The following are rumors flitting around the Sabbat in Miami, organized by date.
April 18, 2014[]
There is a concrete wall in the background and a folding chair sitting before it. In the folding chair is a black catsuit that seems to be animated of its own accord. A cigarette hovers in mid air and occaisionally goes up to where lips would be, smoke drawn in to illuminate the outline of fanged teeth and the throat before disappearing into the catsuit, then coming back out in a cloud which briefly outlines a woman's face. She speaks. "Ju know what fuck you guys. Send me to investigate Serena's death like anyone cares beyond the fact that she was a fucking bitch and needed to die. Make me risk my life and then store the results of my investigation on a shelf to do absolutely nothing with. For my complete success I am rewarded with an inquest into why I broke Camarilla law to save myself from getting staked. You allowed my pack to be disbanded you watched while I got staked on camera and you did nothing. Was it me who broke the silence of blood or the people charging me with stakes because last I checked Driving a stake through my heart on camera would break the Silence of Blood too, particularly as you see I have no reflection in your world." Another drag is taken and smoke released. "So I want to know why the people who decided to stake me on camera were never appropriately investigated or punished. Or is there some clause in the Code of Milan where if you whisper that someone is a fool and he uses auspex to hear you, all violations are then justified because of section A subparagraph B which states, being butthurt automatically makes the other party at fault? I musta missed that one. So if your going to investigate me and punish me, then hand it down on all of them because your inaction is like a loud ticking in my head that wont go away."
Fangs illuminated by smoke and face briefly as she speaks. "It is common for people to blame God for their troubles so I understand the stupidity. But thankyou figments, thankyou for disbanding my pack as though any of you were fit to say whether I should lead. Thankyou for turning my name into a byword and thankyou for making me sick to the point of vomit and using me as a convenient scapegoat for your problems. Vykos is dead...." Another drag outlines her briefly. "Good. Im glad you all pulled together. Im sure you forgot that it was my vision that first alerted the rest of you to the presence of the infernal. But please.... Dont ask me to investigate Vykos death or his crimes. I already know and I already could care less. Thanks for the memories. Some of you will recognize how bad you fucked up by doing these things to me. The rest of you can go die in a hole." The video goes black and then ends.
June 8, 2014[]
Word has begun circulating that Bishop Agustin has named Isabella d'Este von Habsburg as a templar. Although 'Lady' Isabella now, she is said to go by just Bell. 'Sir' Eugene Richardson, or just Gene as he is known for short, is his other templar. Both are said to have undergone the annointing to him. Juicier gossip persists that Luz performed both rites for Bishop Agustin. What can not be disputed is that he has empowered them both to see his will done in the city, particularly in his diocese which is known to consist of Edgewater, Wynwood, the Design District, and Little Havana.
Woe be to the one who crosses the Bishop's new attack dogs.
June 10, 2014[]
I recently came to the conclusion that I am what some might call a "European" Cathar. The way I've been living, so-to-speak, is much closer to the old Path of Sin than the Manicheanism of the Montreal Temple.
That means that I'm pretty much in it for myself. Higher purpose is fine for those who need or want it, whatever, but there's something to be said for the freedom to do what you want, and the guts to choose your own allegiances, so to speak. So I'm Sabbat, but I'm here becuse I want to be.
So, I have a question for you, oh glorious Cainites of Miami?
What is up with all this ascetic bullshit? You dry, staid, dare-I-say-it (of course I do) unsexy motherfuckers?
You drink the blood, you jump over the fires, you puff up your chests and you talk a good game about beating down the Kine and Cainite supremacy but are you really enjoying any of it?
What are the rewards you're reaping for being Sabbat? To paraphrase a comedy that is about a woman who did what she wanted because fuck you, that's why:
Unlife is a banquet. So why, you poor sons of bitches, are you starving to death?
Everywhere I go I see Cainites acting like a bunch of anorexic models, starving themselves to fit into a mold of the way they think they're supposed to behave, and generally feeling shitty and miserable about it. When I took my first hit of the Vaulderie chalice I had the fool notion that there was no one way we were supposed to behave. There are obligations we choose to carry out, sure, but no one attitude we're supposed to have about DOING them.
So, really, what's the deal? I could see one ascetic, or two, I've met followers of the Path of the Beast who believe Communion with Caine is sitting bare-ass naked in the woods being bored, in between chasing things.
But in a town over-fucking-flowing with excess, I'm starting to feal real, real lonely at the trough. Food for thought, I guess. If you're miserable, maybe consider how you think you're supposed to behave, versus what you actually want, and whether the latter really costs you anything at all. Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, right?
Anyway, I'm out. Take it easy, licks--I won't be able to keep my mouth shut for long.
Free your mind (and your ass is sure to follow),
-Andy
June 28, 2014[]
A young man, shirtless and wearing both a Star of David and an Orthodox Cross is sitting, his chest and hands illuminated by the dim light, but his face shrouded in shadow. When he speaks, his voice is distorted.
"What have you been doing with yourselves?"
The scren flashes to images of protesters, then a golf course, news reports of Boko Haram, the Middle Eastern Civil Crisis, and then back. "I mean, really."
Flash to images of children screaming, then footage of a boy being ripped apart by wolves.
"Here's the problem, fellow Fiends - you resigned agency over yourselves. You had the right to rebel, but then what? Having claimed the estates of your forefathers by right of conquest, you abandoned your position. Oh, I suppose I don't blame you. I mean, your crusty progenitors got spanked. But then you abandoned leadership of the clan to a collection of us whose path of enlightenment doesn't really allow the whole leading thing. I mean, really. Don't get me wrong, Metamorphosists. You do what you do. But you have to be the first ones to admit that we're probably better off if you remain a fringe element."
"So, let's take a rundown, shall we? Our glorious Sword of Caine is desperately in need of a Reformation, an overhaul in how we conduct the business of the Jyhad. Consider our nemesis in the Ivory Tower. It exists for the betterment of the Ventrue and the Tremere and the Toreador. We all know the Brujah and the Malkavians are just suckers. What are our enemy's goals?"
"Preserving the Masquerade. Well, this goes beyond secrecy and boils down into pretending humanity in order to survive. Ew." Image of a guy wearing vampire fangs and wearing a hawaiian shirt.
"Second, it exists as a pyramid scheme to protect some old licks who haven't done anything lately. Put a shade on old Hardestadt, use him as a lamp. It's about all he's good for. What have you done lately? Next." Flash to an image of an old man covered in dust.
"So, the Ventrue. Yes, the age of aristocracy is largely over. But here's the thing. When your enemy is so bogged down in protocol that he's unable to act without it, he's just begging for a barbarian to come along and unseat him."
Cut to film footage of howling barbarians sacking a city. And we've always had a different idea about being the boss, and the law."
"And the Tremere, well..."
Cut to Gary Oldman as Dracula: "What devil or witch was ever so great as Atilla, whose BLOOD *FLOWS* IN THESE VEINS!?"
"For that one, we're going to have to turn up the heat. You know they can't take it anymore. We were beaten by the blood-wizards of old, and you might say their like is not in the world tonight. Time beat the Tremere for us. We just have to strike." The figure makes a throat-cutting gesture.
"The Toreador, oddly enough, are the only ones worthy of respect, because they understand that to rule you have to have passion. Drink deeply, admire intensely, feud noisily, and *fuck hard*. They're dying a slow death in the Ivory Tower, so *make them see*."
Cut to footage of a doctor holding a newborn child. THen a pile of dead babies at a killing field.
"In any event, we were never the Ivory Tower type. If a castle's *too* posh, you want to spend all your time there. And, well, there's a big wild world out there for the taking. Then, there's the Anarch Movement."
Cut to footage of a Twink fellating an older man in a suit.
"What more need be said? The fact that Detroit fell to these empty-hearted licks is something that the Ecclesiarchy ought to be ashamed of. But, there's a lesson in it. It's not just gold and guns that decide who wins the fight. You've got to be hungry. You've got to be angry. You've got to have *passion*."
"And that's really what the new reformation is all about. Passion. Passion for ruling the Kine, passion for the Black Church, passion for your legacies."
Cut to a man severing another man's head and drinking the blood that spurts out of his neck.
The figure can be seen to smirk. "You didn't usurp your crusty old bat-king sires just to throw their titles and all the good stuff that came with them away. So here it is, laid out for you. Take it back. Take it all back. Start turning over rocks, start laying down claims. The Shadows don't like it? Well then they can start a counter-reformation of their own. Because I don't know what they get up to on a night-to-night basis, but from where I stand the answer seems to be "not very damn much." When they're not at Esbat, they might as well stick themselves in a closet and wait for sunup. As useless as tits on a bull!"
The speaker grows visibly annoyed. "Too many licks put on airs that they're high-and-mighty. But if you present them with anything of substance aside from butchering each other all you get in return is a blank stare. Then they'll try to steer the dialogue right back toward mindless violence. Because that's all they're good at. And where's that gotten us? The Camarilla's held New York for fifteen years. *Fifteen*."
"How about mindful violence instead? How about some calculated atrocity to scare our enemies and wake them up to the fact that the wars of yesteryear never really ended?"
The figure shakes out a dog-eared novel, and reads a passage. "What good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it?" He snaps the book shut, and a flash-image of a forest of dying humans impaled on stakes crosses the screen. "Well. There you go. So here's my desire made manifest. I want a little Old Country in the New World. I want severed heads, impaled corpses, and dying Young Turks. I want you to remember your miserable, mountain-squatting ancestors, who killed the *fuck* out of anybody who looked at them sideways, and make them proud. After all, if you overthrew them and then didn't *surpass* them, then it was really just wasted effort, wasn't it? And *that* would really disappoint them."
"Anyway, that's all... I'm tired of talking to you. But think about what I've said, and what you've been doing with yourselves."
July 8, 2014[]
During hunts and meanderings, Cainites might take note of a few strange things occurring around the underpasses of the I-95 expressway and the Dolphin Expressway. Garish yellow and green graffiti is spraypainted in glaring relief. The shapes are usually the same, a triangle containing a single, staring eye. Sometimes the pupil is filled in. Sometimes there is a large S. A tag accompanies a few. We see you
July 11, 2014[]
You know Verse? Sure you gotta. Crazy kid that got shoveled in time for the Setites, and never quite got over that addiction to meth and E, right? His music was sick, sick as fuck, but damn if that guy wasn't brilliant with anything electronic. Hope you didn't have any shit on back order. He's dead. Dead dead, final dead. I heard it myself from Electric 4. Guess that makes them Electric 3 now if he's gone and burned himself up to a crisp. Verse didn't come back to the haven. He was stuck up in some club til late. Nothing new there. Way I heard it an hour before dawn, and no sign of him, Electric 4 got real pissed. Wouldn't answer his phone and the rat Kernita sent out came back talking about really strong chemical smells. There wasn't shit they could do that close to sunrise. Next morning, Kernita and Kernel were out the door first thing. They got back to an abandoned shop and there was crazy shit sprayed all over the walls. Blood, paint, urine, excrement, everything you could imagine. They found Verse in the middle of the room. What was left of him anyways. Remember that jar of eyes he kept taking from all his victims? They were all over. Burnt up, squashed, pinned down. Really fucked up shit. If I didn't know better I'd say he was trying to call something up, looked like a damn summoning or some shit, but this is a Malkavian and you know anything about Malkavians, you know they're fucking batshit. No huge loss I guess. The real problem was the way that Verse was torn apart like he was made outta paper. These weren't even Lupine claws, no signs of 'em anyways. That place looked sick. Kernel went underground, haven't seen anything of him since it happened a few nights ago. Kernita threw some matches in and ran off in a frenzy when the building started to smolder. The last of 'em, Zebu, is a shithead nuisance at the best of times. But I tell you he's good for blabbing and he was bitching up and down a storm that everything went to hell all cause of some spraypaint and a suicidal Malk. Verse was never suicidal. Don't suspect he plowed through a house of addicts either, seeing as how his ribcage was on the fucking roof three buildings over and pretty sure it went *through* the window up there.