The Land of Fog and Shadow
- -=Arkady Dallas=--=San Francisco=-
The city lays shrouded in the fog which is so intrinsic to San Francisco. I stand at the largest window of the Chatanooga Street Chantry and look down upon the misty streets below teeming with mortals so alive and yet so completely unaware. The willingness of humanity to look the other way is amazing, but it is beneficial to homo vampiricus. This is a very normal looking street. Men and women walk here where police patrol the area. Police are good, but mostly clueless as to the darker world around them.
Several of the residences here have been purchased by the Tremere and brought together to form a substantial chantry. The houses look normal on the outside, but have been richly appointed and decorated on the inside. Old time castles and mansions are out of date, the modern vampire needs rooms in the city. To this end mortal contractors have built in connecting doors and altered original layouts. Most of the kitchen area's have been removed or renovated to laboratories. Silver and other metals have been worked into the door frames, often inscribed with variations of hoc fuger, or Latin for "go away". This keeps ghosts and other unwanted spirits from wandering the house with impunity. While there is no traditional threshold as such, the common, prolific use of herbal and inscribed wards keeps most of the Chantry from being spied on be outside forces.
Once several vampires lived in the rooms here, though that has changed with the times. Since 2005 when the Kuei-Jin declared war on the Western Vampires, those they call Kin-Jin there have been a very small contingent of Tremere in the city. In fact, at the moment there are only two of us sanctioned to be in the city. The Mandinarate works with Killian Beckham, the Regent of this Chantry, he has a Liason status. In many ways living here is like living in an Embassy. This may be America, but in most ways it is like being in a foreign country these days.
If anything I am very much like a spy here. Killian watches me like a hawk most of the time. I often feel that he has is fiara schimbata (house beast) following me around. In many ways it's a silver and black cat-like creature that I swear I have heard speaking. I think he has made a binding deal with a Grimalkin, but I don't know that for sure.
The Kuie-jin don't know what to make of me. My introductions are usually "You can call me Arkady of Dallas." Most everyone shortens it to "Arkady Dallas". I don't correct them, it is good to deflect interest in my surname. The Kuie-jin are practitioners of true name magic and I like to keep them away from my True name as much as possible. I was sent by Athioso and my sire to find out what I could and send information back to my clan. Killian would prefer I not communicate with them without his knowledge. What he doesn't know doesn't hurt me.
My meager time away from the Chantry has been a
Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimalkin (Grimalken is also a character in the Ravenloft novel "The Enemy Within by Christie Golden)
