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.