Content Warning
Grief, Loss of Material Possessions, Rage, Despair, Presence of a Corpse, Discussion of Violence, Transformation, Revenge Ideation, Gore and Gross Out Imagery, Compulsive Callousness, Language.
Tense and Perspective
Think of the first three sessions like a prologue (in the V:TM sense), excepting that we switch characters rather than treating the prologue like a launch point or inciting incident for the initial character. I wanted to jump in, I chose a simple two pager for a system, and I don’t think I ever really intended to keep playing Simon. In fact, I took it as an opportunity to poke a little fun. Not that I intend to start taking myself overly serious, here. Writing his part in a limited third person perspective allowed me to keep distance and writing it in past tense helped it to feel more like events that were happening before the story began proper. I’ll move to my usual present tense and first person, then.
As I move into the hallway, I can just see and hear the last of the residents on this floor disappearing down the stairwell. I cast one last sad look into my burning apartment but wonder what I’m looking for. It might have been nice to save mom’s photo album. I scanned them all and stored them in the cloud a few years ago but there’s something precious about real, physical, material items. Their loss is worthy of grief. I feel my lips pressing into a hard, thin line as I think of my mother’s hands fussing over the position of the pictures behind the flimsy cellophane on each thick page and the enthusiasm with which she’d flip those pages and point out relatives and events I’d been too young to really remember.
I’m thinking of her still when the roof suddenly collapses. A cloud of cinders, smoke, and ash billows into the air. I realize that, other than being an obnoxious visual disturbance, it doesn’t bother me. I’m not coughing or retching, like in that last fire. With no small amount of wonder, I look down at my chest and realize that’s because I’m not breathing. Slowly, it dawns on me that breathing or no breathing, fear or no fear, I am going to burn up and die if I keep standing here like an idiot. I move for the stairwell. I live…well, lived…on the third floor, so it’s actually a pretty short distance to the ground floor. The stairwell leads to a hallway which exits immediately out the alleyway fire door or wraps around to the lobby in the front of the building. The fire door is ajar, and closest, so I exit that way. It’s not a far walk to the street. I can see tenants just now exiting the alley into the gathering crowd nearby. I’m not inclined to join them. They seem strange now. I can almost feel their pulse, like the blood in their veins is a tangible thing I can reach out and touch from here. I find it unnerving.
Something draws my attention anyway, here in the alley. I glance down the other way, deeper into the alley behind my building, and glimpse a pair of sneakers jutting out from a recess. I glance back the other way and spot one of the lookie-lous who isn’t being quite so lookie. He seems to be searching through the crowd near the alley entrance. I watch him pull his phone from his jeans and quick-dial someone. From behind me, near the sneakers, I can just pick up the low vibrating buzz of a ringing cell phone. My senses are working overtime. I never would have been able to hear that as…well, who I was. God, even naming the state of being human makes my current state seem all the more unreal. Just say it, Anya. I wouldn’t have been able to hear the phone as a…human. My eyes flicker back and forth but the searching friend doesn’t seem like he’s about to add the alleyway to his search area. I move to investigate.
Investigate the Scene of the Attack
I think, as a result of having just awoken, that a lot of her vampiric nature is revealing itself to her almost instinctively. In this version of Elegy 4e, there are no moves. You make a standard roll for anything risky or uncertain. The book provides examples for how you might handle rolls for gathering information, hunting, persuading someone, and performing rituals. To this standard roll, you add a whole host of modifiers from your relevant attributes, Edge dots, Connections, and 1-3 Blood spent boosting the roll on a 1-for-1 basis.
I’ll roll to investigate the scene with Mind (+0) but I’ll add my one Edge dot from my Vision Gift. Normally, she’ll use Vision in combination with her Empathetic Aspect to suss folks out. Most of what Vision (Aura) does is read into emotions, inclinations, and personality but, crucially, it also reads the target’s aura (implying the supernatural element). So I’m imagining that this very dead young man in the alley way still has some very minor, lingering but rapidly fading energy about him that she can still read. Because he is no longer animated and alive, I do not think her Empathetic (Accuracy) applies to this roll.
2d10 (10,4) + 0 Mind + 1 Vision = 15, a Stylish Success! Pretty nice for a first roll. As a result, I’ve succeeded, I’m in control, and I get +1 Rush for Aura and +1 Rush for overcoming. That puts me at 4 Rush.
The scent of blood hits me first. It’s overpowering and heady. For a moment, I can’t decide if it’s too much (like a sickly sweet candy) or not enough (like trying to savor a favorite dessert). My stomach shifts with a brief, sharp hunger pain and something in me becomes aware that it doesn’t matter. That, push come to shove, I’d shove my tongue into the dirty cracks in the asphalt to get at that spilled blood if I needed to. I shudder at the thought as I quietly move a big, black trashbag aside with my shoe to uncover the corpse beneath. He’s young. Early 20s, clean shaven, nicely dressed. He might have been handsome in life, it’s hard to tell. In death, his face is contorted in an unfinished scream, part of his skull is crushed beneath finger like indentations, and his throat is completely savaged. I feel revulsion. Part of me recognizes that some of that revulsion has nothing to do with the state of him and everything to do with the fading essence in his cooling blood. He has no use now. The other part of me now feels revulsion that I would even so much as think such a thought. That’s not the loss that is worthy of grief, I tell myself. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Dead Blood
I’m going to add a World Truth. Dead Blood from Interview. That means, if you want nourishment (the only way Vampires can gain any), you have to get it straight from the source. It can’t be stored and it rapidly loses its vital essence the longer it is out of the human body. That especially means no blood bags. Also, the preservatives and shit they put in blood bags to keep them viable would make them taste awful. Frankly, I think this is the direction vtm should have taken anyway. Adds tension and drama. Plus, they spent all that time outlining types of feeders…seems weird and a little toothless to still allow bloodbags even if they are shittier than direct from the source.
The phone is still ringing. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened here. How many…vampires could possibly be in St. Barnabus anyway? This was Simon. I know it was. I expect to smell him or otherwise sense some leaving of his passage but nothing presents itself. But it had to have been him. He left me to die, and burn, and he tore some poor college kid’s throat out on his merry fucking way. If I find him, I’m going to kill him.
The firetrucks are arriving now. It’s time to leave.
Does the Friend Finally Search the Alley?
I think this is Almost Certain. 82, Yes. Makes sense, he’s searched the crowd on the street and they were in front of the alley when that weirdo yelled at him to call 911.
Here’s the thing. Anya is brand new. She doesn’t know about the Masquerade and has no investment of any kind with the city’s vampire population. She’s pissed at Simon and she isn’t going to want to do him any favors. In her mind, if the cops manage to pull some evidence that links to him, so much the better. Bastard deserves it. Still, she’s not stupid. Arson investigator will determine that her apartment was the point of origin for the blaze. She’s not dead in there. He’s a known associate, if an intermittent one.
Anya can’t fully compel the guy since I only have Temporary Suggestion right now. I look forward to full compulsion. She’d see him before he sees her, the way her senses are kicked on, but there’s still a chance he could make out an identifying feature. Or even just be able to see someone standing over the friend he is about to find. She has to bolt. She can possibly make it into the adjoining alley before he gets far enough down this one to see her. I imagine the alley is very dark, with maybe one flickering security light over the fire door and the light spilling in from the street entrances providing the only real light to see by. Plus, the corpse is in a recessed area behind Anya’s building. Still, running isn’t her strong suit.
2d10 (9,3) - 1 Body = 11, Flat Success. I’ll cool my rush to replace the 3 I rolled with a 4. That bumps me to 12. I’ll spend 3 Blood (taking me down to 1 Blood…NOW, I’m going to be hungry) to bump me up to 15, Stylish Success. No feats were used but I did overcome risk, so +1 Rush (taking me to 3 Rush).
Sidenote: I wonder if it’s confusing or helpful to use first person in the narrative but third person in these mechanical dropdowns.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the friend paused before the alleyway opening. He’s craning his head back and forth, still hoping to find his friend on the street somewhere. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet and some instinct tells me he’s working up the courage to venture in. I glance at the corpse one last time, turn, and move as quickly as I can for the adjoining alley. I just make it around the corner and out of view by the time he makes it to the body. “Tucker?” I hear him quietly call out. I keep walking. I don’t look back. “Oh, god, Tuck…” he chokes out. That’s the last thing I hear from the alley as I make the street and the noise temporarily overwhelms me.
Next: Session 5
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