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The Times
The Kindred Chronicle
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THE MONSTER OF EALING
Last night, several people reported the sighting of a "screaming red monster" in a quiet neighbourhood of Ealing. After a power shortage in the area, a building caught fire. It was then when, what was described as a "man shaped, footless creature" emerged from the flames, leaping, running, and screaming. One woman has told our reporters that the man had "teeth like a wolf, and the face of the devil". Police officers are still trying to get to the bottom of this; neither the power shortage nor the fire have still been explained. A spokesperson from Scotland Yard has stated that the "so called monster" might be a wounded person, escaping the fire.

TRAGEDY IN TOOLEY STREET
The police has found the bodies of three TFL workers in the construction site at Tooley Street. One of their colleagues raised the alarms last week, when the three workers didn't attend their shifts. The bodies of the men have been found in a deep hole, uncovered by the refurbishment works that are taking place in the area. According to the Police, the bodies were horribly mutilated, which has led to the wildest speculations. The names of the three workers are being kept anonymous, following the wishes of their families.

HOROSCOPE
MARCH 8 - PISCES
You are used to making sacrifices, to prioritising the happiness of others before yours. Even though that is a noble attitude, there are times in life where the only healthy alternative is to embrace your own selfishness and allow yourself some enjoyment. Reserve one hour per day to do something you really like. Treat yourself! Your colour for this month is blue.
Echoes from the past ring back into London. Their intensity increases until they are deafening. What once was a faded memory of a glorious time, now becomes a shocking reality. The consequences of actions taken decades ago ripple into the present, altering the lives of everybody in the City. Unguided and blind, Kindred wander around, trying to make profit out of the reigning chaos.


The appearance of four mysterious figures turned the city upside down. Mistrust and jealousy became the official currency of London. Serpents and fiends rise to power, misdirecting the blaming eyes of the Camarilla towards imaginary enemies. Only those with clear vision and the ability to trust each other strive, while the rest run towards a shallow grave.



Across The Board
Current Chronicle: Dragons and Lions; Pride and Fire
Current Season: Spring
Controlling Sect: Camarilla



Index
Getting Started
General Information
Central London
North London
East London
West London
South London
Miscellaneous
Out of Character


Population: 31

Camarilla
Anarchs
Other
Ventrue: 1
Toreador: 5 (6)
Brujah: 2 (3)
Malkavian: 7
Tremere: 2
Nosferatu: 3
Gangrel: 1
Ventrue: 1
Toreador: 0
Brujah: 2 (3)
Malkavian: 0
Nosferatu: 1
Gangrel: 1
Setites: 5
Sabbat: ???


THE CAMARILLA

Prince

Nobody

Sheriff
Meredith Furlong
Hounds
Robyne Sheridan
Rosella Marie Allain


Keeper of Elysium
Davvad Bisset

Grand Harpy
Catherine Wilke

Primogen
Ventrue: Marcus Antonio Russo
Brujah: Thomas Krusen
Gangrel: Alexa Mallik
Malkavian: Ellora Reese
Tremere: Hannah Sundling
Toreador: Arsenio Pozzi
Nosferatu: Dogan Khojak



ANARCHS

Baron

Khoza

Baronets
Enfield: Leslie
Haringey & Barnet: Clarice Harris
Harrow: Jelena Korolenko

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Welcome To The Night

You find yourself in London on a dreary, foggy night like any other. But what lurks in the shadows is the stuff of fantasies and nightmares, far from mortal reality.

This game uses the cursed and immortal vampiric condition as a backdrop to explore themes of morality, depravity, the human condition, salvation, and personal horror. We are a writing and roleplaying community dedicated to telling complex and engaging stories.

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The Walking Czar; Majesty Training - #3
Topic Started: Thursday, 15. January 2015, 15:26 (409 Views)
Tsar Ilya the First
Member Avatar
Claiming Tsar
* * * *
This is who I am, this is what I am. I am not the man, I am not the monster: I am the Czar.

Rise and shine, your majesty, the sun has gone a while ago. Your highness needs to wake. There is a whole Empire to rule out there.

That is good. Wipe the dust off your body, and get inside that suit, that royal armor that inspires fear and respect.

Look at yourself; you have the poise of a King, but you are much more than that. The noblest and the bravest bow to your presence. Fear and admiration flow towards you. It is the time to let the people know that their ruler is there for them.

Ignore the noises of your palace; not all of your servants are that bright, but they make the Marble Empire run smooth as silk. Your goal is out there, in the open. Ignore that pesky worm, offering you his services. You don't need them. You can walk out, and find the people by yourself. Your magnetic presence will take care of that.

Fresh air in your face, you majestic creature. All of the things around you, every plant and every soul, you own them. They are yours, and they behave accordingly. If the tree grows, it does so to please you. You don't even need to give the order; it happens. The tree is a tree, and the stone is a stone, because you wish them to be that way. The integrity of the whole world depends on your desire, on your every whim. Wish it to exist, and it will exist. Wish it to disappear, and it will banish into the thin air.

Look there, in the square. A large group of people are gathered for no apparent reason. We both know why they are there: because you want them to be there. They don't notice you, at first. But that mistake is easy to correct.

The world around you depends on your will.

Let it exist.

Let it exist to please you.

Let it elevate you to your deserve spot in it.

The Czar is the Czar, because the world wants him to be the Czar.

Be the Czar.

The world is begging you.

[PRESENCE: MAJESTY]

Look around. Can you feel it? It all lightens up. It's all bending to your will. Every atom around you is your servant. It all falls in its place. The puzzle is complete.

The mob turns around. They don't care about their menial issues anymore. There is something more important happening there, just in front of their eyes.

The Czar is happening.

Some of them drop to their knees. The rest just can't react. Their lives have meaning now, for the first time ever. They are here, on this planet, to serve a purpose. They are here to serve the Czar.

All is good now. Your soul is in its palace, sitting in its throne, overlooking a vast empire, an empire that compromises it all, from the material world to the digital lands; from the spiritual kingdoms, to the rational nations. You are the glue that ties them together. They can exist, thrive, and progress, only because they adore you.

Their free will is the will to serve you.

Turn back. Go back to your fortress. Your dominance is clear now.
Ilya entered the fortress, and dropped to the ground. Some blood was finding its way out of his mouth. Rostik ran beside him, worried to the core. He managed to drag his master's body to the sofa, and went to the basement. After half a minute, he was back, with a bag of blood in his hand. He pressed it to Ilya's mouth, and sighed relieved when he saw him drinking. The eyes of the Ventrue were lost, blank. He was staring at the nothingness, lost in the abyss of his own imagination. He made it. And the price was monstrous.
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Oleg's Voice

You may know me as Yuri Mikhailov or as Khoza.
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Tsar Ilya the First
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Claiming Tsar
* * * *
Pain. Severe pain. Massive headache.

Vampires don't get hangovers, do they?

Well, apparently they do. What happened last night?

I was there, walking through that street, putting my thoughts in order. That's when I heard it. Those voices. The voices of the machines, raising to the sky, preaching to a higher entity that just doesn't exist. The robots polishing their carrot circuits, so the stick mechanisms make a bigger impact.

The voices, raising from the tonic, to the third, to the fifth, to the seventh, the eight, and even the thirteenth... Dancing together... the fat bass holding the frame of the others, giving them a ground so they can jump and play. The baritones adding that unmistakable identity, that unique character. The altos filling in the blanks, proficiently jumping through the most alien melodies, absolutely nonsensical on their own, but tragically beautiful when fitted between the others. The mezzos and the tenors, playing jumping in circles, holding hands like twin brothers, pushing the whole ensemble up, to the skies. On top of them, above them all, the sopranos, the delicate dancers, pirouetting around, showing off in arabesques and sophisticated jumps in the air. A perfectly well greased machine, made of more machines. Voices. A choir. Gospel.

To my right, there was that building, that old office building, now transformed into a place of worship. Academy of Life, that's what the sign says. There were words about love, and such strange concepts. I entered. Upstairs, after some filthy corridors, the main meeting room. Old blue carpet and neon lights, shiny pieces of purple fabric hanging here and there, trying to make that old school corporate environment a holy feeling. Fail. They were there. Singing. Singing to God. The pastor was guiding them, pointing their voices at the sky, at the elevated nature of their faith. Praying with the strength of their lungs for a higher power to come to save them, for an answer from the sky. They wanted to see the messiah.

I was there.

They saw me, and their voices went quiet. The pastor started crying, and the flock turned towards me, shouting, praying, kneeling. I walked among them, and they timidly touched me. I just put my hand on their foreheads, and looking at them, full of cold peace. They shivered away, feeling happy, guilty, and relieved of their uncomfortable free will.

I was a Czar walking among those less privileged intellectually. If they wanted to believe me their god, I was not going to correct their impression. I sat in the Pastor's chair, and rambled about for a while, talking nonsense, spewing the first words that came to my mind. They swallowed them, and begged for more.

That's what happened last night.

Last night I became a god.

Then it all went away.

And they got angry. They stopped seeing that God, and started perceiving a snake in their midst. They turned hostile towards me. I had to defend myself. But my whole body, my soul, was shaking. The pain was too much to handle.

I barely made out of there in one piece, and I called my transport. That's all I remember.

I'm going in too deep. I need to stop this. It is going to kill me. How could I believe, for a second, that I was a god?

But... am I anything but a god?

What am I?

Who am I?

Am I?
Languages:

Russian, Japanese, English, French, Finnish, German

Oleg's Voice

You may know me as Yuri Mikhailov or as Khoza.
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Tsar Ilya the First
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Claiming Tsar
* * * *
Oh no, never again. Never again climbing up the mountain of my hollow ego, fuelled by self indulgence and ambition; never again fooling myself into believing I'm more than a mere vessel for a course of events to happen. I am just a walking corpse, less of a thing than those undignified and sweaty flesh machines. No more believing that I'm worth more than the ash I will become when my time comes.

What are you talking about, your majesty? The people of your empire need you. Your responsibility over this whole world is too big to give it up like that. Can you imagine what would happen if you stopped wishing their existence to be a reality? They would all disappear, erased from this world and forever forgotten. It is your responsibility to raise above the fear, and seize the holy position you deserve. Grab it, even if it hurts.

I'm not good for that. I'm just a cowardly shell of a real Czar. A hermit crab living in the husk of a majestic demigod. I tried, and I failed.

You succeeded.

The price is too high. I can't afford losing the last threads of my sense of reality, my anchor to what's meaningful and important.

Believe in what you are, my lord. Believe that you are here to rule us all, and to imagine and construct a whole universe for us to live in. What would we become if you were not there, dreaming our lives, making them happen inside your head? Would we even be? My Lord, you owe us that much, you owe us the gift of life, of memory, the sacred chance of leaving an imprint in this world. Without you, that will never be possible. Will you let us dissolve in the watery void, just because you can't face the truth of your condition? Just because you can't assume who you are, what you are?

I am what I am, and I deserve nothing but what I got. Aspiring for more, planning on flying higher than the sky, is what will make me burn, like Sir Hewson before me. He wanted to be a God, too, and he was eaten alive by his worshippers.

Oh majesty, oh my Lord... How deep are you in your own web of excuses and self justifying lies, that you can't even make sense of what is a fact and what is a fantasy? Lord Hewson never even got close to achieving his dreams of divinity; Maxim and you murdered him before he could even start walking that path. That story... that fairy tale about the mountain people, and the spiritual elevation of Sir Hewson... that was the lie you created to make his murder more bearable, easier to justify. You are miles above what Sir Hewson ever imagined he would achieve. You just need to embrace it.

Lies. All lies. And I cannot, for my life, navigate between what's real and what's not. How do you expect me to impose this new lie upon myself? How do you expect me to force myself to believe that I'm that majestic creature, that god, that Czar?

I don't. That's what you are actually doing. You are forcing yourself to believe that you are that little man, that damaged flesh machine, crawling through this world, seeking a salvation that will never come. You spend so much energy convincing yourself that you are not the Czar you are meant to be, you end up being your only obstacle.

I am not that Czar. I am just trying to survive...

SHUT UP! You snivelling worm. You make me sick. Such a display of weakness and self indulgence. Power is not a privilege, but a responsibility. You cannot just give it up because it hurts, or because it makes you feel uneasy. You can only grab it, and make it yours. Otherwise, you are just a waste of space, a waste of imagination. You are not even worth the effort I make imagining you day after day. Your cowardice makes me want to stop dreaming you once and for all, and free the world of your petty existence.

No... My lord, please... I...

Stop stuttering and accept your position in this world. You were not created to hide in a dark corner, where it is just safe. You were made to shine, to blind them with the blazing lights of the future, to become a beacon of purity in the middle of a swamp of filth and corruption. You are the Czar.

I... I am the Czar.

You are godlike.

I am godlike.

Now rule, my lord.
The man in the suit stood up. Some people around him shushed him, tried to make him move. A man even said some harsh words. The film was still being projected in front of the hundred people gathered there. Some ridiculous story about a comedian being chased by the shadow of his superbly heroic self, who happens to be a bird and a man. Ilya had not paid any attention to the film, though. He had gone there to surround himself with meaningless noise, and to shut up the nagging voice that was haunting him. The effect was not the one he had intended. The voice had chased him into the dark room, and tormented him through half the film. He gave up.

Standing up, in the first row of a cinema, in front of about a hundred people watching that strange film... He was completely out of place. Or, looking at it under a different light, the place was completely out of him. He needed to tune the place to his own vibrations.

[PRESENCE: MAJESTY]

And so, like a shockwave, the surge of change propagated from his core, washing the dark room in its entirety, repairing the perception of the flesh machines gathered there, reprogramming them to understand that they were in the presence of the Czar, and that they were meant to adore him. And so they did.

It was so easy now. He just needed to believe it. He needed to acknowledge that simple truth about himself, that single piece of information that made it all so uncomplicated.

He was the Czar, and these people were there because he had wished them to exist.

Simple.
Languages:

Russian, Japanese, English, French, Finnish, German

Oleg's Voice

You may know me as Yuri Mikhailov or as Khoza.
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Tsar Ilya the First
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Claiming Tsar
* * * *
Study on Social Reprogrammation,
by Czar Ilya I of North London


What was once a terrible effort is now a second nature. It is, in fact, very hard to disguise my true nature in front of the other creatures. Like Henry V, I need to willingly hide my royal nature from the peasants, in order to level with them and learn what they are thinking. If that is what I have to do, so be it, but beneath the skin of a regular man, lies the purple velvet of an Emperor.

It has nothing to do with the attire, the target, or the gradual imposition of my charm. It is all inside. It's a matter of believing that I am who I am. I still don't understand why it was so hard for me to get this, why I was so weak? I was afraid of raising to my true stature, and showing the world that I was here. Not anymore.

I'll be careful, though, as people react in unpredictable ways when facing grandiosity. I need to understand my people if I want to rule over them. I will not be able to see them for what they are if I keep on blinding them with my royal light. There is a next step in my road to the throne. I may be the Czar, but nobody will recognize me as such if I don't learn how to understand them.

Empathy, it's called. The ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. No matter how high or low that target is, Empathy always has its space. I lack that skill. I am not Empathetic. I need to learn to see life through other people's eyes.

I've seen Maxim doing that in the past. He grabs his target, stares at them for a long time, and he... he becomes them. He gets to be literally inside of them, looking at the world through their eyes, and feeling it through their skin. I need to learn to do that, so I can understand what peasants think and live. I need to develop that form of piercing Empathy, and become a master of understanding other people's feelings and thoughts. Maxim will help me, no doubt.

This process has taught me who I am. It has taught me also how complex and delicate is the layered world of self delusion. While trying to convince myself that I was what I am in reality, I had to break layers of self imposed lies, excuses for my own weakness, old security systems, put there in the first place to avoid hurting myself when going too fast, but not necessary anymore. I am more of myself than I was before, and I got to this point by trying to convince myself of things that were not apparently real.

Now I know.

Now I am.

Tzar Ilya I
Languages:

Russian, Japanese, English, French, Finnish, German

Oleg's Voice

You may know me as Yuri Mikhailov or as Khoza.
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