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Post by Strigus on Oct 19, 2018 18:36:04 GMT
Charisma (3) + Persuasion (0)ThbcSCNVp_p_p_
Sarah paused for a moment, clearly hesitant. "I don't know. Bruce and I only managed to flee the last time she attacked. Do you think you and I could stop her together? It might be safer to just wait out one more day before I can flee further south."
Her face betrayed a sense of guilt, however. Fleeing south might be safer for her, but it would be leaving Clyde to the wolves. With a sigh, she said, "Though I suppose I can't be sure I won't be followed. Perhaps this is the best way forward. I've been holed up here for a while, so if I wander around Providence, and the assassin is still after me, I bet she'd take the bait. We'd just need to set up some sort of trap for her first to even the odds." ··
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Post by Clyde Maddick on Oct 25, 2018 23:34:45 GMT
"I don't have many ideas on how to trap an assassin." Clyde said, descending the stairs. "How have you managed to escape in the past? If you're able to exploit her weaknesses we can use that to trap her, right?"
He needed all the information he could get. Both Clyde and Sarah knew that he needed vampire remains in order to convince the prince. If the assassin was not feasibly destroyable, Clyde would have to turn to other options, and neither wanted to entertain that idea.
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Post by Strigus on Oct 27, 2018 1:33:32 GMT
"Well," she said, thinking back, "I just ran. One of my gifts is speed, though I think the assassin had it as well. When I ran, Bruce held her for a bit, giving me a headstart. Being the prey, once she shook herself of him, she followed after me, but I think I was far enough away that I managed to lose her. So last time, it was dumb luck.
"Although, I bet she's rather young too, if I could lose her. Perhaps inexperienced. What if we wait until it's nearly dawn, I wander around to draw her out, then lead her to a room with two entrances. You lock her in as she follows me, I exit through the other door and lock that too. Then we'd just need some way to open windows to that room, and when the sun rises, she'd burn.
"Or perhaps staking? That would paralyze her, and make dealing with her quite easy. I lead her to you, and when she thinks she's got me, you hammer a stake into her back and don't stop until she stops moving?
"Just spitballing here. I've never had to plan an assassination before."
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Post by Clyde Maddick on Oct 28, 2018 19:36:46 GMT
"Funnily enough, neither have I. I just kinda showed up here with weapons and hoped something would work out."
Clyde fussed with his long disheveled hair as he thought, biting the dyed green ends. He wish he knew which clan the assassin was from. If he knew that he could find a way to truly exploit their weakness.
"I don't know if the sunlight plan would work. If we open any windows they could break out, or we could get burned ourselves. That's fire that I don't want to play with. I think staking is definitely the better plan. I do like the idea of locking them in. Oh wait!" Clyde had a sudden epiphany. "We combine the two! we lock them in a room where they need to fight us. I stake them on the inside, and once they're paralyzed, you open the windows and let me out. Then we just leave them till the morning, I collect the ash, and we go our separate ways."
The idea was risky. Clyde was no fighter, and going up against an assassin would be much different from going up against Sarah.
"Unless you wanna help with the staking process. If you do have greater speed than most, it would be advantageous to have both of us fighting. I already have the needed supplies." Clyde pointed at his duffel bag and looked down a Sarah. "And also, do we need to talk to each other across a stairwell? This is beginning to feel kinda awkward."
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Post by Strigus on Oct 29, 2018 12:19:34 GMT
Sarah laughed at this, and began climbing the stairs. "I was going to show you where you could sleep, but we should get moving if we want to get her out before sunrise. I just hope we can find her in time- I need to walk somewhere conspicuous and hope she notices me and follows me rather than attacking on the spot. Unless... you found me, Clyde, when even she couldn't. Maybe you could find her?"
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Post by Clyde Maddick on Oct 30, 2018 20:17:29 GMT
"I don't really know how it works." Clyde said, stepping aside giving Sarah room to pass. "I knew I was looking for a yellow door, and made a map a'la Jackson Pollack, then followed it to get to you. Do you have a good description of her, or an object of hers, like a torn bit of clothing or something? It's harder if I don't have anything to go off of." I'll also need a medium to see the vision from, like water or paint. Something changeable that I can look into."
Clyde walked into the proper of the warehouse, "Plus, finding her isn't the only issue. We need a spot to set the trap. You know the area better than me, and you seem to have pretty good survival skills scouting out places, compared to me at least. I'll look for something to find the vision in and we'll text each other once we've found what we need?"
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Post by Strigus on Nov 3, 2018 2:56:14 GMT
"I'm afraid we were too busy running for our lives, we never stopped to collect Voodoo ingredients. But I do have a place in mind. Let me run over and make sure it's all clear. I have some blood bags- literal ones, not chained up people or anything- in the other room, so help yourself." Sarah shot a quick text to confirm that they had the right numbers, then headed off.
In the other room, Clyde found the blood bags, left in a small pile on the floor. On the wall opposite the blood, several maps of the area pinned to the wall with red twine running from one to the other. The maps were all of the same area, but by different makers and from different years, and none were quite the same as each other. More tacks and twine were littered on the ground underneath the wall, as well as a few atlases of Providence in general, from which the page of the waterfront they were at had born torn out for the wall. There was some garbage and debris swept into a corner, but otherwise the room was empty.
The maps looks obsessive, like a madman tracking a paranoid delusion, and at the implied madness Clyde could feel the voices begin to stir.
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Post by Clyde Maddick on Nov 3, 2018 3:14:59 GMT
Clyde started to feel wary. What was she looking for. This was not the setup of someone fleeing, this was the work of someone with a mission. He could feel the voices tugging at the edge of his mind, and rather than quiet them, he listened with purpose, trying to make sense of the inspiration. He tore open one of the blood bags and smeared it on his hands. He began to mark the maps, hoping to make sense of their connections. What does this mean. Work in me, muse. Reveal truth. Clyde began to move in a trancelike state, letting the visions guide his hands. He knew not to search for anything in specific. He could feel that inspiration would reveal meaning. The map had a purpose, a statement, or rather, a story to tell. The mind would reveal what it needed to through the maps. Whether that be the location of the assassin, or some other hidden truth, would be left to the chaos within Clyde's mind. Eyes of Chaos BB. Letting the voices run free. Clyde's gut tells him something is up. Not gonna let the conscious goal of the mission at hand obscure any truth the vision might hold.
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Post by Strigus on Nov 3, 2018 4:00:55 GMT
Clyde rolls Perception (4) + Occult (3) at Difficulty 8, since he's not really sure what he's looking for:8w0nkYqap_p_p_p_p_p_p_ One success
As Clyde patted his bloodied hands across the map, his field of vision became blurred and faded to a blood red. Losing track of his physical body, the red field began shifting, with raised peaks and depressions, until it was an amalgam of the maps from a bird's-eye-view. Soaring downward, he investigated individual streets, each bare and empty; no people, no benches, no streetlights, nothing. This continued for a while, until eventually he found a street with one figure. It arose from the ground, a lumpy and misshapen individual from the bloody ground. It's form was humanoid, but the blood wasn't precise- no face, no variances in color, and the lumpy body wasn't easily identifiable as male or female. Around this figure, another half-dozen figures rose. The first figure attacked a second. A third figure rushed to attack the first, and in turn was attacked by a fourth figure defending the first. The others fled, while the second figure collapsed to the ground and melted back into it. As the first and fourth attacked the third, the third would strike them, and portions of their blood-forms would be knocked off and merge with the ground, until the first and fourth fled. The third, rather than follow, calmly walked into one of the buildings.
Clyde's field of vision began rising, and he reentered a bird's-eye-view, focused on the building that was entered. As he left's the blood-tainted coloring and returned to a normal view, he saw the building on the map- the only point that hadn't been coated by his hands with blood. The maps had a horrific amount of blood smeared across them, and looking back across the room, he saw that he had gone through all the blood bags, apparently moving back and forth throughout the vision. Though it hadn't felt long, he had clearly been locked into it for some time. ······
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Post by Clyde Maddick on Nov 7, 2018 2:43:35 GMT
The stories weren't lining up, if the vision was to be believed. The two that had run away could only be Sarah and Bruce, and they had not been ambushed or passive in their encounter, but instead aggressors. These maps seemed preparatory, so his theory about Sarah being on some sort of mission did not feel far off. Perhaps it was an assassination of her own. Maybe that was why she knew of a place that would work for the plan.
Clyde's mind raced. There was so much complex intrigue, and far too many moral quandaries for his liking. Undeath was complex, and filled with paranoia. It seemed to be getting to him as well. Earlier he had wondered why the elders would be so paranoid of the young, and now he somewhat understood. No matter who it was that Clyde spoke to, they may never have been showing their true face. With such a perilous existence, and eternity to spend with your enemies, it was no wonder that the eldest among the kindred were so terrified of betrayal. Hundreds of years is a long time to amass a long list of enemies and malintents.
The only way to find out, though, was to act. He had to find this 'assassin,' and fast. If he was being deceived, his prey might have already made for the train station under the pretense of assisting him.
Clyde left the warehouse, following the map in his mind to the only building revealed. The only building not soaked in blood.
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Post by Strigus on Nov 7, 2018 4:53:03 GMT
The trip was straightforward and uneventful. Clyde was, after all, moving in a largely abandoned area during the small hours of the morning. Even during the day, there likely wasn't much commotion, and that meant his trip was fortunately quick and without interruption.
It had been difficult to make out any specifics from the map, but when he arrived at the only unbloodied address he found himself before what appeared to be another building. Perhaps a factory, or maybe another warehouse. That was unsurprising; they seemed to make up most of this area of the waterfront. However, unlike Sarah's hideaway, this one wasn't in a state of disrepair. It potentially wasn't even abandoned.
Above two large red doors, a sign read ''Marshall's Baked Beans'' in simple red block letters. The sign also featured various rural imagery, and aside from the sign the building was unadorned. A sturdy, brutalist brick cube with a tall chimney and a modest dock on the water. No lights were on inside, though that was hardly telling given that he was dealing with nocturnal predators.
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Post by Clyde Maddick on Nov 7, 2018 17:57:11 GMT
Clyde worked his way around the building over to the waterfront, and the dock next to it. The chimney indicated that this was not only a warehouse, but a cannery itself. Clyde wondered why baked beans would be canned in a labyrinthine warehouse district. A fish cannery made more sense to be here, but then again, Clyde was no economist, even less so a baked beans investor.
--no time like the present to learn--something's fishy--no this is a bean cannery--you know what I meant--shut up--listen just look it up Clyde--yeah--you do have a phone--nah he's gonna start asking us for visions and dark inspiration or some shit--
The voices were right. In this digital age, the least he could do was look up this company's website. If the elders, and the Camarilla, really had as much wealth and power as Sarah let on, then this might have been a front to hide a different purpose for the structure. Maintaining a Haven in Providence's warehouse district wasn't too far a stretch of the imagination.
He began to look up information about Marshall's Baked Beans on his phone while he went around to the back to find a way in other than through the front door.
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Post by Strigus on Nov 8, 2018 0:30:44 GMT
Looping the the back, he saw the dock extend into the water. The dock led to the large brick building, to another massive set of doors. Above these doors, however, was an iron walkway with a human-sized door. The walkway went across the right side of the building where it led to stairs that went partially down the building, suspended about a story up, ending with another door and a metal ladder that was put up.
As Clyde began investigating Marshall's Baked Beans, he recieved a message from Sarah. ''Ready when you are,'' it said, along with an address and location. Continuing to read up, Wikipedia had little that immediately jumped out. Marshall's Baked Beans was part of the larger Marshall's Food Co., which was based in Connecticut but had branched across New England and the Tri-State area. In recent times, it had been closing down some of it's northernmost holdings, but was still a reasonably successful, if regional rather than national, company.
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Post by Clyde Maddick on Nov 10, 2018 21:15:24 GMT
Clyde went to the large doors, activating his hearing sense, and listened at the base of it for any movement, rather, any sound at all, inside. He looked at the side of the building, while he was at it. He looked at the rough brick and wondered if it was scalable. It would take some effort, but it was certainly worth a shot. Going in through these large doors, or the front ones, would be the expected place of entry.
Then again, he could play this as an alliance with the assassin. They had the same prey after all. He was a childe of Malkav, and it would be reasonable that his visions had lead him here; certainly, there was truth in that story. This way he might be able get the full story, as well, before finally making the choice on who to destroy.
--make up your mind--lord this shouldn't be that hard--the door's right there dummy--
Clyde had changed his mind. He would listen, to see if anyone was inside, and then he would knock. They were on the same side after all, assassins hired out for the destruction of Sarah White. And depending on how the tale played out, Clyde might decide to do just that.
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Post by Strigus on Nov 11, 2018 13:21:55 GMT
Perception (4) + Alertness (1): Rd|4AA2Ap_p_p_p_p_3 successes
With his superhuman hearing, Clyde could just make out a faint, rapid-fire clicking on the other side of door. Someone was on the otherside, and it sounded like they were texting. Rapping his knuckles on the door, the clicking stopped, there was a brief pause, then footsteps approaching the door.
Opening the door was a small blonde woman, generally matching Sarah's description of the assassin. She opened the door fully, revealing the inside of the abandoned Bean factory- essentially a massive, empty room, gutted of any equipment or furnishings. She opened her mouth, but quickly her face changed from an expression of welcome to one of confusion, and she looked Clyde up and down briefly before asking, "Who are you?" ····
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