Mayday Plays - Vegas By Night | Episode 22, "A Gentleman's Bet" | Vampire: the Masquerade

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

Where does NexGen go after the showdown between Champagne Pudanesca and John Burrows? #vampirethemasquerade #vegasbynight #worldofdarkness CAST Amanda as Jackie Santana (Banu Hakim) Eli as Niles (Caitiff) Lev as Mal (Lasombra) Zakiya as Sybil Geier (Gangrel) Vince as Raguel (Salubri) Sergio as John Burrows (Ravnos) Caleb Miller as The Storyteller -- 👕 MERCH: http://ko-fi.com/maydayrp & https://mayday-merch.printify.me/products 💵 Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/maydayrp 📰 Join our newsletter: eepurl.com/iIVUjo 🎙 Listen to us: 🟣 Apple Podcasts : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mayd…ys/id1537347277 🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5vdTgXoqpSpMssSP9Vka3Z?si=97a6a19d71cf4be0 🟠 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mayday-roleplay 🌟 Other Socials 🌟 🐦 Twitter: http://twitter.com/maydayroleplay 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/maydayrp/ 🔴 Website: http://maydayroleplay.com/ 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maydayroleplay 👾 Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/maydayroleplay 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maydayrp Thanks for your support!

Welcome, good morning kindreds and putas and welcome to Vegas by Night. May Day Roleplay's Vampire the Masquerade Chronicle. Welcome back into our little Elysium and I hope you're ready for the duel of the century. If you're not familiar with Season 1 of Vegas by Night, don't fear. You can still check us out on Spotify, Twitch VOD. We don't even really truthfully do Twitch VOD, so really look for us here on YouTube. If you're wondering how you can get more May Day in your life, you can catch us here every other Saturday

for our main shows, and then on all major platforms, we have every other campaign we've gone through. The podcast-friendly recordings, we have Doomed to Repeat, our heavily produced shows, and our streams that are edited down for your convenience. And finally, you can donate to us on Patreon and join our Patreon Discord. That's really where the fun of it is. We have patrons running some incredible games out of the community and members of May Day

themselves that have been inviting our Discord members into a monthly RAN May Day one-shot, essentially. So being a part of that Discord gives you an opportunity to play with us, play with our friends and engage on a higher level. We'd like to give a shout out as well to our handler level Patreon contributors. It's because of your involvement

that we get to do all of these crazy things. And we're heading into what we call the little break in the year for May Day right before we enter the holiday season where we get together and we talk about all of these huge things we have planned for the channel and for what we want to accomplish and we just had one of our first meetings like that this year and we're especially thankful that we can have these ideas because of people like you. So a special thanks to Advanced War Sammy, Bimblewort, Cameron S, Jonathan M, Kirby's Double, Onk, OJPan, and Ren. I believe that's everyone, if I'm leaving anyone else out. Please know that I love you. Actually.

REVurgan, am I missing Vurgan? REVurgan, and yes also gained somebody named tony oh my god thank you tony there we go our number one fan yeah wow we got tony we are also really proud to announce obviously he couldn't be here for this session, but we want to celebrate our wins. We have a new published writer and contributor in the TTRPG space among us. Vince recently had the opportunity to write for Delta Green and is heavily featured in their latest release Dead Drops. And I'd love if you get a chance to check it out and see what he was able to write with

the creators of Delta Green. It's an incredible opportunity that this game gave us a through line to make something like that happen. I'm sure Vince is really happy. Other than that we want to shoot a big congratulations to the finale of our season three season of Doom Tourbj and our beloved ghosts with the most the Orpheus gang that have said goodbye for the final time. If you'd like to see how both of those seasons came to a close they're available now on

VOD and before we get started today I just want to remind everyone that Vampire the Masquerade can be a dark setting and as such there are content warnings for any watching. Please be advised that there's going to be a lot of violent themes, plenty of adult language, and the exploration of darker subjects. Today could go a number of different ways. Champagne is involved, so just know that things could look bad. Take care of yourself and be aware. Okay, let's get started. Humanity was cursed, and Juliette Puttanesca knows this

better than any. Born in a small corner of Napoli, she was laced into the web of crime that the Puttanesca name had drawn for themselves before she could even drive. A victim of circumstance, an even worse lineage. Juliette was called into the Giovanni family of ghouls, and soon the Embrace, while she still had a nubile, steady beating heart. Locked in time and trapped in a prison of her own youth, Juliette was called upon to lead the next generation of the criminal Pudinesca and conquer the New World. She landed like a carpet bomb in the immigration movement into the first breaths of New York and paved the way for herself across waves of the dead, building the Hiccata throne over a pile of broken corpses.

That is until the New York world rejected the parasite and a hit was carried out on Julietta's most beloved pet, her trophy husband and ghoul. The death of which caused a reeling crack in her façade and an exodus from the East Coast after years of ruling. Scrambling, she took new obsession, in a Jewish line as tortured and obsessed with death as herself, the Rothsteins in the West. And in this obsession, embrace.

Shlomo Rothstein, her newest toy, made real in the Giovanni line and given the world on Giulietta's silver clatter and his most desired object, the meadows of Las Vegas. Humanity was cursed, but there's still room for a bizarre sense of honor. Competition, mutually agreed upon destruction. We are sick and we are dying, but we are not without a prideful ignorance of the bigger picture. We will still find reasons to hate, to kill, to die in our words as sharp stakes. Never doubt a parasite's ability to inherit the host's hubris. There's always room for the soul's avarice for misplaced righteousness.

We will prove you wrong. We will kill our darlings. Welcome to Vegas by night. So I'm just jelly. Now you're late. I wasn't I? I was there before one. Applesauce was fine. Anyway. Yeah, that was totally fine. I'm just jelly. Yeah, yeah. I've learned, I've learned the timing of Sergio. We're waiting for our friend. There he is. Caleb's back. I'm back. Hopefully we have solved the microphone issue. Apologies if there's some peeking. We noticed a small issue. But now that we're

back, let's introduce our cast. My name is Caleb James Miller. I'll be playing the storyteller today and Champagne Poudinesque. I'm Amanda and I am playing Jackie Santana. I'm Lev and I'm back playing Mal. I'm Sergio and I'm playing Burrows. I'm Zekia and I'm playing Sybil. Perfect. Beautiful. We've done so well. It only takes a week for us to forget how this works. That's okay. Beautiful. It changes. It does. Before we kick things

off and we continue on to dire consequences, we have a recap from Burroughs. Lord, I apologize. It's been a while since you and I spoke, and well, I wish it was under better circumstances. You see, I find myself in a time of trouble. It all started back at that damn Hakata party, truly the vilest display of carnal sins that I have ever been privy to. And I've been to Hollywood parties. There, I met a low-down dirty dog named Champagne Poudoneska. Took a liking to me, as people are suspect to do.

I've never had trouble making friends, Lord, you know that. Beloved, some might describe me as. But what do you do when a person that likes you also wants to hurt you? I don't know if I'm built to understand that. Champagne wanted to take me down to his special dungeon. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Let him just shove me into his brazen bull?

Who knows what he would have done to me alone down there? Hell, I did the only sensible thing, drove a samurai sword through his damn eye. So now he's come to claim his satisfaction. And he'll get it, because that's how this weird world works. You know, now that I think about it, ain't no one from the tower even asked why I did it in the first place. Almost like they don't even care. Too distracted by the whole pageantry of it all.

Which I guess is good because now that they're distracted, they're not asking why we were attempting to steal a key to a very important door. I'd be in a much more precarious position. Instead, I'm down in some Hikata crypt that's been remodeled into a gladiator pit. I got my fists, my decades of training in Chi-Tu-Rai-Yu, and I got you, Lord. But I can't help but acknowledge you made me a lover, not a fighter. And I can already tell champagne hits like a stuck pit. Hell, I got a broken samurai sword through my wrist to prove it. I'm gonna get my ass kicked tonight, Lord. I accept that. I pray to you tonight, asking for your help to get me through.

I'm not worried about broken bones and bruises. I know those will heal. Niles bruises it to me every time one of us accidentally blows him up. No, what I'm asking from you Lord is the grace to move past this once it's finished. Right now I don't know if I can. I mean what he done to cheat before we even met? What he's done to Lydia? Lord I hate this man. I never felt this kind of heat before, even when I was alive. He took from me more than what was owed,

and that's all I can think about. And that voice in my head, I know you hear it. It tells me to do things, awful things. And I can't get it to shut up. Worst, it's starting to make some sense. I'm scared that tonight all I'm gonna wanna do is burn down things with this thing. God, what am I becoming?

Come on you pussy, come on. It's time for a little less conversation, a little more action, you know what I mean? A little TCB, a little take care of business. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, it's all gonna be okay, baby. It's all gonna be groovy. Beautiful. I adore you, sir. Beautiful. Wow. That us the best gift. You're a gift onto this planet.

You are. Okay. All right, we got our coffin out and I believe that we're just about ready for business in the worst kind of way. But before we do so, would anyone like to declare any changes to the character sheets that we think would be relevant to the situation or would we like to keep some things close

to the best? I did. I did from our last session, I upgraded to Blood Sorcery where I have like a blood shield. So and it's what's nice about it is all it includes is one Rouse check and then I keep going and it's a list. It'll help incoming damage by five. I plan not to use it. I mean, I would it's basically for only like if Pudineska takes things like he is going to, let's say in the throws of it, try to kill him, kill him.

Then that's when that would go up. If that makes it's there as a buffer. Right. Right. Perfect. Okay. So shields are a good thing to have in this situation. I think that was a good route to take. Any other declarations before this begins. Okay. Yeah, you tried to convince me to get, you know, some points maybe in Fortitude or something, but I just don't think I want to waste points in something Burl's isn't. So I'm going to hold off and maybe in five points, XP points, I'm going to be able to increase my blood potency. You're absolutely right in that decision, Surge.

Why would you wanna protect yourself now when you can have more for yourself later? That is the ravenous way. It's good business. Because if you do survive, you've got more XP. So it only makes sense. And of course, if you die, well, you didn't need the shield anyways.

Fair enough. That's good. This all checks out. You are all dead, but of course there are still the senses of whatever still rides the dwindling soul of your bodies. You are all dead, but you are still doomed to feel. And in some ways, feeling is all you are. And thus, the this duel begins. The mold within this place, that musty controlled substance cloying at your nostrils, is undeniable in its stench, in its death. You are dealing with the smell of centuries, centuries older than even you, an undying thing.

It is strange then to consider that there is new life, new movement, and new consequence introduced into this room of ancient legacy. Those revolving exclusively around your friend, Burrows, who now sits in the center of this gladiatorial arena with a katana pierced delicately through his hollow wrist and a very large Sicilian man greased and ready for his welcoming. We are going to begin this duel. It is such that the two of them are locked in combat. Lydia is poised in the center of this circular elevator without railing that has met the center, the perfect plane of this terrain. It looks as though the controls to whatever this elevator operates

is somewhere other than this arena itself, and it does not seem as though she's going anywhere other than standing behind Champagne for the time being. And it seems as though Champagne has not made any moves in her direction yet. His eyes are locked uniquely on yours, Oberos, and he does look like an animal. There is a bizarre sense of size to his iris that is overtaken, and he is singular in purpose as the two of you poise away from each other and he gives room to breathe for the two of you to look down and register exactly what moves have been made against each other. And this is the culmination. We're gonna start with you, Burrows, and we're going to go in this order. Let me bring up a little notepad so I can make sure that I live up to whatever the hell I'm about to say out loud. A good tip to anyone running games, but more so to me, when you say shit, it helps if you remember it.

Serge, you're gonna go first. Well, you know, I don't think I would be the incredible humble player that I am if I didn't mention you didn't assign me any damage from that samurai sword through my wrist last session. You're absolutely right. The differential I forgot to mention last time was two superficial damage which gets halved Essentially to one so you can remove one superficial damage. Thank you for reminding me

that will Get you some points back later Yeah, I have a total of four superficial damage because something else happened last session where I got hurt a little bit. Somebody shot me or something like that. Oh yeah, those are the little kudinetska fuckers. Yeah, that's when you woke up, when you saw your first daylight since dying. So we have Burrows. Following will be Mal, then Sybil, then Niles, Jackie, Champagne.

I believe that's all of us, yeah? Okay, cool. That's our turn order. We're gonna start with Burrows. Burrows, you are opposite Champagne. You are staring down. What little dripping vitae surrounds the wound of this sword through your wrist?

Opposite Champagne is Lydia, and right directly in front of you is the Greasy Bastard himself. Yeah, I think, you know, knowing it's time to take this very seriously, I'm going to pull that samurai sword free of my wrist. It's just going to get in the way. He's going to use it as a point of leverage or something. And as I drop it to the ground, I'm just gonna call out to Niles. And I'm gonna say, hey Niles, remember what happened to seeing that everybody is now looking at them.

And with hesitation just says, you ripped their nuts off. And before there's even a moment for anyone to register what that means, I'm just going to run and start punching at champagne. Okay, perfect. Are you going in direct? Are you moving for the nuts with these punches? Are these punches unfocused? I'm going to make him think I'm going to like, you know, like think I'm going for him,

but then and then kind of do a reverse and come up from a different direction. As you go in for those punches, he's hearing this conversation. As you rush in with the first hit, he does look you square in the eyes, and he says, you just give me a fucking fondle, you'll see.

Um, and we'll go from there. Go ahead and give me a brawl plus strength as you hound in these ham-fisted attempts at karate. You can use your specialization as long as you're using that formal ability here. I'm definitely coming in in the correct, you know, martial arts stance and using the memories of how to do Chito Ryu. I'm going to... So, yeah, here we go. I have three hunger, so that's a, yeah, here we go. I have three hunger, so that's three hunger die. Okay.

So that's a total of three successes. A total of three successes, beautiful. And may I be reminded, am I able to do a rouse check to reroll if I wanted to? You can use willpower to roll up to three dice that are not hunger and you can do that once per roll. I want to remind you all we've done it in the past. I think season one we were doing it where you will power however many you like and

just spend that. It's just once per roll if you would like to do so. But you can also blood search which would give you another die in the pool. I'm gonna just burn a willpower. Here we go. Okay. Fine, it's worth it. That's four successes total. Four successes total. Okay. I think that rather than dodging Champagne Madman that he is,

than dodging champagne madman that he is, is just ready to take the punches and is instead hoping to return damage. I think this first round is the two of you laying into each other uniquely. So as you connect with him with one ham fist, he connects with you. And so he's going to take the full birth of your four successes as superficial damage. You don't have potency, do you? I don't have potency, no. Okay, because I believe potency would have made this aggravated damage, I believe,

with... let me double check this here, because he does, so... Let me see... Hmm here because he does. So let me see. I'm just a pretty face. That's about as much as I've got. Yeah. For now. Oh, it's aggravated health damage to mortals. Okay.

And you're not wearing armor. That's okay. Unless you consider the armor of the Lord. I'll let you know if the armor of the Lord protects you. So the two of you just going all out damage against each other as you're hitting him, he's hitting you, you know, one connect across his face to another uppercut across your shin.

You know, you get him in the ribs and he comes back in and donkey kicks you just above the knee, collapsing your leg in a little. You had four successes, he has four successes as well. So the two of you are going to trade these blows, both taking a combined two superficial damage between. It looks pretty evenly matched when it just comes to the fact of the two of you trading punches like this. It's not pretty. And from those of you watching over, it is just a trade of blood against blood,

Vitae staining the ground like tar as these huge ham hocks connect with each other and these basically naked pot-bellied men trade greasy punches between each other. That'll be our our first declaration our first little round between the two uh now is there anything you'd like to do as this first uh breakup uh begins uh i think i'm gonna lean forward kind of between jackie and uh sybil of between Jackie and Sybil. Do we want multiple angles on this? We want multiple points of ingress, should things not go towards our boy?

I think so. I don't think we'll need it, but it'd be good to have. Jackie's going to also like kind of show that she started doing like a cut on her hand in a way. Like I have at least one emergency backup in case things go a little too aggressive. Great, and I have one too. So I'll take one under the Iranian jockey.

Great, and I have one too. So I'll take one under the Arrhenia Jekyll. And I'm going to Shadow Cloak and just start making my way to be like flanking basically. And if that puts me closer to Lydia, cool. If it doesn't, I don't know her. Beautiful. Are you making this movement known to others? Are you trying to masquerade this from Champagne and from anyone watching?

What's the vibe on the flanking? Ideally, I'd like to just kind of be casually in a shadow somewhere else. Just like, I don't think I'm trying to make it known. I'm not trying to make it a threat. I'm just, I wanna be somewhere else. In a, like a sneaky way. Got it.

Okay. We'll resolve that without a dice pool. We'll say that you're able to move about them as their focus is clearly somewhere else. We're going to go to our next. Do you have anything to resolve here, Siville? Anything that you'd like to put on the board? No if we're already covering like flanks and stuff.

I think I just want to be able to see. I want to take a check to see that nothing shady is happening as this fight is going on. I know we're all being sort of threatening, but just to make sure. Right. Are you looking in special consideration for champagne's team? Or are you looking for the Hiccata in general? Are you worried Schlomo's got to play here or that Pudinaska's got to play here? I'm looking in the house behind Champagne.

So yeah, like Shlomo and any other Akata. Okay. Go ahead and give me a wits plus awareness. Oops. That's three successes. Two successes, sorry. With two successes, you can see that on the other side of this display, the 60 or so participants here in the audience are enjoying the festivities already.

It's very clear that the vibe right now in the room is that the stands are pretty full for whatever this mausoleum is supposed to hold and those in attendance are very, it's like the same sort of feelings you get at like a carnival or a circus. They're here to laugh at the freaks. And it's very clear that they're having a good time. They're snickering between themselves. It's clear that no one is taking this very seriously. This is not to decide kingdoms. This is to watch two grown children fight

until one of them explodes. And they're perfectly okay with that. But with special consideration to the leaders of the house, the ones who run the tombstone, Shlomo Rothstein Jr. on the other side is standing next to the Countess and Mira, basically the heads of the house outside of Puninesca's small involvement. You do see Alfons is in the same sort of echelon, but is seated behind them more as like escort than anything else. And it seems as though there is a deliberate conversation between the Countess and Shlomo Rothstein as this is going on. Imagine that that porcelain skull mask, that beautiful hidden hidden woman essentially behind the mask that makes

up Countess has leaned into the open ear of Schlomo Rothstein Jr. and is feeding information that then is being returned with softened language. They are not here with the fight. They're discussing other matters. In terms of Champagne's groupings, there is a massive crowd of Spacilians on the other side, of Puttanesca in full parade rest, essentially, submachine guns that are all waiting on the threshold for this to go worse than it is. But it seems that champagne has kept them at bay.

Is there anything you'd like to do with this information? Not at this moment. I will give a little up nod to Alphonse though. OK, beautiful. Yeah, I think that he meets your eyes and it has been some time since the two of you saw each other, especially since the last time you all saw each other. Y'all were getting freaking downstairs while people were getting stabbed in the eye. So I think there is this long measured stare of, you know, being surprised to see someone

at a party and what a strange party you're at. Beautiful. We're gonna go to Niles. Niles, do you have any actions here? You're in the Hekata Mansion under Rothstein's umbrella. You've been wanting to come back here. Maybe not under these circumstances. I would give that you're privy to a lot of what Sybil has noticed, maybe not to the intricacies of the conversation between Rothstein and Countess, but everything else you seem to see yourself. So if there's anything you'd like to do, as the time. I think at this current time, especially since once again, attention has been befallen on Niles out loud by Burrows. This is like the third time. I think Niles is just trying to find another place to kind of retreat to, still being able to like see what's going on, but trying to just not be where someone knows where they are and just kind

of get mixed up in the crowd somewhere for this first round. Niles, you notice as you're trying to join the stands essentially and get a good seat for the bloodshed, there is a bizarre feeling to your body today. You feel almost as though you are working through sleep paralysis, that you're sluggish. If any of you are familiar with that feeling of waking up

in the middle of the night without control to your body as though you're still asleep but half awake, trying to move right can feel like you're moving left and trying to fight forward can feel like your whole body has to do it just to listen. It's like your arm has fallen asleep. But as you're moving left into the stands itself, you can feel almost a part of your body wrench right. And it is sluggish, but you are able to join the stands. Okay. Beautiful. We're going to go to Jackie. Anything to report, anything you're looking for? Sorry. With everybody kind of like pacing the crowd and around,

Jackie's going to actually focus probably most of her attention on the direct fight. Basically, she's she's trusting everyone, but she is more on a champagne and making sure that's a fair fight. So kind of think like one of those boxers like coaches in the corner if they're even in stools or something and Jackie's little hoodies up maybe has a towel to help light up any blood or excess. Kind of like you'll see her like really focus, kind of just doing even the moves, like kind

of like see if she's just like watching the fight, really keeping in focus on that. But I do want to like make note, like I said, she has her, she has a wound already open just in case if she needs to kind of throw up a blood shield but she is mostly just focus on that and keeping her eyes open. Got it okay, so you're playing million-dollar baby in the corner there. We move from this to champagne taking full action as the two of you sweaty pigs that you are in the center of this slapping

you can feel the heavy meat slap bodies connect with each begin to employ um such t It is the nature that you more powerful than you ev it's also that your body reactive. And so where some vampires embrace grace in their new lives and their un-lives, the two of you have embraced a bizarre sense of elasticity

to your large powerful frames. And so it's like two Mack trucks running up against each other as these blades are traded. Champagne though breaks this first exchange and makes an attempt essentially to almost Grecian wrestle you, picking up one left hand behind your left leg and sort of arching into your groin and the right hooking up under your arm as if to suplex or toss you the most that he possibly can with an incredible display of strength.

As you can feel, he's a lot faster than he gives out. Those first displays was almost like he was letting you hit him and now he's making decisive action against you. Do you do anything in response as he goes to essentially grapple and toss? Well, if I was a more dexterous kindred, I'd probably try to get out of the way, but I don't think that's really feasible. I think I'm going to try to meet him head on and try to avoid

letting him throw me or toss me the way he wants to. I kind of want to toss him if anything, you know, just kind of use my strength to curl him off of me. Beautiful. It becomes this old Grecian, almost Olympic sport between the two of you. If the Olympics were competed by two Babe Ruths

in eternal combat, you tuck into him and he t talks into you and it's a battle of which bowl will push harder. Go and give me a strength plus athletics, I think, for this. Oh, you could you could do brawl, whichever you you see fit. Athletics or brawl here. I appreciate that. Yeah, I would prefer brawl. That's five successes. I see five successes. Very good. It does unfortunately not beat

Champagne's critical success here. He manages to pick you up clearly. It is a huge struggle as you dig your feet and you can feel the grave dust underneath your feet on the top of the smooth paved concrete that makes up this ancient arena kick up around you. And if you were alive, you'd be coughing at the sheer amount of debris that the two of you have caused in this meeting of two animals. But for every amount you thought you were strong, he's that much stronger. And in a moment, you feel weightlessness as he grips you, lifts you, and your champagnes for the moment. He whispers almost into the back of your ear as you're lifted into his embrace and he offers to you, I never even fucking liked your singing the begin with bitch, and he tosses you an amount of feet that he can get from you.

You're only going to take a total one superficial damage as the margin between you two are not nearly as much as you would hope, but he does manage to toss you some feet. You feel you collapse onto your your back the top of your spine essentially and you skirt into the dust itself enough that you can feel well, I would say your clothes ripping but you're near naked so more so you feel the rug burn like a motorcycle crash as your skin skirts along the floor itself and rips to the the lowest levels of your skin layers as

the lowest levels of your skin layers is, Vitae begins to form around the horrible scab you've just given yourself. So one superficial damage, and you are some feet away as Champagne succeeds in his attempt. We're gonna go back up to the top of the initiative, which means you Burrows. You've just been knocked on your back.

It's clear that Champagne's trying to get some distance from you. What's the move? I think, you know, Burrows takes a moment on the ground. Maybe everybody almost thinks it's going to be it for him. And he kind of puts one hand down and then the other and slowly starts to get up. And as he's doing it, he's going to start brushing himself off and say, Hey, Sybil, what I do do to get the conqueror biker gang

out of our club? You remember what that was? You let them shoot you a whole bunch of times. And I just get discharged back at ship pain. This time, I think it's very clear that I'm either in the ballpark of strength if not just meeting him. I'm not going to be able to beat him physically. I want to start figuring out can I outmaneuver him sweeping his leg getting him angry. I would rather try to use my stamina to prove that I can outlast him and take the hits over him.

Okay. Okay. So you're trying to get him to tire himself out. Yeah, I suppose so. Yeah. Stamina is my highest physical asset. I want to use it. Okay. Let me see a stamina plus survival as I think this becomes less about fighting and more about getting closing the distance as much as possible as you connect this becomes less about fighting and more about getting, closing the distance as much as possible as you connect with him and you try and get him to swing out from you. Survival, not my best. I'm going to burn a willpower to,

well, I can't because they're, they're hunger dice. They're all hunger dice. That's my one success. You could burn a blood surge by rousing the blood and that would give you an additional pool or additional die in the pool. Additional single die, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, two successes, I'm not really thinking that's going to do much. Okay. I don't think it's worth it. So I'm going to take that one success. Beautiful. Okay. The trouble here is you come in, you try desperately to get him to tire out.

You close the distance again as you scramble back to your feet and you run back in and it becomes another trading of blows. This trading of blows. He comes even harder ready for you as he catches you almost before you were two bulls at each other. Now it's more like he's playing with you. He's running the red as you get in hoping to tire him out. You realize that he's slowed down and prepared for you and as you arrive back in he again tries to take this big gripping hold of you and suplex you behind him, almost using the momentum of your run back into him to adopt an attack there,

which succeeds pretty heavily for him. He has four successes against your one success, meaning a margin of three. We're going to round that down to two more superficial damage. But the worst of it, as you're collided into the ground, he picks you up, he takes you over and for a moment, everyone watching can see that Burrows is is essentially ascended. with champagne's height. He's not exactly a tall individual, but with burrows is height additional.

You're maybe 10, 12 feet in the air at the highest peak as he heaves you up and then back over. And you can feel if you were human, your neck might've snapped at the back because you land basically exactly on the stinger where your spine connects to your neck. And you feel essentially a crack that would kill an immortal. But for you, it's just an annoyance as that Ravnus blood feels like fire in your veins to kill or to run or to do anything to survive that same vein you've always fed of needing to be here.

The trouble is you land, you're hurt, you're dazed, you can hear Lydia's cries over the two of you and from looking over, Champagne has stepped basically over your corpse. You can see basically the blubber of his strong man's fat stomach that is tattooed entirely across his chest. And in one hand on his right hand side, he has taken something free from his pocket and he's moving towards Lydia. The last few seconds

You can see from on your back is he's holding what you believe to be a hand grenade With the pin still in place, but he is now moving over to Lydia past you We're gonna move on to next in the initiative. We go back to Mal. Mal, you've flanked behind. You have this other perspective from the other side of this duel. You're staring in at where Champagne has just basically lifted your friend and suplexed them into the back of their spine and is now moving on to the hostage with a live explosive.

Something that grits you in fear as your beast itself reminds you the consequences of that thing going off, of that internal fear of the fire inside. Doesn't seem to be bothering Champagne, who is muttering to himself looking down at Burrows' temporarily stopped corpse, just calling out, put a fucking sword in my eye, put a fucking sword in my eye, put a fucking sword in my eye, I'm gonna put a fucking shrapnel in all your fucking eyes. Everybody in this fucking place is gonna go up.

And he's moving towards Lydia at this point. This is frustrating. I don't think Mal really, I think Mal's a little bit stuck because intervening is likely going to cause a problem and Burrows is on the ground. So I think the only thing they can think to do is look at him and go a little less conversation, a little more action, please. Beautiful.

And just try to like rally him up out of his injury. Champagne, hearing this from you, points the grenade in your direction, the pin shaking at the end of this incendiary device, the shrapnel shitting nightmare for all of you. And he goes, yeah, a little more fucking action. I thought this was gonna be a fucking fight. And he steps over to Lydia, he's now crossed the distance.

We're gonna go from now. Go ahead. Can I do one more thing? Can I hold, can I hold an umbrous clutch to? Pull him away if he's gonna if he's gonna if he's if it looks like he's going to pull the pin. I want to umbrous clutch him when it comes to umbrous clutch.

Do you have to be near them or is this a ranged attack? It's a ranged attack. It ports him through his shadow into my arms. Okay, so you would like to take the man from the bomb near Lydia to the bomb near you. I'm okay with that. I'm good with that. Hold that action, keep that in mind.

Beautiful. Well, here we are. Sybil. Hi, I am going to... I'm not close to them right now, so I think I'm just going to... The rats that I summoned on the way in here. Are they also watching the fight? Sure, I think that's reasonable. I could say that the rats are out here. Excellent.

I'm going to apologize to those rats, but I'm going to have them... This is so sad. They're going to make a line of defense before Lydia. I'm fully ready to sacrifice the rats. Okay, but should what about their livelihood? Hey, we're all dead in here. Should they should champagne stop the fight and turn to attack Lydia, then there will at least be a distraction for Mal

to do the cool thing that they're actually going to do to save Lydia. So I will I will use feral whispers and get hungrier to order the rats on that side of the field. Okay, so you order these rats and what like like a little fairy circle around this middle-aged cashier? Yes, some snow white shit is happening. Yeah, some fucking fairy tale princess forms of a defense of red wall rat knights around Lydia. And you can see that Champagne is almost grinning at the sight of this. And looks unperturbed from his situation, he's still marching towards Lydia. And in fact, if he can, he'll reach over and he'll step onto one of the many rats.

And it is just this cartilage explosion as he pulls full jackboot down on it as hard as he fucking can. And he looks to Burrows, he says, look at that rats for fucking rats. I like the way you think. Keep with your kind. Keep with the dirty fucking rats. And he steps fully into it, smashing that further into the grave dust and concrete of the floor. And you can feel just the sharpest tinge of supernatural pain, Sybil, as you can feel that ramification run through all of the rats you possess, their singular mind aware of the pain of this thing

and felt across each of their small minds back to your dead one. But good, we have a field of rats around this Lydia here. We're gonna go to Niles. Who? Um. Hmm. Uh.

I don't know what Niles can really do. Well, actually one question. The sluggishness, is that because I've been recovering from superficial damage or is that like a feeling of something else that's driving that? Let's do like a self-love check to see if Niles can really insight to themselves

and kind of, you know, check in with the body. Treat it like a one-on-one acting class where they teach you to check every muscle, checking with your body. Don't put me back there, man. Okay, let's, everyone start in the bottom of your feet. Just flex your toes. Wait.

Checking with your body. Climb up to the foot, the ankle, roll your ankle. Give me a insight plus resolve to see if you can look into yourself and find the feeling. It's something you haven't felt before. No, that's no successes. Niles, you're trying to diagnose, you remember the last thing that happened to you was that dream of finding your child lost between the haystacks. Malifit cars, interpretation of your dead loss, or at least the other version of use dead loss Everything feels strange

This could be the effects of the fire You could be feeling what mal was afraid of inside of that incendiary grenade just now Maybe that is the symptoms of a kindred meeting their mortal flame But you're unsure of what's happening to you. But you do still feel it confused in the stands. It's as though you are moving one way and your soul is torn and twain moving to another, like a homing beacon to somewhere else.

I think I mean, ultimately seeing the grenade and already having experience what it's like to go boom, as much as Niles would want to help out, I think Niles is moving towards away from where Champagne is heading towards Lydia. So maybe just trying to get to like the opposite side and just waiting to see if they need to jump in there. But if they can away from the bomb, that's that's what they want to be doing. So I think it's still moving around in the crowd, but finding a better vantage point to maybe step in if needed. finding a better vantage point to maybe step in if needed. Niles, this is a raucous crowd for the Hiccata.

It's a very different vibe from running with the pack so long ago. When a bunch of nomadic bikers were interested in a situation, you could hear them from miles away. And you remember trials from your youth, trying to prove yourself right after your embrace, being thrown into a circle with someone who had been dead a lot longer

than you had learned how to bite and being forced to fight for your life. You remember beer bottles being tossed at the center of the fights, cutting your arms before your opponent ever had a chance to. You remember them hugging and fighting in the stands and so proud of everything that was going on in the center.

You remember them standing at the forefront, calling for blood, your sire edging all of this on. But here, what passes for Rokkos for the Hekata is a bizarre, eyes wide shut ritual among them. It is a golf clap for this bloodshed. They are all silently amused, nothing short of finding a good book in the Barnes and Nobles. They are not exactly entertained in such a way as to draw panic amongst them, but you can tell that there's this palpable interest, this morbid curiosity around what the poor do when they finally get up to it. And apparently what the poor do is be thrown on their asses and threatened with incendiary devices.

All of them are hungry for what the puttanescas are capable of. And it seems to continue here as you prepare yourself for what's next. Trying to fight that feeling. We go to Rocky's coach in the corner, Jackie. I have to tell you, your fighter's not doing so well. He's on his back in round one, around two, depending on how you're looking at it. But he's fighting with all his life. Is there anything you'd like to do here, Jackie?

Because I've been watching, at least that's where Jackie's attention has been, how much of Puninesca's blood is on Burro's? Because he beat him up quite a bit with his hands, which I wrapped up that had some glass in it. So the point of that was to start shredding. And so some of that might be on Burro's face, skin, or anything like that. The trouble with kindred is that vitae drips slow.

It's like tar more than it is like blood in my mind. And I'm sure that's, you know, different to every situation. But for Puttanesca, he is more greased than he is bloodied. There have been wounds, but he looks more like a collage of oil paintings on his chest than he does dripping Vitae so far. Go ahead, let's, you know what, I'll roll for it. I'm gonna roll for Champagne and we'll see

if there's any sort of visible Vitae and whether that Vitae is dripped down onto. Okay. I'm gonna build a pool of stamina plus survival we'll call it. It looks as though he's not visibly bloodied yet. You're gonna need a little more. Burrows to do a little bit more.

That's okay. To draw out that vitae before you can call in whatever big bomb this is. That's okay because if that, I'm seeing plan A is not going as successful as I want. That's where plan B is coming up. When Punesca is like already walking, Jackie's already gonna do,

let me just do a quick rouse check cause I am gonna do, actually no, I don't have to silence the death so he doesn't necessarily hear it. But I'm already walking towards, uh, let me I'm sorry to block. And. I am going to basically my objective is I want to get in front of champagne. Nice like that.

Um, and the point I'm'm gonna do is I'm going, Jackie's gonna, her, she wants to make sure she gets there before champagne. And if she can, she's gonna, cause I know she's a little covered up, she's gonna lower glasses and she's gonna be like, like no. Okay.

And she's gonna be like, you too. It was like, it's a duel like you too. So from what I understand, you're breaking the line of the arena and joining them in the center there in front of Lydia. To get to prevent any grenade like my big it's a show like like a defensive, like no, no, no, no. Okay. Yeah. Beautiful. Give me a dexterity plus athletics. Let's see if you can cut him off at the head.

If you have any dots in celerity, this would be a good place to put it too. I don't think any of us have celerity. Don't, but I will next time. Can I also, I think I'm gonna do can I do a okay hear me out. Can I either do a blood search to get a little bit of a boost I think a plus one or I do have that part of my thing where in June I'm sorry where it's like a plus two to anything to make myself either look innocent deflect basically to avoid suspicion to trigger him

So which would it be more of the blood route? I think blood search would be closer to this So you'll have to rouse the blood the situation with the avoiding suspicion all of those things that's in a social encounter where combat hasn't really been initiated Like this is a deadly situation. I think we're past the point of being swayed. No problem. I did a rouse check at past and you do not grow hungrier. I got three success three successes.

Okay, so the the trouble is is that you have basically met him as he's met the circle. You guys are in line. There is enough room to get directly between him and Lydia, but you would be essentially rubbing up against his little oily chest, so I don't know how close you'd like to get to him. Honestly, let him.

And also, I have that towel that I said wrapped around my shoulder. If to not raise suspicion, if he bumps into me, I'm gonna do my best to let myself touch him. And including the towel, anything. I don't care because if I can get blood on that, I'll take it. Beautiful. Okay, so can get blood on that, I'll take it. Beautiful.

Okay, so you get in the middle, you shake your finger at him, warning him that it was just between him and Burrows. And he does come around to his turn. He looks you square in the eyes as you have reached this sort of arena, the first of the others to do it. And he takes one singular glance in the direction of his group in the north and makes some sort of silent communication with the field of men with submachine guns and then comes back

to you to meet you in the eyes. He says, I don't remember having any other rules than I can't fucking kill him. And he flicks the pin off of the grenade and he tosses it. But at that same time, we have Mal who has held an action essentially to keep him near them. So let's see if this pull happens. Well, you'll be pulling him and the grenade.

Yes, ideally. It's, here, let me make sure. Cause I don't know how much, I think it's a him roll, not a me roll. Okay, yeah, just tell me what's gotta go down for this. What's the name of this? Okay, Umbrous Clutch, right? It's Umbrous Clutch.

Yeah, cause it's also a believe me, I'm waiting on the user. You do have to rouse check for this, so we can start with that. Caleb, before you and Mal also, I also had my hand ready to go in case I needed to do that blood shield. Just so I didn't know if there was a way

that if I could do that, if that requires protection if you threw the grenade, I just wanna let you know that's my intention to throw that. Got it. So it looks like you're building a wits plus oblivion against my dexterity plus wits. An unprepared mortal will be terrified while a vampire must test for fury

or fear frenzy test at a difficulty. Okay. I'm going to roll his frenzy test first. I did get hungrier. Did get hungrier, okay. He passes on his frenzy against four, and now I'll roll his dexterity plus wits to decide whether, I mean.

I got five. Are you looking at the spell itself? Does it say whether it fails if he beats your pool? That is the thing that I'm trying to find right now. It does not matter. He did not roll to beat yours. So we'll say that it instantly happens. The problem is you need to mark one stain. You suffer a

stain every time that you use this. Which is not great. How many more stains before you've caused damage to your humanity just so I'm aware? That I don't know because I don't I have we've we've had this conversation before of I don't know where stains are supposed to go so I'm just keeping tally marks of my stains. Stains are work like an orpheus with humanity. It's half a box and then X's when you have full humanity hurt. So I have three little half a boxes right now. OK, so this is this is three or this would be four half a box.

This is the third. This is the OK. And what's your total humanity? Six, six. Okay. And what's your total humanity? Six. Six. Okay, so in three stains, you will lose one humanity, just so you know. Okay. I'll talk to you a little bit later

about how to remove stains. We can do that once the duel has been solved here, but there's the way to get rid of them before it harms your humanity. So here's the problem, right? You're holding your action. He goes to throw this grenade. You see it. You cause Umbras clutch. I'm going to let you decide. Would you like the grenade to come with him? Or would you like the grenade to leave his hands before you pull him to you? Or would you like the grenade to leave his hands before you pull him to you?

My intention was it was coming with him and I'm not gonna change that Okay, whatever that might fuck whatever that means. Okay. Yeah So then I'm going to give you an opportunity Essentially on his turn that grenade is going to go off and you're going to be reacting to it as he's pulled through to Umber's Clutch. Is there anything else that happens to Umber's Clutch besides the Frenzy Test? Does he take any damage on the way out?

I think it just pulls him, correct? It just pulls him. Okay. Yeah. It's just the Frenzy Test to see if he's afraid and he just gets pulled. Give me a Dexterity plus Athletics. Okay. That's not a huge bowl.

One success. One success, that's not great, bud. No, no it's not. It's not great for him either. Describe to me what it looks like as champagne is pulled through to you in this moment. His shadow that is stretched across, I feel like it's big and long

because we're in such like a heightened space. It almost like a wave kind of crashes over him and pulls him down into the ground and he shoots up out of, oops, and he shoots up out of Mal's shadow into their arms. And I think they're gonna try and use that momentum of him being shot out of their shadow to almost like not suplex him in like a in like a strong way but just like going

with momentum and trying to fling him like past them a little bit got it beautiful okay so go ahead and roll me a dexterity plus athletics to avoid the I'm sorry you already did right? It was one success. One success. Yes. Comparative to my four successes with this. So we've got a margin of three and the difficulty is is that this is essentially explosive damage fire is aggravated meaning I'm essentially going to get both of you three aggravated damage as the explosion goes off contained entirely within you. So go ahead and mark three aggravated damage as that suplex does happen, you pull him out of the shadow,

you wrench him up, he falls with you, but as he falls with you in that embrace between the two of you, there is this self-contained explosion that takes off inside of the shadow. And you guys can see that darkness envelops the explosion and then is almost self-contained, like a bomb going off, detonated underwater.

And it is contained within Mal and Champagne as the two of you are wrenched through with this fire. The problem too is that you're being exposed to fire, which should cause a frenzy. Frenzy test? Or is it just straight up frenzy? Yeah, let me find out. I can never remember the severity there.

I don't think I've done that before. Oh no. I believe this isn't what happened in the elevator, but it's close. That is, you know, it's fine. Don't worry about it. I think it's warranted. Elevator. We don't need to talk about the elevator.

It's warranted now. I like it. Give me just one second to find that frenzy table. Hey, we're doing crazy stuff, dude. You gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah. We'll call this a life-threatening situation. We'll call it a frenzy four. So you're gonna make a frenzy roll against four.

You're going to roll your willpower plus your humanity rounded Plus a third of your humanity rounded down if I remember correctly so total willpower or willpower still available to me total willpower Sorry unmarked willpower So if you if you mark a willpower point to reroll, it won't count towards the dice pool. So anything that you've already used for willpower, it's remaining whatever's left over plus a third of your humanity rounded down. Great. One, two, three successes, but oh, it doesn't matter if it's a fail.

Yeah, just three successes then. Okay. So that is technically a failure. Yeah. We are going to call this a flee frenzy. I think that you're deeply afraid of what's just happened to you. You just saw what happened to Niles, not even three days ago.

And you understand the implication of being hit with fire like this. And I think that the this self contained explosion prevents Lydia from dying, essentially, and prevents Jackie from taking a grenade to the face. But it does mean that you feel this intense fear for life. Now something that doesn't exactly happen often for Lasombra, but suddenly you have a meaning to live. And that meaning is just survival in the face of this fire, as you can feel your body is wrenched with these flames that eat up your left side as you and Champagne are hit with the shrapnel and incendiary fire that takes up the both of you and he rolls out of the way trying to kick and stop, drop and roll him way out of this, his way out of this. The same goes for you, but you can feel this internal need to leave. So does does the stop, stop, drop and roll and basically just like wraps themselves in shadow

role and basically just like wraps themselves in shadow and disappears from most vision. Champagne is pelted essentially as he not only is hit by the shadow, is not only hit by this explosion, but also has to roll out of the way and is discarded essentially in the same way that Burroughs was left on the ground. And for a moment as this whole spectacle takes place, the Rat Army dances about Lydia and Burroughs' boxing coach in the corner takes place over the hostage. Both fighters are emptied out on their backs, rolling around writhing in agony from the pain that's been delivered. But the first fighter to make any sort of move would be Burrows at the top of initiative. Burrows, this is your move, man.

Yeah, you know, everyone's always worried about what Pudinets was going to do, but nobody's worried about what Burrows is going to do. So he's going to get up. He's going to see the opportunity before him. His enemy just got half-bl get up. He's gonna see the opportunity before him. His enemy just got half blowed up. He's gonna rush over and he's gonna try to collect that pound of blood that Jackie's asking for. He's just gonna pound him and try to get a little bit of Vitae out of him. I'm focused on just trying to get a single drop of Vitae out of him.

Okay, and you're using your fists. The claymore has not come out of your... When I punch, I drag to cut. I'm trying to get that little kiss of vitae. Beautiful. We'll say that's an intention, and if you succeed in the roll, you will get your intention the same way that he threw you. Let me get a strength plus brawl as you are just pounding down on his body, taking the advantage while you can as you wrench yourself up and hobble over to him. I'm gonna burn a willpower.

Okay. Okay, that's four successes. Beautiful. You could blood surge if you want to up the amount here. You could roll another die. Sure, I want it to happen. So Rauze check first to see if you get a hungrier. Damn, if you get hungrier that's a hungry four. Everybody's getting hungry in this fucking room. It's kind of scary.

Hungry four is not a good look. That is one more success with a five. One more success. We're going to call it five successes. He is in a state of panic. He just barely succeeded on his frenzy test, so he can still stay in the fight. But the grenade went exactly the wrong way for him with the interference of your friends here, meaning that he's just going to try and dodge. You have a pool of five. He's going to try and see how much he can margin that down. Let's hope a meatball isn't very dexterous.

He's fucking not, because he has essentially created a margin of four. You deliver four superficial damage as you connect in. You follow where the fire has hurt him already and just pound in as much as you possibly can. And you can see that champagne's hurting for sure. You've imagined that in all of this, the sheer amount that he's taken already, that he must be entering into elderdom. But these sort of bizarre circumstances have shown that he can at least bleed. As you expose Vaitei along the beatings in his chest, you cave in some of those ribs and you can see that some of those barbed cuts along him, he is now starting to show and at least giving you a point that you can connect

with. You both are bloodied with each other here now. Beautiful. We will go to Mal. Mal, again a bat who's trapped inside just kind of like starts hitting the sides of things trying to get anywhere else. Okay. I, I, that's it really, I think they're just kind of running toward toward, toward a direction, not toward away from from the direction where the fire started and maybe toward familiarity, whoever that might be. The struggle is that in this frenzy, you take, like a bat trying to escape the belfry, end up taking the nearest passage. And as you flee through, your mind is so clouded with the voice of your beast

inside begging you to leave, to survive to get out that when you turn the corner for that intersection, you forget where you are. And there are six armed puttanesca with submachine guns that turn on you and having the arena been intercepted by the friends of burrows, they take their own option and there is an unloading of submachine guns against you. I'm going to say that in your fleeing frenzy, I will allow you to make this roll still to dodge the bullets coming at you. But you know, this is just my little flavor.

I'm going to take half the pool you would normally have. So dexterity plus athletics to avoid being shot at half the pool. So you have four, you have two. And they're both hunger dice. Beautiful. Yee-haw. One success. One success. Beautiful. That is a very tiny little margin. Let's see what their shot looks like here. They have a critical success. They have a total of five successes as they turn those

submachine guns on you and fire at full effect and you all can hear the ratcheting of these magazines and then the full auto expulsion of all of these bullets into the world that you're a part of now. It is essentially that this echoing mausoleum is filled with gunfire as the audience erupts in this shock and watches from their eyes wide shut, you know, on high audience points, their golf claps erupt as the bullets cascade over Mal. Mal, that was a pool of what I said, five hit you? Cool.

It's brought down to three points, three points of superficial down to three points. Three points of superficial damage to your body. Great. How are you doing, Mal? I have, I had an injury left over, so I have four superficial damage, three aggravated, so I can take one more superficial

before I have four aggravated. Not good. Mal's not good. Okay. Mal's feeling not good at all. Beautiful. With that, we can go from Mal to Sybil. Sybil, do you have any actions here? Your rats are standing little guard around Lydia right behind Jackie, and you see that Mao has

just been riddled with bullets and Burrows is on top of Champagne just throwing the hardest punches you've ever seen out of him and drawing blood. And Niles is up in the stands. Can I tell the rats to go for Champagne's eyes? Absolutely you can, yeah. So the rats are called in against him. Are there rules in that animalism for how we operate their fighting pool? That's an excellent question. I don't believe so. I know there are stats for animals,

but it's like shape change related. I think we can just use those. Okay. You're using Feral Whispers, right? Yes. Go ahead and roll me manipulation plus animalism, and we'll use that as there are rounds of successes, since that is the dice pool used for Feral Whispers anyways. We'll say that as there are rounds of successes since that is the dice bowl

used for feral whispers anyways. We'll say that's how well you can convince them to hurt. Okay excellent. Let's go babies. Okay babies that's three successes. Three successes. Champagne would dodge out of this the best that he can, so he's gonna roll his dodge pool. Not a great look for him. With a margin of one, he does take one superficial damage as the rats begin to eat away at his face. You can see them nibbling away at his ears, chipping at his already charred and pulled lobes. And he is screaming out obscenities from underneath burrows as those rats sort of combine in a swarm over his face.

Definitely not a good situation for him. And I give a nod towards Jackie and start moving after Mal as uninvolved as possible. I don't want to chase after them. I don't want gunfire, but I just start sidestepping. Okay, you want to be like around the corner from where Mal is being riddled with bullets? Yeah. Okay, cool. We'll consider that done. We go to Niles. So much going on. I feel like it's just like between the vitae and the air,

which Niles is already hungry still, and all hearing bullets. First off, what is ahead of the household doing? Is nobody from the Hakata side, like seeing these exchange of events and doing anything, or are they just in there chatting still? I mean, it is the climax to a good collateral combat. So they are on the edges of their seats.

It is probably the most interested they've physically been. It is still very cult-like. It's still as though they're in attendance to some bizarre kink show that they've orchestrated for themselves and they're enjoying the carnival, the freaks. But let me express that there is no intention from any of them to step in yet. It does not seem as though that this is going away from their intentions whatsoever.

The largest disagreement to what's happening in the room was the grenade going off. But you imagine that was the primordial fear that comes from your bodies when fire is involved to begin with. But bizarrely, Niles, you can still see that the the Countess and Shlomo are participating in like casual conversation about other interests. No one intends to stop this. I think with that knowledge, I think Niles is going to go and help Mal out hearing those bullets. So they're gonna work their way through the crowd.

And if I can, I'd like to at least step in to that fray using the Sistitut to kind of grow out my claws and see if I can cut through the guns at least or try to like disarm the three that are popping off so that Mal can at least get out of here. So you are not going to kill those mortals, you are looking to disarm. I'm looking to disarm.

Yeah, I'm hoping not to cause a bigger problem, so we're gonna start with disarming and go from there. Beautiful. Go ahead and make that attack with your Viscissitude. I forget how we pulled that in the past. What does Viscissitude do for your brawl? I think we add points to it. Let's find out.

Na na na na na. Let's just add the dot from this institute into the brawl you're making. Sure. Which I feel is something we've done in the past. I've rolled this like 6,000 different ways. That's normally what we do. We do like strength and brawl

and then add a point for this institute. Okay, let's keep that going because that will accomplish for the flesh crafting you're doing to build these claws. Beautiful. And is, you said they're not kindred? You believe that these are just puttanesca crime families, not kindreds.

They're using traditional bullets. You know, any kindred with their assault is not gonna sit there and stand in a room full of six people and shoot in formation. Cool, cool, cool. Just double check and see if we can add that extra dot. That is three successes. Three successes, okay.

They have no successes. So we'll see that there are six of them. We'll see that three of them have had their submachine guns disabled completely. Do you wanna tell me what this looks like as they lose their ability to operate these firearms? I think it's just, I think Niles is gonna, as soon as they're unloaded their entire magazine, I'm assuming, onto now,

while they're in the process of reloading, I think that's when Niles is gonna just kind of jump in between right, like right directly in front of Mal. And kind of do that, that Wolverine thing with their heads and just like slice through the barrels of each of the guns. Since they're machine guns like that, that should disable them completely. slice through the barrels of each of the guns. Since they're machine guns like that, that should disable them completely.

Beautiful. And then Niles is going to bare fang at them when I do that. Beautiful. OK, we'll consider that three of them no longer have access to their guns. Three still operate their submachine guns. That's where we're rocking. Jackie, that means it comes over to you.

Okay. Okay. As of right now, I feel like the main situation is Lydia, right? Because I want them out of here. Because of that, I think rules have been broken of terms, so therefore in my eyes and in the Banu Akin, they have no honor in my point of view. So I'm going to go ahead and take my knife out, cut, you said it was duct tape, it was duct tape to the chest, how was, how were they bound? So Liddy is not

bound in any other way than they have zip ties about their wrists and zip ties about their ankles. But the trouble with the ankles essentially is that her leg is broken in an awful, basically dislocation and full break, and then zip tied. So you can see that the legs are tied together, but one is loosely,

it's faced the wrong direction essentially, and still bound. You know what? I'm not, I feel like I'm gonna do more harm than good. So I'm gonna go to Lydia, kind of bend down and be like, I'm very sorry for this. And then kind of lift her fireman style, like onto her. She, right before you go to lift her, she begs you.

She looks towards you. She is still bound with a blindfold essentially, but begs you, please don't, please don't. Please don't what? Please don't move me. Why? Roll of wits plus awareness. Absolutely.

Oh, I don't like that. I don't like that at all. OK. Fucking pressure mines are some bullshit. Yeah. Yup. Yup. Uh, wait a minute.

Why do we keep having fucking pressure mines in our villains? Oh, wait. No, I'm going to burn a willpower really quick. I had... Ah, okay, uh, four successes. Four successes. Uh, you notice that there is some sort of runic iconography on one exposed wrist on her right hand.

Mm-hmm. That runs down the length of her arm. You recognize it as some form of blood sorcery, either the Tremere or within your discipline of the Banu Hufim. You know that these can be delicate magics, especially on a mortal and you imagine that that might be what she's referring to. He told me I die. He told me I'd die.

He told me I'd die. Please don't. Okay, the symbol, because that's got to usually match up to one of the rituals. What does that symbol immediately clock for me? Go ahead and roll me an occult plus intelligence. And I'll tell you whether you can discern

whether this is something you know. Come on on Jackie. Investigations. Okay. Okay. We're gonna do another willpower. Okay. Yes.

Remember that you're all watching your willpower? Oh yeah. Can only use up to your max in a day Okay, so My question is this mm-hmm okay? I have two critical successes, so that's doubled yeah, but then I have I'm sorry two criticals and And one more so that's five, but when you get this little bastard, does this negate it? That's a beat shield failure.

It only matters if you fail the roll. So you- And negating was an orpheus. Yeah. We don't have to worry about it. Yeah, no negation here. The only time that those skulls really matter for us is if you do not pass the roll. Oh, no.

No, I passed. The only thing is I think it's a, is that a critical, is that a messy success though? I believe that's a messy success. Was the, yes. One of, so I had two of these. One of your criticals was a, okay, so this is a messy success, okay.

Okay. You wrecked it today, huh buddy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, hmm. Okay. Uh, you reckon- We're really putting you through it today, huh, buddy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just succeeded. There you go. You identify that this rune is one that is far beyond your capabilities and your powers. You could never draw this ritual in such a way that it would succeed in fact this must have been

Custom-made it's something you would have to go to a very high power to accomplish So whether it's a sorcerer somehow within the Hikata or he went out for a private job for this There's almost no way put in Eska was writing this Themselves because the blood that is imprinted almost tattooed into the wrist is one that resembles in the center of this overarching spiral circle is almost a cauldron shape. And you believe that it's on a delayed status. And with your extreme success, I will tell you that you believe that this is a culture in a blood ritual. You believe which you know that if activated would boil the blood

inside of the victim. That's I am going to go and you can see just underneath the ritual in a brand essentially is a an actual burn mark just below the end of the ritual itself of a champagne glass hidden inside of a rhombus essentially that has been burned permanently into her skin and it looks as though it marks directly at the start of that ritual site. and it looks as though it marks directly at the start of that ritual site. I'm going to, uh, this is, uh, Jackie's going to actually take out her phone, take a photo of this, of that, but also very importantly,

needs to go over and whips her phone and takes photos of champagne. That's because I'm going to need that for rituals coming later. Yeah, absolutely. Let's decide your messy critical though. Yes. Make me a Dexterity plus Athletics roll. Okay. Dexterity plus Athletics.

Okay. Looking for a difficulty of four. Just a one. Would you like to use willpower in this situation? You know what, okay, yes, yes, yes, yes. What was I thinking? That was dumb. So you can reroll any dice that are not hunger.

Up to three. That's still a one. Okay. All right. Shoot. Doesn't tell me nothing. It's worse than that. Oh, no, I set it off. There is a situation as you go and you move the arm and she begs you not to be moved. You are already in the process of doing so hungry as you are. Your powers is more so than you're considering. And as she's picked up, you believe that the ritual is beginning. As you can see, there is this intense, powerful heat that begins underneath the arm as the arm begins to red and inflame.

And you can see an extreme scream building on her face as the ritual begins to glow bright red on her arm. And you can see the arm underneath is turning gelatinous beneath the skin. As you can see already, she has lost the arm bone underneath, and the veins within must be finding some sort of brutal boiling effect behind it. You do notice though that in a ritual this intense, it is delayed in this effect. Torturous as he is, he likes to make it last and it is just her arm up until this

point. I have a above table question. Sure. Is it possible if let's say someone chops off the arm or pops that sucker off, if the ritual is embedded on that party arm, which is already melted goo, and that thing is taken off, does said ritual that is attached to the body go away as well? There is only one way to find out. I'm gonna let you all know that's gonna be my intention. I don't know if Caleb's gonna allow me to do this in this role, but when that because I have that very sharp knife, I will. That's my intention. Well to find out.

I'm sure finally so sorry. I'm so sorry, sir. I'm sorry to do it. Amanda. I want you to do it actually. I'm serious. Like it's probably the only way to save her. I was gonna say.

Champagne underneath you is going to take his turn. Burrows, he desperately tries to get his legs up from under you and kick out. He's basically trying to create distance between the two of you again. You can also see he's scrambling in the unbuttoned section of his slacks that are underneath his gut there to reach for an object within his hip. You imagine some kind of a firearm. Before we can declare that we are going to see if he can

scramble out from underneath you. So is there anything you'd like to do as he makes an action to crawl free from you? I mean, really, I just like to keep him where he's at so if I could just use my strength To kind of fight him and keep him right where he's where he is. So let me get a strength plus athletics from you Or you could use brawl we'll go with that I do think I'd be kind of punching at him to keep it in place I do feel a brawl is more appropriate. And he's going to try and crawl out of it.

Rather kick you out of it. So that's three total successes. Okay, three total successes. He meets you at margin. So it's three to three. Essentially you guys cause no additional damage to each other. It also means that you kind of reach an impasse at both attempts. So he neither gets away nor you can stop him. So what I'm going to say is he gets himself to a standing position attempts. So, he neither gets away nor you can stop him. So,

what I'm going to say is he gets himself to a standing position and it becomes a fight on the the standing up rather than on the ground here and so he's one step closer to his goal but he does not achieve getting away from you but you do now realize what it is that he is trying to reach from his is a side reach from his side there from the hip and he pulls free what you assumed might have been a revolver or a pistol of some sort, but instead

is this long elongated a very ornate wooden steak that he had has in his hands and has prepared over himself and he pulls up his fists and he puts himself up. He's scrapped, he's hurt, he's bleeding vitae just like you are, but it's very clear that he's ready to go another 10 rounds and he's got another little thing up his sleeve there with the stake itself. You can also see, Burrows, go ahead and give me a wits plus awareness. Here we go, wits plus awareness. That's three, two successes. Two successes is enough. You see primed over by Niles and Mal that the Pudineska tribe that is taken up that north side essentially have foregone

their submachine guns and two of them are prepared to launch these bottles with lit rags that extend down to the edge of their basically old gin bottles that they have in hand and it looks as though they're preparing Molotov cocktails as well And with that Involved that end champagne's turn that brings us to the end of another two cycles here as the duel continues It's 1250. We haven't taken our first break. Let's take a five ten minute break Reset get ourselves ready for whatever comes next Alrighty, we'll be right back.

Woof. We return to Vegas. But before we can exist within the meadows, there is a short interruption. meadows, there is a short interruption. Somewhere on the edges of California, along the I-5, there is a small rest stop, a gas station, a denny's, a series of fast food joints, a place to shower, to rest, a place where the semis can take a break before going through the grapevine. We look inside of that small diner. It is 10 o'clock at night. It is quiet.

There are three patrons at individual tables, all getting coffee before going back to the road. There is a middle-aged waitress in her 50s, blonde platinum hair that is receding back to gray. A dye job that is painfully obvious. She's pudgy. In a way that old age will keep up with you. And she's tired. She lives locally.

She drives to work every day. She watches TV after her shift. She sleeps soundly. Tonight, she welcomes a party. A party of three. Two arrive before the final. There's little conversation. She asks if they would like anything to drink and they order two black coffees that sit still in front of them, untouched for the duration of the meal. They sit for an hour and after repeat provocations there is no order of any food. The third stranger arrives. The room falls silent. He is strange to look at from her perspective.

She's never seen an individual like this in her life, and she finds herself bit into silence at the entrance of him. There are slow footfalls that follow past her to the table with the two who wait. She finds her voice again, comes back to the table, and asks if they'd like anything. Reap fills an order. Asks if they're in out of town, if they're passing the grapevine, if they're moving on, and there's little conversation back. They discuss in hushed tones for the next hour within this diner until she returns to remind them they're reaching closing time.

She's never heard from again, She's never heard from again. And weeks later will appear in a news report referring to the finding of her corpse massacrated, broken, destroyed some miles off from the diner in a ditch and rolling I-5 desert not far from there. The strangers leave that night, but this time together. We return to a duel in a mausoleum somewhere within the Hikata mansion where we are dealing with the criminal fucking Putinesca, of which many have brought a grudge for some reason,

and we must solve that. We're going to start with Burrows at the top of the turn order, and what we assume will probably be the last exchange of events. So if you have it, this would be the exchange to do it. Burrows, what's the plan as you come to a standing position, the two of you are in front of each other? Champagne has adopted this sort of wiling, almost like fist

to cuffs position, like old street boxer form in front of you. And in one hand has this stake, very long, longer than you've seen, longer than the one pierced into Regale's chest some time ago. You imagine this is one formed for hand-to-hand fighting to keep you at a distance should he need to. But he looks primed and ready. What's the move? This is no longer a fair fight and Burrows is not interested in getting staked.

I think Burrows is probably going to back up closer to kind of the center of the ring within more easy eye shot of Rothstein. And I think he's going to call out he's gonna say he's gonna address the champagne he's gonna say you satisfied are we really gonna keep doing this how far is this gonna go rosteen um champagne looks as though at first he's going to speak to you in terms of satisfaction until he realizes that you really are calling out to... Can anybody hear the emergency vehicles outside this? I thought it added atmosphere to this.

No, they're coming for that poor waitress out in the I-5 desert. So he goes to respond to you, Champagne, at first until he realizes that you're addressing Rothstein. And it's almost disappointing, Burroughs. You look in the direction of Shlomo trying to grab his attention. And you find that, almost like a king in his court, he's too busy with his confidence to even be bothered with what's happening down here. And you almost catch him at a loss as he meets eyes with you, most drawn to the sound of his name and stands, bitten with his cane and calls to the rest for a temporary pause. And you can see that Champagne, good guard dog that he is, has already put down his fighting spirits before Rothstein has even called him off.

And it seems as though those molotovs that were about to be lifted and lit into the air see a pause as well as the chaos somehow simmers for a moment. The rats climbing off of Champagne's face and all of us coming to almost like a school yard pause to these festivities. And you can see the absurdity in this room as what you imagine our elder vampires or at least kindred that believe themselves to be of higher class stare down at the idiots fighting over cashiers. But as you call up to Rothstein Rothstein meets you and stands using his cane to assist him and speaks out and says, I do not participate for my satisfaction. I participate for champagnes the put in Eska's consider this a sufficient embarrassment

than I assume that we can call this fair, but that would be revealed to the two participating parties. How about we ask the put in Eska and champagne looks to him and then back to you says, I don't know. You seem a little worried about what I'm going to do next. Yeah, I'm not worried. I'm thinking I'm thinking about what I'm going to do next. Listen, if you want to call this quits, we can call this quits. But I'm not going to act like I don't want more.

We can call this done. We can call this retribution. But I want her. And he points at Lydia. You want this off? I keep her. Oh. Somebody throw me a stake.

I'll put my hand out. I'll wait for someone to offer me the same weapon. We're gonna keep this fair. You see that a Pudineska from the north actually tosses out a wooden stake. One of your enemies clearing it out into the grave dust by the concrete at your feet, and Champagne gestures down with his stake to the one

in front of you. Fine then. Let's see who goes to sleep first, you little fuck. And then Sh mo stand. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Well, we have a complication, which is that she's in the middle of melting. So I don't know, there is a part of me that kind of wants to resolve that if she's melted,

I might do something. If she's not melted, I might do something else. Okay. Um, as you're calling out for this stake, the, the, you know, progress is moving up her arm, essentially. Her right arm is this bizarre, like, plastic bag of skin. Um, it is empty. Um, she has... I'm sorry, to say empty is incorrect. It is filled at the fingers. She is a blood bag. Whatever is left of the boiled insides has accumulated in some sort of

slurry at the bottom of her lost arm. Still there, holding it all inside, almost like bagged milk. But it begins to crawl past the elbow, excuse me, not elbow, past the elbow into the bicep itself as it's starting to eat away her tremendously. The steak is tossed to your feet, but you can see that it's progressing and Jackie is with her. If I'm with her, I'm gonna distinctly, just so you know, Jackie's gonna look at you and honestly I'm gonna make this kind of like, a your call, like you could tell I have the knife that I intend to do something to the arm, but if you give me the signal to like maybe end her life

or something like that, I'll do it quickly as like a mercy thing. She gives you that intention. You imagine it will take some time. For example, Mal, Sybil and Niles before Jackie will have a chance to do anything in that regard only because he just happened to Be looking directly at her. You also remember that just in terms of remember strategically that the puttanescas went following Mal so it would be Mal puttanescas Sybil Niles Jackie

You know what I want to do is I want to take it away from him I don't want to give him the satisfaction of having Lydia. I mean, she's literally about to die sounds like it. So what Burrows wants to do is I think he'll leave the stake and he's going to go over to her and he's going to take her from Jackie's arms and you know as gently as he can kind of sit her down maybe kind of prop her down and lift that, the cover over her eyes so she can finally see him, and there's tears running down his face.

He knows that all of this is effectively his fault, including Lydia's passing now, and he has moments with her, and unfortunately those moments are full of agonizing pain on her end and it's just the the anger is overtaking the sorrow that he's experiencing because although he mistreats these these members of his cleaver family in his own twisted way they are him they are his and and and so I think really more than anything to to say screw you to put an SGA, I think I'm going to feed on her and take her life before this blood. A problem kills her. I want to take her life as a kind of let me put you out of your misery before this finishes you off. And hopefully I can take some hunger while doing it. Yeah, absolutely. So you go to do so champagne effectively

allows it. And as you rush over to her with Jackie, he very calmly follows in tow, stepping behind you. And so as you sort of fall to your knees with her, cradling her, taking her and feeding, he essentially moves to stand directly behind you. And you can feel even as you go through this process, this overwhelming domination of his essence right behind you looming over still with stake in hand and he has given a pause to his boys. It's clear that he's allowing you this moment rather than

taking the opportunity to stake you now you are feeding off of Lydia and as such you do not have to essentially roll to stop yourself from slaking fully. You will slake to zero. Here's what I need you to do. I need you to make a frenzy test against your willpower, whatever you have left. So whatever you've marked for today does not count towards this. Plus your humanity rounded down to a third. Humanity rounded down to a third.

One third of five is what? One or two? Math, I'm a theater major, so. Yeah, exactly. It's one. It's one, okay, here we Exactly. It's one. It's one. It's one. Okay, here we go. Round it down, it's one. It's one. I... yeah.

And... I've got... two critical, well, excuse me, one critical, and then three more on top of that, so five... seven? Yeah. Five, six, seven. You have succeeded in forgoing frenzy and you avoid the last few drops of her blood as you realize you are drinking from one side of the wick and the wick is burning at the other. sanguine, sad, melancholy taste to her cold, cold blood, that then is met by the heat of that boiling afterburn. Just the edge off of hurting yourself as you drain the last few drops of Lydia,

her eyes stay with yours the entire time burrows. And the trouble with your lingering kiss is that it is a delight to be hurt by you. And she will fill this forever. It was always a delight to be hurt by you. And as those last few drops begin to drain from her and you can feel the boiling heat on the other side of another drink, she reaches up with the last few movements

that she has in her depreciating body, with maybe the one good limb that Champagne left her, and she strokes the side of your cheek. And it's almost like she's hearing music in her head. As you can see her eyes, lull back into the left of her. Um, and you feel that you're holding a husk of whatever has melted through and she deflates in your arms as you are slaked to hunker zero and you will take a stain for this action. I'm going to call it a stain, not a removal

of humanity. Because I believe that this touchstone was not taken from you by your own accord. not taken from you by your own accord. I think Burroughs finishes and he just whispers in her ear. I'm sorry, baby. And I think he'll stand up and he knows that that Pudin esk is right next to him, but he's going to look up at the again at Rothin and say When we began this you warned me that if I took his life you would take mine and everyone along with me

Well, he got a head start and I point down at her body And I know there was no mention about cheating and doing things other than hurting and killing each other, but this ain't right. And now I want my satisfaction. You gonna give it to me, Rothstein? You gonna give me what he took from me? We are not under any ivory tower. You are not high above this city. You do not look on to it as one does a fiefdom. There are no serfs here. Instead, you are in the only kingdom that matters.

You are not high above this city. You are below it. You are sitting in your grave like the rest of us. And so I will offer you this opportunity. If you feel cheated by this negotiation, consider this. What happens between the two of you following this moment has nothing to do with the greater family. And we will consider that yours and the Pudanesca are motioned against each other. And what happens here among the gravestones has nothing to do with it. Should you bring harm to their families, you will see the ramifications and the consequences.

But we will not intervene until deliberate motion has been made. Does that satisfy? You're standing in front of the prince and he's asking you why you let a war start because of some fucking dog of yours. I want you to remember my face. From what I understand of you and your motivations, of your dogs that you've brought. I don't think the Prince would be in your favor. Me and Aloysius are closer than anyone understands. We are all fighting over the same peace, and the same that you and Champagne are. No war will come of my losing. No war will be attributed to my kingdom. You are free to do as you see fit. But understand that anything more than I've already offered you is spitting in the face of a good deal with a family that has a history of honoring them. You could cast off all of this, realize that you made a mistake,

and as did Champagne, and grow from this, accept the ramifications of that. Or you can take the route I know you will. I have met your kind. I have met his. What exists in the Ravnos is not so different than the whore. I see no difference in the two of you. One is a dog on a chain, the other is free to roam. Maybe you should consider domestication. I'm going to pick up Lydia's body very gingerly, kind of in my arms, not over my shoulder.

Just look at him, look at Budaneska and walk away. I'm done with this. We are calling this honor duel to completion. Let this be the last of our fighting for our own natures. If this goes further, there will be only more pain. And he delivers this not directly to Burrows in the engine, but instead to Champagne, who sheaths that stake along his side, wrings out his wrists, looks over to you, Burrows, gives you a little bye bye.

I really don't even care if my allies are following me. I'm walking my way out. Jackie's going to follow, but she will also purposely make eyes with She will also purposely make eyes with Shlomo and then end on Champagne. Make sure that a lot of other people are out. She wants to be one of the last people to leave because to her, at least it's like a neutral party. Like it's a buffer, but very not happy right now. Okay.

Any other actions from the engine? Yeah, I leave. I think Niles also wants to be one of the last people out. That's fine. I'll wait for you to. And is that feeling of sluggishness still here? Even if I'm heading for the door, is it like tucking back?

Mm-hmm. Is it noticeable? Like would we pick up on that? I believe it's internal. I believe that this is something that Eli's experiencing inside. It's almost like a bad high. Is there any way that I can self check again or try to find?

You want another self love check? Let's check in with our bodies. Everybody start with the... More the better. I just want to know... We all just had a lot of exercise, a lot of work. Let's go down to our toes. Start there. Flex them out.

Roll me an insight plus resolve. I'm gonna fucking shake now. Start there flex them out. Roll me an insight plus resolve Oh, I just want to know where at the very minimum where it's coming from everybody do a 10 countdown shakedown We're gonna end in our big scream. Okay two successes this time two successes You're just trying to find a solution to what that is, what that feels, why, why here of all places, why now of all places. And as you're checking in with yourself and you're trying to find where that might be, You graze your eyes over to Shlomo and he meets yours and there is this pang in your chest like decades of feeling connected to another person like the most important person in your life that

you haven't seen in years walked into a room you didn't expect them in. And this gaze held between the two of you, that sluggish pull exists again, but it's like everything that you are moves down, lower. You feel called into the ground here. There's part of Niles that wants to retreat away from that, especially since Slow-Mo is looking at him. But there's also, I kind of also want to like, go towards it. And, but I don't, I don't know what to do. I think Niles is going to take a couple steps closer to that as the hall is exiting, just getting a little bit closer, just compelled by this pool to bridge the gap in between. Beautiful. Okay. If Niles moves, because they were by Jackie, Jackie's gonna stop.

Okay. Just so you know, it didn't observe this. There's a bizarre exchange as the room is sort of emptying out as many of these Hekata family, these guests, the esteemed observers are beginning to fill out. But many of them notice what's happening here. It's as though the crowd no longer exists as Shlomo and you connect. And you think for just the slightest that there's going to be words exchanged

until the click of that cane connects with the cement out in front of him. He whispers something to the Countess and you can see that beautiful porcelain mask hiding that skulled visage underneath darts in your direction as well. And then the two of them leap, filling out into basically the north passage of this mausoleum. You imagine that as all of you are leaving out south towards Traveler, the horse that we brought in here, everyone else in the Hiccata family are moving north. Champagne is being all but celebrated like a show pony after a good race or, you know,

the prime gorilla at the zoo, right? He's being paraded around by these individuals treating him as a hero and they march out through the north, but you see no sign of Shlomo as he slinks off. I think Niles is gonna follow at least where Shlomo is heading off to. And I think once it's been obvious that I've been lingering here a little too long, I think Niles is not gonna turn around,

but Niles is gonna take those steps back until they meet up alongside Jackie, and that's when they'll finally turn around. Oh. I'm gonna extend my arm. I'm not gonna lie. That raised some eyebrows. I'm just gonna be like, you first?

Um, yeah, yeah. Okay. I think so. You first? Um, yeah, yeah. You okay? I think so. What was that about? Just a feeling. Good or bad feeling? I feel like nothing that involves anywhere here is a good feeling. Let's have two.

And I'm also going to look around in that direction for Shlomo. Obviously he's gone, but I'm going to kind of off of that, kind of put my hand on the back of Naus, but not like totally touch, but indicate like, let's go. Okay. Naus is going to like... my hand on the back of now's but not like totally touch but indicate like let's go. Okay. No, no, I'm not. That's why I'm not touching you. But I'm just going to you'll know what I mean. I'm not touching you.

But I feel it. It gets you moving. Are we all moving back to baby blue? Is there anything else we'd like to accomplish here? Well, the horses also, it's kind of like, Yeah, I don't know how we get the horse home. Well, I can walk. It's probably like a trailer. I think Burroughs actually

goes to Traveler and puts Lydia's body on Traveler. And when the others come out, you know, he says, I need to put her to rest. I'm going to ride out into the desert. If you can take baby blue. I'm going to reach out for the keys, but before you also go, I'm going to start taking your wraps and also wiping anything that I want to make sure I grab that first. Yeah, I think as you're doing that, he kind of looks down at his hands at you and then up at you and he just has this look in his eyes like was it even worth it was any of this even worth it come see me when you can and I'm

just gonna be like I'm very sorry looking at her she's genuinely sorry about Lydia. I think I'll mount travel her and I'll just start riding out into the desert. You take her further in as far as you can from civilization. And for a while there, Burroughs, the nature of the meadows is that removed from that singular city that acts as a beacon in the horizon. It is so impossibly dark. Aside from the stars overhead, there is not much to guide you outside of your preternatural senses. And every so often, you can feel the toss and turn as Traveler's powerful legs cause Lydia's body to rub up against you. But for the time that it takes to arrive at a place that feels deemed sacred enough for her, you're reminded over and over again, you can seldom call that a body.

You're reminded over and over again, you can seldom call that a body. It is this husk, this reduced sack that resembled a woman you knew, whose son you still know, the same you came to visit when you were nothing, when you were nobody, when you couldn't even leave your place except for running errands for H.H. There is a bizarre sense of longing for this woman that will never for her. But now she's not even a corpse, just a bag you'll set out in the desert somewhere. What does this look like? What does this trip look like? Where do you put her?

I think I just try to find and maybe a plateau or underneath a rise in the land. I think I'll just kind of start digging into the ground, make it big enough. She's not a very big girl, a very big person, so it's easy enough to build a six foot by five foot grave. Maybe I even use the claymore a little bit to help dig it out. But it's very, you know, finishing some business and I think he puts her in it, covers her to where it's as unnoticeable as possible that a body was buried here and I think he just looks at her and...

You didn't deserve this baby. And I'm gonna look back at Vegas, you know, in the distance glowing there in the distance. And I think I'll Mount Traveller and I think I'll head back into town. It's not business to take care of. It's bizarre. But for that moment as you lay baby to rest, once you're sure that the dirt is packed enough that no one will go looking and knowing that out here, God knows how many people have had a burial like this, you feel for just the slightest moment,

slightest moment, a sort of presence with you, as though someone something, some energy is watching in on this ritual. It feels almost all around you. And it makes your beast inside bounce off of the walls, like a caged animal and there is a level of paranoia but also awareness. I think if Burrows does in fact feel a presence of some kind he's gonna just kind of turn out to the to the darkness and say I know you're there and I just want to make you understand. I'm gonna make a promise to you. I'm gonna get my satisfaction or Vegas is gonna burn. That's why when I start writing on the Traveler back in town.

That's why when I start writing on the traveler back in town there is a singular thought on the way back on traveler of a man you knew What feels like a long time ago in? A prayer he taught you the first you met on a late night in a foreign place place you've never been to, a version of you that went looking for a different kind of soul to live in that empty body of yours. It was the first conversation the two of you ever had before things changed so much for you, a person that gave you what you are now,

person that gave you what you are now and that prayer of serenity of following the road before you and never stopping plays over and over again in your head in the language you know few speak and you return to Vegas. With that, we're going to take another uh about five minute break just so we can stretch. We can uh get our bodies rolling again. Use the restrooms and then uh when we come back, we'll try and get the group back together, decide what the next move is. I think uh we'll go from there. Okay, so we pick up with the group as they await the return of Burrows from their trip with Traveler to bury Lydia.

I want to know where the rest of us pick up. Where is it that we call this late night meeting following the events of Champagne's involvement? this late night meeting following the events of Champagne's involvement. Back to the club? Yeah. Go home? You're all stretched out in, again, an empty, largely unfurnished club. Freshly cleaned, but it's not being used for anything.

We haven't really outfitted this thing with anything. There's an old couch that the conquerors were using. There's a bar that you don't really use except for burrows with his concoctions. Um, and there's a few spare what I'm imagining is like camping chairs. Uh, and then there's the bizarre refrigerator you keep on the bottom level with two corpses still in there. But you're back home and you're awaiting the arrival of your favorite Elvis impersonator. Jackie's gonna unzip her jacket so you can see her components like think like the the leather like, you know, instead of like a row of bullets, it's like just a row of like glass vials with the little pouches and stuff like Batman's utility belt.

And you're going to. Bandelier. Thank you. Whatever Brendan Fraser wore in the mummy. Think like that. Yeah. Yeah. I think like that. And she's going to you'll see her take out like medical gloves and actually do her best to extract

but like she's doing her as she's kind of collecting her samples almost like CSI kind of way. She's still going to like interact with everyone. She's just going to like really focus on that but still talk and she is going to be like... So... Is it always this exciting with you guys on a regular basis? Sometimes we like to get more exciting. I can see that. I am. Okay, so the Hiccata, how much?

What is the, may I ask the lore between this group and the Hiccata a little bit so I can up to speed on everything? You don't know? Mal has like pushed himself into a corner behind the couch. They've like made a little fort almost, and they're just kind of like a tower of shadow. They're not. The couch is between you and them. Jackie's going to get mad for probably maybe the first time. And then she's just like, you know, if you want to just talk and, you know, be snarky, all riddled up with bullets, you can just sit there the whole time.

Shut up. I'm actually trying to get things to I know what the fuck is going on. You're going to see like she's like very, like very, like maybe a little bit more upset about what happened tonight. Again, is there anything else?" But one of them was Burro's stabbing champagne with a katana through the face, I believe, through the eye. This is the part two of that. As I understand it, the Hakata are a lot more involved with this Koterie's goals and secrets more than I'd like them to be. But this is kind of developed into its own thing. I think we can safe to expect that Champagne will retaliate at some point, but I think the Hakata are going to go back to what they're doing, which is watching us and doing shady things in the dark.

They brought up Aloysius and the ivory tower. Has there been... Does anyone know anything in particular of whatever friendship they may have, alliances? They may have alliances. There's an idea that Aloysius took power under interesting means now. And I think it's safe to believe that the Hakata had something to do with it. They're affiliated with the Camarilla the way that everyone who isn't innately anarchy is. They haven't fully separated themselves, so they're not fully separated. But like Rothstein said, it's not the Camarilla in there. No.

Okay. I am... I have my own objectives, which is to establish a base here for the Boundary of the King. I am also trying to look into many organizations like the ivory tower and may not necessarily agree with everything that's going on there so all i'm asking is that if there is any other alliances that you guys are not up to speed on or not telling me of i do not want to cause any issues that makes you guys like what Burrows did tonight. Okay. I don't want that. But I am asking that you guys be a little bit more upfront with me. Are you sorry. Are you saying that you're you're trying to there's there's an offensive

move against the camera apps. No. or but I'm also saying if There is I need to be aware of where any offense were and if the hecata with the punescas Decide I don't know since their Interpretations of it would only be between those two and how they Escalated I would like to know a little bit more the players of everybody. That's just, I'm sorry, I'm frustrated. You're gonna see Jackie kind of like stop and shake. It's one of those,

she, this is maybe like one of the first times you're actually seeing her break her cool, hasn't eaten. And you might be able to see a little bit of almost like the tinge of red that looks like blood would come from open sources like eyes and even the ears. Like you're seeing like extra redness, like almost maybe like blood is leaking through that if it keeps like hunger goes further. Maybe we shouldn't be trying to get to the truth of everything before we eat.

Maybe we shouldn't be trying to get to the truth of everything before we eat. Does anyone have any... Is there anything to drink in this place? Always. Always. And Sybil moves towards the blood bags that they keep in there, if at all possible. I think last we checked, there was four and I drank one, so you're welcome to them. I'll probably take one actually, because I'm at all possible. I think last we checked there was four and I drank one. So you're welcome to them. I'll probably take one actually because I'm at hunger three. Okay, so that puts us at what? One blood bag left in Club Canaan. Yeah, well Jackie, how many do you take? You can take two. I have three hunger, so let me take two to knock off two. Okay, then we're out. I'll Let me take two. Yeah to knock off them. Then we're out. I'll get some Fresh out of Club Canaan, but you guys can slake one according to each blood bag you've consumed I'm gonna be like double barkeep if you can put the two now and Niles. How are you two doing on hunger?

I'm at hunger three But I don't have anything here so I will keep it to myself I think though while malice off in the shadows doing something Hanging out there. I think Niles is gonna rummage through one of the empty shells or underneath the bar I'm gonna pull out that big bottle of Tiger Bomb that I've been given from Burrows like a while ago. And I'm just gonna like put it down at the bottom of where bottom of the foot of the shadow and leave it live. Just it disappears into the shadow.

Leave it live. It disappears into the shadow. It is a largely ceremonial process. Tiger Mom does not do much for the supernaturally regenerating dead flesh that makes up the kindred. But it is a nice gesture, and it does smell weird and good, at least very medicinal. It's definitely more that. Mal's not necessarily putting it on all of their open burning wounds, but I think it's a familiar smell that Mal in the shadows is hunched over, like huffing.

Mal, you are visited with remembrances of being a kid and hurting yourself and having to bring about the smell of different medicinal salves, tiger balm, Vicks VapoRub, all of those sort of weird nostalgic, good feelings around poor moments are brought about. And you remember occasionally having to fix it at your beloved's skin knees and hurt fingers and all of the things that go into feeling better. And it does mean something as that tiger balm is reduced into the shadows. At this point, I will say that you could hear horse hoes outside of the-

Clop, clop? Yeah, clop, clop of a show pony out there. If anybody's looking, they just see burls kind of hop off the horse and then smack it in the ass and that's its signal to run back to its place. Where does this horse go? It's gone. It's just gone in the street. There's a ranch that it stays at. It knows how to get back. The imagery of the horse just like, alright, I'm going home. See you later, man.

The horse showed up, we rode up on it, we started the duel, it stood there for like an hour and watched a bomb go off. Less one. Then used it for a funeral, then it's just released into the city of Vegas. That's incredible. Have you ever seen like a fucking Lipizan or stallion how they'll like drop in and like kick their little back legs? Fully what I'm imagining. I just like to think of the tourists in Vegas

who just watch a horse run by on the streets. Oh, the most Vegas shit in the fucking world. And what about like, I told you I wanted this game to be dreamlike. You imagine you're walking home from the strip at three o'clock in the morning and it's you and a horse on the same street. Come on.

Technically not a masquerade violation. Not at all. It's just weird. It's a horse. It's Vegas, baby. Yeah. It's Vegas. We're still in Vegas. It's Vegas, baby. Yeah. It's Vegas. We're still trying to kill off

the fucking locust invasion. Oh shit. But yeah, I think once the horse is gone, once Traveler's gone, clop, clop, I'll just kind of saunter into the club and just kind of, you know, lock eyes with folks and wait for somebody to catch me up. lock eyes with folks and waiting for somebody to catch me up.

I think I can't speak for everyone. I can't make up for tonight, but maybe I can make up with this. And I'm going to indicate towards the blood. Give it some time. I can make up a ritual to basically do to him what he did to Lydia. Burrows will walk up to it silently, kind of observe your work, look at you and smile, give you a friendly pat on the shoulder. I think he'll turn to the shadow up the wall that he knows that Mal is probably hiding in and He'll just say Thanks for trying to keep her alive. I appreciate that So then you lost your Lydia He'll just turn around as if it's nothing's bothered him at all this entire evening

probably covered in bruises and a blue eye or something like that. But he's just gonna say, you know, I remembered a couple months ago, we got offered a real good job, a heist. You remember something to take care of a club, get some money out of there. And I think that club was associated with the Camarilla.

You know, it'd be a real shame if that job went off and the Camarilla thought that all the clues pointed to the Hiccata or something crazy like that, you know what I mean? How full going to work. You mean the silver dollar? Yeah, that's the one the silver dollar. Nas is getting nervous. Um, I mean, we have to take care of it, uh, I mean, for, for other reasons, but pinning it on the Hakata would be much no?

Would be much much of what much much exactly what I want to do is what it is anybody against this idea? I know very little of this idea to be very frank because I think that's what we were talking about catching me up, but I think I Think pinning it on the entirety of the Hakata is a big task. I think pinning it on a couple of unfortunate motherfuckers in the Hakata is Much easier to do we study a handful of people, know their moves, leave a calling card.

We, as I understand it, have someone who can do a little blood magic in the group now. How much of a secret is that? I think not a secret at all. In fact, as the representative of the Banu Akeem, like I said, I think we can be a good alliance. Since we have a whole mixture of Camarilla and an Anarch. Anarch-friendly people. Am I correct on that? Not much of a mixture. I know. Technically yes.

Technically yes, It's great. Look, I'm not asking you all. You all know what I'm inferring here and I'm not asking you to get mixed in with me in this, but I need to see this through to the end and I think you understand why. But this doesn't have to be on you. This doesn't have to be something that's gonna get in your way. I'm just looking to get mine. I feel we're looking at something that can make it work for everybody. And what Sybil is suggesting actually makes a lot of sense. And frankly, I do believe that there was a grave injustice tonight and

Justice should definitely be served So if you need support in that I have no problem being your judge jury and executioner It's it's got to be done anyways, so there we go You let me know. I also do that face they do. Faces? That face you do when you're stressed and hiding it. Your little secret face. You get all hunchy. And they're not hunchy. It's a different hunch. You'll learn it.

It's more hunched. You'll pay attention. You guys just keep me in check because I don't know if I can keep myself. And he looks up at you all and there is a clear tear kind of streaming down his face. I'm scared. Not of him. But of me. You can see the blood pouring from the eye socket of Burroughs.

There is a look in his eye that you've seen before. Right before he's about to do something that can't truly be explained for anything other than an impulse. But it looks like this time it's not dying. And that blood slowly trickles down his cheek. And we pull away from the bar for just a moment. Out of Club Canaan, we see Traffler moving down the streets of Las Vegas. Even more so, we see Baby Blue parked in the discarded parking lot, the rent-to-fence covered domain. And in the back seat is a brown paper bag covered present wrapped in twine with a little gift tag on the back there, and the tag reads, from Champagne to you. And we'll pull away from that gift in the back of Baby Blue to the larger of Las Vegas, just past the silver dollar and its blinking quarter icon and full neon out by the north of the strip

and then further past all of Vegas until we cascade across the darkened deserts past where Lydia is buried through to the I-5 where a car moves across the highway and we will pick back up in two weeks. Thank you all very much. What the fuck, dude? Great session. Ah!

Damn. Full swing, guys. Somebody made a good point in the comments. We're finally acting like vampires. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, it takes two seasons, but we get there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm excited about this silver dollar plan.

I think it's such a great angle. Let's say they know the rules and they were really into it. Pinning it on people, so for once, people don't hate you guys. That's a great move. I should be very proud. One thing that we are gonna do, I want you all to consider for the next start of our session, any of you that have stains, we're gonna do a remorse roll.

We've not done this before in the game. We're gonna do that to rectify where you all are at in stains. I said earlier I was gonna give you one stain for the death of Lydia. I'm actually gonna give you three, since the death of Lydia. I'm actually going to give you three, since that's what's attributed in the rule book. I looked it up for the death of a touchstone. Makes more sense to do three stains. I'm sure that Mal has some from the use of their

Oblivion powers. I'm not sure that anyone else does. Can't remember. I have one for eating Felix's dead flesh. Yes, I remember that. I think maybe Niles has one for the spoons. I don't even know what to call what we did to spoons, but the reshaping. Yeah, the reshaping. But I'll go back and declare whether that's true or not. I'll let you know before the next session Eli. And then of course, Jackie's stains are all from like 2002 to 2008.

So we don't have to worry about those. Oh no, are we adding stains to me? Oh no, something's, I'm like, wait a minute. I'm going to do the math and I'm like, oh zero, oh shit. That's coming my way next. What happened in Afghanistan stays in Afghanistan. Perfect. Thank you guys so much for staying with us the whole time.

Chat was such a blast this time. I mean, you guys are always a blast, but this session especially felt very electric. I'm glad that so many of us got to join us. Tell your friends, get them in here. Let's have some fun. In two weeks, we're going to get even crazier because it looks like we're going to be robbing a casino together and getting in with the gang roll of the world. So we're going to be robbing a casino together. And getting in with the gang rule of the world. So we're going to see a whole lot of Sybil and Niles way of life. And we're going to push forward into the world. And we're making our first vampire move.

We're pushing some of the biggest players at the table against each other. Let's see if it works in our favor or if it blows up in our face like a frag grenade. We love you guys. We love doing this every week. I love my players. I love you guys. Thank you guys so much for being here. See you all later, gang.

See you guys. Bye. Bye.