Aristotle: [doesn't share credit for one artifact]
Beckett, his eyes enormous: you STEAL FROM Beckett? you kick him while he's worried for Okulos? oh! oh! jail for sire! jail for sire for One Thousand Years!!!!
"I'm not sure what you want from me, Beckett," Okulos finally told him. "None of my contacts know Fortschritt any better than you do, and it's not as though the Tremere uploaded the blueprints for the chantry to the Internet. I've got the floor plan of the church itself, the public parts of the library, but I'm afraid none of them have 'secret entrance' marked on them. Are you sure you've looked everywhere?"
Beckett grunted an affirmative. He heard keys clicking as Okulos brought what images he had up onto his computer screen.
"You've got the entry hall, you obviously came through there. You've searched all the walls and the floor of the cathedral?"
"Yes."
"The individual reading rooms on the left? The offices on the right?"
"Yes."
"What about the small book restoration room behind the altar?"
"Well, no. The door's marked 'private.'"
There was a long moment of silence from the other end of the line.
"Okulos? You still there?"
"Beckett… Please repeat to me what you just said."
"I said I hadn't gone in. The door's marked 'private.'"
"So ancient curses, religious prohibitions and nearly certain Final Death don't dissuade you, but a 'private' sign does?"
Beckett felt something give in his mind, not entirely unlike feeling an ear pop during a pressure change. If he still possessed mortal reactions, he'd have blushed.
"I've been affected by some sort of aversion spell or ward, haven't I?"
"Unless you've suddenly developed a remarkable obsession with other people's privacy, I should say so."
Beckett sighed. "Thank you, Okulos. We'll negotiate later what it's going to cost me to keep this quiet."
"Just bring your checkbook."
Beckett hung up and proceeded toward the door at the far end of the chamber. Even now, knowing about the spell that must have certainly been cast on it, he wanted to turn away, to search somewhere else. It required an act of will even to put his hand on the latch, but as soon as he did, the sensation vanished.
He glanced back at Kapaneus. "Why didn't you point out that we hadn't searched here?"
The elder raised an eyebrow. "You made such an obvious point of avoiding it, I assumed you had a good reason."
Day 6 and 7: Nosferatu ~ Cryptophilia and Toreador ~ Obsession
Nosferatu: The need to know permeates the vampire. They become consumed with a hunger for secrets, to know that which few or no one knows, almost as strong as that for blood. They also refuse to share secrets with others, except in strict trade for greater ones.
Toreador: Enraptured by beauty, the vampire becomes temporarily obsessed with a singular gorgeous thing, able to think of nothing else.
These prompts were tough ones for me, until I woke in the dead of night with the idea to combine them. Victoria Ash indulges her obsession with herself, and Okulos gains some super secrets in return! I also realized they're both redheads??? I know Victoria Ash changes her hair from time to time, but she has red hair in my heart.
If you want to join in Nos + Tor fun, check out Fuck Yeah LA by Night's kick off post here!
My friend and I were discussing VtM scenes that would make good ACME cartoons and...remember that time that Lucita blow-torched Beckett's balls.
Image ID under the cut
[[Image ID two screenshots from Beckett's Jyhad Diary's "The Way of Three Eyes" chapter. A simple audio transcript without edits or notes,
Anatole: You continue, Lu. This tale is starting to bore me, and I'm tired of adding artistic embellishment.
Lucita: Our hero screamed, fell backwards into the pool, swam as if his life depended on it--which it probably did--and removed his trousers before climbing up the diving board. I was making my way up the other side of the building when I heard his shrieks, and raced to his location. I found him in flagrante delicto with a flotation device.
Okulos: What of the corpulent corpse?
Lucita: Still cackling when I arrived, and attempting to pull itself to its stump-feet.
Okulos: This really happened?
Anatole: Every damn thing. If hell gets worse the further down one does, this place was an inversion. The closer I was to the rooftop, the worse the sounds, sights, and smells.
Lucita: When stumpy caught sight of me, it wrenched a grille from one of the water overflow drains, and threw itself inside. I blow-torched any offspring latched upon Beckett's legs. Most of them followed mother down the drain.
Anatole: The leg hair still hasn't grown back.
Okulos: I assume neither of you followed this thing into the sewer?
Lucita: He said that if you were there, he would have asked you to enter the drains, but no.
Okulos: A true friend.
Lucita: The remainder of our search turned up nothing living. Nothing sapient, anyway. Plenty of corpses--mortals, we believe--stuffed with hives of parasites. Obscene. All of it.
Anatole: Whether it was evidence of Baali activity in Johannesburg, or just a Nosferatu with entomomania, it was all kinds of wrong. There was only one course of action available to us.
Okulos: You burned down the building.
Rebekah: Actually, I did that.
Beckett: [far from the recorder] Are you lot talking about me?
So like. That time Jan staked Beckett naked. Is there a story behind that?
asdfghjkl; Sort of, kind of, not really?
I think you’ve reached the “War Across Dixie” chapter of the Diary, right? That’s where it’s mentioned.
What we actually know is as follows: Around the time he started Dominating Jan, Hardestadt ordered Jan to kill Beckett for spreading Gehenna theories and “Noddist propaganda.” Jan was to make an example of him. This was close to Jan’s break up with Lucita. Jan tied a naked Beckett up in a room with a skylight. Beckett was artfully arranged so he would burn slowly with the sunrise. His toes would burn first, and as the sun rose, the rest of him would follow. Okulos knows about this incident.
What blanks I fill in because I’m a gremlin: As the selling-point stability of the Camarilla wavered, Hardestadt was deeply worried that his top aide was straying from the sexy-rebel-but-actually-conservative Camarilla poster boy image. Ya know the image that helped lure all those bright, young cannon fodder neonates to the Camarilla’s side. He was worried that Jan was being radicalized and would join the Anarchs or go Independent. Out of this paranoia, Hardestadt starts Dominating Jan: he erases swaths of his memory, orders him to sabotage his relationship with Lucita, and, as match to fully burn that bridge, orders him to kill Beckett.
Jan figures out that Hardestadt is Dominating him, and, clever Ventrue bastard he is, tries to wiggle out. He likes Beckett, he loves Lucita, but he knows he’s dangerous to be around right now, with Hardestadt all over his business. So. He comes up with a solution.
He breaks up with Lucita, and, to fully piss her off, lures Beckett to him with the promise of cool books. Jan seduces Beckett, which includes some ropes and a ball gag, as a treat. He leaves Beckett for the sun--but also arranges for Okulos to arrive in the nick of time, so only Beckett’s toes get a little hot.
MISSED CONNECTION: Nosferatu seeking his sire. No, I will not tell you his name or describe him. That's private. He knows who he is and what he's done -- Angus, probably
