Helena heads home to attend to her over-neglected domestics. Daria goes home and hangs around with her head in a pot.
The vampires gather with their respective clans in the meeting room on Elizabeth Street and await the Prince and the Knights. Daria and Jennifer meet and talk. Helena and Sophie run in late, among the last to arrive; most of the vampires have arrived early. The Lasombra are sucking up to the Knights as usual, Rita, looking pissy, is hiding behind Jackie near a smirking, self-satisfied but kind of impatient Kieran and a mildly-smiling Heresy and there is no sign of the Malkavians. The Gangrel - Valerie and Frederick are in the corner talking. Vaugn and Fong enter the room together, and are closely followed by Peter and Jessamy.
Maryanne and the Prince are talking, looking out over the growing crowd and nodding. Alfred is standing alone, looking around, by and by, seeming quite calm. Luke is looking around with impatience.
(Sorry there is a matter of missing notes at this point)
The meeting is called and the Michael declares that a cult has begun an invasion, and tells of the events at the Necropolis. He declares as Prince of the City that a state of war exists and that all Kindred must cooperate with the Knights or be destroyed. All vampires must inform the knights of the locations of their hunting grounds and havens. Any who dispute these rules must immediately leave Michael's domain.
Jennifer delivers a bound ream of typed notes to Heresy. There are some raised eyebrows around the room as Heresy places her hand on the notes and closes her eyes.
As the vampires are filing out, Daria is intercepted by Samantha. Quite humbly, she makes it clear that she and the other Lasombra are sorry about the situation between them, and that she would be happy to assist in any further investigations into the current disturbances in the city. However Daria doesn't give much away; she makes it quite clear that she's not going to let the issue go lightly.
Luke and Reuben have a conversation, and they discuss Daria's stauts; Daria's not a Malkavian according to anyone anymore, she's a Lasombra and always was.
In light of the turn of events and to convey her apologies, Samantha offers to arrange a meeting to discuss some of the information that the Lasombra have kept over the centuries. Maintaining her hostility, Daria finally agrees.
Helena gathers with Sophie and Peter after the meeting. Peter's really wrung out from having spent so much time using auspex to glean images of the events that've happened at the Necropolis with Jessamy. The images they've got have really disturbed him. He's kind of frantic - he's come to realise that the Cult knows all of the vampire's patterns and they know where they all are.
Helena gives Daria and Jennifer a call and asks them if they want to go and check out the Docklands again with her. Daria has to go to her meeting with Samantha tonight, but says she'll meet up with her afterwards. Jennifer makes her excuses and runs around somewhere else for the evening.
In her meeting with Samantha, Daria is handed a number of texts in relation to the history of the Camarilla, with some of the information going back centuries.
Among the texts there's information relating to obscure cults and references to them creating new vampires rather than recruiting them, no prisoners, no mercy. There are references to cults involving lots of dancing around fires to induct, bodies being thrown onto fires and the summoning of demons, but nothing specifically about the Marauder. There's reference to the worship of demons.
The information suggests that the cults represent many clans. There are photos of cracked skulls, but the wounds in these photos are in different places to the type of injury Daria associates with dancer masks.
Daria mentions the antribu she'd come into contact with in the Necropolis and asks Samantha what she thinks. Samantha says that the cults do not represent one whole body, but there are fractions between them. This vampire seems to have abandoned his clan and to have mingled his blood with that of his entire group.
Later on Daria meets up with Helena and they approach the Docklands together. The girls find a hidden spot that offers them a good vantage point to the area where they'd seen the dancing before. Daria wraps them in shadows; literally pulls them around the girls, and they watch out for awhile, but don't see anything. Eventually they abandon their search, drive a safe distance away and give Alfred a call.
They ask him about his thoughts about a possible connection between the old cult history they've been gathering and the report of Kieran at the Docklands. Alfred says that the vampires have been watching Kieran and Heresy and so far they've been quite cooperative.
The girls ask if he'd have copies of the police reports surrounding the events that they could possibly go through? He says that they haven't really been able to find much, but sure, they can meet him at the office in Hawthorn they've been working from and see what they can find in them.
Indeed there is little in the reports; there's a greater trend of missing persons being reported around the necropolis, sometimes when someone goes missing there's a report of someone very nearby also going missing at the same time.
Again he says that no sense was made by any of the vampires that had risen at the necropolis - they had very confused memories and shattered identities, and no comprehension of what's really happened. They all seem to have gone together, possibly by flight; the Marauder has wings. He also says that the Marauder seems to change shape, but this perception could have come from skewed perceptions in that different observers are likely to import their own egos and expectations into their perceptions. The trail leading away has also been skewed.