Vampire: The Masquerade

[General Havoc]

Marcus has his blade, don't get me wrong, but that's not to say he's averse to the idea of picking up other weapons when and if the occasion should provide. It's not like weapons in his size are easy to come by, after all. When one comes along, it's worth looking into.

[Lys]

A fun thought just occurred to me, the way i described Lucretia's Kindred family, they actually do come close to looking like they're related despite being centuries apart in age. Both her 'sister' and 'father' have pale skin, fair hair, and light eyes as she does, albeit different shades: Lucretia is golden blonde with pale green eyes, Desideria light blonde with blue eyes, and Augustino amber haired and eyed. Admittedly it's kind of cheating on resemblance when i used Cersei and Jaime Lannister as reference pictures for Lucretia and her sire Augustino, but i swear i pictured them in my head before realizing who they resembled.

Also, it occurs to me that it was a mistake to tell Marcus that the matter of the Guelfs and Ghibbilines was complicated without elaborating on it. The subtleties of the argument - beyond being the party of the Pope and the party of the Emperor - are in fact relevant to his interests. The Guelf and the Ghibbelines are respectively very similar to the Populares and the Optimates in terms of their socio-economic platform. More importantly, Lucretia herself is a Guelf and thus a Populare, the faction of Quintus Sertorius. Guess i'll have to have Lucretia realize the parallels next session and bring it to Marcus' attention.

[frigidmagi]

I was unaware that Lucretia had the classical education necessary to make the comparison.

[rhoenix]

In fairness, Matthias has the education for it as well. It's just that his interests usually move in different circles than such things.

[Lys]

I was unaware that Lucretia had the classical education necessary to make the comparison.

Having a classical education is how Lucretia kept herself employed as a courtesan while pushing forty. She realized that if her only assets were youth and beauty, she would lose her value in short order, so she made a point of developing others. Many men - young and old alike - would rather the company of a scintillating conversation partner than that of some pretty young thing whose only skill is being decorative. So not only is Lucretia educated (Academics 3, Politics 3, Law 1), she owes her success to it.

[General Havoc]

Lucretia had best make this distinction clear in short order, as Marcus has an entirely different conversation in mind.

[Lys]

It's unlikely that she'll mention it before Marcus starts that conversation, as she knows it's coming and is rather interested in hearing what he has to say. It might come up during it though, and if not then certainly after. Really the main reason why Lucretia even brought up Guelfs and Ghibbilines at all was so Marcus knew which side is hers in the event he managed to get himself caught up in some kind of altercation, not because she believed the politics were going to be relevant. However his conversation with Monica has given her a better understanding of just how much Marcus values such things personal level, so she's no doubt realizing that the details may be important after all.

[General Havoc]

Sorry, what things are these that she has a better understanding of?

[Lys]

Lucretia is getting a better handle on much Marcus values his identity as a Roman and his connection to the by-gone glories of Rome. It's been obvious those things are important to him since they met, but the longer they interact the clearer it is just how much of his personality and sense of self rest upon them. She is also learning that Marcus values earnest conviction in one's beliefs more than whether or not he agrees with them. This was made clear from his reactions to the discussion with Dux Monica, which Lucretia was able to fully gauge with her Soulsight. He was shaken some by her casual disdain for Rome, but he clearly respects her nonetheless because of her strong convictions and great accomplishments. This leads to the conclusion that it was a mistake for Lucretia to dismiss her own political stances as unimportant for the sake of expedience, and also the realization of how to best correct that mistake. However, whether or not that comes up during their impending discussion or if she brings it up later remains to be seen.

[frigidmagi]

I've gotten the sense it would be like if a 16 year old me was frozen and released 1000 years later to find the country calling itself the United States of America is really just California and the surrounding areas only everyone speaks Spanish and prays to alien gods. Oh, and it's a Monarchy now.

[Lys]

And meanwhile in the rest of the former United States people speak a descendant of English with heavy foreign influence that you can't understand, but the priests of the new alien gods do still speak the English you're familiar wtih even if the pronunciation's a little funny in places. Also somehow the Quebequois decided to call themselves the United States of America too, even though they still speak a linguistic descendant of French and they would never have called themselves American when you were around. They keep trying to claim the entire Northeast as their domain, while the squabbling little city-states side either with them or with the priests of the alien gods based in the ancient capital of Washington DC. Oh and the backwater of Myanmar somehow became a major power, and its political descendants are occupying Hawaii, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest. They worship a different set of alien gods and apparently this is cause of a never-ending series of holy wars.

[General Havoc]

That's a... not entirely inaccurate analogy for Marcus' position in the middle ages.

Whatever her opinions on the subject of Rome, Marcus can't really help but be impressed by a child-vampire who overthrew and murdered her own sire and proceeded to carve out a position of Lordship in her own city, and be damned to the opinions of the rest of the nobility around her. This mirrors Marcus' own goals closely enough that even he can't ignore it. And while she's plainly no fan of pretensions of Roman Honor, she also is younger (somewhat) than he is, meaning she did not live in the days of "virtuous" Republican Romans, but in the fallen, decrepit times that came after, when the Romans gave in to kings and tyrants and had abandoned all honor, which is what he's decided to blame for the collapse of the Empire. Christianity was a symptom of this.

If that all sounds like a convenient bout of rationalization, that's because it is. Marcus lived, after all, at the cusp of the end of the Republic, an institution that was already completely dysfunctional even when he was alive. The reason he was born in Spain to a non-Roman mother, after all, is because his father, a war hero and winner of the grass crown, was driven out of Rome in a civil war during which several Consuls and ex-Consuls were murdered and a whole swatch of the aristocracy proscribed. Ever since the Gracchi, things had been spiraling more and more out of control, which is why Cicero used to remark that Cato (who would discourse windily about how awesome the Republic was) spoke as though living in Plato's Republic, rather than "the shithole of Romulus".

But Marcus was nine when he was embraced. Fed a diet up until that point of Roman nationalism and triumphalism by rhetors and pedagogues the same way any wealthy Roman child would have been. Rome was an intensely conservative society, and like all intensely conservative society, it clung to value systems already two hundred years out of date. Marcus' Rome, the one in his head, the idealized Rome that he was taught about and clung onto after Perpenna embraced and enslaved him wasn't Trajan's Rome or Constantine's or Augustus' or even Caesar and Cicero's. It was the mythologized Rome of four generations before him, of Scipio Africanus, Fabius Maximus Cunctator, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Cincinnatus and Marcus Furius Camilus, Lucius Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius Poplicola, who drove out the Tarquins. He didn't have time to reconcile things with the reality of Rome, as the "reality" he got shoved into was horrifying beyond all description. And while he's not stupid enough to think that his vision of what Rome was is the same as the reality of what it was, it's still the subconscious construct he anchors himself to. Given a thousand year temporal dislocation and the extinction of clan, culture, and religion, what else was he supposed to do?

[frigidmagi]

Well given my reaction would likely be unhealthily attempting to bring my old world back, I might not be the best person to give advice.

[Lys]

Given a thousand year temporal dislocation and the extinction of clan, culture, and religion, what else was he supposed to do?

The other option would have been to become an an irreverent cynic who believes in nothing save his own self, but that would have lead to an entirely different character. That's the direction i tend to take with my own characters when they're put through hell, usually manifesting as callousness and satiric disdain with some bitterness. It's been rather interesting seeing you go the idealism route with Marcus.

[General Havoc]

The Romans abhorred fatalism in all its forms, regarding it as pernicious at best, and downright barbarous at worst, the provenance of dour Punics and Gauls and inscrutable Orientals who did not possess the fortitude of proper Romans. Even at their most stoical, the Romans of Marcus' day at least were not fond of bitter sarcasm, as they regarded it as a sort of surrender. One accepted the world as it was and did one's duty, whatever it happened to be. The route Marcus has taken isn't precisely what I'd call "idealistic", as Marcus has no illusions about the depths to which the world can descend (or at least no more than most vampires do after a while). He just doesn't regard the fact that savage motherfuckers exist as being a relevant matter to how he is supposed to conduct himself. There have always been Barbarians, after all. A Roman's duty is to slay and conquer them. All is thereby made right with the world.

Note that Marcus distinguishes, as Tacitus wound up doing, between barbarians, such as Helgi or Ciara, and Barbarians, such as Perpenna. The former are a relic of the old world, and worth thus having around, to say nothing of Helgi's proven valor and virtues. The latter... well... duty calls.

[Lys]

That is something i had not quite realized about Roman philosophy, though it makes sense as an natural consequence of their stoicism. Nevertheless, while callousness is a necessary component of cynicism, fatalism, bitterness, and sarcasm are not, they are merely how i tend play it. A man who has lost all reverence for higher ideals and succumbed to moral nihilism can still stoically accept that the world is so. He can conclude that since there is no higher authority than his own will, and no meaning save that which he imposes on the world, that he shall be the arbiter of right and wrong as per his own desires. That is a different sin from fatalism, one that is still abhorrent to the Romans it's true, but nevertheless one that Romans were susceptible to: Hubris. For what else but hubris could it be to say that if gods have no greater moral authority than man, then man shall take it for himself? And hubris is as much an act of irreverent cynicism as fatalistically mocking a world that makes no sense.

So when i say that Marcus is an idealist i mean it in the sense that he holds an ideal of the Virtues of Rome that informs his behaviour and world view. He might not be blind to the horrors of the world, but that is of little importance to his ideals. They do not assert that the world is good or just, but rather that the code of thought and action constituting Romanitas is so, as it derives moral authority from mos maiorum, to use the Roman term. It as much an ideal as any other, and he holds on to it tightly when he could have very well looked around himself and rejected it as worthless. That's why he's an idealist and not a cynic.

Lucretia on the other hand, is a thoroughly cynical woman who has given in mainly to hubris, albeit with a streak of bitter fatalism. She tries not show this, but it slips through sometimes, such as when she stated plainly that she finds no gods worthy of worship. Sure it was also a calculated move to place herself apart from religious matters, one that i note has well succeeded, but there might have been a wiser way to approach it. In some ways idealism and cynicism mirror each other, and neither likes to sit still under wraps. Regardless, there is still a little ember of idealism in Lucretia, i will not say what because she will not acknowledge it, but it's there.

[Hotfoot]

Helgi must Helg.

Forget this at your peril.

[Lys]

Lucretia already believes that Helgi may very well be the most dangerous member of the Coterie.

[General Havoc]

Lucretia already believes that Helgi may very well be the most dangerous member of the Coterie.

We'll see what she thinks after next session...

[White Haven]

I fucking swear, the world seems to think I just don't deserve Mondays. Got a call out of the blue, need to help a friend move last-minute. Makes me wish I drank, I'd gouge this fucker for so much alcohol...

If I'm not too beat when I get back, I'll get on, but don't wait up for me. This is getting fucking retarded.

[Cynical Cat]

Considering that every session you've missed has resulted in someone suffering, we can deduce

1) Someone's life is going to suck

2) The universe hates you and wants to deprive you of tasty, tasty, tears.

[Lys]

You know i've been thinking about last session and how at the end of it Havoc decided to play out the ending of the scene between Marcus and Monica via PMs with our illustrious ST. What nefarious acts could have possibly been going on behind scenes? What vile things was Havoc concealing from us? After some thought the answer came to me: Marcus and Monica were holding hands.

[General Havoc]

You know i've been thinking about last session and how at the end of it Havoc decided to play out the ending of the scene between Marcus and Monica via PMs with our illustrious ST. What nefarious acts could have possibly been going on behind scenes? What vile things was Havoc concealing from us? After some thought the answer came to me: Marcus and Monica were holding hands.

Yes... that's it... no evil plots whatsoever, just holding hands. That must have been it...

[rhoenix]

What Havoc's trying to say is that there were violins playing wistful songs, soft breezes ruffling their hair, and beautiful reflections of the sights of the city reflecting into one another's eyes. It was a very touching moment, and very private. We shouldn't make fun of their efforts to build relations with one another.

Either that or they went people fishing, one of the two.

[Lys]

Yes... that's it... no evil plots whatsoever, just holding hands. That must have been it...

So among other things, you were asking Monica about Lucretia.