Alucard and Lenore begin contact due to rumors of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire being more ambitious and having a vampiric backer that is helping him win campaigns. Venice is a potential target, and Lenore would appreciate that not happening, thank you very much.
Introduction of friend Melchizedek, who offers the following: The silver one, our redeemer," Melchizedek says, picking up the skein of it like reciting the next line of a poem. "Kekazu whose heart is amber. He pours the light into us. He consumes the darkness from our flesh. Kekazu, kekazu. Aiiiiiiiiiie! [thread spot] and mentions the Cataclysm for the first time
Melchizadek also gives Lenore a dodecahedron, which is a range finder of sorts. It is powered by: you need to imbue a specific command or purpose into it - that'd be why you knew it as a range finder. That is the most common use. You meditate thoughts of navigation and location and finding into it, and then the connection lasts either a lifetime or until a more powerful will breaks the connection.
Lenore explains the Cataclysm: "The theories about the Cataclysm--which, again, no one wants to talk about at all, ever--fall into three camps. Either vampires were all wiped out and re-emerged again by whatever evolution created us in the first place, or vampires only ever evolved after this event. The most popular theory is that one vampire--the Ur-vampire--survived, and is then the father or mother of all vampires who have come after. But in any case, there seems to be a catastrophic event or events which results in a great loss of language and technology, which no more than one vampire survives. And this event or event involves at least one ziggurat, a flood of some kind, and possibly a rainbow."
She listens with interest to all that he's found and all that he's surmised, gratefully accepting the glass and sipping at it. Her expression stays relatively impassive, cracking only once at the suggestion that Kekazu was the first vampire. Her fangs bare briefly, a sneer of disgust in reaction to the suggestion, which she finds viscerally unpleasant. It's entirely possible, but she finds it distasteful. A discordant note in her stories of earliest history. Not that history necessarily follows the rules of a good narrative, and yet, it galls her.
But she lets that go, at least for now. Her fingernail taps against the side of her glass, a soft tink-tink-tink as she processes all that he's told her. For a few minutes, her gaze is faraway, running it all through her head, comparing precedent against human and vampire nature and coming up with the various possibilities that fit, then narrowing it down to the most likely handful.
After a few minutes of thought, her gaze returns to him, more confident now that she has some conclusions to work with.
"I think that we're looking at two disparate issues, so let's start with the simpler one. Istanbul." She sits forward a little, starting to talk, and he'll have learned by now that she likes forming narratives as she talks. She already knows her conclusion, but she lets her words form a path, finding the shape of it along the way. "It's interesting to me that the presumed vampiric presence is ancillary to the government officials, not the government itself. That's ... not typical, for what I know of vampiric courts. It's true that recent courts have been more subtle, focusing more on secrecy and defense, but to be subsidiary to a human court? To me, that suggests one single vampire, or a very small handful, all of them weak. They can't outright take control of the court, so they're providing support. I think the most likely strategies are either having seduced the sultan and keeping him enthralled, or convincing him that they're some kind of ethereal beings--angels, saints, something along those lines. Something to be worshipped and protected. But ... honestly, nothing I'm hearing makes me think it's much of a threat. Not one worth your time, anyway. The Ottomans are themselves a very serious military threat, and yes it sounds like they have some kind of night world influence, probably something that would give them an edge in battle, but it's still just ... human wars, with a side of a vampiric cult. For that, I would say keep an eye on it. I ... honestly, I'm not even sure I'll bother with emergency contingencies. They could make Venice poorer if they took enough of her trading hubs, but Venice cannot be sieged without an organized coordination of both land and sea powers, and probably not even then."
Setting her glass aside for the moment, she rises and goes to one of the nearby shelves, taking down a small wooden chest with bronze banding. "As for the other... I don't think Kekazu was the first vampire. I know I may be biased in that I don't like the idea, but it seems wrong to me. And--forgive my bluntness, Adrian, but I think you're biased in regards to your experiences. I don't think this is like the death cults that worship your father. I think this is something very different."
Placing the little chest on the table, she opens it and takes out the dodecahedron that Melchizedek gave them. Turning it in her hands for a moment to find the right alignment, she moves toward Adrian with it held very carefully and specifically. "I took some time to think about what I wanted enough to focus my intention upon, and I found it. Look through this aperture." She taps one of the holes with a fingertip to indicate the one to use, then surrenders the object to his hands. "When you see the rainbow, close your eyes for the count of five."
Then she takes a seat again, placing her hands in her lap and waiting for him to see what the little object contains. She's already viewed the scenes within, and it plays out in her mind while it plays out before his eyes.
The dodecahedron shows a ziggurat amidst a lush jungle, with a great many smaller buildings dotted around it, all of them lively and occupied. In a flash of scenes, it shows a king and queen ruling over the city, happy at first but then increasingly obsessive and bloody, leading a cult of human sacrifice. Over time, the sorceries and the sacrifices begin to physically warp them, turning them into vampires who only ever leave their ziggurat palace by night. It escalates horribly--more sorcery, more sacrifice, blood and torture, and it's a mercy that the montage flips through the awfulness of it with a rapid flash-flash-flash of images.
Finally, amidst a complicated ritual performed by the entire cult, some kind of gold-encrusted stone chest at the center of the ritual bursts a sudden thick ribbon of rainbow straight up through the center of the ziggurat into the sky, a solid rainbow like it's made of glass, dozens of feet wide. As it reaches the stratosphere, a split second later, it flares out in a wide angle across the sky.
The first time she watched the scenes, she didn't know to close her eyes at what came next, and spent hours afterward sobbing and vomiting.
After a count of five, the scene has gone still, showing the ziggurat again, but this time in ruins. The jungle all around it is gone, surrounded by bare flat desert, all of it dead and empty, covered with a white blanket of what looks like snow. After a few seconds, as the sun beats down upon it and the wind whirls across the wasteland, it becomes obvious that the blanket is one of ash.
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cryptsleeper) wrote2022-03-12 01:56 pm
Venice, 1600s * Part 2
But she lets that go, at least for now. Her fingernail taps against the side of her glass, a soft tink-tink-tink as she processes all that he's told her. For a few minutes, her gaze is faraway, running it all through her head, comparing precedent against human and vampire nature and coming up with the various possibilities that fit, then narrowing it down to the most likely handful.
After a few minutes of thought, her gaze returns to him, more confident now that she has some conclusions to work with.
"I think that we're looking at two disparate issues, so let's start with the simpler one. Istanbul." She sits forward a little, starting to talk, and he'll have learned by now that she likes forming narratives as she talks. She already knows her conclusion, but she lets her words form a path, finding the shape of it along the way. "It's interesting to me that the presumed vampiric presence is ancillary to the government officials, not the government itself. That's ... not typical, for what I know of vampiric courts. It's true that recent courts have been more subtle, focusing more on secrecy and defense, but to be subsidiary to a human court? To me, that suggests one single vampire, or a very small handful, all of them weak. They can't outright take control of the court, so they're providing support. I think the most likely strategies are either having seduced the sultan and keeping him enthralled, or convincing him that they're some kind of ethereal beings--angels, saints, something along those lines. Something to be worshipped and protected. But ... honestly, nothing I'm hearing makes me think it's much of a threat. Not one worth your time, anyway. The Ottomans are themselves a very serious military threat, and yes it sounds like they have some kind of night world influence, probably something that would give them an edge in battle, but it's still just ... human wars, with a side of a vampiric cult. For that, I would say keep an eye on it. I ... honestly, I'm not even sure I'll bother with emergency contingencies. They could make Venice poorer if they took enough of her trading hubs, but Venice cannot be sieged without an organized coordination of both land and sea powers, and probably not even then."
Setting her glass aside for the moment, she rises and goes to one of the nearby shelves, taking down a small wooden chest with bronze banding. "As for the other... I don't think Kekazu was the first vampire. I know I may be biased in that I don't like the idea, but it seems wrong to me. And--forgive my bluntness, Adrian, but I think you're biased in regards to your experiences. I don't think this is like the death cults that worship your father. I think this is something very different."
Placing the little chest on the table, she opens it and takes out the dodecahedron that Melchizedek gave them. Turning it in her hands for a moment to find the right alignment, she moves toward Adrian with it held very carefully and specifically. "I took some time to think about what I wanted enough to focus my intention upon, and I found it. Look through this aperture." She taps one of the holes with a fingertip to indicate the one to use, then surrenders the object to his hands. "When you see the rainbow, close your eyes for the count of five."
Then she takes a seat again, placing her hands in her lap and waiting for him to see what the little object contains. She's already viewed the scenes within, and it plays out in her mind while it plays out before his eyes.
The dodecahedron shows a ziggurat amidst a lush jungle, with a great many smaller buildings dotted around it, all of them lively and occupied. In a flash of scenes, it shows a king and queen ruling over the city, happy at first but then increasingly obsessive and bloody, leading a cult of human sacrifice. Over time, the sorceries and the sacrifices begin to physically warp them, turning them into vampires who only ever leave their ziggurat palace by night. It escalates horribly--more sorcery, more sacrifice, blood and torture, and it's a mercy that the montage flips through the awfulness of it with a rapid flash-flash-flash of images.
Finally, amidst a complicated ritual performed by the entire cult, some kind of gold-encrusted stone chest at the center of the ritual bursts a sudden thick ribbon of rainbow straight up through the center of the ziggurat into the sky, a solid rainbow like it's made of glass, dozens of feet wide. As it reaches the stratosphere, a split second later, it flares out in a wide angle across the sky.
The first time she watched the scenes, she didn't know to close her eyes at what came next, and spent hours afterward sobbing and vomiting.
After a count of five, the scene has gone still, showing the ziggurat again, but this time in ruins. The jungle all around it is gone, surrounded by bare flat desert, all of it dead and empty, covered with a white blanket of what looks like snow. After a few seconds, as the sun beats down upon it and the wind whirls across the wasteland, it becomes obvious that the blanket is one of ash.
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