After 70 years of mostly menial service, and a disastrous clusterfuck of a first mission, I was judged worthy of commanding a squad (by dint of selfless loyalty and, barely, surviving) (also, the local Invictus are clearly getting desperate). A WW2 medic, a Southern Belle, and a blind kung-fu mistress walk into knock politely at the door of a hunter conspiracy. "Is this some kind of a joke?" [snip]
It turned out that that region was overrun because my ancient sire never plugged in his phone, so he failed to keep in touch with his nemesis (the Mekhet primogen). This was all a failure to communicate. Still, risking the lives of neonates over trivial nonsense is kinda how neonates advance... Beats 70 years of maid-work.
Eating rats is fine, though. Eleanor likes being a cat.
Eleanor's sire went off (taking the car) presumably to duel his kismesis. But not before giving her orders to attack an identified hunter stronghold and, specifically, kill them all.
We avoided humanity loss last session by attempting diplomacy with the vampire hunters... But it's so obviously total war, that that won't work again
We tried to prepare without seeing the building, which was a mistake. To be fair, though, we were all embraced before 1930. We can barely use phones, much less Google. Still, we did adopt a couple of ghouls... a disturbing process, even with certain parts skimmed over.
That did involve a nice long social scene in a weird poetry club, though. Eleanor sat down at an occupied table and stared patiently until acknowledged. Then offered her poetry for criticism:
Cats are wonderful creatures. They are graceful, beautiful, and better than people in every way. Sometimes I dream I am a cat, and there are rats everywhere. Some of the best things about cats are [rest of the page is a bulleted list]
[Other side is the rest of the list] Dogs are awful.
Having long lost the ability to read social cues, she assumed they liked it so much they had to leave. Then sit down at another table. She continued observing them, hoping to learn more.
Our nosferatu wore a burka, and- actually nevermind, less said about that, the better. Or about our belle acquiring her ghoul.
The rest of the session (took a break writing this post) was an incredibly vicious battle. The original point of this post, in fact. I'm not going into detail, but just saying... It was
incredibly rough. It was basically a suicide mission. One of the players really wanted to just leave, and I would have too, except that my character had sworn a vitae-oath to never fail her sire again.
And said sire had specifically ordered the death of all the hunters inside. My character, the "squad leader", had to do everything possible to accomplish that. OOC I was quiet, others pushed that player to stick around.
IC, I was ready to whisper to Julia's beast, and induce a rage frenzy. I never revealed that card until now, heh.
Regardless... It was very close. Towards the end we had to "flee" and ambush. And at the very end, we all frenzied. Even my character Eleanor for the very first time. She had eight dice, kinda designed not to frenzy, but RNG chose this moment. All composure was thrown aside, and we were the monsters they expected. And skipping over gory details, we did win.
Eleanor did *intentionally* unleash her beast in the aftermath, chasing down a straggler. Because when you've had nothing but rat blood for ~50 years, and your sire orders you into a suicide mission on pain of death, maybe you treat yourself just a little bit.
a reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitelyHer beast is an emaciated creature, an abused pet. But now it smells blood. And thanks to her Animalism power, which lets her negotiate with beasts... It's negotiating with
her.
And she, also, sees light at the end of a long tunnel. a reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely
a reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely
Edit: Eleanor did lose 1 humanity. She
just barely (2 dice) still feels a wrongness from killing, even in war. It was very close, though.
Burning their fortress to the ground, destroying everything they own? She felt nothing, and dropped to 4 humanity (7 is default, where stealing feels wrong)
WoD is interesting that way. As long as she still feels something "wrong" while killing, she's retains 4 morality/humanity. That particular line is a rough one to cross.
She did luck out and receive no derangement (insane quirk) for losing all respect for property, though.