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The Times
The Kindred Chronicle
Key Figures
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.

Your fate is your own. Mingle among the ivory-tower elite in the Camarilla, join the fight of the discontented and chaotic Anarch rabble, or set out independently and attempt to survive in London's nighttime underworld. Anything is possible in our World of Darkness.

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The French Influence; [Presence: Intensification] Training #2
Topic Started: Friday, 24. July 2015, 13:03 (203 Views)
Tsar Ilya the First
Member Avatar
Claiming Tsar
* * * *
Last month's experience had taught him a valuable lesson: the act of creation could not be isolated from the object of the creation. The same way one could not be a father in an abstract sense of the word, without a specific son or daughter, one could not be a creator without a specific creation. A father was never a father, but a "father of". Ilya had been trying to create... anything. The object of the creation had never been important, but a mere excuse for his creative ambitions. That way, he would never be able to actually leave the imprint he wanted to leave in this sad world.

He thought about the painful irony of his ambition; all of this was geared towards one of the oldest and shallowest goals ever: immortality. What did immortality mean for somebody who was already immortal? Why would an eternal creature like himself want to have any sort of legacy? It just defied logic. And yet, the impulse was there. Stronger, although subtler and harder to detect, than the very survival instinct that commanded him to feed every night. For some reason that defied logic, he wanted to remain there, even though his own vary nature somehow guaranteed his persistence in that world.

So, the only way of achieving those huge ambitions of immortality, of painting that desired "big picture", involved focusing all of his attention in the objects of his creativity. Creating them with a bigger plan in mind wasn't going to work. He needed to forget his goals in order to achieve them. In a way, it had a reminiscence of the Greek mythology, with Perseus slaying Medusa by not paying attention to her. He needed a project in which he could dump all of his creative juices, only to later use that project as a step in his ladder towards true immortality. For a while, that project was going to be everything for him... then, he would discard it, probably repulsed at the results.

He considered the ways he could embark himself in such an adventure, but those ways were limited. He could try his hand at music, composing a piece on the piano that mirrored his own shattered emotional self. But that seemed too cold and mathematical. He could get some clay, or flesh, and turn it into a sculpture of sorts, listening to the raw materials to extract their own true souls to the surface. The mere thought seemed too vain and uninvolved for his taste; modern day visual artists were frequently too self absorbed and dishonest to have any relevance. Painting had a similar problem, in the age of design and multi media. Traditional art forms were hard to justify in today's technologically oriented world.

He could tell a story. A story that was as honest as everything in his life; the biggest lie ever told, painted with the brush of truth. The idea excited him greatly. He remembered his sire, Roman, brain washing his brother and his sister, even himself, and filling their minds with those impossible stories, making them really believe they happened... he did so himself, helping Roman do the nasty work with ghouls, and other Kindred. This happened quite recently with his new servant, Rui. He projected an incredibly complicated story in his mind, and ensured his loyalty and madness in the process. He could write a story of that caliber, narrating his own biography, but in a way that didn't reveal his identity, or his true nature. He could tell his own story, substituting the most relevant elements with metaphors and conceptual translations. He could be honest, he could share what was in his soul, but in a way that didn't endanger his life.

He sat in front of his computer, and he started writing.
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
Member Avatar
Claiming Tsar
* * * *
A week passed, and he barely came out of his basement. At times, he just took a walk around the fortress, trying to focus his ideas, and come up with new solutions. He had started his chronicle in Tsaritsyn, before the Revolution, under the shadow of a dying regime... the realism was interesting, but he felt forced to leave plenty of holes in his plot. Just the idea of not referring to his family as "Senkin" was quite complicated, all things considered. He wrote about a hundred pages, and he got stuck in the episode of his father's death. Not because it was a painful memory; it was, but there was more to it. Telling that story without speaking of his Moscovite cousins...

He went out and walked through the closed market. It was hard to focus on telling a story, when he couldn't tell the story. How was he supposed to put his own life on paper if doing so in a honest way was so dangerous? The challenge was simply overpowering. He could change the names, the surnames, the locations... but it still read as Senkin. How could he skip the part where he had to explain that he was, in fact, a Vampire? Otherwise, the idea of him living for so long wouldn't make any sense either... It was a very complicated issue.

Pondering about the Senkin problem, something twisted in his mind. An idea. He could be more than himself... there was no need for him to appear as a single character. Same thing could be said about Roman, and Maxim, and Valera... and his ancestors... Instead of old vampires, they could be... many people. It was not the story about a man... it was the story about a dynasty.

He ran back home, and sat in front of the computer, deleting page after page, and editing what was left. What was a simple and direct narrative about a man surviving against all odds, became a complicated web of relationships and interactions between related characters, moving forwards towards the survival of a dynasty. Inner dialogues became real dialogues, letters, messages... it was blooming in a way that amazed Ilya, as his own biography became a tree, with branches that were characters, facets of his own selves... The characters in his environment also transformed into multitudes... the scope of the story grew, and grew...

Sunrise caught him sitting in front of his keyboard and, when he woke up, he had a couple thousand pages filled with the letter Q. He was excited about his own project, all bigger ambitions forgotten, all of his inhumane and detached nature swept away by the magic of the simple act of telling stories. For once, Ilya was like a real human being.
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
Member Avatar
Claiming Tsar
* * * *
Three hundred pages of complicated family trees, betrayals, adventures, murders and affairs later, he was getting somewhere. The references to the Soviet regime, with the secret society he had created to make things reasonable -The Scarlet Fist-, was becoming huge, monstrous, massive. He couldn't stop writing for one minute, such was the pressure of his memories trying to escape his fingers. He had to be very careful not to reveal his own origins in every line, not to shatter the disguise he was using to mask all the characters, to avoid the idea of blood sucking monsters prowling the nights... it was all getting increasingly difficult and, the more he had to twist things around, the more complicated the whole story became. When he hit the five hundred page mark, he realized he needed some perspective. He needed a reader who was ready to understand his work, and to give him an honest and objective opinion. Where could he find such a smart audience... The answer was, obviously, closer to home than expected.

He printed the whole thing, and started reading. Who better than himself to judge his own work? He devoured the whole thing. It was fascinating, exciting... it was a masterpiece. It all made sense, and the references were deep and interesting. There was a wealth of culture and knowledge poured into those pages... those pages had love, passion, everything... He felt like he had conquered the world of arts, in just one piece, one masterpiece.

But there was a bugging feeling in the back of his head... maybe he was not being purely objective... maybe he was not the best audience to judge his own work... after all, somebody once said that art was nothing without an audience. Maybe he needed to let intellectually inferior creatures judge him... even if that idea was so repulsive...

He printed two copies, and gave them to Rostik and Olga. If he wanted to find simpletons to evaluate his prowess and admire his magnificence, he couldn't wish to find anything lower than that. He waited. A week passed... nothing. They were still reading. How long did an idiot need to read just 500 pages? Another week, and they were about to finish. About time. The finished a few days later, and they came to him, trembling. They were probably too excited to explain with words how majestic was his writing...

"My lord... I liked the fact that... there were words there. And they were in order... Sentences... and characters... a lot of characters... I counted one hundred and thirty main characters, and then I lost count..."

"One hundred and forty six, I think. They were... a lot."

"So, you liked it? Is it good?"

"Good? That is hard to say... it is..."

"Complicated. That's it. It is very complicated."

"That means good. Right?"

They were pale as chalk. Obviously too scared to talk. Olga managed to get her courage up, and spoke.

"I am sorry, my Lord... it is not good. It is impossible to understand. I really have no idea what's it all about. I couldn't understand a word after page two. It is... unbearable. I had to skip whole chapters to get by. In a word, reading this is... torture."

He slapped her. And then he slapped Rostik. Then he send them away. This was immensely frustrating.
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
Member Avatar
Claiming Tsar
* * * *
THE MEANING OF ART
PART II

I tried to focus and deepen on the conceptual side of things, but it seems my mind is not ready to create things for the mass audience. At least, not in its purest state. Maybe taking my own life as a template was a mistake, or maybe I tried to go over board with the complications. My two servants' perspective, even if it's hurtful and unfair, seems accurate. They are stupid, we all know that, and their primate brains cannot reach my heights... but if I am to become immortal through my works, I need to be able to reach a bigger audience. They are the perfect control subjects; if they get it, and enjoy it, then I am in the right path. After all, it is not art if it has no audience, and my novel apparently had no possible audience.

It is frustrating, but I am learning something in the process. Flesh machines are inferior beings, that is for sure, programmed to respond only to the most basic impulses, and to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. They are fragile, weak, simple... they even smell bad. However, they are good at creating art. I don't know why I never considered this before... all the music I love, all the literature I ever enjoyed... all of that -or most of it- was created by flesh machines... mortals... Their works have managed to move me to points where no real interaction has ever moved me. Where does that skill come from? How can such unevolved beings create such delicate pieces of art? And why is it that, when I try to do something similar, the results are so bad?

This all leads to very dark places, to places where I feel I am the inferior one, the parasite leeching the life out of these healthy magnificent creatures I call "Flesh Machines"... maybe I am just that, a simple parasite, unable to create, enjoying some second hand immortality, but doomed to roam endlessly this world without a purpose... it would be a very sad thing... and it feels so real...

I will not give up so easily. Just one more try and, if I fail... I will have the answer. I will understand that I am not that important, and that the world doesn't need me. This is a desperate call to myself... I hope I will measure up to my own expectations...
Languages:

Russian, Japanese, English, French, Finnish, German

Oleg's Voice

You may know me as Yuri Mikhailov or as Khoza.
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