[VtR][Mature] Born into Darkness: Arc 1

[Graf]

Nice chuckles, it's an unpleasant sound. Whatever's under that scarf of his isn't normal vocal apparatus.
The source? he gestures at the ceiling vaguely, yeah, I would say so.

As the conversation continues Archer pushes himself to see beyond the reality that he experiences day to day. After some time he manages to push his vision into another diminsion, color washes over everything.
[sblock=Aura]Nice's Aura is fundamentally pale. Archer picks out two colors. Light Blue shot through with Vermilion.[/sblock]

[sblock=Beth]The world around you spins, you feel an intense pull as your vision reorients: you're suddenly looking at Nice. But he looks trippy, like he's in a psychedelic poster. Pulsing with weird colors.

[sblock=OOC]Archer's use of Auspex has triggered your own "latent" abilities. [/sblock][/sblock]

 

[Festy_Dog]

Calm. Happy. Nothing to be suspect of.

"Alright, thanks for the heads up," Archer proceeded down to the tank.

He distracted himself with reading until the desire for sleep overcame him.

 

[Graf]

Dreams

[sblock=OOC]The fact that some people get long dreams and others don't is sorta unfair. For that I apologize.[/sblock]

[sblock=Archer]You're a student again. Working the linguistics degree you'll never finish.

Warm light comes in from your window. Your old girlfriend is asleep on the bed; which is strange. You didn't know her in college. You met in Budapest; much later. But there she is curled up on the bed just like she was the last time you saw her.

The light is illuminating a book you're reading. No wonder I can't understand it... you find yourself thinking. It's not modern Arabic at all.

The light is very warm, soothing. You almost feel like it's making you drunk. You look up. But the quad of the campus isn't there. Instead it's a city an old city.

The sun is huge and red. From this angle it looks massive, like it fills the sky. And the light is so warm and invigorating. It feels wonderful.

OOC When Archer awakes it's like no time has passed since the years past, when he could read and write arabic and chinese.

The book in the dream is the book you got from the woman at the spice shop. Glancing at it again when you get the chance confirms that it's old Arabic (so speaking Arabic is helpful, because it hasn't changes as much as other languages, but it'll still take some Academics rolls to dig through it).

You don't think you've ever been to a city like the one you dreamed of. It was big, obviously a large sprawl, but everything was low to the ground, no skyscrapers or anything like that.[/sblock]

[sblock=Biggs - Yes. He gets a dream. I wrote it for him months ago darn it.]Biggs walks into his usual bar.

As usual it's populated by a bunch of scum. The guy with the claw-glove, hockey-mask-guy, fish-guy and the rest of their ilk are taking up most of the room. He gets cold looks as he wanders in, but he brushes it off and goes over to "his side".

All the regulars are there. The guy with the chainsaw for a hand waves from the corner. Biggs nods to John Crow and his crew as he makes his way to his table.
He slides into his seat and realizes there's somebody at his table.

A black and white. Japanese samurai dude. Doesn't look out of place among the good guys. Rases a tea cup. Like he's toasting Biggs.
Biggs hears ed up Japanese stringed music in the background.
He knows the guy. He knows the music.
*****************
Biggs snaps violently awake in in the morning.[/sblock]

[sblock=Beth]Your dream is indistinct.

There's a friendly lady, and she's dancing.
Everyone comes up to her to dance, and she dances with handsome man after handsome man.
There is a great red sun hanging low over the sky, suffusing everything with a hot tingling light.
After each dance the man lies down on soft black earth and stops moving.

You ask her to teach you, but she just takes your hand. And leads you to the shade and then goes back to finish her dance with her waiting partner.

It's cold in the shade. And it looks so so warm and inviting out in the sun.[/sblock]

[sblock=Cole]Cole dreams the same dreams he always seems to see. From his time in torpor. Celeste doesn't appear tonight.[/sblock]

 

[Graf]

Begin Fourth Night​

[sblock=Condition]Now Diego is quite hungry. (Unfortunately he's an NPC... unless I'm very lucky and Only comes back to us :/)

Beth is a bit hungry (but not hungry - the game state - just hungry). Everyone else is full on blood and will power.[/sblock]

The Tank
You all rouse yourselves shortly after dawn.

Almost immediately thereafter the door of the tank begins to make the crank crank crank sound it makes when someone is undoing the lock.
[sblock=Auspex]Beth and Archer can hear Nice making "yes sir" sounds. The torrent of incoherent cursing mixed with a crackly electronic sounds suggests that LB is on the phone with him.

And very unhappy.[/sblock]

Nice comes through the door. He looks a bit scattered, instead of the black trenchcoat you're accustomed to seeing him in he's barefoot, got on a pair of black corduroy pants and an extremely worn Doors T-Shirt, with several holes in it.
His red scarf is wrapped and tied around his face and upper chest, obscuring everything below his nose and above his sternum.

Nice is juggling a rotary phone (with a very long cord), the phone's headset and a newspaper.

yes sir, yes sir, no, no I'm down here now.

Nice wordlessly holds out a copy of the local newspaper in one hand while holding the phone a foot away from his ear.

On the front page, on top of the fold the headline blares

SUBURBAN MASSACRE
Motel Murders!
Neighborhood of Freedmont Horrified!
Police: Ethnic gang violence!

Quickly paging through the newspaper reveals the following points:

• The motel is the the Redthorn that the group considered (?) visiting yesterday; where the mysterious Gangrel, Merchant, was supposed to be staying.
• police estimate the conflict occurred in the "early evening" and are "at a loss to explain why the conflict was not discovered until morning; though they cite the fact that the room was the most remote in the hotel"
• the bodies belong to a "local ethnic street gang"
• Though not mentioned by name the room was apparently in an "rented out by an unidentified man, known to the police to be former resident of the area who'd recently returned"
• the resident's body wasn't found and police are "actively seeking the individual in question; the person's name is being withheld by police to allow a smooth investigation".
• there are reports of a "late model Chevrolet driving erratically out of the parking lot around 7pm".
• Shocked Maid (complete with a picture of a wide eyed looking Hispanic woman who apparently found the bodies around 6am) "Parts... were everywhere.... like there was a savage beast."
• In addition to the front page article there is at least one or two follow up articles. And an anonymous editorial that's ostensibly about jobs, but which is (at best) a thinly veiled anti-immigrant screed.

The screaming on the phone seems to be building to some sort of creshendo when it abruptly cuts off in an unplesant crackle. Nice gently sets the headset back down and puts the phone on the floor.

So... maybe we'd better talk about what you were doing last night?

 

[Festy_Dog]

"Swung by Celeste's abode, and Gkao Golden Spice," Archer's accented rasp sounded honestly surprised, "Oddly enough, we had exactly nothing to do with that incident. Should we be looking into it?"

The last question sounded as though it had been posed to everyone in the tank, and not just Nice.

After a night's rest Archer remembered Raghunandan's words to him. If he was still attached to Celeste, she wasn't dead. She was still alive, somewhere.