WEEK 03

[modmachine]

Preparation for the holidays continues at a steady - if slow - pace. Almost all traces of Halloween are gone by now, except for a few rotting pumpkins shoved into compost heaps, but with over a month until Christmas and the Day of Lights, nobody is yet in a hurry. Still, a few early holiday shoppers are out and about, usually in pairs if they aren't families with children, happily chattering about gift plans.

Weather forecast: The rain has passed, and days grow clear again for this week. Hex’s weather has been getting colder, and people are bundling up a bit more - even those who don’t need to, just in an effort to fit in. Hats and gloves are being prominently displayed in stores, even if they’re not strictly needed yet.

Moon phase: The moon is full on Monday the fourteenth, reaching peak fullness over the city at about 2AM. Afterwards, it begins to wane.

More employment: More decorations for the Day of Lights are going up, with some stronger-backed labor being recruited for the stockrooms in preparation for the incoming holiday rush. No one seems concerned about work history, a boon for people without a human paper trail. The park lights aren't finished yet, either, though things are on schedule to open next week.

Hitting the books: To prepare for the holidays, and raise funds for their community party, the library near the university is selling some of its used books. Most of them are fine, if an odd selection - you might find a cookbook, or you might find a book of poetry. There’s something weird about the books, though - a few of them smell faintly of mint. Watching over all of this is a sharp-eyed librarian. Don’t take a book without paying, or she’ll get up from her desk and try to block the door. She keeps having to chase away teenagers with dirty hands, too.

Bake sale: Some of the local schools are starting to take up donations for their holiday parties. One in particular in the residential district is holding a bake sale in front of the elementary school for an hour each day after classes let out. If you can fight through the sea of small children hoping someone will buy them something, you’ll find a variety of brownies, cookies, and tiny cakes. Many of them are lopsided, but a few look put together by expert hands. They cost more, of course, but it’s all for a good cause. A grouchy mother can be found near the cash box at all times, making sure no one steals the money.

Whoo are you?: Malin will notice that owls seem to be happening at her; they're hard to see, just shapes against the lesser-dark of the night sky, but they definitely seem to be watching her. They particularly seem to gather when she feeds. If she doesn't confront them, this will increase slowly but measurably throughout the week.

Time waits for no one: An old clock tower in the part of downtown leading into the Sixth has been restored to functionality... Mostly. The belltower stands empty, though there's a visible place where a bell should be hung, several stories above the floor. Ryoji might find the scene familiar. On Wednesday evening, there is some kind of reopening gathering at the church below it; the brief service and meet-and-greet is not particularly unusual, save that the young Acolyte handing out papers in the entry won't step into the congregation hall itself.

Like a dog with a bad...: In the Sixth, the construction is ongoing, still with the same handful of men, who rotate through almost like randomly generated NPCs. Lurking around outside is a thickly built man, who watches the whole goings-on with suspicion; strangely, he seems to be watching it mostly through the camera on his phone. On Friday morning, though it shouldn't be cold enough for frost, three of the strangely similar men slip on patches of ice and fall behind a half-finished wall... Where they vanish completely. They reappear after lunch, if it's even the same men, with no signs of injury. That afternoon, the man with his phone looks smug.

A touch of the season: And speaking of ice, passage into many of the city's Avernian Gates is blocked this week by a thick frost that seals the entries shut. An Unsettling Youth and his girlfriend can occasionally be seen investigating them; though they're constantly together, they don't seem much inclined to talk to each other. Occasionally, she'll drape her arm over his shoulders and giggle, while he looks confused; other times, she seems almost to shy away from him.

Comments

[movingon]

"Because it only works while they have a body?"

That description is ...A vampire out in the sun? She's definitely not heard about that before, not even in the context of some horror story, and it sounds like something neonates would swap around to try and one-up one another. She sure has participated in games like that before, the who gathered the scariest bit of lore one. But maybe they are limited to this city?

[notachickenhawk]

"And if you leave even a tiny opening while you're burning them, they'll escape." He glances back up at the things above them, looking concerned.

[movingon]

"...So you need to put them into a hermetically sealed container and then manage to have a fire burn within that container for long enough to burn them to ashes?"

She didn't go to school for very long, but the little physics and chemistry that she learned tell her that that doesn't sound very likely. Unless you're using some magical fire, maybe?

[notachickenhawk]

"I've used boxes, sealed containers, garbage cans sealed shut... it's possible. It's hard. But it's worth it to get rid of those... things." Those things are not family, as far as he can tell and as far as he's concerned.

[movingon]

"I... Doesn't fire go out in airtight sealed containers?"

She is sure that there was something along those lines.

"How do you even put them into something like that if they can turn into smoke?"

[notachickenhawk]

"... Usually we can't get to them until it's too late." He doesn't want to admit it, but... "It feeds on life energy. So any humans with one of them in them are already dead."

[movingon]

She should probably have guessed.

"Better than them finding another victim next. ...Is there a way to protect oneself against them?" Except for keeping one's will strong, which... she has no idea how one would do that. No alcohol, probably, but that's what she has been doing her best to avoid since last week, anway.

[notachickenhawk]

"... Sunlight and fire. That's about it." He finally just sits down, rather than crouches, and tugs his legs into his chest. His whole posture just screams tired, as he rests his head on his knees. "... I've been fighting them for three years and I still haven't found out much more."

[movingon]

"Ever since you got your soul devoured?" It's just a guess, but she feels like it is a fairly informed one. Most people's life seem to change when they come into contact with the supernatural, in one way or the other. Her tone has softened. She doesn't know how to deal with this sudden turn of events, doesn't know what to say or do, but back when she lived on the streets, she would sometimes comfort others. So she must have been able to do it somehow, once.

[notachickenhawk]

"Yeah. ... It's not so bad, though. Not having a soul, I mean. Some people think it's awful, but it's fine. You don't miss what was there, not when things were added. I don't, at least." He smiles a bit and shrugs. It really doesn't bother him. His Horror more than makes up for it.

[movingon]

"How is it different from before, not having a soul?"

She leans forward a bit, curious now, which makes a few yellow scales poke out from under the shadows as the hood shifts, the fabric unable to fully follow her head.

[notachickenhawk]

"Well, I've got something else instead. Which lets me do all sorts of neat things. Like keep up with those things." Not in terms of speed... but he'll stalk them to the ends of the Wall to get what he needs.

[movingon]

"So it doesn't really feel very different? You're still the same self?"

She should probably focus on those ...things in the trees more, but she has no idea what else she could ask about them.

[notachickenhawk]

"... I still feel like I am. I still have my human mind. I just have something else in addition to it. Is it the same with you? Are you still the same self?"

With all this time, he really hasn't had a chance to sit down and talk to a vampire like this. It's usually all business, if he does talk to one.

[movingon]

"...I don't know anymore."

She's never sat down with someone and talked about something like this. Not that she can remember, anyway; maybe there was a time when Lars was around.

"I used to be almost exactly the same. I even still lived the same way." Until things got better, until she got off the street and worked to carve out a spot in the world for herself. "I'm not the same self anymore, but that came later. At first, the only difference was I wasn't entirely alone in my body anymore." She snorts. "...Now that just makes it sound like I got pregnant."

[notachickenhawk]

He manages to huff a little bit, amused. It does, but he knows what she means. "I'm... sure it'll be different down the road for me. There are others like me. Some have made it longer. Some of them pull away from the world. Others don't. Some get killed. For now it's still a partnership between us."

[movingon]

She'll never be like the older Kindred that she met in Copenhagen. Maybe like one of the cautionary stories that Lars told her about, elders too deranged and inhuman to the point where other Gangrel hunt them down and destroy them, but she at least still has her mind.

So she ...doesn't know. She'll probably not survive long enough to find out how she may be at four hundred, or hundred, or even sixty. She isn't sure if she'd like to, but she will still do her best to be around for it.

"What makes it a partnership? ...You seem to communicate a lot." That fascinates her. Every approach she has been taught was centred around control and mastery of one's beast; the thing that he calls horror seems to have more intelligence, but the relationship still seems to have vague similarities.

[notachickenhawk]

"... He helps me, whether it's letting me do things here or going mostly where I direct in the Dream. I feed him. It's a give and take relationship. Ignoring him or trying to suppress him would just make him go insane and start lashing out at everyone around me, so it's not a good idea to try to ignore him. ... Besides. We're chosen by Her. People who don't make the cut will probably have Her to answer to at the end."

Rachel made the cut, he knows. She just... slipped up. But she was the most effective Beast he's ever known.

[movingon]

"You're pretty religious."

He may have witnessed someone when he was made, but thinking that she will return for a reckoning seems like the same difference as accepting that Kindred are cursed and thinking that all the stories about Caine and the Cities and Antediluvians are real and around and coming to get you.

[notachickenhawk]

He laughs a little bit at that. Religious?

"It's more of a fact, really. We do what we have to. ... You're... well. A vampire feeds. A werewolf hunts. Other stranger things do what they have to do. We teach our lessons, you teach yours."

It's not a matter of belief when it's a matter of fact.

[movingon]

"But I don't say that in the end I'll have to answer to ...God or Caine or Ennoia or whomever for whatever cut I made or didn't make."

When you're dead, you're dead, in her opinion. Unless you are undead of some kind -vampire, ghost, whatever-, but that's still kind of alive, in the larger picture. Final death is final, that's kind of the point. It just comes more easily to some than to others.

[notachickenhawk]

"She's our Mother. She's the one who gives us our Horrors... I think. That's what some people say. Maybe we don't have to answer to Her, but I'd rather try to do the right thing than just say 'fuck it' and consider that none of it exists or there's no penalty for acting badly."

He's seen her. The great bird inside of him knows that she exists, that she still works in the world. Why does he have to explain that it's true?

[movingon]

Because he's talking to someone who has been indoctrinated into believing a lot of lore to be dangerous bullshit.

"...Do a lot of your kind believe in 'doing the right thing'?"

[notachickenhawk]

"... Some of them do. Not all of them." It's not as if he's never met a Beast who terrifies just for fun. ... One in particular stands out, from earlier on. That... hadn't ended well. "I try to. But it's not like all vampires believe in only taking blood from people who won't miss it, right? Everyone has their... people who go too far."

[movingon]

"...I can't speak for everyone else, but how often do you think about what you believe about your eating a sandwich? Assuming your kind still eats regular food."

You drink blood to survive. You try to not take more than the vessel's system can take so that you'll be able to drink from them again at some later point. It's not quite as simple as that now that she's been talking to people again for over two weeks, but that's still the gist of it.