Have a Bite (original) (raw)

Fri, Mar. 19th, 2010, 09:16 pm

innocent_man: The Show Must Go On Update

So! We didn't have Lindsey, since her player broke her neck in Buffalo or something (might've been a foot, or a toe, I don't know). Padma was going to go clubbing, but decided to go join Marconi and go and visit Andre. Heath went to see Tolliver.

Andre met Padma and Marconi outside the Grand, and walked with them to the Flamingo to meet Sir Louis Frank. Frank was a little quirky (Ventrue), but was helpful. He told the characters that creating a mental trap isn't exactly difficult, but he wasn't sure who in this city did that kind of thing. He mentioned Betrand Biel, the former Lancea Sanctum bishop of the city, who had been pretty tight with the Prince until he went into torpor. Now, the bishop is a dude named Don Iltano - who's Protestant (there's friction there).

Biel had two childer who are or were in Vegas: Isabeau and Marcel. Isabeau was here for a purpose, but Frank wasn't sure what that was. He also mentioned that Cynthia Farnsworth, Lindsey's mentor, was a Ventrue of some skill at Dominate - she might be able to do it. The characters decided they should go have a chat with Maeve Blackwell and see how badly the Luxor was screwed, so they headed for the Grand (Andre was putting the Crone vampires up for a while).

Meantime, Heath went to Tolliver's club. Tolliver asked Heath to accompany him on an errand and use his money for his benefit. En route out into the desert, Tolliver explained: An acquaintance of his, on the way out of Vegas, had spotted a car that he thought belonged to Tolliver's "aunt" (that is, a vampire Embraced by the same vampire who'd Embraced Jamie Opps, Tolliver's sire - confused yet?). She'd been missing for a while, and Jamie thought that something bad might have happened to her.

They got out into the desert and there was a guardpost. Heath paid the guy off, and he raised the gate. The car was there - California plates, apparently abandoned. Heath jimmied the lock and got a face full of ashes for his trouble. In the driver's seat, they found ashes and clothes, and a wooden stake jammed into the shirt and into the upholstery. They weren't sure exactly what had happened, but they decided to drive both cars back and investigate further.

En route back, Tolliver slammed on the breaks. Heath tried to stop, and didn't - something got stuck under his brake pedal. He slammed into Tolliver's car, totaling both, and flying through the windshield. Being a vampire and everything, he wasn't badly hurt, but embarrassed. While waiting for the tow truck and the limo, they searched the car. What was blocking the brake pedal? A copy of The Vampire Lestat. Suddenly, this was sounding annoyingly familiar.

Checking the trunk, they found a plethora of

pinatas

vampire novels and movies. Apparently this woman was as much a goob as Jay and Lily and their people. Heath also found a diary, but fighting through her handwriting was tough. Some references to "Count Yanosh" who was an "Avus" (while Tolliver explained to Heath), and then later in the book, discussions about meeting "Firefly."

Meantime, Marconi and Padma had met with Maeve. They talked about ghosts and what Amy might want, and Maeve said that she probably didn't want to destroy all vampires - that wasn't personal enough. She offered to perform a ritual to channel the ghost, but wanted a boon. Marconi balked (this really wasn't his issue), but Andre said that he'd consider the whole "you're staying in my hotel" thing even if Maeve would perform the ritual (which is, of course, because it was Andre who fed on Amy and drove her crazy to begin with, not that Maeve knows that - confused yet?).

About then, Heath called Marconi and told him about the diary. He mentioned Yanosh, and Marconi remembered that a Daeva named William Smythe had passed through town and talked about some dork in Los Angeles named Yanosh - or, really, "John Melford." Apparently Yanosh lived up to every vampire trope ever; Smythe had expected him to start sparkling soon.

Heath also had an associate run the dead vampire's plates. Her name came up as "Mina Harker." Oy. Likewise, someone remembered a movie called Serenity that involved a "Firefly" - and the characters included Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, and Jane (spelled "Jayne"). Recall that these names show up on the message board for "the Brethren."

So what was happening? Was the dead vampire ("Mina") the Patroness? And who was "Firefly?"

Next time - rooftop seance, and some more answers, hopefully.

Fri, Mar. 12th, 2010, 05:03 pm

innocent_man: The Show Must Go On Update

So! Last night we played Vampire!

Recall that the characters were going to go and drop in on these wannabes and try to learn more about their mysterious "Patroness." They knew that the "Las Vegas Brethren" group (groupies, really) were getting together Friday night. Thursday, they fed.

Lindsey and Padma went to a club, got some dudes high, and drank from them. Padma, who feed often but sparingly, only took enough to get herself a nice buzz. Lindsey, who doesn't think ahead that much, took a lot from one vessel and the drugs in his blood affected her more strongly. Padma helped her out of the club, marveling at the colors.

John sat the blackjack tables, bought drinks for folks, and helped a drunk person off to feed. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

Now, this is cool: Heath, owner of Binion's, has a poker game that, if you're desperate enough, you can get into. There are rumors in Vegas that the owner of Binion's will play you and spot you $500 to start. But he doesn't play for money. Heath played and won, and drained some poor dude nearly to death (but he got medical help, so he'll recover).

The characters reconvened and talked about their approach for the next night. They decided this was (probably) just going to be a simple conversation, not a "bust in and kill everyone" kind of thing. John and Heath decided to go to the apartment complex tonight and scope it. Padma went working the black market and found a dude named Julio who sold her a gun (which she doesn't know how to use, but fuck it). And Lindsey took a twenty to the penny slots to watch the pretty, pretty lights.

See, drugs don't metabolize for vampires the way they do for people, largely because Vitae is stagnant until the vampire does something with it. So Lindsey just stayed high that night.

Heath and John went to the apartment complex. John Dominated some poor sucker into leaving his key in the door and forgetting all about it, and then they sodded off.

Next night, the vampires hooked up and went out to the complex. They brought a bottle of champagne and a shotgun (concealed with Heath's Obfuscate). Padma knocked and, when Lily opened (they heard the "squee!" from behind the door), she hit the mortals with Awe. They behaved exactly like a bunch of teenage girls would tonight Robert Pattison showed up and started sparkling.

The Kindred talked with the groupies a bit, and from their description, the Patroness was an elder vampire, old enough to remember the Revolutionary War. According to them, they gave her blood and partook of hers. Lindsey and Padma fed on the groupies, and Lindsey noted faint (very faint) traces of Kindred Vitae in their systems, but their auras were bright green - obsession. They clearly weren't ghouls, but they were behaving like they were. Odd.

Asked why they were at Bellaggio when Amy died, neither Jay nor Lily could remember. John tried to call up the memory from Lily's mind, but something ejected him (and stripped away some Willpower). John had heard of Devotions that allowed laying "traps" for vampires trying to uncover memories, but that took some skills. He didn't know anyone, offhand, who could do that - maybe the Patroness?

But if it was, why was she allowing these morons to wander around knowing as much as they do about vampires, blabbing about it? Heath speculated she might have help, or that she might be lying about her age, but the groupies weren't much help after that. They asked if the groupies could arrange a meeting with the Patroness, and Lily and Jay seemed willing, but the other male groupie (who kept his composure due to a higher Composure) mentioned that they promised not to bring any vampires to her. They did agree to bring it up to her and try to arrange something.

The characters left. Lindsey's going to see her mentor at UNLV. Padma is going clubbing. John is going to call on Louis Frank (a Ventrue and one of the Harpies) by way of Andre, and Heath is going to go talk to Tolliver.

Next week.

Fri, Feb. 26th, 2010, 05:39 pm

innocent_man: The Show Must Go On Update

The characters woke up on the evening of 7/19/06 and headed up to the roof of the Bellaggio to try and commune with a decidedly hostile ghost. Well, three of four. Padma decided she wanted to go get high before going up there (the stated reason: altering perception would help with seeing ghosts. The actual reason: Drug Addiction Flaw) and that delayed her.

Marconi, Heath and Lindsey bribed the loading dock worker to let them on the elevator. The door stuck halfway closed when they got to the roof, but they forced it and went out. Lindsey activated Auspex and saw a shimmery aura with no body, and figured that must be the ghost.

Amy - said ghost - spoke to the vampires through their cell phones, and she wasn't happy. She named Andre as the one who fed on her, and told them that since then, she'd become tired of being the "extra" to the vampires' pretensions of stardom. She claimed to see vampires wherever she looked, and hated them for just taking what they wanted. Lindsey tried to reason with her, and tried to get her to talk more specifically about what she wanted, but Padma arrived (having charmed her way onto the elevator with Majesty) and stepped out, high as a kite and rather brash as usual, and Amy vanished.

In the distance, the characters saw the Luxor just...disappear. Actually, the lights went out, but at night that's good enough. Remembering that Amy worked at Luxor, the vampires descended the elevator again and went to visit Tolliver at his club. He told them that he'd talked to a colleague about ghosts, and had learned that for a ghost to pass on, they needed to resolve what was keeping them around. For Amy, obviously starved for attention and paranoid as all hell, it probably wasn't anything as big as "destroy all vampires."

But then again, she'd shut down the Luxor. That meant that the vampires who made haven there would be forced out for a time, and that would require them cashing in favors, and that would start a cascade through the Kindred of Vegas. If Amy were to figure out that she could do that kind of thing when she wanted - or worse, if she grew more powerful (and the vampires didn't know if ghosts did that) - she could play merry hell with the Kindred of Sin City easily.

The vampires then called up Andre Sheen and met him at the Grand. After he figured out that they weren't there on official business, he admitted that he'd fed on her, but hadn't realized that she hadn't fallen under the Kiss - if he known she would resist, he wouldn't have bothered. Lindsey, at this point, remembered something her mentor, Cynthia, had mentioned about a Kindred scholar's report on something called "the hunter response," in which a mortal, once fed upon or otherwise exposed to vampires, becomes enraged and paranoid rather than ignoring or rationalizing it. This might have been what Amy experienced, but with no support system, she just went nuts.

Andre told them that he'd appreciate it if they stayed mum about what had happened (the implication there being that he would grant them a boon). He told them that the Harpies of the city had met at the Bellaggio some time back, except for Louis Frank...who was the only Harpy whose initials didn't show up on Amy's list. She must have "made" them there, and that discomfited the characters a bit.

They split up then. Lindsey went to the university and read up on ghosts, while the others went back to Binions and looked up the message board the Jay had given them before. They saw that the posts were from four posters - Jane, Inara, Kaylee and Zoe (yes, the players noticed, though the characters did not) - and that most of the posts were waxing poetic about the trials of being immortal. It read like bad movie dialog, and this confused them - why go to all that work just to fool Jay? Were these people really vampires, or just pretending? Some of it made reference to facets of the Requiem that only vampires would know about, but might that just be luck?

From there, they went to the Google group LVB. Lindsey showed up about then, and used her superior computer skills to track back the posts to find a reference to one of their houses - Lily. Turns out they're meeting at Lily's this Friday. The characters intend to show up and see what these wannabes really know.

Fri, Feb. 5th, 2010, 04:14 pm

innocent_man: Show Must Go On Update

Lindsey rejoined the group in their haven, and told them what she'd been up to. She went to UNLV (where she's a researcher) and visited her mentor, a professor and Ventrue Invictus named Cynthia Farnsworth. Cynthia mulled over the situation with Amy Stevens with her, told her about an interesting Serbian legend about things called dampir, and mentioned that she'd heard a story about an incident in a goth club called the Attik. Apparently a couple was necking, and someone started asking questions insinuating that the woman was a vampire feeding. She wasn't, but the guy made some comments that raised some Kindred eyebrows. The characters decided to trek out to the club and ask around.

They arrived, spent their Willpower to gain reflections, and found a Mekhet of their covenant named Tolliver. He's the childe of another Dragon named Jamie Opps, and Jamie is a master of the Coil of Blood. Tolliver listened to what they had to say, and told them what had happened on the night in question. There's a seat in the club that remains in almost complete darkness because the lights are rigged to stay away from it, and so he uses it for feeding. But on this night, a woman and a man were necking there, and some guy rolled up on the woman and basically accused her of being a vampire - but wasn't outraged so much as starstruck. Tolliver described him, and he looked a lot like Jay Greene (whom the characters had met).

They explained the whole story to Tolliver, and Tolliver heard the bit about the ghost on the rooftop with great interest. He told them to talk only to him about this unless directly ordered by someone higher up in the Ordo, and advised them to go check out the ghost and find out if it was the ghost of Amy Stevens. He also told them that he'd be happy to tutor them in the Coil of Blood, if they liked.

The characters retired to their haven for the day. Tomorrow night (7/19), they go ghost-hunting.

Fri, Jan. 29th, 2010, 10:04 pm

innocent_man: The Show Must Go On Update

The characters, you'll recall from last time, had discovered that Amy Stevens, the dead girl who had taken a swan dive off the Bellaggio, had been asked to join an online group called "LVB." The players, naturally, had fun thinking of meanings for this abbreviation (it is not an acronym).

But we started off by letting them get to sleep. It was nearing morning. So this session actually begins on the evening of 7/18/06. The characters woke up, and found that Lindsey hadn't come home last night. But they didn't sweat that, and instead got online to try and figure out who these LVB people were.

Padma emailed Jay Greene and asked to join. He responded by adding her to Google talk, and pinged her asking why she wanted to join. She claimed Amy Stevens had been a friend and had mentioned the group, and Jay asked her to meet him at a coffee shop. Meanwhile, Marconi called up a vampire he knew named Trent Sinlorden, the so-called "Sin Lord," and ask if he knew anything about LVB or, more importantly, who had called him to look into Amy's death. Trent said he'd look into it, but obviously that gave him a marker from Marconi (this is how Kindred society works).

The characters headed for the coffee shop, but no one showed (note, however, that Newman and Marconi didn't use blush of life, and none of the vampires spent the Willpower for a reflection). They left; Newman and Marconi headed back to Binions and Padma started walking. She wound up at a club, looking for a friend of hers named Grayton.

Grayton didn't know anything of value about the situation. Padma asked if he had any good prospects for feeding that night, and Grayton offered his own blood to Padma. Padma has no Occult, you see, and didn't realize why that might be a bad idea, so took a drink. She felt better, and headed back to Binions. There, she learned that drinking from other vampires can be habit forming - even cause slavery-like issues.

About then, Google talk pinged again. Jay revealed that he knew that Padma was "one of them," but wouldn't talk about it online. He offered to meet, and Padma told him to show up by the fountains at midnight. The three Kindred arrived, and found the young man they'd see staring at Amy's corpse the night before. He apologized for standing Padma up, but had realized that the three of them were "Brethren" and kind of freaked out.

It was obviously talking to this guy (Jay) that he was a serious vampire groupie. He referred to a secretive "patroness," and referred to vampires as "the Brethren," which wasn't a term that Kindred use for themselves. He said he'd never met Amy in person, but that she had found LVB ("Las Vegas Brethren") looking for hunters. Apparently someone had fed on her (which Jay referred to as a gift) and she hadn't taken it well. She claimed this had happened about a month ago auditioning at the MGM Grand. Jay told the characters that his "patroness" had asked to see some posts that Amy had made, and that they could see them on the "Brethren site." The characters didn't know what he meant, but he showed them on his iPhone - a message board that someone had set up, and it looked like multiple vampires were posting to it. Something the characters need to look into more. Jay also mentioned that Amy had been watching people for "tells", looking for signs of vampirism.

Jay, totally starstruck, was about to take his leave, and Newman activated Nightmare and scared him off. Marconi called up a Harpy named Andre Sheen - he knew Amy, because she had auditioned at the Grand and Sheen was in the theatre scene in Vegas. He didn't know who'd contacted Marconi, though.

Looking at the initials in Amy's notebook, Marconi noticed something. They all corresponded to names of the city's Harpies: Andre Sheen, Violet Gray, Chloe Requi, Trent Sinlorden. The only one missing was Louis Frank, a Daeva of the Invictus.

Food for thought. Maybe Amy had been used as a blood doll? Maybe she just had a really bad night. But if Andre or anyone else fed on her on the Strip, they were in violation of Prince Rossini's feeding restrictions.

More info coming next time, probably with a visit to at least one Harpy.

Fri, Jan. 22nd, 2010, 08:20 pm

innocent_man: The Show Must Go On Update

Last night we had our second session of Vampire: The Requiem. Between holidays, illness and awesome cons in Boston where awesome things happened with awesome women, I was starting to wonder if we'd ever find out if Binky the Clown would save Christmas.

Er, wait. Wrong story.

Last time, the characters investigated the suicide of a young woman named Amy Stevens. They were headed to the Luxor to check in with Maeve Blackwell, one of the Crones of the city. Lindsey left before they did to go do...something else, because her player was sick (and won't be with us next week, because she's working, so whatever Lindsey is doing, it's apparently significant. I smell a spinoff!).

The characters went backstage and talked with Maeve, who told them that Amy had been calling off sick a lot lately, and that was unusual. She used the Drops of Destiny spell and saw images of being surrounded, trapped, and paranoid. Something closing in, no way out and no one to help. And a point of light in the distance, flickering and very faint. (Remember, it's a one-dot spell.)

Maeve gave them the key to her locker, but couldn't accompany them into the locker room; too many people and Maeve's a Nosferatu (if you're interested, her eyes leak blood all the time). The characters stepped in...and then Padma realized that the place had lots of mirrors. Not willing to risk being noticed, they waited in the casino until the showgirls had thinned out a bit, and then went and poked through Amy's locker.

Pretty standard stuff. Change of clothes, but also a bottle of pills with no label that Padma recognized as Vicodin. They found a set of keys, probably to her apartment, and Marconi found a garbage bag containing a journal taped to the side of the locker. Inside the journal were several sets of what appeared to be initials, with tally marks beside them. The first one, AS, had the most, and the characters figured that to be her name - Amy Stevens. But there were no other writings in the journal (though the first few pages were torn out).

Marconi asked a couple of the remaining girls what they knew about Amy. They reported that Amy had been much more social until a few weeks ago, and then maybe she'd gotten involved with someone. She'd been distant, looked unhealthy, like she wasn't sleeping. Padma noticed one of the other girls tense up and then leave in a hurry, so she followed and asked what was up. The girl said that, to her, Amy was behaving liked she'd been raped. She also said that she'd seen Amy hanging with some odd-looking people at a coffee shop near the library one morning.

The vampires decided to go check her apartment. They found that the door frame had been smeared with garlic. The bedroom window had been sloppily nailed shut, and her books from the library included self-help, coping with trauma kinds of things, as well as books and DVDs about vampires. Clearly someone had been feeding on her (or she'd seen something). Marconi called Sally Moore, his cop friend, and asked if Amy's cell phone had survived the jump; it hadn't. But when they booted up Amy's computer, they found that she was logged into her email, and she'd sent herself the pictures she'd taken.

One was of a man playing blackjack, an older man in an odd suit. The next was of a man almost hidden behind a slot machine. But then there was a video. Amy had filmed herself standing backstage, apparently before she'd gone up to jump. She said to the camera that she had been looking for help, but that no one could help her. She spoke to "you guys", but didn't name names. And she mentioned that she kept trying to click "that link," but couldn't.

Checking her browsing history, they found a vampire fan site with a thread entitled "If you knew the truth." The link in it took them a Mexican man talking to the camera, telling whoever was running the camera to get ready to call the police. And then he told another man to open a door; the other man pried open a door with a crowbar. The first man took up a mallet and stake and went to enter...and then vanished. Slowing down the footage revealed a pair of huge, white hands wrapping around his head...

Marconi remembered that the vampires of Corpus Christi had been involved in a kind of turf war a while back, and the clothing and surroundings of the video looked rather Texan. Mortals getting wise when vampires fight? Could happen. But on the message board, someone had posted (using the name "Zoe") and said it was fake, and explained why.

Checking through Amy's email, they saw that she'd been invited to join a Google group called "LVB." There was no info on the group, though, and she had declined the invitation. She had, in fact, emailed someone named Jay Greene, telling him that she would not join, and "you should be ashamed of yourselves."

By this point the night was wearing down, so the characters decided that they'

Thu, Dec. 17th, 2009, 10:55 pm

innocent_man: The Show Must Go On: First Session 2.0

OK, so, probably you've read the opening notes by now, so we'll just get to it. Oh, and I had my lovely girlfriend read out the opening bit of the letter, which you can hear here.

John Marconi gets a phone call from an unavailable number, telling him that someone's just died outside Bellagio. He asks what he's supposed to do about it; the voice tells him "I thought you were the one that fixed things," and hangs up. Marconi contacts Newman and asks who he knows over there.

Turns out Newman knows a ghoul named Ralphie who works the loading docks (the ghoul of an Ordo Dracul Ventrue named Alex Reingold). John arrives and sees the body of a beautiful young woman outside the hotel, on the pavement. No obvious broken windows, already cops swarming around. John goes around back and talks to Ralphie and bribes him to get in, and then (as Newman arrives) bribes a maintenance guy to take him to the roof.

Meantime, Lindsey is out clubbing, trying to scare up some blood (player rolled a '1' on that initial blood pool roll). She finds a likely candidate and starts feeding, but loses control and fills up. Fortunately, this doesn't kill him outright, but he's dying. Panicked, she calls Newman, who tells her to lick the wound and then claim the dude had a seizure. She does, paramedics are called, and he's loaded into an ambulance. Lindsey leaves for the Bellagio, reflecting how close she just came to killing someone.

Padma, meantime, is also clubbing and feeding. She slips her vessel some X, waits for it to kick in, and bites. She keeps control, though, and takes enough to get high. She walks out wanting to touch everything...but not really feeling it like she should. Still chasing the highs she got as a mortal. Marconi texts her about the Bellagio, and she heads that way.

John and Newman ride the elevator up, while Padma and Lindsey survey the crowd. Lindsey, using Auspex, sees someone standing on the roof and kind of shimmering (Twilight jokes were made, stabbings followed) and texts John about this. John gets that text when he steps out onto the roof.

The two vampires survey the roof (the maintenance guy didn't walk out with them) and determine that someone came up here, staggered around a bit, then got a running start and jumped off the roof. Heath texts back and forth with Lindsey a bit, and then his phone crackles a bit and reads FUCK OFF VAMPIRE. He tries talking to this presence, but it just says KILLER on his phone...and the door off the roof locks. Heath makes a comment about how this being, whatever it is, should just face him, and the door opens again.

They get into the elevator and it lurches to a stop, then picks up speed and stops suddenly, slamming them into the ceiling. Minimal damage, but rather frightening (for the maintenance guy especially). They get out and head out front.

Meanwhile, Lindsey scans the crowd and sees a pair of employees looking at the body. One whispers "that's her" to another. And then there's a couple standing off to the side, the woman crying softly into the man's shoulder. Her aura is normal looking - sad, shocked. But his is weird. It's like he's watching something beautiful and artistic...but he's staring at the girl's ruined body.

The four vampires get together in the crowd and Lindsey points these weirdos out, but they notice her and stare. And now the girl looks at them, and it's like she's seeing her favorite rock star get out of a limo. The couple turns and goes off into the crowd, and Padma follows them.

Marconi, meanwhile, sees his Ally, homicide detective Sally Moore, in the crowd. He waves her over and she tells him this is actually a suicide, according to the CSU. The victim is Amy Stevens, showgirl at the Luxor, but she died with a key card for the Bellagio (which they're trying to run down). She also did something odd on her way to the elevator - she stopped at one of the blackjack tables and looked through her phone at some old guy, as though taking a picture. And then she continued on her way.

Padma follows the couple, but loses them after being distracted by the smell of pot. She finds a couple of guys in a car in an alley, and offers to party with them (burning Willpower and blood to do Blush of Health and fix her reflection). She gives one guy a hit of X and feeds on him (earning her Willpower back for Lust), and then gets a text calling her back.

The characters pile into Newman's limo and talk about what's going on. The presence on the roof seems to be a ghost, but the vampires aren't sure how old it is. Amy's ghost? Do ghosts show up that fast after death? Might it be someone who died when Bellagio was still the Dunes? They need more info, so they contact Maeve Blackwell, a Circle of the Crone vampire who makes her haven at the Luxor. One of her coterie, a Daeva Crone named Sandra Davidson, answers the phone and tells them to pop by - she knew Amy by name, at least in passing.

Next time, which won't be for a while due to holidays, we'll learn what Maeve has to say.