cryptsleeper | 20s AU Post

20s AU Post

Current Carmilla plot outline
--Post-fire, Carmilla and Mr. Peanut team up mostly to use each other. Carmilla's spent the past several months (since November, it is now February 1925) networking, and it's clear to her that Alucard's not suited for the position and that the other two are the obvious weakness. Mr Peanut needs something back, so this is perfect on her end. Mr Peanut can only imagine the joys of vampire blood in his work, and he'd like an army of vampires for his own ends.
--Shit stirring from Mr Peanut (all of March?)
--Mr Peanut also begins to sell mis Miracle Serum, which has vampire blood in it.
--Gang is very much trying to murder Mr Peanut during this.
--Start of April, vampire gets a call from one of the blood bank contacts that 3 patients have come in and are displaying some bizarre signs. Investigation yields the fact that they're in process of turning, and they've all taken the same serum.
--Additional investigation reveals O FUCK IT MR PEANUT
--Meanwhile Carmilla's been made aware of a familiar she didn't sire, so she knows something's up. Big fight with Mr. Peanut and thus Mr. Peanut is left depowered
--Gang commits a murder
--Carmilla's well sured up on her contacts now, and it's time for open rebellion (mid-April)
--In a more subtle attempt to let Alucard just step aside, she cuts the breaks on demon car and shows up to gloat/suggest he not pull a dad and go to deal with his grief quietly while she runs the city. The how he wants to do it is up to him (black widow joke goes here.) Treffy and Sypha walk in.
--1 week of straight up rebellion; feedings, no help from allies, need to do damage control instead of fight carmilla, every dracula rule is
--MEANWHILE IN GRAVITY FALLS, triangle shows Vlad what's up to try and psyche him out, somehow this finalyl snaps Vlad out of his depression and he heads home
--Just in time for Alucard and Carmilla to be tearing each other to bits in one of the bayous, it's not going well
--Vlad coming in means the king of vampires is accosted by a belmont with a pair of blessed knitting needles and a speaker with a fucking gun and he's just like what the shit happened to the world while i was gone
--Wards around the fight means that only demon car can break the wards, everyone has to pile in.
--Carmilla gets her ass kicked AND SENT TO THE JUSTICE DIMENSION

THEN THERE WERE FAERIES.
--Prior to all of this the vampire and Sypha have done a shit ton of research on how to get their Belmont back
--Sypha has also been practicing debating with dad, which leaves everyone Very Tired.
--When Trevor is actually snatched up (1 year after marriage, it takes fae effort. Taking Arn's shape fails, so it's a lot more kidnapping by force), Sypha and Alucard go into Faerie
--But they're playing this as politics, not as heroes rescuing their damsel, so that means the faeries are just "wait what now excuse u?"
--There are 3 gates and 3 trials (the particulars we're still bullshitting.) Each is asked to sacrifice 3 things. (Alucard: voice, his titles as bestowed upon by his father and his people, i forget the third; Sypha: her human form (she's a birb), fuck what were the other two)
--They enter the court at the end of the third trial. After LITERALLY ALL THE TITLES Sypha declares she Speaks for Trevor Belmont
--Claim debate over Trevor, turns out that the rules are in Sypha's favor.
--But that means debating to leave Fae without giving up what they've chosen.
--Sypha lawyers it all out, Alucard is a safety deposit and hangs out with Fae!Trevor
--In the end, safe passage out of Faerie consists of Sypha giving up her memory of the necromancer (billed as a great mage she studied under), the vampire gives up his immortality, and Trevor is replaced with Carmilla (dad was aware of this option and OK with it), but Trevor has his ability to swear taken. He now soundslike a rubber ducky when he tries
--Everyone gets home okay, except for the AU of this AU where the gang fails, but Trevor's on their doorstep like a bat out of Hell because time doesn't work right and he's been in Hell for a WHILE.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Blood is complicated. The general rule for it is please don't, not unless it's something to do with that specific person. You generally don't want parts of people's bodies getting mixed in with your magic. Which- probably also true for baking cakes, I suppose.

[ Not that that has ever once stopped him. But Belmont blood is a pretty specific component in itself. ]

Grave dirt, for vampires. You can use it to replace the sand, else mix it with water and make the written component with mud. Generally don't need the specific components for that, though. Belmont and all. Vampire bullshit comes naturally. Fishmeal for werewolves. Whole fucking list of different components for mages, though most of them are better to track the magic than the mage themselves.

Hmmmm.

[She's listening intently, taking mental notes as he rattles off the various components, cataloguing them internally and making sense of them as he describes.]

But for a specific person, you would want to use a specific component from them personally, if you could? Say I did want to find a very specific person. I would need the map to direct me, but then I would need something specific of theirs as well?

[Hmmm, redux.]

And if I wanted to find them over a great area, I could start with a very vague map and narrow it down from there with more and more specific maps. Yes?

It would help. Usually you'd want an item belonging to them rather than a part of their body, just to be safe. Hair tends to be safe, too. Blood gets things fucked up because it's gone through the heart and the brain. It's one of those intent things. Once you have too much of a person involved in your spell, it can start to change it, make it do what they want.

[ He taps on the map. ]

For most people, if you're using a spell like this, the worst you'll get is bad information if they don't want to be found. But if you're targeting someone who can use magic- say I was using this to find you, but using your blood. You'd know that the spell was being cast, you'd know that it was me doing it and where I was doing it from, and you'd probably be able to use that connection to focus intent on me and set me on fire or something.

[ It'd be cool. ]

Incidentally, that would be why components for tracking mages tend to focus on their magic rather than on the mage themselves. [ Oh right, and the other question, because he went off on a tangent about Sypha setting him on fire. ] You could. You don't need the maps, really. The spell'll work without them, it'll just be useless because there'll be no context for the results.

I see. Well, perhaps we will have to try it sometime, just for fun. The part about you tracking me with your components. ...And I suppose maybe the part about me setting you on fire, but that would only be fun for one of us.

[She smiles at him, small but coy. Hopefully he doesn't think she's serious. ...Hopefully.]

Is this the only spell you know, or are there others?

It's true, it's true. You'd be bored out of your mind doing it for purely scientific reasons, and I'd be having the time of my life.

[ Do bad jokes count as being awful? I guess it's time to find out. ]

There are others. Wards, mostly, against specific types of magic or types of creatures. Information gathering, sending messages and defensive shit. I can't use a lot of them here, mind. House rules, can't do anything that might interfere with the castle's enchantments.

I imagine the castle would likely resist the attempts, anyway.

[...Although. He did get in, back when he first turned up on Alucard's doorstep. And he is a Belmont. And — hmm.]

Or do you think you could disrupt them? If you were able to, that is, in the absence of the house rules.

If I wanted to, more than likely.

[ He shrugs. ]

But that would be a blood thing, not a me being any good with magic thing. Belmont blood interacts with Dracula's magic, and any magic based on his work, in odd ways. Always has. Since most vampires in Europe use magic based on his work, it's always served us fairly well. Except when they have squabbles among themselves and decide to grab one of us to use for materials.

[ Sometimes you want to leave a massive stupid hole in your defenses just in case your ex bf ever forgives you and comes back, okay???? ]

...How very strange. Almost as though you are fated enemies, or something like that.

[OR VLAD'S HOPING FOR AN UNEXPECTED BELMONT BOOTY CALL but let's just pretend like nobody's thought of that, how about.]

Well. Fate or not, here you are, enjoying the hospitality of the castle. And...to be fully honest, I was asking all of those questions because I was curious if you could find my people, with a trick like this. Where they are now. So it sounds like you could, if you had something of them to track, and a proper map to show with it.

I don't know if it's why we got into this shit, [ Leon and Mathias' story is long lost to the Belmonts by now. ] but it may well be.

[ He gives that some thought, looking over his papers. He had a map of the whole of the country (not a GOOD map, but a map nonetheless) that he'd bought when he first arrived here and used to track the castle. ]

Across the entirety of the country? I managed with the castle, but- Belmonts and vampires, you know how it goes. With a possession to focus on, I could try. [ He traces the route from New York southwards. ] It's easier in places I've been. I- think this is the route I ended up taking from the boat to here? I'll know if they've crossed it, or if they've been close to either city. But I don't know that I'll be able to find them across the whole country.

It's all right. I was mostly just curious anyway.

[She shrugs a little, watching the path that he traces and smiling faintly at the route it displays.]

When I left them, they were heading west. So I expect they would not have passed over the path you took; they're heading for the opposite coast. A great number of the Speakers have congregated out that way; the story we carried from here is important enough that we are going to pass it on to as many other groups of Speakers as we can.

[ He nods. ]

If you ever want to know, show me how your focuses work some time. If I can just write down the spell and have you use it, you'd probably have an easier time of it. You could even track the spread of the story, if it was important enough to you to focus on.

That —

[Now that's an idea that she'd never even come close to considering, but the instant he says it, her eyes go wide in surprise — and a moment later, with eagerness. To track the spread of a story — to watch, even from afar, as it moves and reaches people — it would be like watching the tale's life as it moves and drifts and grows.

Stories are living things, but they've always had varying interpretations of what that means. The European Speakers thought that meant they had to be carried by humans and only humans, never to be written down. Other groups and factions think that preserving it in pen and ink is wrong, but that there are other ways to maintain it in media that still recognize its life.

This, she thinks, is another manifestation of that. The life of the story as it travels the world. What a magnificent thing that would be, to see.]

...That would be amazing.

[Like a child presented with a whole store of candy to run free in.]

You know, you are really quite tolerable when you're behaving yourself, Belmont.

Never tried it with stories, but they're just information at the end of the day. Watching information spread is like- like a tree, I suppose. It starts with one person knowing it, then branches as they tell people, and those branches branch out and so on. Then there's a little explosion of tiny branches when something makes it to a newspaper or the radio.

[ He doesn't liken it to tracking the spanish flu, which it is also similar to. You're welcome. ]

You could have just fucking told me to behave this whole time. I've been suggesting it for a while.

As though you would have listened even if we'd told you.

[Guess what honey there's a big storm a-coming]

I am glad, though, that you came around. It's better this way, I think.

I listened this time, didn't I? Good at following instructions.

[ He drops the subject, though, examining the cast on his wrist instead. ]

Seems to be working fine for now. I'll let you know if something goes weird. Can you tell him about the council's conclusion? He'll fucking listen to you.

[She actually has to backtrack through their conversation a minute, trying to pin down what he's talking about, until eventually she stumbles across I want you to stop being awful and — hmm. He had, hadn't he? She'd noticed, even, that he'd come around almost...

almost immediately...

...after she'd said that. Hmm.]

I'll tell him. And in the meantime, you should probably get some rest. Or I suppose you might ignore me and walk all over the place on your ankle, if that's what you decide. You and he are alike that way — stubborn, even when you are injured.

[She gets up, and before she can think twice about it, she runs the tips of two fingers down the line of his jaw, grazing the stubble before falling off naturally at the chin.]

Let's talk about magic again sometime, yes? I like to learn new things. And perhaps next time it will be my turn to show you some of my other tricks.

Don't tell him that. He'd need to run off and scrub himself for an hour if he thought he were anything like me.

[ It's almost funny how very taken aback he is by that gesture. People are only supposed to touch him to do stabbing????? He just nods as response. ]

I- yes. I'd be interested.

Oh? Does that mean you are going to run off and scrub yourself for an hour because it turns out you are like him?

[She raises her eyebrows, drawing back a step with quiet amusement.]

Good. I'm sure I can think of a few you might like.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

20s AU Post

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i thought i tagged this back what the fuck