synopsychic | Like a stumbling ghost, I haunt these halls

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Like a stumbling ghost, I haunt these halls

Hi? Shit, I don't think I've ever been the one to start a mass psychic conversation. I'm more used to tuning out any voices in my head.

Anyway! This is Thorne, who some of you guys probably have met on the jaunt as Chouko, Princess Noriko-hime's attendant, and I'm dead! And in liminal space. Which I guess is traditional or something, I don't know. The Mantis killed me. He's, um, a killer cyborg with an inexplicable insectile theme. Well, okay, not inexplicable, if you ever knew Dr Wärring, which technically I never did, but Chouko did and the stuff in her memories actually reminded me a bit of this guy named Oda that my old, uh, boss used to be friends with and shit, I'm getting off-topic.

Right. So yeah, the Mantis killed me--he's Hajime, by the way, the Donalds are really running with that bug dude theme with him--but he's probably only after people who used to be with these guys called Vexatior--your basic shadowy organization who wanted to take over the world--so uh, if any of you guys remember having any ties to them, take care, okay? The only person I know who does is Min--I mean, I guess his name is Armin out of Jaunt--and the Mantis already spared him once due to age, but he's older than he was then and so, uh, if people could keep an eye on him and maybe make him stop being an idiot and wear a goddamn mask already that would be much appreciated. And try to help Noriko--Naoto--too? She's gonna be worried when she realizes I'm gone.

[PRIVATELY]

Joscelin? Can you make it back to Liminal Space? I think I need your help with something.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes. Yes, that was 100% a dick move. [jfc she will beat that into your head if she has to.]

Yeah. Well. Vampire.

[Another mental sigh.]

I was so okay with it when I met you. With everything. Infiltrating has fucking ruined me, Melissa. I keep ending up alive again, with a goddamn soul again and then I go back to being this and-- God.

Edited 2015-10-15 11:27 (UTC)

[There's a long pause before Melissa says anything.]

...Yeah. I know what you mean. That's part of why I hate it so much. I don't need help remembering what I lost.

I don't hate it, exactly. I'm glad to be alive again, for as little time as I can be. But it fucks me up.

[...]

I'm glad you understand.

I know why you would have expected me not to. [It seems to be a minority opinion among the Kindred. Melissa is pretty sure half of it is justification of something they can't fix, and half of it is that they're horrible, terrible, not-people.]

Yeah, well, once the deed is done it's done, right? When you haven't been alive for a while it's easy to forget how good it was. Couple that with the temptation of living forever and all the cool powers and shit and of course people will be perfectly fine being vampires. Especially since we've got the beast in us going "YEAH YEAH BLOOD AND HUNTING AND BEING ASSHOLES WITH NO CONSEQUENCES."

Except there always are consequences eventually. And everyone's fucked when Caine comes home.

[...]

He told me it was important that he embraced me. He'd thought he could chart the future through seismic analysis. Maybe he could. Malkav's line is supposed to be prophets as well as madmen. And then when we learned from Shaw, the weird old guy under the library, about the book of Nod and Gehenna and how everything was about to get really fucked up I thought that was why. But I died before I could do anything to stop it.

So what good am I like this now?

Edited 2015-10-16 01:34 (UTC)

[Fuck the Beast. She hates that thing most of all.

But... the rest of that sounds like a whole lot of nonsense to Melissa. She doesn't even know what Malkav means- maybe some special bloodline thing.]

...I think I'm going to need some more context for most of that.

[You can't see it, but Thorne is wearing her LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT NODDISM expression. ~~It's a lot like a LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOMESTUCK expression.~~]

Okay. Right. Um, so do you know the story of Cain and Abel from, like, the Bible? After Caine killed his brother, got kicked out to the land of Nod, and added an 'E' for 'edgy' at the end of his name, he ended up becoming the first vampire. Basically it involved eating a lady to learn the magic she wouldn't teach him and then like the big four angels all showed up to yell at him and curse him for being a dick. And that's where vampires come from.

(And, like, I'll show it to you in the Ercinyes fragments and the Book of Nod when we're all done with this Jaunt shit. I'm really just summing everything up.)

Anyway, Caine went to party it up in Nod and sire some childer and his childer had childer and then everyone was making too many vampires and Caine left in disgust. And there was the flood and everyone hid on the bottom of the ocean and diablerized the fuck out of each other--do you know about diablerie? It's when you drink another vampire dry and it's like the ultimate dick move, even other vampires will be disgusted if you try it--and anyway, after the flood Caine's childer, called the Second Generation, and their remaining uneaten childer, called the the Third Generation, started to live it up much as Caine had done in Nod, but there was serious bad blood (hah) between everyone, so, like, the Third Generation went to war with their sires and ate them.

Then Caine comes back in and bitches everyone out and he curses basically everybody with their clan weaknesses in, like, punishment. Because all those Third Generation guys? They're who the clans are descended from. Well, anyway, all the clans that were originally around. Some of them, like, died out or practically died out. Like, nobody hears about Cappadocians anymore. But, like, Caine's curse is why Ventrue are, like, super picky about what they'll eat and the Nossies are ugly fuckers and, like, the Gangrel are basically wild animals. And he also cursed everyone so we'd always be weaker than our sires, so we couldn't go turning on them and eating them so easily.

And then he was all "CAINE OUT!" all over again, but, see, here's the thing. He's supposed to be coming back at the end of the world. And according to the weird old guy in the New York City Library, that end of the world is coming really soon now. He read these prophecies to us, stuff from the Book of Nod, and... I dunno, it felt true to me.

Anyway, there's this prophecy about a woman who would be able to save everybody and after I read it I thought, "Maybe that's me. Maybe that's why Dr B said I had to be embraced." But then I died before I could do anything, so I don't even fucking know anymore.

Basically, Vampire Armageddon is coming and there's nothing I can do about it now.

Edited 2015-10-17 08:57 (UTC)

[That is... way more information about the origin of vampires than Melissa ever cared to find out. Some of it seems a bit off, but given that it's an overview and Melissa could easily have a large chunk of the mythos wrong on her own, maybe it's better to hold off on any questions.]

So... some twisted sort of Second Coming, then. [If it was just the end of the world for vampires, that would be totally fine. But this sounds like the end of the entire world, which would be awful.] Fuck.

Yeah. Basically.

Most of the Princes are, like, trying to actively suppress knowledge of Gehenna--that's what Vampmageddon is called--basically to avoid mass panic. But there's still a bunch of us Noddists lurking around in the shadows and, like, it's actually easier for us to spread this stuff now that the internet's around. That's how I got my own copies of Ercinyes and the Book of Nod. Some useful dude scanned theirs into PDFs.

I can sort of see why, if theoretically only one person can do something about it. [In which case, she wonders how many young vampires have fallen into the same trap Thorne did.

guess who doesn't believe at all the Thorne was supposed to be vampire jesus? this chick.]

[Well, she's not actually supposed to be. Which is just as well, really, or they'd be seriously boned back where she comes from.

Like, even more boned than they already are.]

... it's not like I was ever any good with, like, the bow and arrow at summer camp. And shooting shit is, like, an important part of her job?

I was so sure that was why he embraced me... but if it's not, then why? I must be like this for something, right? It can't just be for nothing.

Can it?

[...sigh.] Thorne, how old were you when you became a ghoul?

... twenty-three.

And look, if you'd been living at home with your folks for over a year because there are no jobs beside shit retail work when all you have is a B.A. in English and the rent in Santa Carla is completely batshit--a grand a month for a studio apartment, can you fucking believe that shit?--and suddenly you were able to land a job that wasn't retail and was something you'd always found cool, namely science, and the pay was good enough to actually move out and get that apartment downtown you always wanted, you'd have drank the mystery serum too.

That's not why I asked. [though it does explain some things.] I was 26 when I was turned. I'd been a cop ever since I finished my stint at community college. Might not have been a hell of a lot older than you, but in my line of work? We figured out pretty damn quick that there's not some grand mystical reason behind everything.

So you think I was turned for nothing. But if it was for nothing, then why did Dr B think it was so important?

Look, I don't know your Dr. B, so I can only guess. Maybe he thought you were at first, and then realized after that you didn't fit and didn't want to admit he was wrong. Maybe there was some other agenda tied in there that you didn't get to. Fuck, maybe he's just a goddamn liar who just wanted a new vampire to boss around.

[... it's probably a good thing she still hasn't turned the whole blush of life thing back on, because otherwise she'd probably be crying by now.]

... I always was a really good minion... fuck.

He did... he did honestly like me, though. Like, I think he cared about me as much as we're capable of it. Which isn't much anymore, I know, but... shit.

Edited 2015-10-17 10:56 (UTC)

[that's good because Melissa is also pretty shit at comforting people when she's telling her version of the truth.]

If you think so, I'm not gonna argue with you. [Even though she does kind of doubt it.] Sorry, kid. I wish I had better and or more comforting news for you.

... kid? You're not that much older than me.

He did like me, though. Some people fuck their ghouls up. They're like, huge dicks to them, because they can be. And he wasn't a huge dick to me.

[He totally fucked you up, Thorne. Being Embraced fucked you up. That's part of being a vampire.]

Doesn't matter. [she'll call you kid if she damn well pleases.]

Then he did something halfway decent. [yeah she's still not forgiving him for the rest of the bullshit.]

I loved him. Back when I was a ghoul. And even afterwards, sort of. He was-- everything.

[.....she is hella judging your taste right now, but she supposes that wasn't really your fault.]

Well, we've got another chance here. Maybe you can find a new meaning.

[To be fair, she wasn't really given a choice not to. That's how ghouls work.]

Yeah. Maybe. Doing the Traveler thing, that has to mean something, right?

... hey. Uh. Tell me if I'm being too personal, but have you ever slept with anyone you ate?

You mean my normal method of getting blood? [that would be a yes.]

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