#vtm aila

[blighted-elf]

Vampire: The Masquerade - Choice of Games Titles

[nightingaletrash]

I don't think I think hard enough about Amicia and Aila, especially considering that Aila was the first step down the road to becoming a diablerist. Like... it's easy to think that Amicia would just brush Aila off as someone who was pathetic enough to lose herself to ennui, but Amicia has seen Aila, experienced her, knows her as one knows themselves which is a very intimate way of knowing someone.

Aila was ancient and she didn't end up a mindless wight unlike Reremouse (who was the second (successful) step on the road of diablerie). She was strong, intelligent and decisive, and she didn't allow anyone to keep her from the decisions she made. They were her choices, everyone else be damned. She fought and survived wars that decimated swathes of the world, and her diversity of skills gave her the kind of freedom that Amicia always craved.

So while Amicia usually has no respect for anyone she deems to be weak or a quitter, she will never launch such accusations against Aila - partly for her own pride, as Aila is now part of her, but also because she's someone who had what Amicia is still chasing by Night Road: the freedom to make her own choices.

[porcelainseashore]

oh boy apologies for being late with sending this in I'm spacy af-- but I would love to know: 🔥🔚🧮📚

🔥 what’s something that’s currently going really well?

Answered, but I think another thing that fits the bill is putting myself out there in the VTM community and organizing an event for the amazingly talented writers (yourself included, of course!) in it. Shameless plug for our VtM Secret Santa 2024 Masterlist again, hehe. It was a lot of work, but I'm very happy I did it and got to meet all of you, and intend to host more in the future 🫶

🔚 have you ever completely changed the direction a piece was going?

Oh, hell yeah. Spoilers, but Poison Tree, the Lucien/Wynter piece, had a bunch of dialogue at first, focused entirely on their relationship, with Lucien being way creepier and possessive. Later, I scrapped it all and inverted how I thought about the story, starting it off with Wynter meeting her sire, Violetta, and then working backwards from there. Wynter took the spotlight interjected with Lucien's influence on her life. Less dialogue. Lucien became more human? with his love, guilt, and failings. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and in the end it aligned better with my vision.

🧮 what are you working on? describe it in 20 words or less

Answered, but you know what? I have more! 😂 Okay, let me dig out my WIP sheet again and see... ah-hah! There should be a Lettow/Wynter piece exploring their involvement in the Gehenna War in Cairo, along with Wynter experiencing increasingly frequent flashbacks of Aila's memories. Other than that, I'm planning write a part 2 to The Other Son and more stories within Dávdna's chronicle, The Cardinal North. Uh-oh, was that more than 20 words?

📚 do you ever read similar works while writing, or do you intentionally not read them?

Answered, but I could probably give another example. While writing Poison Tree, I was reading Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney and The Outrun by Amy Liptrot.

[badass-at-fandoming]

hi, where did you get the eager obedience of lettow for aila bc i didn't run into it on my playthrough, i know abt the love but does the obdience thing come up if you pick certain options?

Hi @ventrimaculata I assume you're talking about this post where I complain about White Wolf 😅

So @ryttu3k has the actual screenshot, but during the first Aila dream, if you order Lettow around, he happily and eagerly follows orders. I think it boosts your Charisma? It's only one or two lines, but those lines contain domme-submissive subtext.

When the Courier chooses to boink Lettow, he "cries out" when the Courier bites him, which might be a masochist/pain kink if you squint:

Lettow touches the Courier's wrist before the Courier leaves for the final battle. The narration suggests he wants to check the time on the Courier's watch, but I think it's fair to interpret the touch as romantic as well. The wrist is where the Courier marked him, and Lettow touching the same spot on the Courier's wrist is a fond, wistful echo of that gesture. The wrist is where the Courier bond him to them, and they granted that pleasure through pain.

You might find out more if you play Clan Hecata, since their bane is their bites just feel like bites. No aphrodisiac for necromancers! 😂

Thanks for the ask! Felt some glee going through the Night Road screenshots again. I haven't played the game in ages, since the update erased my Lasombra run (RIP Lucita, too dark for this bright world). On Twitter, Marquis consistently says he doesn't like writing romance, but I'm consistently impressed with how good he is at it. And to fit it into such an action-heavy game! Good writing is good.

[lots-of-little-pink-clouds]

GUYS I’M SCREAMING

(Banu Haqim lineage spoilers under the break:)

A Banu Haqim PC is related to Aila!

[ryttu3k]

Clanswap AU, Night Road edition! For previous clanswap fun, see also: the signatures (Tremere!Myca, Lasombra!Fatima, Gangrel!Lucita, Toreador!Anatole, and Nosferatu!Beckett), write-ups for Tremere!Nines and Banu Haqim!LaCroix, and the fic featuring the latter two.

Details beneath the cut for Ravnos!Lettow, Ventrue!Dove, Tremere!Julian, and Cappadocian!Aila!

Lettow Kaminsky | 9th generation Ravnos | unknown sire

One of Lettow's key themes is that he seems to be restless. Let's turn that up a notch! Lettow was Embraced by an unknown Ravnos and immediately went "cool that works", roaming around Europe in an extended childehood. Over time, he met Jasper and Dove, and later Aila; now, he wasn't just a wanderer, but a wanderer with a new family. He still has Riga, of course. Can't eventually be the Eagle Prince without an eagle!

Made it through the Week of Nightmares okay, largely due to Dove staking him when he first went into frenzy. She and Aila watched over him for that time, busied themselves with working out what was happening (there weren't many other Ravnos in the vicinity, but word spread decently quickly that it was something related to the clan), and when everything seemed to calm down, he was able to recover - and come to terms with his new bane.

Being based singularly in Tucson ended up being a good thing. After acquiring Madrigal Real Estate, he was able to establish a network of seven havens, going between them from night to night, with the Viper more or less in the middle. Aila's depression even took a back seat for a while, helping Lettow cope with becoming part of a near-extinct clan, something she was all too familiar with herself. Still, her depression did end up leading her into torpor, and then into being diablerised; Tucson's Ventrue Prince did end up receiving a tree trunk to the chest, and Lettow did end up Prince, largely to find out who had dared to hurt Aila...

The Dove of Moudros | 10th generation Ventrue | Embraced by Sophia Komnenou

So Dove is Greek and Embraced right around the Greek Revolution. Why not get in some Sins of the Sires? That was right around the time that Sophia helped overthrow the former Prince; likely knowing that Peisistratos was a raging misogynist, I could easily see her choosing to Embrace an intelligent, passionate young woman to help back her up when she inevitably tossed him out. Dove fits that bill well, and she helps Sophia in all things technological, taught Ventrue diplomacy and politics, and generally serves as Sophia's assistant.

Well, up until she decides that she's not meant to be a politician and ditches, eventually meeting Lettow, and Jasper, and eventually Aila.

Her story from there is more or less the same as per canon, with a love for radio technology, fast vehicles, and the like, albeit being able to be a little more open about it with her lack of the Nosferatu bane. Her Ventrue bane, too, fits in well, with a feeding restriction on adrenaline junkies and the like. Hanging out at the motor clubs isn't just a hobby, it's dinner!

When they arrive in Tucson, she sticks by Lettow; when the former Prince (still Ventrue) starts being awful and Lettow (as Ravnos) is one of the ones targeted, they start working on taking him down. After, despite Lettow technically being Prince, it's Dove who serves as main advisor and generally runs the show; it's particularly useful when it comes to the former Prince's childer. If they want to Ventrue at her, well, she can just Ventrue louder!

Julian Sim | 11th generation Tremere | Embraced by Jasper Knowles

Julian's backstory is more or less the same up to his Embrace. His canon Banu Haqim sire, however, happened to mention the young man he hoped to Embrace to his friend Jasper; Jasper promptly pointed out that maybe this guy was a little too chaotic to help spread the influence of the Banu Haqim in southeast Asia, canon sire went "...fair point", and left Julian to be Embraced by Jasper instead. Which, honestly, suited Julian just fine!

He's still pretty similar, honestly. Still has a lot of blood sorcery, just this time it's explicitly Tremere Thaumaturgy. Slightly, um, less sense of justice, and one big point of divergence for a Night Road plot is that he doesn't arrange to kill Jasper, his sire. He does end up leaving his side and striking out on his own, though, and still fully intends to do the whole 2100 thing.

The collapse of the Pyramid, here, was a big influence - if hiding and staying secret still saw the Tremere brought to their knees, then what was the point of even having the Masquerade? Why not be themselves, openly, so the SI can't actually attack without causing a major diplomatic incident? Better to be out in the open and with a public that supports them, than skulking around in the shadows and still being killed.

Aila | 6th generation Cappadocian | Embraced by Alexia Theusa

Last up, Aila! She's Cappadocian here, having travelled to Constantinople from Anatolia as a young woman and crossing paths with Alexia Theusa, one of the eldest of the clan in the city and close to the Trinity (in this AU, they were, at the time, still around and kicking). Alexia was already 1,300 years old at this point, and the young, passionate, and independent Aila sparked her interest, Embracing her and hoping her youthful passion could help revive the ageing Clan of Death.

Aila... wasn't a natural fit for clan Cappadocian. She was a fan of acting rather than sitting and thinking, and while she certainly pitied Alexia and her fixation on finding her former lover, she couldn't bring herself to become a part of the city. Eventually, after just a few decades, she left, returning to Anatolia under the pretense of meeting more of her clan members.

It was not them she met, however, but rather the Banu Haqim; impressed by their dedication to doing something and being in the company of other Muslims after the largely Christian Constantinople, she requested training from them. Training a woman as one of the Warriors, and one from another clan, no less, they initially refused; when Aila left, trained on her own, and later bested one of their own in combat, they grudgingly agreed to work with her, although she was still forbidden from their stronghold of Alamut. For the next few centuries, Aila lived and trained nearby with the Banu Haqim, becoming a capable combatant; with her face and body masked, few were able to see the corpselike appearance that betrayed her as a part of the Cappadocian clan.

This eventually saved her life when the Giovanni began their rampage against the clan. The Banu Haqim had already seen and fought against the Tremere campaign against the Salubri; now, they defended the remaining Cappadocians as well, Aila defending her clanmates from behind her mask. The end result was, alas, the collapse of the Cappadocians as a clan, with Aila left as one of the few survivors. With nowhere else to go, despairing at the loss, she spent her time training to become stronger and stronger so she would never face the fate of her clanmates, and increasing periods of torpor.

One of those periods of wakefulness happened to coincide with the Great War, and there, she found herself a novelty - a Ravnos fighter pilot, of all things! Lettow was a delightful distraction, and for another handful of decades, she found herself with more energy than she had had in a while, travelling with Lettow and his coterie members, Dove and Jasper. But her long existence always did weigh heavily upon her, and she never fully trusted Jasper or his childe Julian, and a few years into the new millennium, she began to feel the call of torpor again, promising Lettow that it wouldn't be forever, and they would see each other again before he knew it.

He never saw her again.

[vampiremourning]

‘rosy-fingered bitch’ Why Is He Like That

[robotslenderman]

Lettow: I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we will be landing immediately. The bad news is, we're crash landing.

Aila:

[papirlife]

Holy crap, I was listening to old Evanescence songs and ‘Before the Dawn’ is giving me MAJOR Lettow/Alia or Lettow/guilty courier vibes. Mainly Alia because LOOK

Meet me after dark again and I'll hold you

I am nothing more than to see you there

And maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away

We'll be lost before the dawn

If only night can hold you where I can see you, my love

Then let me never ever wake again

And maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away

We'll be lost before the dawn

Somehow I know that we can't wake again from this dream

It's not real, but it's ours

Maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away

We'll be lost before the dawn

Maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away

We'll be lost before the dawn

TELL ME IT DOESNT SOUND LIKE AILA IN HER FINAL DAYS

But like the instrumental is so ethereal and haunting too, it’s just so *chef’s kiss* gorgeous and fitting and angsty I love it.

[missn11]

@robotslenderman I have the most awful (or greatest idea) what would happen if you named your courier Aila? I have an idea of a Toreador or Caitiff have been taken over by Aila but she hide the truth from herself until slowly remembering when they(she) meets Lettow again...

[astfut]

... Aila should be the only character who can be romanced by the courier in the vtm night road

[nightingaletrash]

Julian and Amicia's relationship is so damn weird because Amicia just... does not care for him at all. At best, she pretty much used him as a sort of guide for how to be a Camarilla Kindred rather than a Sabbat Cainite, how she would (generally) be expected to behave, and to learn what non-Sabbat vampires believed about being undead. She didn't care for him back then and those feelings never changed. She was still indifferent to him, his plans, his very existence, and only put up with him because she had something to gain from helping him from time to time.

Julian knew how she felt about him back when they first met, but he also knows how she thinks, what makes her tick. He knows that she's a survivor, interested in persisting above all else, and he figures that that makes her easy to predict and manipulate. He thinks he knows what moves she'll make before she makes them, and that if he can keep dangling the carrot in her face, he'll get what he needs from her.

But he never anticipated her using the SI as a weapon. He knew there was a possibility of her taking his formula for herself and leaving with it, but he really believed he could win her over with the promise that she would be shaping the world as she saw fit. He believed that he could finally break that apathy she held for him and get her on side, only for her to betray and destroy him without a second thought.

[orodrethsgeek]

VTM!

VtM: Night Road

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): my "canon" courier Vane on a less self-centered note, Lettow. What an amazing concept for a Prince??? He's so intriguingly chill throughout the game and I just want to spend more time with him, honestly.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped): Jasper Knowles. Yes, yes, the blood crimes, but also, he is So Shaped. (Julian is also cute, but obnoxious.)

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): Alexander, Lettow's ghoul. He's stinky and sketchy and I love him. My "canon" courier wasn't able to save him and is going to be haunted about it for the rest of his life.

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week): definitely Aila, even if she's only obscure in the sense that she's dead the whole game. I just find myself fascinated by her and the things we learn about her.

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave): Giselle. More on the "poor/pathetic" end of the spectrum, less on the "problematic"; all of my couriers want to rescue her from Invidia. :( I deserve a little witch rehabilitation, as a treat.

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason): Julian. He wrote self-insert vampire romance novels, I just think he'd appreciate a little shenaniganry. Oh, also the manipulation and gaslighting would make a little torment fun.

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell): Samantha :( Mostly by virtue of elimination; I'm intrigued by her character concept honestly, but she is mean to my vamps, so.

I fully intend to do this for all the VTM games I've played so far, but this took longer than I expected, so have this Part 1 in the meantime until I get to the others.

[badass-at-fandoming]

Night Road update kicked me back 3 chapters but it’s okay because my jaw hit the floor at this art.

[lots-of-little-pink-clouds]

Lettow’s always complaining about how old he is, but he’s really only, like 200-something (wiki says he was born in 1770, going off that he’d be 249 in 2019). Compared to Aila, he’s a baby. Like, look at LaCroix, who was also about the same age (born late-1700s).

But maybe that’s why he feels older, since he spent a lot of time with her (Aila was freaking ancient). Plus the whole “keeping her entertained so she won’t go into torpor,” and Lettow had to grow up really quickly, just look at the difference in how he acts and speaks in Night Road vs. the flashbacks (”Dawn, that rosy-fingered bitch,” anyone?).

[ryttu3k]

Night Road Sims? Night Road Sims!

Can’t share on the Gallery, unfortunately, since they use a ton of CC. Still, here are Lettow, Julian, Dove, and Aila! Outfits in order are Everyday (Lettow and Aila have two - Lettow’s fighting-Reremouse outfit and Aila’s photograph outfit), Formal, Exercise, Sleeping, Party, Swimwear, Hot Weather, Cold Weather.

Design notes: lots of white for Lettow. Some old-fashioned stuff, like the Party outfit. Turquoise jewellery. Hard to see, but he has a ponytail. Julian is just a straight-out gremlin tbh. Dove - tough and badass. God she was tricky to make. The Sims just doesn’t have skinless/skull-like faces, so I had to make do with tattoos. And Aila has a ton of turquoise accents teamed with black and white, to more or less give a cohesive look with Lettow.