A Cure and a Quandary
8th of September 2006 A.D.
You speak, and you voice echoes, reverberating across the shadows of room: "You haven't yet killed anyone, Sitha, and so I shall grant you a choice. Listen carefully. The Hunger in your soul is awake, and not yet sated. Should you fail to do so, it'll consume you, and then I will have to put it down. You have two ways to stop this gruesome fate from passing. Bend the knee to me now, and your Hunger will abate, for none shall touch those that swear to follow me. Or feed on your elder - he shall survive it, this I guarantee. The woman, however, is not for you...."
"Why, she's done for already?" the girl asks, her Hunger giving feral edge to the words. "Be kinder to finish than leave her like that."
She is, you realize, repeating a mantra, something she had been taught, perhaps since childhood. It makes a cruel sort of sense when you think about it, the Skavis are human enough to need humane rationalization.
"She is in possession of too much incriminating information which incriminates one of the athumi of the Court, it is sealed within the machine-mind..."
"I know what a computer is," you snap. "She is dying, to delay is to seek to frustrate my will." Turning back to the girl you offer simply: "Choose."
"Can... can she do it zio?"
"The Elders of the Jade Court have many insights of abnegation, though I have never heard of them offering it to others, certainly not other- cilth."
Having hung around Lydia as much as you have you are pretty sure the 'zio' is something Italian, but the old man is speaking another tongue, filled with sharp-edged consonants and cut off exhalations.
Etruscan, the formal tongue of the White Court, the mark of highest standing among them. How old is the old man to seem so ancient among those who value beauty and the illusion of youth so highly? Suddenly you feel a lot less confident in the fight you'd get into if things go poorly.
"So like..." Sitha sinks in a practiced courtesy. Looks as weird in pants as you'd expect it to, but it does the job, intent is all that matters
You frown at her, as though it costs some mental effort to tame her newly awoken hunger, but from the way the elder's pale cheek twitches in surprise you suspect the effort had been wasted, he had seen... something surprising in your manner.
At least it does not seem to be 'shoot now' surprising. Instead he nods slowly to himself before turning towards Sarah Greene: "I shall lend her the strength to endure."
The best idea you had was to call an ambulance which would come with all sorts of inconvenient questions so you cautiously agree, all too aware that you are holding Sitha hostage against his conduct. You watch as he lays his hands her temples chanting in that tongue which was old when Rome was new, as the veins on his hands start to glow brighter and brighter, quicksilver radiance until it spills all at once over mortal flesh racing through her veins to undo the harm which had been forced upon her. Thus is a demon of unending want forced into a moment's grudging charity
Elder Discipline Revealed: The Illness Unveiled
Mark that up another notch on the scary-vamp-o-meter Usum, you think glibness not quite enough to mask the very real concern. If he can make his demon heal random mortals you do not want to know how tough this guy is in a fight.
"She will sleep now, remembering little of what was done this night, little good though it might do her," the elder vampire notes clinically. "She knows too much and is too determined to make it known. So it is with mortal servants carelessly plucked."
"What do you mean?" You would like to think he is lying but you had given him no reason to believe you might be sympathetic to mortals for their own sake, having not denied his assumption that you are an elder of the Wan Kuei.
"Agent Greene is part of FBI Crimes Against Children and Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit." He stops, as though to see if you are confussed by the nomenclature. When you show no sign of it he adds. "She also used to be the eyes and ears of House Raith within the unit until her husband was killed in a rather messy attempt by parties unknown to frame the local wizard. Given that the attempt involved clear signs of sorcerous tampering to anyone who knew to look for it, including a shape-shifter appearing on camera she came to believe that her handlers among House Raith would have answers. When they refused to help her obtain revenge she came to suspect them. Given her previous position and a skill for unavailing conspiracies far above what Madrigal Raith assumed she possessed..."
Again he pauses, this time as though to assess reaction to a name that had just 'slipped out' in his frustration and you can believe that as much as the bridge seller in Brooklyn.
"She intended to deliver the information to a group within the FBI which knows enough to believe her, yet not enough to have learned discretion. While I too would prefer a less blunt solution than simply killing Agent Greene she has known too much for too long to simply cloud her memories and in any case I do not possess enough of an understanding of the machine-minds..."
"Just call it a computer zio," Sitha huffs, only seeming to hold herself back from rolling her eyes by supreme effort.
"From the Latin putare," he counters serenely. "I could call it a knowledge pruning machine if you prefer."
"Can you not simply compel her not to speak?" you interject before things can get any more surreal... and then you realize you had just suggested mind control and feel like shit.
"Given the strength of her conviction that would be... unreliable," the elder says, seeming to balance the word gingerly on his tongue.
But, you realize, I could wipe all of Sarah Greene's evidence against the Raiths off her devices and any off-site storage.
Do I want to protect White Court human trafficking?
On the other hand it's not like you can think of another bloodless way out of this. You could probably convince these two to leave now, but you cannot exactly follow Agent Greene around town to play bodyguard 24/7 and it's not like she was an innocent if it's true that she worked
with the White Court to cover up their crimes until she came to believe they killed her husband.
She's not the main victim though.
What do you do?
[] Offer to wipe off the evidence of Raith crimes off all of Agent Green's devices
-[] Sincerely
-[]... and keep a copy (Roll opposed Charisma+Subterfuge vs the Elder's Auspex ???)
[] Let the two vampires go, odds are they will try again, but maybe Agent Greene will get the evidence to Dedalus before she is killed
-[] Wash your hands of the matter
-[] Once they are gone return to speak to Agent Greene
[] Write in
OOC: And here we are, that was a lot of rolling. 
😓
