Vampire: Dark Ages (Vienna) - Chapter 5: The Road North

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Vampire: Dark Ages (Vienna) - Chapter 5: The Road North

Post by Goatkiller666 »

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It is still the evening of April 14th, 1205. Day 26 of the lunar cycle, and so there is a crescent moon (waning) in the sky tonight. Ekaterina and Sasha are once again standing, hidden from sight, in a dingy alley in Vienna. The evening grows late, and as far as they know they are alone. No invisible wolves, no King of Cats, no messenger bird.
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Post by Sasha »

I creep up to Ekaterina.

"I know where it is. Mostly. Do you know where Oslo is? We have to go there first."
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Post by Ekaterina »

"Oslo is far to the north, dear one. This will be a long journey....." *mock frown* "But the company will make it quite...interesting" *wicked grin*
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Post by Sasha »

"We only have a month. We need to move fast."

It's very urgent. I stand up on my hind feet. I put my paws on her shoulder.

"Very fast. I can't lose the game. That would be bad."
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Post by Ekaterina »

"I might be able to get us there quicker.....It'll take a while longer, though. Can you be patient while I talk to some spirits?"
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Post by Sasha »

"Talk to some spirits. That's all you ever want to do, is talk to spirits. I talked to my spirit. He told me where to go."

"Fine. I'm going back to the Inn to sleep. Wake me when we can leave."
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Post by Ekaterina »

Face crinkling into a moue of distaste at the exchange, turning nonetheless, and re-entering the Umbra...summoning another spirit....and bartering for passage across the Umbra to near Oslo.
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

The spirit that replies to the summons is that of a Bat. It says that it will open the bridge for you, but only "if Auntie says its okay".

[Enigmas tells you that it's talking about a specific person, someone to whom the spirit holds quite a bit of respect. Or fear. You know that bats and rats are cousins, so maybe it's referring to a local Bone Gnawer?]
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Post by Sasha »

I stay in Hispo form. I stay hidden. Then I walk through the streets. I look for anything fun. I don't walk straight back to the Inn. I'm annoyed at Ekaterina.
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

[Still waiting on Ekaterina to post, but I'll move on with Sasha, since they're not in the same moment.]

Sasha is alone on the streets, hidden from view. In the distance, she hears footsteps, and sees the glimmer of of torchlight coming from around a corner ahead of her. Soon, a pair of city guards appear, one holding the torch, and they walk past her unseeing. They approach the woman behind her, and call out. "State your business here, wench."

A woman's voice replies, clear and sparkling in the hollow night, "My master sent me to you. He said that those who keep us safe at night, well... they deserved some thanks from the city. He had me bring two flagons of his best mead to help fortify you against the chill and keep you strong for all of us." She holds out two stiff leather mugs, and Sasha can smell the gentle scent of honey and spirits. (The alcohol kind, not the umbral kind.)
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Post by Sasha »

I sneak closer to them. I like honey. I think I like mead. I can't remember, but I want to try some.

I can't hold a mug in hispo form. I change into Crinos, instead. But I stay hidden for now.

Then I walk up behind the men and grab the mug out of the hands of one of them. When I do, I stop hiding so they can see me. Everybody runs away screaming, and I get to try some mead.
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

Sasha, in crinos form and invisible (or at least very hard to see), grabs the mug of mead while allowing herself to be seen. The two guards understandably freak out, while the woman simply recoils in fully rational caution. Then the woman simply fades from view and from everybody's thoughts. Sasha lets out an unearthly yowl, and drinks the mead.

That's when shit gets real. Clearly, this is no ordinary mead, as Sasha is instantly high. She quickly guts the guards, mostly just to see what blood on her claws looks like. They die soon after. Then, she decides to follow the woman who isn't there anymore. But, since she now can see the woman, this isn't hard.

Through their dream-link, Ekaterina senses Sasha's change in mental state. The image of Sasha in the dream ceases to follow normal euclidian rules, and is difficult to look at for long. (It's easier for Ekaterina than many others, given her experience on the Spiral.)

Ekaterina hears the yowling in the real world, and steps into the Umbra to get there faster. She finds Sasha quite out of her mind. She's alternating between giggling and slashing at a spot of corruption even more tainted than Sasha's own. Even her slashes seem pleasant-natured, however deadly they still are. Ekaterina steps into the living world again, but sees Sasha slashing at nothing.

Knowing that there was something there, she Creates Element: Fire on that spot, but there is no effect. Then, she speaks to the spirits of the fire, and offers them several of her gnosis points to attack and burn whatever the hidden thing is. This brings the fire brighter and stronger, and the space of burning nothing continues to try to get away from Sasha's claws.

By now, the fire is quite strong, and is starting to scorch nearby objects and the walls of some buildings. Ekaterina gives yet more gnosis to the fire spirits, and the fire grows even larger. Then, from amid the blaze, the woman appears and drops to her knees. "Spare me, please. I can smell the taint upon you. We should work together, not fight."

Ekaterina calls off the fire spirits, who seemed to be doing nothing at all to the woman anyway, other than showing where she was hidden. Then, she changes to crinos form, picks up the woman, and sprints out of town. Sasha follows, mostly. Ekaterina questions the woman, who is Kaos of the Malkavian clan.

She seems to be some kind of infernalist, and was testing out a concoction made of local mushrooms in the mead. The aim was to allow people to see through illusions, but it also left them so disconnected from reality that being able to see the truth was no help to them.

Ekaterina and she strike a truce, and then work a little while on improving the concoction. Ekaterina's lupine spiritual connection allowed her some insights into the spirit of the muchrooms that Kaos lacked. Ekaterina also came up with a variant that would heighten libido instead of perception.

She tries a little of this on Sasha, who succumbs to it very quickly. Kaos leaves, and Ekaterina and Sasha get freaky there in the woods. Camera fades to black. Scene.
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

[None of this is word-for-word. Towards the end, I even start to get into a flow again, and the actual words are nothing like what was said in real-life. But, it gets the point across better than a summary, don't you think?]

On the evening of the 15th, for it seems that the recovery period on the XXX mushroom concoction is quite lengthy (and plot required that it be nighttime), the two girls wake in the forest. They stretch, remember what happened last night, possibly blush and look away from each other. Not. But, they eventually get up.

Then, a rift opens in space in front of them. Out of it steps a woman. She is pregnant. Very much so. Dirty and wearing rags, barefoot and haggard. Her eyes show fear, but her voice is confident as she says "I am here. Tell me what you have found."

Ekaterina is surprisingly deferent, which confuses Sasha. Ekaterina explains, quickly, that this is her true master, the one the message was really for. Then she tells the woman about the hidden speakers and the message. The woman nods, asks a few follow-up questions, and then holds out her hand to Ekaterina. "Join me." Ekaterina in turn takes Sasha's hand, with some resistence, and the three step back into the Umbra.

Once there, the woman speaks to a nearby spirit, who seems quit cowed, and it opens a moon bridge. The three of them follow it to Oslo, though once back in the world the two garou discover themselves to be quite alone. Ekaterina isn't perturbed by this, and the two of them look around to try to find a caern.

[Of course, all of the above was a not-so-subtle attempt to get the three players in the same scene so I don't have to keep hopping back and forth between them. Soon... very soon.]

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Fast forward a couple days. The two have left the city itself and wandered deep into the wilderness. Norway being what it is, all of the civilization is along the coast. Going inland means going uphill, but nobody really does that very far. [According to Google, even the locals (in general) didn't know about the mountain range in the center.] The sky at night shows these bright green flames that manage to appear as cold as the rest of the land. Nothing about this place is inviting.

The two do head uphill anyway, staying in hispo form for warmth, and are quite a ways inland, resting in a small cave. From outside, they hear a growl, and another hispo rushes into the cave, attacking. It heads straight for Sasha, who manages to jump directly upwards and then cling to the ceiling. [Leap of the Kangaroo, followed by Treeclimber.] Ekaterina responds by attacking the stranger herself, though the two manage to mostly wiff a lot.

Realizing that he is outnumbered, the hispo attempts to escape the cave, but Ekaterina is in the way. She braces and blocks the entrance, but it squeezes past her. She turns and grabs, and they grapple for a while. Ekaterina wins the grapple, and holds the hispo immobile. At this point, Kaldrenzi arrives, having been pursuing Constantin (the attacker) all the way from Linz. Kal is in crinos form, and sees the whole thing. It argues that it has claim on the hispo's life. Ekaterina in turn says that she'll leave Constantin alive for now, and the two hold him down.

[Seven has been wanting to use a variant of this one power, whelp body, for years now, and this is the time. Don't ask me why everyone got so mean once we were in person. Seska's player wasn't there yet, and she's the closest thing we have to class in this group.]

So, Ekaterina uses Whelp Body on Constantin. But, as a super-bonus from her evil totem spirit, if she can involve some kind of sexual degredation in the process of enacting the Gift, it can destroy willpower instead of physical stats. So, of course, she violently rapes him and mostly destroys his psyche. Go Team Evil! After that, she turns the wimpering quivering puddle of a man over to Kaldrenzi. Kal puts the iron mask, iron mittens, and iron booties on Constantin, and then begins to torture him physically. Given his mental state, the torture isn't as effective as it might have been... he's already broken. But, eventually, while surgically removing his genitals, it gets him to change form involuntarily. Of course, the silver inside the iron burn him, and the iron eventually crushes his much larger head as it grows.

The three choose to see the complete ruin of Constantin as a sort of resume of evil, and so start talking about partying up, since they're all stuck way out in the middle of nowhere. But, Kal has to finish its mission. So, it rat-tails back to Vienna, where it visits Wendell's mom to tell the tale and deliver the severed manhood. Then it pops back to Linz to tell the tale to its buddy there, as promised.

And finally, Kaldrenzi returns to Norway for the girls. [Kal has a gift that allows it to track over any distance, so it could find them basically the same way it found Constantin in the first place.] They have made it several days further inland, and further uphill. Not that Norway in early Spring wasn't already cold, but this far up, it's still deep winter. They all kiss and hug, then keep looking for the caern. Ekaterina summons a spirit of the Whooperwill, the totem spirit of the Black Spiral Dancers they're trying to find anyway. She asks it where the Caern is, but it isn't telling. All it will say is to go to the most desolate spot.

Where they are is pretty desolate, but they see the mountaintops in the distance, and decide to head there.

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They climb to the summit, challanging the legendary balance of their pre-historic forms as well as taking all of their supernatural energy just to stay warm. Once there, they see that there are two other peaks very nearby, with a small hollow between them open to the sky. Nothing lives here, but at least they're protected from the wind. This must be the place. But, looking up at the sky, they are still several days before the moon is full. And so, they wait.

They decide to wait on the summit, fearing that being in the basin will anger the locals, and they hide. And, as the day of the full moon comes to an end, they notice huge, grotesque werewolves in crinos form emerge from hidden tunnels in the valley. They begin to set up three bonfires, one to each of the Triatic Wyrms. Shortly, human women are brought out, bound to crossed logs [Think St. Andrew's Crosses.] and set near the fires. As they're naked, the fires are all that keep them from quick death to the cold. Some of them show clear signs of leprosy, with hands and feet missing. Their bonds hold them upright in spite of that. Then, wooden cages are brought out containing wolf bitches, probably also meant for the use of the twisted garou in attendence. Food aplenty and plenty of mead are brought out as well, and the stage is set.

At sundown, the full moon rises, and the moot begins properly. Many more garou arrive, as well as spirits of the area. Nothing is alive this high up, so only spirits of death and desolation partake in this celebration. The green fire in the sky once again glows brightly, and the moon begins to cross into the flames. This is what was meant by the Sept of the Scorched Moon.

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Ekaterina decides to go attend the moot, and the other two follow along with some reservations. She is a member of this tribe; they are not. They are acosted as they enter, and told to prove their worth. Ekaterina, ever the Galliard, asks that another such be brought to tell the truth in her words. She then shares a few choice tidbits of her falling from gace, and the Galliard grants her access. Kaldrenzi shares some of its recent tales as well, and is allowed entry. Sasha has not really done much in the way of true evil. Instead, resuming her human form, leaving her naked beneath her wolf's skin cloak, she climbs the Galliard very suggestively and whispers something in his ear. He smiles and also allows her access.

The three wander around, enjoying the festivities, and settle on the fire for the Eater of Souls, Ekaterina's chosen aspect of the Wyrm. When it is her turn, she sings them a balad of her exploits. [This is also necessary for her to gain Renown, and thus to go up in rank. Her peer tribesmen must recognize her achievements publicly.] While singing, Ekaterina uses Sasha as a prop to demonstrate some of her actions, usually the sexually explicit ones. She scored very well on her performance roll, and they liked the groupie skank as a prop, which gained her enough Renown to go up in rank. After that, she and Sasha wandered the area apart, molesting and being molested by random strangers, but always keeping eye contact with each other while it happened.

[For those keeping track, that's my wife and Seven playing these characters.]

Kaldrenzi was mostly staying unobserved during all this. The ratkin's natural dislike for garou combined with a mountain full of the things and no rats anywhere nearby meant he was being cautious.

And, just at midnight, when the the moon was in the center of Green Dragon's eye, he rift appeared in space and out stepped the pregnant woman. She approached the Beast of War's fire, where stood a giant garou. Giant even for this sept of oversized crinos, this must be Brude the Bull, since he had horns. Not the most common of deformities among the incestuous wolves, but he seems to have grown into them and embraced them as a strength. Most of the Dancers draw back from the new arrival, realizing that to open a Moon Bridge into the center of a Caern without warning is no small feat. But, of course, there is always one young Ahroun pumped up on mead not thinking fast enough. As he reached for the woman, towering over her, she raised her hand in a small gesture. Before his clawed hands touched her, the werewolf grunted and fell forward into the snow. Blood can be seen trailing from his ears as he changed back into human form, clearly dead. Whatever noise had been left quickly stills, and only the crunch of her naked feet can be heard over the fires' crackle.

"King Brude, I have received your invitation, and I am here. Hateful Luna is held within Green Dragon's eye, and we are free to negotiate under her very nose. Will you speak with me?"

Brude laughs, "Well met, monster. Let us speak. What would you trade with me, then?"

The woman glances at some of the captured women, well-used and thankful for the respite. "I know of your tribe's danger, Brude. Many are your enemies, and few are your children. The Dancers are wise to breed so many metis, or they wouldn't last another generation, but without good breeders, and plenty of failed children, you won't last a second generation with nothing but metis. For metis die, and they do not breed." She looked directly at Brude, himself showing signs of being one of the sterile metis. "But what if they didn't die? With a strong core of immortal metis, unaging and sterile, the homids and lupus of your tribe would be..." she gestures towards the bound women and wolves, "... only necessary for one thing. To breed more metis."

"And how would we do that? Even the fomori die."

"Yes. But not vampires. I can give you one, King Brude. I can show you how to to become undying, and how to do the same for whichever metis of your tribe you choose."

"Abominations? There is no renown in that. No glory at all. I will not consider it."

"Oh? When all who mock your choice are dead and dust, and gaians all over Europe tremble at the name of King Brude, speak to me again of glory. When the Sept of the Scorched Moon numbers thrice any others, and your weakest theurges can best any Ahroun, we shall speak of glory. In thirty years time, everyone here will be nothing. I will have forgotten all of this. THAT is the glory you seek? Fah!"

Brude rises in a surge of temper, and his klaive is halfway drawn when he notices the cooling corpse of the hothead. Killed by a gesture from a tiny woman.

"Yes. Maybe you speak wisdom. And what would you have of us in return?"

"I have just awoken, great King. I have plans of my own, plans for which I will need capable assistents. Some tasks, I can use fomori for, but others require true strength. And so, you will give me one pack. Metis all, one from each auspice, to take the blood and become undying. They will serve me for all of eternity, and they shall know glory like they have never imagined. But they will be mine, Brude. Always. That is the cost your sept will pay, five of your own in return for dominance over your enemies."

"And I choose the five?"

"If you wish. They must not be cowards, nor too deformed to act. But you may keep your best. I will shape these five as I require."

"This is a high price, monster. But, what you offer is valued even higher. Perhaps we can have an accord. But you are as warm as I am, and I can hear your heart beating and smell your fear, tiny woman. I will not deal with agents. Tell your master to show himself."

"This woman is... just my conveyance. I am here, Brude." Then, her eyes widen in fear, and she says in an entirely different voice, and in Romanian, "No!"... then her belly begins to move. What's left of her shirt begins to stain red, and then is pulled aside from underneath. An infant is standing in the hole it has torn in her belly. Or what used to be an infant. Some poor dead baby, stillborn, and yet animated and with tiny fangs looks at Brude and the rest in attendence. The tiny high pitched voice, yet with the same tone and cadence as the woman before, continues "I am Janos Itor, of the Clan Malkavian. I would never insult you by sending an agent, Great King Brude. But it is cold out here, and so very warm inside my lovely girl."

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Nobody speaks. For several moments. For a minute. Brude stares, not wanting to express horror in front of his people. Not wanting to admit that he was capable of horror anymore. Then he steps forward. "How will we swear, then? With blood?"

"Oh, you would not like mixing my blood with yours, I assure you. Instead, let us share the blood of another." He waves at the body, "That one. Let us feed from his blood and flesh, and let his spirit carry our oath to Green Dragon's ears."

They do so. The party continues. Janos climbs back inside the woman, and her belly heals closed again, though clearly there is much discomfort in the process. Only her expression shows that, her posture and words are all controlled by her master.

"But, before sunrise, I must depart to find shelter of mine own. You have met Ekaterina. She will direct the five in how to proceed. They will acoompany her to where the vampire is, and they will return here with it and the instructions on how to become immortal. Then, it will be up to you how you use it. And they will return with Ekaterina to me."
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