7. War of the Magi (cont)

Game VII – War of the Magi [continued]

21st June, 2019.

Act I

Scene i: Barnhouse/Shadowlands.

Having followed the trail of the suspicious canine from the estate of Tarrow Hall, Sir Logan found himself some miles to the Northwest, open paddocks and fields that faded back into the low wooded hills under the starlight.

The long stride of the beast’s tracks ceased without any cause, the pasture around it undisturbed as though it had leapt into nothing. Unperturbed by the eerie vanishing, Logan continued walking in the last direction of the prints toward a neighbouring field that was bordered on one side by tall poplar trees.

The Ventrue could find no further evidence of the beast, but there were signs of other midnight travellers in the area. One man had used the windbreak as cover to watch another, whom had been crossing the open grounds toward the hills upon which he could discern an animal barn on the tree-fringed slopes. The spy’s tracks had joined the other, shadowing them to the weathered grey building.

* * *

Unused for some years, the grounds around the shelter were choked with grass and brambles in the leaf litter, the paired barn doors latched with a beam from within once Logan tested their position, casting his eyes about the sunless terrain to be sure he was so far alone. Keeping the edge of his sword at 90° to the earth, he used the narrow blade to pass between the gates and lift the beam from its bracket. A golden aura was briefly mirrored along the sword’s surface, a clean shaven face with a skullcap, like the image he had seen a week before in the cargo holds of the ill-fated ‘Kleine Muis’.

Entering the empty refuge, Logan kept his sword at the ready as his eyes swung from one dark corner to the next in anticipation of attack. The slap of wood on wood made him spin to face the gates, now closed by invisible hands as the beam latched itself with a heavy drop. An unnatural presence squeezed the timber boards of the walls as though reinforcing them from without, the building’s frame moaning as it settled under the force.

From each corner of the barn arose liquid flames, blackening the dried grass that had been heaped along the walls by animal movement in the past, climbing the grey walls in flickering licks. Surmising that he had been caught again in some trap by the unnamed foes that had drowned the Dutch Ship, Logan acted before the flames could consume him inside the building.

* * *

Ensnared within the Shadowlands of the Dark Umbra, Alistair was unsure if the trans-dimensional world about him was any more real than a dream. He was in the barn also, but from his perspective it had taken on a more ghostly hue, a slow shimmer of the reality he had left behind.

Looking down toward his feet to see if the naked figure had also crossed over, he was mildly surprised to discover that it had melded half way up his shins to anchor him in a pale wax-like mass of flesh. His feet could not break away from the anchor, and on further investigation he lost the benefit of his left hand as it made contact with the lump, drawing it in like quicksand.

Four shadows gathered into towering threats against the plane of the walls, shaped with a feminine familiarity as each raised a dagger point in their right hands to focus on Alistair in the centre of the room. There was no verbal response to his polite introduction, or the veiled threats which followed.

Instead, four black darts shot from the tenebrous witches, passing through his body to be caught and flung back again by the opposite shadow-image, repeating itself in a juggling act that was increasing momentum, the figures and darts blurring into a ‘cross’ of overlayed images travelling at speed.

* * *

Without the barn, Johann had slipped sideways into the Dark Umbra with a mysterious aide, whose human form had warped into a snarling black wolf that challenged his mettle. There were few on the earth that Johann would consider more terrifying than his own visage of twisted teeth and leprosy, meeting the wolf’s stare with a deadeye gaze of unspoken warning.

Flattening his ears, the wolf stepped back in defeat, heart rushing with momentary fear of the Nosferatu’s potential. Johann asked the creature what game it was playing by luring him into the world of shadows. Rising back onto its hind legs as the gypsy youth regained his human appearance, he replied that he had been summoned by four beauties to help trap four leeches (vampires) such as Johann.

Jacob, the shape-shifter, had never encountered the undead until now, but had learnt enough in his childhood to believe they were real, servants of a maleficent wyrm that corrupted everything it touched. His people had sworn to destroy this corruption where ever it might manifest, as had the four beauties that had left out pannikins of buttermilk at sundown to call for his aide...

* * *

Back in the mundane realm, Logan stamped his heels into the wall panels, compacting the wood grain against the invisible shell that was strengthening the decrepit farmhouse. Splintering apart as he drove his boot against the wall with determination, the planking broke away from the frame to show the starlit meadows, fuelling the spreading fire with an inflow of oxygen.

Shielding his face from the hissing flames, he searched the burning shed with a sweeping glance before making his exit. There, in the centre of the smoke and heat lay a shrivelled body, dressed in the tricorne hat and cloak of Alistair (aka Friedrich). Fighting his inner compulsion to flee, the Ventrue crossed the fiery path to take up this body on his shoulder, breaking out of the inferno to the safety of the open wilderness.

* * *

Meanwhile, in some inverse dimension, Johann had come to the conclusion of his talk with the shape-shifter, the Gypsy’s outline became opaque against the background darkness of the woods until only a pair eyes remained to stare into the Nosferatu’s. Behind them, a white fire ate away the exposed skeletal frame of what had been the barn’s ethereal counterpart. Grabbing at the fading figure, Johann’s claws hooked onto the tail of Jacob’s coat, riding with him back into the material realm of an English countryside by moonlight.

Momentarily confused from the surreal transition, the Nosferatu watched a large black dog bound away from the fire-lit scene. Coming to his senses, he reached for one of the rodents that accompanied him in his secret pockets, whispering encouragement to a whisker combing rat to seek after the canine, to which it leapt from his palm to disappear into the undergrowth.

Scene ii: Tarrow Hall.

United again in the half-light glow of the collapsing barn, Logan and Johann returned to the manor, carrying with them the corpse husk of the Tremere.

On arriving at Tarrow Hall, the Ventrue called out for his manservant to prepare one of the guest rooms and seal its windows from the rays of the sun. Laying out Alistair’s shrivelled body on a bed in this same room, Logan gave further orders to his servant, that he were to go out into the night and find or bribe anyone willing to discreetly return with him to the manor, so they could try and revivify the doctor’s shell with their blood.

Left alone in the room with the remains of Tremere once Logan and his batman had left, Johann crept out of the shadows, pacing from one side of the bed to the other as he scrutinized the vulnerable Cainite. Dragging his dirty talons over the frock coat and ruffled shirt, Johann felt them skip over something hard that was extending out from the heart. Folding back the linen shirt to identify the alien object, the Nosferatu was greeted with four iron nails, of an exaggerated length that reached deep into the desiccated thorax.

Drawing out each nail from the mummified heart, his mind turned back to the encounter with the Gypsy and his four friends as he dropped them one after the other into an empty porcelain bedpan, landing with a sharp ‘plink’ as they bounced. Here was evidence of witchcraft, the Nosferatu mused, recalling his studies of the Malleus Maleficarum (Kramer & Sprenger’s ‘Hammer of the Witches’). And more disturbing, these witches knew the weaknesses of the Kindred.

* * *

A knock sounded from the door late after midnight, followed by the voice of Logan’s manservant. Johann replied in his heavy accent for the man to enter with the company he had found in one of the nearby villages, retreating into the shadows cast by the door as it creaked open.

Beside John (the batman) stood an unknown guest, features hidden until she drew back her hood and cloak upon entering the unlit bedroom. Perhaps she was a woman of the night, or another drunk floozy the servant had enticed to the manor? Regardless, there was little time for introductions as John closed the door behind her, the Luna rays coming through the window to highlight the dressed corpse that waited for her like a dead groom.

Johann flew from the wall to catch the scream from her lips, smothering it with one hand as he drew close to her ear and warned her to be still. The lady’s cry had already pierced the solid walls, disturbing Logan in his own bedroom on the other side of the manor. Angered by the disturbance, if not surprised that John had already found someone to rejuvenate Alistair’s torpor, he shouldered his robes and armed himself to settle whatever trouble was coming next.

In shock from the gruesome hand clamped tightly under her nose, and the foreboding foreign voice that asked for her compliance, she nodded in understanding as her right arm was taken by the unseen figure still behind her, swiping a razor edged talon to the inside wrist to let the ruby waters drip freely. Unable to resist the iron grip that took her hand, the hidden monster held her bleeding limb over the corpse to align its dripping stream, red droplets painting the withered lips.

When Logan swung open the door like a clap of thunder, he was greeted by the smiling Doctor, reclining on the bed beside some conspicuous dark wine stains that were the same colour as his teeth when he greeted him with his usual purring grace. Beside the supine Alistair, Johann was easing an unconscious woman to sit against the bedside table...

* * *

Before dawn, the three Cainites addressed their options if they were to fight back against the unseen enemy that had pursued them since the North Sea whilst also searching for the elder Cecelia B. Logan wanted to know how these four witches had managed to capture Alistair, whom was himself unsure if he even believed the experience to be ‘real’ at all, placing it in the more believable realm of fevered dreams.

Interrupting the others, Johann suggested that Alistair was withholding information from them, a summary of the Tremere’s secret history that explained the paranormal events that were trying to destroy them. He had overheard all this during the last voyage of the ‘Kleine Muis’, spying on Dietmar when he had revealed a pale yellow gem that spoke to him of at least five entities that wished them harm; four witches and a man “like a piece of the Sun”. Dietmar interpreted this message from the demon of the crystal as a warning that Clan Tremere’s ancient rivals, Magi from a common past, were behind the bad luck.

Intrigued by the new evidence, Logan asked if they should try and befriend them instead, since he could readily identify with their hatred of the Tremere. It was decided that they would continue in the hunt for Cecelia, ready for the elusive Magi when their paths crossed again in the nights to come.

Already sure that Lord Christie’s clue could be none other than the infamous Alexander Pope, Alistair recalled reading the poet’s obituary during one of his London visits fifteen years earlier, his sharp eidetic memory providing them with a verbatim reading. According to the ‘Tattler’ pamphlet, Pope had been buried in St Mary’s church, Twickenham, not far from the riverside villa on the Thames he had built with his literary wealth.

* * *

Two night later they all departed from Tarrow Hall, disguised as the recently deceased being delivered to an undertaker’s address in Twickenham, where the three coffins would be ‘collected’ by the grieving family. The overland journey would take them from Yorkshire to South London, a funeral carriage trundling into the heartland of Prince Mithras’ domain.

Act II

Scene i: “Mathews & Sons Coffinmakers, etc.”/St. Marys, Twickenham.

Prying open the nailed lid from his casket, Logan woke to find himself in a carpenter’s workshop, the benches and walls carrying the tradesman’s planes and saws near the spiral woodchips of a day’s labour.

Alistair and Johann had stirred from their diurnal rest also, examining the work tables as they passed them toward a door in the background. Taking Logan’s lead, the three Cainites lifted a shovel each to aide them in the search for Pope’s tomb, carrying them out on their shoulders by the time they were pacing the unlit urban environs in search of any spire-capped belfries that might guide them to St Marys Church.

* * *

Following the directions given to them by a night watchman whom was preparing his lantern for the coming gloom, the coterie were thankful for his advice once he explained that the church facade had been renovated to resemble a pair of narrow white battlements, rather than the customary steeples that stood along the skyline.

Mounting the limestone stairs from the street, they paused to observe the scene, allowing time for Johann to peer in through the leadlight windows and witness a single bishop locking away some sacred vessels and the doors on his way out. Still as death, the vampires waited for the echo of his steps to recede into the unknown before they began their investigation of the many ornate headstones and family crypts.

Johann’s Luna cast shadow swept across a pink marble slab, raised some inches from the earth atop more of the same dressed stone. Standing over the peculiar grave, he hissed for the others to join him and see for themselves the gold chiselled ‘P’ that was its only marker, besides a brass funeral urn at the head of the tomb. All agreed it must be the poet’s grave, passing the urn over to Alistair to riffle through its contents whilst the Ventrue and Nosferatu used their strength to begin cracking the mortar seal.

Hair in lockets, faded ribbons, knotted, and woven into mementos spilled out over the slab of another tomb as Alistair emptied the urn. Amongst them, slips of paper left by Alexander P’s many female admirers, the oldest barely legible from rain water. He paused to smile at the poem that had inspired such devotion (‘The Rape of the Lock’), taking up the first note to begin reading for any hints of the elder.

Shifting the weight of the marble slab, Logan and Johann stared down into a single crypt, the polished contours of a white sarcophagi resting away from the puddle of ground water that had filtered through. Descending into the narrow space, they drew on their strength again to lift the white marble from its fitting, allowing a gap of enough inches to expunge the reek of decades, revealing the parchment skin skeleton of the dead Englishman within.

Taking away the pair of mouldy books that had rested under the crossed hands of the reposed, Johann turned each page with the tip of his black nails, hunting with his eyes for any sign of Cecelia B. amongst the Latin text of a Roman Bible and Pope’s own updated revision of Shakespeare, a work that was never popular with critics in his lifetime. The books were not marked or coded, nothing more than what their embossed gilt titles read on the spines.

Dejected, the two kindred climbed back to the surface, resetting the sarcophagi before Alistair greeted them with a secret gleam in his unreadable eyes; a single message had been signed with the intitials ‘C.B.’. The note itself read

“I miss you Pope. ~ C.B.”

The Doctor was also sure that he could detect a hint of ambergris, a base note employed in expensive perfume and no doubt worn by a lady of some wealth. The discovery gave them some hope, proof that Cecelia at least had some interest in the poet enough to visit his grave.

Seated above them, between the crenulations of the church tower, a figure had observed there disturbance of the burial ground, waiting until they had repositioned the pink marble over the single crypt. Then it called down to the coterie, breaking their thoughts from the note left in the urn.

An albino Nosferatu with itchy looking skin, Swithin was a member of the Prince’s ‘watchmen’, part of a gang that patrolled the southern districts of London. As he spoke, the silhouettes of other kindred arrived, amongst them the sheriff Joseph-Maria, of mixed mulatto ancestry (as was the term of the game’s setting), whom questioned their suspicious activity in the cemetery.

Claiming that they were trying to find Cecelia, as part of a plot that the Prince (Mithras) himself had a hand in, Joseph-Maria was conflicted in his duties to drive away any outside kindred when he heard their explanations, questioning why he had not been aware of their mission in destroying the rebel elder.

Asking the coterie to accompany him freely, with a subtext of violence if it were to be otherwise, he would take them to be judged before Prince Mithras himself, to confirm or deny their stories and grave-robbing.

Scene ii: Palace of Westminster, London.

By day, Westminster Palace hosted the parliament of Great Britain in a cluster of annexed buildings that dated back to the medieval ages with views over the western Thames. By night, the ancient chapels and hallways would be used for assemblies of the London Camarilla, seating themselves on the time worn benches in the upper gallery to listen as the higher ranking Primogen stood at either side of a high backed throne that peaked in a Gothic arch silhouette.

Standing together unbound, the coterie were wary of Joseph-Maria’s close presence as they presented themselves to the High Prince of London, Mithras. Reclining in the tall speaker’s chair of mortal parliament, his presence radiated like the gilded Roman cuirass he openly wore, a museum piece from his years as a centurion before coming to Britannia. His proud aquiline features were the last memory of a people from the Levant whom had been extinct for millennia.

Listening to their account for trespassing in his domain like a bored lion, his dreaming menace snarled to hear mention of Lord Christie, besides the stubborn thorn in his paw that was Cecelia Blackwood and the Tremere.

So far the Prince had agreed to having knowledge of their mission, upset that they had not informed him they would be crossing into his territories. Before he could address these grievances, Alistair spoke aloud his wish to use the elder’s (Cecelia) blood once they had hunted her down, which froze the proceedings of the Red Court as their eyes of condemnation focussed on the Tremere Doctor.

Coming to attention at a signal from the Seneschal , Joseph-Maria confronted the Cainite and motioned for him to leave peacefully under arrest, to be tried for conspiracy to commit Diablerie, being the cannibalism of an elder vampire to steal their accumulated powers.

From the gallery, a Germanic voice hailed the gathered Undead. It was Dietmar, whom had survived the shipwreck after all. Now revealed, he pleaded with the kindred of London to not misunderstand his Childer’s accidental outburst...