The City of the Dead

Ken's Vampire Game

Session Seventeen

Tuesday Night continued...

The girls are still at the Necropolis, continuing to observe the aftermath of the recent events there.

Daria's seeing Dancer "patterns" strewn all over the place, but then again, Daria can see Dancer patterns strewn everywhere. Other indicators include that the "main" or head perpetrator seems to be wearing a crown of steel in the visions that Jessamy and Peter are gleaning, which is reminiscent of Daria's tinfoil hat. There also appears to be holes and sometimes nails in the sides of the heads of some of the newly-turned vampires, similar to Daria's report of the mask that she had bolted onto her own face.

Daria and Helena overhear a mobile phone conversation between Alfred and Maryanne. Apparently 104 disturbed graves have been reported, with 64 of the vampires unaccounted for, while 30 have been staked. There is no direct evidence of anything still being around, and none of the reports from the casualties have been coherent. 8 out of the 30 are Lasombra. All are adults.

Daria thinks to check out the periphery of the necropolis, so she and Helena make their way out. Helena heightens her senses and sees the outlines of a couple of shrouded forms hovering around watching. The girls inform Alfred and point them out. A couple of nondescript faces become apparent - Nosferatu. "Okay, go and tell Jerome what you saw", he yells out to them before getting back to his work.

The girls go their separate ways when it seems that there is nothing that they can do and no new information is coming to light.

Helena decides to check out the Docklands, the sight of the dancing that they'd stumbled upon previously while looking for Frederick to tell him about Jessica.

Hiding well out of sight in the shadows, Helena beholds what appears to be a similarly instance to that Daria had reported from the last time they went to the Docklands.

Kieran is standing beside a figure shrouded in a cloak, beholding a group of mortals dancing around a fire. Kieran's aura is showing a lot of flinching but happiness nonetheless. Drums are being played and several of the party is fire twirling. All up, there are around 15 to 20 humans dancing. Snake tattoos entwine many of their arms.

An inadvertently thrown fire stick lands between Kieran and the shadowed vampire, and Kieran leaps back in terror. The hooded figure slowly moves to the still-burning stick and slowly wraps his hand around one of the flames, extinguishing it, and then does the same to the other. His fingers are extremely long and tipped with black claws, even at this distance Helena can see blood dripping from its hands. A bright yellow glow can be seen from within the hood. He moves over to the mortal who had thrown the stick, grabs him by the neck and drinks from his throat. All the figures dancing have stopped and begun to watch in horror, as does Kieran. Eventually the figure drops the lifeless body in a heap on the ground. A moment of stunned silence passes before Kieran vigorously rubs the snake bracelets together in a loud chiming rhythm and screams "fucking dance!"

The dancing resumes and Helena gets away as quickly as she can.

Wednesday Night

Jennifer has another meeting with Kris. She asks Jennifer of the events at the necropolis and some of the information seems familiar to her.

She says that the Marauder is the leader of the cults. She says that the cults are about religious crusades, and that they are blood cults. She also confirms that the Dancers are affecting the cults. She also mentions that the Lord of the Dance needs blood to maintain him.

To overcome the Dancers, she repeats that you need to kill Sladek and the Lord's physical body. He needs to be killed with metal.

Jennifer shares this information with Daria and Helena. Daria says that somehow, they have to kill Sladek; they should get metal swords or something and somehow work out how to kill him. The only problem that Jennifer sees with this is that if the Dancers are somehow affecting the Cult and preventing their power over Melbourne, then perhaps stopping the Dancers may take away their only obstacle to overcoming the city. So they should think about the situation a little more first.

Jennifer ends the night by doing some research in the library, while Daria and Helena feed successfully.

Thursday Night

Daria and Helena leave messages on Valerie's phone.

Daria gets a call from Alfred who tells her that they need to get a hold of all of the Malkavians, and that he needs her help to find out where they all are.

Helena leaves a message on Rita's phone telling her that she wants to speak to her. Eventually Rita calls her back.

Valerie gets back in contact with the girls, and is incredibly hostile with them, but agrees to meet them anyway. They drive out in Daria's car to an intersection in the far out suburbs around Dandenong. Valerie gets into the car and they park the car somewhere more convenient to talk.

Helena checks Valerie's aura and notices it throbbing with hunger, which puts her on edge. She nervously asks Valerie if she wants to feed, to which she contemptuously snorts that she's fine. Eventually with Helena's persistence that she can go and get her food, she sneers and laughs coldly, "Fine, go and get me food then". Helena brings back a teenaged boy, luring him with the potential of playing with her and a couple of other girls. She drinks deeply, and his body begins to crumple. As the girls are contemplating pulling him away, she throws him outside of the car where he slumps lifelessly. "He'll live" she half growls, wiping at her mouth.

Valerie makes it apparent that she isn't interested in helping them. Her hostility peaks when she asks the girls if they were the ones that got Jessica killed. Helena and Daria are quick to defend their innocence in the situation; Daria points out that she tried to calm her down and restrain her to keep her away from the Knights.

The girls tell her how they're interested in what's been happening in the city, and in particular about how Jessica had said that she'd noticed signs of other vampires in the city a long time ago. They also talk about the instances at the Docklands; Frederick's hunting grounds. She doesn't question the truth of Jessica's beliefs; she has confidence in Jessica's lucidity, saying that she was a hunter, and if she noticed them around, then they were around. She isn't really able to give much information; nor does she seem interested in helping.

But before she leaves, she says that she'll tell Frederick that there are people intruding on his hunting grounds.