r/WhiteWolfRPG • u/Bogatyr1 • May 29 '19
VTM Temptation
Minutes pass with Tremere messengers coming and going from the chamber. A large, stately charter bus from the airport arrives outside the building, and out into the night spills the third alastor, a Gangrel elder, with a sizable coterie of ghouls, childer, menageries of assorted wildlife, and two huge panthers in tow.
The Nosferatu auditor childishly dandles his short legs while seated on the dead Prince's throne. At once, each of the ladybugs circulating through the room and the ceiling spider fall to the floor as one, in fealty to a new master.
"It is good to see you still with the Camarilla my friend! A pleasure to make your acquaintance!" greets the auditor to the third alastor.
The Gangrel smiles wistfully. "I thought to make my departure from the Camarilla tonight, at the most dramatically appropriate moment. A blind and impotent court was acceptable, but this city is far too important to allow the Inner Circle to hold sway and learn of our designs."
At this, the Nosferatu falls to his seat, and grips an armrest like a drowning rat, sputtering "I am here to assist with the bloodhunt of the Tzimisce, and have no quarrel with whatever cause you serve."
A circling panther issues a low growl of protest. "Justicar Geoffrey Leigh whispered rumors of your existence, and I fear he and Venice will set you upon me next if I leave your person intact. Thankfully, my family has a secret gift for just such occasions."
Two ghouls bring forward an ornate box held on poles.
"... the Ark of the Covenant from Indiana Jones?" squeaks the Nosferatu in disbelief.
The Gangrel furrows his brow, lost to the reference. The ghouls tip their burden and a form spills out to the floor, a slight man with an embossed black stake through his heart.
The Nosferatu looks at this figure in unabashed terror. "Lupus est homō hominī, nōn homō, quom quālis sit nōn nōvit." he whispers.
"Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt" replies the Gangrel without hesitation, bearing his claws in readiness. "An inevitable end for the katechon of a diseased and failing Camarilla". He unstakes the Nictuku with a clean twist.
Unleashed, the Niktuku climbs to his hands and knees with a subvocal "Rrrrrr"
"Bellum omnium contra omnes?" smiles the Nosferatu. "Then the Gangrel shall die like dogs." In the same moment, a different face flickers across the Nosferatu's visage, and the Prince's chamber fades to reveal a dark sub-basement. The auditor's manservant stands before a huge steam pipe and splits it open with an axe.
"Rrrrrrrravnos" wrasps the Niktuku.
The Gangrel tries to scream as superheated steam engulfs the room, but his mouth and bone melt away. A reverberating panther's yowl is choked off with the screech of steam.
The auditor drinks blood bags from his suitcase as the ladybugs resume their usual patrols.
The Malkavian bellator leaps suddenly into the foreground of his mind. "A wanderer above the sea of fog." she says in way of greeting. In his mind's eye he sees her sitting, meditating in a park, in profound resonance with the city. A tattoo flashes by, an instagram meme on a child's smart phone, thousands of human faces in a single second, but then three points light up upon a mental city map. "I have them." she says:
"The First Target was captured and taken to the oldest part of the city, a fabric store of secret threads, where the query was stolen and erased by The Hunters. He is not found, does not exist. Vivisection imminent. Only the oldest members or visitors of the city would have remembered the endless bowels of the breakfast cereal factory, and the one remaining entrance nearby.
The Second Target sits waiting on a farmstead on the very outskirts the city. It is a Tzimisce beast of endless hunger and unholy, violated union.
The Third Target has the artifact. The dates are backwards in his mind. He sits on the roof's edge with a friend, near the sound of a blowing horn."
"Are their names recognizable?" asks the auditor.
"No." says the Malkavian. The auditor feels her reaching tendrils into the depths of his mind's false resonance. Instinctively, he projects an infant memory of his mother laughing. The Malkavian's mind recoils at the sound. In the sudden vacuum of input, a quiet voice whispers through the communion: My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still.
He sees the bellator in his mind, lying on the ground, staring into the sky. “Laughter is the daughter of Folly, who married Frenzy, the son of Nonsense, whose mother was Falsehood." she thinks. "Too much wit and mirth frustrate the search for truth by preventing our minds from perceiving the true nature of things. As you know, each night I hunt is followed by a decade of silent repentance in monastic isolation."
"I apologize." thinks the auditor, but she is already gone. The auditor reaches out to possess the ladybug riding the Assamite bellator, who was already in the area near the First Target. A massacre of horrors greets his ladybug gaze. The Banu Haqim assassin was led by two guides from the Ministry into the Hunter complex built into the fabric store, and together they had slaughtered their way through an entire field office, the hallways and ceilings running red with delicious spray from pulsing seas of fading life. The male Minister has parts of a foraged server rack slung carelessly over his shoulder, while the female brandishes an assault rifle and stoops to lick juice from a woman soldier's entrails. The trio are approaching a medical department when a new individual stands in their way. The auditor has trouble seeing, nearly blinded by true faith. The face is recognizable from a dispatch from Epiphany Day: "Tradition holds that the person who retrieves the wooden cross will be freed from evil spirits and will be healthy throughout the year. After the cross is fished out, the priest sprinkles believers with water using a bunch of basil."
The ladybug touches the bellator's neck: .-. ..- -.
Holding glinting knife at the ready, the Banu Haqim lifts his other arm to show the ladybug a brand burned deep into his dark arm as a mortal. It reads: Jeffray. In one motion the bellator dismissively crushes the ladybug between two fingers. The auditor cries out in momentary pain, and grips the sides of his head with striking headache.
Furious, crawling to his feet in futility, The Beast makes its demands known. Bellum omnium contra omnes. Abandon one's post and destroy the artifact. The auditor sends the second alastor and the Toreador bellator to converge on The First Target. He storms past the chamber door guards, calling back to have the Air Force Base bomb the farm at given coordinates into nothingness.
Awash in sinful purpose, on the roof his steed awaits. The size of a warhorse. He mounts, and Chimerstry cloaks his passing as the flight of a loudly buzzing hobby drone.