August 3rd.
Rötschreck is one of the five curses he has observed before as being part and parcel of this shadow life he is living, this quest he is on. Rötschreck is one of five, or is it nine, and it conquers Sneaky Jack at the Keep when the air is red with vitae and the walls limn with fire and the chairs and the piano and the strings snap and it snaps inside him just so that he flees. He flees, Jack who'd Never Been There, flees as the smoke obscures the Assassin [The Soldier], his Primogen [The General, The Lover(?)], his Primogen's Sire [Another Hag, Another Witch Who Offended Turns To Malice]. He doesn't return to the Keep once he's regained control and no longer feels the need (hysterical) to flee. Dawn'll be coming soon, and the police sirens. They're wailing, fairy lights falling toward that dark center.
So no. Jack goes to find his cat. His blood-fed darling with the diamond face and the teeth so sharp and somewhere a Malkavian swears that there is no such thing as a cat, that every cat is just one of Caine's eyes, that every cat is a fantasy of Caine's, but Jack doesn't believe that. He knows there are no such thing as owls, that owls are just gatherers of the dead, that they're something Other, but he can deal with them as well as he can deal with cats. He looks for his cat, though, calls Boots until Boots comes insinuating out of the shadows of an alleyway, a lanky Tom with lamp-lit eyes.
Jack picks Boots up and tucks the cat under his chin, scruffing its chin as he does so. Boots splays his paws on Jack's shoulder, begins to knead and knead, curled up like a question mark, the tail a twitching point. After a minute, Boots has had enough, and wriggles up onto Jack's shoulder. Jack takes Boots by the scruff of his neck and holds the cat in front of him. He regards it gravely, and then tells it what he wants it to do.
The Keep is in flames. But there is a Palace, too. The Brown Palace Hotel, where the Blue Blooded visitors have been sleeping the day-away, according to deliberate (?) rumor, and why shouldn't they, with its Art Nouveau glass, its gorgeousness, its age and its tunnels and its secrets. Jack tells Boots he wants the cat - the clever cat, the cleverrest cat - to get into the Palace and to watch and to see what happens. He wants to know whether or not vampires return to the Brown Hotel. He wants to know which. He wants to know in what state. He wants to know if one has silver fur (hair), what the state of her is. He wants to know if they're attacked there, too, if anything strange happens to the staff during the day, and it's a tall order, what he wants Boots to find for him.
Boots is a ghoul, and Boots is a clever cat, but Boots is a cat, and Boots looks watches Jack unblinkingly while Jack lays out what he wants, and then twines between the Nosferatu's legs, reaches up with his claws to use Jack's leg as a (gentle!) scratching-post, and Jack narrows his eyes at Boots and Boots purrs and gives Jack's leg one more rub before darting off.
--
He is at a 24-hour Laundromat now. It's his 24-Hour Laundromat, actually. Belongs to him. Is his secret domain and the headstone on his grave. There are a couple of men doing laundry inside, or maybe they're making a deal of some sort for some thing, Jack doesn't know, Jack doesn't care. What catches his attention is the tell-tale gleam of somebody's ipod screen in a car, irradiant on the dashboard: A car with the driver's seat back, because somebody's taking a nap in the relatively hidden safety of their car while they wait for their laundry to be done.
The 'they' is just a young woman with a broad-jaw, glasses that aren't quite hipster, soft-arms and short [almost stylish] hair, lines around her mouth and eyes like she does know how to smile even if she doesn't often exercise the right. She looks like a secretary, or an educator, or a substitute teacher, but doing her laundry this late she probably works more than one job or her washing machine is broken or who knows. Doesn't matter.
She locked the passenger door and the driver's door.
But she neglected the car's backseat door, on the passenger's side, which is where her laundry baskets were, all two of them (and a bag), and when she decided it'd be safer to wait in the car, she just reached over and got the passenger door herself, didn't even think about the backseat, and she has a timer on on her phone but it's been a long long day and ipod shuffle just keeps playing lullabies.
That door opens and in slides a monster in a suit stiff with drying vampire's blood (not his own), a hideous thing with teeth and hunger. He slides inside like the gentlest of Jacks and then
--
A young woman with a broad-jaw wakes at dawn with her heart galloping, her pulse thready and she feels light-headed and groggy and sick just sick she's calling out and her laundry! At first she thinks someone stole it, but then she finds it all dumped unceremoniously on the floor by somebody else who apparently wanted the washer -- no, dryer. The dryer she was using. Everything is there, and she
But who cares? That's another story.
--
During the dark hours, Jack receives a phone-call from Kali, and he sounds tired even across the lines, because he's been considering things.
He closes with: We should touch base in person soon.
--
Dawn's beginning to threaten, as it always does. It's not here yet. Another hour, but you can feel it, can't you, when it commands you so, when it delineates the Hours that can be yours. He can still feel the echoes of Rötchschreck in his bones. He knows its ruddy red bull madness still and he frowns at the horizon. He isn't done yet tonight: oh no.
There is a tailor who lives in a hole under-the-ground, attendant on a King of Rats. A dangerous place for a cat to go.
He calls the rats. He calls them and calls them and they don't come.
Maybe they know that Boots was around. Maybe they smell the terror-Tom of the underground. Maybe they're hiding, shying away from monsters tonight, or they're all just so content in their hideyholes, beginning to nest down den in, that one of Them summoning isn't high priority, but he is insistent, ragged, and finally one does come, a bright-eyed girl rat, maybe one who knows him from before.
He tells (instructs) this lone rat to go down - he uses rat-speak, rat-images, rat-metaphors, speak to an animal like an animal and it will do what you want, it's a Knack - to the underground, to the Nosferatu Warren, to the hole where the tailor is, where Gotfred dens, and to watch in secret and to tell him what happens to the tailor, tell him if the tailor stays, tell him if another comes. He wants to know what happens down there in the Warrens, wants to know the fates of all his clansman, but that one is the most important.
He is tired after impressing this on the rat, after willing the rat to know what he wants and to do it. He is tired and drained and even the blood doesn't wick him to life and dawn's coming, dawn's coming, dawn's coming and he strips off his suit doesn't want a suit on and when the sun finally crests and freezes him casts that enchantment over him he is already lying down.
--
The witness is CC!
Tithe
[Okay. First, for the ghoul cat, who doesn't need to be called. Feral Whispers. Carry out this command - uh - request, Cat.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Tithe
[Then I think we'll try calling some rats. And we'll burn yet another WP.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 5, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Tithe
[Damn, yay WP. They must've known the cat had been around.]
Tithe
[Okay, lone rat who was brave enough to come to the call. I need you to do a thing for me, okay? We'll spend a final WP, which leaves Jack totally drained, but hey.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury
[Weird falling out of the chat room is weird. Witnessed!]
Rötschreck is one of the five curses he has observed before as being part and parcel of this shadow life he is living, this quest he is on. Rötschreck is one of five, or is it nine, and it conquers Sneaky Jack at the Keep when the air is red with vitae and the walls limn with fire and the chairs and the piano and the strings snap and it snaps inside him just so that he flees. He flees, Jack who'd Never Been There, flees as the smoke obscures the Assassin [The Soldier], his Primogen [The General, The Lover(?)], his Primogen's Sire [Another Hag, Another Witch Who Offended Turns To Malice]. He doesn't return to the Keep once he's regained control and no longer feels the need (hysterical) to flee. Dawn'll be coming soon, and the police sirens. They're wailing, fairy lights falling toward that dark center.
So no. Jack goes to find his cat. His blood-fed darling with the diamond face and the teeth so sharp and somewhere a Malkavian swears that there is no such thing as a cat, that every cat is just one of Caine's eyes, that every cat is a fantasy of Caine's, but Jack doesn't believe that. He knows there are no such thing as owls, that owls are just gatherers of the dead, that they're something Other, but he can deal with them as well as he can deal with cats. He looks for his cat, though, calls Boots until Boots comes insinuating out of the shadows of an alleyway, a lanky Tom with lamp-lit eyes.
Jack picks Boots up and tucks the cat under his chin, scruffing its chin as he does so. Boots splays his paws on Jack's shoulder, begins to knead and knead, curled up like a question mark, the tail a twitching point. After a minute, Boots has had enough, and wriggles up onto Jack's shoulder. Jack takes Boots by the scruff of his neck and holds the cat in front of him. He regards it gravely, and then tells it what he wants it to do.
The Keep is in flames. But there is a Palace, too. The Brown Palace Hotel, where the Blue Blooded visitors have been sleeping the day-away, according to deliberate (?) rumor, and why shouldn't they, with its Art Nouveau glass, its gorgeousness, its age and its tunnels and its secrets. Jack tells Boots he wants the cat - the clever cat, the cleverrest cat - to get into the Palace and to watch and to see what happens. He wants to know whether or not vampires return to the Brown Hotel. He wants to know which. He wants to know in what state. He wants to know if one has silver fur (hair), what the state of her is. He wants to know if they're attacked there, too, if anything strange happens to the staff during the day, and it's a tall order, what he wants Boots to find for him.
Boots is a ghoul, and Boots is a clever cat, but Boots is a cat, and Boots looks watches Jack unblinkingly while Jack lays out what he wants, and then twines between the Nosferatu's legs, reaches up with his claws to use Jack's leg as a (gentle!) scratching-post, and Jack narrows his eyes at Boots and Boots purrs and gives Jack's leg one more rub before darting off.
--
He is at a 24-hour Laundromat now. It's his 24-Hour Laundromat, actually. Belongs to him. Is his secret domain and the headstone on his grave. There are a couple of men doing laundry inside, or maybe they're making a deal of some sort for some thing, Jack doesn't know, Jack doesn't care. What catches his attention is the tell-tale gleam of somebody's ipod screen in a car, irradiant on the dashboard: A car with the driver's seat back, because somebody's taking a nap in the relatively hidden safety of their car while they wait for their laundry to be done.
The 'they' is just a young woman with a broad-jaw, glasses that aren't quite hipster, soft-arms and short [almost stylish] hair, lines around her mouth and eyes like she does know how to smile even if she doesn't often exercise the right. She looks like a secretary, or an educator, or a substitute teacher, but doing her laundry this late she probably works more than one job or her washing machine is broken or who knows. Doesn't matter.
She locked the passenger door and the driver's door.
But she neglected the car's backseat door, on the passenger's side, which is where her laundry baskets were, all two of them (and a bag), and when she decided it'd be safer to wait in the car, she just reached over and got the passenger door herself, didn't even think about the backseat, and she has a timer on on her phone but it's been a long long day and ipod shuffle just keeps playing lullabies.
That door opens and in slides a monster in a suit stiff with drying vampire's blood (not his own), a hideous thing with teeth and hunger. He slides inside like the gentlest of Jacks and then
--
A young woman with a broad-jaw wakes at dawn with her heart galloping, her pulse thready and she feels light-headed and groggy and sick just sick she's calling out and her laundry! At first she thinks someone stole it, but then she finds it all dumped unceremoniously on the floor by somebody else who apparently wanted the washer -- no, dryer. The dryer she was using. Everything is there, and she
But who cares? That's another story.
--
During the dark hours, Jack receives a phone-call from Kali, and he sounds tired even across the lines, because he's been considering things.
He closes with: We should touch base in person soon.
--
Dawn's beginning to threaten, as it always does. It's not here yet. Another hour, but you can feel it, can't you, when it commands you so, when it delineates the Hours that can be yours. He can still feel the echoes of Rötchschreck in his bones. He knows its ruddy red bull madness still and he frowns at the horizon. He isn't done yet tonight: oh no.
There is a tailor who lives in a hole under-the-ground, attendant on a King of Rats. A dangerous place for a cat to go.
He calls the rats. He calls them and calls them and they don't come.
Maybe they know that Boots was around. Maybe they smell the terror-Tom of the underground. Maybe they're hiding, shying away from monsters tonight, or they're all just so content in their hideyholes, beginning to nest down den in, that one of Them summoning isn't high priority, but he is insistent, ragged, and finally one does come, a bright-eyed girl rat, maybe one who knows him from before.
He tells (instructs) this lone rat to go down - he uses rat-speak, rat-images, rat-metaphors, speak to an animal like an animal and it will do what you want, it's a Knack - to the underground, to the Nosferatu Warren, to the hole where the tailor is, where Gotfred dens, and to watch in secret and to tell him what happens to the tailor, tell him if the tailor stays, tell him if another comes. He wants to know what happens down there in the Warrens, wants to know the fates of all his clansman, but that one is the most important.
He is tired after impressing this on the rat, after willing the rat to know what he wants and to do it. He is tired and drained and even the blood doesn't wick him to life and dawn's coming, dawn's coming, dawn's coming and he strips off his suit doesn't want a suit on and when the sun finally crests and freezes him casts that enchantment over him he is already lying down.
--
The witness is CC!
Tithe
[Okay. First, for the ghoul cat, who doesn't need to be called. Feral Whispers. Carry out this command - uh - request, Cat.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Tithe
[Then I think we'll try calling some rats. And we'll burn yet another WP.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 5, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Tithe
[Damn, yay WP. They must've known the cat had been around.]
Tithe
[Okay, lone rat who was brave enough to come to the call. I need you to do a thing for me, okay? We'll spend a final WP, which leaves Jack totally drained, but hey.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury
[Weird falling out of the chat room is weird. Witnessed!]
