tithe
[High Society Influence! Char + Infl. 10-4. Diff: 6.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
tithe
[If things go well, a theoretical Presence roll. Awe. Remember how much y'all like me later. -BP. Char + Perf. + Specialty: Magnetic? We'll WP it because self-preservation and determination.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
CC
Witnessed!
(See V. for more information.)
There should be a VII. which is more Humanity-dealing-with, but I'm never going to send this damned mood-post off if I don't send it now, so here you go! Tell me things! Tell me things I should do, roll, write, whatever.
And look forward to a much-easier-to-write Jack post coming eventually. :)
Love,
Jess
--
The Art of Discipline: A Toreador's Primer
The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep burning, unquenchable.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
They require practice and they require will. They require blood, too. Blood is potential. Blood ispromise. Blood is immortality, and years to gain control. Of course they require blood. Of course they're gifts in the blood.
They: the vampiric powers, called Disciplines because they're each a sub-field of study under the general heading 'study of power.' They're called Disciplines because they require a measure of self-discipline to understand at the higher levels.
Lux applies herself to learning like the infernal choir applies itself to mocking heaven or Michael applies his flaming sword to the Deceiver. 2013: the short nights are growing longer, a dark arm reaching with longing toward winter, inviting winter back to Denver, and as the air is more often filled with darkness, Lux applies herself deliberately to the study of two Disciplines.
Lux applies herself to a number of things.
There's no point in living without desire and she is a creature of desire, and so -
I. Anarchy
Hello, darling.
Either she calls St. Germain or she finds him. Likely (?) the latter. Finds him: gets him in a corner. Hello, darling. Head's up. Be aware. There's a mad-eyed pyro whose tongue drips grease and thinks he's slick instead of a stain. Dogwood ghoul without attachment. He's in town and so proud of his 'mistress.' I know for a fact he's made contact with the More Brutal Set, but who knows what'll happen? Just keep an eye out and don't get made into vintage-on-tap, hm?
Speaking of, how's Edward? Has he disappeared with the company funds yet?
Either she calls Ezra or she finds him. Likely the former. Ezra, when are we going to get a chance to really chat? I want to hear your voice. Men like Ezra: surely, they want to see what their voice looks like on somebody like Lux (on somebody, on anybody). He gets the same information as St. Germain: Head's up. There's a mad-eyed pyromaniac with expensive taste and a greasy tongue who thinks he's so slick he won't slip up on his own oil. He's definitely made contact with the Soul-Sucking Set, so keep an eye out. It'd be awful if you were made into vintage-on-tap.
…Any more than you already are, that is! How are Edward and Simon these days? All going according to your -- or was it 'our' -- hopes, I hope?
II. Emphasis of Study
Her emphasis of study has been the Discipline of Celerity. Why? Did it wake first? After the death, before any other promise [you'll never see the sun again], was grace the first thing to quicken in her blood, express itself as skill and power? Is that why she honed it -- because it was first?
Imagine, okay? Imagine the thrill of discovery. How suddenly even the most careless gesture was refined into a poised thing, a thing of intention. Easier to walk an edge without falling. Easier to catch a knife without bleeding. Easier to fix a clock or untwist a knot or pick a lock or play Paganini's Caprice #24. Easier to be swift. Easier. Easy. Easier to be precise without effort or to run or to jump or to dance or to keep a steady hand. Imagine, okay? That's just the passive benefit of possessing a knowledge of Celerity.
Harder to knock down. Harder to trip up. Harder to stumble and fall.
Imagine using it. The thrill of using the blood which promises Forever-Unless-Stopped. Sacrifice an edge of satiation, a measure of surety, and in payment become so fleet, so devil-quick, you'd have a chance at outracing a fallen star.
Imagine that first time: being so quick you know you are no longer human. Listen. It's more than just moving faster. You're forcing the Night to concede you extra Time -- not literally. The minute is still just a minute. But you can do more in a minute! So you have more minutes than someone without Celerity does. Do more with less.
Lux wants every second. Of course she has studied the Discipline of Celerity. And the rebel host needed to be quicker than the fire of their wings 'lest they burnt before they came to their new dominion (reign in Hell [serve no heaven]). Have less. Do more. It feels good.
But did she place such an emphasis on it because it was the first Discipline she understood? Or just to be contrary? There are those who say 'what's there to know? You go faster. And then?' There are those who say why spend so much time on such a limited school of power. There's only so much you can do. There's nothing to it. Look at the Discipline of Dominate where you can go from a one-word command to erasing a memory to changing a memory. Look at the Discipline of Obfuscate where you can pass invisibly, change your face, hear things that others would keep from you. What's going fast compared with all that?
Lux thinks they're fools.
There are the quick
and the dead.
If she weren't already quick, she'd want to be. But she is: quicker than many, if not most. That shadow, over there? She thinks she could outrace it. That gang of menace, right over there? Oh, she could outrace that, too, or stab the first in the gut, steal the other's gun, shoot the other in the head and kick the other in the stomach before they had more time than to make a single grab, to square their shoulders and menace with all the menace possible. She could always run.
But she doesn't want to run from Denver itself, so the Discipline of Celerity is not one of the two Disciplines she turns her mind to increasing her control over as the nights grow longer and more tender, readying themselves for cold again. No.
III. A Presence
Where is he?
He has dissolved like a bad film reel into nothing, vanished as if he was never in a box under rugs in a warehouse in Aurora. Aurora: should've known better. Aurora means dawn. Aurora means to rise again: should've kept him somewhere else. Should've put more security in place. Should've slept over him in the day. Should've made him finally dead. Should've mailed him to one of the siblings-by-blood with a note. Should've visited more often.
Where is he?
He is in the new tarnished-up radiance of the narrow sweep of her gaze. He is in the shadow when she turns her head, giving a room a side-long inspection, and the promise of something long and wooden for stabbing, never left behind. He is in the determined set of her chin and the occasional kiss of tension at the nape of her neck, pressed there like a benediction (absolute [never]) and a reminder you're alive for now but only for now conditional immortality is conditional. He is in her more introspective moments. He is in her decision to leave this place early, or to go to that place later, to speak to this person or that.
Where is he? Where are they? Where is he being kept? Where is he keeping himself?
Who knows where he was? Who hired the professionals and what next?
He is a presence. He always has been, but this new not knowing, this new shape makes her angry and afraid. She wants to lash out. Instead, she makes decisions that draw people around her like shields or weapons or both. Instead, she makes a deliberate decision to study two Disciplines, neither of which is Celerity. She already knows she is quick enough. (She could be quicker.)
Because - mostly, not entirely - of him she goes once to Elysium. Richthofen Keep which couldn't keep itself safe. Nosferatu. Never trust 'em. Don't mistrust them because they're ugly, mistrust them because the invisible man was a dick who did abhorrent things because nobody knew it was him and that's all Nosferatu. Henrietta's head arrests her attention for a long time. She studies it with her head tilted, just so, to the side, and one arm wrapped around her waist, the index finger of her other hand touched to the side of her mouth, and a languid curve to her spine. She studies it for a long time. Perhaps it is beginning to dissolve into ash when she visits. Perhaps she can't quite parse the expression that was on Henrietta's face when her head was sliced off by an Assamite.
Look at her. Perhaps she is wondering, it looks as if she is wondering, whether or not Henrietta was responsible for her own sire's last actions -- hm?
Perhaps she is just wondering what Henrietta looked like underneath all that ugliness. She doesn't go to stare at gruesome trophies.
The night she goes to Elysia she goes to be social [to inquire, to see] and to be brave.
Little rebellion: against hiding, against fear.
IV. The Discipline of Presence
Her second emphasis of study has been the Discipline of Presence. The first time she became aware of the similarity between her clan's favored Disciplines and clan Brujah's favored Disciplines she was told: The difference is because we look at and see the world. They try to wrestle it into submission.
Maybe Lux's potential as a Presence-user was initially unlocked consciously because it was clear she'd have a talent for certain applications of it. Look at her. Study the Discipline. Love as war. Beauty as a spell and a weapon and a chain and a command and a net. You are compelled to love & to want & to be chained with devotion & because you want it because the wanting isyour wanting you will not hate it and you will not know. You are drawn to the center & I have become the center. You yearn to be closer. You. Your thoughts. Your mind. Your little ways. Your little clevernesses and machinations. You are drawn, little moth. Be entirely yourself. And be mine.
So maybe it was that kind of natural talent combined with an involuntary flex of [Awe and Beauty] blood like blood had memory the way muscles can have memory that started her off on the study of the most (?) subtle of Disciplines. Or maybe it was curiousity: What can those who possess this Discipline do? What should I be aware of? What might I need to resist?
Lux believes in the individual's will to conquer anything. Lux doesn't like vitae-as-addiction as an enslaving-poison to give the kine. Lux believes in the individual.
Of course she studies the Discipline of Presence. The power of control without slavery: all's fair, so she wraps heart-strings around her fingers, plies them, plays them, pulls them this-a-way, that-a-way. She already knows how to gather a fistful, just enough to Awe, just enough to draw-in, and she already knows how to give those strings a yank, how to undilute her own menacing aura, make her hate and her fury a thing terrible in its beauty, a terror-thing, run away, run away, just yank those strings, shrill them sharp.
The nights are growing longer, and so, if she has anything to do with it, is her proficiency.
And one night soon, she'll call a name and the owner of that name will come, no matter what they want, no matter how much better they know.
V. Applying the Discipline: A Story of Influence
Finding the right crowd requires leg-work, but she's a lodestone and she's already 'in' and even when her patience is a fraying thread she is calculating. Even when there's that shadow-kiss tension at the nape of her neck or the potential for a bloody mess she is thinking one-two-three steps ahead. The people Lux wants are people who occupy the ven diagram overlap with another crowd she doesn't yet have a touch of influence over but oh she wants to be able to push-and-pull.
Who is who? Where are the who's who going to be?
High Society ---------------- University
[Academics
Performing Arts Complex
Robert & Judi Newman Center for Performing Arts
The ___________ Foundation]
Lux starts with her own. This hot art & literary critic, a blogger who knows everybody who's anybody, who knows a photographer who's currently working on a project with a painter who makes money by designing sets and assistant directing for this center-over-here (when not bar-tending, of course), who's friends with -- here's a fork in the road, perhaps? -- this gallery-owner with ties to that museum's library which is associated with this branch of DU, or maybe this wealthy lawyer alumni of DU who does work for the Burne-Thomas Art Foundation, or maybe --
Leg-work. Society-work. Lux, willfully making her shadow grow: but this is a how-to.
After she finds the right crowd, or thinks she's found the right crowd, she twists her Toreador blood into action, into active power, changes the gravity of the situation so heart-strings twist around her fingers, invisible but surely they are there and hers for light motions, just don't tugtoo hard, they still own themselves. Understand that it's like a pressure: rushes in [like foam-laced-with-blood, drag-back] and knocks over the weak(-willed) first. Who wants weakness? Not Lux. But she'll use them to get her hooks further in:
The best impression is a killer first impression. Denver's at war. She knows. Humanity gives her something to do with her thoughts besides brood.
[Where is-?]
[What if-?]
[Who-?]
VI. The Third Discipline
The Discipline of Auspex is the discipline of observation, understanding, of omens and of intuition. The Discipline of I see you and I know you and I hear you. The Discipline of Vision and Visionaries.
It's not a Discipline that Lux has proficiency in. Yet. The potential is dormant in her blood, is close to the surface, wants be remembered and used, but it's been dormant for so many years, and her areas of interest so focused on the Disciplines of Quick-and-Graceful and Love-Me-Fear-Me-I-Am-Here, that when she decides to (finally!) try and wake the understanding-that-is-her-
Lux always thought somewhere behind her conscious thoughts, somewhere she didn't have to actually take the thought out to look at it and judge it, that Auspex would come when it wanted to come, that one night she'd be engaged and then she'd taste something she'd never tasted before in the delectable flow of sweet blood, or she'd hear something, hear something important happening around a corner, or she'd be in trouble and suddenly she'd just see on a level she'd never seen on before.
But she wants it now. There's an "If only" attached to the Discipline of Auspex. If only I'd spent time interpreting signs I'd have known what to do. I could've touched one of those filthy nails and seen the face of the bastard who played break-out. If only. If only. If only. She wants it now. That edge.
How does Lux--who is determined, who doesn't let anything deter her once she's set her mind to it, who is intractable--study the third Discipline her clan is known for possessing? Sheer fucking willpower? Yes.
But also she works for it and works at sharpening her perceptions against the whettstone of Denver nights. Lux, hanging out in the library at DU, hanging out in used bookstores that are open very late, looks for books by philosophers and reads what they have to say, and then she reads journals of artists and art criticism that circles around the idea of experiencing the world, of clarity, and she re-reads some old letters in her possession about perception and sight and dreams, and she starts to build a philosophy. Maybe this is what she does when she visits Richthofen: Maybe she talks about perception -- maybe there's a library and she finds a book she doesn't have and won't likely get elsewhere and curls up to read it.
Applying knowledge to intuition.
When she goes out, she forces herself to be attentive to her surroundings, to the movements of the shadows, forces herself not to feel adrenaline in her cold heart like a snarl of thorns, forces herself to be considerate. When she goes out, she tries to unchain her mind:
One night, after rain sweeps Denver's streets clean and silver, makes the man-lit city a dark surreal reflecction, Lux pauses outside of a bar, predator-still though who'd ever think it? The rain is a mist and it has given all the street lights and headlights and lights radiance halos visible coronas like a dreaming sleepy image that softens the city and she looks at the halos delineated by the rain and when someone else comes out of the bar she almost imagines a halo around them too. As if people are always burning, are always candles, but tonight she can almost see it, can see what it will look like once she sees, and it's a fine thing. The rain sweeps Denver's streets clean and silver, but it makes the darkness darker, more viscuous, shows you as you walk on it that you are in the dark city, until it swallows you up.
Water has always been a visionary element.
Lux pauses outside a bar, and sees all this, and her mouth sets in a determined line.
I'll get it by winter.
--
And then she did, yay XP-spending.
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