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.

And remember, kids, the GM wants you to fumble!

We battled people in a corridor. It wasn't great for them. It wasn't great for us either, in fairness, Valgai got badly injured, but he lived and most of the people on the other side didn't.

Next session, the party left Murmei (and Knightlight) at the Queen's Legate to look at books to find out more information about house ownership, and so on, while they went to search through some houses. They get into a massive fight, because of course they did, and Deadorna for a long while was the only one really damaging them. Lucky for us, the party survived. The people (Templars?) attacking them didn't. Don't mess with motivated adventurers, FFS. Will NPCs never learn?

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.

 

Are we SURE we're the good guys?

We had a look at the records over at the Queen's Legate to see which (read: whose) houses went down the hole, in case that has some significance. The archivist there seems to have the hots for Valgai.

When going to speak with a Father Servola, people threw lanterns at us, and we ended up in a fight with some cultists? They weren't being very nice to us, at any rate.

Then some kind of "special" (in a Chosen One kind of sense) 6-year-old child proclaims Murmei is evil. This is a surprise to everyone, because being a bit of an idiot? Sure. Evil? Umm ...? Valgai's Witch Sight confirms this - the belt makes it look like Murmei's some kind of corrupt, evil thing. Perhaps it's a good idea to un-bind himself from that belt at the nearest opportunity?

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 love your lack of self-confidence

The gang (sans Elindra) go to see Nightpitch. They leave a message then get to meet him in person, to discuss the recent events. Valgai then speaks to Yagaba, the chief witch. Always good to speak to people.

Elindra also speaks to someone, but my notes literally only say "someone", so whatcha gonna do?

We decide the Templars need murdering, because of course they do. It's like a thing, right? Can we burn down the Winged Ladle Inn and plant a heretical book there? And some fake bronze tablets? Because that would work out pretty well, or so we think.

Valgai also gets to torture a cultist, so everyone got to have some fun. Especially as it was suggested Elindra pretends to be a hooker, but her hooker talk was along the lines of calling people "dearie" so she sounded more like a grandma than the 17-year-old she actually is. It was weird.

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.

There’s no zealot like a convert

There's some kind of corrupt person that Deadorna speaks to on the crystal island, and is told people shouldn't go down there. Umm, well, duh?

We don't, in fact, get eaten by ginormous creatures, but instead a deal is made with the barbarians (?) down there that the blind death lizards won't kill anyone who's down there in the company of Deadorna or Elindra - everyone else is fair game. We're happy with that arrangement. and finally manage to emerge from the hole!

Murmei gets a note about meeting someone in an alley. That sounds as bad as it absolutely was - he, Valgai, Knightlight and Vizell get attacked by archers on the roof as well as on the ground. But it's fine, the ones still alive at the end of it get thrown into dungeons, because hello? RUDE!

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 go to a land down under

We descend into the big sink hole! Therein, we encounter really big creatures, and the cave floor has a lovely mosaic pattern, which is a bit unexpected of a cave system. Seems like the tiles are Symbaroum-related, so someone's clearly behind this. It's not just a coincidence.

We also come across what appears to be a mushroom plantation, guard lizards, and spirit people in the water where there's an island of crystals. It would be beautiful if it wasn't so terrifying and deadly at the same time.

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?

The prettiest Arch Enemy in the land

The first session I forgot to note down what we were doing, but it's fair to say it contained the licking of wounds in the aftermath of fighting all the things that were coming up through that hole. Possibly even fighting more of the same.

The second session, Elsiosi turned up being very concerned about Murmei. I think it was suggested everyone should pretend he died in the attack to get her to go away, but ... that didn't happen.

We decided we wanted to be the ones to go down the hole on an expedition. We're brave heroes, right? We are clearly best suited for the job! Which is also the reason we give Ordo Magica when we go to ask them permission to go down there. They make us take some old, scary-looking wizard with us.

Funnily enough, Elsiosi didn't fancy joining us down the hole. Sucks to be her?