Sunday, January 01, 2023

New Year's Day

• Moira, Blaze, and I stay in the freehold overnight while Agnes and Aoife head home before dawn
  • Moira and I plan to work on an enchanted collar that will let Bran shrink or grow (and make a little progress over the course of the week)

Monday, January 02, 2023

A new year

• Agnes
  • Agnes hears from her partner that at the party he was at was weird
    • Evidently some kids tried to scare them pretending to be zombies, leaving some bodies of dead homeless people behind
    • It is clear his description is his mind making sense of a Mist shrouded experience of a zombie attack
  • Both of them are later called into meet with their director, Shelly Park, who says that she's gotten pressure from her superiors for more resources to be put on the Malacoda
    • Seems like this is likely the vampires exerting influence after the attack on Julian Stone
    • Agnes texts John Merit, who loops in Aoife to ask her if she wants to handle this before saying he'll contact Julian to put him in touch with Agnes
• Blaze
  • Blaze goes to meet with Mike Munin who is the stunt coordinator on the "Project Artemis" film
    • None of the stunties have seen a script, but he says he's going to try and get a hold of one to see what the plan is
    • From what he's heard, he's not sure what sort of stunts there may be, as it sounds like it's a simple romantic comedy
    • In the meantime, he tells folks to hit the gym and to come up with any ideas for stunts to pitch
  • She texts Jimmy to see how things went at the movie theatre party on New Year's Eve
    • He says it got kind of weird; as it got late people probably got a little too drunk and everyone started thinking the place was haunted
• Moira
  • Works at her studio, but it's dead (as expected during the first week of the year)
  • She gets an email from Marina Blue asking about when the studio is opening and when she can get in to set up
    • Moira says yes and finishes getting the dedicated space for Marina who arrives with a couple guys who help haul in her stuff
• Aoife
  • Aoife receives tickets to the private opening of a new exhibition at the High of the work of Sonya Clark, which seem to have been sent from the High directly, and she doesn't seem to know why
    • Seems like it might be some sort of private, high level donor event
    • She asks Merit and Ashmore if they set this up, and they say no
  • She texts one of her brothers about what happened at their party, but he says nothing really happened, everything was fine and then begs off because he's "losing signal"
    • She totally texts their mom and says she thinks there's something up but they don't want to talk to her about it, so asks if she'll check on them
  • Later that night she receives a message from Julian saying that he'd be happy to meet with her and speak to the FBI, though he doesn't know what he'd have to tell them
    • He's willing to meet one night this week at the Merit & Ashmore offices and Aoife sets the meeting up for Tuesday night after checking in with Agnes

Tuesday, January 03, 2023

The law offices of Merit & Ashmore

• Aoife goes into her first day of work at Merit & Ashmore, whose offices are across the street from the Fox as coincidence would have it
  • As she's driving in, she spots Sir Elias, Baroness Sabrina's major domo, standing outside having a smoke
    • He spots her but she doesn't acknowledge his presence
• That night Agnes and Julian Stone arrive for the meeting
  • He messages Annie, his date (and now his assumed ghoul) to come answer whatever questions Agnes has for her, and she arrives around 20 minutes later
  • Annie looks rough, clearly having been through a lot in the last couple days as she learns about what she's now involved with
  • Agnes uses Chronos on Annie, and at some point in the last month catches a memory of Annie and Julian arriving at Annie's place after some sort of holiday party, there's a blip of scrubbed memory, and then Annie talks on the phone about how she thinks she's going to keep seeing him and go to the party at Merit & Ashmore
    • She notices a creepy figure that lines up with the impressions of the Malacoda outside but then it's gone
    • Over the next few weeks Agnes picks up on other memories where there was a similar figure, caught out of the corner of her eye
    • Annie's place is over in Decatur, not too far from where Blaze lives
  • Aoife mentions the party at the High and Julian says something along the lines of "it'll be nice to see you at the party" and it seems like he is not the one that sent the ticket and was surprised that she was sent tickets but rolls with it

Saturday, January 07, 2023

Getting a little culture

• We all go to the High with Aoife with the suggestion to "dress to impress" from Julian
  • I tailor a gorgeous tux from ones I've grabbed from sets over the past
• Moira finds out that Marina Blue is going to be going to the opening as well and catches a ride with her
• When each of us arrive at the parking garage, they ask to see our invitations at which point we are let in for free
• The attendants at both the parking deck and at the doors of the museum checking tickets read as either senior ghouls or young vampires to Agnes (the latter more so than the former)
• There is notably an absence of wine or other drinks circulating and there are definitely not other changelings here
• Aoife's read is that there is no magical protocol in place here, but definitely an unspoken but completely understood protocol that this is a place where violence will not be tolerated to an extreme degree
  • We're totally in Elysium, which Agnes pulls the name out of a vague memory from a past life (when she was invited to one by probably a Nosferatu friend a couple centuries back)
• While undoubtedly a lot of the attendees are vampires, there are a bunch of human artists
  • We spy Julius Langston (one of the vampire's from Aoife's law office party) and Bert Grimaldi (the movie producer that head hunted Blaze) who seems surprised to see that Blaze is here
  • Amongst the mortal artists, I don't get a sense that they are aware that they are amongst supernatural creatures
  • Moira picks up far more than me, but both of us note that the majority of the artists here are not super high profile or great talents
    • The artist whose exhibition is opening, Marina, and maybe another one or two are higher profile, but the rest are lesser talents who are happy to be invited to a fashionable event thrown by some rich folks
    • She hears some of the artists mentioning that "Ms. Ash" will be here, and is certain she's not an artist, but probably some deep pocketed patron/collector
• Moira manages to end up gathering most of the real, talented artists as she "well actually's" some pretentious posers who are commenting on Sonya Clark's work after Clark hears her and agrees
  • Aoife drops a comment in a drive by to give her a card, which she does
  • Julius and Julian don't seem to notice that Moira has gathered up all the real talent, but there do seem to be a few pale individuals that have noticed
• I go about injecting myself into conversations and asking who our host is
  • Some noncommittal responses of "you'd have to know the host to get invited, or they'd have to know of you"
  • Get the name Ms. Ash dropped as someone who probably had a hand in putting together the guest list
    • One of the people I was talking to agrees to give me a nod when this Ms. Ash makes her entrance
• Ms. Ash makes her entrance and approaches Aoife, around whom a respectful area of has been cleared, where she's not in range of anyone's prying ears, even supernaturally enhanced ones
  • That bubble of space doesn’t seem to be something that others are consciously aware of, they've moved away of their own will as far as they are concerned
    • Agnes bowls right through whatever supernatual aura that Ms. Ash is evidently exuding without being bothered
  • She is a woman with whose beauty is classical and timeless and her presence is distinctly captivating
  • Ms. Ash explains that she considers what we did for Julian constitutes something worth owing a favor, which she extends to Aoife
  • She evidently has more recently taken up leadership amongst the vampires of the city (she's the prince, but for how long?)
  • Agnes gets the read that Ms. Ash is a much more powerful vampire than any of the others she's met
    • Certainly an elder
    • If push came to shove, our motley could probably take her, but it's very much a matter of could fuck with, but probably don't want to fuck with
• Ms. Ash introduces Agnes and Aoife to one of her people, as young looking man named Silas (my old PC from NPC) whose help she offers in Agnes' investigations into the Malacoda
  • Agnes is evidently smitten with him (which is hilarious)