Fall of the Camarilla

[hmm maybe i disabled you guys' ability to edit your posts... i'll check]
He doesn't immediately answer, however after you turn a corner onto a residential area, he responds, "A few years ago, I summoned a demon of Wrath. It nearly killed me during the ritual, Though I managed to restrain it and force it to talk, I was not able to stop it from killing all the other participants in the summoning including a dear friend. In total, 4 people died. The summoning was not actually for me, but I agreed to help anyway. Looking back, I don't think the other members of the Moonlit Black Cats, especially not my friend, who the summoning was really for, were ready to summon a demon, but it's too late for that now..."

"They weren't a formal group, they were really just a group of friends, but one of them decided he wanted to name the group something cool. As you can tell, he wasn't very good at picking names. I met them while on the road, and I saved them from a couple of bandits. Oh, and this was shortly after I became a Mage. After that, I walked with them to an inn and after talking for a while, they invited me to join them. I accepted mostly because the atmosphere between them was so warm and family-like that it made me jealous. It had been so long since I had seen my own family that I think I was particularly weak to that sort of scene. But it looks like we'll have to continue this later, as we've arrived." As he said this, the two of you round a corner and come to the great walls of Rome. By the looks of the people entering the city through the gate, it seems to be one of the western gates. The guards lazily glance at the two of you as you walk through the massive gateway, but they pay you no mind and you walk out onto the road outside of Rome. Surrounding you are hundreds of gravestones and mausoleums. There are even a few recently crucified Christians and other criminals lining the road. Walking until you are out of sight of the guards (and other travelers), Antonius begins to stroll through the graves, looking for a fresh one. [I'm ending my post here to give you a chance to do anything you might want to do. Would you like to do anything or simply watch Antonius as he looks?]

As Antonius examines a grave a few yards away, I pause, deciding whether or not to join him, then decide to cast an improvised fate and space spell to make the trip here just a bit more fruitful. With a few whispered words of high speech, I cast a spell that detects and guides me to items with paritcularly strong sympathetic vibrattions or destinies. The spell only works within about a twenty foot radius, so I decide to wander around a bit nearby once it takes effect.

The member 'Admin' has done the following action : Dice roll

'd10' : 5, 1, 8, 1, 3, 3

Closing your eyes and dipping your Will into the fabric of Fate, you rearrange a few threads and then pull. You snap your eyes open and overlaying the landscape all around you are the threads of destiny, they slowly fade away leaving only a few here and there, attached to some of the objects around you. You follow a few of the threads, but since some of the threads represent where something important has been in the past and some represent where they will be, the first several threads you follow yield nothing in return. After about 10 minutes of thread-following (and little to show for it) Antonius calls over to you, "Can I get your help with this?"

[Oh well I tried... It was still fun lol and you're a very good storyteller ]

I go back to Antonius to help him. "What can I do?"

[lol am I? thx ]

You find Antonius standing in front of a fairly new mausoleum, looking rather vexed. Shiro is standing next to him, staring brainlessly [HAH! get it?] at the door. Antonius glances at you as you approach and motions for you to help him open the stone door that seals the tomb shut. "Even with Shiro's help, this damn door open. I'd like to avoid using magic, so, if you would be so kind as to grab onto the otherside here..." As he says this, he and Shiro grab onto the left side of the door.

[Hahaha yes I got it ]

I grab the other side of the door to help open it.
[Sorry this is so short I couldn't think of anything else to say/do lol]

Even with the three of you pulling, the solid marble door refuses to budge. Sighing and stepping back, Antonius motions for you and Shiro to step away from the door. Shiro instantly and wordlessly obeys.

I move away too, wondering why it's so important that we open this mausoleum...

[you could say it's because Antonius doesn't like to lose to anything, expecially not inanimate objects ;D]

Picking up his staff from where he left it on the ground, he levels it at the door and recites a few lines of High Speech. As he does this, his staff is ringed in magic circles, with the biggest being around the head of the staff and the second biggest floating in the air just in front of the staff head. Inside the magic circle that's floating in the air, a ball of purplish magic appears and as he finishes the last sentence, it is blasted out and strikes the door, kicking up a small cloud of dirt and dust. At first, after the dust clears, it appears that nothing has happened. However, as he rights his staff and the magic circles disappear, you can see that that's not quite true. There seem to be small cracks forming in the marble door. Suddenly, after a few seconds [something like 2 seconds], the door lets out a loud *CRACK* and crumbles into several large pieces which fall to the ground. Coolly stepping into the the now open entryway, Antonius enters the Crypt, followed shortly by the ever-silent Shiro.

[Show off. Oh well I guess it can't hurt to stoke Antonius' (? Lol) apparently big ego...]

I follow Antonius and Shiro inside and then say quietly (but audibly so that Antonius can hear without being aware that I mean him to) "That was impressive"

[I admit that was pretty cool lol...]

Antonius doesn't respond to your comment, and instead, heads along the bodies lying in the alcoves along the wall until he comes to a fairly fresh one. He, with Shiro's help, lifts the body out of the alcove and places it on the floor. A loud bang echoes throughout the stone crypt as he slams the butt of his staff against the floor creating a magic circle around himself [the circle only surrounds Antonius, not the corpse]. [See, this is why I love staffs, the number of awesome things one can do with them is endless. Plus, you can't really say you've played a game with mages in it if someone doesn't go full-Gandalf with their staff XD] Holding out his hand towards the body and chanting a few short words, there is a loud crack and a bright flash as a black lightning bolt strikes the body from his hand [keep in mind that lightning strikes are instantaneous, so there's no sense of the bolt "traveling", the whole thing just appears in the air]. After being struck, the body ignites in flames of darkness. The body floats up off the ground and is lightly set on its feet as the flames die down until only his eyes burn. The newly risen corpse lets out a low grunt and stares blankly at Antonius. "What do you want to call it?"

[Yah, this post was fairly poorly written but I've had enough editing for now so I'll leave it how it is lol]

[Sorry for the late reply! I was hungry lol]

I consider Antonius' question as I look over at the body he's picked. It's a soldier [Yup I'm super original lol] still in his armor. I think for a moment then say "Glaucus" [You had to know I was gonna go for that name lol--but it's Latin so I think it counts haha]

As you speak his name, the fire in his eyes change from neutral black to Marina green and he shuffles over to stand next to you. Antonius rummages around in Glaucus' tomb for a second before pulling out a helmet and placing it on Glaucus's head. The helmet is of a type you've often seen gladiators wear. "This way, no one should notice that his eyes are on fire. However I still would advise that you exercise a little caution when walking around with him." Antonius then looks around the room before saying "That's probably all we need, shall we head back?"

[I like that you chose "Marina green" lol. Is there any way I can convince the vampires he's a ghoul or something and make him carry my food? ;P]

I take a quick glance around the room, then reply "Yes let's go. Thank you for this..." [What exactly is it lol? It sounds a little weird to say "thanks for the zombie" haha]

[hmm idk. I suppose that depends on how good of a talker you are. It will be difficult to explain the (literal) fire in his eyes if that's ever discovered]

The four of you head back toward Rome. It is very nearly dawn as you arrive at the gate. The guards are different then the ones who were stationed here when you left. As you point this out, you think you might have seen Antonius smile, but it's hard to be sure. "Exactly as planned. It's significantly easier if we don't have to explain how we picked up a fourth person in the last hour, and by timing my trips out here, i can make sure that the guards change shifts while I'm gone." You guys make your way back to the apartment, and as Antonius is putting away his stuff, you suddenly realize something: Mages never reveal their true names, however, "Antonius Pompeius Invictus" doesn't sound at all like a Shadow Name (which is what mages call the names they use to hide their Identity), which means that either Antonius isn't his real name, or he is extremely trusting (or naive). [feel free to call it a zombie, that's what it is lol]

The evening before you leave, Antonius hands you an indexed post of books he believes you should bring with you. After a short peruse through the library (the sanctum one) you manage to find all the books on the list and hand them to Glaucus. The first night of the trip procedes as it did in session, and that day after you were sure that everyone else had konked out, you left the inn (making sure not to be seen) and met with Glaucus to eat and research for a few hours. After a short breakfast of salted pork and bread, you crack open the first book and begin to read. You read for about 3 hours before deciding to turn in for the day. You repeat this each day of the trip and by the end, you've managed to get through most of the books. Unfortunately only one of them seems to be of any use. It brings up a ritual for the summoning of a Pride demon and of all the rituals you've seen, this one is the most complete, however even it is missing some essential parts. It describes how you need to gather together 20 people and have them chant a ritual chant (which the book doesn't have) while the summoner forces a once proud and powerful man to beg for mercy from someone he considers below himself. After 5 minutes of the changers chanting and the prideful man begging, the person the prideful man is begging to must deny him mercy while the summoner loudly calls out the demons name. The book then mows on to unrelated topics and goes no further into the ritual or the demon. The only other clue you have to go off of is the author, who goes by the pseudonym "Umbral, the Dark One". [the book also fails to mention the Demon's name. So that's all of the research you can get done]