08/17/2012 Brian's Take
The Ball
We arrive to the ball in all of our finery, which is just expensive suit for both Yan and I. The Castle is dressed to impress, both for guards and finery. We arrived basically on time to be escorted in by our host the Seneschal. We find Edward-Prince of Denver- and Anselm -Prince of Chemnitz- speaking together in Latin. Our hostess introduced me to the other princes, she left out Yan for some reason. They were surprised a bit that I understood Latin.
We spoke about polite things, only ones of substance included possible Assimite invasion from Istanbul. Anselm pledged troops if needed to defeat them. Carlak of Prague also pledged troops. (When Carlak arrived we switched to German) We were joined by the Voivode of Wrocław Maria. She is more of a creature than a women but all there were able to treat her with respect. The proxy's for Berlin arrived last, Parsifal Wildgrube for Gustav and Irmingard Kopp for Wilhelm. They arrive at the same time... that seems very staged but I don't see them working together, only thing I can surmise is the only way one could not upstage the other (by arrival time....) was to arrive together.
The night progressed...vessels were provided, I did not partake taking the Ventrue flaw as excuse. Yan took advantage of a lull to pull the hostess out to confront her. He comes back in and gives me the look, the one that says something is happening. I look around and see the Prince of Prague feeding on a young women, looks like he is going to take too much. With silent agreement, Yan moves to help the girl and I back up to watch his back and the crowd.
We find in hind sight that Carlak is getting assassinated. The girl is used as the delivery device for a poison or curse that quickly kills Carlek, but not before making a big scene. The curse transfers to Yan when he touches the girl, quickly climbing up his hand. Yan chooses to cut off his hand, similar to dealing with gang green. Maria the Voivode examined Carlak and the poison transferred to her. She choose to watch/and feel it all the way to her upper arm before cutting it off.
During this I noticed a couple of items. First the Tremere guest Ulrich Pankraz Senft was chanting (maybe casting) including the name of a healing deity. Both Anselm Kaube and Edward seemed to recognize what was happening. The rest of the crowd did not. The poison seemed to "eat" blood while doing sever damage to the person.
