Stream of Unconsciousness (Hypnovamp Hyperfixation Powerhours)

Man meanwhile Summoningverse vamps mostly like 'donors are a valued resource and if you poach there will be a throwdown'. There's specific rules against poaching, and at least in the established houses, donors are usually treated very well because every donor you have is one less chance to get human authorities on your ass for murder and having to skip town (and thus your powerbase)

 

Vamps' ability to wipe memories of the trance means that they don't entirely need willing donors, and allows them to get away with a fair amount more abuse- the gaslighting's built right in!

why yes Serene/Obscene is idfic of the 'Laz is processing its trauma through fictionalization and metaphor' variety.

 

Spoiler: RIP Lexi

When she came downstairs she found Lexi had woken as well, and was frowning at the bloodied couch. He heard her, lifted his head, and froze when he saw what she was wearing. He was already eerie still even for a vampire, not bothering to breathe for her comfort and instead only taking in as much air as was needed to speak. But he looked at her, looked at the dress, and went as motionless as only the dead could. His face was perfectly neutral, not vacant but restrained, every emotion pushed far down and away; she was willing to bet that even if he weren’t invisible to her psy she wouldn’t be able to pick up a damn thing from him.

And then it passed.

 

Yeah most vamps have a bite be pleasant because they have mildly intoxicating saliva or very low glamour abilities, but generally speaking the donor won't forget. And if the vamp is too unpleasant to the donor, they're nothing stopping them from not coming back and these days, sudden kidnapping tends to get noticed.

 

Since the ouroboros of procrastination continues; anyone wanna give me questions/prompts for folx outside of Caelia's line? (Or for minor members. I could poke at Violet some and I don't wanna drop her in the Rave rn)

 

What´s up with the warrior line, how do they work?

 

So line classifications are very loose; Charilaos, Caelia, and Elling's line are all considered artist lines, but only Charilaos's turns artists exclusively. Liborio's is considered a warrior line similarly, but he just. Had a bit of a Thing for sad dying soldiers.

There are other lines I haven't mentioned because there's actually a lot of sublines and probably a couple other people the First has turned, but the only 'true' warrior line that's come up so far is Daianera's.

Daia was turned in the wake of a war that destroyed her home village- she was untrained, but she and several others took up what weapons they could. It didn't help, but the First found her in the ashes and she had enough psy to be turned without her brain going melty.

Daianera has only turned women, and only women who fight- she's modernized in some ways, especially recognition of what 'fighting' entails, but she's updated her beliefs... uh, rather poorly in other ways. She has Opinions on why men fight vs why women do, and they are wrong.

Her line only holds a few territories, and doesn't gather much; a new turn is typically kept around long enough to learn and then left to their own devices, but when members do meet it's usually fairly cordial. Individuals may have donor agreements with mortals, but the line doesn't keep stables of them the way the more social lines do. They tend to have a lot of ambient anger, but are faiiirly level-headed in the application of it, and they don't truck with most vampire politics; they get called in as security for some gatherings, either for volatile lines or when multiple lines are meeting.

There are a couple sublines, notably Dalena's which consists solely of her, and Eira, who's known for turning people on battlefields. Daianera doesn't allow the turning of men within her line, but her sublines are their own entities and she (sometimes begrudgingly) allows them their own canons; Eira's definitely turned men before.

 

So, what is up with Pietro´s silver ring? Whys he doing that to himself?

 

1) He doesn't like the idea of falling out of practice, so every decade or two will make something out of silver. The process of making the ring was much worse than wearing it.

2) Jewelry as a display piece rankles him, which he knows is irrational, but he still prefers that his pieces be worn while he has it instead of put in a case. Nobody's wanted the ring yet so he still has it, and he doesn't presently have a donor who could wear it for him.

He's not usually as sparkly as he is in the Rave right now, but he had a showing so he's wearing more jewelry than usual. The ring stays on though, because taking it off/putting it back on is a literal pain.

 

(Sidenote, would you mind if I try to draw some of your guys from your descriptions?)

 

Would do the opposite of minding! [Eyes]

 

I think I can find descrptions (mostly thinking abt Lia, Lexi and Pietro mebbe) but do you have any important extra details on them?

 

I can pull the character descriptions I have, if you want! I don't have much for Pietro's though.

Lia looks more delicate than she is unless you can see her muscles, and if you can see her muscles you can see her scars. The ones on her face are subtle, healers try to prioritize full healing for those, and I don't have an actual list for the others. It doesn't show on her avi very well but her eyes are very blue, dark but a very saturated shade.

I think it got mentioned in-rave but Pietro's hands are practically dainty, very much a jeweler's hands.

 

Spoiler: Lia eats dessert first

She should have expected the person at the door was the donor. He wasn’t remarkable, really, though Lia tended to judge people by their auras before anything else and his was absolutely standard for the average human. The man- she barely wanted to call him that: he looked young, barely an adult- was boring. He might have looked like anything and still been boring, right down to his bones. She was glad about two things, though: he seemed healthy rather than showing any signs of mistreatment, and he’d brought breakfast. More importantly, ‘breakfast’ had included coffee.

Lexi and the donor were making polite social noises Lia didn’t care about to each other, so she got up, claw-gripping the top of the thermos with her fingertips and gently but inexorably pulled until the donor gave up the goods. Coffee secured she reached for the paper bag emitting food smells and was rather pleased when it was handed directly to her this time. “My sister’s baking again.” He said, half to her and half to Lexi, and the faint note of dismay made her lift a brow as she settled back onto the couch. “She’s not- she’s not bad at it.” He added hastily. “She just… does this thing where she bakes nonstop for like two weeks until she gets whatever perfect or just gets bored or burns out or whatever. It piles up faster than we can eat, we’re drowning in brownies and pumpkin bread and whatever else she decided to make today.” He paused, turned a pleading gaze on her. “Please, dear god, save us from confectionery hell.”

Lia was already searching through the bag. A hunter’s life was short, and she never saw the point in holding off when there was no good reason not to have something now; she ate dessert first.

 

Following from this:

Spoiler: Post-Caelia bullshit, Lexi's trance, hunter bullshit

Lia pressed the edge of her nail into the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger, was rewarded with a small flare of pain that helped settle her thoughts. “What the fuck.” She repeated, and then, gathering herself a little, “You shouldn’t be able to do that. What the fuck.”

She was more than a little proud of herself as she stood her ground against his approach, though he had returned to the terrible gentleness of the previous night. When his hands closed over hers to carefully pull her nail away she felt flayed, oversensitive, but there was that feeling of safety that didn’t belong again as well. “I didn’t know I could.” He admitted, rather apologetically. She wasn’t sure if she found his guilt soothing or infuriating; she could hate him if he were cruel, could accept if he was apathetic. Both were easier than being subjected to this kindness. “Can I look?”

He didn’t make her look at him, and it took her a few seconds to realize the question wasn’t rhetorical; he was actually asking permission. “I want to see if I can figure out how that happened.” He explained, as if her silence was hesitation and not her being floored by the novelty of a vampire asking. She nodded once, looked up to meet his eyes, and his power washed over her as if from nowhere.

Though she couldn’t remember it exactly, now that she had experienced Caelia’s trance the difference was stark; Caelia breaching her defenses had been violent, they had been pushed past destructively. Lexi just let himself in like he had a key.

What little pain of her injuries that lingered faded, the edges of reality going soft and sweet except for the sharp awareness of his hands on hers, a side effect of his line’s trance. He didn’t pull her completely under as he had the night before, left some small part of her mind able to observe if nothing else. “Here.” He whispered, “Do you see?” She struggled to turn her power inward, her own psy clumsy and sluggish. He withdrew with the same eerie ease, except…

It was like the tie his blood had formed the night before, but thinner. It was harder to see, but not any weaker; something had bound her to him in a manner difficult, potentially impossible to break that didn’t show any sign of coming undone on its own. “I’m sorry.” His voice had taken on a terrible gentleness once more.

“Did you mean to do this?” She snapped back rhetorically, transmuting fear to anger. At least she could do something with anger, could act. Not that it did much good; he bore it with gentle patience rather than any reaction she knew what to do with.

“No. That’s not what I’m sorry for.” She wanted to make some kind of demand, to push him in retaliation for the fear which both was and wasn’t his fault, but he radiated regret like a tiny sun. She burned under the realization that either he had done something terrible to her in the period of time she had lost, or he was about to do something to her now. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t remember, would you? She wiped that conversation with the rest.” He sounded terribly sad, and Lia’s anger melted back into fear, grew into a tight lump in her chest. “I’m sorry. I said I would try to give you a way out if you wanted it. Caelia-” a hot flare of anger on his part, restrained as quickly as it appeared. “She’s never been good about giving people choices.”

“If I refuse she’ll kill me.” It wasn’t a question but an observation.

“No. She’ll make me do it.”

Perhaps this should have been the point where it really hit her, that she was being made to turn away from everything she knew, that she was trapped. It did, in a way, but it was familiar. Running from a vampire was a good way to catch a bad case of dead- the only way out of a fight was through. They fought or they died, that’s just how it was. This honestly wasn’t any different- she would do what she had to do, or she would die. Simple.

“I was going to agree anyway. I just-”

“Wanted the option.” Lexi said with horrible understanding. He finally looked away, whispered “I’m sorry” again, and when he looked back at her everything changed. It wasn’t psy, but it wasn’t truly magic; it didn’t take a mage’s training to be able to call a blood debt. She wasn’t able to remember the words, the way she couldn’t truly remember her oath, but she knew they mirrored each other. Hunters spilled the blood of vampires for the blood they took; Lexi had given her his blood, and now hers was his to spill. Hunters brought death to those who killed; Lexi had prevented her death, and now she owed him even if she found death again in his service. There was only one new addition.

Lexi had saved her life, and now it was his.

 

Nts: write up about oaths, life debts, and how much it fucking sucks when they intersect

 

Also: souls

 

Spoiler: oathbreaking kind of fucking sucks

It was done, the words were done, the act was done, and it

hurt

It wasn’t a physical pain but it was agony nonetheless. It hurt like loss, like grief, like something done that could never be undone. For the first time in a long time Liadan felt the sting of hot tears encroaching. Her whole body shook viciously, and she was distantly aware of the way she curled up in on herself like a wounded animal, making a shield of her shoulders and ribcage around her vulnerability. A warm hand touched her face, gentle, but she flinched away with the sudden certainty that if she allowed it she would crumble, like a child’s sandcastle. Her chest was already threatening to cave in on itself, a hollow-scraped out emptiness residing in her. She had been gutted, cleared out, pieces of her old life torn out for something new to grow. But it hadn’t yet, and she was left a shell.

Far, far away a voice spoke, soft and concerned. For the second time that night Liadan blacked out.

 

I have now made the Mistake of thinking about Lav in vampverse, which means I need to write up on mages too.

 

And now for something completely different. Still vampverse though.

Spoiler: They're reading Harrow the Ninth

Opal’s reading was interrupted by an unkind snigger from the vicinity of her feet, and she lowered the book to her chest, reached out with her leg, and pressed the sole of her boot to Callen’s head. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“It’s a room full of immortals stuck in close proximity who hate each other. It’s hilarious.” She pushed against his head again. “I’m allowed to find it relatable.”

The other vampire in the room rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“I am attacked. I am besieged.” The toes of Opal’s boot tapped against his temple, and he casually reached up to grasp her ankle. “Darling, I would like to remind you that I am perfectly capable of tearing your foot off at the ankle.”

“No you can’t.” She lifted the book once more, found her last line. There was no fear in her; casual but empty threats of violence were almost an inside joke between them. “I’ve got boots on. You’d have to go for the knee.”

“Ah, right, yes, of course. Whatever would I do without you to correct me on the means of your destruction?”

“Do it wrong, apparently.”