What one does after Rome

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Bolverk the General

So after being exiled from Rome, Erik wanted to take care of a few things before joining me on the 1st crusade. We moved north to Verona. Unfortunately the plague has moved ahead of us, Godiva or Lady Mortis as she is now called, has started to research the plague. She has a stable living space, as she was "forced" to live in the palace. I look forward to any details she finds, I will continue to keep contact up with her. At Verona I had the "pleasure" to meet the current Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. I thought I would awed or impressed by this great historical figure, but I wasn't. He is just a human, not even an impressive one at this point in his life. He has done some things that would be worthy of song, but not much, a person would tire easily from such a small selection of tales.

Erik handled him well, not unexpectedly, and got him motion. His plan was to wait and let the winter help decide the outcome. One thing I have noticed about Erik is for an elder of his age he is almost impatient when action is needed. He shamed him into motion and got his Dukes moving to attack. The target is Canossa Castle, home of Countess Matilda the leader of most of northern Italy.

Erik has decided to let me lead, this is not unexpected. As a Ventrue one of my skills of the time period is leading, both in peace and in war. As his childer and tool he needs to test and hone my skills. I wonder what Marcus Verus would think of my military skills, since he taught me what I came here with. His childer insisted that I understand cavalry and how it is deployed on the medieval battlefield, which thought was a waste of time, but I am using those skills now.

I was able to take a lot of the small fortresses through generally good military tactics and superior numbers. One of the large(ish) cities on the way to Mantua(I think?) decided not to surrender, Erik had me decide on how to take the city. I decided to start a plague, one strong enough to hurt the Kindred as well as mortals. This tactic changed the citizens minds and they surrendered the city. Only after using this tactic did I remember Uriel's words about my being the Horseman of Pestilence.

The next city in our path was Parma, with the thought that there is no need to embrace the idea of being a Horseman I wanted to use different tactics in this city. The nice thing is that the story had moved ahead of the army and the officials of the city were willing to surrender the city to avoid destruction. The was a much better solution and could net us allies or at least oath sworn. Everything looked good and Erik seemed to be good with plan. Though Erik we have learned about the vampire coterie that resides in the castle. This group is led by a elder Malk by the name of Lefanue who happens to be the sire of one of my least favorite Malks, Iago.

Welcome Back, Pageant

We separated from the whole of the army as they traveled back to there home. Erik and I took our small number of troops and headed toward Paris. I briefly considered going to almost any other city that will let me follow the crusade but it feels to much like running. I really do not want to be in any kind of feud with a Elder Malk, even one step removed which is worse in some cases because I may become an expendable piece.

On the way to Paris we ran into the Pageant. Like a neighbor that is very annoying but not annoying enough to try to get rid of (if that would even be possible in this case). There is a new player on the field, a time traveler that has gotten snared by the pageant. I learned about this person by an old friend Rambert, who decided instead of keeping tight monitoring and control over this person that he would pass control to an unknown Kindred. He also did not educate this person at all on the benefits and drawback of the both coming back in time and the Pageant itself.

I may need to kill this person as a threat to our plans. I will need to get to know this person and evaluate the threat. He is useful right now but he is very into the pageant, I have no idea how attached he is to the pageant, or how difficult it would be to pull him away from the pageant. One item, he is still mortal but he has some magic, this could be a very valuable agent if we could nail down his loyalty's and abilities.