Darkness Unvailed

This is most likely rough as I am just trying to get the last few nights out for people to enjoy. If the editor ever ends up with some free time this should get whipped into better shape.

We start the night with Hugh calling James to find out what he was doing. Hugh asked about Gracey to make sure they were in one place. Hugh then asked if James would like to break the rest out. James was more then a little surprised at this and asked Hugh what had happened.

(The players for James and Gracey had missed last weeks game and were left at Paul place while the rest started that adventure. Now they get up dated with last weeks game information.)

Hugh explains that he did not do any thing wrong as he got out of there. After some more questioning by James, Hugh tells James about making the stops at The Orphanage and then following leads to a different building. Hugh also tells James about see Zetta and Vern there. Then Hugh asks again if James and Gracey would like to help. James asks if Hugh has a plan to get them out. Hugh of course does not, so James tells him to come over to Paul’s and start to think of a plan on the way. Before James has a chance to hang up Hugh tells him that he does not think he can get in at Paul’s. James tells Hugh that he will meet him at the gate.

While James and Hugh were talking on the phone, Gracey steps out of the place to go feed. Walking not to far from the house Gracey stops in a small store and convinces one of the patrons to go to the restroom with her. As Gracey is a good looking girl the guy is almost eager to go with her. After taking a quick sip of he, Gracey walks out of the restroom leave the guy sitting on the sink, wondering what just happened.

Hugh gets to Paul’s and starts to explain to James what the rest of the group are caught in. Hugh starts to talk about pushing over one of the walls. While James and Hugh are talking about this Gracey comes back from feeding. James just yells to Gracey to get her things as they are leaving. Gracey not liking this asks what is going on. James prompts Hugh to start explaining things again. Hugh goes off on the whole steal box thing and how they need to get them out of there. Gracey asks Hugh and James if they know any one else that can help them right now, they don’t come up with any one. Gracey grasping at any chance calls her sire, Sarah, to see if she knows of anything or anyone to help her, Sarah does not either. Gracey asks for more details about the building. Gracey getting frustrated starts asking question that she knows the answers to. Gracey then tells James and Hugh to come with her to her place and stay there while she goes to check some thing out. James thinks that it would be a better idea to go to a bar to wait for Gracey. Gracey thinks that they should stay at her place so they are easier to find.

Paul tries to strike up conversation with the others and asks other then himself, who is the last person in the world she would fuck. Victoria not having anything much better to do starts to thing about it out loud, but does not get to for with it. Paul then turns his attention to Christian with the question besides Victoria, who is the last person in the world he would sleep with. Christian smarts of with you Paul, then oh you meant female, after a dah comes out of Paul’s month. Then after thinking it over Christian response with I don’t know, because I do not know everyone in the world.

After James, Hugh, and Gracey get back to her place, Gracey takes off for the park that is close by to see if she can talk with Minth. While waiting for Gracey Hugh and James continue to talk over how they may be able to get Victoria, Paul, and Christian out of the cage and building. Hugh goes into more detail about the lay out of the place and how they got there. Not getting any help from Minth, Gracey calls Hugh and tells him she is on her way back, which surprises Hugh a bit as he missed it when she left. Gracey does see a few construction projects on her way back. From what she was hearing earlier Gracey thinks to try and get some tools off the site.

Gracey goes back to the apartment and gets Hugh and James and has them drive back and park close to one of them. As she get close to the site the security guards notice her and one of them tell her the site is close. Gracey asks even for me, to which the one of the guards announces go away we are not paying for it. Gracey try to keep talking the guards into letting her in. Even with a small boost from Gracey dominate the guards do not seem interested in any thing she says. Hugh then steps out of the truck sees that no one is close by and opens fire on the guards. Hugh puts a few rounds into the chest of the first guard and blows the head off other the second one, while Gracey was talking with them. Gracey yells back thanks for the help Hugh. Seeing the blood Hugh goes though the locked fence gates and feed off the guard that was still alive. Gracey then let Hugh and James in on the plan of talking the tools from the site. To which Hugh and James are not impressed and wondering why they just went though all this. After see the futility in this course of action Gracey is in a hurry to leave to get to the build.

They arrive back at the place they left the other vehicle is parked Hugh tells Gracey to open the back of the SUV to see if there is anything in there that they can use to get the others out. As the SUV pops open Louis rolls out much to the surprise of James and Gracey. Seeing Louis reminds Hugh about him as he had forgotten. Hugh introduces Louis to James and Gracey as his explosive friend. James sees that Louis is wired up and asks Hugh about how Louis is set up. James and Hugh talk over how to best use Louis to get people out of the building. Hugh takes a minute to formulate what kind of deal to cut with Louis to make best use of the opportunity. The deal is that Louis needs to get them to release the three hostages, and if he can, Hugh will not blow him up. Louis see no way out takes the deal and walks over to the building. Time starts to pass, and no one is coming out of the building.

As this happens a vampire comes close enough to the cage to induce panic in Christian and Paul. They start trying to get out the back of the cage without any progress.

Louis comes back out of the building to tell Hugh, that no one in the building, right now, is of any threat to him. Hugh just asks if Louis is lying. Louis just flat out says not with this crap strapped to me. James sets the plan of using Louis as a door alarm. James explains that is some one else tries to come in that Louis is to yell to them and if they get by him with out that he will be blown up, if Louis strays too far he will get blown up. While James explains this Hugh arms the explosives on Louis. Louis getting sick of this just asks them to blow him up now. James tells him that is not going to happen and that if he does cooperate with them, he may get out of here.

James, Gracey, and Hugh enter the building with Louis standing guard. James, Gracey, and Hugh make it down to the cage. Hugh looks the cage over to see what they can do to get the others out. After looking it over Hugh finds a control panel that may make the back wall work. Gracey hears this just walks up to the control panel and just pushes a button. By shear luck the back wall starts to slide back out of place. Hugh goes over to the side it is coming out to catch Paul, Christian, and Victoria before they leave, so they know what has happened. Hugh tells them that came here to get them and to meet them back at the SUVs, because James, Gracey, and himself have to pick up the “Louis bomb” before they go. Paul, Christian, and Victoria all think it was great fun that Hugh used the “Louis bomb” for this.

As James, Gracey, and Hugh walk back out the front doors the yell at Louis to get back to the SUVs. As they all get to the SUVs with Louis, Victoria calls Riley and Gracey calls Sarah. Riley answers the phone with a little surprise that Victoria is calling him, as last knew she was still trapped. Riley asks Victoria what is going on. Victoria rattles off about finding Vern’s hide out and getting caught, which Riley remarks that he had already herd about those things, then Victoria tells Riley about James, Gracey, and Hugh coming back and getting her out. Riley, displeased some, tells Victoria that he will need a long talk with Hugh next time he sees him. Riley after commenting on how much of his time has been wasted asks what he can do for her. Victoria tells Riley the reason for the call was to let him know she is out and that they had found one of Vern’s hide outs. Riley tells her that if Vern is not there now that it would most likely be a long time before he returns there. Riley thanks Victoria for the information and asks for her to come see him in a few days. Gracey calls and tells Sarah that everything is fine now and that she is alright. Sarah thanks Gracey for the call and Gracey hangs up.

Paul filling the effects of being locked in a box for a day start to look hard for a snack. Hugh and Gracey make a few comments about a construction site a little ways away and how there may be leftovers. Paul not hearing it, just walks away from the group and finds someone to snack on not that far away. When Paul returns they all agree that they should move on. Paul being mad about being locked up asks Hugh if he has some thing to burn the place down with, after Hugh declines to use Louis right now. Hugh digs around in the back of the truck for a short time and comes up with two rocket launchers and hands one of them to Christian. James and Paul both get a little worried about the out come of this adventure, but let it happen. Christian after a short once over with Hugh aims and fires his rocket at the same time as Hugh sets his off. Both rockets hit the building producing a large amount of damage themselves, but to add to the destruction one of the rockets explosions ruptured the gas line in the building causing a much bigger explosion then Hugh even expected. Christian and Hugh having stepped around the corner to take the shot are both exposed the flying debris, though being that far away they do not get too much. After seeing Christian and Hugh walk off with the two rocket launchers, Paul, Victoria, and James get the idea that maybe it is a good time to leave this place. As soon as they hear a few explosions they take off in one of the SUVs. Christian and Hugh come back around the corner to find that only one of the SUVs is still there. Hugh and Christian jump into the one remaining SUV and head to Paul’s at Hugh suggestion.

They all meet back up at Paul’s late in the night to go over what they are doing next. Paul calls to some of his friend, but only one of them is willing to come over this late. After Paul get off the phone and enters the living room. Gracey jumps on him wrapping her lags around him and getting him a kiss to remember. Shortly after Gracey gets off of Paul, Paul’s guess arrives. Paul tells Gracey the he is bring dinner to bed tonight. Gracey does not like this idea, telling Paul the dinner does not belong in bed. Paul and Gracey argue about it for sometime, and Paul lays down that food is going to bed with him even if that means with out Gracey. Gracey hearing this grabs for food and misses. Paul then grabs them both and drags them into the bedroom.

(Normally I do not worry too much about topics covered during my games, but this next part of the story goes a little farther then average and may not be for every one. Please remember that this is just a game and the events are not real, nor are they condoned just because we played through them. Thank you for reading. If you don’t feel like reading the rest it does not have a great effect on the game if you skip this part. There is a line later to let you know when it is over.)

Gracey rolls off the bed to get away from Paul. Paul asks Gracey what is the problem with bring food to bed. Gracey tells Paul that he has never do it before with her and she does like it. Paul then sees why the problem started and tries to explain the he did know it would upset her as he does this a lot. This just makes Gracey even more determined to leave. Gracey gets off the floor and starts to make her way to the door. Paul then races to the door to get there before Gracey and hold it shut. Paul tells Gracey that she can not leave at this point. Gracey says “Bye Paul.” While she is trying to pull open the door and walk out of the room. Paul holds the door shut so that she can not get out. Paul hearing this slide in front of the door and pushes Gracey back into the room. Paul then locks the door behind him. Paul asks Gracey to clam down, telling her that it is just food. Gracey repeats that you do not bring food into your bed. Paul tries again to clam Gracey just to have her repeat that you do not bring for into the bedroom. Paul tries to call it a bed time snack, but Gracey will have not of it. Paul start to say that it is not have the food in bed, it is that Gracey is afraid that Paul is going to fuck food. Gracey just stays with the point, that food does not belong in bed. Paul then tells Gracey find he will just hang he in cuff on the wall. Gracey replies, no you will not, not if Paul wants her in the bedroom. Paul states that he does not understand, to which Gracey reply of course you do not, because all you do is think with your dick not your head, now good bye. Paul asks Gracey, so now you are going to fight with me about were I eat. Gracey just tells Paul that if he wants food in the bedroom she is not going to be in there also. Paul asks Gracey, so then were is it ok to eat. Gracey tell Paul that anywhere, but the bathroom or the bedroom is fine. Paul then tells Gracey to let go of some of her mortal inhabitations that she still has. Gracey then starts for the door again, but can not make it there do to Paul standing in front of the door. Paul then offers to share with Gracey that does not help any. Paul relates it to eating ice cream. But Gracey still does not see it that way.

Gracey seeing that she is not going to get out the door, pushes through the wall next to the door making quite a mess in the process. General confusion sets in on the rest of the group. Hugh telling Gracey that she made a mess. James wanting to know what is going on. Victoria just stating that Paul is going to kill Gracey. Paul turns though the hole in the wall and grabs Gracey by her hair. Paul then pulls Gracey to hard back through the wall that Gracey lands on the bed next to food with Paul still holding Gracey hair. Paul tries yet again to get Gracey to calm down. Gracey is not having any of it. Paul asks Gracey if he feed every day to which Gracey tells Paul no. Paul states that he does and today he has had a stressful day and wants to eat. Gracey tell him fine, but that she does eat were she sleeps. Paul just tells Gracey that he does, and it is not like he is going to leave her in bed.
Gracey start to calm down and asks Paul to let go of her hair now. Paul just says no. Gracey tries to demand Paul let go. Paul holding tight tells her that she just put a hole in his wall. Gracey break in with that is because Paul won’t let her leave. To which Paul responds that is because this is just dinner and guess what you are not even human anymore. Gracey then starts to vent her anger at food by saying, if you would have come over this wouldn’t be happening, wench. Food responds, who are you calling a wench, bitch. Food continues well bitch if you have such a problem with me being here why don’t you just leave. Paul looks over to try and stop Food from finishing just a little too late. Gracey flies off with, what do you think I have been trying to do. Paul just tells Gracey to shut-up. Gracey continues, I am not just going to shut-up. Paul only reply to this is to slap both Gracey and food with his free hand. Paul then tells Gracey to calm down one more time. Paul then turns to food and tells her to shut the fuck up; dinner is not to talk back. Food only response is to try to tell Paul look my name is Candy not dinner. Paul just quips alright dessert, whatever. Food is food. Gracey wiggles a bit. Paul tells Gracey, until you calm down I am not letting go, you have been fucking ballsy bitch tonight. Gracey then start to question Paul as to why this is such a big deal to him and how come Paul is holding her here against her will. Paul defends it by saying this is how he treat all the other. Gracey screams at Paul that she does care about the others, why is he doing this to her. Overhearing this James yells back fuck he up Paul. Victoria adds a go ahead to the end of. Hugh getting back into the room from some excursion just to catch the comment by Victoria ask what is going on. Victoria explains to him that Gracey just told Paul the she does not care about them, so now she does not care about Gracey. Hugh just goes oh. Gracey looks at Paul and tells him that the long he holds on to her the more excided she is going to get and that Paul will not like it. Gracey again states that she is not just going to calm down after Paul’s laughter from the last comment dies off a bit. Paul then tells Gracey that she is not helping her cause much by continuing to act this way. Gracey asks yet again for Paul to let go of her hair. Paul some what indigent goes, or what, what are you going to do to me. The thought of pulling hard enough to pull out her own hair flashes though Gracey’s mind. After giving Gracey a short pause, Paul starts to find out what Gracey’s problem is with having dinner in bed. Paul say, I do not know what the big deal with this is it is not like I am going to fuck her just eat her, what are you going so jealous for? Gracey screams back, I am not jealous of her, she is just food. Paul tries to break in, but Gracey continues, I just do not what food in here. Paul asks what is the problem with have food in here. With all the screaming go on Victoria and James yell back that it is Paul house he can eat were ever he wants. Gracey hearing this screams out at them screw you all. In response to the James yells into Paul tell him to beat the living shit out of Gracey. Paul continues to tell Gracey she needs to let go, that she is not human any more, she needs to embrace the dark side. Gracey finally has had enough and just stops fighting and goes stiff. Paul yells for Victoria to come and look to see if this is normal. Victoria refuses, so for fun, Paul calls Hugh over to look. This gets Victoria just curious enough o look.

Victoria sticks her head in though the hole in the wall to see Gracey at the end of Paul’s arm just lying there. Candy cringing on the bed, but not making a move to leave it, with one side of her face red. After Paul gave Victoria a short time to look thing over. Paul says to Victoria, I told her to embrace the dark side and she froze up on me. Victoria snaps her fingers at Gracey and says, you who bitch, getting no response. Victoria that comment, just bash Gracey in the head then she should be good. Paul express that he is just afraid that Gracey might hurt herself. Victoria question Paul as to how he thinks Gracey might hurt herself, as she is not doing any thing. Paul goes that is what is scary. Paul tells Victoria that he think he should put Gracey into a closet, for her own protection, as this is freaky, it is the first time Gracey has ever shut-up. Victoria agrees that this is the first time Gracey has ever shut-up. Victoria then tells to the rest of them to come and see, explaining that Gracey has shut-up. This draws a few comments about: if I had a heart I would have a heart attack. James, Christian, and Hugh make there way over to the hole in the wall and take a look for themselves. James makes the comment to Paul, look you scared Gracey to death. Paul uses that fact all he said was Gracey should embrace the dark side. Paul and Victoria go over putting Gracey in the closet, which Paul decides to do, only to be nice as he does not like how this is happening, Paul picks Gracey up gently and puts her nicely into the closet, tied up, and locks Gracey in. While Paul is doing this he makes the comment that he has never seen any one get so upset about food before. Victoria comments that Gracey must just be hanging on to her humanity to hard. Paul before he locks Gracey in tries to explain that this is for her own good and that he will let her out in the evening went they wake up, it is just that she is freaking him out right now. Paul tells Gracey one more time before he locks her in that this is just for her protection. As soon as the door is locked Paul turns and states, now back to food. Victoria and the rest of the group return to the living room and Paul checks out Candy.

Gracey checks her bonds over and finds that she would not be able to slip them without causing herself a lot of damage. Seeing that it has become useless to try and get out, Gracey just gives up and waits for morning.

Candy seeing that all the commotion is over, just blurts out can we fuck now. Paul caught just a little off guard, just stumbles over a, yeah sure. Paul tries to explain the scene away, but Candy does not seem interested in anything and just wants to get down to what she came for. Paul goes into the motions all that time trying to think of ways to make Candy forget what she just saw. Paul slowly returns to himself and gets on with the tasks at hand. Paul makes sure that Candy gets loud just to play with Gracey in the other room. Paul then takes enough from Candy that he sends her to the hospital to be taken care of.

While Paul was having his fun at last Hugh went out and checked on Louis and to make sure that he has been put in a safe place. Victoria, Christian, Hugh, and James all then head off to rooms that have been provided by Paul for them to sleep in today.

We pass into the next night and this same night of play.

This night start with Paul having a package waiting for him when he wakes. Within this package is more information about Lt. McNaily. Mostly showing that he is spending more time then he used to at “Open Traps”, and talking to people he had not been seen with before. Paul sends out a request for more information on who McNaily has been talking with, and a small payment. The rest of the information doesn’t interest him right now, so he goes into the living room to plan what the group is going to do tonight. They talk over how most of the places they have been with kindred activity have had sewer access. While they mull this over, Paul calls in some food for himself and the others. They eat and then head out in the SUV’s without Luis, but with a large amount of equipment from Hugh’s things. (Oh the OOC conversation they had.) They arrive and park a block or so away and climb down into the sewer. Paul leads them through the sewer to the building that they had stopped in the night before, so they guess by the feeling they get. (Taint check) They find the access into the building; Paul goes up the ladder and checks the room from the hatch Paul seeing the room is empty motions to the group to follow him. As Paul leaves the hatch, he hears a clang off the hatch, and turns to see that he was attacked by someone with a baseball bat. Paul, in a dejected manner, says, “A baseball bat, you swung a baseball bat at me.” Paul pulls his knife out and puts his hand on his sword as soon as he is in the room. The goon in the room swings at Paul again hitting him with little effect. Christian enters the room and hacks at the goon doing a little damage. Victoria enters and moves off to see if she can get through the door that leads out, but it must have been stronger then it looked and she didn’t get through. Paul takes his shot and does a good amount of damage. Hugh pops up from the sewer and with his knife and turns the goon to ash. After it happens Victoria asks, ‘I thought you wanted information for him?” Hugh response, “I’ll get it from the next one.” With the goon out of the way, Victoria checks the door to find it unlocked.

The group enters a large room with a conference table sitting towards the far side with about twenty kindred that stand as they enter. Victoria see that one of them is Zetta, as does Paul, who smarts off with, “Zetta, you are one hard bitch to find, let’s go we have a ride waiting for you.” Each one takes the command to sit, they all do right were the stood. With them sitting here so nicely one of the kindred, from the table, walks over and starts to lecture them about have much trouble they have been. Vern continues on how becoming part of the LS would better them. How ridding the city of kindred like Hugh would make it such a better place. Christian comments on how they have all been taught that Vern is the danger. For this one of the others drives a knife into Christian’s shoulder. This leaves Christian to yell out in the pain. The other kindred, after sum more of Vern’s lecture, have stepped back, as they see this group of kindred are not going to be convinced. Vern ends his speech with a quick movement.

The group becomes aware of large pieces of steel swinging in around them. Hugh is quick enough to roll out of the way back in to the sewer entrance room. This leaves Christian, Victoria, and Paul locked in this steel box. Victoria checks the walls to find them thick enough that they are not going to be easy to get through. Christian finds that the walls are still there own pieces and checks with the others to see if there is something that they can have to wedge under them and open them back up enough to get out of there. After checking over what they have nothing stands out as something that would work. Hugh after a short time of regaining his composure, Hugh moves over to the wall blocking the doorway to the sewer access to listen in on how they are doing. Paul starts to check the ceiling with is sword to see if that could be a way out. After hearing the clang a few times, Victoria informs Paul that the ceiling is most likely thicker then the walls. Hugh finding that they can not hear him right now, Hugh starts to look around for a way to get them out of the box or back into the other room. Hugh checks the sewer for a way close by to get into a different part of the building finding none. Victoria, Paul, and Christian try pushing on one of the swinging walls, just making it move a small amount. See light come in on the first try they all try some more and then give up see that the gap does not get any larger on each try. Hugh looking around the other room sees one of the walls is made of drywall while the others are made of red brick and cinder blocks. Paul starts to listen some more hears that Hugh is still around and starts to talk with him. Paul tells Hugh to go get some thing to cut them out of the steal box. Hugh asks if he should tell Riley that they are here. After a few remarks about how sure just go and tell him we got caught. Paul tells him to get a hold of Riley to tell him that they found Vern and that they need to get cut out. Then Hugh tells Paul to stay right there. Paul yells at Hugh “Where am I going to go.” Hugh tells him he will be back. Hugh climbs back out of the sewer and gets into one of the trucks, before realizing that he does not have a way to get a hold of Riley. Hugh then thinks to go back to where they exchanged bodies the last time to see if he can find Riley.

After Hugh has gone Victoria starts to think about using the cellphones as wedges, Paul shoots down that idea fast. Paul walks over to the other wall of the cage and starts to listen to see if the others are still talking at the table. Paul over hears them talking about how big of a pain that group has been to them. After hearing a little of this Paul starts to look the cage over some more, and does not find any good news.

Not finding Riley at the hand off point Hugh then goes to check a few of the bars that Christian’s sire owns to see if Riley might just be at one of them. At the second on of this bars Hugh finds Riley. Hugh walks up to him and asks, is that you, Riley. Riley be cough off guard by Hugh, who had his obfuscate active, turns and swings catching Hugh and doing a bit of damage. Riley tells Hugh not to do that. Hugh starts to studder, so Riley not liking to waste time asked Hugh what he needs. Hugh stumbles on a few more words before telling riley that they found him. (Referring to Vern) Riley tells Hugh that he normally gets a phone call for this type of thing. Hugh then asks for his phone number. Riley tells Hugh that it is not something he gives out freely. Riley then asks about what happened, what do you need, and what is going on. Hugh then asked it Riley remembers Paul, Victoria, and Christian, then tells Riley that he could sure use a way to get though some metal. Riley asks again what is going on. Hugh asks if they should talk here or some where else. Riley makes the comment of it that bad. Riley then guides Hugh though a back room to an office. After asking the guy in the office to leave, Riley shoves a chair at Hugh and has him sit down. Then asks one more time what is going on. Hugh explains that they went looking for Zetta. Riley asked who sent them looking for her, Hugh responds that no one did that they were just looking to bring Riley a present. Riley states that he has gotten quite a few presents from them recently. Hugh continues to explain that they follow some leads to the place and went in and found Vern. Riley states that this would normally be good news, but. Hugh starts to say that normally he has a bit of an entourage. Riley corrects Hugh by tell him he is normally part of the entourage. Riley again with some inpatients asks what is going on. Hugh starts to ramble about the walls falling, steal cage, and them getting stuck. Riley asks about Victoria and Christian, and Hugh tells him they are in the cage with Paul and each other. Riley asks where the steal cage is. Hugh starts to ramble about going though the sewers and the different turns and finally gives him the address. Riley asks what lead them there, Hugh responds Victoria. Riley then tells Hugh to go hide some where. Hugh tries to think of some place to hide. Hugh make his way back to the Carthian warehouse that he had been a few days ago.

As the night gives way to the sun those stuck in the steal cage feel sleep creep up on them and they all fall into the day time slumber.

One more night down not that many left at this point.

Ok, to get something up on the sight, I will start in on night twenty one, early. We played through about half last week and I hope to get through night twenty two this week. As life has gotten in the way, Gracey’s player will not be at the sessions for a few months so that she may learn something.*

The group starts at Paul’s place, as this has been the crash pad for the last few nights. They all meet in the living room to go over what to do next, as they have been very busy rounding up Vern loyalists for the old regime. To date, they have brought in Dalia, Damon, Aaron, and Carman. Christian starts to talk about taking some time off again to take care of other things, but the group still thinks that finding and eliminating others that are loyal to Vern should come first. Victoria, looking over the list of names that they have, figures that the next person to locate should be Zetta. The information they have on her comes from all of the files that they have procured over time.

Victoria leads the way, telling the others that they have four addresses to check out. A short ride later, they find themselves at a downtown Manhattan building. Gaining entrance via picking the front door locks, they head upstairs to the apartment number from the file. With another quick pick, they send Hugh and Paul in first, to check out the safety of the place. A quick check of the place results in a resounding “nobody home”. The rest enter the apartment to check it out. It’s a smaller place with just four rooms: living, kitchen, bed, and bath. Though lived in, the apartment does not have any clues to finding Zetta. Paul, after looking around, notices a fine piece of oil work in the wall, in the living room. Victoria and Christian take note of a nice statue, that upon a closer look, is just a fake plaster copy. Feeling this stop a bust, they head out for the next address.

With a longer ride over to Queens, they make it to the next place, but not without notice of a number of kindred from the area. This address leads them to an abandoned two-story building. Gaining entry through the broken doorway, Paul and Victoria lead the search through the building. On the main floor, they find that the place seems to have become a dumping ground for some kindred, as a few of the apartments have bodies stacked in them. Many of the bodies look as though they are from the vagrant population, but a couple of them are dress a little too nice for these parts. Victoria seizes the chance and quickly goes through their pockets. Victoria finds out that one was Nelind Hughes, by way of his credit cards and that the driver license is missing, as well as all the cash. The other body belonged to Andrew Mason. Again, no license or cash, just credit cards remain. Looking though the business card collections from the wallets, Victoria finds one for Missie Larance on Nelind and one for Lt. McNaily on Andrew. Asking the group about the names, no one recalls hearing Missie’s, but Paul tells Victoria that he does recognize McNaily. Victoria quickly puts the wallets back and the moves on. Looking though the building, they find that a few of the rooms have been converted so that no light can get into them and that they lock from the inside. Going into the basement, they find a few interesting things. One: a few of the rooms seem to have been the sites of many fights sometime not long ago. Two: that the sewer has access from inside the building. After spending a little more time looking around the basement, they head up to the second floor to see if they can wring any clue out of the place. On the second floor, they find one more room rigged not to let light in, and access to the roof.

Paul leads them up the stairs to the roof. Leaving the stair behind, they all feel the presence of another on the roof. Paul quickly scans the roof for it. Paul sees the stranger just in time for him to look up from his meal. Paul yells at him to stay put, but he just jumps over the side. Hearing a loud clang, Paul figures that he had jumped onto a fire escape. Paul takes off after him with Hugh following behind. They a make it down the escape ladder with out a problem. The stranger starts running down the ally, dodging trash all the way. Paul makes ground on him with Hugh starting to fall back a bit. Close to the end of the ally, the stranger trips and this gives Paul the chance to pin him to the ground. Hugh though, found a bag of trash that did not get out of his way and has fallen short of were Paul is. With the stranger pinned to the ground, Paul asks him why he ran. “Fear” sums up the statement quite well. Paul, berating him for his background, starts with his name. “Luis, Luis Rolon”, comes the weak reply. Next on Paul’s list is “what covenant?” Luis tells him, “Sanctified, sort of”. This makes Paul boil with anticipation for the next answer. “Who is your sire?” comes down for Paul. Luis, with a hint more fear tells him, “Andrew Mills”. Not the person Paul was hoping for. Hugh, being able to collect himself, makes it to Paul and Luis, just in time to hear this. Seeing the excitement in Paul, Hugh tells Paul what he knows of Andrew. Though Paul is still on the edge, he tells Hugh to grab hold of Luis so they can get him back to the group. Hugh and Paul, each grabbing a leg, drag Luis around the building and up the stairs to the roof, where they see what the group would like to do with him. The talk is short and, on point, they tie him up and throw him in the trunk. They head out for the next address a little heavier.

This one strikes them as strange once they enter the Brooklyn building. Sensing and seeing Kindred and humans in one place mingling with familiarity is strange. A few of them who have heard stories about this place know what they have entered: The Orphanage. Victoria comments to Paul that this would be a strange place for a follower of Vern’s to hang out.

This is were we ended up for the night as time ran out on one of the players. I have some fun for next time if I can keep my end of the deal up. Here’s to hoping for a good time.

Well, we pick up the game from were we left off on the next week.

Victoria shows the rest a picture of Zetta, so they all knew who to look for. Paul looks it over and decides that he should talk with one to the kindred in the place. Paul walks over to the nearest one and waits for him to finish his current conversation. Paul questions this vampire if he has seen Zetta recently. He informs Paul that Zetta has been known to stop by for short stays from time to time, but has not been in recently. Paul asks him if he would let Paul know if Zetta come in while Paul is there. This kindred agrees to let Paul know if Zetta shows up. After some debate the group takes the elevator to the top and works there way down using the stairs.

The seventh floor is little more then a hostel with about 30 beds for anyone to use. Though all of the windows are closed off. The sixth floor is deferent do to the facts that some of the floor can get light and some of it is being used as a game room with a pool table and TV. The Fifth floor has a small section divided off for the stairs and the elevator, while the rest of the floor appears to have been turned into a worship space. Moving down to the fourth floor they find, another floor with beds and a game room. Though this room does not have a pool table instead, there are a few table set-up for chess. On the third floor they find more beds and an area made into a cafeteria with working kitchen. Moving on again the find themselves on the second floor. This one contains many rooms that all seem to have desks in them, though most of the desks do not appear in use, some are and a few have been neglected for a long time. Back on the main floor they find that the floor is much more then the reception area and a few offices. Taking the stairs down one flight farther they see a basement area with many discarded items from the many people that have passed though. They push on one more flight to get into a subbasement. Though the path here does not look well used there have been people down here. Two spaces have been made to do interrogations in, and off a ways is a sewer entrance. After they have explored the entire building finding little of interest Victoria asks them to go onto the next address on the list.

The group makes it to the Manhattan address. Victoria picks the lock in the door and they all enter the building. They all pass the “taint” check. They see in front of them a long hall with two large kindred standing at the other end blocking a door. Victoria walks over to them to ask one of them if they know Zetta. One of the large kindred stares at her, then states, “Go away”. Victoria turns and starts to walk away from them. Paul asks her, “Where are you going.” She responds with, “I’m going away from them.” As Victoria continues to walk back down the hall, Paul asks what she was going to ask them about. In reply Victoria tells Paul that she wanted to know if they new Zetta. Paul yells out to them, “Hey Bevis and Butt-Head do you know Zetta?” Both of them stare right at Paul and tell him to “Go away”. Paul turns and leaves with Victoria. Christian and Hugh both pose the question and are dismissed in the same matter. Once the whole group is outside, they start and a new plan for dealing with this. They all enter the building again to find six kindred now in the hall. (I call out xp for the group to shut them up as they whine that I hand it out regularly. I don’t, but they shouldn’t complain about it.)

Victoria stares at the smallest of the six and asks, “Where is Zetta?” He responds with the fact, she has not been here in a few days. Victoria asks, “Is there anyone else here?” The response is, “Yes.” Victoria asks, “Who are you protecting?” Only gets a blank stare. Victoria tries one more time and asks, “Bring us who ever you are protecting?” This gets no movement out of them. They leave the place again, to go out to the SUV to get Luis. With Paul taking hold of Luis, Hugh straps some explosives to him. After much chatter about weather or not this is a good idea, which includes talk of fleas, airplanes and the sewer. They disarm Luis and put him back in the SUV, and leave the place heading back to Paul’s. They get there with a short amount of time to talk over what their plans are. The day passes with them all safe at Paul’s.

We roll on into the next night.

Here is more that have been gone over…

Night Five

Ok, I am going to try to get another one of these nights out, soon. I hope to be caught up with the game, so these show up shortly after the night we play them on. So, here we go…

On this night, everyone was at the game and we start with them awaking from their daily rest. (I like this way of starting, as it gives the players a little time to settle in to their characters.) I start by giving everyone the information that they found last week, which I finally figured out, it was not all complete, but it was a good start. They also found out more about their sires. This wasn’t real complete, either. Paul and Christian have some discussion, over the phone, about what to do with the body they “found” yesterday. Gracey called Victoria, to see if she had any plans for the night or if she heard anything from Paul. Hugh was bored, due to having nothing to do, so he heads down to a firing range to indulge his interest in firearms and explosives. Victoria starts to go through her sire’s computer to see what has happened to his money, in recent times. About this time, Hugh’s player gets informed about what happened last week. Paul feeds some more, by playing with his food in his “study”. He invites Christian over, about this time. James gives Paul a call to invite him out to meet with his contact, from the city, at a club called “Blue Lighting”. They find out this name later. They enter to talk with this contact and give him the information from the blueprints that they found yesterday. Hannah figures that it is time for her to relax in her hot tub. Gracey thinks watching TV would be fun. (This, to me, is a good thing. They finally know that these characters are people and have lives.) When they enter the club, I give them a short description of the place that includes the fact that the place is heavily populated by males. (I wish that I could have done it with a straight face. It did cause a short laugh session.) James tries to explain that this is not the normal meeting place, which Paul doesn’t buy, right away, but he slowly goes along with it. Victoria calls James, shortly after he made it to the bar, and tells him about some addresses that she found on her sire’s computer. They take a seat in the club and wait, a short time, for James’ contact to show up. As soon as James’ contact, Kelvin, shows up, James makes apologies to him for Paul’s behavior. Of course, Paul is a little defensive about it, but lets it slide, for now. Kelvin, being less then enthused by his job, figures that he can get to it, tomorrow. James orders a drink for Kelvin, sits down, and talks for a while. Gracey calls Paul, about this time, and wants him to tell James to give her a call. (Though it may have had more to do with OOC info, she did have some in-game reasons.) Paul calls Hannah, to hear a female voice he can stand. Then, he makes some comments that are offensive to the club patronage. Kelvin makes note of the apology, made earlier, and leaves the table. This gives people in the club reasons not to like him anymore. Christian spouts out a comment that would make someone of “that persuasion” mad and gets smacked for the trouble. James goes to the “bathroom” to get away from the table. This sets Paul off with some more comments that get the attention of others in the club and the floor manager comes over to the table to tell them “You’re out of here!” This doesn’t impress Paul, so he continues to sit there as the three bouncers show up at the table. Two of these guys pick him up off of his seat and start to drag him out. Paul, of course, finds this rather unsettling and fights back. The last one hangs by the table, for a short time, until Paul starts to get the advantage, in the ensuing fight. This brawl goes through a few stages of Paul pushing them around and then the bouncers team up on him, all the time moving Paul closer to the door. I give James the chance to hear the cops coming, he does, and starts to try to talk Christian and Paul, who is still fighting the bouncers, that is time to leave. They do make it out of there in time to avoid the cops. While all this was going on, Hugh has progressed to putting C4 on the targets, instead of just shooting them. Gracey had gone out for a walk. While in the limousine, James starts to chastise Paul about his behavior. Paul makes excuses. Gracey’s Player thinks to ask if she can walk to any of the address from the files and I told her, “no“. (More due to not having anything in mind for any of them other than the location.) Christian calls Gracey after he gets dropped off and finds out what was in the files. They decide they should meet to go over it, the next night. Then, Gracey calls Victoria, Hannah, Paul, and Hugh to set up a time to meet the next night, to go over all of the collected information. Paul and Hugh start to talk about what to do with the body. Hugh’s first idea is to blow the body up. They all agree that they will meet up the next night. Gracey and James finally talk and James rips into her about how she could have passed her information on through the other people. Paul drops everyone he has in the limousine off, and heads home to talk with his sire. Dianna gives him the marching orders to find who is trying to help the old prince back into power and tells him to mull this over.

Everyone takes the daily rest and is safe, for another few hours of their unlives. It was a short game night that we had done a lot in. I found my self hopeful that the game time will start to be used better. (Well, you can hope in one hand…)

Night Six

In further efforts to get caught up with the game, I am going to try and get this out quickly. Again, not everything stays in the order that it happened, though I do try to keep it close.

We all meet for the gaming night and chat for some time, then get down to the business of playing. They all awake from their daily rest and start with the chatter. After this, they decide to meet up and review what they have found so far. Paul sends out the limousine to pick everyone up. (Damn Limousine.) As they pick up Gracey, the last of the group, they start to discuss what they have found and what they have been told that they need to do. They go over all of the information that I had given Gracey from the files and what Victoria discovered from Robert’s computer system. As some of the information overlapped, they made a plan to check out a warehouse that they found out Victoria “owned”. This was not whole-heartedly accepted by the group, but it was something to do, so they all went along with it. The limousine pulls up in front of the warehouse and everybody piles out. They go over to the closest door, only to find it locked. They all talk to each other about how to get in, as Hannah steps over to the lock and picks it, quickly. (Who would have thought the school teacher would be the best one a picking locks? The only thing scarier was the fact that her player got involved in the game. Not for too long, though.) This prompts the crew to enter the building. I have them a do a “taint” check, and, of course, Gracey has to be the one to fail it. Gracey goes running back to the limousine and Hugh goes after her, because Paul told him to go get her. As I am telling them of the other vampires in the warehouse, Victoria gets the bonus of knowing that Robert is in here with them. Gracey, meanwhile, doesn’t want anything to do with going inside of the warehouse. Paul gives Gracey a call, not paying much heed to the taint feelings that he is getting, to tell her to get out of his limousine. She does this, as Hugh gets to the limousine and attempts to get her back into the warehouse, with the rest of them. A short struggle later, Gracey is calling a cab to get away from this place and Hugh starts to head back to the warehouse where the rest of the group is now being held by some very unhappy elders. (See the “Meeting of Donald Riddel, Robert Bonnell, Riley Corgan, and Reed Veits” for more details.) Robert tells Hugh, as he is entering, to shut the door. Though the dominate fails, just being told is good enough for Hugh. He shuts the door. The cab for Gracey shows up. As she getting in she yells at Hugh to see if he wants a ride. Hugh declines the offer, preferring to wait for the rest of the group. After a little conversation and a bit of a hug, the elders let everyone go, with the admonishing that they do not look any further into the power struggles of the New and Old prince. Gracey takes the cab to a club to try to sort things out. Once at the club, another vampire was already there. She tries to get nearer to this one to see what he is doing, but he always stays just out of reach. After this little walk around, she decides to go home and call everyone. These conversions go over poorly as every one basically blows her off and is pissed because she left, save for Hugh, who doesn’t care, one way or the other. This is upsetting to Gracey because she wants everyone to be her friend. The group, at this point, has given up on the whole “go on a mission” thing and thinks that it would be great idea to just travel around the city looking for something else to do. As this degrades into idle banter, I hurry the night along and they all retreat into to their havens for their day’s rest and another few safe hours of unlife.

Night Seven

Ok, so I took a few days off to rest my wrists. Sue me! This night we got some more hooks out there and a few mysteries added to the mix, though it wasn’t planned that way.

We get there and have to wait for the last player to show up. He had to make an unexpected stop to help someone on the side of the road who had car troubles. The pain of living in Minnesota. Everyone gets settled in and I start the game, like normal, having them awake from their daily rest. A couple of quick feeds and off into the night we go. Victoria thinks that there could be more information on Robert’s computer and goes digging into it. (A great roll with her Computer + Intelligence and I need to come up with something, quickly.) I fill in some of the blanks that I had left last week and gave her some more information about her sire’s business dealings, throwing in addresses that may matter later – an address to a bar that will come in to play later in the night and in the game, hopefully. After a phone call to James to discuss the information, she has the bright idea to copy of all the e-mails that he gets and forward a copy to another e-mail to hide the fact that she is looking at them. (Damn! I should have made that roll harder for her.) (I, also, finish giving out addresses that others had found, to fill in more of the blanks that I had left. Though I do make a few mistakes on the continuity of the information that I give, at this time, it gets corrected later in the night.) This leads James and Victoria to get together at the bar, at the address from the information. Gracey and Paul talk some about the information Paul got from his contact. Paul pawns that off until later, not wanting to repeat himself for the rest of the group. Christian and Hugh talk about what to do for the night and end up waiting to see what ideas Paul has for the night. Christian talks to Paul and gets some of the information out of him. Gracey has been calling around, trying to make amends for leaving the other night. After a lot of talking, Paul, Christian, Hugh, and Gracey all plan to get together so that they can help quell Paul’s curiosity. Victoria and James arrive at the bar and figure out that this is where they met Hugh. They go in to take a better look around, to find that the crowd is not that different from the last time. About this time, the limousine starts its rounds to pick up everyone who is still at home. With some more investigating, they find a locked door that doesn’t seem to belong where it is. They check it carefully, smelling gunpowder. Victoria then picks the lock and they proceed to go down into the basement of the bar to find a firing range. As they enter the range, the others enter the bar. Using a “taint check” all but Gracey enter without a problem, though Paul does go back to bring her in. Due to the timing, Victoria and James disappear into the basement shortly after the others enter, so they can’t find where that “taint” feeling came from. Paul, Christian, Hugh, Gracey, and Hannah stay in the bar looking around at what is in there. Gracey finds the dart board and attempts to convince the two drunks to let her play. About this time, Victoria and James are looking around at the range and decide that they need to talk with Hugh about this place. They head for the bar. Feeling the others, James is a little hesitant about entering the bar, until he hears Gracey’s voice, through the door. Hugh tries to keep Gracey from causing a scene in the bar by talking her out of playing darts. Christian, using Dominate, tells one of the guys to let her play while Paul just tries some good, “old fashioned”, intimidation on the other and they give Gracey the darts and go off drinking. As James and Victoria enter the bar, they say some hellos and ask Hugh to go outside, to talk. They get outside and he tells them that this is a place that he comes a lot to blow off steam. This NPC that I had added as a lark the night they meet Hugh makes another showing. This was one of the things that had brought Paul back to this bar. (It is just something to add some fun to the game and, who knows? One night she might end up dead.) James, Victoria, and Hugh enter the bar again, to get the rest of the group, and to go to another place to look for some clues. After a short decision, they all go outside and fight about not taking the limousine to this other address, as it would draw a lot of unneeded attention. They do end up in two cabs and make their way to the address that ends up being the building where Hannah’s haven is. (Though Hannah didn’t know it was her place, until I spilled it to her, after they were there and thinking about breaking in.) They get to the address and start to take a look at it and mention that they may need to break in and Hannah pipes up with “why don’t we use my key?” They all stare at her and she goes, “you never asked.” They enter the building, go up to Hannah’s haven, take a quick look at her place and then have her show them to her sire, Thomas’ haven, on the top floor. Hannah takes Victoria to his place and she picks the lock, enters the apartment and heads straight for the office and the computer to check it out and see what she can find. Not finding too much, she sets-up another e-mail forwarded and leaves it alone. (At this point I really start to think that I should not have sent them the link to THE CHRONICLES OF MICHELLE at http://www.forumchronicles.dk/ . That damn gazebo keeps popping into the conversation.) [It will probably never go away] They start to talk about going to break into another place, but time is running out. (The game night was just about over, so I didn’t want to start too much.)

Every one goes home in the cabs and they are safe for yet another night. I do answer a few questions as to how XPs get awarded and used. Then, we talk about when we might do D&D next and if the other vampire players would like to play that. With a little more chatter, we all collect our things and head for home.

Night Eight

We start the night with our normal amount of bullshitting and quick snack that seems to last about a hour to a hour and a half, which I don’t mind, but would like to see it cut down a bit, if possible, so that maybe we could get more than one night in, during the night of play.

So, like most gaming nights, they all wake-up to start the night. Victoria checks the e-mail traps that she set up and got that information. She didn’t get too much new, just a few more pieces of the puzzle that doesn’t yet make much sense to her. Gracey gives Paul a call and sets up “going out” for the night. They head back to the club that they went to, the first night. While this conversation was going on, Victoria gives Christian a call about a few of the e-mails that she read. She asked about Andrea Willson, who sent an e-mail about a problem at her club, “Orange Ranger”. She also talks about an e-mail that Robert sent to Donald to have him kept on a tighter leash. Christian, a little confused at this, told her that his sire doesn’t believe in computers, so how would he get this e-mail? Paul and Gracey meet up at the club and start to talk about what is going on around them. Victoria, after getting off the phone with Christian, calls James and talks about how Thomas is, most likely, having some financial problems and asks him out to a club. Then, Paul calls Christian to come to the club with him and Gracey. In the middle of that call, Hugh calls Christian, to see if he wants to do something, tonight. Paul and Gracey talk at the club some and Gracey inquires about the wet bar. Paul takes her out to the limousine to take a drink. James and Victoria decided to go check out “Orange Ranger” and when they get there, they have a bit of a surprise. (They have to make Taint check.) This made them perk up and take notice. James sees the vampire; to him, a good looking girl. Victoria also sees her, but notices that she is not what she appears to be. They get a table and talk about more of the details that they have collected, during the past night. Gracey and Paul head back into the club. Gracey is loosened up from a few spiked glasses of blood. About this time, Christian and Hugh show up. They found each other and talked shortly. Then, Gracey, after some convincing, gets Paul to go onto the dance floor. These two make quite a pair, heading to the floor, and get a number of looks. (Both have the Striking Looks merit.) (After a bit of OOC talk, they all start to get back to the game.) I tell Victoria and James more about the Vampire that is in the club with them. Christian and Hugh talk some about what a pair Gracey and Paul make in the dance floor. The best comment made was: Christian said “What a pair those two make,” to which Hugh replied, “Just like brother and sister”. (Read Hugh’s background you will see why that was so funny and right in character for him.) Gracey and Paul will end up talking the night away on the dance floor. (Hannah, although the player was at the game, there was little input from her.) After spending some time at the club talking, Victoria and James decide to check out one of the other addresses that they have. With a short cab ride to a difference warehouse, they go in and have a look around. This is the one they had blueprints for, although they did not bring them with, they do notice that the office area is not as big as it should be. They start checking it out. Victoria takes a crack at the computer system and finds the shipping and receiving logs, but not much else. After some searching, they find the spot in the office where there should be a door, but isn’t. They rip down the drywall and find a steel wall behind it. They give Hugh a call to see if he will come out and help get through the wall. Hugh asks Christian to see if he wants to go with, Christian, in turn, asks Paul if he wants to do this. Paul makes the observation that it getting close to sunrise. This sets Christian off into not being included yesterday. Paul tells Hugh that he won’t be responsible for taking Hugh there and not being able to take him home. Hugh takes stock of all of the options and takes a cab to the warehouse. While this was taking place at the club, Victoria finds a torch to try and cut though the wall. After a few checks to see if they can find a way of using it out, they start to cut through the wall. This is a slow process for Victoria so when Hugh does get there, she only has a four inch slot in the wall. Hugh takes stock of what they have, as Victoria continues to cut through the wall. (With way too much OOC about what the effects of a small amount of C4 and the Acetylene tank would do to the wall.) In the end they don’t try to blow out the wall, but they do make a big enough hole to see through and see the body of a vampire in a room that seems to only have a sewer entrance. They couldn’t tell who it was but end up leaving it in shambles and going home. Thus, we ended the gaming night with Paul dropping off everyone he had with him and the rest making it home on their own, safely.

With a little chatter, we all head home for the night with yet another night gone. Well, hopefully, I can get more posted, soon.

Night Seventeen

Everyone wakes up for the night. Hugh looks around the place and lets one of the servants know that he was leaving for a while. Gracey wakes beside Paul and tells him, “good evening.” Paul smiles and kisses Gracey and tells her he is going for a shower. This allows her to get dressed and check her cell phone for messages. Not finding any, she goes to the living room to wait on Paul.

Victoria, waking in her haven, checks on what has been coming into her e-mail box. Most of it is junk, of course, but there is a message from Riley to have her call back to set up a meeting. She makes a call to him to find out what he needs a meeting for. Over the phone, he tells her that he needs to talk with her and her new “friends”. Riley gives her the chance to set the time and place for this meeting. Victoria goes with “Altered Currents” bar, sometime after midnight. Riley tells her that he can make it and hangs up. After getting off the phone with Riley, Victoria calls Paul. Not getting an answer, she calls Christian. After letting Christian in on the plan, she has him try to call Paul while she calls James, Hannah, Gracey, and Hugh. They are short conversations, because they all just agree to it. Gracey checks to see if Paul has heard the news and if he is willing to give her a ride. (This involves conversation that does not have anything to do with the game.) Paul had found out that Hugh was no longer at his place and thinks to see if anyone else has called him to tell him.

(At this point in time, Hugh’s player and I were off role-playing himself talking with his sire, so the rest of the players got off on a tangent that included, but was not limited to, more than one animal impression. It had nothing to do with nature, and everything to do with the fact that my players have sick and twisted minds, and sick and twisted views of the Hugh character. They also joke about the recording and how I get to laugh at it when I play it back and hear it. They crack a few jokes about the fact that they get more done without me in the room than they do with me there. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t true. After about five minutes of this, we get back to the room with the normal amount of heckling. This is why having the night recorded is so much fun. Damn people and wanting dates, October 26th.)

Gracey feels that they have time for a quickie and Paul doesn’t disagree, so they take care of that and then get cleaned up again. Paul finds his package that he had been waiting for. (I was giving him the information about what was in it while the rest of the group talks about the ride over, as one of them got to ride over on a motorcycle this night. It degenerates into conversations not fit for this web space.) After wrapping this up, Paul and Gracey head out to pick up Christian. Victoria arrives at the club and takes a seat at a table near the back. The rest of them arrive shortly thereafter. I ask Gracey what she was wearing, as a way of passing a little time, as a switch into the Riley persona.

(They go off on a tangent about this for about five minutes. Then I call a taint check for when Riley enters and starts towards the table. One of the players fails this check as she rarely engages in anything other then combat while we play I had hoped that this would provoke a reaction. It did not.)

I give the players a short description of Riley. Riley is a tall figure with hands like claws and dressed down in jeans and a flannel shirt. Victoria greats him, followed by the rest at the table. Riley makes notice of each, in turn, with respect paid to those he had any regards for. He also makes mention of the fire at the “Shit Hole” and how this is beginning to be a bad habit for the group of them. Paul figures out some of the back story given away by Riley’s actions. Riley starts to lay out what has been happening in the past few days after court. He starts with the facts that Vern has been drunk with power, and that the Invictus feels that he must be stopped. To that end, and to that end, only, they have teamed up with the Carthians. This distasteful arrangement means that they need everyone’s help. One of Vern’s lackeys, Dalia Pestage, needs to be found to lead them to Vern. The problem is that she has left her known hang-outs and is in hiding. Most of the Invictus and Carthians have bigger problems to deal with, or they are too well known to try to find anything out. This and the fact they have been hanging out so much, is why Riley was sent to get them on her trail. Riley doesn’t have a lot of information on Dalia to give them except that, as part of the sanctified, she has done a lot of business for Vern and they hope to get more information about her. Dalia, an older looking woman, is heavier set (5’4” and about 140 pounds). Riley tells them about her old haven and that she has been keeping offices in the same office building that this mess started in and this was the last place she was seen at. Riley makes it a clear point that she is needed alive, although, anyone with her is expendable. This makes Paul happy, as Paul asks questions to clarify the point as the rest agree with the course to find Dalia. Riley hints that they don’t have reliable information about all areas of the city. They start to talk with each other, but Riley gets bored with them and walks off into the club looking for someone. Paul feels that he needs to feed before going on with the task at hand. Paul does ask Victoria to find out if Riley has any more information that he did not want to share with the whole group. Riley talks to Victoria about the time table that has been worked out. Riley also talks about how they are working on putting Vern under control, rather than destroying him. Riley discusses Victoria and the group’s “knack” for finding things that they were not supposed to. Victoria tells the group about the limited time and that they should head on out to Dalia’s haven.

Paul tells her to wait, just a short time, for him to take care of business. He goes out on the floor and starts to dance with the “toys“. This makes Gracey a little uncomfortable. After Paul gets back to the table, they head out to the townhouse.

As soon as they get to the townhouse, Hannah goes right to the door and picks the lock. As they enter, Paul takes charge and tells Victoria to see if there is a computer around. Gracey follows Victoria to the office. James is asked to watch the back door while Hannah is told to keep an eye on the front. Paul and Christian find the door to the basement to take a look around there.

Victoria boots up the computer and starts to look at files. The first information that she finds looks garbled and doesn’t mean anything. As she works harder to find things, she starts to pull out financial records with listings of a hotel that was acquired recently, just outside of the LaGuardia airport. The records also list four purchases in Queens. She finds maintenance records for the apartment building they had stopped by many days ago.

Gracey goes to work on the file cabinets, getting them unlocked quickly, finding only empty file folders. Looking over the folders and other papers in the room, she finds that they come from many of the different hotels in town. She takes notes of them. Gracey noticed that a cabinet is missing. During this inspection, she finds a package of files, like those that she needed to return to Enos, an other Kindred. It also contained two video tapes that she starts to look for a player for. Finding the camera with a dead battery, she starts off to find Paul in the house.

Paul, Christian, and Hugh find the door to the basement locked and take a quick look to see how to get through the door. Hugh feels that a good shoulder blow will do the trick. Hugh backs up a step and hits the door, sending it down the steps and into the door below, opening that one, also. In the basement, they find two sparingly furnished rooms. These rooms look like their only use was interrogation. Upon closer inspection of the rooms, they find a few clamps, a hammer, a badly dented aluminum bat, fragments of a wooden bat, and a large knife. Paul looks to see what else may be in this basement, pulls up a block of the floor and reveals sewer access.

Gracey finds them downstairs and asks Paul if he can play these tapes at his place. It will not be a problem. She also mentions that it is getting late in the night. Paul places the block back and they head out. Gracey asks to stay with Paul, and Hugh heads for the Carthian safe house.

Victoria leaves the office, after doing what she could with the files, and starts to look over the rest of the house. Looking through the house, she finds that it is well furnished and kept. She also finds an open wall safe and a few paintings that could be valuable. Looking through the desks in other rooms, she finds keys that don’t fit anything in the townhouse. As she discovers this, she sees that everyone is heading out. She looks at the time and leaves with them.

Like most of the time, I allow them to make it back to their havens with time and settle in for the day.

A lot happened on this night, and more is coming soon.

Night Eighteen

We start night eighteen the same night we played through night seventeen, so everything is fresh in their minds as to what happened. Well, on with the show.

Gracey and Paul both wanted to see the tapes first, as they fell asleep yesterday morning, though this evening, they wake at the same time, so their was no sneak previews for either of them. Paul gets out of bed and heads in for a shower, as Gracey gets dressed and heads out to start the tapes. Gracey pops the first one into a player and starts to watch it as soon as Paul gets out. The tape is a dub of a poor quality recording. (Or as I put it during the game, a “crap-tacular” security camera tape.) As they watch the tape, most of it is really boring. They cannot tell what part of the city it comes from. After getting most of the way through the tape, they get a call from Victoria. Gracey leaves to take a shower, while Paul talks with Victoria, on the phone. While still on the phone, Paul puts in the second tape and sees a drive-by shortly after hanging up on Victoria. The car that was attacked explodes and, on the tape, you see someone get out, fall, and turn to ash. This makes Paul go back over the first tape a little closer. As Gracey returns to the room, from her shower, she asks about what she has missed. Paul tells her about the second tape leading him to take another look at the first.

Victoria wakes and feels that the files she got yesterday should prove to be a good challenge for the evening. As she pours over them, they start to make sense to her. She picks out that these files are a plan for getting rid of the Carthians within the city, by taking out the leader and fueling the in fighting until they are no more. After working this out, she gives James a call. Within this call, she goes over the plan that she found in the note and tells him they should check out Dalia’s offices. James agrees and they plan on getting the group together. Victoria calls Gracey, to no avail. Next, she calls Paul and goes over the plan with him. They talk about the tapes as they have not gotten anything out of it. Victoria decides to meet Paul and Gracey at Paul’s.

Hugh wakes at the warehouse the Carthians have been using as a safe house. He spends time listening to the crowd and looking for his sire. Though some of the night passes in this way, he gets a call from Victoria and leaves shortly thereafter.

Christian, feeling a little cramped, doesn’t talk with anyone and just takes some time to go out to a few bars. This plan doesn’t work very long as he gets a call from Paul to meet up at the office building they met at originally.

Victoria arrives at Paul’s and is informed about what was on the tapes, along with Gracey. The first tape contains a car crash with a Kindred getting out and walking into a building across the street. The second tape has the drive-by recorded on it. After hearing this, she gives James a call to let him know that they are going down to the offices tonight. Victoria tells James that she will get a hold of Hugh and Christian and have them meet up, there. Victoria tells Paul to call Christian, Gracey to call Hannah, and she will call Hugh. The calls go well. They all arrive, a short time later, at the office complex.

Victoria starts to find out if anyone has a plan for entering the building. Gracey asks “why not just walk in”, as the last time she was here it wasn’t a problem for her. Paul reminds her of the “run down the hall” incident, and she informs the group that is not the last time she was here, much to the surprise of the group. Victoria goes over the facts about how the building is controlled by the prince and Gracey didn’t have a problem. This fact hits Victoria as interesting. Paul thinks the best place to start looking is in the basement, as a joke. (Why he goes there I don’t know, though it does prove interesting again.) Gracey starts heading up to the second floor for a look at these offices, when Victoria starts to convince the group that the basement is the place to start as the last offices were bare of information. Gracey starts talking about how long before they meet back here, when Paul steps in and talks about how splitting up the group might not be a good idea.

(James’ player makes a comment about what happened several thousand years ago when the group split up. A veiled D&D reference as we had all just about died last week in that game, as a result of someone not following the group. It took a bit for everyone to catch on, but eventually got a laugh out of it.)

Victoria continues on about why the basement may be better, and with Paul supporting her, that is were the group starts to explore. They head down the familiar path to the basement, asking Victoria what they are looking for. She stumbles around until she finds a place where the hall should continue, but does not. Gracey studies the wall to find some seems. Hugh talks about shouldering it down, but Gracey holds him up. About this time, the security guard finds them, but they see him first. (They start to go over plans on hiding, with the sneaky Tremere and obfuscate. It only gets funny for a short time, then they get back to the game.) The guard shines his flashlight at the group, blinding them, and asks them what they are doing down here. Paul repeatedly tells him to get the flashlight out of his eyes as the guard asks, again, why are they down here. At this point Gracey starts towards him making full use of the light. This makes the guard quiver just a bit, whether it is from someone walking up to him or having a damn good looking chick head his way, she doesn’t know.

Gracey’s player, still a little new to how things work in Vampire, asks if the flashlight would hurt her, I tell her only if he hits her with it. James’ player makes a snide remark about the question, and a speaker falls on his head from the entertainment center behind him. This gets laughs and remarks about “that’s what you get for making cynical comments“.

The guard asks her if he can do anything for her. Gracey starts to bluff about having a meeting somewhere in the building. The guard announces that they all need to leave, unless they have business in the building. Hugh turns his back to the guard to see if he can find a way to open the door, and finds the mechanism, but doesn’t know how to open it. Christian, through this, catches the gaze of the guard and tells him they need the door opened. “Can you help us? We need to get something from behind it“. The guard happily walks over and opens the door for them, tells them to have a good night and walks away. Hugh tells Gracey to go first and she retorts that he is the man and he should go first. They fight back and forth over this for a short time before Christian tells them that he will go first. Christian walks in, does not look around, turns, and comes back out screaming. Victoria simply tells him “that was funny”, and they all enter the room. They find themselves in a planning room.

Right here, we stop for the night as it was late and I need time to prepare for this room as they were not supposed to find it until later in the game. We pack it in and head on out for the week. We come back the next week with a bit of bullshitting before we get back to the game.

As they pass through the Doorway they see a set of double doors that opened in on the planning room. The room contains a large central desk with an assortment of half-open filing cabinets. One wall contains a map of the city subway system, with a faint route marked on it. Gracey starts to check through the filing cabinets, finding two video cassettes. Victoria takes a look around the room for any passages that are hidden. As the group continues to look closer at the top of the desk Victoria realizes that the map on it is for the sewer system. The strange thing about the map is, there are a few different marks in different parts to the city. Along with the sewer map, is the title and blue prints for Elmwood Estates. James and Victoria talk over some of the information that they already had gathered to see if anything jumps out at them. After finding out about Elmwood Estates, James takes a look through the files. James finds information pertaining to The Orphanage and how Derrick Coverstone has set up a stronghold around it. While James is running through the files, Victoria takes a closer look at the map on the wall. She can follow a route on the map finding that it goes through many abandon subway tunnels and over to New Jersey.

James, Gracey, and Victoria keep looking over the desk and files for anything else. Victoria stumbles across a business card for Lt. McNaily and starts to show it around. When she shows it to Paul, he starts to tell them about what his PI had found on him. That this Lt. has been slipping recently, not getting most of his cases to close, also that he was in charge of the investigation on the assault on the welder and the warehouse fire. The odd part of his recent behavior is that he and a couple of his officers have been hanging out at places owned by Donald Riddell. Victoria sees that in one of the files are plans for using the two warehouses as a launching point to try and take over the docks area. Also within that file is a copy of the letter: “To His Holiness”. After sharing this information with the rest of the group, they decide that Vern needs to die.

With one more quick check of the room, Gracey heads to the second floor offices with the rest of the group following her, as they now have a healthy respect of being separated. They take a back stairwell up to the second floor. Once there, they find eight doors running down each side of a main hall for a total of sixteen. Gracey just walks down and checks randomly the third door on the left side of the hall. The unlocked door leads to a small reception area with two offices behind it. The place looks like it has been empty for about a month and is only furnished with some cheep desks and chairs. Next, Gracey checks the fourth door on the right to find it locked. James, after seeing that Gracey is down the hall, takes the first door on the left, finding it locked. They start to discuss what is going on and James sees that Gracey is about to pick the door she is at and stops her so they can do this with some sort of plan. James has them check each door to see if it is open or locked, before trying to open them. They find, with all this searching, an adult daycare facility, an office and file room, a small meeting room with extra tables and folding chairs at the back, and a large conference room with copies of most of the files on kindred within the city that are very detailed, save for the LS. In another of the offices they find some antique furniture, but little else. The next one they go to has antique furniture and is nicely decorated. In the one of the desks are some of the LS files that were missing. They check Pete Ares’ file, getting information about how he had controlled the Queens area in recent times. Also, they go over Carmen Oster’s files. The last office on the left turns out to be more of a reading room for someone. Victoria opens the broom closet and checks it over, finding it a solid room. The last room they check, on the right, had been converted into a large room with four desks in it. In the desks, they find more LS files, one of them being Dalia’s. The file gives them more information about Dalia’s habits and hang outs. Dalia had started to invest in the hotels around the airports and also the Yellow Cab Company. Dalia’s file had some old subway plans and information on how to redevelop them.

Gracey talks about calling around to hotels to see if she can find Dalia that way. Paul talks her out of it, as it would serve to drive Dalia farther into hiding. This prompts them to go back down to the planning room and check the two maps against each other. Victoria rips the map down and takes it with her. About this time, the night has mostly slipped away and they all head home.

End of this night’s work as I take a minute to gather the next part of this mess and start on the next night with them.

Ok, to get something up on the sight, I will start in on night twenty one, early. We played through about half last week and I hope to get through night twenty two this week. As life has gotten in the way, Gracey’s player will not be at the sessions for a few months so that she may learn something.*

The group starts at Paul’s place, as this has been the crash pad for the last few nights. They all meet in the living room to go over what to do next, as they have been very busy rounding up Vern loyalists for the old regime. To date, they have brought in Dalia, Damon, Aaron, and Carman. Christian starts to talk about taking some time off again to take care of other things, but the group still thinks that finding and eliminating others that are loyal to Vern should come first. Victoria, looking over the list of names that they have, figures that the next person to locate should be Zetta. The information they have on her comes from all of the files that they have procured over time.

Victoria leads the way, telling the others that they have four addresses to check out. A short ride later, they find themselves at a downtown Manhattan building. Gaining entrance via picking the front door locks, they head upstairs to the apartment number from the file. With another quick pick, they send Hugh and Paul in first, to check out the safety of the place. A quick check of the place results in a resounding “nobody home”. The rest enter the apartment to check it out. It’s a smaller place with just four rooms: living, kitchen, bed, and bath. Though lived in, the apartment does not have any clues to finding Zetta. Paul, after looking around, notices a fine piece of oil work in the wall, in the living room. Victoria and Christian take note of a nice statue, that upon a closer look, is just a fake plaster copy. Feeling this stop a bust, they head out for the next address.

With a longer ride over to Queens, they make it to the next place, but not without notice of a number of kindred from the area. This address leads them to an abandoned two-story building. Gaining entry through the broken doorway, Paul and Victoria lead the search through the building. On the main floor, they find that the place seems to have become a dumping ground for some kindred, as a few of the apartments have bodies stacked in them. Many of the bodies look as though they are from the vagrant population, but a couple of them are dress a little too nice for these parts. Victoria seizes the chance and quickly goes through their pockets. Victoria finds out that one was Nelind Hughes, by way of his credit cards and that the driver license is missing, as well as all the cash. The other body belonged to Andrew Mason. Again, no license or cash, just credit cards remain. Looking though the business card collections from the wallets, Victoria finds one for Missie Larance on Nelind and one for Lt. McNaily on Andrew. Asking the group about the names, no one recalls hearing Missie’s, but Paul tells Victoria that he does recognize McNaily. Victoria quickly puts the wallets back and the moves on. Looking though the building, they find that a few of the rooms have been converted so that no light can get into them and that they lock from the inside. Going into the basement, they find a few interesting things. One: a few of the rooms seem to have been the sites of many fights sometime not long ago. Two: that the sewer has access from inside the building. After spending a little more time looking around the basement, they head up to the second floor to see if they can wring any clue out of the place. On the second floor, they find one more room rigged not to let light in, and access to the roof.
Paul leads them up the stairs to the roof. Leaving the stair behind, they all feel the presence of another on the roof. Paul quickly scans the roof for it. Paul sees the stranger just in time for him to look up from his meal. Paul yells at him to stay put, but he just jumps over the side. Hearing a loud clang, Paul figures that he had jumped onto a fire escape. Paul takes off after him with Hugh following behind. They a make it down the escape ladder with out a problem. The stranger starts running down the ally, dodging trash all the way. Paul makes ground on him with Hugh starting to fall back a bit. Close to the end of the ally, the stranger trips and this gives Paul the chance to pin him to the ground. Hugh though, found a bag of trash that did not get out of his way and has fallen short of were Paul is. With the stranger pinned to the ground, Paul asks him why he ran. “Fear” sums up the statement quite well. Paul, berating him for his background, starts with his name. “Luis, Luis Rolon”, comes the weak reply. Next on Paul’s list is “what covenant?” Luis tells him, “Sanctified, sort of”. This makes Paul boil with anticipation for the next answer. “Who is your sire?” comes down for Paul. Luis, with a hint more fear tells him, “Andrew Mills”. Not the person Paul was hoping for. Hugh, being able to collect himself, makes it to Paul and Luis, just in time to hear this. Seeing the excitement in Paul, Hugh tells Paul what he knows of Andrew. Though Paul is still on the edge, he tells Hugh to grab hold of Luis so they can get him back to the group. Hugh and Paul, each grabbing a leg, drag Luis around the building and up the stairs to the roof, where they see what the group would like to do with him. The talk is short and, on point, they tie him up and throw him in the trunk. They head out for the next address a little heavier.

This one strikes them as strange once they enter the Brooklyn building. Sensing and seeing Kindred and humans in one place mingling with familiarity is strange. A few of them who have heard stories about this place know what they have entered: The Orphanage. Victoria comments to Paul that this would be a strange place for a follower of Vern’s to hang out.

This is were we ended up for the night as time ran out on one of the players. I have some fun for next time if I can keep my end of the deal up. Here’s to hoping for a good time.

* As editor, I would like to clarify that this does not mean that playing Vampire has somehow prevented her from accumulating more knowledge, merely that she will be taking time off for school. -KJB

Everyone awakes at Paul’s and he calls in some of his “friends” for them all. This takes some time as the ten he could get to come in are passed around the group to get everyone back in shape. Amazingly enough, all of the guests survive with only one of them needing anything special. They mingle with the guests long enough for them to move on to the next party that Paul is able to direct them to. After all the guests leave, they go out to check on the prizes from last night. The three are still locked away safe. Paul tells Victoria to give Riley a call to find out were to drop them off. Riley, with a little shock at the fact that the group and Victoria had already found Dalia, asks if Victoria can hold on to Dalia for a short time while they set up a place for the interrogation.

(Ok, the order of these events was done both ways. Food then prisoners and prisoners, then food – depending on which week of the recording I go by. So this way is from the first week.)

Gracey and Paul head off to make use of the free time. Victoria gets permission to use Paul’s computer to check her e-mail. She doesn’t find anything interesting in there. The rest just hang around the house waiting for the call back from Riley. Riley gives them a call and tells them to bring Dalia back to her townhouse, as that is were they are set to receive her. They all pile into the SUVs and head over to the townhouse. Once at the townhouse, Victoria drags Dalia, Christian takes Damon and Hugh takes Aaron (“Armless”, as the group affectionately calls him) towards the door. As they approach, Hugh gets a little freaked out and turns to go back to the SUV as Paul pulls Aaron away from him. Riley meets them at the door to take Dalia from them. He also is interested in Damon and tells them to leave him, also. Andrew, on the other hand, is not of any interest to Riley, so they get to keep him and do as they please. During the exchange with Riley they hear two voices drifting up from the basement, they can’t make out what is being said, but they do recognize one of the voices as Rudolph. Christian and Victoria drag Dalia and Damon downstairs, with Paul and James following behind. They notice that the doorways have been repaired and made sturdier then they were. As they turn the corner, they see that, indeed, Rudolph is here. Victoria asks Riley why Rudolph is here, as he is a member of the LS. Riley informs her that Rudolph is good at questioning people, has followed in Derek’s footsteps and has split from the current prince. Hugh sees that Rudolph is beginning the process and asks Riley if there is any thing he wants them to do. Riley informs Hugh that the group is free to go at any time as the work at hand does not really concern them. Paul starts looking for the next job assignment, Riley informs him that they have nothing for them to do right now, because Dalia was captured to get more information, as they don’t know were Vern is and are hoping to find some new places to look. Paul, Hugh, Christian, and Victoria start to talk about what to do next because Riley doesn’t have anything for them to do. They argue over what to do. Hugh enjoys blowing things up and reinforces the point by talking about the elysium incident, while Christian is more in favor of taking some time for themselves than doing anything destructive.

Paul starts asking about were the rest think they could find some other LS in the city that are still loyal to Vern, as they turn and head up the stairs to leave. The discussion continues until they reach the top and Victoria turns and slaps Hugh across the face. Victoria and Paul “go off” on Hugh about talking about blowing up an elysium – Victoria, for telling people who do not know that they did it and Paul for them not telling him about it. Hugh tries to make his point that Riley, most likely, knows already, so it did not matter. Victoria and Paul continue to tell him that he should not talk about it. After settling down a bit, Paul restates that he wants to go after any of the remaining LS that are loyal to Vern in the city. Christian sees this as a bad idea, and makes the comment that he just wants to find someone to fuck, as he is sick of the fighting. This gets Paul attention right away as he has been trying to figure out what type Christian likes. Christian comments that if Paul would have asked he would have told him. Paul informs Christian that half of his fun is derived from the game of finding out, but now that Christian offers, Paul asks what his type is. Christian does not answer his question. Victoria, thinking about the past few weeks, remembers a few names: Zetta and Carmen. They could look into it and see what’s going on with them. Paul asks what information she has on them. Victoria just has some basic information on them and makes the suggestion to go back to the office complex to see what more they can find out.

This, of course, sends them back to the office complex to see what more they can find in those files. The group picks the lock into the file room and starts looking over the files to see what they can find. In searching the files, they find that Carmen is easier to find as they take the information form the files and head to her place.

As they arrive at the twelfth floor apartment, Victoria picks the lock quick to let the group in. Everyone but Hugh makes it inside the apartment as they feel a presence. Hugh heads back down to the waiting trucks for a short time before getting the nerve to come back up. As the rest press into the room they all start to look around for who this might be. The place is furnished nicely and appears that it has been used recently. The first bedroom does look like it gets used in the apartment, as it has a stagnate appearance to it. The second bedroom has been converted into a small office space. This has Gracey ready to go through the small filing cabinet within the room. Gracey finds nothing in the files that stick out to her. Paul, after walking around the apartment, has narrowed it down to the first bed room as the location of the vampire. Paul asks Christian to keep an eye on the closet double bi-fold doors, as Paul rips the mattress and box sprint off the frame without finding anyone. Paul and Christian pull the doors off of the closet, and see nothing other than clothing. Paul starts to pull everything out of the closet to see anything. While doing this, Paul can hear some muffled noises coming for the closet. Victoria, standing in the doorway, also hears them after asking, a few times, what was going on. Paul, having pulled most everything out, resorts to the “we won’t hurt you if you come out” line and starts to count to five. At about four Carmen steps out of the closet as if from nowhere. Carmen, with fear on her face and in her voice, asks what everyone is doing here, looking for her. Paul tells her she should be frightened, as she is friends with someone they don’t like. Carmen tells them she was just helping him out, to survive. This doesn’t sway them much. Victoria steps in and asks, “Were is Vern?” Carmen responds with, “I don’t know. After court I returned here. I was too frightened to do anything else. I have been here for days.” Victoria asks if she would rather talk with Rudolph, than with them. This visibly, physically, shakes Carmen and more tremors enter her voice, as she answers with a string of nos. Carmen starts to offer to tell them anything she knows. Paul asks were Zetta falls in the ranks under Vern. Carmen tells them there was little structure, most just did what Vern told them to do. Victoria asks if she knows were Zetta is. Carmen, again, tells them she doesn’t know. Victoria tells her that they don’t believe her and maybe they should take her to Rudolph. Carmen stays defensive about that. Paul asks what Carmen had been doing for Vern. Carmen informs them all she was doing was delivering messages. Carmen lists off a few names, including Andrew and Derek. Paul asks if Andrew was important to Vern’s plan. Carmen tells them that Andrew seemed to be more in the wayof, than helpful to him and Derek was needed to keep others in line, as he has a great amount of influence and without that, Vern could not do what he wanted. Victoria, feeling that Carmen is not giving them enough, is still of the mind to take Carmen to Rudolph and see what he can get out of her. Paul still feels that she is being helpful and continues to question her. As she begs them not to take her to see Rudolph, Paul presses about what she knows about any remaining allies Vern has, what kind of protection he keeps around him, and were she normally saw him. Carmen tells them that she does not know of any remaining allies. As for protection, Vern was keeping a few ghouls around him, but left it mostly to the Sheriff, Enos, to protect him. Most of the time she had contact with Vern, it was at the office complex. Victoria and Paul are in agreement to take Carmen with them as Rudolph may get more out of her. Carmen did not resist as they bound her with the bed sheets. Victoria gives Riley a call to see if Rudolph is still with him. Riley, with much surprise in his voice, tells Victoria that it is fine and they will get to her, in time. After dropping off Carmen, they head to the next address that looked of some interest, in the files.

The address leads them to a house. Victoria, in a rush, takes the door off the hinges and the rest enter behind her. They head upstairs to see what’s around. Once upstairs, with some caution, they look around to find a small hall with three doors off of it. One of the doors is standing open and appears to be a bathroom. Hugh and Paul go to the first door and open it. As the door opens they get to see that the room appears to be a child’s bedroom. Once fully open, the girl in the bed , who looks to be around fourteen, starts to scream. Victoria enters the room and walks over to the bed and puts her hand over the girl’s mouth. After getting a hold of the girl, Victoria stares her in the eyes and informs her that, if she wants to live, she needs to shut-up. The girl, though still scared, stops screaming and calms down. Paul questions the girl about who lives in the house. She is able to tell him that it is just her parents and herself and they have been here for a few years. Paul asks what her last name is, to find out that it is “Andrews”. Paul also asks what kind of work her father does. He’s a lawyer. Paul, taking James with him, breaks down the door to the parent’s bedroom, leaving it flat on the floor. The mother sits bolt-upright and starts to scream. The father continues to snore. Paul sends James after the mother to shut her up, as he grabs the father’s ankle and rips him out of bed, bouncing his head off the floor to wake him up. James has a hold of the mother and keeps her quiet. The father, waking up, is pulled face-to-face with Paul while screaming out, “What’s going on?” Victoria, in the other room, has to add some effort in keeping the fourteen year old quiet. Paul calmly asks the father, “Who do you work for?” The reply comes that he works for himself, freelance. The father questions what they are doing here. Paul ignores this and asks how he knows Carmen Oster. He replies that he just wrote up some paperwork for a hotel out by the airport. The father continues to ask why they are here. Paul just asks about Vern and gets nothing. Paul asks if she keeps any records here and finds that they are kept at her office. Victoria sees that this is taking some time, rips the phone cord off the wall, ties up the girl and repeats that she is not here to hurt her. The father, still looking for answers, gets Paul to tell him that these are the wrong people to be doing business with. Victoria, after making sure the girl will stay put, walks over to the next room and tells Paul that it is time to go. Pulling the cords off the phone and a lamp in the parent’s room, they are secured. Paul leaves him with one last warning that if he sees the father’s name on anything dealing with others that Paul is looking for, he will be back. They all head out of the house to see that the morning is coming and the head back to Paul’s, in a group.

We wrap up the night and head home. Looks like next time we play it is going to be good.

They all arise for the next night, call each other and set up to meet at Paul’s.

Gracey checks her voice mail and then gives her sire a call. After the call she stops by the park to see if Minth is there, not finding him she finally heads out to Paul’s.

They all end up at Paul’s though Gracey is a little behind them as they had time to have a snack. This in tailed way too many other conversations, though. As Gracey arrives at Paul’s, the group heads out the start of the subway maps. They get out and Paul’s checks with Victoria on how far from here to the safe house it seems to be. Victoria tells Paul that it is far enough that they don’t want to carry all of Hugh’s gear. Paul just yells at Hugh that carry it all and the start down the steps. Paul weary of the new surroundings tells them that things don’t feel right to him, but to move on with the search. The group talking of what they want to do with Dalia realizes that they don’t have any stakes. An old wooden bench is sacrificed to the cause. Everyone, but Hannah picks up a stake. After they walk a short time more they see that the place has been taken over with vagrants. Two of these stand and block the path and a third steps up behind them. Paul takes charge as Victoria steps aside. Paul tells them they pick the wrong day to get in his way. (Combat ensues.) James, the first to act, uses the stake to lash out at the third ghoul. Paul hits one of the front two taking a chunk out of his arm. Hugh takes aim with the auto handgun and hits the other ghoul in front. This gives Victoria the chance to drive her stack into his chest. The ghoul that Paul hit takes a swing back, and lands a light blow. Hannah takes a swing at him and connects. The other one takes out a 9mm at takes a shot at Hugh and misses. The back ghoul takes a swing a James with a sap. Christian takes a swing at Paul’s ghoul and takes out its leg. James takes another swing at the ghoul landing a solid blow to the guy’s jaw leaving him dazed. Gracey takes out the first ghoul with a swift kick to the head. Hugh takes another shot at his ghoul and sends him to the ground. Victoria takes a free shot at him. Hannah feels that they are down and out, so the fights done. James gets hit by the sap, and this makes him yell out getting Paul back who take a slice out of him. Seeing this, Gracey runs back and kicks him, knocking the last ghoul down. About this time another figure starts towards them form down the subway. James and Christian start to head back up the subway. As they start to see more of this figure they can tell that it is a Gangrel. Hugh feeling lucky takes shots at him with the auto-9mms. Doing some damage, but not slowing him down in fact it piss him off enough that he runs up to Hugh and slashes him with extended claws. Paul takes off the arm that slashed Hugh. (This insights some Monty Python references.) Gracey see this runs back to see what she can do, and just brushes him. Hugh takes a few more shots at him, hitting him in the chest. Victoria takes her other stake and imbeds it in the gangrel’s chest. Paul takes another swing at the gangrel, hitting him in the side. Hugh mad with getting hit unloads his handguns pointblank into the gangrel’s head, killing the gangrel with out even a word. Paul takes the time to suck what little blood is left in one of the ghouls. Victoria and James take quick sips from the other two. Paul finishes off one other before stopping to question the last ghoul as to any information he has about Dalia. He tells Paul that she is farther down the subway and he been down here all his life. Paul leaves him alive and tells him if he is still here when he gets back Paul will kill him. They head farther down the subway to find a divider with three doors in it. Christian and Hugh head back down the tunnel again. Victoria checks the door and unlocks it. As Hugh and Christian arrive back they group start to bitch about others in the group always running away. They take stock in what they feel and have on hand. The plan ends up being Hugh pitching in a flash-bang. Christian got the door as Hugh sent in the flash-bang. With a short wait, the group started to hear sounds of battle in the next section, letting a short time pass to see if any more vampires would come in, which none did, they went in. They observed a fight between the four that were in there. Only the weaker one of them frenzied, but that has kept the other two busy. A short a discussion later, they decide to take these four out before moving on. Hugh tells them to clear back out as he pitches an incendiary grenade that lands dead center of the group in that room and starts to burn them.

Right here the end of the game night came up and we packed up for the night took our two weeks off for D&D and a week for gossip. We get back and pick it back up on a short night of play.

With much too much conversation about side by side refrigerators and other things we get to the game. This is the first night without Hannah as her player saw the light and will not be coming any more as it was too late for her.
They watch through the doorway to see all of the vampires engulfed in flames and burn to cinders. After they ensure they are safe the take in what is in the room. I tell them that there are three doors on the far wall with 1 on each side and the third up a staircase of to one side. Though there was some talking going on I thought that everyone was clear with the layout, I was sadly mistaken. Hugh tells me he is going to go through the middle door. Now I was fairly sure I said nothing about a middle door that night I just went through the recording and did not hear someone say anything about a middle door before Hugh. So I call the roll for going through the wall. I should know better then to do these things, but I did. As he makes his way through the wall, into a dark room that the door on the right to the tunnel he looks around to find some light. (We do have a short rules check on auspex as to how to use it.) Hugh backs out of the room and Paul looks it over. Hugh and Victoria then check the door on the left to see a smaller room with a door on the far side. The group lead by Paul goes to the far end to check what is behind that door to see a subway platform in disrepair. Paul looks it over for signs for resent activity find that it is not well used, but people have been through recently though it looks more like construction traffic then anything else. The group goes up the stairs to find a meeting room that had been used for other proposes before its conversion. At the far end of this room are two doors, Hugh and Victoria check them both out to find a balcony looking out over the platform they had just seen. There are stairs leading down from the balcony to the far side of the tracks, but Paul after stepping out on to the balcony see that it is not to far down and jumps the rail. He lands safely on the platform; though Gracey tries she fails to hit the platform and lands by the rails. Hugh follows Paul as Victoria, Christian, and James walk down the stairs. There a blocked off area that looks to head up to ground level, Paul confirms that it is by knocking out a piece of the plywood. After a short discussion they all decide to push on down the tunnel, a short while later they arrive at yet another division wall. They feel that there are two vampires on the other side. Paul’s mind rolls back to what Hugh had done earlier and start to inform the others of his plan. Not to use the door and go through the wall instead. Hugh and Paul break through the wall on either side of the door way tackling the two that were in there. Paul rolling through after tackling the vampire pops up and says, “The number 12 from downtown to Manhattan”. (This comment was most likely do to out of game comments and did you get the number of that train, but hey it is funny.) The rest come in through the door. Hugh who stays on top of his victim pulls out one of his full auto 9mm and unloads it into the guy head; it doesn’t have a killing effect, but does cause a severe wound in it. Christian steps through the whole Paul made in the wall and takes a hack at Paul’s vampire sending a spray of blood in to Paul’s face. This vampire rolls off some of the rubble to start to fight back as Paul jump back on top of him and drives his sword down into his neck. Gracey give the guy a swift kick to the head. As Victoria goes after the one Hugh shot with a stake imbedding it into his back. Hugh pulls out his knife and takes a slice at his guy, gashing his neck. Christian turns to take a swipe at Hugh’s removing what little material that held his head on. Gracey takes yet another kick at the last one causing some more trauma. Victoria picks up her stake to use it later. Hugh seeing that there isn’t much holding the other guys head on tries to just pull it off, but fails. Paul press down on the sword blade with all his power working the broadside through the neck. Gracey kicks the guys head one last time sending it rolling off. They finally start looking around the room. It appears to be under construction for use as reception area. At the far end of the platform is a short set of stairs leading farther in to the tunnel.

They hit what will, end up being, the last of the partition walls. Feeling about four vampires on the other side, Paul tells them that going through the wall again is the best course of action. Victoria, Hugh, and Paul all take this route into the room. With in the room they find seven vampires, two that look like Dalia, another that appears to be Damon Westman, and four others that they don’t much care about long term. Paul tells the rest to take care of the Dalias and Damon; he wants to get his hands dirty. Gracey and Christian open the door and walk in to the room. Paul sights in the closest target and goes for him with his sword. The sword slices from the top of the right shoulder down into the center of its body. Victoria goes after the first Dalia and hits her with the stake in the head with this distraction his obfuscate falls him to show that is not Dalia. Christian sees this and tries to dominate her, tell her to go wait by the door. Hugh sees someone start towards him and takes aim at her pulls the trigger and hits Dalia with the shots leaving her almost destroyed. Gracey takes off form the door and kicks one of them in the face, she likes to do this it seems. Paul pulls his sword out of the first one and takes another slice have it fall it two places while getting hit from some gun fire from across the room. Victoria runs up to Damon and drives a stake into his stomach. Christian takes a strike at another of them giving them a cut. Hugh shoots at the fake Dalia getting a few hits. Gracey sees this and runs over to kick him landing a light blow. Paul sees who had taken a few pot shots at him and cuts off the arm holding the gun. Victoria pulls her other stake and drives it into Damon’s ribs.

(At this point Paul’s player makes a few comments about the fact that tonight every started to play with their text messaging and how it had been cutting down on out of game chatter. Not that I mind the chatter most times, I almost like it more than all the beeping caused by the texting, but it was fun for the time. Back to the fight.)

Christian cuts into the vampire in front of him, as Hugh takes shots at the one Gracey had just kicked doing so harm. Gracey feeling spry goes for another run and trips on the way. Paul feeling a bit on the sadistic side cut off the other arm. Victoria pulls out one of the stakes and pushes it back in not doing much. Christian takes one more hack at his vampire destroying it. Hugh takes another shot and finishes his target. Gracey goes after the fake to kick him and misses. Paul goes after someone new to protect Victoria from an attacker from behind catching a piece of him. Mister armless falls over hitting Christian in the process. Victoria continues with Damon to bring him down to the point he can be controlled. Gracey gets hit by one of the goons and tries to kick him and fails. Paul sees this and goes after him and misses. Hugh and Gracey at a few new hits as Christian takes out one of the remaining goons. Hugh gets a hit in; Gracey misses hers, as does Paul. Victoria pulls a stake out of Damon and hits the fake with it. Christian slashes out again sending pieces flying. Gracey continues to beat on the vampire in front of her. Victoria continues to beat on the one behind her with the broad side of the stake. Though the other vampires rail against the group, but fail to do much damage. Hugh hit the one attacking Gracey, throwing her off as she misses. Paul comes back with one final blow sending the guy head out of the room. Victoria subdues Damon with a final hit to the head. This ends the battle as they gather up zip ties from the construction area. Paul, Christian, and Hugh now drag out Dalia, armless, and Damon to the SUVs. They get back out of the tunnels and load the prizes in to the SUVs, see that it is getting to close to dawn and the trip to drop off the prizes would push to close. They talk it over and as Paul’s is closer they head for there. Dalia, armless, and Damon get locked into their own cells. Everyone is given a place to rest for the day at Paul’s.

This ends that batch of game play we talk over what has happened and plan for the next day. Everyone reviews their wounds and how much blood is going to be needed. We start in on the next evening, but cut it short as we don’t have too much time to get into anything.

We start night eighteen the same night we played through night seventeen, so everything is fresh in their minds as to what happened. Well on with the show.

Gracey and Paul both wanted to see the tapes first as they fell asleep last night, though this morning they wake at the same time, so their was no sneak previews for either of them. Paul gets out of bed and heads in for a shower, as Gracey gets dressed and heads out to start the tapes. Gracey pops the first one into a player and start to watch it as soon as Paul gets out. The tape is a dub of a poor quality recording. (Or as I put it during the game a crap-tacular security camera tape.) As they watch the tape most of it is really boring. They can not tell what part of the city it comes form though after getting most of the way through the tape they get a call from Victoria. Gracey goes to take a shower while Paul talks with Victoria on the phone. While still on the phone Paul puts in the second tape to see a drive by shortly after hanging up on Victoria. The car that was attacked explodes and on the tape you see some one get out. fall, and turn to ash. This makes Paul go back over the first tape a little closer. As Gracey returns to the room, from her shower, she asks about what she has missed. Paul tells her about the second tape leading him to take another look at the first.

Victoria wakes and feels that the files she got yesterday should prove to be a good challenge for the evening. As she pours over them they start to make sense to her. She picks out that these files are a plan for getting rid of the Carthians for with in the city, by taking out the leader and fueling the in fighting until they are no more. After working this out, she gives James a call. With in this call she goes over the plan that she found in the note and tells him they should check out Dalia’s offices. James agrees and they plan on getting the group together. Victoria calls Gracey to no avail, next tries Paul, and goes over the plan with him. They talk about the tapes as they have not gotten anything out of it. Victoria decides to meet Paul and Gracey at Paul’s.

Hugh wakes at the warehouse the Carthians have been using as a safe house. He spends time listening to the crowd and looking for his sire. Though some of the night passes in this way he gets a call from Victoria and leaves shortly there after.

Christian feeling a little cramped does talk with anyone and just takes some time to go out to a few bars. This plan doesn’t work very long as he gets a call from Paul to meet up at the office building the meet at originally.

Victoria arrives at Paul’s and is informed about what was on the tapes along with Gracey. The first tape contains a car crash with a Kindred getting out and walk into a building across the street. The second tape having the drive by recorded on it. After hearing this she give James a call to let him know that they are going down to the offices tonight. Victoria tells James that she will get a hold of Hugh and Christian and have them meet up there. Victoria tells Paul to call Christian, Gracey to call Hannah, and she will call Hugh. The calls go well. They all arrive, a short time later, at the office complex.

Victoria start to find out if anyone has a plan for entering the building. Gracey asks why not just walk in as the last time she was here it wasn’t a problem for her. Paul reminds her of the run down the hall incident, and she informs the group that is not the last time she was here, much to the surprise of the group. Victoria goes over the facts about how the building is controlled by the prince and Gracey didn’t have a problem. This fact hits Victoria as interesting. Paul thinks the best place to start looking is in the basement, as a joke. (Why he goes there I don’t know though it does prove interesting again.) Gracey start heads up to the second floor for a look at these offices, when Victoria start to convince the group that the basement is the place to start as the last offices were bear of information. Gracey start talking about how long before they meet back here, when Paul steps in and talks about how splitting up the group mite not be a good idea.

(James’ player makes a comment about what happened several thousand years ago were the group split up. A veiled D&D reference as we had all just about died last week in that game, as a result of someone not following the group. It took a bit for everyone to catch on to it, but every got a laugh out of it.)

Victoria goes on about why the basement may be better, and with Paul supporting her that is were the group starts to explore. They head down the familiar path to the basement, asking Victoria what they are looking for. She stumbles around until she finds a place the hall should continue, but does not. Gracey studies the wall to find some seems. Hugh talks about shouldering it down, but Gracey old him up. About this time the security guard find them, but they see him first. (They start to go over plans on hiding with the sneaky Tremere and obfuscate, it just gets funny for a short time then they get back to the game.) The guard shines his flashlight at the group blinding them, and asks them what they are doing down here. Paul repeatedly tells him to get the flashlight out of his eyes as the guard asks again why are they down here. At this point Gracey starts towards him making full use of the light. This makes the guard quiver just a bit, weather it is from someone walking up to him or having a damn good looking chick head his way, she does know.

(Gracey’s player still a little new to how thing work in vampire asks if the flashlight would hurt her, I tell her only if he hits her with it. James’ player makes a snide remark about the question, and has a speaker fall on his head from the entertainment center behind him. This gets laughs and remarks about that what you get for making cynical comments.)

The guard asks her, if he can do anything for her. Gracey starts to buff about having a meeting some were in the building. The guard announces that they all need to leave unless they have business in the building. Hugh turns his back to the guard to see if he can find a way to open the door, and finds the mechanism, but not how to open it. Christian through this catches the gaze of the guard and tells him they need the door opened can you help us; we need to get something from behind it. The guard happily walks over and opens the door for them and tells them to have a good night and walks away. Hugh tells Gracey to go first and she retorts that he is the man and he should go first. They fight back and forth over this for a short time before Christian tells them that he will go first. Christian walks in does not look around turns and comes back out screaming. Victoria just tells him that was funny and they all enter the room. They find them selves in a planning room.

Right here we stop for the night as it was late and I need time to prepare for this room as they were not suppose to find it until later in the game. We pack it in and head on out for the week. We come back the next week with a bit of bull-shitting before we get back to the game.

As they pass through the Door way the see a set of double doors the opened in on the planning room. The room contains a large central desk with an assortment of half open filing cabinets. One wall contains a map of the city subway system with a faint route marked on it. Gracey starts to check through the filing cabinets, finding two video cassettes. Victoria takes a look around the room for any passages that are hidden. As the group continues to look closer at the top of the desk Victoria realizes that the map on it is for the sewer system. The strange thing about the map is a few different marks in different parts to the city. Along with the sewer map is the title and blue prints for Elmwood Estates. James and Victoria talk over some of the information that they already had gathered to see if anything jumps out at them. After finding out about Elmwood Estates, James takes a look through the files. James finds information pertaining to The Orphanage and how Derrick Coverstone has set himself up a stronghold around it. While James is running through the files Victoria takes a closer look at the map on the wall. She can follow a route on the map finding that it goes through many abandon subway tunnels and head over to New Jersey.

James, Gracey, and Victoria keep looking over the desk and files for anything else. Victoria stumbles across a business card for Lt. McNaily and starts to show it around. When she shows it to Paul, he starts to tell them about what his PI had found on him. That this Lt. has been slipping recently, not getting most of his cases to close, also that he was in charge of the investigation on the assault on the welder and the warehouse fire. The odd part of his recent behavior is that he and a couple of his officers have been hanging out at places owned by Donald Riddell. Victoria sees that in one of the files are plans for using the two warehouses as a launching point to try and take over the docks area. Also with in that file is a copy of the “To His Holiness”. After sharing this information with the rest of the group, they decide that Vern needs to die.

With one more, quick check, of the room Gracey heads to the second floor offices with the rest of the group following her up, as they now have a healthy respect of being separated. They take a back stairwell up to the second floor. Once there they find eight doors running down each side of a main hall for a total of sixteen. Gracey just walks down and checks randomly the third door on the left side of the hall. The unlocked door leads to a small reception area with two offices behind it. The place looks to have been empty for about a month and is only furnished with some cheep desks and chairs. Next Gracey checks the forth door on the right to find it locked. James after see that Gracey is down the hall takes the first door on the left, finding it locked. They start to go over what is going on as James see that Gracey is about to pick the door she is at and stops her, so they can do this with some sort of plan. James has them check each door to see if it is open or locked, before trying to open them. They find with all this searching, an adult daycare facility, office, and file room, a small meeting room with extra tables and folding chairs at the back, a large conference room with copies of most of the files on kindred within the city that are very detailed, save for the LS. In another of the offices they find some antique furniture, but little else. The next on the go to again has antique furniture and is nicely decorated. With in the one of the desks are some of the LS files that were missing. They check Pete Ares file getting information about how he had controlled the Queens area in recent times, also go over Carmen Oster’s files. The last office on the left turns out to be more of a reading room for someone. Victoria opens the broom closet and checks it over finding it a solid room. Last room on the right they check had been converted into on large room with four desks in it. With in the desks they find more LS files, one of them being Dalia’s. The file gives them more information about Dalia’s habits and hang outs. Dalia had started to invest in the hotels around the airports and also the Yellow Cab Company. Dalia’s file had some old subway plans and information on how to redevelop them.

Gracey talks about calling around to hotels to see if she can find Dalia that way. Paul talks her out of it as it would serve to drive her farther into hiding. This does prompt them to go back down to the planning room and check the two maps against each other. Victoria rips the map down and takes it with her. About this time the night has mostly slipped away and they all head home.

End of this night’s work as I take a minute to gather the next part of this mess and start on the next night with them.

Everyone wakes up for the night. Hugh looks around the place and lets one of the servants know that he was leaving for awhile. Gracey wakes beside Paul and tells him good evening. Paul smiles and kisses Gracey and tells her he is going for a shower. This leaves her to get dressed and check her cell phone for messages. Not finding any she goes to the living room to wait on Paul.

Victoria waking in her haven goes and checks on what has been coming into her e-mail box. Most of it is junk of course, but there is a message from Riley to have her call back to set up a meeting. She makes a call to him to find out what he needs a meeting for. Over the phone he tells her that he needs to talk with her and her new “friends”. Riley gives her the chance to set the time and place for this meeting. Victoria goes with “Altered Currents” bar some time after midnight. Riley tells her that he can make that and hangs up. After getting off the phone with Riley Victoria calls Paul, not getting an answer she calls Christian. After letting Christian in on the plan she has him try and call Paul while she calls James, Hannah, Gracey, and Hugh. They are mostly short conversation as they all just go with it. Gracey checks to see if Paul has herd the news and if he is will to give her a ride. (This has conversation with it that does not have anything to do with the game.) Paul had found out that Hugh was no longer at his place and thinks to see if anyone else has called him to tell him.

(At this point in time Hugh and I were off role-playing out him talking with his sire, so they got off on a tangent that included, more the one, animal impressions. That had nothing to do with nature and everything to do with, my players have, sick and twisted minds, and views of the Hugh character. They also joke about the recording and how I get to laugh at it went I play it back and here it. They crack a few jokes about the fact that they get more done without me in the room then they do with me there. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t true. After about five minutes of this we get back to the room with the normal amount of heckling. This is why having the night recorded is so much fun. Damn people and wanting dates, October 26th.)

Gracey feels that they have time for a quickie, and Paul doesn’t disagree, so they take care of that and then get clean up again after that. Paul finds his package that he had been waiting for. (I was giving him the information about what was in it while the rest of the group talks about the ride over as one of them got a motorcycle ride over this night. It degenerates into conversions not fit for this web space.) After wrapping this up Paul and Gracey head out to pick up Christian. Victoria arrives at the club and takes a seat at a table near the back. The rest of them arrive shortly there after. I ask Gracey to what see was wearing as a way of passing a little time as a switch into the Riley persona.

(They go off on a tangent about this for about five minutes. Then I call a taint check for when Riley enters and starts towards the table. One of the players fails this check as she rarely engages in anything other then combat while we play I had hoped that this would provoke reaction, it did not.)

I give the players a short description of Riley. Riley is a tall figure with hands more like claws and dress down in jeans and a flannel shirt. Victoria greats him, followed by the rest of the table. Riley makes notice of each in turn with respect paid to those he had any regards for. He also makes mention of the fire at the “Shit Hole” and how this is beginning to be a bad habit for the group of them, after Paul figures out some of the back story given away by Riley’s actions. Riley starts to lay out what has been happening in the passed few days after court. He starts with the facts of Vern being drunk with power and the Invictus feeling that he must be stopped, to that end they have teamed up with the Carthians. This distasteful arrangement means that they need everyone’s help. One of Vern’s lackeys, Dalia Pestage needs to be found to lead them to Vern. The problem being that she has left her known hang-outs and is in hiding, most of the rest of the Invictus and Carthians have bigger problems to deal with, or they are to well known to find anything out. This, and the fact they have been hanging out so much, is why he was sent to get them on her trail. Riley doesn’t have a lot on Dalia to give them just, as part of the sanctified she has done a lot of business for Vern and they hope to get information about her. Dalia an older looking woman, whom is heaver set being 5’4” and about 140 pounds. Riley tells them about her old haven and that she has been keeping offices in the same office building that this mess started in and this was the last place she was seen at. Riley makes it a clear point that she is needed alive though anyone with her is expendable. This makes Paul happy, as Paul asks questions to clarify the point as the rest agree with the course to find Dalia. Riley lets on that they don’t have reliable information about all areas of the city. They start to talk with each other and Riley gets bored with them and walks off into the club looking for some one. Paul feels that he need to feed before going on with the task at hand. Paul does ask Victoria to see if Riley has any more information that he did not want to share with the whole group. Riley talks to Victoria about the time table that has been worked out. Riley also talks about how they are working on putting Vern under control rater then destroying him. Riley goes over Victoria and the group’s ability to find things that they were not suppose to. Victoria tells the group about the limited time and that they should head on out to Dalia’s haven.

Paul tells her to wait just a short time for him to take care of business. He goes out on the floor and starts to dance with the toys. This makes Gracey a little on edge about his. After Paul gets back to the table and they head out to the townhouse.

As soon as they get to the townhouse Hannah goes right to the door and picks the lock. As they enter Paul takes charge and tells Victoria to see if there is a computer around, Gracey follows Victoria to the office. James is asked to watch the back door, while Hannah is told to keep an eye on the front. Paul and Christian find the door to the basement to take a look around there.

Victoria boots up the computer and starts to look at files. The first information that she finds looks a garbled and doesn’t mean anything. As she works harder to find things, she starts to pull out financial records with listings of a hotel that was acquired recently just outside of the LaGuardia airport. The records also list four purchases with in Queens. She finds maintenance records for the apartment building they had stop by many days ago.

Gracey goes to work on the file cabinets, getting them unlocked quickly, finding only empty file folders. Gracey in looking over the folders and other papers with in the room find that they come from many of the different hotels in town, she takes notes of them. Gracey noticed that a cabinet is missing. She finds with this inspection a package of files on other Kindred like those that she needed to return to Enos. As it also contained 2 video tapes that she starts to look for a player for. Finding the camera with a dead battery, she starts off to find Paul with in the house.

Paul, Christian, and Hugh finding the door to the basement locked, take a quick look to see how to get through the door. Hugh feels that a good shoulder blow will do the trick. Hugh backs up a step and hits the door, sending it down the steps and into the door below opening that one also. In the basement they find two sparely furnished rooms. These room look like the only use for them was integration. Upon closer inspection on the rooms they find a few clamps, a hammer, a badly dented aluminum bat, fragments of a wooden bat, and a large knife. Paul looking to see what else maybe in this basement pulls up a block of the floor to find sewer access.

Gracey finding them downstairs, asks if Paul can play these tapes at his place, this will not be a problem. She also mentions that it is getting late into the night. Paul places the block back and they head out. Gracey asks to stay with Paul, and Hugh heads for the Carthian safe house.

Victoria leaving the office after doing what she could with the files starts to look over the rest of the house. Looking through the house she finds that it is well furnished and kept. She also finds an open wall safe and a few paintings that could bring in some money. Looking through the desks in other rooms, she finds keys that don’t fit anything in the townhouse. As she discovers this she sees that everyone is heading out. Looks at the time and leaves with them.

Like most time I have it happen they make it back to their havens with time and settle in for the day.

A lot happen on this night, and more is coming soon.

(At this point in time Hugh and I were off role-playing out him talking with his sire, so they got off on a tangent that included, more the one, animal impressions. That had nothing to do with nature and everything to do with, my players have, sick and twisted minds, and views of the Hugh character. They also joke about the recording and how I get to laugh at it went I play it back and here it. They crack a few jokes about the fact that they get more done without me in the room then they do with me there. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t true. After about five minutes of this we get back to the room with the normal amount of heckling. This is why having the night recorded is so much fun. Damn people and wanting dates, October 26th.)

…

(They go off on a tangent about this for about five minutes. Then I call a taint check for when Riley enters and starts towards the table. One of the players fails this check as she rarely engages in anything other then combat while we play I had hoped that this would provoke reaction, it did not.)

Just a little OOC to keep things going as it doesn’t look good for getting it out before game time tonight.

Well we started the next week with the end of night 16. I didn’t have them do the humanity rolls, but we did make some progress. With the normal amount of banter we start off at Paul’s sire’s place shortly after most of them get done cleaning up. As they sit in the living room discussing their next step, Hugh wants to go to his haven and pick-up the rest of his things. The other not yet being sure if that is a good idea or not after what just transpired at the bar. Victoria, Christian, James, and Hannah continue to talk as Gracey finally catches up with the group, and Paul gets back from cleaning up, finding a few swords picking up one of them remembering back to the bar. Paul eyeing Gracey works on catching up on the conversation. They do decide that it is worth the risks to get the last of the gear, but before they go this time they raid the stock pile they already have. Christian spotted the sword Paul carried into the living room and asks to see if there mite be more of those floating around. Paul takes him off to see the other few in the house. The rest head for Hugh’s stuff, Gracey asks for a butterfly knife, the rest thinking better of it steer her toward a four inch folding knife. Hugh picks out two SMGs and over the shoulder the holsters. Victoria also picks something out and the head for Hugh’s haven. (Hannah’s player was to busy sleeping to pick anything out at this point even after many prompts from me and others.) They head out in the SUVs to find what s ahead. They arrive shortly there after and head on up to the haven. Nothing seems out of place so they just go in and start to carry out all the things Hugh points to. They take this load back to Paul’s sire’s place and pack it away. This of course leaves them with just enough time to return to their havens for the day. Hugh head out to the warehouse were his sire is back at talking over problems. Gracey makes move and stays with Paul.

After this we head right into the next night.

Though we start this night on the some night we played through nights 14 and 15, we end it the next week missing 3 of the players, Gracey, James, and Hannah. It was also a short night do to life being in the way yet again.

Most of the group wakes out at Paul’s sire’s place where they had been give room to stay at. Gracey wakes at home and goes on to here computer to see if any news had come from her old cheerleading friends. Back at Paul’s they make ready to go back to the “Shit Hole” to pick up the last of Hugh’s stuff. They get out on the road and pull up in front of the “Shit Hole”, right when Gracey calls to find out what is going on. Paul tells her of the plan and asks her to start over. They get out of the SUVs and get to the door of the “Shit Hole” only to feel a vampire with in the place. With little talk they barge into the place to find themselves faced with out ten mortals who don’t seem to be in control of their actions and one vampire way in the back in front of the hall leading to the door down stairs to the range.

This becomes a mess fast as the mindless horde attacks them. Now I am torn here as to go into details about the fight or stick to highlights. As I don’t what to do a blow by blow I will try to balance between the two. As it is from my memory thing may not have happen exactly this way though I am hope for close. The fight starts with the mortals getting, up close and personal, as the Vampire takes a seat where he was. In the round of the fight not much happens though Victoria and Christian try to dominate a few into not coming at them, and fail. Paul takes up the slack and gets a knife from Hugh as he hands off one of his two handguns to Victoria and Hannah steps out to pull off a table leg. James takes a step back as not to get his hands dirty. The mortals begin with a few weak blows to Victoria and Paul. Paul lashes out at the mortal the hit him causing some bleeding though not enough to stop the mortal. Hannah takes a swing with the table leg hit one with little effect. Christian goes for a table lag of his own as Victoria tries her hand with the handgun finding out that she would have been better out hitting some with it shooting it. Paul continues his assault on the mortals through out the fight doing some messing things to them. (I did call a few frenzy rolls during the fight, but they seem to have had no trouble pass those, on the other hand they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn for the in fight rolls.) Hugh unlashes a valley from his handgun at the vampire, to little effectiveness. Victoria see that the handgun does her no good gives it back to Hugh and gets a table leg herself and starts to bash on the humans with that. The fight continues like this with the player taking some blood from the mortal they were fighting as they need it to heal the damage. Paul and that knife being the most effective in the battle with the mortals. During the fight Victoria tells Hugh to take out the lights as she spotted the breaker box and hoped that they could gain some advantage in the dark. They did, but it did seem to help much.

About that time is when the first night of play ended and we went home for the week the next week we pick back up in the fight.

With the lights out Hugh takes a few more shots at the vampire never getting too much of a piece of him. As the fight continued they had made their way through most of the humans, with Paul losing a few Humanity points. At last all the humans were unconscious and they could all go after the Vampire. Hugh let loose his last few bullets hurting the Vampire and slowing it down just enough for Paul to use that knife to its full potential and kill the Vampire off with out ever saying a word to him. They clean a path in front of the door and make their trip downstairs to get what they come for. As they leave they see that they need to cover the mess up some what and use some of the supplies from downstairs to soak the place. As Hugh leaves he pitches an incendiary grenade into the place and it starts to burn as they drive away.

We end the night with them getting back to Paul’s, giving Gracey a call to have her go there instead of the bar, and cleaning up from the nights activities.

I see the need for a humanity roll for a few of them at the start of next week I also need to give out experience points for many nights to the ones that missed this week, and also finish up experience with the one that did all of this so that I am caught back up with all of them. Well this has been a fun day of typing hopefully I will get a recording of next weeks events so that I have a more accurate log of the events to type from. Till next time…

This happens on the same night of play as night fourteen, I have been trying to move thing a little faster, so we get more done each night with limited success. Will now we move into night fifteen.

James awakes to find that last nights confusion has continued into to night and that nothing seems to be moving forward. Looking for Judy, he finds her in a group in heavy debate about what should be done next. See that at best the debate is going in a circle he starts to look for other faces in the crowd.

Hugh awakes and takes stock of his surroundings and finds that Stacey has slipped out at some point and is no where to be found. This troubles him some; as he is not sure she is safe or ready for what mite happen. About the time he finishes his rounds, he runs across James and they start to make some plans. Hugh is worried about his “collection” at the “Shit Hole”. After talking with James awhile Hugh gives a call to Paul.

Again at the Invictus club the group finds itself and start to look forward. Christian is summoned over to a table where his sire sits. Donald has some advice for Christian and also wants to know, what it anything Christian mite have herd in the past few days, as Donald knows Christian has been poking around. Christian relays what information he has and some of it was news to Donald, but not much. Donald admonitions Christian about who he associates with as these are dangerous time right now. This gives Christian food for though as he leaves the table as a group has arrived to talk with Donald.

Gracey not knowing real why she stay last night feels it is time to leave and head out the door calling a cab to get a ride home. She gets outside and starts to wait for the cab, when a short time later Paul comes out to talk with her and gets her to come back in after waving off the cab.

Victoria takes a seat with Nadene to see if there is anything Nadene and tell her about these pass few nights. Though Nadene does not say much about it she does sound concerned that this is happen now and not latter. This give Victoria the feeling that plans may already be in the works for taking care of things. Victoria then wonders off to a table with Hannah to see if any other news has come up. As Victoria takes a seat Christian also sits and they start talking about what is going on. About this time Paul and Gracey sit at table close by and they all start to talk. A short time later Paul gets a call from Hugh to see what is going on with him and to see if he has news of the others. As they talk plans are formed to go and pick up Hugh’s stuff from the “Shit Hole”. Paul checks with Dianna to see if it would be safe to use the limousine right now, it was. Hugh make one more check for Stacey while waiting for Paul and the other to arrive with the limousine, not finding her he give her a call and leaves a message.

Some time later they have all made it to Paul’s sires place and have talked about what to do tonight. They all decide that getting the stuff from the “Shit Hole” may come in handy with what is going on. Paul has them get into a couple of SUVs and head on of to the “Shit Hole”. As they all arrive they notice that the normal crowd is at the place and start the loading process. This takes quite a long time as there is much to move and most of it is heavy. They get what can fit into the SUVs and head back to Paul’s sire’s to unload it all. This takes time, also, and they feel that there is not enough time to get the rest tonight, and make plans to pick it up the next night. As Paul has space most of them stay the night, though Gracey feels that it is time to head home, with a quick ride from Paul she makes it home and rests the day away waiting for the others to call the next night.

This end the next night that we played that same night of gaming and we do start in on a third night and that is come out next…

After a long delay, I will try to put something out for night fourteen, as the recording was a bunch of dead air, so this, again, comes from my poor memory.

After their escapes from the court last night, Christian, Paul, Victoria, Gracey, and Hannah are all held up in the club that their sires took them to. When they arise, they find that many have woken up before them and have started to talk about what happened. These events seem to have galvanized them against the new prince, as his actions are that of someone who has gone mad with power. Though the conversions are muffled, the general fell of them is that “we waited to long”. The players start to look around for someone familiar to talk with.

Christian finds his sire, but at this point is unable to talk with him, as he is busy with a group of others. Paul is waved over by his sire and is sat down to have what is happening explained to him.

Dianna goes into the ever-so-evident fact, that being in the Carthian movement is not a safe place for him any more, that she has let him goof off long enough and it is time for him to grow up and come with her in to the Invictus. This is not a time for him to try and push away from the reasonability of what he is or play on his bad habits. Paul takes this in, but doesn’t have much to stay about it. Dianna leaves him to his own devices to talk with others in the Invictus. Paul looks around for some time before finding the group at a table off to the side of the club.

Victoria sees the fact that many of the Invictus are here and hears what is going on. She starts to seek out any information she can. She looks for a week link that may give up some information to her and finds Gracey. Victoria approaches Gracey to see if, by chance, she has found anything out. Gracey, being in the dark just as much as Victoria is, doesn’t give her much, but does offer to talk with her sire, to see if Sarah has anything, though Gracey doubts it, as Sarah has not seemed to ever know as much as Gracey already does. After Gracey leaves, Victoria sees that Hannah is sitting with Nadene Karmel. Before getting over to the table, Nadene leaves and joins a group out on the floor talking over what has transpired. Victoria takes a seat at the table and starts to ask about what is going on and if Hannah has any clue. Hannah, being the “less then talkative” person she has always been, doesn’t say much to Victoria other than she doesn’t know anything.

Gracey, after talking with Victoria, seeks out her sire. Finding Sarah, she starts to ask questions. The first thing on Gracey’s mind, is to see if she can leave the club and go back to her haven. Sarah tells her that though she may leave, it would not be the wisest decision, as this is a safe place to stay, and they don’t know how far this has gone, yet. Sarah goes on to explain that this is a safe place to be for them to stay, as things are still uncertain outside these walls. Though Gracey takes the information, she is still not sure about staying. After this talk, she looks around and finds Victoria, Hannah, and Christian sitting at a table off to the side.

Gracey finds her way over to the table about the same time as Paul. They all sit and talk over what they know and what they can do. Christian, all this time, is keeping on eye out to see if his sire is free to talk. Gracey, during most of the conversation, is talking about going to her haven. Victoria and Christian both try to simply talk her out of it, but she insists on wanting to go. They don’t want her to leave, for her safety, the safety of this place, and other reasons, so they take other actions to keep her at the club. As it was getting close to dawn, they find a place to sleep for the night and all stay here.

Hugh and James find themselves at a warehouse on the docks. After overhearing the ranting in the place, they feel it is a safe place to be. Though they don’t talk with much of anyone, the place is full of people throwing ideas on what to do about Vern. Is this the time to take the city? Is time just to leave, or is it time join with the Invictus and hope for a better outcome? As no one is taking charge, they spent most of the night like this. James was able to talk with Judy for a short time, but was unable to get much from it. Hugh finds Stacey to check and see that she is alright. Athough shaken, she is in good shape and just asks him not to do something uncalled for. This is most everything that happened there during that first night. They all find places to hide there for the night.

That’s one of the three nights done. As you can tell, I did spent much more time with the Invictus side of the group, this is one of the hazards of having a larger group. If you split them up you can’t always give equal time to the haves. I didn’t like doing this, but moving the story along made it necessary. Will this was just the first part of that night of game play on to the next.

Though the bomb was not in the best place to do the damage that was desired, it did have a sizable impact on the place. This is not to exclude what happened to some of the patrons and employees. Although this was not one of the largest saloons that the Invictus keeps, it was one that many of them enjoyed. Much of the inside of the place had been redone to look the part of a 1920’s speakeasy. This gave many of the patrons a feeling of escape. There were a few larger meeting rooms set aside to conduct business in. Also, there had been many deals that changed unlife for many within the limits of New York. The explosion took out one of the supporting inner walls. Thus, leaving four of the upper rooms without support and sending them crashing into the rooms on the main floor below. The part that made this even more disastrous, was the proximity to dawn when it happened, giving little time for many of the trapped to return to the safety of their havens. The full aftermath of this attack has not yet been realized, but what is for sure is at lest eleven servants and two vampires are gone.

Again, this is all for story movement. It has taken some work to get it all out and it is quite long, but hopefully it is enough. As I am not going to have time to flesh out the previous courts I am going to post the outlined information I think it will be enough for my players to get the feel of what has been going on. Night Thirteen is the forth court held, after Vern took power…

First court after Vern took power…
Many of Jacob’s loyalists make comment about him stepping down
Carthians don’t accept Vern’s authority
Many of the younger vampires need to be removed before getting out of hand
Primogen council meeting canceled due to the unrest
Many elders are not happy with the handling of the unrest and the canceled meeting

Second court
Carthians have their own meeting in another place
Most of the younger vampires are deemed too restless to enter the open court
More elders are not happy with the change in policy
Primogen meeting is held with a stand-in for the carthian member
Stand-in sent out of meeting – being told the Carthians no longer have a seat

Third court
Starts without many kindred from the city
No unaligned are let in
All Carthians are made to stand in back
Derrick Coverstone leaves before primogen meeting, in protest of the closing of court
Carthians riot in celebration, when he leaves, and hurt a few of Vern’s guards

For the majority of the remaining night, the gathered Invictus talk out what to do next to rid themselves of Vern. As far as they’re concerned, he has no hope of continuing as leader of this city. The club, though not large, has enough safe places for all of the gathered kindred to stay for the day. Even so, many of the old kindred leave, to go back to their havens.

At the warehouse, a large amount of the Carthian Movement from the city, are gathered and talking about what to do next as Vern has now crossed the line of no redemption. Though the warehouse is safe for the day, many of the better established head out for their own havens. Judy stays to keep the trust of many of the younger in the movement, as not to let them go off the path too far. Everyone is given space to sleep for the day as many of the group talk, until the last minutes of the night, about what to do in the nights to come.

Donald has the driver take the group to a club that has been closed for repair and was about to reopen soon, to sort out all of the happenings of tonight. He then turns to his brood, asking each of them if they are in need of any attention, stopping with Christian to tell him that this is going to get worse before it is over.

Robert, sitting in the front seat, tells the driver to head to a club that Victoria knows is closed. Once they arrive at the club, she knows that this is going to be a lot more than just a place to hide. Victoria watches as Robert pulls Daise in with him, “yelling” at her to follow them in. As soon as she is out of the car, it speeds off.

Dianna stares at Paul as they move down the road to a club that he knows is closed for repair. She starts to tell him that, now he has little choice, but listen to her. Things are about to get ugly, and he needs to see something other then himself as important. She continues to tell him that he no longer has his freedom and will start to respect her – one way, or the other. Paul feels the rush of blood down the inside of his neck. He hasn’t felt a burning like this inside of him since the first time he met Dianna. The rush subsides shortly before they get to the club. Dianna guides him into the club and all he sees is the other Invictus he hates.

Outside, Hannah is taken by the arm and lead to a car by Nadene, as she is telling her to stay calm and not to worry. As they both settle in to the car, it takes off to an address that Nadene gave the driver. During this trip neither of them talks, as they both seem to have something on their minds. The car stops and Nadene gets out, she ducks back down to tell Hannah to get out of the cab. Hannah gets out and fallows Nadene into the club where there seems to be a gathering started.

The driver, without any directions, leaves as soon as the doors shut. Judy starts to talk with everyone in the limousine, asking for any input on what to do with Vern and if now could be the right time to try to seize control over the city. With all of this talk, time seems to slip away and the limousine stops in front of an old warehouse building on the docks. Judy makes mention that this place is assured to be safe, by Andrew, which seems to calm a few that are in the limousine. They all get out and head into the warehouse, asking questions to each other, but not really getting any answers.

After some time in the cab, Sarah comes to her senses and gives the driver an address to go to. The driver tells her that the place has been closed for repair for some time and maybe she should go elsewhere. Sarah tells him, “No. That’s the place”. Sarah relaxes in the seat a bit and tells Gracey not to worry too much, as they will be safe, there. The driver stops across the street and asks if he should stay, as the club looks closed. Sarah pays him for the ride and tells him to be on his way. She grabs Gracey by the arm, heads across the street and knocks on the door. Gracey feels all of the others within the place and is not sure of what is about to happen. The door opens and they are let into what seems to be a large meeting of the Invictus.

Half way to the “Shit Hole”, Stacey tells Hugh to turn and head out to the docks. Hugh, not sure about the directions, sighs, and makes his way to the place Stacey tells him. As they arrive, he feels the others around and makes sure this is where Stacey wants to be. She tells him that it’s safe and that they should go in.

At the court location, the Natural History Museum, the whole of the Kindred population arrive slowly, with a few surprises in the crowd and on stage. On stage, is Bishop Coverstone, seated at his position. Within the crowd, stirs Jacob, with Jeff trailing behind. Enos is in a balcony overlooking the proceedings, with a distrustful look to him. This is not his normal manifestation of menace. While all are gathered here, many are not at ease. Still, they are all staying respectful of the proceedings. As the last few are announced and enter the court proper, everyone begins to take seats and start the night’s business. With the announcement that the court is now in order, Vern appears on stage, with a smug look that worries many in the audience.

Vern steps to the center of the stage without stopping at the primogen council’s table – an unusual event. Vern raises his hand to quiet what noise this made and waits for silence to cover the crowd.
Vern begins, “With the events of the past year, I have been making every effort to rule this city without the harsh measures of the former leader.” This gives rise to many quick glances at Jacob, as he was not an over-zealous leader. Vern continues, “As I have not been able to quell the turbulence in this time, with a soft hand, caused by his sudden departure, stronger measures will now be used. The sheriff has been informed, that by the end of a weeks time, NO unaligned kindred are to be within my city, be that by them leaving, or becoming members of the Invictus, LS, or, if need be, the Order Dracul. If any remain at the end of this time, Blood Hunts are their fate. By the end of one month’s time all Carthians are also to have left or been converted, or suffer the same.” This makes a stir in the crowd, which was quelled only by the fact that Bishop Coverstone had broken the council’s table and was now standing with a power that left a few kindred in the room quaking. This took Vern by some surprise, as Derrick was not one too show this amount of disrespect. Vern continues “I have been forced to do this, by recent actions taken against me, and all of us. With the recent attack on my personal property and now with last night’s attack on the elysium, I have no choice.” Derrick, in a voice that filled the hall announces, “All will be welcomed at “The Orphanage” and NO kindred, be he prince or archbishop will ever change this.” Vern immediately pronounces him an outcast and no longer fit to lead the LS or be on the primogen council. Derrick responded to this by throwing the pieces of the table left in his hands toward Vern and storming out of the court, taking many of his fellow LS with him. The crowd, becoming pandemonium, sees that Vern is still on stage, holding up his hand and looking for quiet. Many younger kindred within the hall start to shout, the blood within them starting to boil in rage. The elders within the walls are finding their way out, with whatever speed they have at their disposal. They do not want to risk any lingering in the hall. Donald, having all of his brood close to the stage, leads them out of the hall and into a waiting limousine. Robert takes the hands of Victoria and Daise, leading them out to a waiting car. Dianna throws her arm around Paul’s neck and drags him to the waiting limousine. Hannah, having seen enough school yard fights to know that once they are this big, the only thing to do is not to get hurt by them and finds a back way out to an alley. Hugh knows that Stacey does not have the strength or wits to do well in that environment pulls her out of the melee, protecting her all the way, and heads for the safety of the “Shit Hole”. James seeing his sire, Judy, on the stage makes his way there, once together they head out of the hall with a small contingent of carthians with them. Gracey, knowing what can happen if caught in the middle of a brawl like this, grabs onto Sarah and they push their way out of the hall and onto the street. They make a break for it, moving 3 blocks away before hailing a cab, to take them anywhere else.

Night Thirteen

This is not a night that we role-played, rather it’s some down time information about actions that take place around the player characters. With this, I hope to make what is going on in the city around the characters more immediate to them. As this is all “story” from me, I hope that I can make enough sense with it to do a good job of getting the ideas across. Now on to the show…

As the sun sets on yet another gloomy day in the city, the kindred stir to meet with the revelations from the night before. As many find out, after rising from their daily rest, a few more kindred of this city no longer walk the earth. It seems fitting that tonight has a court planned for it. As the heralds have been ringing out over the past few days, everyone is required to come to this court, even though some had been shut out of them, before. This court is important enough that all need to be there.

Paul and Gracey awake to the ringing of Paul’s cell phone, its Dianna calling to see what her newest childe is up to, as it has been a rare occurrence for him not to be home. Paul tells her that he can take care of himself and, yes, he will be at the court tonight. Gracey, still a little “out of it”, is startled to find Paul in her bed, at first, but then relaxes, as the memories of last night wash over her. They both find enough to wear to start out their night and seem content with what has happened, for now. Sarah walks into the apartment a short time after they had gathered themselves and asks Gracey about the court tonight, to make sure she goes.

Victoria arises at her haven to find it just the same as before. She takes care of the little tasks that always need to be done, at the start of each night. About the time she is done with this, Robert calls to ensure her presence at the court tonight. She appeases him enough to let her off the phone.

Christian makes his way through the evening’s work and checks in with Donald to see what arrangements have been made for tonight’s court. After hearing the plan for this evening, he feels he has time to stop at “Nibble” to see if Vincent has found anything. Vincent was able to confirm that the car explosion a couple nights ago was indeed Vern’s car and that two guys died in it. Vincent also goes into how a few of the other bouncers seem to think Vern is pressing on something too hard and it may, very well, explode in his face. Christian tells Vincent that he needs to head out, as he has an engagement to go to.

Hannah wakes up and starts her evening in her usual languid method. Afterwards, she receives a call from Nadene Karmel reminding her of the court tonight and that she must attend, to show any that may have seen the loss of her sire as an opportunity to hold her down. She agrees to the outing, as she has grown tired of her apartment.

Hugh wakes to find his sire, Stacey, at his place and prepares himself for a repeat of last time. Tonight, she seems to be collected, calm, in full control of her emotions and is also in one of her finer dresses, not something she wears here, often. Stacey tells him to be sure to dress his best, for the court tonight. Then, she goes over the code of conduct with him. She tells him that this may not go well for them, because anytime Vern makes this proclamation at court, it tends to make others very upset.

James finds himself in the company of many a carthian tonight, as his sire,Judy, is hosting a meeting before tonight’s court to make sure everyone promises to be respectful of everyone at court and what the code of conduct will be, for it. James, not really paying much attention to it, is more interested in the rumors that others are passing around the room, quietly. Most of these rumors involve comments about how bad New Jersey smells, but it may be better than this place. Some comment on how The Order or the Invictus may need a few more members, and how they could fit into one or the other.

Well here we go again.

To start the night Hugh feels it is time to play with something bigger then his new handguns. He takes out a military specification sniper rifle and takes a short trip outside of the city limits to practice. This will take up a good share of his night – unfortunately, not quite all of it.

Paul starts the night in the mood to play with some one. This didn’t entertain him for long. He heads down to the site of the warehouse fire and takes a “look” around. In this “look around” he discovered that, most likely, the building fire started with an explosion and no other accelerants. He gives James a call to talk over what they did there. Paul has surmised that Hugh must have set off the explosion after the rest of the group left that night. After talking with James, Paul continues to look around the site for any other clues. After some time with that, he goes home to clean up.

Gracey checked her e-mail and had an error with the computer that prevented it from printing out the e-mail replies to her old cheerleading friends. She spends some time playing with that, to get them out. She discusses how she is enjoying her new job, but that it wasn’t what she expected and asks about their cheerleading season. After spending a little more time on-line, she gives Paul a call, to see what he is up to and finds him in the shower. After a short talk, they decide on meeting up at “Altered Currents” to chat.

Christian heads out to see if any of his bar friends have come up with information for him. (I relay some outside game information to him.) He stops at another club (Random Club 4) “Aurora” to see if there is any information here for him. At this club he meets up with Terrie, who is in on the kindred, and talks some about Vern. She relays about the fact that Vern’s car was destroyed last night and it took with it a few of his ghouls. She also tells him that Vern doesn’t know, as of yet, who did it and how. He goes back to “Open Traps” and talks with Missie and she tells him that Vern is running many businesses that she thinks are shady and some of the information she got scares her and she isn’t going to do any more digging for Christian. Christian then goes to “Orange Ranger” to find out what Andrea has to tell him. When he arrives, he finds Donald talking with her. Donald tells him to wait out in the bar for him. After twenty minutes of waiting, Donald leaves the back room, and motions Christian over to sit at a booth in the back. After both of them are seated, Donald tells Christian that he has found out about Christian asking his mortal contacts about Vern. Donald is not upset by this, He only asks for Christian to be more discrete about who he uses, as Andrea leads back to himself, far too directly, for his comfort. Donald inquires about what he has been able to find out with these conversations. Most of the information that Christian has received is not new to Donald. Donald, being the protective sire he is, warns Christian to watch out for what Vern might do, if he finds out about Christian looking into him. Donald also inquires about Christian’s new friends and how they might also be involved – the whole time, gauging how truthful Christian has been, with him.

Victoria stays at home going over what she learned from her meeting last night. She also discovers that her sire has moved out of the apartment. Out of the blue, (and as a shock to all of the players) while exploring around, she gets a call from Hannah. (Where’s a defibrillator when you need one?)

Hannah thinks tonight would be a good night to go out somewhere. She heads out the movie house that is nearby. She just watches a kung-fu flick – not that she was paying to much attention to it, as there was a couple using the darkened room for other things. This was a fun game time for Hannah as she had a use for the popcorn she picked up. After leaving the movie, she gives Victoria a call to see if she has an idea of something to do. Victoria suggests calling Gracey and Hannah makes the comment that she would “rather go out into the sun” (Needless to say, that starts some laugher and chatter). Victoria gets snippy with Hannah, as this is the first time she has shown any interest in anyone in the group.

This leads Victoria and Hannah into exploring Hannah’s sire’s old apartment. They both enter the apartment and see that someone else had been through and cleaned up the place, to get it ready for new tenants. Hannah looks around a little closer and finds some files that were hidden, in a compartment, in the spare room’s closet. These files seem to detail his dealings as Judex with the other Invictus in the city. They also show how Jacob had to make many concessions to others, to keep Jeff out of public trouble. Victoria feels that Christian would like the information from the files, gives him a call and talks him in to coming over. Victoria also invites James over to see if he may have any input on the files. Though James, a Carthian, does take a look at them, he sees nothing that is of great interest to him. Christian sees names that he is familiar with, but doesn’t talk much about it, until later. At this moment in time, Victoria gets Hugh on the phone, after making a few attempts, and has him come over, to see if he knows anything more than the rest of them do. Shortly After he arrives, they find that he doesn’t have anything new to add about the files, but with all of this new information, they start talking over what to do next.

Christian talks about how much of a pain Vern seems to be and informs the rest of the group about Vern’s car being attacked. This catches Hugh attention as he wants more details, but doesn’t let on that he knows what caused the attack. There’s more talk about going to the source of the problem – Vern’s haven, but the snag there, is: they have no clue were that might be. That discussion leads them to think of the blueprints of the elysium, one of many in the city, James has in his possession. This leads them to go out on a limb and strike at the stronger kindred on the whole. James, Christian, Hugh, Hannah, and Victoria all set out to pick up the blueprints, from James’ haven, and a bomb, from Hugh’s, to make ready for the run on the elysium. They arrive at the elysium, Hugh obfuscates himself and the bomb, to go in and set the bomb at a point determined will do the most damage to the place. After getting into the elysium, Hugh starts off to find the point he predetermined in the cab, and gets LOST. After wondering around for awhile, he finds a place that is familiar enough to set the bomb and still make it out of the building, so he sets the bomb and heads out of the elysium. Arriving back at the car Hugh gets in and they take off for their homes as the bomb goes of. They hurry home to beat the sunrise.

At the club, Paul and Gracey start to talk about how Gracey needs to learn how to use her body and new skills as a vampire, to get what she wants. They make their way back to a table and start talking about how Gracey should be able to get whatever she wants with all the assets she has. Paul sets the task for her to find the best looking guy in the club, other then him, start dancing with him and ask him to get her a drink – preferably an expensive one. She starts to ask him how to do this and he just tells her to go try, by ordering a drink and then not drinking it. The skimpy black dress she decided to ware shouldn’t hurt the cause. Gracey finally makes her way onto the dance floor, finding some random guy, starts to make him pliable, and asks him, after a short time, to go and bring her a drink. He does so without too much delay. She tries it and tells him to get something different. She flirts some more, and he fetches another drink. She, again, rejects it. With a little more flirting he goes over to the bar and brings back a bottle of wine and two flutes for her. She takes them from him and leaves the dance floor, under the assertion of going the restroom. After a short chat with Paul, she does make that stop at the bathroom. When she leaves the bathroom she goes and sits with Paul, with apparently way more confidence, because, when she sits down, she is facing Paul and straddling him. With comments on how well she did and with her not thinking to stop flirting, Paul stands up with her in his arms and heads for the car. Gracey is still wrapped around him with the wine and flutes over his shoulders. They take Paul’s limousine back to her place and Paul shows her what could happen next.

Ok, here is night twelve after many tries at it…

In the larger cities of the world, there are many denizens of the night, crowding the streets. What few are listed here are but simple examples…

We with in the Darkness Unvailed playgroup have started to play the new Vampire: the Requiem from White Wolf. With this new game, there came a need for a new setting and new NPCs… I, as the storyteller for the game, have made an effort to get a short write-up on all of the NPCs up for my players and others to reference on-line; to better get the feel of what I have going on, in my head. It also reminds me of what train of thought I was on when I thought of them in the first place. As we continue to play, I will add to the list and work on fleshing out the ones that are already there. As I am not the most prolific writer or idea maker, it will take some time. If you see an NPC that you would like to know more about, drop a note here. Also, if you see one that is on the working list, but not up, give it your try to make their background.

I fixed a few errors in the text and add the changes made by the site editor…

We started this right after night ten on the same gaming night.

Well, on this night James, Gracey, and Hannah decide that it is time for them to find some blood. (A few quick rolls and way too much chatter later, we move on.) Paul calls up some friends and has Christian over to partake in the fun. Paul was able to gather a few friends over to make the night more fun for Christian. Christian does take one of the guests off to the side. After this, Paul gives James a call to see if he would also like to have some fun and pick up Hugh on the way. This did not sound like something James wanted to do, but he gave into Paul’s request. James and Hugh arrive a little later at Paul’s. A short time after they arrive, Christian sets out to talk with some of his contacts. At (Random bar 1) “Open Traps” he runs into Missie the head bartender and night manager and asks her about Vern to see if she had been hearing anything about him. She didn’t have anything at this time, but said she would keep her ears open for anything interesting. With a little passing conversation he heads out for the next place on his route. At (Random bar 2) “Nibble” he found Vincent, the lead bouncer, and asks if he could keep an ear out for anything on Vern. Vincent tells him that there has been some talk about a car getting mangled that was tied to some Vern guy. Christian chats with him and little and heads out to the next place. At (Random bar 3) “Random Acts” he was looking for someone mortal that he knows, but instead comes across Riley. Riley tells him that Vern’s Car got hit by some gang bangers. They killed two of his people and got the cops looking into why this happen so far out of “normal gang areas”. It has also gotten Vern investigating what is behind this new assault on him. This gave Christian something to think about and Riley something else to get to just giving Christian a heads up.

Hannah, in the mean time, goes out for a walk. I ask about what type of walk she was going on, she just wanted to walk around the area close to her place. Not much ever comes of it. Victoria does make it to the meeting with Nadene to find that Nadene has an interest in helping Victoria along, on her way through the mine field that is coming her way. After her meeting with Nadene, Victoria gives Gracey a call to set up a place to meet to trade the file she has. As Gracey gets back to her place she checks her e-mail and finds some from her old team mates. (Check her background for info.) (I gave the player the assignment to tell me what was in the e-mail she sent back.) Gracey tries Paul, getting his voice mail, then she calls Victoria back and sets up the meeting for trading the file. Victoria tells Gracey she will give it back, but Gracey will owe her a favor later. After this short meeting, Gracey takes the last file back to the office. At this point in Hannah’s walk, I throw in that she notices that another vampire is in the area around her. She continues to walk around. After Gracey was done taking the files back the question of did she make copies of the files and after having a roll decide, I go with, she made copies of the important information. Victoria accepts that and leaves her alone. Gracey heads back to her haven, but decides along the way to stop at a park close by for so time to contemplate resent events. This leads into more mostly out of game chatter. During Gracey’s walk in the park, she meets up with a Nosferatu named Minth. They have a short talk that ends without much resolution in the conversation.

We wrap up the night with everyone heading back to their havens for the next days rest.

I fixed a few errors in the text and add the changes made by the site editor…

Into night ten…

About three weeks ago, I did some one-on-one storytelling with most of the players to give some more information about the world around them and spark some more interest in the game. I put up the preface texts that I used in these for the most part. In this, I am moving onto what happened after those little events. I am hoping for the players to write what happened in those events and their reactions to it. Now on with the show…

As Gracey leaves her place of capture, she heads directly to her haven to retrieve the files that she had stolen a few nights earlier, only to take the files back to the office that they came from. Victoria heads for her haven to see what is left of all the information that she has been accumulating in the past nights. Christian exits the back room of the club his sire had put him in and heads out to see if he can find out some more information on Vern. James, in a huff about what his sire has told him, decides that there is little to do but wait and see. Hugh gets proactive and goes out to a “friend’s” place and has a talk with this friend about “some thing he over heard a few nights ago”. Paul after getting himself let go by one of the resident servants, goes on the prowl for some release. Gracey, on the trip home, remembers that Victoria had taken one of the files from her and gives her a call. Victoria, not being in the mood for requests, gives her the brush off, even with Gracey making promises that may get her in too deep for her own good, to get the files back. As she makes her way into her apartment, Gracey gathers all of the files that she has and takes a cab back to the office that they came from. After dropping off the files she needs to relax and heads out to the club they had went to a little over a week ago “Altered Currents”. (Gracey will be there for some time as the rest of the group spends time this night.)

Victoria makes it to her haven to find that her sire’s office is cleaned out and much of her office has been gone through, but not much has been taken. This makes her take stock of her computer files, noticing that her e-mail traps are not being any thing back to her. She does, however, have an e-mail from Nadene Karmel asking her to call. (Check listing for info on Nadene) After some thought, Victoria does give Nadene a call to see what is on her mind. Nadene just asks for Victoria to meet her tomorrow at an art museum that is protected. Victoria finds little fault in this plan and makes the arrangements. After this she makes a call to Hugh.

Christian heads to the “Orange Ranger” to see if he can get any thing from there, stops at the bar to talk with Jacob, the bartender, locate were Andrea is. Jacob questions why Christian has not been around the place, to make some chatter and gives him the nod to head into the backroom to go see Andrea. Arriving at the office, he waits a moment before he gets noticed, as she was deep in paper work. He gets right to the point and asks her about Vern to see if she has herd anything. She mentions that Vern is not one to frequent this type of place and he tens to be all, holier then thou, about it. Christian then heads out. A short time after Christian finds a place to take care of his hunger; he gets a call from Hugh inviting him over to play with some new toys.

Hugh heads over a few blocks and finds one of his friends that he has had some less then legal dealings with. Hugh gets to the “office”, a back bedroom in a less then nice apartment complex, and talks with Samuel about this things he has been hearing, out on the street about this guy Vern that keeps mouthing off about how he is going to clean up around here and send Samuel and his friend packing. This makes Samuel less then happy to hear, but thankful for the heads up. Hugh tries to play it off as nothing to big and that Samuel can pay him later, but Samuel will have nothing to do with that and wants to pay right away. Samuel doesn’t like owing debts. He heads to the back room and grabs a few things, a 50 cal, a modified AK, and a pair of Beretta P92s that have been turned into full auto handguns and have 30 round mags. (Don’t need to say anything about that.) Hugh looking at them decides on those Berettas, and gives Samuel his thanks. Hugh having his new toys head straight to “Shit Hole” to test his new toys. After playing for a while, he gives Christian a call to see if he possibly wants to come and play also. Christian makes his way over and gets to test the new hardware. After Christian gets a few tries, Hugh gets a call from Victoria and invites her down, also. Victoria arrives and takes her turn with the new toys. The night was getting ready to creep into day light so everyone decides to head home.

Paul, hanging for awhile in the “study” before being let down by one of the servants, decides that it is time to find some thing to play with. This provides him with a distraction for a while. After cleaning up, he gives his PI, Adam Holt, a call and leaves a message to have him look into that warehouse fire from a few nights ago. Hanging up from his call to Adam, Paul was still felling restless and decides to head out to his normal haunt “Altered Currents”. He arrives there a short time after Gracey had gotten there. Feeling the presence of another vampire, he looks around, but does not find a face to go with the felling. Paul, being himself, just looks for a great looking piece of flesh heads out onto the dance floor and starts dancing with whatever looked the best. Gracey, having noticed Paul when he came in, makes her way over to him, scaring away the person he started to dance with. They chat about a few things before Gracey wants to take a table so they can talk better. They make their way off the floor and to a table and sit for a short time before Gracey start to talk about how they should continue to explore their relationship. Paul manages to be polite for a short time before getting bored with it. The day was coming soon so it gave him an easy way to get out of the chat without hurting Gracey feelings to much.

Well the make it back to their havens and we start the next night…

I’m doing my best to make the blog more fluent for those who can’t read Lennian [those who can, know what that is]. However, I will only be editing the Storyteller’s entries, unless otherwise requested. I will be concentrating my efforts on new entries, while slowly making my way to the beginning of the blog. This may take a while, as my time for doing so is limited. If you happen to spot mistakes, please don’t hesitate to point them out. Comments are encouraged!
Thank you for your support!

I have gotten the outline of what happened at these meeting, but as of yet to flesh them out. If you would like to see the outlines let me know and I will post them here if not I will post them as soon as I get them in shape.

This is just do to the 2 weeks of ADnD we play. There will be updates made to the site, we do have a day play that is not up yet and I will have more NPC backgrounds up soon I hope.

Ok sitting here listening to the recording the random bar stuff that I type for night ten happened at the end of night eleven.

We started this right after night ten on the same gaming night.

Well, on this night James, Gracey, and Hannah decide that it is time for them to find some blood. (A few quick rolls and way too much chatter later, we move on.) Paul calls up some friends and has Christian over to partake in the fun. Paul was able to gather a few friends over to make the night more fun for Christian. Christian does take one of the guests off to the side. After this, Paul gives James a call to see if he would also like to have some fun and pick up Hugh on the way. This did not sound like something James wanted to do, but he gave into Paul’s request. James and Hugh arrive a little later at Paul’s. Hannah, in the mean time, goes out for a walk. I ask about what type of walk she was going on, she just wanted to walk around the area close to her place. Not much ever comes of it. Victoria does make it to the meeting with Nadene to find that Nadene has an interest in helping Victoria along, on her way through the mine field that is coming her way. After her meeting with Nadene, Victoria gives Gracey a call to set up a place to meet to trade the file she has. As Gracey gets back to her place she checks her e-mail and finds some from her old team mates. (Check her background for info.) (I gave the player the assignment to tell me what was in the e-mail she sent back.) Gracey tries Paul, getting his voice mail, then she calls Victoria back and sets up the meeting for trading the file. Victoria tells Gracey she will give it back, but Gracey will owe her a favor later. After this short meeting, Gracey takes the last file back to the office. At this point in Hannah’s walk, I throw in that she notices that another vampire is in the area around her. She continues to walk around. After Gracey was done taking the files back the question of did she make copies of the files and after having a roll decide, I go with, she made copies of the important information. Victoria accepts that and leaves her alone. Gracey heads back to her haven, but decides along the way to stop at a park close by for so time to contemplate resent events. This leads into more mostly out of game chatter. During Gracey’s walk in the park, she meets up with a Nosferatu named Mithy. They have a short talk that ends without much resolution in the conversation.

We wrap up the night with everyone heading back to their havens for the next days rest.

About three weeks ago, I did some one-on-one storytelling with most of the players to give some more information about the world around them and spark some more interest in the game. I put up the preface texts that I used in these for the most part. In this, I am moving on to what happened after those little events. I am hoping for the players to write what happened in those events and their reactions to it. Now, on with the show…

As Gracey leaves her place of capture, she heads directly to her haven to retrieve the files that she had stolen a few nights earlier, only to take the files back to the office that they came form. Victoria heads for her haven to see what is left of all the information that she has been accumulating in the past nights. Christian exits the back room of the club his sire had put him in and heads out to see if he can find out some more information on Vern. James, in a huff about what his sire has told him, decides that there is little to do but wait and see. Hugh gets proactive and goes out to a “friend’s” place and has a talk with this friend about “something he over-heard a few nights ago”. Paul, after getting himself let go by one of the resident servants, goes on the prowl for some release. Gracey, on the trip home, remembers that Victoria had taken one of the files from her and gives her a call. Victoria, not being in the mood for requests, gives her the brush-off, even with Gracey making promises that may get her in too deep for her own good, to get the files back. As she makes her way into her apartment, Gracey gathers all of the files that she has and takes a cab back to the office that they came from. After dropping off the files she needs to relax and head out to the club they had gone to a little over a week ago “Altered Currents”. (Gracey will be there for some time as the rest of the group spends time this night.)

Victoria makes it to her haven to find that her sire’s office is cleaned out and much of her office has been gone through, but not much has been taken. This makes her take stock of her computer files, noticing that her e-mail traps are not bringing anything back to her. She does, however have an e-mail from Nadene Karmel asking her to call. (Check listing for info on Nadene) After some time, though, Victoria does give Nadene a call to see what is on her mind. Nadene just asks for Victoria to meet her tomorrow at an art museum that is protected. Victoria finds little fault in this plan and makes the arrangements. After this, she makes a call to Hugh.

Christian heads to the “Orange Ranger” to see if he can get anything from there, stops at the bar to talk with Jacob, the bartender, to locate were Andrea is. Jacob questions why Christian has not been around the place, to make some chatter and gives him the nod to head into the back room to go see Andrea. Arriving at the office, he waits a moment before he gets notice, as she was deep in paperwork. He gets right to the point and asks her about Vern to see if she has herd anything. She mentions that Vern is not one to frequent this type of place and he tends to be holier then that. Christian then heads out to one of the other bars that he had been a frequent customer. At (Random bar 1) “Open Traps” he runs into Missie, the head bartender and night manager and asks her about Vern to see if she had been hearing anything about him. She didn’t have anything at this time, but said she would keep her ears open for anything interesting. With a little passing conversation he heads out for the next place on his route. At (Random bar 2) “Nibble” he found Vincent, the lead bouncer, and asks if he could keep an ear out for anything on Vern. Vincent tells him that there has been some talk about a car getting mangled that was tied to some Vern guy. Christian chats with him and little and heads out to the next place. At (Random bar 3) “Random Acts” he was looking for someone mortal that he knows, but instead comes across Riley. Riley tells him that Vern’s Car got hit by some gang bangers. They killed two of his people and got the cops looking into why this happened so far out of “normal gang areas”. It has also gotten Vern investigating what is behind this new assault on him. This gave Christian something to think about and Riley something else to get to just giving Christian a heads up. A short time after Christian finds a place to take care of his hunger, he gets a call from Hugh, who invites him over to play with some “new toys”.

Hugh heads over a few blocks and finds one of his friends that he has had some less then legal dealings with. Hugh gets to the “office”, a back bedroom in a less then nice apartment complex, and talks with Samuel about these things he has been hearing, out on the street about this guy Vern that keeps mouthing off about how he is going to clean up around here and send Samuel and his friends packing. This makes Samuel less than happy to hear, but thankful for the heads up. Hugh tries to play it off as nothing too big and that Samuel can pay him later, but Samuel will have nothing to do with that and wants to pay right away. Samuel doesn’t like owing debts. He heads to the back room and grabs a few things, a .50 cal, a modified AK, and a pair of Beretta P92s that have been turned into full auto handguns and have 30 round mags. (Don’t need to say anything about that.) Hugh, looking at them decides on those Berettas, and gives Samuel his thanks. Hugh, having his new toys, heads straight to “Shit Hole” to test his new toys. After playing for a while, he gives Christian a call to see if he possibly wants to come and play also. Christian makes his way over and gets to test the new hardware. After Christian gets a few tries, Hugh gets a call from Victoria and invites her down, also. Victoria arrives and takes her turn with the new toys. The night was getting ready to creep into daylight, so everyone decides to head home.

Paul, hanging for awhile in the “study” before being let down by one of the servants, decides that it is time to find something to play with. This provides him with a distraction for a while. After cleaning up, he gives his PI, Adam Holt, a call and leaves a message to have him look into that warehouse fire from a few nights ago. Hanging up from his call to Adam, Paul was still felling restless and decides to head out to his normal haunt “Altered Currents”. He arrives there a short time after Gracey had gotten there. Feeling the presence of another vampire, he looks around, but does not find a face to go with the feeling. Paul, being himself, just looks for a great-looking piece of flesh, heads out onto the dance floor and starts dancing with whatever looked the best. Gracey, having noticed Paul when he came in, makes her way over to him, scaring away the person he started to dance with. They chat about a few things before Gracey wants to take a table so they can talk better. They make their way off the floor and to a table and sit for a short time before Gracey starts to talk about how they should continue to explore their relationship. Paul manages to be polite for a short time before getting bored with it. The day was coming soon so it gave him an easy way to get out of the chat without hurting Gracey’s feelings too much.

Well, they make it back to their havens and we start the next night…