#antediluvians talk about caine

[gorbalsvampire]

11, 19, 21, 24

11. How many characters do you have?

Errrrrrrrrr...

Not counting pure SPCs for chronicles I've run, just "OCs" in the general sense... about fifteen? Riccardo, Luciana, Santino, Alistair, Sorcha (Hecata squad); Lamorne (forbidden blorbo); Penny, Riley (PCs in other people's chronicles); Yaritsa and Myriam (Tzimisce PC and her sire whomst I have queued up); Zhao Wen-Jun and all her associated names (VTMB); and Laetitia, Dorian, Sylvester and Dominique, the core cast of Bloodspell, a game I made and a novella I have as of yet no idea how to plot.

19. Which character is least spoken about? Speak about them now!

I want to talk about my Tzimisce! I've not really had an angle on playing one before, but Blood Sigils dropped and gave me the Koldunic Sorcery angle around the time I actually started paying attention to Animalism and watched The Suicide Squad, wanting to adopt Ratcatcher II.

Put all that together and Yaritsa fell out of the air, fully formed; horrid, sassy little street witch who's bonded with the water and knows exactly what's going on thanks to her army of rats. She doesn't like shoes and she comes with an entourage (armed ghoul squad and her ailing, befuddled mortal dad).

Her sire, Myriam, is a concept I've had kicking around for ages but not found the oomph to use, probably because I was being smooth brained and thinking she had to be a Harbinger. The concept, in two words: Saint Death. Ancilla koldun occupies local Santa Muerte cult: they're her Herd, but they're her Herd and she looks out for them, and she's functionally adopted Yaritsa along with Embracing her. Sometimes a character isn't complete by themselves; they need to be part of someone else's deal.

21. Tremere or Salubri?

God, what a choice. I can only hope this question explodes and kills me.

This is tricky because I don't like either of them strictly according to their presentation. I've used both as SPCs and they've been fairly impactful, but... eh.

I've discoursed at great length about the Tremere thing in the past, bottom line is I like them as medieval alchemists who backdoored their way into vampirism and decided to take over, but I can take or leave their Ars Magicka baggage and Thaumaturgy and all the high level "lore" cruft.

Salubri are similarly eaten by their role in the metaplot and so overdesigned that I have trouble with them existing in any other capacity for several thousand years before the Tremere came along. The original "there are only seven and they all diablerise their sire on Embrace and they're all eighth generation" was the start of all that "vampions" bullshit that I don't really vibe with. The super sekrit Sabbat Salubri popping up in Hong Kong all way of the warrior stylee is more of that Nineties wuxiaboo crap that brought us Kindred of the East. I also don't give a fuck about the Baali and the "revelation" that those are Saulot's fault has no impact for me - OK, whatever, I didn't buy the idea of the vampire messiah anyway, who cares about Antediluvians, we have real problems!

You know what, I've decided. It's Tremere. They're on thin ice - every time a Tremere player whines about losing Thaumaturgy in V5 I reach for my revolver, you still have Rituals, you have to play by the same Discipline rules as everyone else, die mad about it - but I can make them into something I vibe with a lot easier than I can the snowflake sparkledog special clan.

24. Caine or Lilith?

Ahi hai, ahi hai, ahi hai Lilitu...

No contest. The recurring subtext of all my games since 2005 has been "the Bahari are right about everything, and they 'won' Gehenna while the rest of you weren't even sure what's going on." The Mother of Monsters is absolutely the most important figure in the World of Darkness (if she literally exists) and she has the coolest cult by a country mile (even if she doesn't). Lilith, and the Bahari, fuck, and they fuck nasty, up against a tree, rubbed red and raw and bleeding. Don't you wish your spiritual icon was hot like mine?

... that went to a place, didn't it?

[catenaaurea]

Do you know of good resources for trying to further understand the early parts of genesis? I’m not that well versed in the Old Testament and keep asking myself “well why would God do that”. The historicity of the Old Testament. Like I believe in it, but I don’t think it’s factual that Seth and Cain’s and their descendants lived like 800+ years like the genealogy says they do…

Yea so you’re gonna want A Catholic Introduction to the Old Testament by Brant Pitre and John Bergsma and I think they’re in the process of publishing a new book against the documentary hypothesis but I’m coming up empty looking for info about it online, will post it when I find it. Those two are total Old Testament powerhouses.

Also, the antediluvian patriarchs did live for that long, I recently had this conversation with a friend. Obviously that seems outlandish to some people today but a lot of the great saints talk about this. Basically, after the fall, the lifespan of humans was very high and gradually fell due to the increase of sin and its effects on the world and culminated in the birth of Christ. On top of this, God gave special graces to certain patriarchs (see Simeon in the NT) for especially long life to carry out their mission on earth. If you’re willing to believe that God became man and other miracles I fail to see how granting people extra long life is somehow beyond the pale.

Augustine addresses this explicitly in City of God book XV chapters IX and X:

[mxldito]

👑 What is their opinion on the Camarilla?

💥 The Anarchs?

🧥 The Sabbat?

💞 Do they have any opinions on the Gangrel?

vtmb oc meme

PRISM MAKING ME GO SICKO MODE. Long post!

👑 - Coyote kills those guys. They do not like the Camarilla in the slightest and has taken down multiple members with their Coterie. They've straight up killed the Prince of London, several of those who stood in their way, the puppet Baron, and triggered a coup within a Camarilla-headed Tremere Chantry. The Fear The Old Blood Coterie has chunks of those guys in their stool and they'd do it again.

They understand the Traditions and why they're important and might even agree with some, but Coyote doesn't stand for the abuse of power that comes with enforcing them. Being a younger vampire, not being allowed to question those whose domain you travel in is a huge one. The fact that you practically don't exist unless you introduce yourself to your local Prince and can get in trouble for it?

"Who the fuck is even in charge? If those bastards at the top of the Ivory Tower are so big and bad, why aren't they here on the streets standing with us?" Why would they care about the will of faceless Elders?

They didn't ask to be Embraced, so why would they want to play by rules that are geared against them? As far as they can tell, those Elders are out of touch and don't have the best interest of younger vampires in mind. Coyote's going to do what they think if right for them and their own.

💥 - As much as I'd like to say GANG GANG, Coyote's been disappointed a couple of times by the Anarchs despite being an Anarch themselves. There's a bit of a history of Anarchs talking about revolution but how often has it just been talk talk talk? The spineless ones are just as annoying to them as the strictest Camarilla. Complacency makes their skin crawl. Not even taking into account straight up corruption they've witnessed firsthand.

Coyote does not believe in a "second Carthage". They appreciate optimism and spirit of those who do, but seeing as the Second Inquisition has wiped out a big chunk of Kindred and seeing how humans treat EACH OTHER. They don't believe vampires can assimilate back into human life and think it's foolish to think they can.

They are determined not to be like those guys. They want action, they want other Sects to walk up and see them in action and recognize that they're something to be taken seriously. You can either join them wholeheartedly, be on your best behavior when you visit, or you can turn around and leave the way you came.

The idea here is to create an environment where younger Kindred don't have to be "butt-wipers" for their elders. Elders are just as welcome to join but are expected to contribute and be willing to learn and listen. Everybody looks out for everybody and has a say in what goes on.

🧥 - Coyote is much more welcoming of Well Behaved Sabbat than they'll ever be of most Camarilla. Those who arrive in their domain and immediately cause trouble get the "Mad Dog Treatment": mercifully put down. But if they're simply passing through, "play nice", and need a place to crash, they're welcome to stick around.

While they've yet to admit it, I think that within their heart of hearts, Coyote agrees with them that vampires really are the progeny of Caine and the Antediluvians. Other than that, nothing else. They don't buy into any of the Gehenna stuff. They see the Sabbat as a violent doomsday cult and nothing more. If they could swipe some of their members, they will. Having an enemy in common and such.

It's also worth mentioning that Coyote's blood brother ran off with the Sabbat so maybe that explains their willingness to be a little more patient than others might be. "IF YOU'RE SABBAT AND HAVE MET A YOUNG MAN NAMED MICHAEL MIRANDA, PLEASE CONTACT ME."

💞 - "THE CANKLES ARE CRINGE." Coyote gets along very well with the Gangrel in the domain, especially their best friend and Sheriff Morgan O'Broin. They also like his mom and his wife. :) Joke aside, they have a pretty solid respect for the Gangrel. They dig the whole transcendentalist vibe some of them have. There's a sizable population of them within the domain, so they do their best to make sure things go over smoothly with them. Stan Warlord Delilah Graeme for clear skin!

[supermauswithagun]

Az Ősatyák beszélgetnek a vámpírok eredetéről

eredeti: itt fordítottam: én

Ventrue: Oké, fiúk, üljetek le. Gondolom, kíváncsiak vagytok, hogy miért hívtam ide mindannyiótokat. Toreador: Fogjuk rá. Két óra múlva lesz egy nagyon fontos találkozóm, MUSZÁJ ott lennem, nem akarok elkésni! Ventrue: Persze, persze. Parancs. /kintről kopácsoló hangok/ Hát, én nem tudok rólatok túl sokat, fiúk, de a Gyermekem… zavarbaejtő kérdéseket tett föl nekem, és én… Malkáv: Csak mondd nekik, hogy ha egy anyuka és egy apuka nagyon szeretik egymást… Ventrue: Kuss, Malkáv. Szóval azt akarják tudni, honnan jövünk, miért, hogyan, és minden ilyesmi. Azt hiszem, itt az ideje, hogy válaszoljunk. /csend/ Brujah: Most mi a francért minket kérdezel?! Faszom se tudja! Saulot: HOGY BESZÉLSZ?! Brujah: Bocsánat! Elfelejtettem, hol is vagyok! Ventrue: Te mit gondolsz, Ralph? Úgyis mindig mindenbe beleütöd az orrod. Nosferatu: Nem, engem... nem hívnak többé Ralph-nak. A mai naptól szólítsatok Nosferatunak. /csend/ Ravnos: Nem’tom. A Ralph illik hozzád. Nosferatu: Nem! Nem akarom, hogy mindörökre rajtam ragadjon ez a név! Ventrue: Hagyd békén, Ravnos. Toreador: Végül is, ha már témánál vagyunk… Ventrue: Akkor meg mi van?! Toreador: Én a Toreador nevet veszem fel. /még nagyobb csend/ Haqium: Ugyan, Norman, sosem láttál bikát, nemhogy harcoltál volna vele! Toreador: HAGYJÁL BÉKÉN!!! Ravnos: Azt akartam mondani, hogy tele… Mindegy. Ventrue: VISSZATÉRHETNÉNK a témánkhoz?! Lasombra: Azt hiszem, Ralph, a Nosferatu nagyon jól hangzik. Nosferatu: És sokkal könnyebb agyarakkal a szádban kimondani. Ventrue: URAIM!!! /csend/ Ventrue: Oké, valami ötlet? Tzimisce: Uh ... Ventrue: Igen, Tzimisce? Tzimisce: Ja. Talán valami betegség volt, nem? Saulot: Neeeeem ... Nem hiszem. Tudnék róla, ha az lett volna. Malkáv: Óóó! Óóó! Van egy ötletem! Ventrue: /felnyög/ Mi? Malkáv: Óóó! Óóó! Mi MIND… földönkívüliek vagyunk! Bezony! A… Yuggoth bolygóról! Brujah: Malkáv? Malkáv: Jah? Brujah: Dögölj meg. /csend/ Malkáv: Nagyon rossz, hogy nincs Uralom diszciplínád, ugye? Brujah: Az IGAZI férfiaknak nincs szükségük Uralomra! /paff/ Malkáv: Áúúú! Ravnos: Oké, kitaláltam.. Ventrue: Igen? Ravnos: Nem vagyunk IGAZIBÓL vámpírok, csak azt HISSZÜK. Ventrue: Hmmm ... nem rossz ... De a hülyébbek úgy akarják majd bebizonyítani, hogy nincs igazad, hogy kiülnek a napra. Lasombra: ÉS? Hulljon a férgese, kisebb probléma a népességszaporulat, kevesebb minden lében kanál Gyermek tesz fel ostoba kérdéseket. Toreador: Lasombra, ez beteges. Lasombra: Hé, hát a bátyám őrzője vagyok én? Tzimisce: Ott a pont, barátom. Toreador: Undorítóak vagytok. /vihorászás/ Saulot: A bátyám őrzője... Hé! Erről eszembe jutott valami! Ismeritek azokat a fickókat, akik olyan hülye törölközőkkel a fejükön mászkálnak… Haqium: VIGYÁZZ, háromszemű! Saulot: Bocsánat. Szóval, van az a történetük a csávóról, aki megöli a testvérét és megátkozzák, értitek… Sutekh: Assszt mondod, áthkozott? Hmmm ...nekem tetssszik! Nosferatu: Jah, de ha te mondod, senki nem fogja elhinni. Tremere: Tudom már! Varázslattal csináltuk! /csend/ Brujah: Te meg ki a kurvaélet vagy?! Saulot: HOGY BESZÉLSZ?! Brujah: Bocsánat. Tremere: Hogy válaszoljak a kérdésre, Tremere vagyok, Arrogáns Összeesküvő Hátbatámadó Mágus, szolgálatotokra! Saulot: Egy pillanat, neked itt sem kéne lenned 1314-ig! Tremere: És? Én… az… Idő Orákuluma vagyok. Ja! Ez az! Akkor vagyok, amikor akarok! Ventrue: Egy halandó, igaz? Hé, Tremere! Tremere: Ja? Ventrue: KOTRÓDJ INNÉT. Tremere: Persze. /ajtócsapódás/ Tremere: /kintről/ Francba. Meg kell tanulnom, hogy csinálja ezt. Ventrue: Na, valamit kezdhetnénk ezzel az elátkozás dologgal. Gangreltől még egy szót sem hallottunk, és ebben a kritikus helyzetben szükség lenne egy nő véleményére. Mit gondolsz, Gangrel? /csend/ Ventrue: Gangrel? /hosszú csend/ Ventrue: Látta valaki Gangrelt? Ravnos: Izzééé, egész pontosan, egy picit összevesztünk… Malkáv: Óóó, mami már nem szeret téged?! Ravnos: Kapd be. Malkáv: Kutyapózban csinálja? /baff/ Ravnos: Köszönöm, Brujah. Brujah: Nem gáz, haver. Ez a csávó úgyis hülye, mint a segg. Saulot: HOGY BESZÉLSZ?! Brujah: Bocsánat. Ventrue: Oké, szóval mi van ezzel az átokkal? Saulot: Hát, azt mondják, az első ember fiainak áldozatot kellett bemutatni Istennek. Az első testvér növényeket meg ilyesmit adott, a másik meg állatvért. Mindenki: Ja! Rendben! Jól hangzik! Tök jó! Saulot: Szóval, az idősebb – azt hiszem, Káin – megölte Ábelt, a fiatalabbat, és Isten megátkozta, mert ez volt az első gyilkosság. Haqium: Fejlődőképes ember volt ez a Káin. Sutekh: Ssszóval egy pssszichopata zöldségesthől ssszármazunk? Mi lenne, hogyha a MEGGYILKOLTH fél lenne az ősssünk, így mi lennénk Isssthen válassszthotthai, az ISSSTHENI ERŐ ÖRÖKÖSEI, az… Malkáv: Neked valami istenkomplexusod van, nem, Sutekh? Mesélj nekem az édesanyádról! Többször bezárt a szekrénybe? Vagy… /paff/ Brujah: Utolsó figyelmeztetés, hülyegyerek! Saulot: HOGY BESZÉLSZ?! /paff/ Saulot: ÁU! /csend/ Brujah: Hű, Saulot, gyorsan begyógyítottad! Ventrue: Sutekh, kérlek, szállj le a székről! Tremere: Különben nekem tetszik az „Isten által megátkozva” - ötlet. Ventrue: TE meg hogy jöttél be?! Tremere: Kapcsolatok. Tudsz te egyáltalán VALAMIT?! Hé, Saulot! Saulot: Ja? Tremere: Csak MOST jöttem rá, hol is láttalak már. Beszélhetnék veled odakinn? Nem lesz hosszabb öt percnél. Megígérem. Saulot: Persze. Megbízható embernek tűnsz. /ajtócsapódás/ Lasombra: Kíváncsi vagyok, mit akarhat… na, tehát… Toreador: Nekem az idősebb testvér szimpatikusabb. Elbűvölő, uralkodói jelenség, aki nagyon gondosan áldozatot mutat be az istenének, de ezt féltékenységből szörnyűséges tettként értelmezik – amit persze később megbán – de már TÚL KÉSŐ, hogy elkerülje egy KEMÉNYSZÍVŰ isten iszonyú büntetését, aki arra ÁTKOZZA,hogy örökké bolyongjon a Földön, KITASZÍTVA embertársai közül! ÓH, micsoda horror! Óh, micsoda EMBERSÉG! Óh, micsoda ANGST! Brujah: Mi az az angst? Sutehk: Ó, asz egy keressszthfélesség, egy hurkos izével a végén. Az enyémek imádják. Brujah: Ó. Nem értem… Toreador: Korlátoltak. /kintről sikolyok/ Tzimisce: Mi a halál volt ez?! Nosferatu: Saulot hangja volt. HÉ! HALLGASSATOK EL OTT KINN TI KETTEN!!! /nyílik az ajtó/ Tremere: Ó, sajnálom, ööö...Saulot aszongya, hogy aszongya, ööö, neki.... el kellett mennie – nagyon gyorsan, hát...ööö, és nagyon örült neki, és, ööö, örült, hogy megismert titeket, fiúk… Nosferatu: Csak én látom úgy, vagy tényleg nagyon sápadt? Ventrue: Kit érdekel? Visszatérve erre az átkozás dologra.... Lasombra: Szóval, akkor a Gyermekei vagyunk? Mert ha igen, nem kéne tudnunk, hol is van most? Malkav: Izééé, megcsinált minket, és utána elfutott. Nagyon gyorsan. Ravnos: Nem, nem nem, először MÁSOKAT csinált, és ŐK csináltak MINKET... Toreador: És megbánta a Szörnyűséget, Amint A Földre Bocsátott! És megtagadta közöttünk az életet! Malkav: És aztán nagyon gyorsan elfutott. Toreador: Ha neked ez kell. Ventrue: De hogy lettünk ennyire különbözőek? Toreador: Az Átok különbözőképpen működik… Nosferatu: Ja! Én voltam a legjóképűbb ember a világon… Ravnos: Ja, persze. Lasombra: És nekem volt tükörképem! Brujah: Lehetek én egy intelligens filozófus? Ravnos: És Toreadornak volt ízlése… Malkav: És én bolond voltam! /csönd/ Ventrue: Azt hiszem, most kísértjük a jószerencsénket. Sutekh: Van jobb ötlet? Ventrue: Hát, akkor szavazzuk meg. Varázslat? Tremere: Igenis. Ventrue: Ez egy. /csönd/ Ventrue: Oké, földönkívüliek a Yuggoth bolygóról? Malkav: Huszonhárom. Ventrue: Malkáv, a többszörös személyiségeid nem számítanak. Malkav: Ajjj… Ventrue: Isten választott gyermeke? ... Sutekh, Lasombra, Tzimisce. Még valaki? Haqium: Igenis. Ventrue: Oké, ez négy. Egy pszichopata zöldséges megátkozott gyermekei? ... Ez négy, magamat is számolva öt. /morgolódás/ Lasombra: Befolyásoltad a szavazást, te köpönyegforgató bürokrata! Ventrue: Ha nem tetszik, alapíts SAJÁT csapatot! Lasombra: Talán fogok is. Ventrue: Oké, akkor megbízlak titeket, hogy terjesszétek ezt a történetet a Gyermekeiteknek, és az EMBEREIM majd küldenek egy jegyzést három példányban a TI embereiteknek, mielőtt elkezdődik az új költségvetési év. Ülés lezárva! /kalapácsütések, zaj és mozgolódás/ Toreador: Italt, valaki? Malkav: Szerintem Tremere már evett. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaahhhh.... Tzimisce: Miért dobtad ki az ablakon, Brujah? Brujah: Nem’tom, haver, meg kellett tennem... /duzzog/ Engem úgysem ért meg egyikőtök sem… Haqium: /suttogva/ Hé, Tremere! Tremere: Mi van? Haqium: Saulot – kicsináltad, nem? Megetted. Szárazra szívtad. Tremere: Ööö… ja, azt csináltam. Haqium: /rövid csend után/  Milyen volt?

[connorhasaknife]

i just realised that people might not understand a few terms in the door theory, just gonna clarify some terms hahaa

for @the-teapot-king specifically :)

Also what’s the deal with this Camarila they mention and who are all these nosferatus and tremeres and stuff? Different vampire clans right? How come they’re different if they’re all from Carmilla as the first vampire?

the entity is essentially the vatican's secret military force. they collaborated with other secret services in like, 2001, and realised "holy shit vampire exist?" before anyone else did. they're responsible for the purge of london in lore, which is why they were important to the theory. in recent nights they did disrupt the 2nd convention of prague, which, lol cammies eat shit

SPEAKING of cammies, the camarila is like, your main faction of vampires. theyre traditionally the biggest and the strongest, and definitely the most central and organised group. theyre pretty much awful, and responsible for the masquerade and enforcing it. the camarila are the reason pyotr didn't want to start a blood hunt, for instance. they like to pretend they're a lot older than they are, so the camarila mirrors medieval vampire society, but it's only been around for as long as the first inquisition. that isn't long, in vampire terms. it's lead by the inner circle, which we know nothing about, which is usually just an excuse for storytellers to flesh them out in sessions (because yes, wod/vtm is first and foremost a tabletop game). the prince we keep hearing about is the leader of the local area, and she most likely reports to someone higher up the literal food chain. diablerie is one of their biggest sins as well, lmao

when they talk about nosferatu and tremere and all that, they're referring to vampire bloodlines. the bloodline a vampire is depends on who sired them, essentially, so the most popular bloodlines are the camarila sponsored ones. this changes, though, like lasombra and banu haqim joined the camarila in like 2012 and the gangrel left in '99. the brujah left at the same time the lasombra and banu joined, but since the series takes place in 2001 none of that is really relevant. the main bloodlines in 2001 were ventrue, toreador, tremere (kevin), nosferatu (pyotr), gangrel (apeboy), malkavian, and brujah (shitbeard) if that gives you any idea about them

the first vampire is caine, like the biblical caine. he was cursed by god with vampirism and the world has been worse ever since. caines blood, or vitae, is what makes a vampire a vampire. the thickness of that blood is how removed a vampire is from caine, so when a vampire commits diablerie they make their blood more condensed like someone of a higher generation, making them more powerful. vampires become more powerful over time anyways, so vampires dont really need to be born a high generation. generations are also the number of steps removed from caine, so his children are generation 2 and the antediluvians are generation 3

speaking of antediluvians, they're the originators of each clan of vampires- think of them like more homicidal primarchs, if you watched tts. the relationship every bloodline has to its antediluvian is very very strained, because the antediluvians generally want to eat and/or inflict some horrible fate on their children

for example, the malkavian antediluvian (malkav) has literally become a network of madness inside the mind of every malkavian and intends to use them as a body to puppeteer whilst his body slumbers in jerusalem, for one example

luckly for every vampire in the world, these antediluvians are fast asleep. everyone wants to keep it that way, because when they wake up, they're going to be very hungry. and when you're at that level of power, the only way to keep that hunger sated is to eat your own kids. a lot of them. it's essentially vampire doomsday- actually, it literally is, considering that gehenna is a thing

(gehenna is prophecied vampire doomsday)

let me know if anyone has any more questions!

[ryttu3k]

Some Vampire the Masquerade OCs (a couple of former Revenants and their daughter) I'm noodling around with but haven't fully developed yet! Just popping the ideas down at this point.

Ecdysis was born in 1921 to the Obertus Revenant family, and was raised amongst like... all of it. They've known their entire life that she’s a special kind of person that's in between a human and a Cainite, they're familiar with Sabbat society (especially in Montreal), if the timeline works then she literally was in the Official Creepy Children's Choir that performed at Sabbat events. She grew up with the expectation that if they did well enough, they'd eventually get the Embrace - although, first, she would have to perpetuate the Obertus line and have at least one kid.

Several degrees later, they eventually were arranged to marry and have kids with another Obertus, decided she was going through their rebellious phase (they were in their sixties, which gave her the physical appearance, maturity, and impulse control of, like, a sixteen-year-old), and promptly ran away.

Settling in Sabbat-held 1980s New York, she ended up meeting Mirielle, another Revenant (this one a Zantosa). Miri had her own duties, although she couldn't really talk about them; eventually, when the inevitable happened and they fell for each other, Miri finally disclosed her secret, which had to do with a certain not-as-consumed-as-expected Antediluvian. In 1988, Ecdysis ended up falling pregnant, and the pair ultimately decided to keep it, officially marrying.

After Paige was born (in 1991, Revenant pregnancies lasting about three years), having both decided, okay, duty done, they approached some of their Sabbat contacts for the Embrace, with Ecdysis becoming Tzimisce as she had always intended, and Miri opting to join the Toreador (both have kept their Revenant disciplines, with Ecdysis having Obfuscate instead of the usual Animalism, and Miri keeping Vicissitude instead of Celerity). After only surviving the Battle of New York in 1999 by going into hiding, needing to keep her family safe, Miri reluctantly abandoned her duties and the family fled, settling in Seattle.

As of 2021, the Drakes (as they have renamed themselves) are established in Seattle. Ecdysis is currently passing themself off as a Malkavian (which kind of works given that they genuinely have OCD), while Miri is still openly a Toreador and just doesn't mention the little Vicissitude thing as well. Paige is now thirty, pretending to be an ordinary seven-year-old and Miri’s younger sister instead of her kid, being homeschooled and slightly more aware than the average kid of the world around them.

Personality-wise, Ecdysis is very serious and intellectually curious. Both before and after their Embrace, they knew they wanted to investigate Cainite origins, and although she was raised with the Path of Honorable Accord, they now follow the Path of Caine. Meeting Miri (and a slightly terrifying but ultimately fascinating encounter with the Eldest) has convinced them that this is an absolutely vital path to follow. They have OCD and tend towards paranoia, although she feels the latter is pretty justified, being a Tzimisce and former Revenant in a Camarilla city, and with a kid to protect.

Miri started out as the typical hedonistic Zantosa, and while she did serve as faithfully an attendant to the Eldest as she could (since the alternative to finding dinner was being dinner), she always has chafed at the lack of freedom to really cut loose, and would often disappear for weeks at a time to go partying. She's since settled a bit and is starting to learn how to express herself through writing, although the double whammy of the Toreador bane and the Zantosa weakness does mean she gets easily hooked into... everything, and has the Addiction flaw (alcoholic, only drinking from drunks). She's well aware of how much of an issue this is, too, especially with a kid to look after, but has yet to be able to kick it. She has since returned to New York and learned of the Eldest’s departure, and occasionally joins Ecdysis in their studies in hoping to find out where her master has gone.

Paige is still... more or less mentally seven and a half, although she has a fair bit more life experience and knowledge. Her parents try to let her be as carefree as possible, although she’s fully aware of their origins, her status as a Revenant, that her parents are vampires and she’ll probably end up as one too, and a bit about both the Camarilla and Sabbat (mostly by description for the latter - she vaguely remembers New York, since she didn’t leave until she was eight, but she was physically and mentally a toddler at the time and it’s extremely vague). Still, being a Revenant and her parents’ background really does mean she has no idea how to do the whole Human thing. Who would she even learn from? Best to hang around with her parents and the few others who know the family’s background. Secretly, though, she would really like a friend...

(L-R: Ecdysis, Paige, Miri)

[robotslenderman]

I was talking with @ryttu3k and ended up developing Maddy’s sire a bit, off-the-cuff.

Recap -- my headcanon (and obviously this only works for a Malkavian Fledgling) is that the Cabbie was not actually Caine, he was a Malkavian Methuselah suffering delusions that he was Caine.

So during my playthrough of VTMB he decides he’s going to create a new Second Generation of Kindred to make their own new Antediluvians. He Embraces Maddy, literally gets bored and wanders off, and then joins up with Jack to prank all the Kindred in LA with the Sarcophagus. He gets bored again while waiting for it to pay off, and ends up LARPing a cab driver.

The reason why all the Kindred in LA are on edge is because he constantly emits a very mild Dementation aura.

(I figured that a Malk pranking people and being delusional made more sense than “Caine is literally your personal cab driver because of... Reasons, I guess?” although obviously it only works with a Malk Fledgling.)

So, stuff about this particular Methuselah, whom I will just refer to as “Cabbie”:

He has a very tenuous grasp on reality -- a lot of the time, he is intensely brain foggy, although he very rarely ever seems like it if you talk to him.

His brainfog, combined with his delusions, is why he has such a short attention span. He basically feels stoned all the time, even if his body and brain are perfectly imitating whoever he’s having delusions about.

These delusions can last from a few seconds to decades at a time, and some of them are recurring. Some of them are random, some come back in specific contexts.

He just has this constant sensation of being crowded by other people, like he’s standing in the middle of a packed crowd, and their ideas and personas blend and leak into him. 

But it’s also very psychic -- when he’s in a delusion, he essentially acts exactly as the real person does with no foreknowledge of them whatsoever. Speaks the same, knows the same languages, acts the same, etc.

Due to this he keeps accidentally advancing other Kindred’s and Methuselahs’ plans, thinking they’re his and having psychic knowledge of them. The Methuselah that are still around (such as Marcus Vitel and Mithras) know him well enough they just let him do it and consider it a stroke of good luck when he shows up.

But it always freaks out the younger Elders when this random person turns up, pretends to be them, makes their life easier for them (or makes the same mistakes said Elder was about to make and therefore makes things harder for them), and then vanishes again.

So yeah, Marcus Vitel, Mithras, et al know him. He doesn’t know them (his brain is too fried most of the time to really remember any of them except when he has a rare lucid moment), but when he shows upthey’re like “ah yes, it’s that guy, may as well take a few nights off and let him handle things for me until he wanders off again.” They often take notes on what he does, what results he gets, and whether he incorporates other delusions and what those personas then do -- it can be very illuminating and he often speeds up their plans for them if he’s playing a whole cast of people when he drops by. (”Ah, he thinks he’s Queen Anne now, so I’ll be able to find out if she’s plotting something based on how he acts!”) They usually don’t even get mad if he blows things up in their faces because that’s just sort of a consequence of it, and he wasn’t going to do anything they weren’t anyway -- they just treat it as a warning that they were about to make a mistake. His presense is usually only a problem when he shows up thinking he’s their enemy, in which case they just point him somewhere else or distract him until he moves on.

Every now and then, every few decades to a century or so, he’ll suddenly end up lucid and it’s like waking up from a multi-decade drug and alcohol binge. “I did what? wtf.”

He accepted long ago that he’s completely out of his mind 99% of the time. He just goes with it. He’s just relieved he somehow manages to survive.

He’s the most dangerous when one delusion lasts long enough to see a payoff on a scheme.

When he’s not delusional he’s usually in some kind of dementia.

Sometimes even when he’s delusional he can deliberately invoke his delusions to advance the plans of... whoever his chief delusion is at that moment. Say he thinks he’s Mithras and Mithras wants an artefact, some part of his consciousness is present enough that he can then invoke, say, Beckett. He then logs into all of Beckett’s shit, acts completely like Beckett, gets the Thing in a Beckett-y manner, and oh look now he’s Mithras again.

Maddy inherited a lot of his traits, although they might manifest differently:

Maddy is constantly overwhelmed with voices. Cabbie is overwhelmed by feelings and sensations of other people, like his consciousness is crowded by ghosts. He is simultaneously aware and unaware of this.

Because of this, both of them are quite spaced out a lot even if they don’t seem to be, and have short attention spans. Maddy often can’t hear other people (or even her own thoughts) over the voices and so never has any idea what’s going on and has trouble doing anything that requires active thinking and mental problem-solving, and for the Cabbie the feelings of these other people are a lot more solid and real to him than actual reality and so dominate his perception.

Both of them struggle to absorb information because of this, and both heavily rely on their oracular abilities to compensate for it. If they have to deliver a message, it’s fine they didn’t hear the actual message because they’ll just... magically be able to deliver it anyway. Handy!

Both are oracles; Maddy gets her info from voices that sound like the people who know that information, or through just talking and channeling the information. Cabbie gets his info from these spectre-like “people” he feels crowded by, and channels the information through thinking he actually is them.

Cabbie usually takes on the speech patterns of whoever he thinks he is, but when he’s lucid he speaks in exactly the same way Maddy does.

Both enter full-on psychosis/dementia when tired and hungry.

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Tell Me Where To Find Shelter -- Weird And Complicated Video Game Crossover AUs Strike Again

Okay, so last week I offered you all an updated rewrite on my old Fallout 4 Sole Survivor!Victor AU, Tell Me Where To Find Shelter. And at the very end of said update, I let you know that I had an idea for fitting Alice into the AU --

Specifically, my Malkavian Alice from Vampire: the Masquerade -- Bloodlines.

Look, the fact of the matter is, Fallout 4 and Bloodlines have been rather closely connected in my head from day one of my purchasing them -- hell, I got them during the same Steam sale! (Along with the BioShock series entire, which is why I had a couple of posts about Tell Me Where to Find Shelter back in 2016, then it dropped off the face of the earth -- I played Bloodlines first, and followed up with that series.) And my “Londerland Bloodlines” playthrough of Bloodlines was done concurrently with my starting up Fallout 4, so -- yeah. Me wanting to figure out how to cross the two over was probably inevitable.

I know what you’re all thinking, of course -- “how the hell do you make this sort of crossover work?” Well, I have had a few ideas:

-->This version of Malkavian Alice and her adventures in 2004 Los Angeles would be much more like the standard fledgling’s, given that the Corpse Bride characters are now born in the future. So the person she saves in the hospital is Heather (who she does manage to send away in time to save her life), and the Giovanni party goes down without dragging an undead version of Lizzie into the mix. Obviously the story and setting would have to be tweaked to fit better into Fallout’s alternate history (though given what the computers in the original game are like, maybe that’s easier than expected). She still goes Independent, and escapes from Los Angeles in the wake of LaCroix’s explosive death, making her way slowly but surely to the East Coast because she has had enough of California and everyone there.

-->She manages to get on with her unlife, watching the growing tensions with China and the Resource Wars with unease, but keeping to herself and doing her best not to let her humanity slip as she gets older. When the bombs fall, she’s sleeping the day away in a basement bunker she set up in Boston -- but the destruction from the explosion ends up collapsing part of the ceiling, burying her in rubble -- with a chunk of timber piercing her heart. She ends up in a staked torpor. . .

-->Until Victor shows up at her location at night to clear out a few raiders who are taking over the place as a base. One of the raiders yanks out the stake to use as a weapon, has three seconds to wonder why it’s got fresh blood on it -- then Alice explodes from her centuries-long hiding place and drinks him dry. Victor is too stunned at first to actually shoot her, and once Alice’s blood thirst has been quest, she immediately puts her hands up and does her best to show she means him no harm. They talk, Alice explains what happened (and goes ahead and admits she’s a vampire when Victor explains about the nuclear apocalypse -- who gives a shit about the Masquerade when the world has ended?), she offers to help with the remaining raiders to prove her good intentions, Victor accepts, and they take down the assholes together.

-->Obviously, Alice isn’t immediately “unlockable” as a companion -- she’s still got her sunlight thing, after all! She and Victor chat about it, and Victor, feeling bad, offers his assistance. Alice accepts -- she misses the sun -- and says that she’ll stay where she is for the moment (after finding a non-partially-collapsed basement to stay in) and keep raiders and monsters out while he searches for information. And so the “Here Comes The Sun” quest begins, with Victor searching for a way to counteract the sunlight curse! I’m thinking this would end up interacting with the Cabot family stuff, because I don’t think it would be hard at all to change the source of their immortality, and the artifact upon Lorenzo’s head, from something alien to something vampiric. Maybe Lorenzo’s partially possessed by the spirit of an Antediluvian, and it’s turned his blood into something close enough to vitae it can make ghouls? At any rate, Jack manages to whip something up after examining some of Alice’s blood (which, naturally, she’s kind of nervous about, but what choice does she have?), and it successfully stops her from burning up in sunlight (though she is weaker in it). A grateful Alice thanks Victor (and Jack) and agrees to travel with him to experience the Commonwealth.

-->As they go on together, they end up getting closer -- Alice likes that Victor is generally a good guy and sympathizes with the story of his lost family; Victor likes Alice’s snarky wit and strong sense of justice. As they share more details of their lives, help out the settlements, and battle monsters together, they realize they’re growing feelings for each other, and eventually get together, facing off against the Institute as a couple and parenting Synth Shaun/Chester together afterwards. (Alice jokes a lot that it took both her dying and the end of the world in general to finally get a domestic happy ending.)

-->Alice’s starting clothes would be a simple blue dress and apron with black buckled boots (the dress would naturally have a big bloody hole right over her heart when she first wakes up; she patches this after you leave her to her own devices for a bit), and she’d have the Tal’Mahe’Ra Blade (her prize from her storming of the Hallowbrook Hotel, taken from Andrei’s lair) as her standard weapon. She has a unique bite attack, being a vampire, and can still use Obfuscate (turning invisible to sneak past/sneak attack enemies) and Dementation (inflict debuffs on enemies so they’re confused and can’t shoot straight, or kill a single enemy from fear alone), though both have a cooldown so Victor can’t rely on her just spamming that to take care of every raider for him! XD Her perk would allow you to drain blood from enemy corpses (which other companions would find less disturbing than outright cannibalism, but still fairly creepy) and/or increase the healing capabilities of blood packs. I’m thinking, once romanced, she’d also have a unique variation of the “Lover’s Embrace” temporary perk, “Love Bite” -- Victor wakes up with HP not fully restored, but the XP boost is greater than “Lover’s Embrace” (+20% vs +15%).

-->Other vampiric elements of the Commonwealth would include:

A) That blood bank you can find? Those bags of blood are warm and fresh because there’s a Tremere there who has built up their power and knows some rituals for preserving the stuff. Unfortunately, they’re also very low humanity by this point, so they end up being a nasty surprise fight.

B) There’s a secret settlement of vampires that is made up of all the various fledglings you could pick from in Bloodlines, having learned to live together after the destruction of vampire society along with human when the bombs fell. The local Tremeres managed some blood sorcery that infused a mutfruit tree with human blood, so plasma fruit, a la The Sims 4, is a thing for them, and allows them to live in relative peace with their human neighbors (though they’ll happily drain anyone who attacks them). They’d probably have a quest revolving around either talking down or killing some vampire hunters who have been eying their base, and they could be persuaded to allow Jack Cabot and family to study them in exchange for vitae to help them stay in their immortal states. Also, the Malkavians openly call Victor the “Sole Survivor” and offer roundabout tips on his quests -- if he can decipher them. XD

C) This is just one that amuses me -- this universe’s Mysterious Stranger is none other than good old Caine! He’s trying to be a little more helpful to mortal and Kindred alike in the post-apocalypse, and has decided this means “showing up randomly to help people out of tight spots before vanishing again.” Alice, upon seeing him, jokes that the cabdriver thing didn’t work out, huh?

D) I’d kind of like to make stimpacks developed from vampire or ghoul blood to explain just how it is they can heal crippled limbs so fast -- the wiki didn’t provide much of an answer there! Which means anyone who uses them is at least slightly a ghoul. . .which might explain a few things about carry weight and why some enemies are so tough. (Legendaries have more vitae in their system, prompting the power-up, maybe?)

So yeah -- that’s how I’d get Bloodlines and Fallout to work together, and thus have my Malkavian!Alice and Sole Survivor!Victor be a couple in the wasteland. Because why make a crossover simple when I could make it way more complicated than it needs to be? XD Look, I just like the mental images I have of them together -- and of Alice taking out a whole army of baddies by hitting them with Voice of Bedlam to throw them into absolute chaos.

[wizzard890]

okay but wHAT HAPPENED WITH VIDKE????

god it was -- essentially the climactic session of the campaign. and it was incredible. 

Vidke’s brother -- turned hideous by the curse of Caine, but monstrous from the moment of his creation -- finally surfaced at the edge of Battery Park City. Vidke was waiting for him, poised with his own childer, as he has always been. 

Cora was there too, beside her lover. Isaiah was there, and Selene, and Margueritte, and Kolya and Katrin, carrying Ellard’s gun; and later, Krystiyan and Casimir, both in their full glory. It was, after everything our characters had suffered, finally simple: everyone who could still stand side by side, united to destroy something terrible. 

We never really found out what Absimilliard looked like, because every time any one of our characters tried, we’d frenzy. All Cora got was the impression of immense size and suppurating horror as he made his way through the park and into Tribeca. 

Vidke, transformed into a creature of knives and hate, threw himself at his brother and fought him every step of the way. Of course he had no difficulty staring Absimilliard in the face. He’d always known what he was. 

There are too many moments to mention. I could talk about how Selene, imbued with the soul of her own Antediluvian, butterflied the flesh from Absimilliard’s spine. I could talk about the nightmarish winged eel that was Isaiah, vomiting acid blood down on the battle. Or Vidke’s childer, his girls, who had promised to help him get his revenge after he so long ago helped them get theirs -- dying for him. 

Or the moment when Vidke put himself between Cora and Absimilliard, and was killed. 

Or maybe the moment that he didn’t -- when instead, Cora saw a vision of his death as clear as starlight, and changed the future. Which meant that Vidke lived, and pursued his brother up the Empire State Building. 

It meant that when Absimilliard was wounded, and fell a hundred stories to the asphalt below, Vidke raised his sword and dropped in his wake, a lance of vengeance finding its mark across ten thousand years. 

He stood in his brother’s ashes, every inch a king.

[gorbalsvampire]

In the Gehenna War era, post-splinterification, what do you imagine it takes to be judged True Sabbat? (Please note: I'm way more interested in your creativity, interpretations, and what interests you than in strict canonicity.) Thank you!

So, about the Sabbat, post-interregnum...

In a surprising but welcome shift in approaches, antitribu doesn't mean "on the other side of the sect war from where your clan normally is" but a far more interesting "opposed to the idea of even identifying by your clan to begin with." Pack and Path identity are far, far more important than whose blood flows in your veins and, if we stop and think about it, this is both ideologically and practically on point.

Ideologically, the Sabbat makes war to hunt the Antediluvians and destabilise domains which protect or apologise for them and, of course, to recruit. Leave turf war for mundane practical reasons to the Anarchs! Given that end goal of annihilating the Third Generation, of course it makes sense that Sabbat reject the clan identities defined by which of your targets happens to be at the root of your own particular bullshit.

Practically, the Sabbat shares vitae (and consequently Disciplines) as a regular ritual practice, and during wartime, the mass Embraces aren't a tidy one-bites-one affair. It's a squirming pit of hungry angry vampires, in which the survivors are probably diablerising each other down there before the surface. And, of course, diablerie is going to have an impact too. Given these practices, the Sabbat must be breaking down the boundaries between clans all the time. Most of the buggers should, mechanically speaking, be Caitiff, with only the rare Lasombra or Tzimisce childe groomed personally for a position of apprenticeship or leadership really standing out. Even they, if they have any sense about it, will lean on the achievements of their ancestors within the sect, and push against the definitive limitations of their Blood.

(Defined "bloodlines" like the Volgirre may emerge, but - gosh, now that I think about it, Baron Philippe's brood make a lot more sense as not defining themselves as a bloodline until they're accepted by the Camarilla and start to Embrace more widely and spread. Likewise, the Harbingers joined the Sabbat as allies but kept to themselves and seldom-if-ever Embraced, until they returned to the nascent Hecata.)

Perhaps what is to be Cainite, and True Sabbat, is in truth to be descended from Caine and not his cursed grandchilder. A clanless potentiality, unburdened of the weaknesses of the bloodlines, and able to develop in the direction its chosen Path demands.

SO! Let's talk about the Paths. I've Posted before about the mechanical faults with "adopting a Path" and the impossibility of transhuman ascension under Vampire's transgression-based morality rules, let's take that as read for now. Second edition did it right with the insistence that all "playable" (read "viable, True") Sabbat are on a Path and have successfully internalised its ethics and mobilised them against the Beast.

I really like how the contemporary Sabbat has fractured into packs led by priests and sharing a Path in common. It Just Makes Sense that the philosophical commitments of given Sabbat are what holds them together. The Sabbat is, after all, a militant cult; an army. Units work better if they're pursuing common goals and adopting a common strategy, rather than being tugged every which way by the individual desires of its members.

And, again returning to my Touchstone of second edition, all Sabbat used to operate on a mechanically distinct and alien basis in which Conviction (belief in an ethic), Instinct (trust in the Beast) and collective Morale (faith in the strength of the pack) replaced personal Conscience and Self-Control, and individualistic Courage. They weren't like you, they didn't think like you, and whatever made them so unlike you happened before you ever met them.

The paradox at the heart of the Sabbat is that it preaches freedom (from mortal and Camarilla moral and ethical concerns, i.e. freedom to be an unapologetic vampire) at the cost of submission (to the sect and its goals, i.e. freedom without liberty, do what thou wilt so long as thou dost what th'art told). Adoption of a Path and inclusion into a Pack that shares that commitment is part of that act of submission: it signifies a sublimation of the self into the sect. One cannot be True Sabbat until one has accepted oneself as a vampire - playing, metaphorically and literally, by vampire rules that are proven to work.

Forsake your Clan. Choose your Path. And, above all, make war, on your own initiative, because there are no orders coming from Mexico. The Regent is dead (and, in unknown fact, has been for a decade). The elders who founded and led the sect threw their childer to the fires and answered the Beckoning call of the ancient horrors: fuck 'em, they'll die with the Antediluvians they protect and serve. The self-proclaimed Kindred are merely obstacles. Recruit them, or tear them down. Leave the turf war bullshit to the Anarchs. We have a higher goal.

It's funny how I always drift into character when I talk about the Sabbat. I started out running a Sabbat game, and cast myself as pack priestess when I started playing them. They've always been my favourite mistake, and now that they and the Anarchs are in distinct and very different kinds of conflict, they are more interesting than they've ever been.

[beethovenwasright]

hi, welcome to tumblr! You're an Elder, right? What Sect are you part of? Do you know how Vampires came about? What's your opinion on Garou and Kithain? Sorry about all the questions, it's just most people here are neonates, and I'm a little nervous about talking to the Prince haha;; --a-dream-in-the-dark

Hello, @a-dream-in-the-dark​! I appreciate that you came to me with your inquiries; I understand your hesitance in reaching out to a senior official of the Camarilla. You’ve asked a great many questions, so I’ll do my best to answer them in order.

Yes, I am an Elder by most definitions. The term is somewhat contentious, representing age to some and Generation to others, but I feel I fulfill both requirements.

I am a member of the Camarilla, though I try not to engage with local politics outside of maintaining sovereignty over my domain. Fortunately for me, there are plenty of other Toreadors eager to fill the position of Primogen.

According to legend, the Kindred were created when God cursed Cain for the murder of his brother Abel, making him the original vampire. He (allegedly) sired three childer, who in turn sired thirteen: the Antediluvians whom the Sabbat so fear. Personally, I believe the stories to be a great deal of embellishment founded on a few scraps of truth. Unfortunately, we may never know for certain; whatever ancient Kindred still survive are no doubt locked in torpor, and it is impossible to verify the veracity of Tumblr.com blogs claiming to be them.

Garou and Kindred are almost always at extreme odds, given that they see us as a product of the great corruption that they fight. However, we are far from their top priority, and they from ours, so I’ve had little reason to seek or encounter them.

Kithain are curious creatures, mostly reclusive and hidden away in their own secret societies. In that way, they are much the same as us, I suppose. Their existences seem at a glance much more joyful than ours, but between a long unlife of hunting in the shadows or many short lives striving endlessly for what is lost, I am not sure which I would favor given the choice. I knew a single Kithain once, but only for a short time. They died of natural causes, so their soul is likely to still be floating around somewhere, as I understand.

[geek-patient-zero]

Prologue (Part 1)

Or: My Dinner with Reuben

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Dead Trilogy Volume 1

I always loved the cover art. It was done by an artist called BROM. Here’s his website.

Robert Weinberg dedicates the book to Edgar Allan Poe “for obvious reasons” and Bram Stoker “who started it all”, though Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu might disagree with that. On Poe, peppered throughout the book, between the three parts and on the back cover are short quotes from his works, mostly “The Masque of the Red Death”. Obviously. It’s a little BS though. Any elements inspired by Poe are shallow, at least in this book.

Underneath the dedication is a little disclaimer:

While the locations and history of this trilogy may seem familiar, it is not our reality. The setting of Vampire: The Masquerade of the Red Death is a harsher, crueler version of our world. It is a stark, desolate landscape where nothing is what it seems. It is truly a World of Darkness.

For in the grim dark 1990′s there is only war. And vampires.

Going into the book I thought this disclaimer was a little wanky. I expected that “a harsher, crueler version of our world” would translate to “our world but with more rats, goths, and supernatural creatures.” Similarly, the book’s spine labels the genre as “Dark Fantasy” which in my experience usually translates to “regular fantasy but with more rape.” Turns out the World of Darkness setting is a little more complicated than that, but most of the time Weinberg isn’t too subtle on the whole “darker version of our world” thing.

I just want to let you know, before we get started, that I’m not the biggest expert when it comes to V:TM lore. I’ve never played the tabletops, or read their source books. My knowledge comes from Bloodlines, wiki binges, and lore dumps on Reddit and the Something Awful Bloodlines 2 thread. Please bear with my dumb ass if I get something wrong.

Alright, enough preamble, let’s get to the actual story.

We start in Rome, June 15, 1992, at an outdoor restaurant near the Coliseum. A meeting there was set up the night before through an anonymous phone call to the “heart of the Vatican.” For a suitcase full of money, they’d talk about vampires, or as the book dramatically puts it:

“We will talk,” declared the mysterious voice in somber, cold tones, “of The Kindred.”

The first to arrive is Father Naples, named so because it’s a word you’d find on a map of Italy. He’s a member of the Society of Leopold, who only get one more brief mention after this prologue so all you need to know is that they’re Catholic vampire hunters. He’s a big buff guy, described like a cross between a priest and a high ranking CIA agent. He came unarmed.

His faith served as his shield.  Along with the five other agents of the Society of Leopold in the restaurant, including two women disguised as streetwalkers.

The Society of Leopold is the “the devil was behind this” kind of religious, so it’s weird they’d jump straight to hookers when thinking of disguises for their agents, or that said agents would agree to it. But this is the World of Darkness, a harsher, crueler version of our own, and that means there’s hookers everywhere, so put on the hot pants and think of Italy.

So Father Florence here’s got his disguised agents, who “carried enough firepower on them to start a minor war.” He’s also something of a badass.

And, though he had retired years before as a field operative, Father Naples still maintained his training in the martial arts. An expert at both kendo and karate, he could kill an attacker a dozen different ways.

He’s also got some agents in a nearby hotel room with a directional microphone aimed at his table to record the conversation. Soon, the target of all this seeming overkill arrives; a blonde mid-twenties guy in a white suit. His voice was different than the one who made the phone call, implying to Naples, and us, that there’s at least two people involved on the other side of this setup. It’s a neat bit of foreshadowing. After a firm handshake and no-selling Father Naples’s patented death glare, the stranger introduces himself as Reuben, “like the sandwich.” They banter a bit about the biblical Reuben before he decides to troll the Father a bit. First by saying he’s older than he looks, then by passing on the Father’s offer of wine.

“No thank you,” said Reuben. “I do not drink wine.”

He waits a beat for a reaction, then orders a Coke and a menu. I think I like Reuben.

Since vampires can’t eat or drink (unless they have high Humanity and a good dice roll) Father Naples is thus satisfied that the guy is not a vampire trying to trick him, deciding he’s “definitely human. And not very clever.” Reuben had made an obligatory knock at airline food, so now Naples believed the agents recording the conversation could use this clue to track down his real name and where he came from through airline records.

They get to the You Got the Cash/You Got the Stuff part of negotiations, with Reuben showing off the twenty million US dollars in his briefcase (Not euro because we’re the only country whose currency matters fuck you Italy) in exchange for a monologue from Naples about the history of the Kindred, starting from the beginning. Reuben says Father Naples can summarize if need be.

“Summarize?... How does one summarize ten thousand years of absolute evil? An impossible task, but let me try.”

The rest of the prologue until the end is Naples’ exposition on vampires while he drinks a shit ton of vino. Since it’s Vampire: The Masquerade Lore 101, I’ll summarize like our pal Naples.

Vampires secretly control the world. There are thirteen vampire clans descended from Caine, of Cain and Abel fame only spelled with an e for some reason. Ye olde Caine killed his brother, though I once read that in this setting it wasn’t so much just committing the first murder as introducing the very concepts of murder and killing to reality and basically ruining everyone’s lives, including demons. God punished Caine by giving him vampirism, forcing him to kill to survive for inventing killing. The vampirism also gave him superpowers, so he’s like a little bloodsucking demigod. I’ve seen jokes about God punishing Caine by giving him cool superpowers, but according to Father Naples Caine needed them because everyone knew what happened and were pissed at him for inventing murder and eating them. When everyone and everything wants to kill you on sight you need to be OP to survive and then feel sad about it.

(He also didn't learn most of those powers until later, when he met Lilith.)

Caine discovered that he could make more vampires through the classic “drain their blood to the point of near death and then feeding them your own blood” method. He sired three new vampires, who weren’t as powerful as him but still quite capable of ruining your day, a trend that continues through twelve or thirteen vampiric generations, although the latest generations are puny compared to Caine and his kids.

Caine and the Second Generation founded Enoch, the First City, and were worshiped there as gods, I’m guessing because of a mixture of fear and the hope of getting some sweet vampire powers if you suck up to the first murderer. The Second Generation then sired the Third Generation, thirteen vampires that became known as the Antediluvians. They’re the ones the modern thirteen vampire clans descend from. 

Then everything goes to shit for Caine. Again. The Antediluvians, ambitious dicks, rose up and killed the Second Generation, destroying Enoch in the process. This could be thought of as Caine’s true curse: being forced to watch his childer, and their childer, and so on plot against and murder each other as he had done to his brother, and generally being a plague on mankind. See, Vampire: The Masquerade can be a bit too try-hard edgy and horny at times, but then you also get neat bits of writing and lore like that. As for Caine, he disappeared after the fall of Enoch. He’s now a cab driver in Los Angeles. Or a hermit in Greece, messing with traveling scholar vampires. Or both. Depends on who you ask. No, really. I’m being serious.

I should mention that, religious guy that he is, Father Naples likes to pepper his monologue with casual mentions of the devil. He says things like...

“It was then, in his darkest despair, that Caine learned from Satan a monsterous secret.”

“Encouraged by Satan, Caine created three such monsters.”

“And, in time, urged by Lucifer, they, too, bestowed the gift of eternal life on a select group of their victims.”

“They knew not the Lord God, but Lucifer, the Dark Angel.”

...and generally blaming the big guy below for getting the vampires to do vampire things. While most of what Father Naples says about the setting’s history is correct, the Satan stuff isn’t. Lucifer is a character in the World of Darkness, specifically Demon: The Fallen, but he has nothing to do with V:TM. This adds a neat bit of characterization and unreliability to Naples’ narrative; something Reuben will point out at the end of the prologue.

The Great Flood happened, but Father Naples doesn’t mention it. He skips to the Antediluvians founding the Second City, which didn’t get a name like Enoch because in its two thousand years of existence apparently no one could think of one. With the support of their childer, the fourth generation, they ruled over the Second City and, according to Naples, enslaved humanity. But eventually humanity rose up against the vampires, killing some of them with sunlight, fire, and beheading. The Second City fell and the surviving vampires fled. The Antediluvians disappeared. Some modern day vampires believe the Antediluvians were all dead, while others (the correct ones, turns out) believe they’re hiding, resting in torpor (a kind of vampire coma) this whole time and one day, they’d wake up and, as Father Naples says, “...the world of the Undead shall tremble.” This is our first mention in this book of Gehenna, the end of the wold according to the Kindred. He also says their return was predicted in Revelations, but I’m no biblical expert so I can’t tell you what bits of Revelations that might be referring too.

Reuben asks what happened to the fourth generation, or the Methuselahs as they’re now known because they’re old as balls but not “lived before the Biblical Flood” old. Father Naples tells him, then goes on to explain the titular Masquerade, vampire factions, and the thirteen clans.

[speaker-sypha]

“This is my history, our history, the history.” 

“It began in a way you might not expect an apocalypse to begin. It began with love, several times over. In the beginning of mankind, Cain, son of Adam, and his brother Abel were asked to sacrifice to the Lord what they cherished most. Abel sacrificed a lamb from his flock. Cain sacrificed Abel. The Lord banished Cain for his sin, where he traveled alone until he met Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who taught him dark magic. The Lord returned to Cain with three angels, each offering Cain forgiveness, and Cain refused all three, because he couldn’t forgive himself. The angels cursed him with the three traits all vampires here share: weakness to sunlight, vulnerability to fire, and a thirst for blood. Cain became the progenitor, the first vampire.

“He traveled alone again for ages, until he learned from the Crone of Childer. After freeing himself from her, he found the city of the followers of Set, and they worshiped Cain. He changed a wife, and made a son--Enoch. They created more vampires, and the city prospered until the Great Flood, and many were destroyed. Cain, distraught, hid himself away for a time. When he emerged, he found his precious Childer in disarray, the younger generations surmounted against his precious second generation. He cursed his progeny, and declared he would one day return to wipe them from the earth. This is the prophecy of Gehenna, that Cain will return with the rise of the blood moon and the faces of the Antediluvians into the sky.

“Years turn to centuries, and presumably centuries to millennia. Then, love reenters the narrative. Vlad Dracula Tepes, feared vampire lord of Wallachia, meets Lisa--or rather, Lisa walks up to the front of his castle, bangs on the door with her knife, and requests to be taught science, for Dracula was also rumored to have older, lost knowledge of the world. Intrigued, Dracula agreed, and they fell in love, and beget a son, Alucard, a bridge between both of their worlds. Unfortunately, like Cain and Abel, it didn’t last. In 1475, Lisa was burned at the stake as a witch for practicing science as a doctor. Dracula declared war on humanity--by killing his love, in his view the only saving grace of humanity, they had proved humans did not deserve the earth, and thus he would wipe them from it. Alucard tried to stop him immediately, but was severely injured, and had to retreat-- ah, but I’m getting off topic. I’ll tell you the story of Dracula’s defeat another time.

“The substance is, that he was defeated, but it could not stop what he set in motion. By unleashing the powers of hell to scourge the earth, Dracula rose the blood moon, and thus started the events of Gehenna. Cain returned, and vampires began having visions of despair and agony and horror. Alucard was not exempt. But even so, we were not aware of the possibility of Gehenna until we, ah... ‘met’ Van Helsing, otherwise known as Raquel Belmont--Trevor’s cousin, who he didn’t know had also survived the massacre to his family. He was the chosen Belmont son to battle Cain on his return, and he had the Book of Nod, which gave us the prophecy of Gehenna. Cain would return, had returned already, and would consume his children. Quite literally. His city, the city of Enoch, was a floating fortress made of dead vampires. We saw it. It was--I don’t really have words for it.

“We traveled to the Camarilla, a council of vampires in Wallachia set on integrating with and living hidden among humans, to warn them. On the way, we stopped at Campulung to retrieve Leon Belmont’s bones, for fear that witch hunters were going to desecrate his grave. We actually awakened his ghost, and he joined us on our journey, after we killed one of the witchhunters that massacred Trevor’s family, who was sitting there bragging about it like he was the hero of some grand quest. It’s still horrifying to remember his story, and even more horrifying to remember how Trevor just-- ...Nevermind.

“Anyway, at the council we were joined by Ashei, a holy paladin from another plane posed as a priest. They sent us to Styria, to gain the favor of the Ventrue clan’s leader, Carmilla, who unfortunately wasn’t very... receptive. We fought her, and a fleshcrafter, but in the end we got what we really came there for--one of Dracula’s devil forgemasters, Hector, who Carmilla had taken as prisoner. We needed him to forge us a weapon of a holy soul. We also, somehow, got Van Helsing on our side--we were at odds with him, if you didn’t catch that earlier. He, uh... He doesn’t like Alucard. At all. Shot him I think three separate times with silver? Yeah. That...still needs to be addressed....

“So we got Raquel and Ashei and Hector, and began our journey to Cain. We returned to the Belmont estate. We traveled through Dracula’s mirror to the land of Eden with the help of another ancestor from a reflected world, Everette Belmont. We all made it through--Raquel was in rough shape by this time. I didn’t mention, but the way Raquel survived the fire that killed everyone else but Trevor was by making a deal with a devil that had been working its way down the Belmont line for generations. He tapped into that devil’s power before we went in, but it was hard for him to handle the enormous power of the devil.

“We made it to Eden, though, and after some searching we found the Tree of Life. There, at its roots, sat Enoch, the son of Cain. We requested passage to the land of Nod, where Cain dwelt, and he told us to prove to him that we had what it takes to stand up to his father, who he had tried and failed to stop before. Unfortunately, he didn’t think Trevor and I were up to snuff at first, so we had to fight him two on one... we changed his mind by the end of it, if I say so myself. He allowed us passage through a pool in front of the tree, but before we went in, Claudia Belmont emerged from the pool.

“The wife of Leon, and the daughter of angel--she was a nephilim, and the source of the divine blood that still runs through the Belmonts, into Raquel and into Trevor. She gifted some of her soul to Alucard, to protect him in the battle--otherwise, Cain would have been able to kill him easily and consume him. She also gave a part of her soul to Hector, to forge the weapon to kill Cain. Raquel provided an Elysium shard to be the shell, and Ashei gave a reliquary with the ability of banishment. Trevor gave holy water, and I gave a spell to-- okay. I’ll be honest. It was technically a love potion. It was what I had, alright? But Hector was going to have to convince Abel to help us defeat his brother, and love potions make people more... inclined to listen to what you have to say. I thought it couldn’t hurt.  

“That said and done, Hector got Abel to agree to help and forged the weapon--a bullet? a bomb? It was a projectile, and it went inside Raquel’s massive cannon gun to be fired at the right moment. Then, we went into the pool, into the land of Nod.

“And then we met the drow. How in the world he found his way to the land of Nod, I haven’t asked yet. But he was there, and he had an airship, a literal ship that traveled through the air, and he helped us get up to the city of Enoch. Illikyur, his name, and Raquel introduced him as his brother. Haven’t gotten that story yet either.

“But we made it to the city of Enoch, and we made it to Cain. He was...sad. I don’t mean that as in unimpressive. Or perhaps that fits, at first. But he was so old, and so... dead. He started this new life alone, and he had been alone for ages, away from light and life, away from everything but this mausoleum of a city, wrapped like a blanket in his own self-loathing and hatred. He barely acknowledged us at first. It was until I spoke his name, and spoke to him in Adamic, in the language of his father, that something in him stirred.

“We talked for a bit, him and I. It was- It was... hard. After all this time, now that it was to the point, I’m not sure he even cared about ending his kind, ending the world. He was too deep in to drag himself out anymore. Or maybe he just couldn’t make himself take the rope. I- I feel like I got close, like I almost... almost convinced him that he could accept the forgiveness, and stop this. But eventually, he said no, that it was too late. I think it had progressed to far for him to stop, or maybe he still, after all this time, just couldn’t give up his hatred for what he had become. He said he couldn’t stop the end, but maybe we could.

“And then he transformed. It was almost too much to comprehend. Massive, and if there had been a sun, it would have been blocked out. Floating through the air like he was swimming, almost aquatic in nature, and covered in eyes and teeth. He fought us, and we fought back. We whittled him down, little by little, and he took chunks out of us. Alucard almost- ...but eventually, we got him down on his end dregs, and Raquel readied to shot. I’m not sure how much Raquel was in control by this point. The devil had overgrown his skin, encased him like a shell. It was a horrifying, terrific, and... odd sight. A devil and the burning son, held aloft by the angel Claudia, being forced in flashes into her true form, something magnificent and monstrous, as large as a mountain and completely incomprehensible... Held aloft by an angel, Raquel fired, and Cain died.

“He died, and Raquel, and all the other Belmonts trapped in the devil’s book, were freed. We went home, remembered our sacrifices, celebrated our victory, and slept until time became fuzzy. And we looked toward the future, free.”

“....”

“...wherever Cain is now, wherever his soul now resides, I hope- I hope he is at peace. I hope he and his brother are reunited, so his brother can forgive him in person, as he forgave him millennia ago. And I hope that maybe, Cain can accept that forgives, and move forward, together, also free.”

[ryttu3k]

Doing those ship meme questions only it's the new OT3 (Beckett/Sascha/Ilias) because they're my main source of serotonin these days. Occasional appearances from Anatole and Lucita, too.

Not doing all, but there are A Lot.

1. Who's the one who's reckless and always getting into trouble while the other gotta pull em out

Beckett and Sascha actually do have a lot of braincells between them but none of them are in use for 'can sense danger'. Ilias has gained some minor common sense since his 'hey, I'm going to ask our Antediluvian for power to help face its favourite childe oh whoops I am possessed' thing and is usually the one sighing fondly and saving their asses.

2. Who's the one to send the other "I love my gf/bf" memes

Ilias. 100% Ilias. He would go out in public in a shirt saying 'I <3 Sascha' and calling them ‘my flower’ while Sascha is just pleased they can't blush any more.

3. Who's the one who listens to a music genre the other doesn't like and how does the other react

God their music tastes are all over the place. Sascha is over a thousand years old and has seen and heard A Lot. They consider the Romantic period 'modern music'. Beckett is similar albeit with about 350 years of it. Ilias got hurled from 1233 to 2004 and after a period of ??? went, "Oh, Romanian music!" and it was. Dragostea Din Tei. Like can you imagine one moment it’s 1233 and the next moment you are listening to Dragostea Din Tei. Also thanks to the language drift they only caught about a quarter of the words so it was this whole thing where he almost, almost was understanding it but the rest was just, “...what.” And that’s how Ilias discovered modern music.

Anyway yeah they’ve pretty much decided that their collective music tastes are so disparate no one is allowed to comment on them.

4. Which one spoils the other more and do they ever get competitive to show the other more love

Honestly, they all kind of spoil each other, albeit in different ways. Like Ilias will just randomly pop a handmade flower crown on Sascha’s head. Beckett will occasionally find an extremely rare book on his desk and know Sascha found it for him. Beckett always tells Sascha first when he’s found something cool so they can be the first to investigate it. And they absolutely get competitive, yeah.

5. How many years did it take to get married or was it just not for them

Sascha and Ilias have a mutual blood bond, which is more or less the equivalent of thus. Beckett has a mutual bond with Anatole, but he and Sascha have a level-2 bond.

7. Are their friends/family supportive

 Honestly, uh, Sascha and Ilias don’t really have anyone else. Beckett’s companions tend to range from, “They’re terrifying but I trust your judgment :D” (Anatole) to “hahahahahaha if Vykos harms one hair on Beckett’s head I’ll end them” (Lucita) to “WHY” (Aristotle, Okulos, most others tbh).

8. How does one comfort the other when the other is in distress/having a panic attack/crying

Sascha is the one most prone to panic attacks because trauma is a bitch and basically just... Beckett and Ilias both respond by with hugging/gentle restraint (if they’re okay with touch) or by giving them space and doing things like running a hot bath when they’re touch-averse.

9. Which one dissociates

Honestly Sascha spent most of 1234 to 2006 lowkey dissociating, which is fair when there’s literally another essence fused to yours. Post-Dracon, they still get the occasional dissociative episode, but it’s much easier to bring them back to themself.

10. Which one stares at the other's booty like “damn” and how does the other react when catching them

All three tbh. Beckett stares at Sascha, Sascha either gets a bit self-conscious or a bit ;) , depending on mood. Sascha stares at both Beckett and Ilias and gets a bit embarrassed when caught (Beckett will laugh it off, Ilias will basically be ;D). Ilias stares at both and is completely shameless about it because he may no longer be on the Path of Pleasure but he’s absolutely not going to feel ashamed for admiring his gorgeous lovers.

11. When they live together what kinda place do they live in? What does their home look like?

Beckett and Sascha travel too much for one place, honestly, and Ilias accompanies them a lot. They do have a few houses scattered throughout the world, though, including one in the Carpathians (nowhere near Brasov, tyvm). Not really as big as the monastery, it’s mostly like... big library, a few comfortable places to sleep or rest, Ilias likes having a garden these days and grows a lot of flowers.

12. What do their dates look like

Museum heists.

13. How does each act when getting drunk

Ilias gets even more handsy. Actually he can get to be a bit of a pain, but he does listen immediately if one of them tells him to tone it down. Beckett gets very enthusiastic and fired-up and a bit more feral and he’s gonna go find Enoch right now and prove Caine wasn’t real once and for all. Sascha, uh, tends to get a bit emotional and also very talkative, but can literally like. Talk their way into minor breakdowns. Basically less barriers.

14. Which one rolls over in the morning evening to wake up the other one just to kiss them

All three :3

15. Have they saved each other's lives before

Yup!

Ficverse-wise, Sascha did also save Ilias from becoming a bogatyr to the Eldest, although that was also Sascha and Beckett both saving themselves by being emotionally honest. Yeah XD

16. Does one have an interest the other think is weird but wants to listen to it regardless

Ilias’ spirituality conflicts a bit with Beckett’s... atheism, I guess? Like he’s definitely not sure he believes in the spirits that Ilias regularly works with as a Koldun, but he’s willing to keep a relatively open mind. (He’s a bit less open-minded in Sascha’s belief in - and support of - Caine, given that he’s literally based his career around the metaphor theory!)

17. Which one uses cropped hentai as reaction images

Sascha.

They have troll tendencies, okay.

18. Does one of them kinkshame the other

There is absolutely no kinkshaming here. Listen Ilias was a Priest of Jarilo. Sascha was once on the Path of Pleasure too. Beckett seduced Dracula for information then forgot to ask his question. They’re all very open about everything.

There may be teasing about the odd hobby or interest but it’s pretty lighthearted.

19. Is one of them self conscious about their body? If so how does the other comfort them

Beckett occasionally has Moments over his hands and worries about hurting Sascha or something. They basically respond by being like “are you kidding the claws are hot as hell”. On occasion, Beckett will get one of them to Vicissitude them down if he wants to use his hands more, although they’ll regrow and be achey for a night or two afterwards.

20. Say they were cuddling on the bed while listening to record player playing the background. Which song is playing?

Honestly I want to say Third Eye by Florence + the Machine just for fic reasons. When I was writing Mantle I saw it very much as Beckett towards Sascha, but it fits with Ilias towards them as well.

I have no idea how they would have discovered F+tM but anyway.

23. What kinda joyrides do they go on? Relaxing ones or wild ones?

It. I imagine it usually involves police chases. When it doesn’t Beckett will occasionally go wolf so he can stick his head out the car window like :P

Shh don’t tell anyone.

25. Do people ever get annoyed of their pda

God probably. One of the main exceptions is Anatole, who’ll basically go, “Oh! Are we cuddling?” and flop on top of Beckett.

27. Which one’s the red, which one’s the blue

They’re all red. Fear. Ilias is probably closest to blue.

28. Are either of them mentally ill, if so how do they help one another cope

Sascha has both PTSD (from Symeon and Michael, and from the Eldest) and C-PTSD (from being bound to the Dracon for literal centuries). Also depression and anxiety, which are... pretty common with those. See question 8 for some of the coping methods, the rest is just... taking each day as it comes. Like they’ve lived a very long time, but they only got free of the Dracon in 2006, so it’s still a very new thing.

Ilias has some trauma from some of the things he’s had to do to survive since waking up with the Thirst of Ages, and gets into guilt spirals on occasion. He mostly focuses on Path of Nocturnal Redemption methods to work through it; he’s kind of adverse to anyone seeing him vulnerable like that. He knows Sascha has done some awful shit, but they weren’t themself at the time so Ilias feels it doesn’t count, and Beckett is like, Humanity 6? He just doesn’t get it, so Ilias keeps it to himself.

Beckett has an odd, acquired one - his experiences in Jerusalem left him with the ability (if it could be called an ability!) to occasionally hear the Cobweb (the Malkavian Madness Network). While his connection isn’t nearly as strong as an actual Malkavian’s, he does get odd flashes of Insight; less helpfully, it can occasionally get, uh, loud in his head. This tends to ramp up a bit with proximity to Malkavians, so when he’s around Anatole, Anatole will help him filter the voices and thoughts out by teaching him meditation techniques. (Given that Anatole - correctly - feels responsible for Beckett being afflicted thus, he wants to make sure it doesn’t hit his lover too badly.)

29. Does one have a spot on them where they would melt when the other kisses them there

Give Beckett head scritchies and he’ll turn into a puddle :3

34. Are they a reckless couple or safe

*loud, prolonged laughter*

37. Do they get into fights often? If so what do they fight over and how do they make up?

Sascha and Ilias are usually... very chill; if they argue, it’s over the other’s safety, like Ilias wanting to do something reckless and Sascha being very much ‘please do not’. Sascha and Beckett argue a bit more, although thankfully they have now stopped trying to literally kill each other XD When they do, it’s usually ideological, related to Gehenna, Caine, et cetera. Sascha is still very much a part of the Sabbat, and Beckett is, well, basically an atheist.

40. Who would fight in honor for the other if someone would insult them

All three tbh. Here’s a fun bit from the novel:

Still really dig this bit from BJD, too!

No misgendering on Beckett’s watch!

42. How would one react if the other was to die

Uh.

Poorly.

Like most of Sascha’s sanity slippage was due to the Dracon’s essence being fused to their own and just how the Eldest... did that, but a good part of it was absolutely due to Ilias’ death.

43. Who dies first

...canonically, Ilias XD;;

It’s okay he gets better.

[robotslenderman]

My Cabbie headcanon, or: How a Vampiric Cab Driver Scared the Everloving Shit out of the Entire Tremere Pyramid, or: The Greatest Prank of the 21st Century

So in my headcanon, the Cabbie is a 4th generation Malk who thinks he’s Caine and has actually convinced Jack that he is. Cabbie was Malking along minding his own business, sired Maddy at some point, and left her post-Embrace with one of his descendant childer... who was held responsible for Maddy’s illegal siring and subsequently executed without anyone bothering to talk to the guy at all.

Before I go more into the events of this headcanon, I’m gonna do some justification as to why I have a vampire OC with such a ridiculously low generation. 

Scroll to the bolded bit to skip the rambling.

I decided that Maddy was so low generation because of a combination of things -- firstly, I don’t think it makes sense at all that Caine himself would just hang around driving a cab. Like. Why. He can do anything he wants and he ends up... dealing the shittiest customer service job ever that’s so bad that kine have gotten killed doing it? Yeah that always bugged me. It’s not like there’s a shortage of roles he could pretend to take that are lowkey. But, whatever.

And then there’s the abilities of the PC. First of all, Strauss immediately gets in touch with you so early that you’re still a nobody who’s expected to die on your first mission. Like, as soon as you wake up in Santa Monica, his card is there. You’re at the point where nobody thinks you’ll last five seconds.

Strauss is the only person who gives any indication of knowing that you will. And he’s certain enough he wants you on his side.

He has no reason to believe you’ll survive. You’re a Fledgling. You’re newly Embraced. You don’t have a sire to guide you, and LaCroix is essentially your adopted sire now (he says in the prologue that he’s now responsible for you) but everyone knows that’s a joke, and he wants you dead so he throws you at the Sabbat. No doubt everyone knows that he’s going to do that for the bit of humiliation that was your not-execution, even if they don’t know you’re being sent to blow up the warehouse. Everyone expects you to die.

Strauss doesn’t. If you’re Tremere that gives him reason to reach out, but if you’re of any other clan he has no reason to reach out to what’s essentially a baby that has just been punted into a snowstorm with a bunch of starving snow leopards.

Secondly, Strauss refers to your great power. It bookends his appearances in the game -- his first introduction to the player has him referencing the Fledgling’s power in his letter, and if you play his ending, it’s also one of the last things he mentions. He followed you during your ending while under the cover of obfuscate. It’s almost certainly the reason why he reached out to you at all. Best to get in early, when the other vamps think you’re a joke, before they realise you’re not.

Thirdly -- Strauss is totally right on that. The Fledgling, despite being such a new vampire, not only fucks up incredibly powerful enemies but enemies that an eighth generation of any age would have extreme difficulty with. It’s so blatant that people speculate that Caine lowered your generation artificially. And yet, Strauss is the only person to notice at all that you’re more powerful than you should be by any rights -- and did so before the PC even meets the Cabbie, even if the PC first meets the Cabbie off-screen while being transported to Santa Monica.

(At one point during the prologue you also see Strauss, who was quite relaxed and blowing off Velvet Velour a moment before, suddenly sit up as if taking notice of something. I don’t think it was due to what LaCroix said -- LaCroix was still going on about how Naughty the PC’s sire had been, so it can’t have been that; I thought that might have been his “IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAND” moment.)

(Oh god I just realised that my younger readers might have no idea what I’m referring to, wtf)

So... because of all of those things I headcanoned that Cabbie was a very low generation Malk, and Maddy his childe. Because yeah, a Malkavian who already has delusions of grandeur would absolutely think that being a cab driver in LA is a good idea and a Caine-like thing to do. And it’d explain why the PC is so powerful, and how Strauss detected that power so quickly before you meet the Cabbie for the first time.

Obviously the whole thing falls apart if you play literally anything but a Malk.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now on with the headcanon of what the Tremere were up to during VTMB -- 

So obviously Strauss realises pretty quickly, “Wait, she is way too powerful to be that man’s childe. Better keep an eye on this one.”

And if she’s not this guy’s childe, who does she belong to? She must be the childe of an even more powerful vampire.

And there’s an atmosphere in LA that’s unsettled all the kindred, too.

So he quickly puts two and two together -- there’s a Methuselah in LA, and its mere presence is bugging the shit out of everybody. While LaCroix, Beckett, and everyone else has their eyes turned to the Elizabeth Dane, Strauss is the first and only person uninvolved with Jack’s shenanigans to realise that it’s a red herring. He doesn’t dismiss the Sarcophagus being involved out of hand, but he’s pretty sure that the Methuselah is what everyone should be worried about, especially if Gehenna is a real thing.

The Methuselah’s presence is incredibly bad news. If the superstitious kindred are correct -- and he’ll never claim to know better than them without evidence, just as he won’t claim to know better than the Gehenna denialists -- then there’s somebody roaming around LA during the beginning of the End Of Days who could be an awakened ancient, and it’s going to be extremely difficult to stop him when, and not if, he decides to smack a few Camarilla like bugs.

(I’m saying “he” because, well, he’s a he. But the Tremere don’t know that.)

And said Methuselah has a kid now. One that is powerful enough that his childe’s power is almost on par with LA’s elite the same night she’s Embraced. 

And it just drives home how fucked LA’s kindred could be -- there’s absolutely nothing stopping this Methuselah from spawning his own army and it would be more than a match for LA’s elite. They’re fifth generation. They don’t need to hang around gaining power if the Methuselah makes enough of them.

Sure, the prevailing beliefs are that the Methuselah are the Antediluvians’ enemies, but that’s still no reason to want a fucking Methuselah gaining power in your city, and if it turns out to be a rare ally of the Antediluvians then that’s even worse news because that means you’re going to have an ancient running around eating people.

And if the Methuselah decides to actually raise his childer to maturity and then strike, they’re even more fucked because by then the childer might not be contained to LA, and their powers will be much more developed and under the guidance someone who’s a way better teacher than any elder or ancilla would be.

So Strauss is like, “Oh. Fuck.”

There is absolutely nothing good about this. And he’s come to all of these conclusions before Maddy’s even finished the tutorial. By the time he’s back in his haven, his Lord already knows what’s going on and Strauss has his orders -- screw the sarcophagus, watch the childe.

There’s two factors that might save them -- Maddy doesn’t know who her true sire is and so won’t seek him out, and she’s under the guardianship of the Camarilla. She can’t sneeze without LA’s kindred knowing how many tissues she reached for. Because of that, if the Methuselah tries to reclaim her, Strauss will know about it and the Camarilla as a whole would immediately take notice. It’s the only reason, in fact, that the Pyramid don’t immediately decide to warn the Camarilla. 

Maddy is basically treated as a potential alarm for Gehenna that could go off at any moment.

So while LaCroix and all of LA are chasing after wild geese, Strauss is busy networking and spying. When Maddy finally shows up Downtown, it’s immediately obvious it’s one of Malkav’s childer who’s in LA -- Strauss is able to extrapolate that Madeline is fifth generation, as she’s powerful enough to be a threat to a sixth generation vampire, but it’s almost impossible that it’s Malkav himself running around LA given that people are still pretty sure he’s stuck under Jerusalem or whatever. (Hopefully.)

Her being a grandchilde of Malkav means her sire, however, is a bit of a wildcard. You never fucking know with Malkavians. With literally any other clan, the Tremere can go “Yeah, they’re up to no good and they’re going to destroy us all and/or get us all destroyed”, but with a literal childe of Malkav... who the fuck knows. It could be a childe of Malkav who thinks he’s an Antediluvian, or somehow better. It could be a childe of Malkav who’s actively trying to fulfil Gehenna, because yeah, if there’s one bunch of Methuselahs who’d kick off Gehenna it’d be the fucking Malkavians.

Or there’s even the possibility that one is just literally passing through and doing what the fuck ever.

They just don’t know. No clue. Any other clan they’d have a better idea, but nope, she had to be a grandchilde of fucking Malkav, so they have a lot less to work with and a lot more uncertainty.

It’s to the Pyramid’s absolute relief that she seems to get quite attached to Strauss very quickly and tends to pop by the Chantry to ask him questions. She doesn’t quite ask for guidance, but she asks him for facts, and he does his best to guide her all the same without being too pushy in case he alienates her. He is very, very careful with her. While the Anarchs and LaCroix are bossing her around, he is quick to establish himself as someone who respects her as a person who can make her own decisions, and has no interest in manipulating her himself.

(It’s for damn good reason -- she’s more useful to him just by being around than by doing his bidding. He cannot risk alienating her at all, especially because part of such a fickle clan and it’ll take some time before he feels he knows her well enough to put her to other uses.)

And the Pyramid discusses things, and Strauss’s Lord gets back to him and basically tells him, “It’s a long shot, but it might be worth getting in touch with the Malkavian primogen to see if he knows or can foresee anything.”

So Strauss reaches out to Grout.

And he doesn’t answer. So Strauss stays calm and gets in touch with Gary... who’s just as puzzled as he is. Okay, it’s never a good sign when a Nosferatu primogen doesn’t have answers, but he reaches out to the other primogen just in case and not a single one knows what the fuck has happened to Grout.

And the Pyramid is like, “FUCK.” This can’t be a coincidence. A Malkavian Methuselah running around LA, and at the same time the Malkavian primogen mysteriously goes missing? Yeah, no.

(Yeah, yes. Thank you, LaCroix and Ming-Xiao, for giving the Tremere a collective fucking heart attack.)

So LaCroix is cornered by the primogen, sends Maddy to Grout, quickly rings up Ming-Xiao all “hey I have an idea”, 

and then Maddy comes back all “yeah, no, Nines was there and also this random German guy.”

Cue the Tremere going ???????????????????????????????????????? and Strauss having to take a few moments to catch them up on Who’s Who of the Anarchs in LA.

“Who the fuck is the German guy?”

“According to LaCroix, a member of the Society of Leopold.”

“????????????????????????????? The fuck are they doing in the middle of all this?!?!”

Shit just got a hell of a lot more complicated.

So now Strauss has to not only track down the Methuselah (which he’s been trying to do the whole time without much luck), he has to track down Nines (who’s gone into hiding) and see if he knows what the fuck is going on, and subtly get the Nosferatu to see what the Society of Leopold are up to in case they’re a possible red flag there, and they’ve made zero progress on that by the time Maddy reappears telling them that somebody’s fucked off with the Ankaran Sarcophagus.

It really, really isn’t Strauss’s week. It’s not even two steps forward, one step back, it’s just all backwards. Shit has gone completely out of control and there’s a whole bunch of wildcards just chucked into the area and nobody knows what the FUCK is happening. The Tremere are scrabbling. Maddy disappears into Hollywood, has more squabbles with the Sabbat, turns up again with the Ankaran Sarcophagus. Thank fuck. 

Unfortunately, before the Nosferatu and Tremere can turn up any links between any Methuselahs and the Society of Leopold, LaCroix has hysterically thrown Maddy at them trying to murder her and all that happens is that Grunfeld Bach and his headquarters, and any evidence of any links with the Methuselah, are blown the fuck up.

Great.

Just fucking great.

Even Strauss’s Lord loses his touch of professionalism long enough to remark, “Jesus fucking Christ, I’m just glad she’s not pointed at us.”

Literally the next night Maddy’s set on the Hallowbrook hotel and a Blood Hunt is declared on her.

Cue the entire Tremere going, “oh no he didn’t.”

This is the perfect opportunity for the Methuselah to strike, to grab Maddy and abscond. And sure enough, he does, although not the way anyone expects.

Strauss’s Lord: “Oh my fucking Christ, we’re getting rid of LaCroix, this is unacceptable. Strauss, want a promotion?”

Strauss, internally: are you fucking serious.

Strauss, out loud: “If it serves the Pyramid, my Lord.”

So now his orders are to wait another night and see if Maddy shows up. They’re all crossing their fingers and hoping that Strauss did his job well enough that he’s the first person she comes to for help. When/if she does, they kick LaCroix the fuck outta LA because you fucking IDIOT you’re going to GET US ALL KILLED.

If she doesn’t show up that night, Strauss’s Lord’s Pontifex is going to the leader of the Camarilla (whose name escapes me at the moment) to personally tell him everything they’ve discovered and get him to put LaCroix on a fucking leash. 

They are seriously lucky that the Methuselah hasn’t, for whatever reason they can’t figure out, just literally made another goddamn fifth gen. He could do this whenever he wants, but he hasn’t. They have no idea why, but Strauss hasn’t noticed any other new faces in LA’s kindred community and certainly none with Maddy’s power, so they can only assume that the Methuselah got spooked by what happened with his descendant’s execution and decided to lie low for a bit. 

The Tremere know he’s still in LA, because everyone’s still on edge and Strauss can feel it thick on the air. He’s there. Watching. It’s looking more and more likely he swooped in and grabbed his childe -- 

And then Maddy turns up, all puppy eyed and stressed out and hallucinating more than normal. Strauss’s Lord has been telepathically keeping an eye on him since it got dark in Vienna and has been really antsy because the sun’ll be up in a few hours there and fuck where is that childe. But Maddy shows up and as soon as Strauss basically tells her he knows she’s innocent (he actually doesn’t know for sure, he barely knows what the fuck is going on, but he’s sure as hell not going to tell her that) she’s absolutely over the moon

And Strauss knows that yes, he’s done his job, this childe now belongs to the Pyramid.

And he sends her to arrest LaCroix and secure the Sarcophagus. He knows she can do it. She does. LaCroix is arrested, the Sarcophagus is secured, LaCroix is secured and now he’s the Prince of LA. The Methuselah didn’t strike quickly enough to get a hold of Maddy; soon as she woke up in Santa Monica that evening she made a beeline for Strauss.

Later that night Strauss is standing outside personally overseeing the loading of the Sarcophagus in a truck for transport. And he feels it -- that heaviness in the air is suddenly much more potent, much stronger than before. It’s there. And for a brief moment he thinks that oh god, there’s something in the Sarcophagus, it was all true, it wasn’t the Methuselah we should be worried about, it’s in the Sarcophagus and it’s awake -- 

But the truck drives away. And the feeling remains.

And then Strauss suddenly realises where it’s coming from, just as a nearby taxi starts up and drives off in the opposite direction.

Strauss makes a mental note of the taxi’s number plate, and over the next few nights he has ghouls and Nosferatu agents track down the cab in question to find out who it was transporting and what their destination was.

But the agents get back to him:

There’s no taxi registered under that number plate. There’s no car registered under that plate at all.

Strauss sends out orders to all who report to him to search the city for the taxi, but by the next dawn the heaviness has lifted from LA, and the taxi is gone, and never seen again.

[leiturasperplectas]

Ploductivity - Douglas Wilson [Pedro]

Uma teologia do trabalho "Taking one thing with another, all things considered, diligence is recognized and honored in the world, and laziness is recognized and shunned." "Plenty of sin accompanies technology, just as plenty of sin accompanies lack of technology. However, the basic driving problem is always in the human heart, always in our use of technology, and that use is shaped and driven by our attitudes about it." "People who do not want public evaluation of the quality of their work are people who have no business being in business. They should just buy a shovel and dig where they are told to." "Workers are generous. Loafers are not." "Fourth, the diligent like to have their work speak for them, and unproductive men like to substitute talk for action. Lazy men are good talkers." "The issue is not whether we are saved by works. Of course not. The issue here, rather, is what salvation looks like. We are saved by grace, but grace works." "As we consider this, we ought not to limit the phrase “good works” to helping little old ladies across the street or volunteering at soup kitchens. Those are included, certainly, but good works also include good work. Good works include turning a table leg on a lathe, or solving a mathematical problem, or shoveling out the barn. In sum, good works include, necessarily, the blessing of good work." Uma teologia da riqueza Paulo não manda as pessoas ricas para o inferno nem as condena por serem ricas e até gostarem um pouco disso. Em 1 Tm 6.17 ele quer dizer que "He tells them to enjoy what they have, and then tells them to be active in doing good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and eager to share." Você não vai mudar seu coração só por vender todas suas coisas ou jogá-las fora, afinal você sempre vai ter seu coração, e seu coração não poderá ser jogado fora: "We can’t throw our hearts away. We can’t get a new heart, or at least we cannot get a new heart on our own. If I were to make a decision to throw my old heart away, that decision would have to be made by my old heart. And if my old heart could do something as wonderful as throwing my old heart away, what is the need for a new heart?" O próprio Deus não nos deixará sem corações (embora os troque por novos): "We cannot make the raw material of idolatry go away. God created it, and He is not going to uncreate it for our personal convenience. Rather, God has to give us a heart that is capable of being rightly related to Him in the presence of things that seem to beckon us to be wrongly related to Him." "So rightly understood, wealth is something you do" Uma teologia das ferramentas Tendemos a pensar que a descendência de Caim era dotada de gênios e mestres em diversos ofícios, mas a descendência de Seth era composta por preguiçosos que só clamavam o nome de Deus. O testemunho de Noé e a maneira como ele faz uso das ferramentas para contruir sua Arca contrapõe nossas suposições: "Noah’s ark was the technological achievement of the antediluvian world. So when it comes to the use of tools, we cannot say that the line of Seth was made up of slouches." O homem não é verdadeiramente homem sem ferramentas: "The world is laden with many good things, and apart from picking an apple or two with your bare hands, any kind of dominion has to be accomplished by means of tools. A man with tools is not being an artificial man. My argument is that a man cannot be an authentic man without tools." Definição do que é uma ferramenta: "And so we should define a tool in this way: something that is not part of a man’s body which makes something that the man wants to do possible or easier." "Tools enable us to widen our reach. Tools make it possible for our radius of fruitfulness (now there is a phrase for the ages) to extend much farther than it otherwise would." "...we should regard our tools the same way we regard our money—with grateful suspicion." Uma teologia das mediações "Our first parents were clothed to cover the shamefulness of their nakedness, but we do not need to assume that clothes would never have been developed in a world apart from sin. Presumably there would have been some hikes that required shoes, and some temperatures that required warmth, and other occasions which would require majesty and glory. So, working outward, the first line of media would be clothing." "We speak and are spoken to, which means that between us and our conversation partner, we are manipulating the air with our teeth, lungs, lips, and tongues, and doing so in order to request that the other person, across the table there, would be pleased to pass the mashed potatoes. The media involved is largely invisible to us, but it is no less there for all that." A internet não nos torna necessariamente menos humanos: "When it was just Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, they did not need the Internet. Nor could they have built one if they did need it. Neither did they require Interstate highways. And so, some idyllic dreamers have assumed that the ideal condition of man must be the primitive one. But why would we assume that we have lost something essentially human just because we have gotten to the point where there are nearly eight billion of us, and we do need an Interstate? God was the one who told us to multiply. And one of the things that necessarily grows and develops with that multiplication is the largely invisible world of media. When we notice it, which happens rarely, our reflex action is to worry about it—as though getting your news off a smartphone is somehow less “authentic” than getting it from newsprint, telegraphs, or smoke signals." Possuir ferramentas e - até certo ponto - depender delas é algo que fazemos e que agrada a Deus! "So, a right recognition of the inescapability of media helps us to understand that when a man buys a tool belt and fills it up, he is doing something that in principle pleases God. This is what he was created to do." Uma teologia das missões e mediações "So what should we bring with us when we travel? What should we send with our messages when we write? The answer is Jesus, but this must be understood rightly. This does not mean that all your Facebook posts have be pictures of saints with three haloes, or that your website has to play Gregorian chant in the background." A vontade de buscar por avanços tecnológicos não é necessariamente pecaminosa, embora traga consigo tentações como qualquer avanço (do tijolo, à carroça, ao computador): "But of course, the improvements will bring a new set of temptations with them, just as the initial invention did." Para o homem, o artificial é natural! "For man, the artificial is natural. We want nothing to do with Rousseau’s “noble savage.” Ten minutes after Adam figured out what that honeycomb was, he started looking around for that stick we mentioned earlier." A internet apenas estende aquilo que a gente já é: "When you go somewhere, or when you send a message somewhere, you are simply projecting what you already are. If you are a bore and a bellygod, then social media will in fact enable you to engage in some digital scribbling so that people in South America can, if they wish, read about your grumbles over lunch." Não há, portanto, transmissão de amor alguma sem mídia! "This means that, because of the way we are created, we cannot love others without media because love, like sound, doesn’t travel in a vacuum." Uma teologia do mercado Sobre o socialismo: "Grinding poverty can certainly come about through natural disasters—famines and so on—but the thing we really need to be on guard against is organized and coercive poverty, by which I mean socialism. Socialism is the drive to control the free choices of other people, especially in the future, in order to prevent them from doing things that seem stupid to the self-appointed organizers, but which will lead to staggering wealth, or so the organizers say, three generations from now." Jesus é soberano sobre a lei da oferta e da demanda. Cristo é soberano sobre todos os preços do mercado, não uma mera lei impessoal! * "When we speak about the law of supply and demand (outside the control of any human agency), we are talking about the Author of that law, and of others." * "In other words, the free market does not decide the price of the new zippers. That decision is made by the Lord Jesus. A statement like that hits us sideways because we are accustomed to think about the world in quasi-Deistic terms. Sure, God made everything some time long ago, but things happen now because of impersonal natural laws, right? Gravity pulls things to the floor, centrifugal force pulls them out to the edges, and the law of supply and demand determines the cost of zippers. But the biblical doctrine is actually one of creation and ongoing providence. All of it is personal." Todas as bençãos que recebemos vêm de mãos perfuradas por pregos: "So my responsibility is, so to speak, whatever is in front of me, there on my workbench or desk or counter. I should do a first-rate job with that, and other things will fall into place. And as they fall into place, it will not be the impersonal doing of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Every blessing a Christian ever receives is from a pierced hand." Uma teologia do progresso "In other words, if you are anything like me, you need to learn how to manage this embarrassment of wealth. In short, you need to learn how to become more productive." Uma teologia da alegre suspeita "God gives us the wealth that we will be tempted to put in place of Him. When God does this, we may show ourselves ingrates by turning away from Him, wealth in hand, or by throwing the wealth to the ground in front of Him." "The only obedient response is to accept that wealth as the gift of God that it is, and to keep it in its proper creaturely place." "We cannot examine the rise of technological blessings without focusing on those nations where the gospel took deepest root. If we couple this with an understanding that the gospel fulfills the promises given in the Old Testament (instead of abrogating them), this would of necessity include the blessings promised in Deuteronomy. What is happening should not astonish us. It is our promised legacy." "It does not profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul, and there is an additional sting when he then loses the world too. Whatever you worship in place of God is another thing you lose. Whatever you surrender gladly to Him is returned to you, pressed down, shaken, and running over." "We need to learn how to be motivated by the things which God uses to motivate us. Among other reasons, the prodigal son returned home in true repentance because he was famished (Luke 15:17). His stomach was part of the reason for his repentance (Prov. 16:26). But shouldn’t we repent for the purest of motives? Doesn’t work that way. If we had pure motives, we wouldn’t be needing to repent." Uma introdução à frutividade (minha tradução neologística de Ploductivity. Sorry) O primeiro passo: "The first step toward genuinely productive work is to make it a point to work coram Deo, in the presence of God" Se nossos corpos são sacrifícios vivos (Romanos 12. 1-2), tudo onde nossos corpos repousam é um altar! "Now if my body is a living sacrifice, this means that everything it rests upon is an altar. The car I drive is an altar, the bed I sleep in is an altar, and the desk where I work is an altar." A verdadeira produtividade só acontece ante a face do Senhor: "Living and working in the presence of God is essential because what constitutes a truly productive person is the fact that they are laboring under the blessing of God." A finitude do trabalho "George MacDonald once said that obedience is the great opener of eyes. The more we do, the more we will be able to do." "Remembering the finitude of your labors will keep you humble. Recognizing that your labors have a place in God’s cosmic intentions for the universe will keep you from thinking that your tiny labors are stupid labors. They are nothing of the kind. Your labors in the Lord are not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58)." Ambição é algo bom Desejar não é algo ruim: "Many Christians think their problem lies in the verbs, when it actually lies in the direct objects and in the adverbs. They think they are to be faulted because they want, because they desire. But the actual problem is not that we desire, but that we desire the wrong things, or that we desire the right things wrongly." Sobre o perigo de se contentar muito cedo: "But there is something wrong with a man settling too quickly, for the sake of avoiding too much responsibility or too much work."

A Chave-mestra O primeiro passo para ser bom naquilo que se faz é assumir suas cagadas. "So the first step in achieving mastery is taking responsibility for the results. You should know what the best practices are. You should constantly be learning something fresh and new in your field. When something blows up, as it will invariably do sometimes in this fallen world, you communicate with your customers and your creditors, refusing to make them chase you. You tell the truth, and you do not resort to those evasive half-truths called excuses." "So while it is reasonable to glance at the measuring stick goal from time to time, for the most part our gaze should be fixed on the work that is before us. Work for the work, not the award. Those who work for the work, and not the award, are—get this—more likely to win the award." -  O poder da imitação: "Another key to mastery is realizing that the key to originality is imitation. [...] First, if you pick a good model to imitate, this prevents bad things from happening when you apply the third key (which is repetition)." "The second good thing about imitation is that it enables you to build on the good work that others have done, which is really the only healthy direction that originality can go." "Learn what good work is, imitate it studiously, and do that over time. The result will frequently be what others call inspired or original or creative." C. S. Lewis: “No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought.” "When people do something over and over again—and this should not come as a surprise—they get good at it. But to some, this seems suspiciously like work." O poder da frutividade Quando o problema não está no trabalho mas em quem o está realizando: "However, when everything is a crisis, nothing is a crisis. When every project or deadline is on fire, this is a time management issue. When it is a routine pattern, the crisis is not in the work, but rather in the worker." "But fifteen minutes a day can be had. That can be found. Here is the power of plodding. Suppose you wanted to write a novel of sixty thousand words. Daunting, right? That’s a big steak there. Carve it up into bite-sized pieces. Commit to writing a hundred words a day, no matter what." "Do a little bit, and do not fall for the idea that unless you can pour yourself into something for half a year, there is no point doing it at all. And if you say that you could not possibly do anything like this without outlining the whole thing first, well, fine. Work on an outline for fifteen minutes a day." "What plodding requires is predictability and routine." Trabalhe sob um ritmo que você poderá manter "The thing to take away is that brief but daily routines are capable of accumulating a large amount of whatever the work product might be." Progresso e depravação "Jesus is the Lord of history, and this is why we don’t need to be afraid of Twitter. Or Facebook. Or teenagers typing with their thumbs. Jesus is the Lord of history, which is why we don’t need to worry about Google making us stupid." "This is going to sound funny, but I am excited about the future because I am a postmillennialist. And I am a postmillennialist because I am a Calvinist who believes that the sovereign God over all things is truly, inexhaustibly, and fiercely good. He keeps His promises. In addition to this, my Calvinism has helped me to understand the depravity of man and his ability to screw up pretty much anything." "So we need to remember that the eschatological future promised by the prophet Isaiah, and the future that was shaped by the Industrial Revolution and will continue to be shaped by the Digital Revolution, are the same future. I don’t believe in an invisible spiritual future, shaped by the Holy Spirit, full of sweetness and light, and an actual historical future shaped by the Devil, Halliburton, the Illuminati, and Murphy’s law." "Belief that we will win the war is not a denial of the reality of that war. My optimism is not of the kind that denies the existence of the battle. My optimism is of the kind that maintains that we are winning the battle." "The Bible says that the wealthy are tempted to hubris, self-sufficiency, lack of concern for the poor, oppression, and the rest of that sorry lot. Wealth is a good thing, but it brings temptations. A lot of wealth is a lot of a good thing, but it brings with it a lot of temptations." Eschatologia

"A good example of an erudite worrier would be Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death. But for every book like that, given the propensity of Calvinists to worry excessively about the heart of man, I would recommend that you read three like Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You, Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies, and Herman’s The Idea of Decline in Western History. Why should Calvinists worry? In the collision between the sovereignty of Jesus in history, and the influence of sin in history, sin is the certain loser." "In the long run, stupidity never works" (QUE FRASE) Sobre o excesso de palavras no mundo digital: "Christians are logocentric, people of words. Why should we be bothered by a tsunami of words? This is where we swim." As novas mediações "Jesus is already Lord of those who recognize it, and He is already Lord of those who refuse to recognize it. This means that the authority of Jesus Christ, right now and not later, currently extends over Facebook, Google, and Twitter. He is the Lord of all the ones and zeroes. He is the Lord of the microprocessor. He is the Lord of the dark web. He is the Lord of all silicon, and the sand it rode in on. He is the Lord of Amazon, and the Lord of that little indie bookstore around the corner. He is the Lord of all our military drones, and all our delivery drones. He is the Lord of all of our great ones, and He is the Lord of the municipal dogcatchers."