A Glimpse of Daybreak
13th of March 2007 A.D.
"So what do you think of her?" you ask Harry as the night air whistles past your ear. Harry isn't quite as fast as you are in flight, but he doesn't have to be. All he has to do is float, which yes does mean you are arm in arm, but for once that is an equidistant sort of observation, the same as counting the streets below to make sure you're heading in the right direction.
"She's a good kid," he answers stoutly. After you let silence speak for your doubts he sighs. "I'd like to think we dodged a bullet, though only time will tell if that's because it ended up in the fuel tack right behind us. I don't like that Lara has her hooks in her already and the stuff with the Name..." He shivers, though not from the cold of the brisk spring evening. "How does that even work?"
"The same way even empty space, a void can have shape. Her exaltation gives that void substance too. You can feel it can't you?"
"Kind of," his other hand moves to his blasting rod. "Makes the Black Court seem cuddly."
"Well good, I might bring it over for a talk, the Black Court that is."
Now it's his turn to be silent. "You're serious."
"I'm thinking of bringing him to church. Lamentations of the Void wants to be human, always did and humans are pretty cool when you come right down to it. Sure we can br dreadful, but we can be good too. That's the core of what 're doing here."
Yellow tape bars the way down the narrow street, a bike had been left leaning on a wall just beyond it and you can just see the harried traffic cops on the other side making sure traffic doesn't come this way. Even though you can't see any blood splatter from here, the shop's window had been broken by the bullet that would have killed Silver Phantom, still feels a little weird on the tongue, ponder your question.
On the one hand it would be nice to ask about all three of the others, but the weight of their fates forbids it. For all they had risen at the same time each are more distinct from the others than they are alike, the faces of the blackened sun.
"Where might I find another?"
Lost 1 Essence (Question)
Hellfire Club. The name slashes contemptuously across your senses, like rusted iron wrapped in silk, like magnolia and brimstone. The room is large and lit blood red, to hide the stains maybe and it looks to have been a club once, though the dance floor had been put to a far darker purpose, scared with dozens of infernal symbols by the same hand that had summoned gaggle of thugs half in street clothes and half in the sort of leather one shouldn't be wearing in public. Far from seeming sensual something about the contrast makes your gorge rise. Meat wrapped and unwrapped that's all these people are to the balding man wielding the syringe among victims the cultists had forced to their knees looking for all the world bored, like he had drawn the short straw to do the scutt work.
As the carved in the floor begins to smoke and the lights begin to flicker you recognize what this is: a mass summoning of minor fiends into the bodies of people too worn out or beaten down to resist properly. It reminds you of some of the horrors the Will of Kakuri had made use of in Chicago:
Bakemono. But this was no work of the Yama Kings...
As the master of ceremonies slices open the palm of the first victim, a fellow in a trenchcoat to allow the demon to slip into his flesh he miscalculates as the knife is torn from his hand and raked across the throat.
God have mercy, you think horrified. Surely if ever there is a time to take one's life.
But it is no merciful God that brings succor to the dying as blood slashes red across the floor and onto the polished shoes of the recoiling master of ceremonies, but something far darker. A circle of bloody black light bursts upon his brow and the demon screams as it is slain and reshaped by rampant necrotic essence. Madness coiling like the body of a great serpent with a head aflame seeps into the world, a soul transofmed, as cultist and victim both scream and beg and fall to their knees in aw and horror before the newborn Champion of the Bleeding Sun.
At first it seems the master of ceremonies is caught in the same spell, but then an inhuman voice tears itself from his lips:
"You are mine welp!"
The command is not to the deathknight, but instead to the body it wears, bulging muscle and tearing flesh. Where once there had been a rather unassuming man now a creature that holds all the most unlovely aspects of man snake and wolf crouches among the mandness, an angelic seal smoking into his brow.
Yet even upon the face the fallen had taken there is fear.
Regained 2 Essence (Urge)
You come back to yourself with a shocking suddenness. "Clippy... get Tiff on the phone!"
Thankfully your assistent is nothing if not efficient and Tiffany answers on the first ring.
So just as fast you ask, ignoring Harry's worried look. "Black snake-wolf thing, which Denarian?"
"Akariel, why?"
"I saw him trying to make Bakemono in New Orleans. He failed, one of the victims tried to kill himself, but Exalted and then everyone but the Denarian went mad." You swallow at the memory. You'd be able to ignore it and Harry might be able to fight it off, but for a most it would be unspeakable.
"Well he can't be all bad if he made Akariel flinch," Tiffany says thoughtfully. "Any idea when?"
"About fourty five minutes after Inari, hour and a half ago or thereabouts. Didn't see what happened afterwards." While it had certainly been no friendly introduction you could imagine the kind of blanishments one of the Fallen might offer.
As it happens there is no Warden in New Orleans, but according to Thomas there are plenty of White Court members. Do I want to owe Lara the favor?
Lydia Essence 7/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 10/18
Molly Willpower 6/9
Harry Essence 1/5
What do you do?
[] Ask a favor of Lara to have one of the local White Court Vampires play your song
[] Travel to Saint Luis, the nearest city with a Warden and then go by car
[] Use the Ways
[] Write in
OOC: What happened here mechanically is the Daybreak make the petty demon they were going to shove into him a familiar with Spirit Tied Pet so it's a part of his anima and Bestial Traits Technique which allows him to take one Special Advantage the demon has... that advantage is an aura of insanity RAW that should just work on everyone but the exalted, but that is a little too strong so eveyone of wizard talent and over (including of course the Fallen) get to contest it with willpower. Don't be a mook around this guy. 
