Paranoia isn't a bug, it's a feature

 Before heading off to bed, Julius was fed some bottles of blood to make him wake up again, and that's just as well, as half his face seems to be missing. (Thanks, Ecaterina!) That's going to take a while to heal back up.

Lottie lures a group of fratboys back to the house as Julius is in no position to go on a hunt in his current state. The couple's particular way of feeding is somewhat unsettling to watch for anyone who isn't them.

They then have a catch-up. There's going to be an outright war with the Sabbat, and an Elysium will have to be called ASAP. The gold auras are gone. As new safehouses are needed, and a safehouse for LJ isn't safe if anyone but them know about it, Lottie hands Frankie the key to Jeanine's place, saying Jeanine left it with them (they swear they didn't kill her, but don't tell him they tortured her), that it's intended for him, and unlike the places he might want to go in Brooklyn, it's warded.

They have an outing to said apartment, near Morningside Park. Looking around the place (using one of the fratboys as a canary) they come across a kitchen drawer of "oppressive nothingness" and Jeanine's will, listing Frankie as her heir ...

Julius quickly averts his gaze from the creepy drawer, but Lottie goes full on Auspex on it - and starts having a seizure. She leaks blood and gold from her face, and Julius goes after her.

In the Dreamscape, as that's where Lottie ended up, she's seeing both Nordic mythology's icy plains with a giant trapped inside the ice, and a snake wriggling around his feet trying to eat through the ice. The Egyptian mythology's pyramid is also there, and she can see shadows of herself and the others from previous visits. The pyramid is bigger and more ornately decorated.

Neith, the goddess who wasn't there last time we encountered the Egyptian mythological dreamscape, talks to Lottie, offering her all the knowledge and answers she wants/needs, but it will hurt. She's fine with pain, as long as it doesn't hurt Julius. The gods propose a bargain of "perfect preservation" of LJ's relationship, but that sounds too much like a trap so Lottie doesn't take them up on it. She's told to climb the pyramid ...

It's nice to have unlife goals

Lottie ends up near the Washington Heights library. It seems Lladislav the Tzimisce's return is welcomed. It's rather touching. While having a sniff around the place, she also discovers some Jewish gangsters who seem to be involved in this, and a Setite is following her? (Is Ellie more concerned about her than the Prince?) She then overhears Turlev and Blaise telling off Lladislav for having "undone decades of work" with his stunt in Harlem. He really can't be around when Ecaterina gets back - unless he, too, would like to become a head shorter.

Meanwhile in Harlem, Val's car screeches to a halt in front of Frankie. Julius is also in the car, badly injured. They speed north to find Lottie, but Julius sends Val off to the Bronx while he and Frankie jump out of the car and run on foot to get to a safehouse near Columbia University. He makes some decoys and sends them off in a different direction.

Lottie does a number of impressive jumps between moving cars to avoid getting followed to get to the second nearest safehouse - incidentally the same one Frankie is carrying Julius to. Finally the two player characters are in the same building again!

Vampire: The Fangening

The fight up in Harlem continues. Frankie and Val eventually manage to incapacitate the Shovelheads and stuff their staked bodies in a car, along with the ghoul that can be useful for interrogative purposes later.

Lottie, meanwhile, sneaks off after the Sabbat guy leaving the scene. While being obfuscated she clings onto the outside of the guy's car to see where that might lead. He seems to be heading north west.

Edgar decides to go up to a door, and after seeing Theo heading in the same direction across the rooftops Frankie follows at a distance. Which turns out to be just as well, as Ecaterina shows up and makes Edgar a head shorter. Julius shows up to face her.

 The two cousins still on the scene, being utterly unable to help and not wanting to be a potentially fatal distraction for Julius, decide to see if they can find Lottie, but she has already hopped to a different car, and they have no idea where she is.

 

Should have bought that Celerity

Evil Prince Basketcase seems to have brought the proverbial popcorn with him, as he's wondering how Lottie would rate her cousins' physical abilities. Dafuq? Is this just a game to him? The two Malks tell the Prince about Jeanine's intel about the Sabbat wanting to attack Brooklyn, and apparently he already has people watching the place.

Val and Frankie stick together, while Theo and Edgar head up top of some buildings. Shooting ensues after a noisy group of ghouls with a vampire walk the streets making a lot of noise. The two cousins go through the back of a shop to see who the group of six nervous vampires on the other side of the building are. They are spotted and end up fighting three Tzimisce shovelheads inside the shop. One of which manages to put his fingers through Val's face, upon which Frankie finally rolls to resist Frenzy ... and succeeds.

The Prince suggests Lottie shadows the Sabbat guy alone, which doesn't go down well with her or Julius, but they still go along with it.

 

Chipmunk stripper ghouls in bow ties

Lottie and Julius need to melt their piece of brass somewhere, so Aisling takes them to a place she knows in Manhattan. As they drive across the Williamsburg Bridge, the Malks Auspex the water, and there's a shape lurking below the water. As it breaks the surface, it's a pyramidal mound. We've seen those before - in dreams ... Both Malks pass out, and are woken up by Aisling, who didn't even realise what had happened until she pulled up at the place.

At the ironworks, the metal is melted down into an amulet and they do the ritual. They get a teeny bit distracted by the smell of each other's delicious blood, because they have to part with some of it to submerge the amulet in. They also have to kiss the blood-soaked amulet, and not licking their lips is a bit like not licking your lips when having a sugar-covered doughnut. They succeed with the ritual, and successfully give themselves selective amnesia.

They go to speak to the Nosferatu in order to get a message to meet with the Prince. The Prince's twin ghouls show up and drive them to a post office location on the outskirts of Harlem. It's the Hell Gate Station. Not at all worrying ...

Meanwhile at Coffey Park, a car comes screeching to a halt. Edgar, another Brujah, shows up to say that the Sabbat are moving in on Harlem right now. Instead of going "oh, is this one of those times we should think before we act?" Frankie, Val and Theo pile into a car and follow Edgar up to Harlem.

Turns out the source was Ellie Harewood, the Setite the cousins had met previously. Some Tzimisce went right up to her, in front of some Kine customers that had to be adjusted, and fleshcrafted talons saying they were taking over. Or words to that effect. Either way, was Red Hook only a distraction and their actual target is Harlem? Which is fine by Frankie, because Harlem isn't Brooklyn. That shovelhead we "encountered" in one of the first sessions did say something about how the Manganos were supposed to be lured south, away from Harlem.

 

What Would Lottie Do?

Theo's Vampire 101 class continues, teaching Frankie about the Sabbat. After being asked why they'd have to wait until Elysium before nominating that Toreador guy to Scourge (isn't the point to get in there first, so why wait?) he's told the "wheels are already in motion" for it.

Lottie and Julius decide Aisling should be in charge of the Fetish they're making - no, not the one they seem to have about blood bonding and then having sex in torture rooms with drains in the floor. This Fetish is to do with hiding memories. They decide to leave a cryptic message in the package Frankie is supposed to pick up from Seb tomorrow, so they'll get a prompt to go back to Aisling to restore their memories. They also discuss what/how much to hide away.

When it comes to the guys in Red Hook, Val shows up to report on how his chat with the police contact went. Turns out the cops further down know the charges are bogus, but they're scared to bring it up with their superiors? Smells like mind control. Theories abound. They should, however, not go charging in there, because that sounds exactly like what they'd be expected to do - and exactly the kind of stuff Lottie said not to do. She would be so proud of her cousin!

In Queens, they start looking at brass to use for the Fetish. It has to be brass, and made in the shape of an amulet. The piece they have appear to have been a part of the steel mill explosion in Red Hook, belonging to a Japanese guy. Hopefully they can shift the bad mojo from it before making it a magic item?

When a Malkavian says someone's crazy ...

Lottie and Julius discuss theories with Aisling. Lottie removes Aisling's anxiety, because right now, there's a fuckload to be anxious about and she needs a clear head. Is the Prince trying to do something without the Primogen council knowing? Might it involve tunnelling under Central Park? No wonder the werewolves might be a bit miffed. Can we talk to the werewolves?

They also do need to speak to the Prince, but going in there with all their memories isn't a good plan. They need to somehow temporarily remove or edit a number of memories just in case. Fortunately, they have a Tremere at hand who knows just what to do.

Frankie's history lesson from Theo continues, and they also discuss hunting grounds and territory and so on. He also finds out about Hunters and Mages, and that there also seem to be Faeries and Ghosts. All this because he asked if there were other things beside vampires and werewolves he should know about. It's also suggested that if he comes face to face with Ekaterina, he should do nothing except to leg it.

Elder vampire uses a telephone for the first time

Waking up, and after having breakfast in bed, Lottie makes a round of phone calls. Val didn't have any strange dreams, but he'll go Auspex Frankie to see if he's now glowing gold too. Frankie recounts the Greek creation myth to Julius over the phone (the Elder vampire's first ever phone call! We're so proud of him!), and it seems both Tartarus and Eros were missing. Seb reports more innocent shop keepers have been arrested.

Frankie also makes a phone call - Benny reports the cane is still on schedule and Angela was pleased about the flower delivery. Val shows up, confirms Frankie has a bright golden aura, and drops him off in Red Hook before heading off to speak to his cop contacts. In Coffey Park, Theo gives Frankie a history lesson. Frankie points out that the Sabbat attack is being led by Ekaterina, which makes Theo realise things are perhaps slightly higher priority than he previously thought - insert facepalm here.

Lottie and Julius go to a secret lab in Queens and meet up with Aisling the Tremere. She recoils having seen Jeanine's thin blood, especially as she finds out where it's from. She does a few experiments on it, and says it's similar to the thaumaturgic Path of Blood, but somehow inverted? It's like Entropy of the Blood, "Chaos undoing Creation", an Unravelling of the Generation. They also discover that it isn't a directed spell, or whatever, meaning it might have been directed at someone else and then spreading up the generation line. It spreads from Childe to Sire? Frankie is absolutely fine, but the Prince got a hold of Jeanine's other Childe - Maslowe. Coincidence?

Perhaps they do actually need to tell Aisling everything that's been going on, so Julius tells her everything. She may or may not thank him for this later.

Your only choice is to be happy

This session was mainly taking place in weird ass dream space. Lottie woke up in a sea of Julius's blood, and then Julius's arms lift her out of it. She calls for him, he actually manages to enter her dream and join her. They see the pyramid rising from the blood. Julius looks up, his eyes get burned away as he looks at three ancient beings hovering in the air, and "there's always been three".

They need to find Frankie and try to reach him - but get no reply. Drinking from the sea of blood, Julius's eyes are restored ... but they're now looking exactly like Lottie's. There's mysticism afoot - something is unravelling and Creation is trying to catch up with itself. It's related to Jeanine's blood situation and Frankie is important ... somehow. They also get a sense that it's important to watch Creation to its completion.

Frankie, meanwhile, gets interrogated by the primordial goddess Gaia, who gets a bit frosty when finding out that he's a vampire, but looking into his soul makes her a bit friendlier. He's a man, despite also being a moving corpse, that's why he matters, apparently. When saying he shouldn't allow the Beast to become all that he is, he asks if there's a way to get rid of it. Well, no, but she has a few pointers for what he might want to consider to get as close to that as he can.

He does hear Julius calling for him, but dismisses it as a weird dream thing and doesn't respond, as he's busy witnessing the Greek primordial myth and was told to watch it closely. It appears that Tartarus and possibly Eros were missing from this?

The trio all wake up with bright golden auras - and Julius now has golden eyes, just like Lottie.

It appears we are the Chosen Ones.

This got spicy real fast

Lottie and Frankie continue their discussion about what happened while they split the party. Lottie then explains to Angela why Frankie can't take her out on a date, and her reaction leads the players to surmise that a certain crush might actually be reciprocated. She also gives strict orders about which Kindred are allowed inside the house, i.e. definitely not Charlotte.

In this week's "ghouls acting kinda weird": Angela gives Frankie's neck a funny look.

The Commissioner of Plants and Buildings in Brooklyn is apparently excited about the Brooklyn Bridge building works, which are taking place during daylight hours and begun the same day that the three cousins were Embraced.

Frankie meets Val to discuss plans, how Val needs to talk to his police contacts to find out everything he can about the hits on Red Hook. This turned into a more personal conversation between the two cousins, where Val finds their new lifestyle to suit him very well, but he notes that Frankie might never get used to it - as highlighted by Val, who had brought them a couple of women to snack on, was busy sweet-talking his before biting, whereas Frankie apologised to his.

Val, it turns out, is worried about the situation between Lottie and Charlotte. That the air gets frosty when Charlotte is mentioned around Lottie is one thing, but it also seems to be happening the other way around ... However, if it comes down to it, he's on his cousins' side. He also kindly offered to stake Jeanine for Frankie. So thoughtful!

Meanwhile, because of the lack of a phone in the Manhattan residence, Julius says he's getting a new place, which will have a telephone. He's confident he can get that house tonight ... because he wasn't planning on paying for it. The family living there are mindwhammied into submission, will be great at answering the phone and taking messages and acting as snacks. Plus, he's just given Lottie a family, which she's never truly had. It's incredibly romantic - and sexy. They can totally take time out for a bit of bedroom fun, despite previously telling a certain cousin that there's absolutely no time for anything other than business right now.

Left brooding after Val's heart-to-heart, Frankie asks Benny to arrange a flower delivery for Angela. In a further doubling down on his humanity, backed up by dice, instead of driving to Theo, he thinks about happy childhood memories and somehow ends up outside Golconda Park. All sounds and all lights around him fade out, spooking him and making him return to the car, handing a passing drunk some spare change in the process.

So in a strange turn of events, Val might actually become a sort of bridge between two cousins who are clearly heading in opposite directions on the morality scale.

 

Maybe you should consider a Path?

In Staten Island, Adelaide says she Sees spiders all over Jeanine, digging into her and eating her regret. (WHY IS DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE SPIDERS?!) Lottie "convinces" Jeanine to put some of her blood into a thermos flask. Looking at the thin blood in the flask, Adelaide freaks out, saying it's "cold, so cold". She doesn't mean temperature-wise.

After Jeanine puts the lid on the flask, it's put into some oven gloves for an extra layer of protection. Lottie and Julius strategise what to do with Jeanine, and they decide to leave her there for now, and make their way back to Brooklyn. She asks him about his first Childe, who appears to be missing, presumed dead, after angering some werewolves.

Meanwhile in Brooklyn, Frankie and Benny are thinking ahead. If you're in a Prohibition setting, your character is a bootlegger, his ghoul is a bartender in a speakeasy, you and your cousins are planning to open a blood donation clinic, and the house rules say you can mix alcohol with blood to make it fine to drink, it would be rude not to combine these factors, right? If one was to find out which types of blood goes best with which types of alcohol, there's a whole new market to tap into right there.

In the end, the two cousins finally meet up again, at "Angela's", where Frankie was considering heading anyway, after a brief phone conversation. Frankie starts telling his cousin and her Sire his side of what's happened while they were away, and the two Malkavians are not exactly thrilled about his and Theo's raids on the Giovanni affiliated speaks in Little Italy ... If only they knew it was (sort of) Frankie's idea ...

I can't keep playing Humanity Roulette like this

Lottie and Julius dream about the other person's personal traumas, lying naked in each other's arms in a basement in Staten Island. Frankie and Val head back home to Brooklyn, and to be on the safe side, Frankie stays over at Val's. In the evening, Val heads off to do some stuff, while Frankie got to see his apartment - and a change of clothes! - for the first time in what seems like forever.

Lottie doesn't lose Humanity for what was inflicted on Jeanine. Nor for jointly breakfasting on Tommy the Fool followed by jointly snapping his neck. How romantic!

Frankie goes to see Benny at their speakeasy, and places a number of calls to check on business. Everything is fine, but there is stuff happening in Red Hook. 25 people, running legit businesses and none of them connected to the mafia, have been arrested on shaky grounds, like "running mob fronts". Some premises were completely smashed, others roughed up a little, or basically left alone. It's puzzling. Seb is looking into it further.

Meanwhile, Lottie and Julius go to meet the old woman, Loretta, and her Childe, Adelaide. The Prince doesn't know about Adelaide, who was turned a year ago. Loretta tells the story of who Adelaide is (kind of a serial killer?) and where she found her (an asylum), how she got her out of there, and rescued her by Embracing her.

While Julius and Loretta have a discussion in private, Lottie and Adelaide get acquainted upstairs. Adelaide is well aware they have to leave before the Prince finds out about her. She wants them to go to Georgia. (Maslowe's from Atlanta. Coincidence?) She also talks about how there's something in the water near the Brooklyn Bridge, but she was afraid to look. She could see what seemed like a cold, bright star in that direction - bearing in mind this is supposed to be 6 km away. Loretta didn't see it. Lottie and Julius did see something in some of the very first sessions ...

Adelaide seems to have some kind of weird fortune-telling power. She asks if she can look at Lottie "properly", then says something cryptic about there being something in the blood, "something that feeds, something thin" before snapping out of it and asking if she's looked at her yet. What the actual fuck?! Maybe skipping town is the best option after all.

We'll all be Malkavian by the time this is done

In the basement of a little cottage in Staten Island, AltLottie and Julius have a frank discussion. Turns out Lottie is actually the third person Julius has sired, gasp. AltLottie tells him a few home truths about Lottie's and his relationship - he needs to shape up or ship out, basically - which has the desired effect, as he really does want the relationship on offer. AltLottie switches back to Lottie, and to save time Julius gives her a memory dump of everything that's happened, and the interrogation of Jeanine continues.

Jeanine hands over the key to her house (well, she won't be needing it ...) and reveals that, unsurprisingly, Maslowe was going to be her heir, but she didn't have a chance to formalise it yet. For a short while she had considered Frankie, but she kinda went off him because he's very stubborn when it comes to having ethics. Lottie gets her two write two back-dated letters, one that names Frankie her heir, one that signs over the ghouls to Julius. Just in case.

That knife of hers? It was used in some rituals. It also went missing, and she did not in fact carve that J into the guest bed at Val's ... She also gives background on the ghouls. Where they come from, how she tracked them down, and so on. Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned, and she might've been better off taking up a different hobby.

Lottie and Julius blood bond right in front of their torture victim (with Tommy the Fool cowering in the corner), because bare cell with a drain in the floor is just so romantic, ya know? (They were in a similar room the first time it happened. Is this going to be a thing now?) They follow this up by going full Malkavian mindshredding on her, which, true to form, makes them super horny again.

In Manhattan on the way back to Charlotte's apartment, Theo divulges his rivals for the Brujah Primogency. Out of the other three, Frankie has only met one: Delilah, from Elysium! When asked if Charlotte can be trusted, Theo says "to a point". The two of them have a sort of off-and-on thing going on. It's currently on. Frankie admits that when it comes to himself, “it’s complicated”, because saying he has the hots for his cousin's ghoul seems like a thing best kept to himself at this stage.

Don Cerro, the Brujah Primogen, is waiting for them back at Charlotte's. He agrees the Brujah had to make a show of strength, but geez, Theo (and Frankie) couldn't have been a bit more subtle about it? Turns out a Setite doing garbage disposal in Harlem and the Bronx has had a lot of business in Little Italy recently. The Giovanni wanted rid of dead bodies (!) and agreed to a one-off slave trade with the Setites, who wanted some live bodies. Not that this means anything in particular at this stage?

Charlotte spoke with the Toreador to get more information about the Giovanni ghouls and found out her Primogen and some guy called Tamoszius are planning to nominate Frankie for Scourge (!), which is of course completely ridiculous considering he's a baby in vampire terms - it hasn't even been two weeks! He clearly won't say yes, and saying no would hurt future career prospects, except what fucking career prospects does a non-political 13th Gen have anyway, even before taking into account that he narrowly avoided being declared Caitiff after being publicly disowned by his Sire? So is that really such a loss? Theo finally suggests they beat the Toreador at their own game: have the Brujah put that Tamoszius guy forward for Scourge first. Having him turn it down would hurt his social standing wayyyyy more than it would Frankie, and the Toreador couldn’t counter-nominate Frankie without it looking like sour grapes.

We've started a war with the Giovanni!

In Manhattan, Charlotte and Val turn out to be in the apartment. Val isn't thrilled about his fancy car being busted up, and puts on some bravado about fitting in with the Toreador. Charlotte takes Frankie aside to ask some questions, which he does his best to answer as vaguely as he's able.

The group end up playing some cards while Charlotte asks around about who might be behind the attack. Turns out to be some ghoul family owned by the Giovanni. Their gang is known to be cruel, but they don't often make moves, so them trying to attack a Brujah Primogen candidate and the new guy sounds strange. Perhaps they ought to go over to Little Italy and be a little menacing as a response?

In Staten Island, AltLottie and Julius discuss options of what to do with Jeanine. Julius decides to lead the Nos on a wild goose chase while AltLottie takes a meandering sort of route to get to the rendezvous point with Jeanine - which turns out to be a lonely cottage on the harbour with a little old lady inside. Jeanine and Tommy the Fool are stashed in her cellar for later. Little old lady turns out to not only be an Autarkis Malkavian, she's Julius's Grandchilde! She tells a surprised AltLottie, “He’s 800 years old, you think he never sired someone before?”

The two Brujah call on some respective goons and gear up to go hit some Giovanni-related speakeasies in Little Italy to make a point that you don’t fuck with the Brujah. Fun times were had.

Julius shows up at the cottage, having shaken off the Nos finally, and it's time to interrogate Jeanine, and oh boy does she have things to say! She doesn't know who did it, but she was alone at home earlier this evening when she felt like someone was pulling at her veins, and she fled to Staten Island - to feed, to make contact with the Anarchs, or possibly to Diablerise someone to get her Generation back up.

Jeanine thought she could somehow become a bridge between the Camarilla, the Sabbat and the Independents. She has been talking to the Chombra Corporation, a subsidiary of Pentex for those keeping score, for the past couple of months. There's a lot to unpack here, but suffice to say it's a can of worms. The Sabbat are planning a hit on Brooklyn. There's a link between Chombra and the Giovanni. She had no idea Charlotte even knew about her little ghoul project - she had been so careful?

There are no safe mental spaces

Lottie and Julius take the Staten Island ferry, while being followed by the Nosferatu Primogen. Sneaky Prince. AltLottie comes out to play and she, along with Julius, agree that killing Jeanine is bad.

At Theo's, he looks as the dagger and says she's seen both Jeanine and Charlotte with it. Frankie agrees to sign a formal complaint against Jeanine. As the two Brujah leave to find their Primogen, another car T-bones them and tries to run them off the road and shoot at them. Theo gets some shots off before Frankie gets them out of the way. (This will have “interesting knock-on effects” says the GM.) After all, if the unknown assailants shoot back with the Tommy guns they're sporting? Heads probably go splat, which is bad for vampires. Failing to find Don Cerro, they end up at ... a house where we know from previous (way back near the beginning of the campaign) that Charlotte has two apartments in? And Theo has a key?!

Staten Island smells funny. Following a scent, the Malkavians find Jeanine in an inn, looking ... poorly. Tommy the Fool tries to get a room, but they take Jeanine up to the room she already has, where Julius pricks her finger. Jeanine has somehow become Thin-blooded?! How the fuck is that even possible?! This complicates things enormously. What to do? AltLottie suggests skipping town. Julius declines.

We don’t need this level of fanservice!

After a two-month break, we're back in New York. The Prince's ghoul delivers a note to Lottie which confirms that the broken ghouls are indeed Abrogard relatives, and they are indeed Jeanine's. The letter is the Prince's handwriting, but it's perfumed. Is he siding with the Toreador for some reason?

Lottie and Frankie drop into Theo's to let him know maybe getting too hard on the Toreador is ill advised at this stage.

Lottie and Julius go to Angela and instruct her to get Andreas into whichever nursing home will take him at short notice. She's also instructed to (and then made to forget having done it) calling a particular phone number to say on behalf of Charlotte Hansard, "J Calloway" isn't to disembark any ship. Could Jeanine be headed for Staten Island, where the Anarchs are?

Frankie, meanwhile, goes to get both the knife and the plans from Benny. The note left by the contact in the planning office is weird. It's in English but is hard to read, and looks like a lot of nonsense? Frankie brings it to Lottie and Julius, who get weird vibes off it. They try to look at it in a mirror, in case of some kind of magic filter, but it still doesn't work. It's put in a locked drawer for later.

The three of them then go over to the Staten Island ferry. Frankie drops the two of them off and drives off. Lottie and Julius are met by Tommy the Fool, a fairly useless mook, in case they need someone to do the heavy lifting. Or maybe in case they want a snack on the way, you never know.

Damnit, I have narrative blue balls!

This is a combination of two sessions, partly because they were both short so not a lot was said, and because they both covered Elysium. The first was short because the GM had internet troubles and instead of having no game, we desperately improvised by ending up doing a group call using actual telephones. #OldSchool

So, Elysium. We were at the Met, sitting in the auditorium watching Faust: Part 1. There was a young man with Jeanine, but we didn't recognise him, nor did she introduce him to anyone, and when she did spot Frankie she didn't appear to recognise him? Don Cerro, the Brujah Primogen, talked to Jeanine who introduced the young man as Steven Maslowe. Who?

Nor did it appear the Prince knew, when he invited Lottie and Julius to speak with him. The Prince had invited the Sabbat (!) to Elysium, for a hitherto unknown reason. The Prince asked the two Malks to keep an eye on them, which they did from the Malkavian Primogen box. Lottie wasn't pleased at the Sabbat referring to her as a "morsel".

Frankie told Theo about the knife Jeanine (allegedly) gave him, as she broke into a third party's house to deliver it. Theo later invited Frankie to the Brujah Primogen box and offered to take him under his wing. Don Cerro was, perhaps understandably, a little miffed about this.

So, in front of the entire Camarilla and the Sabbat, Jeanine finally introduced Maslowe to the perplexed Prince as ... her previous Childe from Atlanta, who is hoping to make his mark on New York City. The only people happy about this were the Toreadors, who thought it was hilarious - except for Charlotte (we don't know why) and Val, because his cousin was just very publicly disowned by his Sire. The Brujah were not happy being screwed over by one of their own, but at least Frankie wasn't declared Caitiff as a result. Phew?

The Prince wanted a private word with the two newbies. Did Frankie realise how fucked he was? Sort of? Not really? (Frankie doesn't get politics.) But yeah, he's pretty fucked, as is probably everyone he cares about. (This is just about the worst thing to tell a character who is fiercely protective of his mortal family and who also isn't adjusting well to being a vampire ...)

The Prince said he could potentially offer the Mangano clan a boon of protection, but they would need to ask him the question he had granted them - specifically without Julius being there. Lottie asked about the broken twin ghouls, which the Prince was unable to answer, but said he'd look into. He then granted everyone "of Frankie's blood" the boon of protection, so that's one crisis averted - and another one created. Frankie's uncle (a.k.a. Lottie's "dad") is of course being actively harmed by another vampire's ghoul, so Angela will quickly have to stash him in some care home so he's out of the way. At least his mind is so broken now that he'll never regain proper consciousness ...

(We shouldn't worry about Charlotte being mind-controlled. We'll find out soon enough.)

Val had left with Charlotte, so Lottie and Frankie rejoined Julius and went back to the couple's Manhattan home to discuss events. Frankie went to bed early while Lottie talked about blood bonding with Julius in private, offering. Julius succeeded a Willpower roll to not throw himself at her.

And that's where we left it.

Let's go find a victim!

The cousins went to Harlem to pick up Valenti from Ellie, who wanted an introduction to the Camarilla court in return? Julius said he'll mention her name, but he never said anything about the introduction being friendly. Having bagged Valenti, he now needed to be delivered to the Prince somehow.

We heard back from our contact in the city planning office and discover that the Brooklyn Bridge was entirely shut for vehicle traffic the same night the cousins were Embraced. Coincidence?

Lottie was shown by Julius how to hunt, as she hadn't actually had to hunt by herself before. It was, uh, memorable, and both of them seemed more interested in snacking on the other than on Kine ...

While the two of them were away, a weirdly expressionless and non-descript guy introducing himself as "John Smith" from the CHOMBRA Corporation came by to do a "transaction". It was not the Prince in disguise, but some aura-less part automaton. He was bundled into the boot as a bonus present for the Prince, who was very pleased. He commended the cousins on being so quick on giving him Valenti. John Smith, upon seeing the Prince, finally had a facial expression: abject terror. Which is fair.

At the Met, Theo introduced Frankie to some welcoming Brujah, and then took Lottie up on her offer of having his disgust lowered for the evening.

Val greeted his sire with a bouquet of roses, so it looked like they were planning on meeting up all along, even though she hadn't invited him to Elysium (but at least she'd been asking about him, so there is that).

Lottie and Julius spotted Jeanine on her own, looking like she was waiting for someone - and that someone obviously not being Frankie. She didn't seem too bothered about basically everyone else snubbing her (something that has been known to reduce a Harpy to tears) and she seemed ... excited?

Crazy people trying to deal with things

Julius is out when Lottie and Frankie return to the Manhattan house. Lottie went to shower off the Tzimice red mist ickyness she had to walk through in Harlem, while Frankie looked out through a window and saw Julius talking to a Gangrel, who wanted him to ally himself in regards to the Gangrel primogency.

Everyone in the same place, we started catching up with what everyone had been up to. Julius had been researching Egyptian mythology. The primordial creator goddess was not a part of the cousins' dream, apparently. Neither cousins nor players have any clue what this means.

 A surprise Jeanine appeared! Lottie and Frankie went to hide in another room to avoid her. She invited Julius to tomorrow night's Elysium. With Lottie's Auspex, she saw the bond between Frankie and his sire was very thin and fragile, but in fairness she hasn't been around for about a week, and the cousins have only been vampires for about a week and a half. And she didn't even enquire about her childe either. Bitch.

Victor, the Setite in the safehouse in Harlem, came by to say Ellie has Valenti and is ready to hand him over. He wasn't looking in a great shape. Not that the cousins really care.

Can I get Willpower for that?

Last time ended on a cliffhanger - things had just turned frosty between Frankie and the boxing promoter, because someone failed his Intimidation roll. (He succeeded on the first one. It was very satisfying.) Turned out that the eight weirdos around the corners of the boxing ring were staring around the room in sequence. Once the situation was defused (because Frankie thought it best not to start a fight in a room full of mindwhammied people when he's in the presence of his big brother and a number of other humans), four of them walked away.

Lottie is a much better negotiator, and got a much better deal. She should go back to the boxing promoter and re-negotiate the percentage. Ellie said she'd find Valenti for us, seeing as how her childe apparently knew where he was. After leaving Ellie's she went to see a production of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, or at least a part of it, in order to negotiate a new deal at the theatre. This was also successful, because she's the negotiator of the two!!!

Lottie then bumped into Theo Bell and offered her services in the mood changing department (to help him become the next Brujah Primogen) and asked him to please maybe keep an eye on her cousin, seeing as how Frankie's sire has been shit. Theo did this by essentially hijacking the taxi Frankie was in to get out of Harlem. Frankie, bless him, went "this is basically my boss, I should tell him what I know if asked" and told him about both the werewolves and Ecaterina at the steelworks incident in Gowanus. This apparently spooks Theo, who says Elysium is likely to be called the next night.