Take me Back to New Orleans

Theme Music: Cowboy Mouth - Louisianna Lowdown

Was it a blinding lack of subtlety
Or just a lack of style
Responding to the ways
And means of fear?

Take me back to New Orleans
And don't call me anymore
Because I might have loved you, yeah
But I love me more

Well, I'm feeling slightly better about the Vampire game.

Sort of.

Sarah's trying to ingratiate herself to the youngest childe of the local Nosferatu. In all honesty, of all the vampire clans, I find myself frequently most comfortable with the Nosfies. Nosfies are information brokers. They're usually utilized by the princes of the city as spies. Their information is generally for sale - for the right price.

A nosferatu is too valuable, most of the time, to meet final death in the purges that take place in a city after the over-throw of a prince. Training a nosferatu and getting him intergrated with the city is a time-consuming process and it's generally easier to let the current one continue his functions. Nosferatu generally aren't a threat to the prince because they prefer not to be in the limelight. I think there are a total of two Nosfie princes in the entire world of darkness (Don't hold me to that, I don't remember where I read that and can't seem to find it again.)

The Nosfies are survivors. They provide just enough information and hold just enough favors due to keep themselves well protected. And a lot of the clans have very little respect for them - they're viewed as social parasites. Distasteful, but sort of useful.

Getting in good favor with the local Nosfie can be one of the best decisions a neonate or Ancillae can make. So Sarah started on that plan recently, having run out of other useful things to do or paths to track down.

[Well, she probably ought to go talk to the local - disputed - Primogen of the Toreadors. (Except when I'm not playing one, my characters generally don't like the Toreadors. Funny, my characters tend to feel the same way about Tremire. When I'm not playing them. An aside within an aside here, how pathetic.) ANYWAY.... as the Toreadors are currently the ones involved in the power struggle with the Prince, Sarah's not entirely sure she can trust the Primogen. Maria might be posing as an uneffective leader to the Toreadors in order to get closer to the prince and to report his plans and movements to her "rebellious" clan members. "When you only see wheels within wheels in a Vampire Game, it means you're not looking hard enough."]

So I dragged my coterie over to Laurence's place and spoke with his youngest childe, Martin. Towards the end of that conversation, a riot broke out in one of the shanty neighborhoods lead by our favorite sheet-wearing assholes. (JD was sick today and didn't come to the game, so I'm not sure what Joshua did during this.) Alexis kicked in her obfuscate immediately and Sarah was too busy to try and find her using Auspex, so we got seperated.

I'm particularly proud of the fact that Sarah managed to rescue several people without ever having to get violent herself. Sarah's got a humanity of 8 and I'm trying really, really hard not to have to kill anyone, if possible. She never takes more than one blood point from her victims (whereas the other members of her coterie tend to take three, which is the max you can take from one lickstick and expect them to live without medical intervention) and refused even to kill the three members of the KKK that we ran into week before last. She bit one of them just long enough to use the Kiss to calm him down but never actually killed anyone, despite the fact that she has ample reason to despise them. As a matter of fact, she was quite distressed that she was left to dispose of the bodies - which she would not have done if the murders hadn't taken place so close to her haven and she was scared.

This time, she saw three rioters chasing a black boy about ten years old into an alley. She sped after them. The first to see her, she grabbed hold of and used Spirit's Touch to learn about him. Discovering that he was a deserter and a traitor to the Confederacy during the Civil War (a fact that would have warmed her to him on another occassion, perhaps) she immediately told him she knew about it and would tell his fellow cohorts about his cowardice and betrayal if he didn't leave immediately. He botched his willpower check on that and ran screaming into the night.

After that, she convinced her Spirit Mentor to help her frighten the other two away. Her Mentor cast an illusion which made Sarah appear as a Garou in Chrinos form. Which not only scared them away, it provided some very useful information as well. Because when Sarah told them to "go home and pray for their souls", the leader protested that "you just told us to come here." This directly links the riot and the local KKK to the garou. Something we'd suspected already, but this time we had proof...

So, after Sarah finished rescuing a man and his six year old daughter (taking a bullet for him because hey, she can heal non-aggravated wounds and well, humans can't) and getting them set up someplace else safe (Sarah needs some mortal allies that can help her do things - her one retainer is actually an animal, and while she has a human Patron, said Patron considers Sarah something of a pet fortune teller and is unlikely to respond well to being asked to do menial favors) she headed back to the Nosfie's place.

She backed up Martin to his sire who wasn't entirely sure he believed Martin's story about Sarah becoming a garou (even if it was an illusion) and earned a small boon from Laurence.

I haven't actually done much before in Vampire with the somewhat off-the-wall system of Prestation, so I was looking up the rules/flavor text about it when I read something that made me very, very happy.

Doing favors for Elders is a good way for neonates and Ancillae to raise their status in Vampire society, although she might be accused of bootlicking.

This is good, since my character's supposed to be sychophanty. While will allow me to regain any willpower that I spend.

Posted by tisfan at July 21, 2004 04:36 AM