Post by The Mouth on Jul 19, 2014 16:33:26 GMT -8
15th September, 2013
Limerick, Ireland
I settle the newish couch into a corner of the main room. The girls have gone out and collected some furniture at Ikea during the day; they came back with a lot of ‘would it not be neat’ gear that one finds at Scandinavian retailers.
Jory and Rabbit are downstairs playing some sort of ‘gaming console’ - I used to think I was all up to date on the newest trends but even I am falling behind on anything that isn’t chemistry or gene related. Hannah throws herself on the couch with a satisfied huff and starts reading a magazine.
I take the other side. Of the three Hannah is probably the least comfortable around me and she never really likes to be alone with me. I’m not entirely sure why as of my three grandchildren she is probably the most combat capable.
“Hannah…” I manage to start. The withering look that her seventeen years on this earth offers to me is worthy of an aged creature found in the London courts.
“Look Hannah, we’re going to have to talk about this, I don’t know, problem. Which is hard for me, I don’t even know what the problem is.”
“The problem is an old man bothering me when I’m trying to read.”
I swear, teenagers are a trial on a mortal much less a Kindred with the Beast.
“Yes, and he will keep bothering you until you explain what is happening.”
She rolls her eyes, Hannah does, and puts down her magazine. “Where to start? That I’m a wolf without a pack? That my family considers me a traitor to the race? That because I’ve taken this chance to learn how to kill leeches and everything else…” Hannah quickly breaks down into tears.
I cross over and gather her up for an awkward cradling hug; she flinches and is stiff at first and then eventually relaxes. After she has cried enough to stain my shirt she pushes me away.
“Gaia, you even smell right. I’m wondering if the Mothers did something to me… But those others that came were just awful.” She sniffles, regaining her composure.
“Yeah, they were. Sorry about that. So, tell me, what’s up. Explain, using small words as I am old and most likely senile.”
She laughs, so I get a little bonus there.
“Well, in short, we have this religion. The difference is that every time we pray we get a sort of answer. Like if Jesus would on occasion would send an angel, or something to Sunday mass. We worship a sort of idealized version of reality, the way the world was before it got all messed up and we can see the pieces of it that are unspoilt and pure, smell them, taste them, we know them.
Thing is that our religion has a Heaven, a Hell, and something in between. A… I dunno, constructive/static force, a creative/dynamic force, and a deconstructive/decay force. All are needed for live to continue, right?”
I nod. “Yes, and I take these forces all have a positive and a negative side? Too much dynamism and you move past evolving and into cancer, the constructive likes things to not change which is conflict with the other two…”
“Right. Once, back in the origins of the universe the static one got a little crazy and bound the decay force so that things wouldn’t be destroyed. the decay force went mad; got too strong and is now running amok. Vampires are seen as an aspect of those two forces at play.”
“Right, because we live forever and generally speaking as a result we tend to be either incredibly short sighted because we always have time to ‘fix it later’ or long/medium term goals involve the displacement or destruction of peoples for ideological or strategic means. Meaning we spread chaos and death to our foes in a big way and really don’t care what we use to get there.”
“Right. In fact there seems to be implications…” I watch her go from involved, to confused, to angry. Very angry. “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about this stuff, Grandfather. In fact, I’d like to know how you are getting me to talk.” She’s gotten bigger, a process that seems to be an intermediate form of change into her other forms.
I hold my hands up in an attempt to avoid being shredded by angry werewolf, “Whoa! I will admit that my particular bloodline has the means by which to persaude anyone of anything; seems to have some static benefits of being super charming even when I’m not focusing. I can’t turn that off much in the same way I’ve noted you got the boys chasing after you.”
“That’s because I’m a girl.”
“No, it’s not. You’ve got a… I don’t know, a draw about you. You’ve been pulling in the brave, the attractive, the well built. That fat kid the other day was super smart and confident in his future earning prospects… I suspect you have a similar unconscious process going on that helps your people self select for traits out of the human side of the pool. You know, like wolves do.”
She looks pole axed. I continue “Look, I can make some assumptions. If you can breed with humans in a human form then you can most likely breed with wolves if you were in a wolf form; don’t know how that works, don’t care. But I do know that wolf behavior is highly studied so I reviewed some journals some years back when I first encountered werewolves.”
Hannah gives me the ‘yeah right’ look. “You survived werewolves?”
I manage a chuckle in spite of the knot of terror that I am recalling.
“Yeah, jammed my gun right up against his junk and told him to drop my master; I was still a ghoul, er, servant to a vampire master, at the time. I got messed up pretty bad, managed to take a hit and stay on my feet. Still have the scars,” I pat my chest.
“No shit.”
“Yeah. No shit. Scary night.”
“Huh.”
“Look, Hannah, your people have a prohibition regarding fraternization with the enemy, right? Something about being corrupted and turning evil? Which means there are werewolves who went to the dark side, right?”
“Down the spiral, we call it.”
“Right. Tell you what, I can’t change the fact that you are probably terribly polluted in my presence and have only kept your murderous rages against me in check due to the geas your mother placed on you…”
She laughs, genuinely laughs. “Well, duh. That and seeing what you did to my Da’.”
“Yeah, little fuzzy on that. All in the moment. But tell you what, how about I teach you how to spot the machinations of vampires, common abilities, and how I might go about fighting the supernaturally corrupting influence of the world. And then you tell me what it was like growing up as part of a mystical clan of Irish gypsies.”
“I don’t know, how about you share your intel first and then I will decide…”
I grin. “I have taught you something, at least! Fine. But you have to know a few things first: Yes this info can be used to hurt me and mine but by the act of observation you will get involved. And by getting involved you will get used. So pick your battles carefully, so very carefully, and understand that you are likely under observation as well. I understand that the werewolves took some hits in the last year?”
Pensively, “Yes, they wiped out two groups and threatened more…”
“Unless you backed off. And I bet they took out the most militant groups as well. So you backed off because they targeted the militants through their families?”
She starts to tear up again, “You see why we hate you so much?”
“Girl, they do that to everyone. That’s part of how vampires work; live long enough and everything is a tool and people are things. That is how they stay even marginally sane, but it comes with risks. We have a… Survival instinct, not exactly sentient, but clever. When it takes over it cannot drive a car but it can do some remarkable predatory reasoning - The older we get the more that part takes over. Largely because it is hard to put it in a box; I know of two who have done so, at least two old ones. But predators work on hunger, security, and fear.”
Hannah is clearly knowing all of this as a predator, but I don’t think anyone really has related to her on that level. “But predators also often know of co-operative arrangements, like wolf packs and lion’s prides.”
“Yes… But vampires are more like tigers with brains. We have to have large ranges, and no way to dance around this, because we need large groups of people to feed on safely. Most of the time we do so benignly, take a little from a large group and no one notices. But sometimes the… Instinct gets ahold and all it does is feed, sleep, escape. That is when people die.”
“I’ve killed people in such a state, it happens.” She is so calm about it that I almost miss it.
“Wait, what?”
“It happens to every one of the People eventually.”
“So why is it evil when I do it, and not when you do?”
“I don’t know, maybe something about how you kill is unclean.”
I consider the bliss of a feeding and shudder inside. If addiction is unclean then… Yeah I can see the logic there.
“Anyway, vampires are about resources first, and everything else last. Most of the licks you are going to find are going to be young and dumb; the old ones are the worst because they use the young ones like beaters in the brush. They will build maps that involve your activities, and in fact will cover up your activities, and then use their resources as sacrifice plays to map you out. If you are a threat then they lower the boom on you with mortals and then with organized groups of ghouls and neonates. Only the insanely bored, the vengeant, or the just plain insane will go after a werewolf directly.
Organizationally, the larger groups of Vampires, and yes there are groups, will avoid werewolves. Like a plague. You are a risky group to deal with and never travel alone. Every time there is is a fight with werewolves they always come in packs. But they also always sweep our youngest first so when they get to the Elders they are exhausted and worn down.”
“So your leaders…”
“Stop. We don’t have leaders. We have the strongest, or best interested, or mutually beneficial. That survival instinct reacts out of fear more than anything else and colors everything we do.”
“Oh.”
“And that is our weakness. And our strength. We build walls around ourselves, see past the walls and you get to the heart of us. Now many of things you would probably describe as evil are in fact exercises in accumulating enough influence and power to control enough resources, ie blood and humans, to survive in a highly competitive environment. We have complicated social arrangements to let all the tigers play together but when we form collectives we tend to… Amplify each other. And like I said it is so much easier to let those survival instincts take over.”
“So, hunting vampires means we are only thinning the herd of the weak and the unlucky, and then when it comes time to face the real threats they will have been actively denying us resources, which could mean destroying our places of… Well, the important things to us.”
“Yes. Because that is how an Elder do.”
“But not because they inherently hate us? Or are evil?”
“Nope, they fear and hate werewolves because werewolves are incredibly destructive and murderous. So if they find you first, and can’t use you, they will push you out of the cities. And evil is relative. Some get off on it, like people do.”
“So, every reason I have to hate vampires is legit, I just have to hate the right vampires.”
I laugh. “I suppose so. I’m young yet, so I’ve got some ways to go. But I’ll try to keep my terrible practices to a minimum.” How do I tell her that I kill when I feed? Yet her nonchalance at her own murders seems incongruous. I’ll sit on it for now.
“Now, let’s talk about corporations. Vampires love any social organization because it means that if I can leverage one person I can then indirectly leveral ten, or a hundred more. Corporations allow that on an even larger scale with investors, banks, and employees…”
She listens to me raptly as I describe to catch and murder my own kind. I do wonder if we can ever truly get along, werewolves and vampires. Frankly, we both just want to live. Sadly, I am not sure if we can do that in the others presence.
Anyway, I like this. Teaching her to fuck up the locals. Even if she tells the werewolves in London or Seattle. I know the Masquerade exists for this very reason, but it is good to chat like this. Have to connect with the grandkids somehow.
Interlude: Hannah
By Ben Vaughan
Limerick, Ireland
I settle the newish couch into a corner of the main room. The girls have gone out and collected some furniture at Ikea during the day; they came back with a lot of ‘would it not be neat’ gear that one finds at Scandinavian retailers.
Jory and Rabbit are downstairs playing some sort of ‘gaming console’ - I used to think I was all up to date on the newest trends but even I am falling behind on anything that isn’t chemistry or gene related. Hannah throws herself on the couch with a satisfied huff and starts reading a magazine.
I take the other side. Of the three Hannah is probably the least comfortable around me and she never really likes to be alone with me. I’m not entirely sure why as of my three grandchildren she is probably the most combat capable.
“Hannah…” I manage to start. The withering look that her seventeen years on this earth offers to me is worthy of an aged creature found in the London courts.
“Look Hannah, we’re going to have to talk about this, I don’t know, problem. Which is hard for me, I don’t even know what the problem is.”
“The problem is an old man bothering me when I’m trying to read.”
I swear, teenagers are a trial on a mortal much less a Kindred with the Beast.
“Yes, and he will keep bothering you until you explain what is happening.”
She rolls her eyes, Hannah does, and puts down her magazine. “Where to start? That I’m a wolf without a pack? That my family considers me a traitor to the race? That because I’ve taken this chance to learn how to kill leeches and everything else…” Hannah quickly breaks down into tears.
I cross over and gather her up for an awkward cradling hug; she flinches and is stiff at first and then eventually relaxes. After she has cried enough to stain my shirt she pushes me away.
“Gaia, you even smell right. I’m wondering if the Mothers did something to me… But those others that came were just awful.” She sniffles, regaining her composure.
“Yeah, they were. Sorry about that. So, tell me, what’s up. Explain, using small words as I am old and most likely senile.”
She laughs, so I get a little bonus there.
“Well, in short, we have this religion. The difference is that every time we pray we get a sort of answer. Like if Jesus would on occasion would send an angel, or something to Sunday mass. We worship a sort of idealized version of reality, the way the world was before it got all messed up and we can see the pieces of it that are unspoilt and pure, smell them, taste them, we know them.
Thing is that our religion has a Heaven, a Hell, and something in between. A… I dunno, constructive/static force, a creative/dynamic force, and a deconstructive/decay force. All are needed for live to continue, right?”
I nod. “Yes, and I take these forces all have a positive and a negative side? Too much dynamism and you move past evolving and into cancer, the constructive likes things to not change which is conflict with the other two…”
“Right. Once, back in the origins of the universe the static one got a little crazy and bound the decay force so that things wouldn’t be destroyed. the decay force went mad; got too strong and is now running amok. Vampires are seen as an aspect of those two forces at play.”
“Right, because we live forever and generally speaking as a result we tend to be either incredibly short sighted because we always have time to ‘fix it later’ or long/medium term goals involve the displacement or destruction of peoples for ideological or strategic means. Meaning we spread chaos and death to our foes in a big way and really don’t care what we use to get there.”
“Right. In fact there seems to be implications…” I watch her go from involved, to confused, to angry. Very angry. “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about this stuff, Grandfather. In fact, I’d like to know how you are getting me to talk.” She’s gotten bigger, a process that seems to be an intermediate form of change into her other forms.
I hold my hands up in an attempt to avoid being shredded by angry werewolf, “Whoa! I will admit that my particular bloodline has the means by which to persaude anyone of anything; seems to have some static benefits of being super charming even when I’m not focusing. I can’t turn that off much in the same way I’ve noted you got the boys chasing after you.”
“That’s because I’m a girl.”
“No, it’s not. You’ve got a… I don’t know, a draw about you. You’ve been pulling in the brave, the attractive, the well built. That fat kid the other day was super smart and confident in his future earning prospects… I suspect you have a similar unconscious process going on that helps your people self select for traits out of the human side of the pool. You know, like wolves do.”
She looks pole axed. I continue “Look, I can make some assumptions. If you can breed with humans in a human form then you can most likely breed with wolves if you were in a wolf form; don’t know how that works, don’t care. But I do know that wolf behavior is highly studied so I reviewed some journals some years back when I first encountered werewolves.”
Hannah gives me the ‘yeah right’ look. “You survived werewolves?”
I manage a chuckle in spite of the knot of terror that I am recalling.
“Yeah, jammed my gun right up against his junk and told him to drop my master; I was still a ghoul, er, servant to a vampire master, at the time. I got messed up pretty bad, managed to take a hit and stay on my feet. Still have the scars,” I pat my chest.
“No shit.”
“Yeah. No shit. Scary night.”
“Huh.”
“Look, Hannah, your people have a prohibition regarding fraternization with the enemy, right? Something about being corrupted and turning evil? Which means there are werewolves who went to the dark side, right?”
“Down the spiral, we call it.”
“Right. Tell you what, I can’t change the fact that you are probably terribly polluted in my presence and have only kept your murderous rages against me in check due to the geas your mother placed on you…”
She laughs, genuinely laughs. “Well, duh. That and seeing what you did to my Da’.”
“Yeah, little fuzzy on that. All in the moment. But tell you what, how about I teach you how to spot the machinations of vampires, common abilities, and how I might go about fighting the supernaturally corrupting influence of the world. And then you tell me what it was like growing up as part of a mystical clan of Irish gypsies.”
“I don’t know, how about you share your intel first and then I will decide…”
I grin. “I have taught you something, at least! Fine. But you have to know a few things first: Yes this info can be used to hurt me and mine but by the act of observation you will get involved. And by getting involved you will get used. So pick your battles carefully, so very carefully, and understand that you are likely under observation as well. I understand that the werewolves took some hits in the last year?”
Pensively, “Yes, they wiped out two groups and threatened more…”
“Unless you backed off. And I bet they took out the most militant groups as well. So you backed off because they targeted the militants through their families?”
She starts to tear up again, “You see why we hate you so much?”
“Girl, they do that to everyone. That’s part of how vampires work; live long enough and everything is a tool and people are things. That is how they stay even marginally sane, but it comes with risks. We have a… Survival instinct, not exactly sentient, but clever. When it takes over it cannot drive a car but it can do some remarkable predatory reasoning - The older we get the more that part takes over. Largely because it is hard to put it in a box; I know of two who have done so, at least two old ones. But predators work on hunger, security, and fear.”
Hannah is clearly knowing all of this as a predator, but I don’t think anyone really has related to her on that level. “But predators also often know of co-operative arrangements, like wolf packs and lion’s prides.”
“Yes… But vampires are more like tigers with brains. We have to have large ranges, and no way to dance around this, because we need large groups of people to feed on safely. Most of the time we do so benignly, take a little from a large group and no one notices. But sometimes the… Instinct gets ahold and all it does is feed, sleep, escape. That is when people die.”
“I’ve killed people in such a state, it happens.” She is so calm about it that I almost miss it.
“Wait, what?”
“It happens to every one of the People eventually.”
“So why is it evil when I do it, and not when you do?”
“I don’t know, maybe something about how you kill is unclean.”
I consider the bliss of a feeding and shudder inside. If addiction is unclean then… Yeah I can see the logic there.
“Anyway, vampires are about resources first, and everything else last. Most of the licks you are going to find are going to be young and dumb; the old ones are the worst because they use the young ones like beaters in the brush. They will build maps that involve your activities, and in fact will cover up your activities, and then use their resources as sacrifice plays to map you out. If you are a threat then they lower the boom on you with mortals and then with organized groups of ghouls and neonates. Only the insanely bored, the vengeant, or the just plain insane will go after a werewolf directly.
Organizationally, the larger groups of Vampires, and yes there are groups, will avoid werewolves. Like a plague. You are a risky group to deal with and never travel alone. Every time there is is a fight with werewolves they always come in packs. But they also always sweep our youngest first so when they get to the Elders they are exhausted and worn down.”
“So your leaders…”
“Stop. We don’t have leaders. We have the strongest, or best interested, or mutually beneficial. That survival instinct reacts out of fear more than anything else and colors everything we do.”
“Oh.”
“And that is our weakness. And our strength. We build walls around ourselves, see past the walls and you get to the heart of us. Now many of things you would probably describe as evil are in fact exercises in accumulating enough influence and power to control enough resources, ie blood and humans, to survive in a highly competitive environment. We have complicated social arrangements to let all the tigers play together but when we form collectives we tend to… Amplify each other. And like I said it is so much easier to let those survival instincts take over.”
“So, hunting vampires means we are only thinning the herd of the weak and the unlucky, and then when it comes time to face the real threats they will have been actively denying us resources, which could mean destroying our places of… Well, the important things to us.”
“Yes. Because that is how an Elder do.”
“But not because they inherently hate us? Or are evil?”
“Nope, they fear and hate werewolves because werewolves are incredibly destructive and murderous. So if they find you first, and can’t use you, they will push you out of the cities. And evil is relative. Some get off on it, like people do.”
“So, every reason I have to hate vampires is legit, I just have to hate the right vampires.”
I laugh. “I suppose so. I’m young yet, so I’ve got some ways to go. But I’ll try to keep my terrible practices to a minimum.” How do I tell her that I kill when I feed? Yet her nonchalance at her own murders seems incongruous. I’ll sit on it for now.
“Now, let’s talk about corporations. Vampires love any social organization because it means that if I can leverage one person I can then indirectly leveral ten, or a hundred more. Corporations allow that on an even larger scale with investors, banks, and employees…”
She listens to me raptly as I describe to catch and murder my own kind. I do wonder if we can ever truly get along, werewolves and vampires. Frankly, we both just want to live. Sadly, I am not sure if we can do that in the others presence.
Anyway, I like this. Teaching her to fuck up the locals. Even if she tells the werewolves in London or Seattle. I know the Masquerade exists for this very reason, but it is good to chat like this. Have to connect with the grandkids somehow.
Interlude: Hannah
By Ben Vaughan