Postcards From Enoch Part Deux
En Route to Berlin
Good heavens do I have crap to do. So after a months' R&R in Enoch, we went back and had a chat-up with Inhauten again. (Note that we did not play cards this time.) Given events in the world, he's thinking it's time for him to go back. No I don't know the metaphysics of it, just that he spends a lifetime in Enoch, a lifetime in the world, and he's been doing it since roughly the 18th Egyptian Dynasty. So about 4000 years. Plus or minus a bit. That said, events are moving a bit, so he asked a favor of us again. Since we were such overachievers in Boston (Yeah, that trainwreck counted as a qualified success to the powers that be, on account of we mightily exceeded our orders and had some success with our excess) we got a few points, and we had a nice long relaxing vacation with Suhalia. By we, I mean me. As much as the rest of the coterie has my back in every situation, they're just gonna have to get their own permanent vessels.
Funny thing about Mummies, they end up in exhibits a lot. Currently, Inhautens' mortal shell is in Berlin, and if we could be so kind as to pick it up for him and bring it to Cairo, that'd be great. I mean really it's a milk run, but it'll help us in the long run as we get our ducks lined up for our own little save-the-world escapade. I know I just described stealing a mummy from it's well-appointed and well-guarded place in a museum as a milk run, but let's not kid ourselves. Even if we utterly Boston up this bitch, it's not like we can really do anything truly permanent, right?
Stop laughing out there.
So anyway, we'll do the job, and we didn't even ask for expenses. That said, we're going to have to at least get there. So this time, we made our way to an exit point via Viking longboat (the Enoch Navy is nothing if not eclectic) and came back to a place called Porto in Portugal. Cass got a call of some kind, and I kept her on call while enjoying the many and multitudinous delights of the beach. It's intriguing. But after we got the all clear from Cass, we came up and met a nice young man (young-looking, anyway) who tossed me the keys to a Lamborghini and said we should go for a drive. He had an Aston Martin. Oh, friends and neighbors, lords and ladies, it was in fact on. Brenda was in the cargo backseat thing almost crying the whole way. Sheesh. It's like she's never seen me drive before. Admittedly the race was fun, paint was traded, but I never got the Lambo out of third gear - mountain roads and tight corners made it difficult to truly wind it out and go. Still, it was fun and the sound system almost drowned out my screaming passengers. Side note; when did AC/DC become Throwback Rock. Motherfuckers have no respect.
Pulled into a little villa and because I freaking could I whipped a little donut with the Lamborghini before parking it. They are nice - it's almost a cockpit rather then a drivers' seat. That aside, damn. Our generous hosts were polite, unctuous, and unemotional. The countess was a mobile statue carved of beautiful marble, and so it was that we had several days of discussion. Really in her eyes I see a cold fear, and when she looks at Cass, almost jealousy. Like centuries have eroded her emotional reflexes to the point where even survival instincts are viewed with clinical detachment, rather than an impetus to action. The was refreshing in a way to me, affirming that I'm on the right path as far as beliefs go. That said, the countess has an academic knowledge that is surpassing many. She spoke for hours about my areas of expertise, and then had that same conversations with Brenda, Cass, and even Hugo. I mean, Hugo gets his standard "Don't steal the good silver" warning, and he's off. After the week, the countess and her childe had made an executive decision to travel with us by train to Berlin. It's a little 5 day thing, and I'm okay with it. I mean, we're still on the long-haul clock, but that doesn't mean we jet everywhere. One should see the world and say "Yes, this is why I'm flinging my mortal coil into an epic struggle against the Giovanni - so that these beautiful places remain beautiful and these ignorant people remain ignorant." The countess has her own train car. Naturally. I took a moment and checked on my own finances, and they'll be...adequate. I'm merely a multimillionaire as opposed to a billionaire. Alas for no longer being able to look at countries and go "meh. I'm worth more."
The most awkward part was when she nibbled around the questions of Auspex and discovered I could rock telepathy. She was on it like a drowning man on a life preserver. For real - it was like even secondhand emotions were something fresh and beautiful to her. I may have pandered out a bit, because seriously, to her this is a need, and even if we don't have any official agreement, she'll remember the emotions, and possibly react favorably in the future. It's a gamble.
A few stops here and there, and we found ourselves in Paris. Oh, yes. Cass doesn't speak French, which is a oh-crap-how-did-I-forget-that moment. Worse fates have occurred. Amusingly, the Assamite pretending to be a Toreador was the best received out of everyone. Cass' fake-toreador down, Brendas' caitiff was cluck-clucked, and Hugos' Ravnos ass was being watched. Constantly. Of course, we did meet Francois Villon at his Elysium of the Louvre.
Mother fuck, this is why Elysium was created. That said, the catty comments were fast and furious. I can hold my own, but overall it was discomfitting to the whole crew. I mean sure I've been in some deep snark-fights, but even 50 years of 4chan is a dip in the kiddy pool compared to the game some of these little courtiers have. As I reflect, yes, this too is worth saving. If nothing else, it's an interesting interactive play. Although as a side note, if a cities' population takes on the tenor of its' vampiric residents, I can see why Paris is reviled by everyone not from Paris. Still, I'm properly acquitted and outfitted for most events that could occur. Meanwhile, there's a bit of a sidebar as Cass and the other Brujah caught a wind only they could smell and went to check it out. I excused myself with politeness, and went to tail cass loosely. There was an interesting picture taking place, with a man handing...his younger twin a letter that burst into flames upon being discarded.
Tremere. They never tire of flash paper. Silly gits. Everyone picked a place and followed, and then we got together and discussed. The older man has a melancholy to him, like he's feeling old rather than being old. Boo-hoo. The kid, wearing a 19th century suit and having his hairstyle done so that he looked like he was being skull-fucked by an iguana, was a little more...more. Rebelling simply because it tweaked off his elders. Because that's original. That said, there's still an energy to him, and again for some reason he's the old guys' doppleganger or twin or clone, take your pick. Certainly the similarity was not unnoticed, but we had a little advantage of temporal knowledge that led up to think this could be worth checking out. We may be in Paris a few more nights and linger long enough to know that it's not a total threat. That means I get to burn through about 180 grand for outfits. Ballistic suits, ties, cufflinks, swordcane sheaths of various materials, holsters, all the standard accessories. I'm on a budget here, so I couldn't really swing by the other shops for casual wear - also, my casual wear of heavy metal rock band shirts and cargo shorts is for some reason out of style. Maybe I'll need to convince someone that metal is in for the spring fashion show.
All that done, Brenda's in the catacombs. Naturally. And...we had to find her. I am not a fan of this. We finally found her having a religious moment of some kind, and we had to get her out of it because dawn's coming. Alas, according to my Cass Chronometer, we were low on time, so it was time to find a cubby and sleep. What's 4 more dead bodies in a place that already has millions.
A bit, in fact. I had...a jacked up dream. A little girl drenched in water, rivulets coursing toward me, a group of 6 people chanting around a table and the same girl pouring ectoplasm from her mouth in an eternal scream, then back to the first girl, seeing an iodine-like substance coursing and billowing through the water, then behind me a guy who was dead-on Antonio Banderas that I'd seen at the Louvre last night leaving with a stunning asian chick, and then a bit more strangeness. Then I woke up to Hugo freaking out and screaming, with a little conjured 80-billion candlepower light above his head. That was an alarm clock I could do without forever. Apparently he had a fuck of a nightmare down here in the catacombs. Everyone else was somewhere in between - that said, we left Brenda and Cass in the catacombs while we went searching for some of the faces that we'd seen in our dreams. Never entirely fun or entirely depressing. Once we got showered and had the computer running a nice little search for the faces and things that we'd seen, it was time to hit the clubs - especially since the countess was chasing a lead and wouldn't be back until midnight.
More in Paris
So it was a good time at the club, we all eventually got our asses back to the train car - there was a bit of relaxation time, so I started crosschecking and collating data that my little searchwire had found, and a lot of it was interesting. Amongst the data were...anomalies. Not just a little statistical outlier, but enough for me to look, turn to the resident dead-things expert, and politely request explanation. Okay, so I said "huh, that's weird", looked at Brenda (fresh from her allnighter with the ungrateful dead) and said "explain this bullshit." But when we're writing for posterity, a little cleanup goes a long way. Crossmatching the data, and it was apparent that there were a lot of odd death of adolescents in the poorer sections of town. in the late 19th century, and running up for about...30 years. Then it just stopped. Time to put on the investigatin' feet and go check out what's going on. I found a few things, enough to make us want to hit the local police archives with Cass while Brenda checked out the local deadest nightclubs on earth. Or something. Since most of the dead within the search parameters were unknown, poor, and whatnot, they were buried in potters' fields. Which I suppose is a step up from the catacombs, but not much.
Having dressed down, we got our collective shit together and Cass and I headed for the cop-shop. While it wasn't the FAS, it was still annoying. I was relieved of my weapons. All of them. Goddamn. Even my baby derringer. And they would in fact part an old man with his walking stick, particularly when said walking stick conceals a nice sword. And then off to explain we're researching a thing for personal reasons from the late 19th century, and could we check things out. Over the mental link Cass mentioned that we had a new problem in that we got pegged with ultrasound, which will reveal that our internal organs ain't in shape, and we've got extra teeth. That's never a good sign, so that needed to be fixed. Sadly, all the electronic pads were sandboxed, so I could only do a basic scan of the frequencies they were using. And without my toolkit. Note to self, get a dual-use smartphone.
Finally got the info I needed and the things they wanted, we got our shit together and went down. Cass was on "distract and inquire" detail, while I found a nice clean virginal terminal and showed it what the world could be like when a master breathed upon it. I'm not one for bragging, but there are maybe 3 people who could do this - to wit; unsandboxing a system, sniffing encryption, breaking it, and then altering two files with previously used data. With no devkits, no rootkits - just raw skills. And doing it all in an hour. The terminal needed a cigarette when I was done.
While I was busy, Cass had not herself been idle. She not only scammed a date with the dude who was ostensibly monitoring us, he's going to see if he can get some additional stuff from Quebec City. Life is good, and the night was young, so we hit a fashion show for some clothes. Dammit, it's annoying to have a budget now. That said, we looked avant-garde when we left the show and headed for Elysium, and mingled a bit because that's what Toreador do in Paris. Tonight it was in another impressive as shit place. There's one other Assamite in Paris, Fakir. Nice guy, but we only really exchanged hellos because as much as I hate to say it, anything else would have broken my cover. And that wrecks the whole point of it. The amusing thing was the amount of space he got. Even though it's Elysium, and there's all these restrictions he's under, most of the Elysium goers were visibly distressed when they saw the Bedouin robes striding by.
With that done, I had to hit the electronics shop and create a fractal holographic emitter that was responsive to touch and voice. self-powered, with a basic command-response system. Nothing too complicated. And nothing too futuristic, but something to make the little roses shuffle amongst themselves and discuss if it's art or not. Quite frankly, the answer is maybe.
So with that in mind, I took the next night and went to find a card game to recoup my spending on clothes. It wasn't bad, I was up a quarter-mill when Brenda drunk-headphoned. This wasn't good, especially with a sudden crawly feeling heading up my spine and causing me to lose my groove. I lost the next hand, and 40 grand. At that point, it was time to cash out and find out where the hell Brenda was. Eventually I taxi'ed it to her and she was...well, naked and jabbering to corpses. So not like her, she was babbling about specters showing up, had lost her mind and had angry lunch on...6 people. I counted heads. 1-2-3-4. Recount. 1-2-3-4. That's 2 less then she said were there. Helllo masquerade breach in paris. Not good. I told her to do her hand wavey thing, and then she realized that's apparently what happened to the club. In the depths of cheap booze, she explained it. Apparently the specters were kidnapped children who were using the kids as conduits to the underworld. The group wanted to bring Emperor Napoleon III back, and he was impertinent enough to die on them. So they tried opening up a portal to the underworld. And then opened up a nihil, which utterly turned the club to dust. Fuuuuuuck.
Then we had to find the two other bodies, dispose of them, wash Brenda off, kiss my jacket goodbye, and then go back to give everyone our findings and then...well, I think we're sleeping away today and then heading for Berlin. With a quick stop at a museum to drop off what may or may not be art. Wunderbar.
Thievin' on the Moscow Express
Waking up was not exactly eventful, but I was under a bit of a time crunch. I had art piece/protoype in my satchel, but the train was departing in a couple hours, Elysium was at the Louvre, and it's a couple days before Christmas. Details. We're going to have to sort them out. After weighing the benefits, we proceeded on foot. And in the midst of all the joy and Christmas celebration, three bruiser-ey dudes tried to mug us. Not gonna lie, I was amused. And certainly, if I was still breathing, it'd be a concern. But there were 4 of us, 3 of them, and we were kinda badass. Being that it was the holiday season, I pulled just enough of the sword out to reveal that mine was bigger. At the same time Cass got a flanking position and loosened her coat up just enough so that they knew she was packing. They went back into the alleyway saying "next time." I didn't want to burst their bubble, so I bid them Merry Christmas and went on my way.
Shit, I forgot to buy presents - note to self; buy presents on train from Berlin stores and have them shipped to our hotel in Berlin.
So we did get to the Louvre, and...problem. Metal detectors. Problem solved by a nice old gent who cut us out of the crowd and bid we use the side entrance, discretely located over yonder. Which we did on account of, well, we was packing. So with that, we went, hobnobbed a bit, and offered the keeper my little toy. It went into a special vault, displaying the kindred-only creations collection. I had a little time to twiddle about, so I perused. Say what you want about the Toreador, they make some damn fine stuff. And the ones who see making swords as an art form? Don't even. I conferred with 1 blade (Gloves on, of course) and was thoroughly impressed. It was folded over a thousand times by the hand of the sheriff, and is even mystically imbued with something so impressive it could cleave heads like nothing. For a cavalry saber, it's not nothing. The keeper was bemused when I came to with cass shaking me (I'm not the first 'Toreador' to get caught up in an object read,) harrumphing, and pointing at her empty wrist on account of the time. Oh yeah, train.
As a side note - I do have to come back in a year, on account of I may be receiving a small boon from the Prince for my art. As a second side note, I have a fuckin' piece displayed in the Louvre for a year. Under a pseudonym, but god-fucking-DAMN that's an achievement. And in a year, we'll know if it's considered "art".
Through the crowds, we rocked and rolled and then I heard...voices. Leading me to a door where there wasn't anything special, but we were permitted access on account of "something hinky is afoot". After walking in, it was a huge stone tablet with the faces of the Roman Gods arrayed equidistant from each other. It was possibly a table or something previously, but it dominated the room. I heard voices, angry, and then several flashes of something. It shook me for a second or two, Brenda and Hugo not so much, but still. Enough that the Keeper was warned of bad things happening soon in this room; and we were off and running.
The second trip through the streets to the train was also loosely eventful, but only in that we had to feed. We chanced upon a little pickpocketing operation of sorts; some kind parisian souls giving tourists spiked hot chocolate and then rummaging through their pockets. I distinctly heard Hugo snort derisively and declare them amateurs under his breath. Two of them noticed my noticing and came for me like I was going to have to be quieted. They chucked a pepper-spray can at me and I batted it back with my cane. I then proceeded to mop the damn floor with them on account of I could move faster, but still one of them caught my suit jacket with his switchblade and there went a couple grand. Dammitall. Still, dinner was served. After that, I noticed someone in a diamond and emerald mask watching me, not realizing I'd seen her through her obfuscate. She was planning to ambush me verbally and show the power of the prince to See All In His Domain. Because I'm playful, I walked almost past her, stopped and asked if she had the time. She was startled, stammered out her lines and was rather rude. Two can most certainly play at this game, and so I cranked out a French Yo-Mama joke that I am disproportionately proud of to the point where I'm putting it here. Just in case anyone asks. Ta mère est si laid son salon de massage fin heureuse était le signe de sortie. (Translation: "Yo mama so ugly the 'happy ending' at her massage parlor was the exit sign".) She almost lost her shit on me. There was another tossoff oath about boorish Américain and she sulked her ass to the nearest alleyway for a good cry or whatever. The down sides of this are pretty significant, and something I'll have to beware of next year; I presented as someone relatively young, but I have rather advanced Auspex and Celerity, both of which were on full display. This could cause some explanations to be required later on, but I'm already working on that. To wit that we (Dawn and Jacob Bearpaw) are Toreador, but none can or will reveal our true lineage, and we hide our generation on account of we are in fact young - we believe this to be a piece of performance art of some kind by our collective sire. Someday, perhaps our sire will reveal themselves but until then we have our 'social lineage' to hide our shame. Ahem.
Anyway. Train station. Our car hooked up between freight and first class, and we knew where to go. And then I saw two figures from the not-distant past heading toward the first class cars. (Retired) Lt Isabel Scott, formerly of the FAS Defense Corps, and Ezra Winthrop, world class twit. I have been a very good boy this year somehow, because Santa has done brought me a present. We all got on, and there was prompt discussion of a plan. My first thought was to catch them in Berlin, but then a reality set in that we were not going to get another chance like this - the gods have favored us by presenting an enemy in a relaxed state. Fortune favors the bold, and so a plan was made. Step one, figure out where they are. Ezra's a poncy little New England rich boy at heart, so he's never traveling less than First Class. (Not gonna lie, I see a little of me there. I think the difference is that I appreciate it because I worked for it, whereas he's like "This is what I deserve because I was born to it." A philosophical point for another night.) So Hugo and I went through the dining car, where the attendant short-circuited for a second before giving me far more warmth then absolutely necessary asking if I was going to dine this evening. Yeah, they don't get too many Native Americans in Paris on the train to Moscow. Braid to my knees, expensive suit, exotic look, and most importantly, no wedding band...I'm currently something from the western aisle. Hugo got only the requisite amount of politeness, as he's a curry-style Indian. Alas for stereotyping. Loitering and listening, complimentary champagne discretely placed on the table of a birthday party in the dining car, and then off to the First Class cabins.
I caught a snatch of their conversation in one of the cabins - Lt Scott asking Why Berlin, and Ezra replying that they needed to consult. They're trying to determine a proper body to return the soul of the scary child-lady whos' sarcoghagus we have. Oh the gods are good. I relayed it back to the rest of the group that I'd found what we were looking for, and Brenda had a slight disappointment look as her method was a little too slow. Still, good to have a backup. Now, we're making one small assumption, in that they have the jars and haven't stashed them away somewhere. But let's be honest with ourselves, if you've had canopic jars with your bestest girlfriend ever in them for over a century, are you putting them in any safe deposit box anywhere? I didn't think so. So now...to get them to open the door. A plan is forming, and I think it might work. I'm going to tell the attendant I'll be up all night.
Seriously, this is a noir classic forming right before my eyes. Life is good.
