oc: What follows in this and coming posts are narratives of testing done. It should not be taken as a "blow by blow" write up. End damage, derangement, degeneration etc will be handled in an ooc fashion in separate posts. If you are at all confused, RE-READ THE POST ... and then ask. Heck, ask someone else if they understood first and then ask us. We're glad to help but if the answer is here, it's always better to get it from what's already been written. Thanks for taking part in chronicle history folks... here comes the insanity! Hope you enjoy it.

-Jim & Dee
PS: We're in the zone chief!


++ Daytime 12-6-09 Various Locations ++

Kindred who are normally plagued by nightmares of their past find those dreams are particularly vivid tonight. You wake to blood soaked sheets, a heaviness in your limbs as if your body had been experiencing strenuous exercise all day long. The dreams don’t immediately fade either, they linger making you feel distracted and less than on top of your game all night long. Through the evening you sometimes miss what people are saying because of the voices in dreams still lingering… sometimes people aren’t even who they appear to be and you’re forced to push your beast into submission or flee in terror.

(OC: Nightmares Flaw)

For those of you who know your time on this earth is limited, you wake with an uneasy sense that tonight is your final night to walk the earth. You will not survive the evening and the most you can hope for is to leave on your terms. Dressing to join the others for battle tonight is a sorry situation… it gnaws at you that your number has finally come up on the die of fate.

(OC: Dark Fate)

A small comfort that you and every other person who has visions tonight, knows that you won’t be going to hell alone. A great deal of people will die tonight and every person with auspex or some sort of oracular sense, can’t help but KNOW that in their very bones as they rise from their bed to make ready for battle.

(OC: Oracular Ability/Auspex)



++ 9:03pm CST 12-6-09 - Giovanni Haven - Location: Undisclosed ++

The house is still, silent as the grave, all but the gentle sound of bare feet on well lacquered wood floors as she creeps from the kitchen back to the den with a large bowl of Count Chocula cereal. Reaching for the remote control, the impossibly pregnant ghoul flips on the movie she had left off watching before her last nap. Settling uncomfortably onto her couch, she smiles as her favorite song begins. She turns down the volume and begins to sing with it… imagining herself singing before a crowded room full of adoring fans… dead and living.

As she sings she absently watches as the red-brown chocolate flavoring begins to color the milk, seeping from each crisp bite and stale marshmallow in billowing translucent clouds which swirl and spin on themselves in the liquid just … “Like blood.” She says in a voice that quivers with fear.

“A bad omen.” A voice without a body says just behind her. Kirsi can only nod and put a hand protectively over her stomach hoping that whatever took Constantino from the house tonight, and Sal the night before, would let them return to her and the rest of the family again very soon.

“Renatta!” she called out loudly. “DeAngelo… Sophia!” grunting as she became increasingly worried that she was feeling something more than Braxton hicks contractions.

“A bad omen, indeed.” The voice repeated as the cereal bowl went crashing to the floor, the dried blood colored milk seeping into the carpet as if it intended to drown the house in vitae.



+++ Meanwhile - Prairie State Park +++

Far across town Cougar, John Gorgos and Theron Caine stride out into the wide open prairie escorting a kindred that none of them are able to see. The three archons look around, vigilantly keeping an eye out for danger coming from any direction.

“Colder than a witches tit tonight.” John remarks.

“Work fast, Graverobber.” Cougar breathes. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

Dark heavy clouds hung oppressively over their heads and from them, big heavy snowflakes began to fall slowly to the earth.

“Kinda pretty though.” Theron whispered, almost to himself.

The air ripples before them, all three wheel around on the rend in reality as very large Italian man appears, his feet not touching the ground. “Don Giovanni has completed the ritual. It’s now safe… you should head back to the cabin now.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Cougar quipped. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”




++ 9:22pm CST 12-6-09 - Gangrel Cabin, Prairie State Park ++

Miranda is the last kindred to arrive at HQ. Calhoun and she are quick to wander off into a corner but Miranda’s words, even whispered, can’t help but be heard by others. "How you can doubt what I feel for you?"

“This is not the place … or the time…” Calhoun tries to insist but Miranda continues.

"You bade me at the opera to spend the night as befitting my status and I tried! It is no fault of mine that Cicero thinks to prove his conquest of your position, and uses me as his goad. I could've danced the night away with any of the other men in that room and you would've been pleased to see me happy and my world would not be in shatters. Yet because it was him" she spits the last word out, then falters unable to continue.

Calhoun puts a hand on her arm, moving so he is between her and the crowded room. “It’s not what you think.”

Her voice goes quiet and infinitely sad "I'm sorry Nathanial, I hate that I must always be the pretty pawn that those greater than I think to move across the board. He uses me to hurt you, and I hate myself. But what was I supposed to do?" A tear slides down her cheek and Calhoun catches it, noticing the paper she holds in her hand.

“Don’t waste your blood.” On me, he seems to imply… though he might just as well mean that it’s important to use it in combat instead. “Not tonight. Cicero wasn’t using you and I’m not angry. I promise.” He says meeting her eyes meaningfully. “I’ll explain everything …once this is over.”

As if she was waiting for Calhoun to finish, Regina speaks, “Wave two, take your positions. We’ll see you on the other side. Archons… with me. Let’s ride.”




++ 9:30pm CST 12-6-09 - Mindenmines, MO ++

A giant wolf races across the earth tracking the scent of a twisted monster, the servant of evil incarnate… and it must be stopped at all cost. It’s pack joins it, racing across the land, they can see the man just ahead of them and soon he will be surrounded on all sides.

The wolf grins in satisfaction, tonight he and his pack will feed well. It’s not every night, after all, that you get to enjoy the hearts blood of one who is old enough to recall the library of Alexandria.

All along the way the pack screams and hoots, making terrible noise as they tear through the streets, harrying their prey until at last it is surrounded on all sides. The man takes a battle stance, his sword held tightly in his hands, fangs extended.

At a glance from the man one of the packs with him runs in terror, another look and one of his own pack collapses to his knees in adoration making apologizes for everything he‘d ever done wrong in his life. The wolf snarls in disgust as he leaps for the throat of the ancient servant of the antediluvians. The power of his body colliding against a brick wall of force is devastating to the wolf, his shattered bones flying across the city courtyard.

The ancient laughs as pack after pack comes for him and falls to ash at his feet. From his place where he struggles to realign his spine, the wolf can’t help but to realize his Bishop knew the first wave would not come back and had chosen them for the first wave to simply be rid of them… it was the whole reason for a second wave, a third, and a fourth.

His allies dead, his back still not rightly placed, the wolf whimpers helplessly as the ancient strides like a god walking across the earth right up to him, his metal shod boots clanking with each step he makes across the blacktop. He stops just before the wolf and reaches down to pick him up and look him in the eyes. The wolf snaps for good measure but can do little else.

“You are connected to your leadership, yes? Good.” The ancient says with a thick accent, a monocle gleaming with a strange crimson glow in his right eye, “Pass along this before you die then… I’m here and I want my revenge.” The wolf fell to the blacktop hard just then and all hope of fighting back faded quickly away as the metal of the Ancient’s boot came smashing down hard through the top of his skull.





++ 9:45pm CST 12-6-09 - Prairie State Park ++

The night sky was dark and the clouds might have been seen as a giant gray blanket spread across the endless prairie were it not for the somber mood of those who watched the first wave walking down on the field of battle. Quiet, peaceful even, it seemed as though there was nothing there for the Justicar and his archons to find… just an ocean of dead dry grass that, in places, grew taller than a man stood.

The man at the front of the group exuded an aura of majesty appropriate to a creature of his station, despite the inhuman appearance that his body had become over time. Sure, the three days worth of growth on his face might have made him like any man in the Midwest this time of year… but the inky black depths of his solid black eyes, his bat-like nose, his pointed bat ears, hooked claws that his hands had become and the short rude spurs that protruded from his back left no doubt what he was - a monster.

There had been no need of obfuscation tonight, as there had been in the past… no one to impress or awe. Tonight called for nothing short of beasts - men and women should have stayed home, safe in their beds.

Archon Theron Caine’s body shifted and morphed into something out of a storybook, mostly wolf but partly other things, as he took step after step crossing into the three mile expanse that His Grace Xaiver had declared fit for battle. Beside him, Art Morgan … who hadn’t been seen in weeks, sprouted claws clearly intending to do some damage of his own.

Beside them Cougar let cat like claws sprout from the end of her finger tips as she spare a playful smile for the old man… as if she not only welcomed combat and possible death - but was eager for it.

A beautiful woman, an archon who was introduced as Genevieve Duchette, held an aura that could be felt for quite some time after she’d left the cabin. She now walked calmly across the field, a small team of men walking all around her. The men, so everyone who had been at the cabin had seen, only had eyes for her and hung on her every motion and breath … obsessed with her. Each carried weapons and seemed as though he might actually know how to use them.

The final man didn’t appear until they were well into the fight zone, his ugly visage the very thing of nightmares and grim fairy tales. The Nosferatu was armed with two wicked looking blades covered in some very dark substance that could not be made out at this distance.

All four stood just behind Xavier de Calis, Justicar of Clan Gangrel, and waited for their orders. The wind rushed through the grasses making the only noise that could be heard for miles. If there had been animals here, they had long since fled in terror.

“Bring it to me.” Xavier growled.

“My pleasure.” Cougar said stepping forward, her body quickly becoming a mass of inky black shadows writhing all about her. “Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty…” She cackled, insanity wild in her eyes and aura as her black tentacles seemed to rip into the earth and reach down for something unseen.

For a moment, nothing happened but then … all at once there was a rumbling of the ground and a noise that sounded like the cracking of thunder only it hadn’t come from the sky… but the ground instead.

Across the massive field men began appearing from the earth itself, like the ground was giving birth to an army of Gangrel… a few at first then dozens as far as the eye could see - red eyes glowing in the darkness giving the only sign of their arrival to those standing so far away.

“What the hell was that… ?” Gorgos asked.

“The earth.” Xavier replied. “Stand your ground. No one leaves until it falls!” His command was heard by all and the Gangrel clan roared making such a sound as to leave no doubt who would be victorious tonight.

“Your Grace… the ground’s going to give way!” Genevieve cried out but her warning did no good as suddenly the as the earth cracked and heaved beneath their feet swallowing Gangrel as the ground exploded beneath them. The ambient light of liquid fire from inside the earth illuminated the army of Gangrel. Out of the crevices, hundreds of man-shaped shambling horrors began to climb out, blood thirsty and ready to join the battle. At the center of this emerging army appeared a creature of horror, standing over 9 feet tall. It reached out with one giant clawed hand and clinched the Justicar’s side twisting him almost in half and tossing him aside like a broken toy. Xaviar screamed out in pain as Art roared, leaping up to take his brother’s place trading blows with the thing.

“KILL THAT THING!” Genevieve screeched in a heavy French accent and her army of supplicants charged to join Morgan in the fray even as their mistress fell unceremoniously into a pit of fire that opened beneath her feet, one final scream echoing into the night, above the clashes of battle joined.

Steam from the earth scalded and did as much damage as claws and fire, Gangrel by the score we’re being pulled down into the earth and some, who it seemed had not leapt out of the earth on que, seemed trapped mid-meld and lay helpless waiting for the enemy’s force to swoop down upon them and finish them off.

The cries of pain and terror made a terrible harmony with the battle cries of the living. While the enemy had taken considerable losses, and was obviously killable, it seemed that the Gangrel clan had taken the bulk of the injuries and it was now time for re-enforcements to arrive or the battle would be surely lost.