Vampire: Dark Ages (Vienna) - Chapter 5: The Slums

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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

Lament clears her throat and motions towards the stretcher leaning against the wall a few feet away, glancing at Ulrecht and quirking a brow at him. "Use that instead, it will be easier on both you and the injured." She looks at Brother Jurgen and asks "Would you be able to help me move him onto the stretcher?"
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Ulrecht shrugs, and waves his men to the stretcher. They bring it to the sleeping man's bed, so that Jurgen and Lament can gently shift him onto it.

As the two servants carry the injured man, now awake, towards the church proper, Jurgen moves ahead to hold open the door. "Welcome to the house of God, my son." he intones ritualistically.

As he looks around and sees where he is being taken, the man starts to protest. He struggles to rise, wincing with pain all the while. Lament can see where he has torn open one of his injuries and blood has already begun to seep out. She cannot understand what he is calling out, but she catches the gist of it: "Don't take me in there!"

The two carrying him seem nervous, but that only causes them to speed up towards the door.
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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

Lament stops them and presses a cloth on the wound to catch the blood. She whispers softly to the man, hopefully soft enough for Ulretch to not hear, "You will be ok, I cannot stop them." She steps back and says to the men carrying the stretcher "Continue but do not hurry, jostling him too much will loosen the stitches further."
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The man on the stretcher is relieved when they stop moving him forward, and he looks earnestly into Lament's eyes while she adjusts his bandages. But when she takes a step back, and they start carefully moving him towards the church again, the man's panic returns quickly.

He's yelling "No!" in his own language, but it's fairly easy to figure out what he's saying. The rest of his rattling is harder to follow., but he continues.

At about 10' from the doors, he struggles so hard, one of the bearers drops one of the posts, and the patient falls to the ground. He lands on his feet, though, and he tries to limp away from the place, extreme pain visible on his face. His rantings continue then, though he seems to be begging this bearers and Ulretcht not to hurt him.

Ulrecht shouts. "Ah HA!" I told you. Devil touched. Why else would he not enter a holy church?"
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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

Lament grabs the nearest guard from the tent and checks to see if he speaks a language they all understand. After verifying that he can, quickly asks "why doe he not want to go in the church and can you make him understand that he HAS to?" She drags him over to the man and nudges him.
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The man replies, "He is... how say? He say that church will kill? I not know why. He begging men not to kill."

The two stretcher-bearers quickly move to take the limping man by the arms and drag him into the church that way. Ulretch is smiling grimly all the way.

The patient makes a sudden shove into one of his captors with a shoulder, knocking the man off balance and briefly freeing himself. He takes the opportunity to grab the other captor by the arm and throw him to the ground before he grabs the dagger out of the fallen man's belt and holds it to his throat. He shouts something in his own language.

The guard with Lament adds, "Now he say he kill anyone who make go into church."
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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

Mumbles something under her breath about Ulretch and the church killing things and thanks the guard absently. She goes closer to Ulretch and whispers softly "How far are you going to take this? Willing to lose a man over it?"
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

Ulrecht whispers back, "I? I'm sure I don't know what you're referring to. I am merely following up on rumors that these injured soldiers, so long thought to have been mistakenly attacked, may be monsters hiding in plain sight."

He gestures towards the screaming soldier, "That one, for example... shot with silver arrows, and nearly killed as a result. Only your own legendary skills could save him, and even then, he is left to recover outside the church's holy aura. And when we finally try to bring him within, look at him. He fights us. He threatens to kill us. He is injuring himself, and may yet die, just to avoid entering into God's house. Why else would he do such a thing, if he were not a foul demon hiding behind his bandages?"

He holds out his hands in a calming gesture towards the man, palms forward. "Calm yourself, man. Only the damned need fear God's loving embrace." He moves closer to the patient, who in turn grows even more agitated. He shoves his hostage aside and slashes at Ulrecht, though he is still a good five feet away from the man, then backs away. He attempts to move away from both Ulrecht and the church door, but stumbles and falls while trying to clamber over one of the temporary beds.

The helpful guard continues to translate, "He calls Lord Ulrecht a monster, and bids him come no closer. He say that his Lordship will murder him within the church."

Lament can see the man's bandages growing much more bloody, and the one over his abdomen is sagging as if the man's innards were no longer firmly within his skin, and only the bandages were keeping them from spilling out.
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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

Lament tries to approach the man, motioning to the guard to follow her. She tries to catch the man's eye and keep his focus on her. She glances at the guard, and whispers to him, "Can you translate for me?"

Assuming he does, she says to the man on the steps, "Nobody is going to harm you, we wish for you to receive the lord's blessing to aid your healing. However, your continuing to stand and fight is making your wounds much worse and I am not sure how much we will be able to fix the damage done." She keeps Ulrecht in her peripheral vision.
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

Ulrecht takes a step towards the patient, who scrambles up onto his feet, still holding the knife. The helpful guard says something to the man, and gestures towards Lament.

The man replies, his voice is trembling a bit, and he seems uneasy in his stance. He goes on at length, which is eventually translated as "He say Lord Ulrecht will harm. He say he go to some other church, but not this church. This church where Ulrecht kill him."

The guard speaks to the patient a bit more, asking questions, which are answered.

"I ask him why he say that. Lord Ulrecht is good man, takes good care of us. He doesn't know why. But he say he knows Lord Ulrecht will kill him in the church. I think he hit in head?"

Ulrecht sneers at the guard. "He's making it up, fool. So you won't make him enter God's house. It's just a ploy. Now, all of you, take hold of that man and bring him into this Church, now. It's nearly sunrise, and I'm growing bored with this mummery."

At his command, all of Ulrecht's guards start to approach the man, who manages to step down from the bed, groaning in pain a few times, and tries to move away from them all.
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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

[Auspex 2 on the patient.

Lament shrugs at the guard, "He may have hit his head, I was more concerned with his leg and stomach."

She moves closer to the patient, deftly stepping in front of Ulrecht's guards, speaking softly to the man, "Nobody is going to kill you, Ulrecht won't approach you any further." While there is a language barrier, she hopes that her tone and body language will convey her meaning enough that he calms down somewhat.

[ooc: I'm not sure where to go with this really. Way to make me work Goat.]
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

[Auspex reveals the man's aura. Most dominant is fear, of course. Other emotions, anger, pain, fatigue are present as well, swirling in and around the fear. There is a section of the swirling that seems... different from the normal kinds of swirls in his aura. This alone isn't enough to really determine anything useful, but something is "off" with his emotional state.]

The guards continue to move towards the man, though none are so uncooth as to interfere with Lament's moving towards him first. The helpful guard who had translated does mutter something about the man still having a knife.

Lament approaches her patient, and she can see a brief moment of calm spread across his aura, before a new spike of fear engulfs him. [This kind of flux is normal for emotions; they change and shift constantly.] Then he makes a break for the far opening to the tent, away from the guards and Ulrecht and Lament.

The man is injured, but unencumbered. The guards, though healthy, are in armor and are not fueled by terror. They break to follow him, but do not look like they will immediately catch him.

But as he reaches the end of the block, something descends from the sky to land in front of him. This monster, for no creature of God's creation would look so hideous, is the size of a bear, nearly to the man's shoulder, though it is itself upon four feet. Large wings rise from its back. The red glowing eyes in its face only heighten the terror of its wide snout filled with many sharp teeth.

The running patient tries to arrest his motion, and nearly tumbles to the ground in the process. The monster rises up to its rear feet to use one arm to grip the man by the shoulder, and then roars at the oncoming guardsmen. All of them, very sensibly, stop their advance and begin shouting for more guardsmen.

Ulrecht and Lament, still barely exiting the tent, see all this from a distance. Ulrecht is nearly giddy as he shouts, "Do you see? The Beast guards his own!"
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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

Lament mutters, "Or it's a creation of...somebody's." She heads towards the beast and her patient, staying behind the guards and watching very closely.
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

"Who could create such a monster but the Devil himself?" demands Ulrecht to Lament's back, as she moves in closer to the beast. It grips her patient with its second hand, then flips him around so that he's held tightly to the beast's chest. "What are you doing? Attack the thing! Use your silver weapons and send it back to Hell."

The guards draw silvered short-swords, and then charge the thing. It spins on its rear feet, and blocks their blows upon its wings with a loud clang. One guard's sword breaks, even.

Then, it jumps 20ft straight up, still holding the patient, and flies away into the night's sky.
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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

Lament steps back quickly as the beast takes off and glares at Ulrecht. She then starts to make her way back to the tents, expecting to check on everyone again before going elsewhere.
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

The other patients, who have gone into the church under guard, are fine. Ulrecht looks grim as he orders his guards to help straighten up the beds in the tent. Before they can even really start, he simply leaves.

Sunrise is approaching, so likely he is heading for his haven.

Jurgen looks further shaken, but seems to be coherent enough to tell the newly arrived city guards (who are responding to all the shouting) what just happened. The idea that the enemy beasts can also fly does not sit well with the guards.
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Corrozus
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Post by Corrozus »

Lament places a hand lightly on Brother Jurgen's shoulders, providing a few instructions for specific patients care throughout the day and heads towards her haven if nothing/nobody stops her.
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

Nobody stops her.

And thus ends the evening. We'll pick things up over here.
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