When It All Comes Down (pm for invite)

[Trahir Trahison]

Everything had fallen apart. The way it happened was like a domino effect knocking each piece out from under the vampire and leaving him and his mate standing the only thing about his life recognizable from what it had been before. He’d been attacked by a vampire he considered a friend, someone who understood him. The attack had been authorized by his adoptive sire,, who also happened to be the head of the faction he had been ready to devote eternity to and he had found himself an outcast within a matter of weeks.

The comments he had seen on the family board before he had been removed left him disgusted at the time. Looking back now, the whole series of events left him disgusted. He had already been ready to cast off all the ties which he had bound to himself after becoming this, a vampire, the only life he remembered now and then the bounty had gone up.

Half a million dollars.

He’d read the number once, twice, three times to be sure of it. Somewhere out there vampires would be stirring. Their blood lust and greed combining to ensure the young Killer would find himself in the Shadow Realm so they could line their pockets.

He had instead turned to his thrall in silence and handed her the gun crafted so carefully and made indestructible through mystical enchantments by the woman he had sworn allegiance and loyalty to in exchange for acceptance and knowledge.

Nicolette had raised both brows in surprise as Trahir had taken her hand and pressed the gun, one of the finest ever crafted, to his own forehead.

“Do it.”This RP uses dice rolls, not grid, to decide chance events and skills. if you join please do not take action against characters on grid that are involved.

[Trahir Trahison]

Everything around him had been still and silent as he wandered through the Shadow Realm. It was as though the color had been sucked away from the world, the light and life gone and what was left had fallen to the ravages of time. Nothing looked the same, nothing was pristine. Everywhere he’d wandered, desolation.

One vampire had visited him and Trahir was fairly certain she had had a hand in the chain of events going the way they had. He had spoken of much of his plans to one vampire. Perhaps too much. They had cleaned up the mess left in the wake of his mates awakening to the Darkness dwelling within her. Trahir had spoke of information he believed had then been passed on to others. Even with the aid she had given by way of summoning spirits, Trahir would be a fool to trust her once more.

He knew his mate would have entered the Shadow Realm had she the power to do so. She would have been there with him, perhaps helping him hunt the spirits within the monochromatic slice of Purgatory he’d been forced to endure by one who could not let things die. He’d instead hunted alone, moving through the realm of the dead as he contemplated.

Names had come to his thoughts, a chain of events that led only to one inevitable conclusion: He’d been branded a traitor while he was being stabbed in the back.

Vampires are not strangers to betrayal. Many fed through deception, earning the trust and desire of a mortal with their preternatural grace, or through the use of powers which subsumed the will or ignited the lust within their chosen victim of the eve. This was nothing new. Trahir though had been trusting of the level of acceptance he had found among what he had considered those with a common interest and similar temperament Now he knew differently. He saw what that trust in others could do.

When the backs of those who were family were turned to face him, when those of the Faction he had joined offered death rather than aid, what could be said?

There was only one he could turn to without persecution. Only one he could trust. The irony of the situation would have made him grin if the whole thing wasn’t so grim.

There were few options available. Leave Harper Rock, this was a possibility though it meant giving up more than the few properties he had invested time into. It meant walking away from immortality. It meant trying to survive through the centuries when any random act of nature could end his life permanently.

He could try and make amends. Neither he nor those on the other side were given to much in the way of compromise. They were perhaps the most stubborn and bullheaded group of people alive in Harper Rock. Alive being a relative term of course. They would want reparations made in blood, his. He would want the same made in concessions regarding his personal life. Neither would be satisfied with half-measures.

He could sever ties, let the past drop and try and find a new niche within the city, though that meant turning his back on everything he knew and didn’t change the grudges which would inevitably resurface if the slightest of opportunities presented itself.

None of these options he could think of bode well for him. One vampire though could not stand against the likes of those he had been ostracized by.

[Trahir Trahison]

He had emerged from the Fade a week later, his body healed and his mind still troubled. Leaving the Morgue, where his corpse had apparently found a home in while he was disembodied, Trahir walked through the streets, called his mate to let her know he had been reanimated and then simply headed but to the crypt.

He had mostly remained there since, only venturing forth to hunt and on rare occasion when rumors of hunter activity reached his ears by way of the ancient relic he kept with him. He was alive as he ever had been since his turning yet he felt hollowed out, vacant. Twice he had ventured out to destroy a Rogue Vampire which had threatened the Masquerade, silently attacking with a savage barrage of slashes from his sword before retreating to the grave once more. Only the time spent with his mate or his thrall’s tales of the goings on in the city broke up the monotony of the passing nights. They began to blend together and now, he finally grew restless in his less-than-gilded cage.

So far there wasn’t a vampire he had met that he would consider remotely reasonable yet it was time for him to try. He could dwell alone in the depths of the earth no longer. His appetites for the fading light seen in a dying mortals eyes, for speed as he shot through the city in his Phantom, the sound of the gunshots breaking through the silence of the slums, all of it tugged at him.

He needed to make contact and see where things stood and where they could go, and if need be what could be used to derail the train before it careened over the edge of the impending precipice Trahir felt was coming up. After all, sometimes there were survivors from a crash, but no one fell from a mountain and lived to tell the tale.

At this point it was about damage mitigation. Things had to be settled as best they could before he went stir crazy.

He decided to head to the farm, get his journal and then call his adoptive sire. Maybe she could see the way his mind worked from the entries in the book. Perhaps some insight might help his case. Even if it didn’t he supposed it couldn’t hurt.

[Trahir Trahison]

“Come on guys, let’s check it out!”

The four young people had grown up together, They had known each other all their lives.Marsha and Jeremy were siblings, Jeremy two years her senior. Walter had dated Marsha briefly and Sue was Jeremy’s girlfriend. Sue was the eldest of the group, two years Jeremy’s elder and Walter was the same age as Jeremy.

Usually they would be accompanied by their friends Walter’s girlfriend, Teri,, Mark , Russell or “Duke” as he went by, Chris and Jennifer, but this evening they had been busy. All of them were close, thick as thieves and they had maintained their friendships since they were children, all but for Chris who have moved to Harper Rock only recently. They had explored the city together, back before the weird things started happening, the Gambondale District being quarantined, strange disappearances and now reports of UFOs and most recently an explosion of crime across the city. The city had changed since then, new businesses springing up, more housing in the form of apartments and even more attention both from the media and the military.

They knew of the rumors, certain business owners were dangerous people. They had heard whispers of government conspiracies and cover-ups. They believed most of it. It was hard to live in Harper Rock and not believe. None of this stopped them from exploring though. They had camped out in the woods to the west of the city, they had delved into the Algonquin caverns, found weird cocoons within, they had even made it into the sewers far enough to know there was an entryway into the catacombs from there and that odd sounds, the sounds of shuffling feet, low moans and other movements too large to be rats came from within. They’d never been bold enough to make it inside though. Today they were exploring an old farmhouse. The place looked abandoned, some crates the most interesting thing within except for several large stains that looked like blood. A lot of blood, like people had been cut open in there. The thing that attracted their attention the most was a hole in the floor, taped off with faded yellow caution tape leading down into the old building’s basement.

“Really babe? What do you think we’ll find down there? It’s likely been picked clean years ago after the place was abandoned.” Sue was the least adventurous of them, she thought of herself as level headed but the others considered her baggage. If not for her dating Jeremy the others would have cut her loose from the group long ago.

“There’s still gotta be some cool **** down there eh?” Jeremy looked over to Wallter. “Wanna help lower me down bro?”

Walter made his way over to the edge and looked down into the murky darkness below. There was a bad smell coming up from the opening, like death, rot, decay. ”I don’t know about this one man. I got a bad feeling about this place. Those stains on the floor are blood, definitely.”

“Yeah, this place is more than creepy Jer, let’s at least wait for everyone to be together before we try and go down there.”

Jeremy looked over to the others, doubt creasing his brow slightly. “”You’ve never been afraid to go exploring before sis. Remember the cave in the woods?”

“Yeah I know but this place feels… wrong. Evil. I think we should leave.”

Sue stepped up next to Marsha nodding her agreement. “Come on babe, even Walter thinks it’s a bad idea. Let's wait until Mark, Chris and Duke can be here too.”

“Alright, fine, **** it. We’ll come back later.”

The four turned toward the exit, “Come on, I don’t like it here, it smells like something died.”

Walter was nodding his agreement until something caught his attention. he moved away from the group down the hallway and pushed a bedroom door open all the way. Reaching under the corner of the bed he withdrew the book which had caught his attention. It was bound in some kind of leather. Unlike everything else in the place it didn’t have any dust on it.

He opened the volume and read the first entry, penned in an eloquent hand. “Um… guys… this looks like a diary… only there’s something weird…”

“What does it say?” Marsha walked toward Walter, Sue and Jeremy flanking her either side.

“Here, read,” Walter said handing it over. “”The author claims to be a vampire.”

Marsha turned the volume over in her hands, feeling the odd texture of the leather cover before opening it. “Propriety among my kind dictates I leave out the facts vs. myth examples. Just in case I ever lose this and someone else finds it. If this is the case, Dear Reader, the following is fiction…”

[Trahir Trahison]

The wilderness. The untamed lands of the Algonquin National Park. Home of the Fae, where vampires feared to tread… if they were smart. Trahir was smart. He moved quietly through the forest ever-watchful for the telltale sign of one of the feared immortal creatures who haunted the land. It was said there was animosity between vampire and Fae that predated known vampire history. Trahir was a student of such and indeed had found the statement to be true thus far.

There definitely existed a long and deep-seated hatred between to two races. Then again Trahir had yet to hear of any race the liked vampires. That in and of itself held a valuable lesson every bloodsucker should take heed of. It was fine and well to love the genre, gothic romance horror was wildly popular since the 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, written by Earl Horatio Walpole of Orford. Later Bram Stoker would add his own twist to the genre with his literary masterpiece Dracula in 1897. From there it had snowballed until the creatures of the night were seen not as walking horrors, but as great romantic figures, doling out immortality based on the merits of their lovers. Tragic heroes doomed to walk the mists of eternity alone until united with their one true soulmate.

What a crock of ****.

That school of thought was the exact same one that lead to the new generation of vampires being such pussies. It had watered down the truth behind the vampires, a war-like, aggressive and altogether selfish race into sparkling little fairies who wouldn’t harm a fly unless it threatened their under-age girlfriend. Trahir wished he could through all of those gothic pansies out into the wilds away from Harper Rock and led the Fae make a meal of them.

On the flipside at least most of the “vegan vampire” idiots weren’t running around shooting each other simply because they didn’t die. Even most humans were smart enough to avoid harm given the option. Animals almost always were. It seemed the more intellect a race could have in theory, the less they applied it when it came to common sense. Instincts dulled and brains inundated with useless information, common sense was washed away in a sea of acronyms, lols, and plotlines for television shows with no bearing on reality.

It was maddening. Blessed with immortality, the future of the world laid in their hands all they could do was bicker. No cohesiveness. No plans for the inevitable future when the Masquerade came crashing down and the military of the human world eventually and inevitably took action. Trahir figured when everything finally came down, the Fae would have a field day with all the fleeing rats flooding out of the sinking ship that was Harper Rock.

Even if the site was not obfuscated by two feet of snow covering the ground, Trahir was confident the damage that he and Mortll had done to the place was more than enough to hide the events that had transpired there months ago when Dominique had finally released the monster hiding deep within her blood. A sheet of unbroken snow, virgin and undisturbed lay over what what had been the site of a massacre. A family wiped out. They had been camping illegally anyway.

Though Trahir hated cliches, especially when applied to him, this one did usually apply. The Killer usually did return to the scene of the crime. In this case he wanted to know if the campsite had been disturbed or not. It hadn’t.

Satisfied he heads back toward the road where his car awaited.

He had some affairs to set right.

It was nearly midnight when the silver Rolls Royce pulled into the long driveway leading past buried fields up toward the dilapidated farmhouse. The moon was a single eye in the sky, bathing the winter wonderland scene in a cold blue light. Ever alert, the driver of the pristine antique vehicle immediately noticed the footprints leading away from the plantation house fading quickly in the fresh fallen snow. The eyes of the owner, unlike the one in the sky, narrowed to slits with suspicion.

For months now Trahir had dreaded a retaliation of sorts for an offense caused by choices he had made. Choices in his mate, choices in his own code of beliefs and morality, if he could truly be said to posses such. Immediately his mind went to an ambush scenario but he quickly dismissed it. His adoptive sire would not be so careless as to leave a trail right to his front door to give him warning unless expecting him to flee to make the hunt interesting. She would know that he would notice the footprints. That and he had stayed far to the north secluded away from the farm. They could find him at any time. Why would they visit here knowing he would be elsewhere? No, something else was afoot. Something was very, very wrong here.

The car comes to a stop nearly at the house and Trahir steps out from it’s warm confines out into the night air so cold that steam rises from the lukewarm flesh of his hands as he makes his way over and kneels, examining the fades footprints. He can just barely make out that there are four sets coming and four sets going. They had come from the north, from the city perhaps or one of the nearby farms and then had entered the house and left.

Adventure seekers perhaps? He knew there was a flood of “”paranormal investigators” new to the city. He believed there had recently been attacks on vampires which by rumors were laid at the feet of the Lionelli Family. He also knew there were enough vampires of the Shadow Path and those who had Bridged to it that the ones who had been here could literally be anyone.

He made his way to the door and pushed it open. The floor was wet, there was some fresh snow still left on it where it had been tracked in by the intruders. He hadn’t missed them by too long, but the slackening of the snowfall made it difficult to tell how long. He couldn’t remember when it had started to peter off. Of more concern at the moment was the open bedroom door further into the room his gaze drawn there by a decreasing amount of tracked-in snow.

His soft footfall caused very little noise as he entered the room and made his way to the bed. Reaching up into the hole in the box spring he groped around and froze. “This isn’t good,” he says to the empty house.

He left the house, closing the door behind him as he stepped out. Withdrawing his phone from his pocket he sends a text to his thrall, Nicolette, Get a cab to the farmhouse, take the car back to Veil, Park it there.

A second text message went out, this one to Jane. Slight problem, journal missing. Sensitive document.

That done he began his trek through the snow, following the footprints of those who had taken what was his.

Dominique invited to join at this point

[Trahir Trahison]

As the four young adults made their way along the road toward Swansdale Marsha continued to read aloud to the others from the journal. They passed the Sparrow Lane subdivision and headed north deeper into the city. “Guys, I don’t know… some of the things it says in here, it really seems like this guy was writing a diary for real, not a novel. I mean, it’s not even in novel format.”

“Yeah, but neither was Dracula was it? It was all letters and stuff right?” Jeremy pointed out to his sister. “There’s no way this that’s real.”

“What is Crownet?” Sue asked everyone as they crossed the street.

“I don’t know, but it mentions that there are auctions for weapons. Maybe we could look it up?”

“We should totes mail that address he mentioned! Music@Midnight? I bet they’d be able to tell us more! It says she’s a human right, not a vampire?”

“Maybe, but I think we can start by just calling the St. Augustine gator place it mentions. You know, ask how Gustave and Lolong from Harper Rock Canada are doing” Walter adds in. “I don’t think we should contact anyone until we dig a little on our own.”

As they walked past Sue’s house the group stopped and Jeremy embraced her, giving her a kiss before she left, heading home. “I’ll call you guys later on Skype,” she promises. "Let me know if you figure anything out!”
(28, 31, Swansdale)
The trio remaining continued north toward Walters house.

[Trahir Trahison]

Trahir Trahison Other NPCs/Objects Difficult Intellectual Tracking humans through city Succeeded
Trahir stalked through the city, following the tracks east. The freshly ploughed roads made the job more difficult, but there was enough of a film built up to leave just enough slush for him to pick up the faint trail of the quartet. Arriving at a subdivision, the group had split up. He guessed he was about five minutes behind them. Their steps were evenly spaced and not too spread out. They were not moving at more than a casual pace. The predator stalking them knew from this that they were unaware they were being followed by the owner of the stolen property in their grubby little human paws. That was good. He followed the singular set of footprints to a house and noted it quickly before backtracking and following the remaining three further north toward the Wonderland Bar.Trahir Trahison Other NPCs/Objects Difficult Intellectual Track Sue home Succeeded
Their deaths, their suffering for this indignity, making him trudge through the snowy landscape of the city to regain that which they stole from him, would be the stuff of legend.

[Trahir Trahison]

Nicolette drove through the roads of Harper Rock carefully. Hitting a patch of black ice and totaling her master's car would not make for an easy life, nor a long one. She pulled over and sent a text to Dominique letting her know that Trahir had pulled her off the work at the tattoo parlor to play chauffeur to an empty car and that she would be back shortly. At least with her being like him she would understand Nicolette had no say in the matter.

The Rolls Royce cruised slowly down the block toward Veil Tower.

[Trahir Trahison]

Trahir Trahison Other None Luck Weather getting better or worse? Failed
The weather was getting worse as Trahir picked up the tracks of the trio once more and began following. As he did he noted the increasing snowfall with a frown playing on his features. Nothing is ever easy. Tribulation brings enlightenment and if it were easy I would not learn. No more journaling. From now on, all my writing will be mental.

He knew the thought was a lie before he was through speaking it. Lies were the currency of his kind. Lies, secrets, blood. Bullets for some he supposed. Those whose words were too weak to make an impact would always feel the need to resort to the fists, the blade, the bullet. There were no words for the humans he stalked. None that he could say to them to prevent them from possibly exposing him and others he had met in his time in Harper Rock. It would, in the case, be the fists, the blade, the bullet for them.

His trench coat, heavy and leather blew in the sudden gust of icy wind that blasted him as he crossed the street. Most humans would shield their eyes against the stinging flakes of snow that the wind flung at them like a million little razors. Trahir kept his on the now rapidly disappearing footprints ahead. He began to pick up his pace a little, determined to not lose the group ahead of him. There was still a couple of hours before daylight came. Even with the sun rising there would be few humans on the street to identify the smoke that would rise from his flesh as anything but warm breath hitting blisteringly cold air in this weather. Most sane people would stay in their homes and as for the insane? No one paid them heed anyway.

He checked his cellphone, irked that he had received no message back from Jane, irked that he was out in the cold like this, irked that these little piss ants, like so many others, interfered with what he wanted. Trahir’s mood mirrored the worsening storm as his temper rose and the winds whipped at him as it trying to take him off his feet. Trahir Trahison Other NPCs/Objects Very difficult Intellectual Tracking in horrendous conditions Succeeded
It was getting near impossible to see the tracks yet somehow the determined Killer persevered. There was blood to be had and it would be his, just like his stolen journal would once again be his.

[Trahir Trahison]

As the group passed that new Alice in Wonderland themed bar they veered northwest, unaware that the vampire was closing in behind them rapidly. They too had picked up the pace and Marsha had been forced by the blowing snow to stuff the journal into her purse to avoid it getting ruined by the weather. Usually they enjoyed the long walks through the city but at this point all any of them wanted was to get inside and start a fire to warm back up. Even the excitement of their find was dampened by the blizzard.

They made the next few blocks in silence and there was no delayed parting of ways when the apartments Walter lived in came into view. (34, 25 River Rock)

Walter waved to Jeremy and Marsha as he split from the group, heading toward his rented apartment. “I’ll catch you guys later. Call or Skype me!”

The siblings waved back with hands that remained in pockets and pushed on through the inclement weather.