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Mekhet Book Poem; Teh Awesome
Topic Started: Feb 2 2011, 02:11 PM (47 Views)
Laraqua
Administrator
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Sestina for Frances Page 79

Dying makes you shallow.
You lose your capacity for reflection.
You only think about blood.
You can’t feel the things you took
For granted, your breath, your heart
Beating. Everything’s gone cold.

Sometimes I get all cold
Like a doll. I make shallow
Conversation. I’ve no heart
For this, on reflection.
I hate the way it took
Me away from life to blood.

It’s always about blood
In the end, the corpse-cold
Truth that took
Away my last shallow
Breath, my reflection,
My echo, my shadow, my heart.

I tried to take some heart
In immortality, in blood
Made strong. My reflection
Came back to me. “I’m cold,”
She said, “And you are shallow,
You don’t care about the lives you took.”

I realised that it was true. I took
Futures and lives, stopped a heart
Without thought, became shallow
As I drank all the blood
I could, made warm bodies cold,
Murdered without pause for reflection.

I left my reflection
To wander off. She took
Some money, went out into the cold.
She left me here with my empty heart
And my thirst for your blood.

I didn’t care. Dying has made me shallow.
Your breath is shallow, because I took
It away. You are my reflection, my heart.
I love you. I killed you. My blood stands, cold.
OOC: Shannon O'Farrell
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Laraqua
Administrator
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I think I've figured out what my issue has been with Humanity. I want to tell a range of stories. I want to tell stories about 'good, moral, upstanding people' who by their very nature corrupt those around them. I want to see vampires struggle against their Beasts and reach for the breaths of emotion, dragging themselves out of the muck and filth with resolute determination. I want to see them fail at this. I want to see them win. I want vampires to be capable of keeping the fragments of emotion, tending them, keeping themselves warm beside them ... knowing that if they fall into temptation, live an easier life, take what they want, those embers of feeling will dim and they won't even know what it is to feel.

I want to watch temptation yank down those who rest on their laurels. I want to show how righteousness can make you more of a monster. I also want to play with how a single vampire can slowly corrode and destroy the lives around them. I want to play with gore-streaked Crone, soul-crushing Lancea Sanctum feeding from homeless men strung up by the ankles, and cruelly experimentive Ordo Dracul. I want Invictus who rest their feet on coffee tables made of ghouls and Carthians who indulge in gangland shoot outs on the streets.

Basically, I want it all. I want to play with all of the themes. I want to find a way where a torturing kindred can be cold and evil rather than raveningly stupid. I want to find a way where a kindred can take the hard way and keep their Humanity high, knowing that with every kick down the ladder they'll be less and less prone to pull themselves back up.

I want some kindred to feel, maybe not quite real feelings, but close (and closer the higher their Humanity is) so that at Humanity 10 they're almost but not quite human. Where emotion, real emotion, fresh emotion, exists, but is a mere breeze against the winds of true human emotion. No longer a mere echo like it is at 7, or a memory of emotion as it is at 6, or worse, a memory of a fact as it is at the lower levels. Something so valuable yet so intangible, that you don't realize the strength of it until you've plummeted and yanked yourself up.

And that so many have utterly and resolutely thrown behind them. Where cruelty and callousness reigns supreme and the bell curve for kindred begins at around 3 - 4.

So yeah, so shoot me ... I want it all!

And now I know what I want and how to get there, now that I know how to manipulate the rules to allow those of high Humanity to struggle yet exist (Trigger rolls for committing a sin where it would be a bigger sin not to and there's no way around it) and where those of low Humanity can blend amidst the vampires, largely undetectable, except to the kine (insanity can be reflected by derangements, thank you, falls to the Beast leave you more hollow - Humanity 1 can develop a system to hide the bodies, even if they don't care much about it).

Now I know all this ... I think I can really work with the Horror.
OOC: Shannon O'Farrell
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