Post by Barnaby Cuthbert on Oct 15, 2016 10:12:07 GMT -8
Sunday, October 2nd - 1:35 AM
Super 6 Motel
Seattle, WA
Suggested Listening: Zack Hemsey - "The Way"
You see, this is why I hate city politics. Within hours of entering Seattle, the last remaining "jewel" of the the Camarilla in the so-called Innland Empire domains, I had this feeling that something was wrong. There's always going to be the normal tension, sure, I'm an outlander, aside from my Standing relevant to the Tower I'm nobody to most of these Licks.
Then I enter the realm of the Court, go through the motions, and end up at a Salon.
No, not a Salon, a goddamned inquisition for one Ventrue called Straad.
I witnessed literal hours of character assassination of this guy while he was away somewhere, the new harpies, this Nos called Spider and a Brujah with pink hair danced around the Prince bowing and scraping and exalting and exhorting and extolling his virtues, basically sucking his undead dick, while simultaneously continuously trash-talking this and most of the other Ventrue who were out of the room, and one Toreador. The one younger Ventrue woman, the Herald, looked like she might faint. It was hard to watch.
The hardest part of the little peacock dance of the Toreador Prince and clearly bought Harpies was the obvious subtext.
See, nobody established in a city dies without it being the important people's idea first. A fine unspoken tradition really, it lets people talk it out, consider how the web of influence and boons and what-not will be effected by the loss. So on one level, it worked.
But the idea itself always made me laugh. The reality was the old joke among Ancillae; which goes like:
Q. "How do you get all the Elders in the city to admit to setting up a Kindred to die?"
A. "Kill a Kindred." (And watch them all clamor to claim it was their idea in the first place.)
It was all a bit tawdry, really. So much like American politics recently; too loud, too obvious, too vulgar. I mean it's one thing to hold a Salon to trash talk a member of your domain, but to do it in the absence of the Kindred themselves? There really wasn't any excuse for that other than fear. I mean, eternal creatures could wait a fortnight or a decade to slam someone and have it be just as well, but hey, not my city, not my clown circus.
What was my problem was not the lack of decorum, it was what it revealed:
"We're afraid of this Kindred, he's a threat to us, and we want to make it ok to kill him, politically, to reduce the backlash from the eventual, actual murder."
...with a side of:
"Even if we die, we want to posthumously say we told you so."
I didn't care one thirty-sixth of a fuck about this guy Straad, I mean he was Ventrue. There are just so many of them, and they don't die easy, generally. Fortitude will do that. But what was one less of them, really?
But it's this: I don't like being in a cave with wolves, per se, even though we have an understanding. I REALLY don't like being in a cave with scared wolves; because you have to sleep sometime and eventually someone is going to get bit.
I'm not getting bit in this ramshackle shithole of a gold-rush town. Not for no Ventrue, that's for sure, but that display disgusted me. It was just so... obvious.
Saw Vivi for a minute, but she was busy flitting about with the toast of Milan, I remembered the uh, interesting trek she'd paid me to make with her, some time back, when I was working the roads around the Mediterranean, providing guided passage between cities and the like, as we Gangrel are wont to do to earn our boons, and the attendant Lupine nonsense that followed suit. It had been one of those 'how did we survive that' moments. Seemed like that bond of survival hadn't been worth much to her, but at least it was nice to see a familiar face since waking from torpor. Not too hard on the eyes, either.
Oh, and then there were the friggin' Ravnos in the gathering. Ravnos! Trickster thieves always looking for an angle. I was almost taken in. What a trap, nimble fingers on paper cards, a beating heart masked by a wind-blown shawl, and a master who claimed that hundreds of years of rivalry was 'no big deal'.
They'd gotten the better of me, for a moment, but you don't put one over on old Brick for long, nossir. I had their number now. Things would be different, next time.
Still, the cards had revealed success, and a plaything in the meantime. A cat batting a mouse for amusement came to mind.
Squeak, squeak, motherfuckers.
Another old associate came to mind, and that association would be a hellova thing if jobs worked out the way he was paying for them. But that was a card for the vest, for now.
Keeper Assamite and I'd had words; Amani. A sleek woman, with something inherently ermine about her, like a Mink waiting to bite into a rabbit. Seemingly comfortable with murder in the moment, perhaps, but seemingly distasteful at the requirement. Interesting choice. A Toreador with an Assamite Keeper doesn't say paranoid at all.
Rhodes named himself chieftain of the Clan and I approved, mostly because he seemed pragmatic, knew the roads around the area and was classically forthcoming in that way that only we are. I didn't even ask for boons and he didn't either. I technically should have, I like to have clean books, but hell, you spend so much time out of the world and sometimes a body is just grateful to remember it's part of more than the dirt.
The first one's free kid. Next time you are paying up. I have a reputation to maintain over here.
There was a sense of belonging with Clan and as much as I hated to admit it, even in the shitty Salon. Blood wanted politics and politics wanted blood. Nothing to be done about that, really.
I was restless the entire night, I recognized it. I paced, I growled when I should have used words. I flexed the Vitae in my veins more than once. The Beast wanted free, and I kicked it back down in the teeth more than once. I was a general danger to myself and others, stalking the room like the hunter I am, showing teeth when needed and throat when required, picking out the predators from the prey, the Alphas from the Betas from the Omegas, smelling for blood in the air and on the ground, getting the lay of the land. There was tension, intrigue, old wounds not quite scabbed over and a hunger for change that for the right combination of boons, I could get behind.
As much as I hated it, the petty politics, the requirement to be at all tolerant of thieving bloodlines and wretched, histrionic Harpy libel campaigns, I had almost had no choice but to admit to myself: It felt good to be back.
Super 6 Motel
Seattle, WA
Suggested Listening: Zack Hemsey - "The Way"
You see, this is why I hate city politics. Within hours of entering Seattle, the last remaining "jewel" of the the Camarilla in the so-called Innland Empire domains, I had this feeling that something was wrong. There's always going to be the normal tension, sure, I'm an outlander, aside from my Standing relevant to the Tower I'm nobody to most of these Licks.
Then I enter the realm of the Court, go through the motions, and end up at a Salon.
No, not a Salon, a goddamned inquisition for one Ventrue called Straad.
I witnessed literal hours of character assassination of this guy while he was away somewhere, the new harpies, this Nos called Spider and a Brujah with pink hair danced around the Prince bowing and scraping and exalting and exhorting and extolling his virtues, basically sucking his undead dick, while simultaneously continuously trash-talking this and most of the other Ventrue who were out of the room, and one Toreador. The one younger Ventrue woman, the Herald, looked like she might faint. It was hard to watch.
The hardest part of the little peacock dance of the Toreador Prince and clearly bought Harpies was the obvious subtext.
See, nobody established in a city dies without it being the important people's idea first. A fine unspoken tradition really, it lets people talk it out, consider how the web of influence and boons and what-not will be effected by the loss. So on one level, it worked.
But the idea itself always made me laugh. The reality was the old joke among Ancillae; which goes like:
Q. "How do you get all the Elders in the city to admit to setting up a Kindred to die?"
A. "Kill a Kindred." (And watch them all clamor to claim it was their idea in the first place.)
It was all a bit tawdry, really. So much like American politics recently; too loud, too obvious, too vulgar. I mean it's one thing to hold a Salon to trash talk a member of your domain, but to do it in the absence of the Kindred themselves? There really wasn't any excuse for that other than fear. I mean, eternal creatures could wait a fortnight or a decade to slam someone and have it be just as well, but hey, not my city, not my clown circus.
What was my problem was not the lack of decorum, it was what it revealed:
"We're afraid of this Kindred, he's a threat to us, and we want to make it ok to kill him, politically, to reduce the backlash from the eventual, actual murder."
...with a side of:
"Even if we die, we want to posthumously say we told you so."
I didn't care one thirty-sixth of a fuck about this guy Straad, I mean he was Ventrue. There are just so many of them, and they don't die easy, generally. Fortitude will do that. But what was one less of them, really?
But it's this: I don't like being in a cave with wolves, per se, even though we have an understanding. I REALLY don't like being in a cave with scared wolves; because you have to sleep sometime and eventually someone is going to get bit.
I'm not getting bit in this ramshackle shithole of a gold-rush town. Not for no Ventrue, that's for sure, but that display disgusted me. It was just so... obvious.
Saw Vivi for a minute, but she was busy flitting about with the toast of Milan, I remembered the uh, interesting trek she'd paid me to make with her, some time back, when I was working the roads around the Mediterranean, providing guided passage between cities and the like, as we Gangrel are wont to do to earn our boons, and the attendant Lupine nonsense that followed suit. It had been one of those 'how did we survive that' moments. Seemed like that bond of survival hadn't been worth much to her, but at least it was nice to see a familiar face since waking from torpor. Not too hard on the eyes, either.
Oh, and then there were the friggin' Ravnos in the gathering. Ravnos! Trickster thieves always looking for an angle. I was almost taken in. What a trap, nimble fingers on paper cards, a beating heart masked by a wind-blown shawl, and a master who claimed that hundreds of years of rivalry was 'no big deal'.
They'd gotten the better of me, for a moment, but you don't put one over on old Brick for long, nossir. I had their number now. Things would be different, next time.
Still, the cards had revealed success, and a plaything in the meantime. A cat batting a mouse for amusement came to mind.
Squeak, squeak, motherfuckers.
Another old associate came to mind, and that association would be a hellova thing if jobs worked out the way he was paying for them. But that was a card for the vest, for now.
Keeper Assamite and I'd had words; Amani. A sleek woman, with something inherently ermine about her, like a Mink waiting to bite into a rabbit. Seemingly comfortable with murder in the moment, perhaps, but seemingly distasteful at the requirement. Interesting choice. A Toreador with an Assamite Keeper doesn't say paranoid at all.
Rhodes named himself chieftain of the Clan and I approved, mostly because he seemed pragmatic, knew the roads around the area and was classically forthcoming in that way that only we are. I didn't even ask for boons and he didn't either. I technically should have, I like to have clean books, but hell, you spend so much time out of the world and sometimes a body is just grateful to remember it's part of more than the dirt.
The first one's free kid. Next time you are paying up. I have a reputation to maintain over here.
There was a sense of belonging with Clan and as much as I hated to admit it, even in the shitty Salon. Blood wanted politics and politics wanted blood. Nothing to be done about that, really.
I was restless the entire night, I recognized it. I paced, I growled when I should have used words. I flexed the Vitae in my veins more than once. The Beast wanted free, and I kicked it back down in the teeth more than once. I was a general danger to myself and others, stalking the room like the hunter I am, showing teeth when needed and throat when required, picking out the predators from the prey, the Alphas from the Betas from the Omegas, smelling for blood in the air and on the ground, getting the lay of the land. There was tension, intrigue, old wounds not quite scabbed over and a hunger for change that for the right combination of boons, I could get behind.
As much as I hated it, the petty politics, the requirement to be at all tolerant of thieving bloodlines and wretched, histrionic Harpy libel campaigns, I had almost had no choice but to admit to myself: It felt good to be back.