Lottie met back up with Julius who told her about an 8th gen/800-year-old vampire called Ekaterina the Wise, a.k.a. the vampire Val met the previous session. Her jaw is all messed up from an attack (that was meant to hurt people close to her?) that didn’t fully heal when she was turned. They decided not to tell Frankie about this, because a Frenzying Brujah in the living room sounded like a bad idea. (Frankie's murdered sister Caterina is his berserk button.)
Meanwhile, Frankie and Val (henceforth an NPC as the player dropped out) went to a restaurant in Lexington to meet up with "Cola" Schiro. Cola was successfully intimidated and spilled that he'd met Jeanine before, at a party in Staten Island, and had been giving her info for the past two months while she used him for snacking. She was particularly interested in Frankie as of three weeks ago (read: a week before the cousins were turned). Once interrogated, our cousin Vince was left to take care of him.
Weirdly, Prince Wellsley showed up in disguise to tell us he wanted Umberto Valenti disposed of, quickly and quietly. He will grant us one question truthfully answered, but we decided to save it for later.
Back with the Malkavians, they do some research, because parks are losing their auras. There's a planned road called Anaconda Street, and its planned path goes through a park. The work started the same day our cousins were Embraced. The park, it turns out, has "no voice".
They also met with Aisling Sturbridge, a Tremere friend of Julius's, to investigate the park situation by way of a ritual. There were runes, blood and a chalk circle and they felt uncomfortable. Lottie insisted on her blood being used instead of Julius's.
In Harlem, the guys investigated the scene of the drive-by looking for clues, and followed a trace to an old Family safehouse, where they discovered an old vampire with a forked tongue - a Follower of Set. He wanted an unspecified favour in return for giving up the location of Umberto Valenti. Val tried to Dominate him, but it didn't work and the guy got a bit grumpy. They then had to high-tail it back to Julius's Manhattan place to not get fried by approaching dawn.
Lottie and Julius had a long-awaited talk about blood-bonding, deciding to say yay to double-sided, nay to one-sided. We'll see what happens with that. It was getting light outside, so everyone went to bed, meaning to discuss the night's details the following evening.
“I’m trying to think of what we need to do right now.”
“Surviiive!”
“Let’s do more things together – split the party!”
(discussing a woman called Ekaterina getting brutally assaulted and turned into a vampire)
Player: “We are NOT telling Frankie about this in character!”
Frankie’s player: “A woman getting assaulted? Whose name is basically the same as his dead sister? Yeah, let’s not.”
GM: “Aww, but I was hoping he’d be here for this.”
Frankie’s player: “You devious bastard!”
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to write 1930s Vampire without using the word ‘sparkle’?!”
“Calling us riff-raff?! Why I ought to …!”
GM: “Anything can be used as a stabbing implement if using enough force.”
Frankie: “I have a lot of force!”
“I’m pretty sure no one cares if he survives this encounter, and he still has all of his fingers.”
“Six successes on four dice!”
“Fucking hell!”
“I’m not risking my Humanity! That’s what we have NPCs for!”
NPC: “What’s gonna happen to me?”
Player: “You’re gonna go to a nice farm upstate.”
GM: “You leave the restaurant.”
Frankie: “I know a much better restaurant in Brooklyn.”
Player: “Everything isn’t better in Brooklyn.”
Frankie: “My restaurant is!”
“FUCK! That’s an exclamation, I’m not suggesting you ask him for sex!”
“I like this one. Can we keep her?”
GM: “They’ll be wanting their Christmas bonuses. In May.”
“You’re gonna make him pay for that Auspex until the day he dies, which may be any day now.”
“Does it stop chaos coming if one of use dies? #askingforameatshield”
GM: “You doubt Umberto Valenti is black.”
Player: “Way to bury the lede!”
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s a thing.”
GM: “You’re acting like there aren’t such a thing as horse ghouls.”
“We’ve made progress on the ‘everything sucks’ front.”
To be continued!
