Passion in a Vial

I'll take it. It may not be the old passion that I once felt, but to be able to use a little of my blood to produce the desired emotional effect is wonderful. I actually reduced myself to tears playing Schumann last night. It's disturbingly less work, as all I need is blood magick to manipulate the emotional responses, but it's equally nice to not have to put in all the spirit and personal emotion into the piece only to hope leaving an emotional response.

This all started with a certain possibility to increase our political chip pile with Prince Maxwell. This fellow out west has successfully eluded two coteries, a Gangrel coterie named the BrewHa and some Invictus Knights. Talk about opposite. Nobody knew why Mr. Rathbone was being pursued, but the tranquility was undoubtedly going to be ignored by these two very aggressive coteries, and Prince Maxwell needed somebody to find this guy. Ethan found out about a possible blood magick ritual that would help locate us, but every new knowledge comes with a price. This particular price was a bit steep, but in retrospect, well worth it.

Rowen knew the ritual, and was willing to teach Ethan if she could learn a Coil of the Dragon. When Ethan approached me I was taken aback. Firstly, that he would trust me to not risk both our situations if either Covenant found out, and secondly, that he would think having this ritual knowlege was worth risking both our situations. I found myself questioning my loyalties, and then wondered why they were considered loyalties to secretly hide away knowledge. I understand not wanting to share certain knowledges before being published or accredited, but eventually you want everybody to know. Not so with this world, although I can see the danger of Kindred having access to all the knowledge floating about.

Regardless, it was an interesting proposition, and quite frankly, a good opportunity for everybody involved. I discovered another juxtoposition - my years of training had led me to be so easily interested in the Ordo, but my instincts found the blood magick so much more intuitive and interesting. Not everything has to be done a certain way. Knowledge can come in all sorts of ways, just as different learning styles are more effective with certain approaches.

Despite my misgivings about teaching the woman that was so incredibly rude and insulting mere months ago, I found her to be a respectful and avid pupil. She later asked what I wanted to learn through the blood magick and I found myself at a loss. The options seemed endless, until I instantly hit on exactly what I wanted. Passion. I had lost it all. My concerts were robotic and depressive.

One painful and horrifying ritual later, I emptied some of my blood onto the piano keys in the quiet and empty concert hall, with tremendous results.

A New Life

It's like being born, only you have a lot of previous experiences and knowledge. Sounds good right? Not always. I'm discovering that respect for those previous experiences and knowlege only count in this new life if it applies to the current problems. It's pretty obvious that Hank's skills in life still serve him well within the coterie, but not many in the coterie benefit from my skills. They might eventually, but let's just say those skills are not yet realised by them. So here's some things to consider.

Do I care what they think of me? Less and less.
Do I care for them? Yes.
Do I want to be a mothering sort of morality check? No.
Do I want their respect? Yes.
Do I want status among our fellow Kindred? Yes.
Is status with fellow Kindred more important than my coterie's opinion of me? Plead the 5th.

These thoughts have been flickering in my mind for some time now, but a conversation with Ethan really pointed something important out to me. I really am starting over. My professional station and respect in previous times no longer exists, and it's up to me to move forward and create a new life. New station. New status. New respect.

Peace

So much has been happening recently, but everything has been leading up to a conclusion. That conclusion is that violence seems to reign supreme - something of which I feel uncomfortable and frustrated.

I am chasing my dragon's tail, but let me specify the anguish it took to do the deed. Killing a mortal is something that should never become easy, and actually doing it while looking into their eyes was something that I will never forget. After experiencing my own induced violence, I don't understand the others that seem to so easily discuss if one lives or dies.

I used to feel responsible for the other's morality, but now, after my own purposeful killing, I realise that my first responsibility is to ensure my OWN morality stays intact. Despite the fact that my victim was destroying his family, I know that it wasn't necessarily my right to pass judgement and end his life, pathetic as it appeared.

As a result, I have focused heavily on leashing the endless anger that is within me: The Beast. He has already overcome my will once, but fortunately was unable to inflict anything on anybody since Gabe mercifully dominated me. I say dominate in the most professional of senses. He may be an overwhelming know-it-all and egoist, but his skills with mind control are very valuable. Anyway, I knew that I had to somehow control this Thing, and through the help of Rachel and Darius, I believe that I have obtained a new level of peace and strength.

The ritual was fascinating. I wanted spirits to be involved because all of my influences of the supernatural during my mortal years were by spirits. Through pan flute music and the spirits of serenity, I managed to reach a meditative level of complete emptiness. Up to that point, the Beast was staring at me, with his huge ugly yellow eyes. After emptying my mind through the ritual, I opened my eyes to blessedly find those horrid yellow eyes gone. I had won.

Personal Loss

Something is terribly wrong. I recently performed at the Chicago Symphony to a thrilled and highly responsive audience. Wouldn't that make me happy? Of course, I was thrilled for such a strong positive reaction. The problem was that the performance wasn't that good. I can feel my own work, my own passion coming out, my own performance, and judge it for myself. It was average at best. Initially, my reaction was that perhaps the crowd was complimenting the symphony because they did do a fine job as well, but it was clearly directed at me as my return to bow produced a standing ovation. I am extremely bothered by my own performance, and feel a sense of loss. Something that I always clung to was my music. I am anxious to go to the B.L.U.E.S. and see if I am simply out of practice classically, or losing my touch in every musical respect.

To make matters exceptionally worse, I provided box seats for several friends, so obviously the performance was to be spectacular. Not only was it not spectacular, but they were extremely impressed. It makes me grit my teeth in frustration that they may think that performance was excellent. I must focus more on my music, and not get so overly distracted as I have in these recent days. Music is something that I can have forever, and I will not let that be lost to me.

Morality and Reality

Existence in this world definitely seems to have it's own definition of morality. Feeding, for one, requires a certain skewing of morality as we do have to treat mortals as cattle. However, with certain cares, you can still perform even this required task with certain level of respect for both the mortal and yourself. Frenzying is another problem for a Kindred. An utter loss of control as the Beast within rages - after an episode like that, I can only imagine the emotions that would follow, depending on how much the person cared about others originally.

I'm learning that there is a large chasm between morality and reality in this existence, but what upsets me is that people seem to give up any hope of resolving that chasm. It angers me that I am assumed to be innocent of pain and loss simply because I cling to morals and choose to make them fit within my new reality. While only one of our coterie has said anything about it, I sense the attempts to pander to my emotional needs, at least according to their perception of my emotional needs. Others have given me full respect; actually more respect than when I was mortal, which I appreciate. Right now I sense that Hank and Ethan's "concern" for me seems to be a justification for their hardening hearts.

Ethan's cruel outburst at me is forgiveable given the tense circumstances, but he's yet to apologise, so I assume he's drawing line's between us. Hank, however, seems to enjoy walking a fine line of trying to make everybody happy. I have no idea what Gabe thinks, which Liz and GT seem to be their same supportive selves. Me? I just would like for my friends to not lose themselves to this harsh new world. It's going to take far more strength to do the right thing than it ever was as a mortal.

From the Frying Pan to the Fire

Although I feel less guilty about being involved with a murder of our own kind, especially one that has been proven complicate with ritualistic murders of humans, I can't help but feel that I'm on a terribly slippery slope where I can't get my footing.

Reeling from the horror of the zombie episode brought on by our coterie, we immediately leaped to GT's assistance to help him with a problem he's been having with the Tigre's. He believed to have discovered the haven of a vampire that was supporting the Tigre's and their terrible sacrificial actions, so off we went to save the day.

Yes, save the day.

What I mean, of course, is to kill another kindred.

It was difficult enough to see the gang members in such a bloodthirsty war. I was glad to be on the winning side, but I was miserable watching the Tigre's drop. I desperately tried to remember how the Tigre's tried to kill GT the other day, and the murders of innocent humans, but this didn't seem the way to handle it.

I will not pretend to be innocent; I planted the smoke bomb. I followed instructions. Since I did not want any part of the shooting, I took a baseball bat to the vampire, but when it was not working, I let fear for my comrades control me and took part of the shooting.

To make matters worse, once we ran up the flag of victory, we literally looted the place! I don't mean just taking the necessary items to study the rituals they were performing, but we took everything of value that we could carry. I was against taking so much, but I had little room to argue since I snitched a beautiful Aztec bracelet for my own collection.

Many nights of guilt are coming, I know.

Difficult Lessons Learned

I have finally managed to calm down enough in order to try and record the difficult experiences our coterie had over these past few weeks.

As I was trying to write previously, we learned a difficult lesson at the cost of many lives that are on our conscience now. It's actually very ironic; we were all rather critical of the professors at the University for trying to figure out what was going on with the book by going ahead and doing the "spell" that released a spirit Wound named the Beast of Blood and Shadow. This all according to our new lupine friends that have such a special gift working with the spirit world, but it definitely sounds accurate based on the Wound's actions. Anyway, there was some definite criticism of their little scientific experiment.

So what do we do? We have our little scientific experiment with the Chalice of Etrius. No lessons learned, several different actions were taken to try and activate this Chalice. The Chalice was a valuable artifact that the Tigris originally stole, then we found in "The Marketplace". We know that Belieul's Brood, the worst of the Vampires with no sense of responsibility towards life, want the Chalice very badly. I'm sure they could have used it with worse effects, but we were pretty damaging ourselves. The activation was definitely discovered; as we found out in detail the next morning.

A terrible motorcar accident occurred at Bell's front gate (we were all staying with him to study and work with the Chalice). To our horror, we saw that the deceased victims were literally some sort of zombie, seeking to only destroy the paramedics and officers. Hank, GT, and Ethan's attempts to stop them were difficult. Bullets from Hank went straight through the zombie's (I don't have any other name for such a creature); bones shattered from GT, but they continued onward; finally, Ethan decapitated one with his rapier. Would you believe that the head literally was still "active"? An arm was removed, and it acted on it's own without the body. It was gruesome and worse than any movie's special effects, possibly because I knew it was real.

After this terrible scene was over and cleaned, Ethan took a peek into that Shadow he's so good at doing. The Chalice, it seems, has terrible red tendrils that are effecting corpses in the manner that I described. Worse, the tendrils are growing, reaching out farther and farther. After some intense research, we discovered three important facts: 1) the tendrils are growing at an exponential rate, soon to hit a hospital morgue and several cemetaries, 2) there is no known way to de-activate the Chalice, and 3) it seems that only time is on our side, as it de-activates after a certain period of time. The problem being of course that we don't know how long.

I suggested that we get the Chalice away from civilization as soon as possible. Over a period of discussion, Mackinac Island was the considered the best and closest option since it does not have any hospitals and the graveyard is at least 200 years old from long past wars.

Many logistical hoops later, we find ourselves with a rented Haven at Mackinac Island, with us socialites spending as much time as possible in the bar at the Grand Hotel. It was there that I nearly dropped my martini as I saw the newsflash from St. Ignace of "strange zombie costumed people attached a local neighborhood party along the coast." I could only assume the worst, and the growth rate of tendrils were underestimated.

We then had a horrible decision to make. So far, we were suspecting that the Chalice would deactivate the next day, as it was the seven day of activation and there's a lot of occult suspense around the magical number seven. Also, anything more than days seemed overkill, and would probably cover at least this side of the hemisphere. Do we wait until the next day? Or do we let the death tolls rise as the tendrils effect larger and larger areas, now reaching into the mainlaind of Upper Michigan and Lower Michigan? Our only choice, other than to wait it out, was to destroy it. I was all for destruction to end the deaths of innocent lives, but Ethan stuck to his desire to wait. It was in that moment I realised that we were about to make our second huge mistake and destroy the only possibility we have to de-activate these tendrils.

Something else that was nagging at us was the potential impact of this Chalice. The more we researched the history, the more we realised that this Chalice was built to literally raise the dead, or to return life to a Vampire. That is not something we should consider destroying lightly. The problem that we're seeing is that it seems to call for some sort of flesh sacrifice, which of course is not acceptable in my book. Regardless, I believe that it is our responsibility to balance the effects of what we did with the future possibilities it holds for Kindred.

It was horrible to realise that our decision would cost more lives, but I now know how Generals on the battlefield feels when he sends the soldiers into death for larger stakes. The only major difference of course is that these victims are not soldiers that agreed to do this. They are just innocent people enjoying a party. Ethan was correct, and thankfully, we did not make the next largest mistake ever by destroying the Chalice, as it did de-activate the next day.

Perhaps we're just now learning the impact of our impulsive decisions, and will hopefully realise the much larger impact we make on individuals around us based on our decisions. In our quest to understand and learn, we have to play by the safety rulebook even more strongly now, as the mistakes we make deal with supernatural abilities even beyond our capabilities, leaving human lives completely dependant on our prudence.