timelineofdarkness

[timelineofdarkness]

I just turned 43, but I have to say, trying to figure out what Skibidi Toilet was, made me feel much older.

[timelineofdarkness]

The Seattle Labyrinth

Have you heard that there's a giant labyrinth deep under the city of Seattle? Deeper than the underground tour goes. Zero cell service deep, and then some.

There's this wall downtown with a locked door. Ms. Way found an old key and determined that it unlocked this particular door. The whole genius/madness insight. We started to explore, at first together, then quickly separated. I must have used up two tubes of lipstick marking the path back to the entrance. We found no small amount of traps, as well as some ancient coins (Drachma if I recall correctly) and some old filtration technology. We spent a long time exploring, and I think we could have spent forever down there. Bellatrix mentioned that Lord Vesuvius' vaults have a very similar look about them. After realizing we'd been exploring for hours, we surfaced. Prince Mariana had left several texts and at least a voicemail requesting contact. She was at first angry and then deeply concerned.

The maker of the labyrinth is a particularly old individual called Daedalus, whom I am led to believe is THE Daedalus. With a moment to process that, I understood why Mariana had insisted on making sure he hadn't awoken and made his way into the city. As far as I know, he sleeps, but...what happens when something that old wakes up?

T.T

[timelineofdarkness]

Task Force X

I mean, everybody knows this one, but maybe you didn't catch how it started. How it really started.

You remember Amgrin? Big Nordic dude, "Free Ballard", that guy? He of course died in Leilani's Praxis, but about two or three years ago he was acknowledged as the Prince of Ballard and it became this island within Seattle. Prince Mariana was weirdly chill about the whole thing. A bunch of Kindred made their way to Ballard and everybody acted like it wasn't going to be crazy unsustainable to have that many vampires living in such a concentrated area. Well, everybody with any kind of power to do anything about it. So of course my co-workers and I see right through it as the unhinged thing it is. So we start sniffing around and shit gets weirder. The Green Lake Monster is out of the lake and not being a monster. Turns out he was a vampire called Odik the whole time. The story goes that he had become a wight, fully giving into his Beast and going feral, havening in a cave under Green Lake. But he's here, walking, talking, giving out hugs. I'd never heard of a wight coming back to their senses, so I needed to know what was going on.

There exists an entity called the Djinn of Wishes that dwelled within Seattle at that time. Needless to say, they grant wishes. There's a good deal that would be tempting to wish for, but we chose the status quo, stability, get out of here with your wishes. He of course twisted our first wish in a predictably irritating fashion. The Ventrue made a second wish that was so specific and weird, that he must remain so many cubic miles away from her at all times I think it was? It's going to be a while before he's able to interact with Planet Earth.

Which meant that all of the wishes he was maintaining, like, Odik being in control of his Beast...? About the time this occurred to us, I got a message from a panicked kindred saying "Oh God, he's killing everybody". Shortly after that, an earthquake.

I trust you also remember Nyx. Old crone, stuck a tree branch up my ass to cure it of sexually transmitted demonspawn, sire of Amgrin? She also died in the Praxis. Before her Final Death, Nyx had been a master of Koldunic Sorcery. I believe they call the power she used Kupala's Fury. It creates a brief localized earthquake. This lead to the collapse of The Longhouse, where the Gangrel Embassy had been, as well as the creation of Lake Ballard. One of my co-workers, a neonate called Talon, dove off the collapsed bridge leading to Ballard and swam to the ruins of the Longhouse, dragging each and every torpid Kindred to shore. We elected to destroy the Wight then and there, begging the Prince's forgiveness for skipping the formalities of the tradition. Our legal theory for such an act was that a vampire no longer in control of the Beast is no longer a vampire at all.

This clusterfuck inevitably leads to The Government stepping in. Curfew was declared, hunter groups started flocking to the city, and everybody is encouraged to lie low. This particular group of hunters, A.C.E., was an all-ghoul outfit that went around hunting kindred and sustaining their extended lives and enhanced combat abilities with their vitae. Keith Mann saw their vehicle outside and went out to investigate. We stopped hearing from Keith after that. When we talked to Sheriff Kellog about the situation he sent London in obfuscated and almost immediately we heard machine gun fire. Apparently, automated turrets don't care about obfuscation. They call in another vehicle to take London somewhere, and we give chase. We catch up with them, incapacitate their vehicle, and force a fight in the street. I've got my sword, the Malkavian is firing the gun more enthusiastically than effectively, and we make quick work of them. A call to Topcent to clean up the evidence and we're back to base with London.

One would hope that the Seattle Kindred lie low from here, but it's also the Summer Solstice and we have a few traditional observances that some of us are unwilling to suspend. The moment we got the Toreador Primogen to concede that we should cancel the festivities this year, I received several messages from Lester Gold, who had already launched his annual event. He'd bribed the cops to allow it to carry on. Unfortunately, Task Force X, the super secret government goon squad of supernatural creatures, was drawn right to him. They quickly incapacitated him and took him to a second location.

This leads directly to us being charged with a rescue mission. We get a guide through the sewers (after paying the Nosferatu for information on where the vans go), and we pop up in their base almost without a hitch. Expect for the part where I slipped and ended up getting carried out to sea and had to get carried back to the action by Nananua, who was coincidentally hanging out near the pipe I got shot out of. By the time we got back, they were already fighting, no chance to do anything too clever. Combat went pretty smoothly until we got different ideas about strategy. I got shot in the head one too many times while expecting a follow-up that never came. I'm told that more kindred than I realized were even captured were freed, as well as several fae creatures, and a horrifying green slime that eats everything. I'm told Nananua was able to neutralize the slime after we escaped.

A year later I woke up in a little pod with a note instructing me to come back to Seattle in a year from that point, and it'd been a few years since I'd been on tour, so of course it seemed like a perfect time to give the people what they wanted.

T.T

[timelineofdarkness]

Mutant Monster Mayhem

Have you ever heard of Mutant Monster Mayhem? It was this dark web page where you could watch custom-built monstrosities fight one another. If you paid enough money you could even customize your own fighter and then if that fighter did well you got a share of the revenue. It was supposed to be cutting-edge computer-generated gore. You know by now that, of course, it was an enormous violation of the Masquerade. The fighters were largely drifters that had been trapped by a Free Anarch outfit called The Flesh Boys. I'll give you one guess, and you'd be right.

Fee to join as an owner was $5,000,000. A good deal more cash than any of us had. Music doesn't pay as much as people think it does. We reached out to Baron Cookie for some help handling it. I know CamAm are different from these guys, but they also like it by them before you start just stomping on a Free Anarch operation. She covers the fee, and then some. She pulls out this giant case, and instead of movie levels of cash, it's these antique gold bars. Sold to the right collector, worth far more than gold. We're able to buy the owner pass and get started with it. To describe the monstrosities we saw would take too long. You'd get a certain number of points to spend on augmentations and alterations to your fighter. You could give them sharp bony protrusions, I think wings were an option, anything you think of a Tzimsce being able to do to a human body, they would create a battle monster to those specifications. A battle monster doesn't have a long career. What's left of them ended up in the ocean. Between fights, they're kept in a warehouse not too far from the docks.

By law, that makes the warehouse Klaus's problem since it's within the agreed-upon radius from his bar. Klaus then hands Bellatrix a boon in her name and tells her to handle it.

There's a piece of me that still feels guilt. Bellatrix managed to access the sprinkler system to dispense highly corrosive acid. We're setting charges inside to blow up the warehouse, and...they begged. These things were still people at the core. Deeply traumatized people, forced to fight for just a few more nights of life, praying for escape, needing salvation.

There was no time and Klaus put a demolition expert in charge of resolving a breach of the Masquerade. Even if I had managed to figure out how the locks work, the acid would have eaten the pipes too fast, and then there were the bombs.

I try not to remember just how many cages were in that warehouse. I also try not to think about how out of control that fire got. A lot of warehouses went up in flames, as well as some small businesses. But the Flesh Boys seem to have disappeared from the Dark Web, it's been at least 2 years since I have heard anything to do with them.

I still smile a little whenever I think of that old Kraut's skinhead bar burning to the ground.

T.T

[timelineofdarkness]

John, Honest-by-Half

There used to be this Malkavian called Honest John. You may have encountered him at the Sanitarium before Mariana closed it down. He ran that nameless antique shop that sold cursed weapons. Also, that gun shop that sold cursed weapons. He was an infernalist. Happened on that bit of information purely by chance. A member of my clan, Keith Mann, was having a sexy party at his studio. There were a bunch of statues affixed with adult toys. You can fill in the rest. Anyhow, a couple of us wake up the next night feeling roooough. I check the group chat, they tell me to go talk to Nyx immediately. Nyx tells me it's a demonic parasite and she's gotta shove this branch of something up my ass to purge it before it grows up and Xenomorphs itself out of me. I suppose I got off light paying her a major boon for it, but it's hard not to be a little sore about it.

So after I get myself cleaned out I start thinking about who was there, and it's the usual suspects except for this one Hollywood actor who seems out of place at a random Seattle party. I started thinking about different ways somebody could wear a famous face for a night. Eventually, we gather enough evidence to determine that John's been consorting with a demon. Delivering final death to an infernalist is a little above my pay grade, but Nananua is usually down to kill something, so we traded a boon for a pile of ashes, mission complete.

Or it would be. This is a good time to mention that John always claimed to be one of a set of identical triplets, each also named Honest John, or more properly "John, Honest by Half". I'd dismissed it as Malkavian nonsense, when, in truth, it was Malkavian Nonsense. They were some sort of cloned personality. I don't know if it was an actual hive mind, but it was the same man three times, which explained how he could simultaneously be at the Sanitarium, the antique shop, and the gun shop. We had visited the antique shop and seen where he kept his good stuff. Once you go past the front room, there's this kitchen full of Coca-Cola memorabilia. Inside the fridge (also Coca-Cola-Themed) is a secret passage to a room full of melee weapons. Swords, axes, pretty sure I saw some nunchaku. All of them cursed. That is probably why they were all free. After Nan killed him, we went back to the pawn shop and found it empty-ish. It was full of traps, and there seemed to be a dead miscreant hanging from one such trap. The body came in handy when we noticed the first Claymore mine. I'll spare you the gory details, but neither the memorabilia nor the remains of the young mortal survived the encounter. After that, we visited the gun shop, operated by a very unliving Honest John.

Once we confirmed the triplet theory, we called an Alistar in on protocol, and in case that demon got aggressive. She had this unearthly beauty, like Tilda Swinton, but more so, if that makes sense. She helped us to take down the second John and went with us to the demon's grove to finish the thing. The demon killed the last one himself and left, seemingly bored of tempting and harassing us. You'll forgive me if I don't name him here, but I also trust that one as well-informed as yourself already knows far more than I'm telling you.

Yes, that was the reason I hyperfocused on demonology for three weeks, and the knowledge you shared has been invaluable on more than one occasion.

T.T

[timelineofdarkness]

The Sword

I mentioned in my last entry how I ended up in a duel with General Silver. I managed to last a few seconds against him. About 3 seconds longer than I expected. Then he ran me through with his sword and it was yield or torpor. Mathias shamed him into letting me keep my sword, since I was pressed into defending my Sire's "honor" and it was well assumed at the start that he'd be wiping the floor with me.

I've since gotten a lot better with a rapier. That Tzimsce I mentioned; we went back to the Tower to report and THE D'Artagnan was raising hell in the Prince's office with two or three Free Anarchs. That golem of hers had it in hand, but the Tzimsce juiced himself and did that freaky thing that they do and Frenchie screamed "SACRE BLEU, A DEVIL" and turned on my late co-worker. He also lasted longer than expected, but the Musketeer slew him. At that point, the Prince went from annoyed to angry, and told Tony to ash them. Nobody commented on me taking D'Artagnan's sword and wearing it out of the office. It didn't save me from getting my clock cleaned by Silver, but I've had a lot of practice since that fight. I'm not too eager for a rematch, but I'm already twice the swordsman I was then.

T.T

[timelineofdarkness]

What I remember

I thought it was fitting, even if "haha, that was a creative writing prompt, don't even worry about the Time Cops. Werewolf cops though...don't steal a kinfolk's Bugatti." You always did have this way of explaining things that leaves me with even more questions.

You've asked me for a recounting of my service under Prince Mariana, but I'm not quite sure what I can share that you don't already know, but I'll do my best to remember the details.

It started with Lester. Fucking Lester Gold. He's the reason I'm stuck in Seattle in the first place. Pretty much the second I got released out into the city as a fresh Kindred I get a call from the Prince offering me a job and at the same time two Snaps from Lester, one being a boon scrip with my signature and the text "take the job", and the second being something I'm pretty sure could get me put on some kind of list. Class act, all the way.

The team is pretty small to start. Just a couple of us. A few faces would join us for a little while and then just disappear into the night.

Mariana had us looking into "stuff in general". Often, this meant hanging out at the Shilling and eavesdropping on the Brujah. Doctor Stitches really doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut. We caught him fighting in Topcent's underground arena. He was apparently making pretty good money beating up on ghouls until auction night. At that point, I think it was just the Tzimsce and myself on the team. I forget his name. His sire was Jonathan Harker. I mentioned him when you were in Sioux Falls since he'd mentioned coming from there. Auction night came, we watched the fights, I made about $5000 that night. Would have been more except somehow Stitches got his clock absolutely cleaned by one of Topcent's boys, a bruiser called Connor Shannon. I was tempted to put in a bid, but Two-Spurs was there emancipating them and it would have definitely lost me points with General Silver, and it's usually good to be on the good side of the Keeper of Elysium. Plus, I've felt firsthand how skilled he is with a sword because Lester can't fight his own battles.

After the Stitches fight, John stomped his way to the locker room and beat Stitches into Torpor for embarrassing him. As far as I know, Stitches stayed away from Nelson's Gym after that. Suppose a few months in Torpor was enough deterrent.

T.T

[timelineofdarkness]

OOC:

That timeline ended up crashing and burning pretty fast, the game has pivoted a few times and so we're shifting focus and characters for this blog. Following this post, it's the Misadventures of Tommy Trash.

[timelineofdarkness]

What We Remember

It wasn’t always like this.

In 2020, the people rejected fascism, Joe Biden won the presidency, COVID continued to ravage the country. Everything was still bad, but it served our purposes. A healthier and happier population means better blood, and less attention on what we’re doing. We were back to business as usual.

Yesterday that all changed. After Klaus left town and the Double Eagle was vacated I had plans to turn it into a leather bar. Felt fitting to fill it up with deviants. Then out of nowhere the few meager gun control measures in place are upended. A new amendment guaranteeing a personal right to keep and bear arms is passed and signed into law with no warning. As I start to ask how this happens in Joe Biden’s America my head starts to swim, like I stopped for a drink at a music festival. I have a very vivid memory of the election. Feeling some relief that the pandemic would be gotten under control. We can’t really get sick, but we can still carry and spread certain viruses. I don’t really know all the science behind it. I could ask Valentina, but she has a way of taking what should be a short answer and delivering a dissertation on the subject. Most of us have been drinking donor blood for a while anyhow. All very sanitized and sustainable. Or, it was.

President Trump is serving his second term and always has been. On the heels of the new gun laws putting an incalculable amount of handguns on the street, the President then shattered The Masquerade. We knew the government knew about us, but there was no point in revealing our existence. It’d be like knowing aliens are real. What would anybody do with that knowledge besides panic?

Martial law has been declared, as well as a curfew; nobody out after dark. There goes my nightclub. The entire country is that town from Footloose.

Of course it gets worse. They’ve rounded up the homeless and stuck them in abandoned houses and motels. We’ll see what happens with that, but it means it’s harder for us to hide, and as intended, is removing the last accessible source of emergency sustenance for the Kindred population. 

The president is also making thermal imaging goggles available to all Americans who want them. We had those banned decades ago for “cancer risk”. Which is bullshit. I think. They might cause cancer, I’m not a doctor. What they absolutely do though is reveal our presence to anybody wearing them. Kindred bodies run cold, and there’s almost no getting them warm enough to fool those things.

Some of us are going underground, sleeping for a decade or two until the humans become preoccupied with something else. It’s not a bad idea, especially if we can’t change the past.

But if somebody did it once, maybe we can undo that change. Maybe we can fix our timeline. 

If we can figure out how this happened in the first place.