Shakespeare 2020

Shakespeare 2020

by Simon W.

I have decided that I'm going to be going along with Ian Doesher's grand scheme to read every word written by William Shakespeare in one calendar year. As it happens, next year specifically, 2020. I was introduced to this project by a friend who knows that I am a fan of Shakespeare and I'm gonna run with it.

Now, you might wonder why anyone would want to do this. Or maybe you just wonder why I want to do this. Let me enlighten you a bit on my personal history with the Bard.

When I was growing up I was that kid who read everything I could get my hands on. And often I would find myself without library or school books because I'd already read them and it was a weekend or something. Which meant that I'd head to the bookshelf of books that was always full of books that my parents owned. Somewhere in late elementary school I happened to be looking for something to read and I found a small volume entitled The Stories of William Shakespeare. I can't remember exactly how many it had, but I want to say it was about a half dozen of Shakespeare's plays written out in modern language and narrative fashion with relevant quotes interspersed though the re-tellings. And I fell absolutely IN LOVE with the stories contained in there. 

It wasn't until I got to junior high school that I even knew that a) Shakespeare wrote plays, not stories and b) that it was considered weird to just want to read them. I found them in my school library and started making my way through them. The language, of course, was a bit of a barrier but what I didn't pick up from context I sort of glossed over in the way that lots of 12 year olds do when they are reading.

In high school we read a few Shakespeare plays as part of the normal English curriculum. I enjoyed them and was able to appreciate being in a position where I could have someone help me through some of the linguistics. And then in college, I decided that even though I was going to an Engineering school for a Biology degree that I wanted to take Shakespeare classes at the college level.

Over the course of my first two years in college I took five different Shakespeare classes and then wrote a giant (and horribly pretentious) essay on how the personal lives of the main characters in Shakespeare's Roman plays affected their politics. What can I say, I was 19 years old; you'll have to forgive me.

Believe it or not, after all of that... I actually haven't read all of Shakespeare's plays nor have I read any of his narrative poems. So this year I am going to fix that.

I plan to talk about my perceptions of what I read here over the course of the year. I don't promise it'll be great literary review. But I hope it'll be interesting... or at least amusing.

Simon W.

Connor - A Retrospective

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Connor - A Retrospective
by Simon W. 

Our first real conversation and our last conversation were about the same thing, the importance of Humanitas. If symmetry were important I could take comfort in this.

Symmetry isn't that important to me, alas. I could deal with a lopsided existence if my friends would stop dying... or being captured and "held indefinitely" by their Sect's internal police but that is a different friend and a different story.

Right now I want to talk about Connor, or if we are being formal Doctor Connor Villanueva, Lord of Sand and Sea. I remember when he got that title. I didn't see it; I was even then off chasing some demon or another (small d demon, I hadn't yet started chasing the large D kind); but from what I hear he stood against a Fae Lord because the Fae Lord in question was hurting people.

That was Connor in a nutshell; constantly standing up and telling people bigger, stronger, or more powerful than himself "no". It's part of why we got along, because we have... no had; I have to use the past tense for him now.

We had that in common.

Connor had his faults, mostly in the fact that he was overeager and impetuous. He also tended to lean toward self-righteousness. Again.... we had those things in common. I still have those faults. And now I'm not sure who to share them with. Because Connor was deeply empathetic and he understood what I did even while it worried him.

I don't even know why he was killed. And I don't know if I will be able to do anything about it. It's gotten to the point where my list of enemies is so long and so dangerous that getting vengeance for the murder of my friend isn't at the top. Connor wouldn't want me to get vengeance though, so maybe this is actually the best way to honor who he was and what he thought was important.

I'm going to try and be a better person for his sake. I don't know if I'll succeed.

But our first and last conversations give me hope, and right now I need all of that I can get.

Change of Heart

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Werewolf: the Apocalypse live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Change of Heart
by Simon W. 

You ever meet someone and, for reasons you can't quite place, you instantly mistrust them? I don't know, maybe it's a Fenrir thing. But for about that past 18 months now I have been what can only be called skeptical if we're being polite and downright suspicious if we're being more accurate about a person.

Anyway, about a year and a half ago, Valka One Eye now called Valka Thrice Blessed reappeared after being shoved deep, DEEP into the Umbra by Grandfather Thunder. She came back with a new rank (Legend) and a new Vision (a unified Gaian Nation) and a new plan to achieve it based on prophesy she couldn't fully explain. And the plan, as she explained it to our Tribe, was that she was going to seek to become the High King of the Garou Nation...and then change the Garou Nation to a Gaian Nation.

I have nothing against the idea of unifying Gaians. And Gods know I have not been quiet about the fact that the Tribal Council is lousy at governance. But something about Valka just never sat right with me. I thought she was seeking Glory, and power, and her unwillingness to share more of the prophesy she'd been given in depth seemed both suspicious and convenient to me.

Maybe it's being kinfolk, or possibly it's just being me, but as far as I am concerned you can take your Glory and shove it. Honor and Wisdom are what I value and Glory ranks so low on my list of concerns on basically any day that ends in Y. So when I encounter someone who strikes me as vainglorious I react very badly to them. And that's what Valka struck me as.

I watched as she made her decisions, her proclamations, her challenges. Some of her initial ideas she was willing to amend after discussions within our Tribe and I was glad to see that. Hey, even I don't like to change my mind and admit that I'm wrong... and I don't have three Incarna spirits giving me their blessing so I was willing to concede that she was, very possibly, not all bad. But still I was skeptical.

I was skeptical when we found the Great Caern in the desert. I was skeptical even though she did with it exactly what she said she would do. By that point nearly everyone I knew believed that I was all in for Valka because we are both Fenrir and I suspect that fueled my skepticism. I hate being assumed to just follow the party line, as it were.

And then we went to Russia, to the Sept of the Crescent Moon. A whole lot of Fenrir and Silverfangs in very close proximity for a week of moots, songs, stories, some grieving, and then, finally, Valka's challenge. This did not go as any Fenrir expected. I'm still not certain that it didn't go exactly as some Silverfangs suspected but, as should already be obvious by now, I'm kind of a suspicious person.

When Jonas Albrect, High King of the Garou Nation, did appear I saw something. I don't know if anyone else was looking at Valka's face at that moment. But I was and I saw hope. I saw joy. I saw relief at her friend being able to speak to her again. And in that moment I realized that whatever reasons she had for challenging for High King, Valka was not doing it for personal glory in the slightest.

So I have changed my mind about Valka Thrice Blessed, High General of the Garou Nation. I'm not sure she and I will ever be friendly but I no longer think she is seeking personal glory. And that matters, at least to me.

See, sometimes I can admit when I am wrong... but Gods know I hate doing it.

Nightmares, Curses, and Consequences... Oh My!

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Nightmares, Curses, and Consequences... Oh My!
by Simon W

October 31, 2019 - Sundown

The blood was everywhere. On her hands from the countless times she'd murdered. In her eyes from the tears she'd cried from anger, frustration, and sorrow. And in her heart from the sheer uncountable number of times it had been broken. Love lost... dreams dashed... every negative human emotion centered on her. She adsorbed it into her very soul every night and then dreamed about it the following days.

It was exhausting. It was the combined negative energy of the eleventh most populated city in the United States and surrounding metro area. Nearly three and a half million people... nearly three and a half million private hells and they were all on her shoulders. Frankly, Marianne was starting to think that fighting against literal demons from hell was probably easier.

She wanted to stop. It was torture. But then she remembered the rain, the despair, the miasma that had overtaken the city when the other way had been tried. She sighed. This way was better. Which really just goes to prove that, as fascinating as they were, Donzella was absolutely correct about Mages being dangerous.

The nightmares each day were overtaken by memories each night. She saw the Infernal cultists fall before her in the church as they tried to stop the cleansing of a holy object. She remembered killing them and no matter how much she wanted to do otherwise she couldn't convince herself that it hadn't been a terrible and dire necessity. And hazy, half formed memories were surfacing... of being underground, of thaumaturgical rituals, and ancient hungry vampires.

***

The ritual was clearly thaumaturgy but it was old, so impossibly old. And the Kindred in the center of the warding circle was most certainly not a Tremere.

"My name is Umushtart - and I have been the guardian of this place for a very long time; since the day Tiberius expelled the Egyptians from Rome, and the twilight of the Xin Dynasty began to dim."

Before Marianne could ask any questions of this mysterious Kindred, there was an inhuman roar. It was impossible to tell if it were of fear, anger, or triumph. Umushtart spoke again, “You have come here seeking answers. And you shall have them - but you must help me stop them."

Marianne looked at Veda and Mrs. Sterling. "Who are they?" she mouthed at them. Umushtart answered: “The First Named. Childe of The Unnamed…”

The three Kindred who came at them were older and more powerful than anything Marianne had ever fought against. She had already been hurt more than once on the way down from disabling the thaumaturgical wards. She wished that the others were with them, but they'd gone down a side passage. Veda and Mrs. Sterling, both far more capable combatants than herself, drew their attention while Marianne helped where she could. Umushtart showed her abilities as a combat thaumaturge as well.

It was a brutal slog of a fight. Working together they managed to destroy first one, then another, of the ancient Baali until only The First Named remained. Even then, four on one, it was a struggle to not succumb to his fury. As there was a shake and a rumble of something happening down in the side passage that no one could see, he finally came to the end of his resources and the blow landed upon him that would kill him. Before he turned to ash he spit out words that were so full of venom they needed no translation. That was a curse and Marianne braced for impact.

The impact didn't come. Umushtart spoke, "Today...you have...ended a great and terrible evil. Your friends...below" she says, motioning down with her head as the other group arrives, carrying their wounded as well. "Did as much as you did. This place...and its contents...are yours now. The world...and my masters...will be..."

Whatever she meant to say no one ever heard as her veins turned black and she, herself, turned to ash.

***

The trip home was quiet and then, as though by magic, the memories had lay quiescent for months. Marianne suspected that what had been hidden in her psyche was probably the impetus behind her making the decision to learn to fight better; and her increasing desire to learn more and more about the infernal and demonic specifically so that she could destroy it. While the events of the last several months could be seen as impetus themselves, there had been an unexplained urgency to it all. An underlying motive which now was becoming clearer.

November 1, 2019 - Sundown

Marianne woke up from another day of nightmares. She suspected it was the Mage's working that had unlocked the memories she had lost over the summer. She sighed, and went to stand up. Instead of her effortlessly graceful movements though, she was slow, jerky, and the room looked... off.

She carefully made her way to the bathroom to wash up and prepare herself mentally for the night ahead. They all seemed so fraught lately. It was frustratingly more difficult than it seemed like it should be, as though her sense of balance were off somehow. She got to the bathroom, flipped the light switch and caught a look at herself in the mirror.

A stranger looked back at her. A stranger who had no left eye. As she stared in horror at her reflection the weight of everything that had happened in Italy the previous summer suddenly landed on her shoulders. The curse of The First Named had finally landed and nothing in the rest of her life was ever going to be the same...

Aftermath of Grief

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Aftermath of Grief
by Simon W 


Marianne unlocked her door and quietly entered her house. It had been a long night, or at least she assumed it had been. The last memory she had was when she had arrived at the other house. It was nearly dawn now. Soon she'd slip into another kind of oblivion; that of death-like sleep.

She suspected the memory loss was a side effect rather than the goal. Although, maybe it was a kindness on his part. God knew she appreciated the missing hours right now. She didn't know what, if anything, she thought about during the hours she couldn't remember but she could imagine.

Juanito and William's deaths upset her in the way that deaths always do. But she could at least feel content that they felt like they'd done what they were born to do. She didn't like it and she wished to God she could have prevented it. But one some level she knew that if they hadn't died fighting this demon they'd have thrown themselves at another one. She recognized herself in them that way. Elika's words spoken in grief barely touched her; not because Marianne felt the other woman was wrong, far from it in fact; but because she recognized both Elika's emotions and the kernel of truth in what she said. She had rushed in. She hadn't done it as heedlessly as Elika assumed; it had been part of the plan. Marianne had the magic sword and her job had been to distract and draw focus so that the other three could attack the demon. They were all much better fighters than she was.

Make that, rather, they had all been much better fighters than she was. Now they were dead, killed by the demon. She owed them her life, as they had taken the blows meant for her. Yes, they had killed the demon in the fight but it felt like a very hollow victory.

Spyder, on the other hand, never should have been there. He had never cared about demons and infernal stuff before. It hadn't been his passion or his cause in life to combat them. He'd been there because the people he'd sought refuge from were demon hunters. He should have been off partying with Lorena or trolling the Cammies with Julien. She had to accept that he'd been there primarily as some attempt to win back her affection and that gutted her. The last words he'd said to her before he'd died were that he loved her and she couldn't even wrap her brain around the fact that she didn't believe him. No one who had acted as selfishly and callously as he had could possibly understand what love was. But then, maybe that's what he'd thought love was? She'd never know now.

Marianne wandered through her house, full of books and artifacts. Memory loss was probably not the healthiest way to approach grief and guilt. But she'd be lying if she didn't admit that it was weirdly making things a little easier. For now at least... there'd be hell to pay later but she'd worry about that when it happened.

Revelations and Declarations

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Werewolf: the Apocalypse live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Revelations and Declarations
by Simon W

Autumn was coming to the mountains. The mornings were cool, the air was clear, thus far no fires had threatened. Inge was harvesting the vegetables from her garden and putting up supplies for the winter. It was an artifact of an earlier time but with the chaos that Pentex had managed to wreck with their plague, it seemed even more important than usual to Inge to depend less on the conveniences of modern society and more on the simpler pace of living in harmony with Gaia.

Things had been quiet lately. Some troubling rumors from Texas had her concerned. But with no tales sung and no public judgement from those tasked by Luna to do so, Inge was starting to think that they were simply rumors.  They had to be. Surely no Gaian would be as unflinchingly foolish as the rumors whispered.

The little Fog spirit that followed Inge everywhere she went manifested in front of her. She was surprised because normally it was far more subtle about getting her attention. "What do you...?" she began to ask but it stopped her.

"Just listen," it whispered.

As one, all of the spirits of the sept began keening and wailing in unison. Their grief and their anger were overwhelming. For a while it was incomprehensible and Inge could do nothing but bear witness to the spirits. She stood, arms held awkwardly around her pregnant belly, and listened as she'd been asked.

Finally, recognizable words and phrases made their way through the cacophony.

"Dead"
"She's dead"
"Murdered"
"Retaliation for our murder"
"We warned you; you did not listen"
"Murdered"
"Dead"

"Unicorn is dead. Murdered while She slept, vulnerable and unarmed. Who is next? How far does this go? Killing of the Incarnae has begun."

Inge began to shake; with grief, with rage; she practically vibrated in sympathy with the spirits. There was a reason those rumors had been so troubling. There was a reason Gaians didn't simply destroy Wyrm incarna, even if it seemed like a prime opportunity. There were RULES!

She finally was able to motivate herself to action when the Elder Child of Gaia theurge came raging and screaming to the sept. There were things that needed doing, people to be contacted, psychological triage to be seen to. She pulled out her phone and started frantically texting.

As she made her way to the central area of the sept she was already compiling lists in her head. Tea for the Elder, check on her sister, check on her friends, find out what Fog required...

Out of the corner of her eye she saw new spirits arriving. They came with determination in their eyes. Their black horns gleamed in the Autumn light.

Black Unicorn was awake. He was angry. And he wanted vengeance.

Letters Never Sent

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Letters Never Sent
by Simon W.
Dear Chris,
Why did you have to go back in a second time? You'd saved one man. Why was saving another crew member more important than your own life? You were so young. We were so young. Our lives together really had so much more potential. Your death left a hole in my heart that nothing, not blood, not friendship, not religion, nothing, has ever been able to fill. It's not your fault and I know for a fact that you didn't do it on purpose but your death broke me in ways I will be contending with for, well eternity possibly.

Dear Professor,
I probably could send this but I won't. Not the least of which because it would have to pass through so many hands and I know, even if not explicitly read, the general tone of my letter would be known by many before it got to you. You are still my best friend, distant though you are. You have, in the time I have known you, lied to me, angered me, probably even literally betrayed me. And I know that you always felt justified in doing it either to protect yourself or because you thought it would protect me. I only have it in me to forgive one person on earth for doing that. And it's you. And you're not even here anymore; you're off doing some research. I guess it just sucks for the rest of the world that you are the only one with a pass on forgiveness, eh?

Dear Everett,
I don't know if my biggest regret is that you died and I wasn't the one to pull the trigger myself or that you died and I couldn't save you. I loved you. And I hated you. And I love you. And I hate you. And I would probably move mountains to get one more conversation with you and if I were granted it I'd probably screw it up because I am a literal emotional basket case. And that's not even entirely your fault... but you're also not completely blameless either.

Dear Konstintin,
If you cared less I'd like you more. For the love of all that is holy you have got to stop trying to protect me, from myself, from the outside world, from the literal demons under your city. Just accept that I'm a lost cause. Please... please?

Dear Zia,
I know you care. I also know that you've figured out how to be sneaky enough to let me let you care. I don't know if I want you to teach everyone else your trick or if I want to swear you to secrecy about it. I waffle nightly on this.

Taggart,
At this point I think we associate due to sheer bloody stubbornness. You're a monster. You're a literal monster. And yet, there are far worse monsters out there and if you're willing to teach me to fight them I think associating with you is a fair trade off for that. Besides, everyone keeps telling me to stay away from you and while I'm not arrogant enough to simply assume that I am right and the entire rest of the world is wrong I have to admit that I am now curious enough to see just how far down this rabbit hole I can go. It's an odd feeling to be staring my own self destruction in the face and feel more curiosity than fear.

Spyder,
I have no heart left to break. I can't explain that to you. You took the last part of me with you when you "died" and I'm not able to withstand that pain again. Enjoy your new life because I will have no part of it. I make a lot of stupid mistakes but I'd like to think I don't make the same one twice.

Dear Vanessa,
I love you too. I shouldn't. I know I'm setting myself up for nothing but pain, drama, and probably in a few years I will hate you because I can't seem to NOT hate everyone I love eventually. But yeah, I love you too.

The Message

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Werewolf: the Apocalypse live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

The Message
by Simon W.

Inge sat on the lake's edge. The cool breeze off the water blew her hair around, strands that weren't caught and tamed by a braid flying about free in the orange and yellow light of sunset. This was one of her favorite times of day; even in the cold, dark days of her early widow-hood when she had been overwhelmed by the combination of grief and caring for small children, she had been able to find a moment's peace in the moment of sunset. Lately she had found herself feeling very far away from those dark times.

Dagmar had regained much of the spark she had lost in the Battle of the Sept of the Crescent Moon. No longer was she hiding behind beer or duty. She was willing to live again. Inge smiled to think that her sister might be granted a second chance at living. It had taken a long time to get to this point.

Her children were all living relatively happy lives. Relatively, of course, because any child born of the Nation was going to face hardship, work, and a never ending battle against the Wyrm. But for the moment her shifter born children seemed to find fulfillment in their duties to Gaia and her kinfolk born children had their jobs in the more mundane human world to turn to as well as the support they offered to their Garou family.

And then there was Wulf, and the beginnings of the new family to come. Inge hugged her rounded belly closely. She hadn't expected to fall in love a second time in her life, and she'd tried for a while to tell herself it was something different. But no, it was love and she was happy to fall, no to dive, into it and see where it led in all its glorious chaos.

Life was actually pretty good lately.

Her vision went dark. Darker than a cloud in front of the sun. Darker than night. Darker than what she could see behind her eyelids. The communications spirits that normally whispered their messages softly screeched in her mind:

"The Gaians will kill you all. Unite or die! Unite or die! The Gaians will kill you all. Unite or die! Unite or die! The Gaians will kill you all. Unite or die! Unite or die!"

And then followed a message of wrongness; a message told with reverence and love for the Wyrm. A message of Gaian victories told as failures, but even so, ones that could be overcome in the ultimate fight to bring victory to the Corrupter, the Destroyer, the End of All Things.

Nausea swept over Inge. It was far worse than anything her pregnancy had yet thrown at her. It was a visceral, physical reaction to the wrongness of what she had heard. Nearly instinctively she called up her power to make a cleansing circle with herself as the epicenter. There was no pain, no burning of corruption from her spirit, simply the cool, soothing feeling she associated with the magic of Gaia.

She sighed in relief. She still felt unclean and unsettled but at least it was simply an emotional reaction instead her having become actually tainted by hearing the message meant for the Wyrm's minions instead of herself.

Shortly afterward there was no woman on the shore, only a splash and a ripple on the waters of the lake as Inge dove in to see if the cool embrace of water would ease her mind.

A Dream of the Future

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Werewolf: the Apocalypse live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

A Dream of the Future
by Simon W. 

"These are the words of Valka Thrice Blessed."

Since Valka, Legendary Tribal Counselor of the Get of Fenris, had returned from being kicked into the Deep Umbra by Grandfather Thunder she ended all of her messages in the same way. And it always made Inge grit her teeth. Inge very well knew the respect that Valka was due and she didn't begrudge her a single bit of it. It didn't mean that she agreed with her Tribal Councilor though, about hardly anything.

But she did always listen.

Today, for the first time ever, Valka's words made her cry. Today Valka had spoken about something that Get of Fenris rarely discuss, victory. Inge knew very well that her tribe's role in the Apocalypse was to fight and to die and to ensure a future for others that they wouldn't get to enjoy themselves. It was grim perhaps but it was what every Fenrir child was taught nearly from birth. Inge had known that she was likely to outlive her sister, her mate, and very possibly her children depending on how the war for the very soul of Gaia went. She could only hope that she would leave grandchildren in her wake, and of course, countless others, Gaian and not, would live because of the sacrifices of the Get of Fenris tribe.

And truly, there was nothing in Valka's message that necessarily said that victory in the war against the Wyrm still wouldn't require the sacrifices of all of the Get of Fenris. But the very idea that victory might be possible was a heady thought; enough to make Inge slightly dizzy as she stared out at the dark mountain on which she lived.

"What do you think, Little Foglet?" she asked the small Fog spirit that always followed her around now, "What would we do if the future was a possibility and not just a dream, eh?" Spirits have no shoulders, and yet it managed to shrug its shoulders all the same.

Inge nodded. "Yeah, I'm not sure either. I guess I'll have to think about it."

She went inside her little cottage. She had herbs that were dry and needed to be ground and stored. She had some phone calls to make in the morning. There was work to do. But she felt a little bit lighter tonight, as though a heaviness of spirit had been lifted.

"Dammit, Valka," she muttered to herself. "I am ok with respecting you... but I really don't want to start to like you."

Shouting At The Sky

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Werewolf: the Apocalypse live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Shouting At The Sky
by Simon W. 

Inge looked up toward the sky. Clouds had rolled in for a rare spring rainstorm but she could feel Luna behind them, in her crescent shape that Inge so strongly identified with. The little Fog spirit she had befriended was beside her, not hiding tonight since there was no one to see it.

"The Pentex created plague was designed to kill between ninety-five and ninety-nine of all humans on earth. Through the efforts of the Garou Nation and our Fera allies we managed to get that number down to about twenty percent. By any logical measure this is a victory, glorious and honorable! We should see it as such."

The Fog spirit had no response and Inge knew the only person she was trying to convince was herself. Because 2.1 million people dead in Southern California didn't feel like a victory. It felt like a gut punchingly painful loss. Maybe less personal than the losses inflicted by the Dark Brigade nearly a decade before but the sheer numbers made up for the fact that this time she hadn't lost friends, family, and community personally. Instead she ached for the millions upon billions of humans in the world that had lost their friends, families, and communities.

Inge knew the kind of work that was needed now. She understood the kind of toll that the survivors would feel. All she needed to do to remind herself of that was to look at her sister and the crushing weight of survivor's guilt she felt after the Battle of the Sept of the Crescent Moon. Dagmar had technically survived that fight... but the woman who'd come back to tell Inge that both of them were now widows wasn't the same woman who'd left for the battle. Dagmar had stuck around just long enough for the funerals and then she had left to try and disappear.

Inge never mentioned how much that had hurt. She never told her sister about the bone achingly hard work it had been to try and hold together a community of mostly kinfolk and children who had not yet shifted together for the years it had taken for the Garou Nation to start recovering and for caern seeds to be planted and for those left behind after that battle to have new septs to live and work at. She feared that the new, more fragile Dagmar wouldn't be able to tolerate the knowledge; not if it were spoken aloud anyway. She had no doubt that deep in her heart Dagmar knew. But the sisters just pretended that the words being unspoken meant they were unthought.

Funerals would have to be arranged. The dead would have to be tended to, both spiritually and physically. Communities would need to be cared for. And the Sept of the Desert Wind, by being spared the ravages of the plague, would need a special sort of tending. Because survivor's guilt could kill and Inge wasn't going to lose any more of her sister to it. Not if she had to claw at the forces of the Wyrm herself with nothing but her all too human hands.

"You don't get to take any more of her, you bastards!" Inge shouted out at the dark. "Not today. Not while I draw breath."

She went inside her cabin, the little Fog spirit trailing after her. As she slept the clouds cleared so that when she woke at dawn she was greeted with a wobbly, watery sunrise. Battered, weepy, fragile, but not broken. Just like herself. Just like her sister. Just like the Gaians.

The Cause

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

The Cause
by Simon W. 

Marianne carefully unpacked the boxes and boxes of books which made up the bulk of her haven. She lived surrounded by them. The only concessions she made to trying to make her home look like a normal human lived here was that the bedroom had a bed in it and she actually used the shower. The living area was filled with book shelves, a couch, and a desk and chair. The dining area held more bookshelves. The kitchen? Well she used kitchen cupboards as bookshelves.

She was putting them away on autopilot, the Dewey Decimal system doing most of the work for her, while she was lost in thought.

Everett had been an objectively terrible sire. No one who knew him could disagree and people who knew his childer only had to look at the fact that the one who had been effectively adopted was a lot more stable than the one who had drifted around on her own for decades. Marianne knew that her feelings about him were anything but objective. And still, she knew he had been a terrible sire.

He'd taught her almost nothing. He wasn't truly an Anarch so he couldn't teach her about the sect he claimed she belonged too. His opinion of the Sabbat was simply that they were there to be killed, by him preferably. Most of what she knew about actually being kindred came from what she had learned before she had met him, when she had been the Professor's ghoul. The only thing he'd really ever tried to tell her had been so garbled by his own issues that she hadn't really understood at the time.

It was shortly after they'd fled from Los Angeles. She'd had no idea what drove him eastward with such fervor at the time. All she knew was the he ran. And then, somewhere in the middle of nowhere New Mexico they'd been jumped by Sabbat. It was just three of them, which is probably what saved their lives because Everett fought them alone. He insisted Marianne stay out of the fray and she was more than willing to do so. He bloodied them up well enough so they could flee. And as they raced down the highway he tried to explain.

"The blood gets up, ya know? It's what makes us Brujah. It's what makes us... it's what makes us us. There's something that burns in all of us and when you see it you've got no choice but to stand up for it. Mine is the Sabbat, you see." He spit. "They all gotta die, you see."

Marianne did not see. And he'd never really bothered to explain. In the following decade she loved him, hated him, and left him. But she never really understood exactly what he'd been trying to get at.It had been other Brujah, later on, that she met that explained the Cause to her. And she had assumed that she'd just not really had one. It made sense given her history.

As she methodically put the books on their shelves she knew she'd been wrong all those decades ago. Because now her blood was up. Because now there was something burning in her heart that would not die. Because now she knew exactly what it was that drove her forward to eternity.

"It's not right," she said to herself. "Like playing chess with a damned pigeon. It's gonna shit all over the board, knock over all the pieces, and declare itself the winner no matter what you do. And that... that's not right. I'm not playing any of their games. I'm not joining any of their teams. I won't be corralled and emotionally manipulated. Nope, it's time to stand up and tell them 'no'. Because I don't like bullies and I don't like being forced to choose and I really, really don't like these damn Ancients!"