electric power lines leading into the foundation of Notre Dame Cathedral. No records exist showing why the cables are there or where they lead. They are live wires, supplying electricity to a location somewhere beneath the church. Since no one complains about the lines, the powers that be in the public works department leave them strictly alone. The policy, as in most big-city administrations, is, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

The first page and a half of Chapter 13 is about describing several weird things about the city and how Phantomas is responsible for all of them. The most interesting what-was-Stonehenge-type mystery (or would be if we didn’t already know the truth) is the network of underground tunnels under the city, not to be confused with the Catacombs.

Located hundreds of feet beneath the ground, these passages are not the result of any known city engineering project. Impossible to reach, no man has walked through them in public memory.

Beats me how mortals were able to learn about the tunnels when they can’t even get to them. Maybe they used a ground penetrating radar, but modern ones can only reach a hundred feet at best.

No one knows who built the tunnels or when, but official policy, considered ludicrous in-universe, is that they’re the remains of an underground Roman fortress. ‘Course, we already know from the first Phantomas chapter that the tunnels are for the old vampire’s personal use.

The tunnels aside, the mysteries described in this chapter are more along the lines of modern infrastructure quirks like the power lines. There’s a two hundered year-old Vert-Galant warehouse whose owners’ identities through the centuries are unknown to everyone but whose rent is paid promptly by a Swiss bank cashier’s check each month. Shipments of computer supplies and expensive art prints are delivered to the warehouse, but nothing is ever shipped out and no one knows what happens to the deliveries. The clerks who work in it are paid stupidly well not to ask.

Phantomas knew the truth lurking behind the mysteries. The power lines snaked down to his hidden lair deep beneath the Crypte Archeologique in the main square fronting Notre Dame. The tunnels, constructed in secret over the centuries through subterfuge and deception, provided him with access to hundreds of locations in Paris. The warehouse belonged to him and the purchases were made through the convenience of ordering merchandise by computer.

What he used the warehouse for during the 190 years before online shopping isn’t said.

The necessary capital came from his bank account in Switzerland. The funds had been raised over the centuries by the judicious use of blackmail among the rich and famous of Paris. No one, living or undead, in the vast metropolis could keep a secret from the prying eyes and ears of Phantomas.

In short, all of Paris’ little mysteries are funded by upper class sins to power and maintain a vampire’s PC. In front of which is where we find ol’ Phantomas.

He’d spent the past few hours on a computer terminal trying to find anything on the Red Death, only to find nothing. A scholar in life and a Nosferatu in death, Phantomas is obsessed with information. Despite reaching that age where passions are long since cooled and when, as the prologue indicated, he should’ve started craving only the blood of other Kindred, Phantomas maintained a passion for knowledge.

Phantomas lived for facts. He collected them, saved them, ordered them, and tried to weave them into a pattern. Especially facts concerning vampires.

Phantomas hasn’t been searching for “Red Death” on Ask Jeeves. He has his own personal database.

Here we learn about Phantomas’ “great project” and why the Red Death had called him “the meddling record keeper.” For the past millennium, he’d been writing an encyclopedia about the Kindred.

A thousand years ago he had conceived of his great project involving the history of the Kindred. He had been working on this masterpiece of information ever since. It was his obsession, his dream. [...] It contained every fact, every scrap of information he had been able to learn about the Cainites during the past millennium.

There was a Tumblr thread going around about the idea of vampires using their immortality to focus on their personal hobbies, like creating new plant hybrids through a century of cross-breeding. Not evil magic plants either, just regular garden stuff.

The invention of computers had greatly helped his work, eliminating the tedious work of hand-writing the information into journals. Also, the powerful database he used enabled him to cross-reference millions of vampiric acts, establishing clear links between hundreds of seemingly unrelated incidents and occurrences.”

Search engines and tabs understandably being a bigger deal back in ‘94.

The most important feature of Phantomas’ project is a “family tree” of the Kindred, starting with Caine and including enough vampires for him to consider it “the most complete family tree ever attempted of the Kindred race.” 

Along with describing each Kindred’s relationship to the other Cainites, the chart also featured a detailed biographical profile of the vampire.

This recorded genealogy, backed up by “a hundred different sources,” includes thousands of Methuselahs and other one thousand plus year-old vampires that could potentially fit the Red Death’s profile, but so far it hasn’t helped.

About those sources, or at least the modern ones. Despite his age, it turns out Phantomas is one of the few vampires who can keep up with the times.

Phantomas had been using computers since their invention and was perhaps the greatest hacker in the world. He could access the files from any major data bank or information file. No security code was safe from his descramble program. The secrets of the world were at his gnarled fingertips.

You’re never too old to hack the planet.

I’d be annoyed that we have yet another character who has to be the greatest or most whatever in the world, but it’s all in service of his hobby and he doesn’t seem to be the unknown power behind a major historical event like Troile’s diablerie of his sire or the rise of the Giovanni, so I’ll let it slide.

Most of Phantomas’ data came from the mainframes used by the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Both sects maintained extensive code-word systems to protect their files from their hated enemy. Neither were aware that a third party, uninvolved in their blood war, had been stealing data from them for years.

Phantomas had to sift through mountains of awful Toreador poetry and Tzimisce how-to guides on gift wrapping using only one toddler, but he’s tough. He endured.

Phantomas also gets his info from the usual sources: the CIA, SAS, CID,   Sûreté, Mossad, and KGB.

He was insatiable in his quest to make his encyclopedia as accurate as possible. That it was never seen by anyone else didn’t matter. Phantomas worked for his own satisfaction.

Yeah, but when social media gets started, we’ll see if Phantomas can resist dumping the whole thing on ShreckNet MySpace.

Speaking of ShreckNet, that’s the secret vampire dark web created, maintained, and used mainly by Clan Nosferatu. I’ve heard that writers used to like to emphasize it’s security, like in Bloodlines when Mitnick talks about wrecking several computers just to break into an unimportant server, so I thought it was weird that Weinberg resisted the urge to namedrop it as one of the databases his greatest hacker character broke into. I looked it up and it looks like ShreckNet wasn’t a part of the lore until the release of the revised Nosferatu sourcebook in 2000.

Phantomas has also got taps on phone company computers all over the world, getting more intel on the Red Death’s attacks on Camarilla strongholds.

Together with his own information on the monster’s appearance in Paris, Phantomas had fed the encapsulated data into his computer. Then he had programmed the machine to search and evaluate his files for those Kindred powerful enough to wield the powers of the Red Death. He purposefully had the machine eliminate the thirteen members of the third generation of vampires. It wouldn’t require a computer to tell when they had arisen from their ages-long torpor.

After initiating the search, he realizes he forgot to exclude Caine and the second generation, and has to start the whole thing over again in the age of dial-up.

(No, not really.)

His proto-Google showed twenty-seven possible Red Death identities. Then he does a second search, eliminating any vampire either “engaged in major blood feuds” for whatever reason or in torpor.

To Phantomas’ frustration, the procedure left two possible names, neither covered in his files of biographies—

Boy oh boy, I wonder who they could be...

Anis, Queen of Night, and Lameth, the Dark Messiah. Both were legendary figures of the fourth generation. But among the Kindred, legends often were based in fact.

“Queen of Night,” huh? That’s a kinda generic title for a woman vampire. I might’ve talked trash about Lameth’s title, but it’s a little better than Queen of Night. And given how petty immortals in stories like this tend to be, you’d think an Antediluvian woman like Arikel or Ennoia would have shut this shit from an upstart Methuselah down long ago.

I’m also gonna go out on a limb and say that, from what we’ve seen of her characterization and how we’ve yet to see the Red Death feel up his own amazing tits while talking about the power of passion, she isn’t our culprit.

We’re given summaries of the two Methuselahs. Lameth, as we already know, was a powerful sorcerer, considered the greatest one “to ever walk the earth,” believed to have been taught by “one of the primeval forces that had once walked the earth,” but no two tales can agree on which. We’re then finally told how he got his grandiose title.

According to myth, Lameth discovered a potion that artificially induced Golconda, the mental state that allowed vampires to exist in perfect harmony with their surroundings. Whoever controlled the elixir controlled the Kindred. That was why Lameth had been dubbed ‘The Dark Messiah.’

And subbed “The Great Evil Jesus”

He had vanished into the mists of history over five thousand years ago. Though rumors of his meddling in Cainite affairs continued to surface.

It’s that time again. Time to pause the story so I can talk about vampire crap.

Golconda’s the name for a sort of vampire enlightenment, supposedly discovered by the Salubri Antediluvian Saulot in India and the overall goal of Clan Salubri. Or it was, until Clan Dick Wizards slaughtered them. It’s thought to be complete freedom from the Beast, or the Beast and Human aspects of a vampire’s nature becoming perfectly balanced. What, exactly, any of that means...

Early game books gave some suggestions, like no longer going into frenzies, or not needing blood so much, or losing all Kindred weaknesses. Hell, it could even be a full-on cure, turning a vampire back into a mortal and maybe even keeping a few powers. Obviously that last one isn’t very popular among storytellers and players.

Later editions made it more vague, and ultimately, it’s another one of those things that’s up to the storyteller. Is it true enlightenment, a balance of one’s two natures, not human yet something beyond Kindred? Some kind of vampire Super Saiyan? Is it true salvation in the eyes of God? Maybe it’s an impossible ideal, something you’re unable to obtain but still something one should strive for, like perfection in your craft or Enuff Dakka. Or maybe it’s all bullshit, a fairy tale believed by the desperate and the misinformed.

How you reach Golconda’s also vague, but what’s there’s your typical enlightenment routine. First you’ve gotta find out about it, which isn’t easy thanks again to the dick wizards. Then you’ve gotta maintain your humanity and feel remorse, or in gameplay terms, keep your Humanity stat at 7 or above and never, ever frenzy. While doing that, you make up for any wrongdoings you’ve ever done as much as possible. It’s just like My Name is Earl, only the guy’s atoning for things like “Hey, I’m sorry I diablerized your sire” or “Hey, sorry I ghouled your dad and casually killed him to make a point I don’t remember.”

During all this, you’ve probably got a guru helping you out. Preferably a real (vampire) guru and not a cult leader or gigolo.

If you do all that enough you’ll reach the final step and go into a trance called a suspire, where you’ll have a spirit journey into the self, the soul, or whatever you want to call it. The whole thing’s a test you only get one shot at. If you succeed, congrats, you’ve achieved Golconda! If you fail, it means you’ll never reach Golconda, most likely because your brain broke so hard you’ve turned into a mindless animal.

Or you can skip all that and drink a magic elixir.

What I’ve learned from fiction and actual real-life religions is that there’s no shortcut to enlightenment. You can’t just do one weird trick and suddenly reach full understanding of yourself and the world. It’s supposed to be a trial. Now, Lameth and Anis believed the elixir would cure them of their compulsion to drink blood, but we don’t know what it actually did yet. We’ll have to wait to see whether the elixir was a lead-in to a moral, something beneficial but mistaken for Golconda after millennia of legends, or actually did induce Golconda and it’s more OP shit.

Alright, back to the story. We’ve heard what legends say about Lameth, and now it’s Anis’ turn.

Anis, Queen of Night, was a contemporary of Lameth’s. Myths dating back to the Second City held her responsible for the revolt in which the third generation rose up and killed their sires.

She did that too? Next you’ll be telling me she was the one who got Caine to kill his brother.

She was described as the most beautiful woman who ever walked the Earth (of course she was). And among the most deadly.

That’s the third time in a single page the phrase “walked the Earth” was used. You’re a writer and editor, Mr. Weinberg. Stretch those writing chops a little more.

The legends of the Second City described Anis as consumed with ambition. She was said to possess seductive charms nearly as intense as Lilith, the lover of Adam and one of the most powerful of demons.

To ever walk the Earth, I’m sure.

And yeah, of course Lilith would fit into the World of Darkness somewhere. Jewish mythological figure and favorite of Wiccans and occultists everywhere, Lilith was said to be the first wife of Adam, the actual second human created by God and molded equally from the same clay as her husband. Adam wanted her to be subservient to him, so she dumped his ass, left the Garden of Eden, and started banging demons out of spite. In V:TM’s backstory, God cursed her for this, dooming her to never truly know the love of another. Meaning anyone she fancied would ditch her eventually.

It was actually Lilith who invented the vampires’ superpowers. She found Caine, injured by all those people pissed at him for inventing murder, healed and fed him, and taught him the powers that would eventually become the Kindred disciplines. Then he ditched her too. In Caine’s defense, it was the curse, and anyway dating his dad’s ex-wife must’ve been too weird for him. But Lilith’s still pissed about it...

Anis, too, had disappeared more than five millennia ago. And, like Lameth, rumors of her reappearance circulated constantly among the Kindred.

Some say she’s the creature in the Patterson-Gimlin film. Hey, who says standards of beauty weren’t different back in the Second City?

Phantomas is frustrated that his only search results are mythological figures, so he changes tactics and looks for powers resembling the Red Death’s fiery death touch. He looks through disciplines, Paths of Enlightenment, and even the latest developments in chemical and biological warfare. He also searches for any mention of demons granting someone powers like it. In the end, he finds jack.

The Nosferatu shook his head in distress. Recent reports from America, obtained by phone taps on supposedly safe lines, indicated that there might be more than one Red Death. The possibility of an entire bloodline of vampires not included in his genealogy chart depressed him. He had worked for hundreds of years on his chronology. It was inconceivable that he had missed an entire branch of the Kindred family. Yet the facts seemed to point directly at that conclusion.

Poor guy. I’m no historian, but I bet this is something they go through at least once in their lives. Someone out there feels for you, buddy.

Phantomas pounded his keyboard in frustration.

Phantomas walked so PC gamers could run.

Lameth or Anis had to be the Red Death. Or one of them had founded a bloodline, all of whose members possessed the power of the Red Death. That was the only possible solution to the mystery. Still, he was not convinced it was correct.

Sherlock Holmes puffed on his pipe thoughtfully. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

“Fuck you, Monsieur Cokehead,” replied Phantomas.

Nor did any of his speculations, Phantomas suddenly realized, address the equally mysterious young man who had warned him in advance of the Red Death. And who knew his name.

As if set off by this thought, his keyboard, luckily not broken by his mighty undead fists a moment ago, suddenly starts typing on its own.

Shocked, Phantomas lifted his hands off the console. The keys continued to type, as if hit by invisible fingers.

Reuban’s been watching Ghostwriter. The show’s gonna end in ‘95 so let’s hope he ain’t too big a fan.

A single phrase appeared on the computer monitor.

“Lonely Single Women in Your Area!”

Staring at it, Phantomas shivered. He had no idea what the words meant. Yet he was convinced that his stray thought about the man in the Louvre had triggered this response from his computer. Voice trembling, he read the name aloud.

“The Sheddim.”

Actually it was “djefhfkhfkffdThe Sheddim.” The narration didn’t say Phantomas or Reuban deleted the results of his keyboard pounding.

Shedim are spirits or demons from early Jewish mythology thought to represent foreign gods, but they have other theorized origins, as the children of Adam and Lilith or humans God didn’t finish making before he rested on the seventh day of creation. Here’s a link if you want to know more.

With that ominous name, this chapter ends and so does Part 1 of Blood War.  Part 2 marks a change in viewpoint characters, so we’re gonna take an extended hiatus from Dire McCann, Flavia, Madeleine Giovanni, Phantomas, Makish, and company. We’ll see them again in Part 3, which suits me fine. I need a break from McCann’s “Ohoho, if you only knew what I knew” thing.