#We all know Brick is secretely a nerd/geek

[bee-cried]

Brick spending 6 hours in a Minecraft world, building an elaborate empire with Redstone and Netherite.

...then later that night being like "...Woah wtf... whyyyyyy"

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 1, Chapter 7

Or: Lameth the Suburbanite Schlub

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

St. Louis—March 11, 1994

When we last left Dire McCann, he had three problems: the mystery of the Red Death and what connection he could have with the rising Nictuku, Flavia figuring out that he’s secretly an ancient and powerful Methuselah possessing a human body, and Rachel Young, the singer from The Club Diabolique and suspected assassin of Tyrus Benedict, stealing his mail from his office while he was out. Now he’s leaving his office and going home to have a drink, think about those problems a little more, and hit the hay.

For the first two pages, the narrative further establishes how the World of Darkness is a Harsher, Crueler Version of Our World, and how cautious, suspicious, and prepared McCann is as a result. He waits ten minutes and spends more money for a security guard to get his car out of a city-run underground parking lot.

Despite security cameras and motorcycle patrols, muggings, rapes, and murders were common occurrences in these parking garages. Rumors had it that the security patrols were the ones responsible for many of the crimes. No one knew for sure, as dead men told no tales.

Evil rent-a-cops aren’t the only plague on the city.

McCann didn’t mind spending the extra money if it avoided unnecessary confrontation. The city was a dangerous place. Urban America was increasingly becoming a jungle in which only the strongest and smartest survived. More people died these days from gunshot wounds than from any disease.

But don’t worry. Our government’s hard at work making sure preventable illnesses come in at a close second.

The government claimed that crime was under control. But nobody believed the politicians. The truth was on the streets.

Survival depended more on recognizing the perils that haunted daily life and adjusting to them than on superior firepower. A fact of life in the nightmarish world of modern society was that someone else always possessed superior weaponry.

Good to know in the Stark, Desolate Landscape of the World of Darkness, with all it’s vampires, werewolves, and wraiths, gun violence is still the bigger problem. ‘Murika!

McCann lives in the suburbs, instantly losing some cool points. I bet you thought, after all that talk about Urban America being a jungle where only the strong survive, he’d live in a shitty apartment in the city where you need to have street smarts to survive just getting to your floor. Nope. Suburbs. It makes all the stuff about how dangerous the city is sound like a sheltered suburbanite repeating something Tom and Susan told them in hushed tones at the Nelsons’ yard sale.

But McCann doesn’t want to live just anywhere. He wants somewhere private and secure.

McCann lived in a small brick home in a new development a few blocks off Highway 80. Located on a wide lot at the end of a quiet street, it was surrounded by a wrought-iron security fence, isolating the building from the rest of the block. Which was exactly what the detective desired. He wanted to be left alone. In these troubled times, no one considered his security measures the least bit unusual.

One of those homeowners, huh? There’s at least one house on the block that has security cameras or a pack of doberman guard dogs or something, even in the safest neighborhood. Who knows, there could be an “urban” person a few blocks closer to the highway just waiting to case your home.

He had bought the house for cash less than a year before, when he first decided to settle in the St. Louis area. He knew none of his neighbors and had no interest in meeting them. He worked at night and slept during the day. The few times he had seen anyone he had raised a hand in greeting, but said nothing. McCann considered his home a safe place to rest and relax. His office served as his base of operations. He socialized in neither of them.

Someone’s never watched The ‘Burbs. Buying a house with cash, surrounded by a wrought-iron leave-me-the-fuck-alone security fence, working and sleeping at odd hours, and never speaking to anyone? All while living near people often stereotyped as gossipy rumormongers who never mind their own business and spy on anyone “unusual”? A private person like McCann should never be able to rest and relax. He’d live in fear that somehow, someday, Tom Hanks would break into his house and discover all his World of Darkness secrets.

Alright, enough talking about suburbs like I don’t comfortably live in one. McCann parks his car in the garage but before he enters his house, he checks on his real security system by placing his hand on the wall.

Certain arcane rituals from the dawn of civilization imbued a home with the personality of its owner.

McCann’s house is also a smug secretive jerk who thinks it’s the greatest and wisest schemer ever. Aww, look, he’s comforting the sexy white house across the street whose neighbor burned down. Oh no, it accidentally gave away its biggest secret!

A master magician, and McCann was among the greatest ever to walk the Earth, could immediately sense any disturbance in their dwelling.

I know I said McCann only knew simple parlor tricks to barely pass as a mage, but I might’ve downplayed the true extent of his powers. A bit.

There was none. McCann was safe. At least for the moment, neither the Red Death nor the mysterious Ms. Young had discovered his hideaway.

Shame. It would’ve been funny if he went inside and scary ol’ Red Death was casually relaxing on his couch like Darkseid.

Later, McCann’s sitting in his sofa, drink in hand, listening to Billie Holliday on the stereo. We get a description of the room, and it’s nothing special. Sofa, coffee table, no TV. McCann believes in “simple comforts” but the real point is that he doesn’t have many valuable possessions because he moves around a lot, never staying in one place for long. Reminds me of a friend of mine. He said he had wanderlust, but I suspect he just didn’t know what he wanted to do in life, chasing one passion before getting distracted by another. Lost track of him somewhere down in Florida. McCann moves around for a very different reason, though. His wandering was necessary for his “complex scheme.”

But as he relaxes, he wonders if all his moving around and plotting is even worth it anymore.

At times, he wondered why he still bothered playing the game. So many of his kind no longer struggled. Some had plunged into the great unknown from which there was no return, while others had retreated from cruel reality into a dreamworld of their own creation. He was among a handful who continued fighting. In truth, the prize hardly seemed important any longer. It was the diversion that kept him amused.

The detective shook his head and finished his nightcap. He had engaged in this mental exercise a thousand times and never arrived at a satisfactory conclusion. He was like Ol’ Man River, ‘tired of living, but scared of dying.’ For those like himself, there were no easy answers. Just more questions.

McCann finishes his introspective episode and thinks about the group he learned the Red Death was part of thanks to his bullshit telepathy power; The Children of Dreadful Night. He’s never heard of them before, but the “Dreadful Night” part makes him suspect they’re a Gehenna cult. They’re typically groups of vampires who either want to prevent Gehenna or find a way to save themselves from the Antediluvians when it begins. Then there are the ones who want to help bring it about, but the narrative is focusing on the ones who fear Gehenna for one reason or other. Technically the Sabbat is one huge Gehenna cult, but they’re much more powerful and influential than the smaller groups the term usually refers to. More cults have been springing up lately.

As it did many mortals, the approaching end of the millennium frightened them.

Oh right, the Y2K bug. I doubt that’s calming the Kindred down either.

McCann used to think the cultists were just a bunch of fringe crazies, but now, with the Red Death...

Speaking of, remember when McCann used his brain probe on the Red Death and learned that he both recognized him and had a pretty awesome counter for his psychic powers? He’s worried about that too. It means that Red D. knows his true identity somehow. He’d kept a low profile the past few decades, presumably while separating his Dire McCann identity from whatever one he was using just before that, and preferred “to forward his schemes through unsuspecting agents.” Whatever those agents were doing, no one should have suspected McCann was involved.

He felt certain no evidence existed associating the human detective, Dire McCann, and Lameth, the Dark Messiah of the Kindred.

Wow, okay, so that’s one of the floweriest wannabe impressive not impressive fucking 90′s Image Comics titles you can give a shmuck like McCann. Not to mention redundant. We already had ~*~The Dark Angels~*~, did we also need ~*~The Dark Messiah~*~ too?

The funny thing is, I think Weinberg knew that title was over-the-top. Back when McCann was thinking about the Children of Dreadful Night, there’s a line about how “Kindred possessed a bizarre fondness for nicknames.” Like he thought that if he didn’t show at least a hint of irony, every nerd, geek, or corporate suit that worked on nerd and geek franchises would rise as one, like a perma-virgin hivemind, and institute a cross-genre ban on “The Dark” as part of a character’s title, rank, or nickname. And then where would vampire fiction be?

Shaking his head, McCann wondered if Anis was behind the attack. She was one of the few Kindred who knew many of his secrets. And, like him, she continued to plot, undaunted by the centuries.

Hold up. I know what you’re all thinking. Anis is a perfectly legit Arabic name. Quit giggling.

McCann considers the other weird things that happened last night. Ms. Young was genuinely terrified of the Red Death, convincing McCann that they weren’t working together, but he still believes she killed Tyrus Benedict, stole the Baba Yaga photos, and later stole his mail from his office. And there was that phone call he got, the one warning him of the attack before it happened, made from an out of service phone booth, whose information was erased from McCann’s recording devices the moment it ended. Or, as the narrative puts it:

Reality had twisted immediately after he received the warning, which hinted that an extremely potent mage was at work.

Oh great. Actual mages.

Then there’re the assassins. We already know that Makish hired them on the Red Death’s orders, but McCann doesn’t yet. 

He still has the billfold he pocketed from one of the assassins.

Except for the money he had removed earlier, it was absolutely empty. However, that didn’t mean that it couldn’t reveal secrets.

The detective rested the leather billfold on the coffee table. Placing both hands on it, he let loose the full power of his mighty will. The air wavered with titanic energies. Squeezing his eyes shut, McCann concentrated on a solitary word. Find.

Despite that whole thing about the air wavering with titanic energies, what he’s doing is most likely The Spirit’s Touch, a power from the third tier of the Auspex discipline, which let’s you use an object’s “resonance” to learn things about it and its owner. Pretty basic, and you don’t have to be a Dark Messiah from the dawn of time to use it, but handy for detective work like this.

This is also the second time that a Kindred discipline being used is described as someone using their “mighty will.” I know some powers were namedropped earlier, like Fires of the Inferno and Body of Fire, but it makes me wonder how many listed disciplines actually have names in-universe. If a player has their character activate Awe, in-universe does the character think “I’m using Awe, the first tier Presence power”? Or “I will extend my mighty will to get everyone’s attention”? Like how Superman’s laser vision is just called laser vision and not “Burning Gaze of Rao.” 

Not that Weinberg should’ve used the discipline name every time. “The detective used Auspex” would be much duller writing.

The detective learns that the billfold’s from Washington, D.C.  It was stolen from a government file clerk by the assassin, just so he’d have somewhere to keep the money McCann found in it. We learn about the Kindred’s political situation in Washington. The part of it that doesn’t involve the spreading gang wars.

The nation’s capital had long been a source of friction between the Camarilla and the Sabbat. Though the Camarilla controlled the city, both organizations had agents in the suburbs.

Must be like a cross between Desperate Housewives and Cannibal Holocaust out there. A bit of Weeds, too.

The constantly shifting population also brought in new Kindred. Each sect controlled politicians and lobbyists.

I always had my suspicions about the Long Pig Lobby.

However, the frequent changes in government officials thwarted their ambitions for absolute domination of the government.

That darned democracy, making life in Washington for the vampires inconvenient. Someone should do something abou- Actually, no, that joke doesn’t work. Certain officials come and go in the capital even faster nowadays.

The city was a potential battleground between the cults. The Camarilla held it, but Sabbat forces surrounded it. Sooner or later, warfare between the two groups was bound to explode.

McCann had carefully avoided the city. He disliked being too visible anyplace where the balance of power was in flux. He worked best when in the shadows. However, this assassination attempt hinted that perhaps he had made a mistake by ignoring the metropolis.

After much time spent thinking and thinking, the detective’s all thunk out and decides to go to bed. He mentally checks his magic defenses on the way to his bedroom. And one other thing.

With a wan smile, he rested one hand on a small, detailed sculpture resting on the end table in his bedroom. Carved from sandstone, it depicted a man’s face remarkably similar to his own. Not particularly large or impressive, the statue originally came from Egypt and was over four thousand years old. It had been with McCann for a very long time.

Did you get that Dire McCann is super old? Need it hammered in a little more? You dumb bastards?

If you got rid of that last sentence, this could be a nice little moment for McCann’s character. Him looking at the statue, briefly allowing himself to feel nostalgia for an age and people gone by. A moment where he drops the master schemer act and let’s the old man out. A little heartwarming. A little sad. But the last sentence turns it into another reminder of something we already know.

Eh, maybe I’m being too nitpicky. Looking too hard for flaws.

The detective grinned, remembering Flavia’s tale of Masqueraders. It was an entertaining fable. He wondered how she would react to the truth. Maybe, someday, he would tell her.

No, fuck it, this one I have something to say about.

Back when Flavia was explaining her “tale of Masqueraders,” this was how McCann reacted:

McCann laughed, trying to appear amused. “What utter nonsense.”

and

McCann forced himself to remain quiet. He had said too much already.

And when he’s back in his office, reflecting on his conversation with Flavia:

McCann, sitting behind his desk in his office an hour later, sighed heavily. The detective folded his arms across his chest. For all her grief, the Dark Angel had not stayed in mourning very long. He trusted Flavia not to reveal her suspicions to the Prince for as long as it suited her purposes, and not a second more. If not handled properly, the Dark Angel could prove to be as dangerous to him as the Red Death

Those aren’t the actions and thoughts of a guy who a few hours later would be thinking “Silly bitch, what an amusing fable. Maybe one day I’ll tell her what I really am.” That’s someone whose intimidated by what she knows, and wary of what she’ll tell her fifth-generation vampire boss.

Flavia said that Masqueraders are Methuselahs who possess mortal bodies while in torpor in order to experience life like a mortal again, while giving them some Kindred powers to protect them. McCann is secretly a Methuselah named Lameth, over four thousand years old and notable enough to earn a title like “The Dark Messiah.” We’re also told that his current body is mortal, aside from a few Kindred powers. A detail we’ll learn in a few chapters may complicate things, but for now the similarities are spot on, and back in Chapter Five McCann knew that.

Flavia may be the very definition of what feminist media critics call a Strong Female Character (i.e. a character whose presented as a well-written woman because she’s physically strong and capable of *gasp* holding her own against a man, but in the overall narrative is a satellite character revolving around a male character, often used as fanservice, a love interest, or a prize to be won despite her “strength”) and maybe it’s a leap of logic to get “secret ancient vampire” from a human who can stop one of her attacks, but she more or less figured McCann out, and he knows it. The detective shouldn’t get all haughty or dismissive now because she might not know every detail. Or because she doesn’t know he’s actually ~*~Lameth, the Dark Messiah of the Kindred~*~ and not Sven, the Socially Awkward Apostle of the Kindred. She got your number, dick.

Anyway, the smug bastard goes to sleep and the chapter ends.