The Library of Babel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
libraryofbabel) wrote2021-08-24 09:48 pm
libraryofbabel) wrote2021-08-24 09:48 pm
Case Studies in Vampiric Hunting Methods, Mid 20th Cen.
You sit at your desk in your study, in front of a pile of news clippings—sorting through them to figure out what the hell Father Joshua is up to,1 now that you’ve dug up the intelligence that he requested special permission to operate in the venerable Alder Aragona’s2 domain in one of Los Angeles’s more modest Latino neighborhoods.
Hopefully, he’s backed into a corner; you’ve been knocking over his sandcastles right and left. His contacts in the local diocese you conspired to have moved to far-off mission trips very suddenly; you’ve been chipping away at his more worldly connections, blackening his name and the names of his retainers—and also, well, you did gut, behead, and burn his incredibly pedigreed childe,3 sourced from the nastiest of old money stock with all the pretending at piousness that comes along with the blessing of privilege.
It’s a big city. Why here? Why this neighborhood, with its modest single Catholic parish? You’ve been scanning through for sudden changes, surprising deaths—
…wait. This Ruíz fellow—that name rings a bell. You saw it… where?
You sort back through all the papers, pulling out the one about the young man’s sudden and grisly death, wherein his family bemoaned that they couldn’t believe that he’d been mixed up in trouble, that he’d been a good boy, they were sure, and that they’d be careful of their daughter—
…the daughter, a teenager—
And there: her face in a small-circulation local paper, holding a prize for academics, with a note that it’s quite an achievement for a girl, plus a bemused reporter’s note about her declaration of her ambitions.4 You compare dates to a few other happenings shortly thereafter, and the name keeps popping up…
Goddammit. It fits his modus operandi exactly, the way you know he does this, the way you’ve heard him brag about it: “One must break them down before you rebuild them as tools in Longinus’s service—arrows in the quiver, as it were,” and then his stupid shitty dry corpse-like laugh.5 “Strip away their sins: their pride, their own ambitions, their sinful, individualistic dreams, such that they can be redeemed, and then you have a proper base from which to start.”6
Of course, you killed his childe that he worked hard on, and now he’s crafting a replacement.7 No, you’re not going to be able to be patient at all. This girl—Paula—you’re too late to save her brother, but you might be right on time to save her.
[1] At that time, he was not the Bishop of the Lancea Sanctum, but still one of the ranking elders among them; respected and considered a political up-and-comer among them.
[2] Aragona was one of the elders of the Invictus, considered the legacy of the feudal lords of vampire society. Yi found it to be true that the corrupt establishment of religion and the corrupt upper class were arm in arm in vampire circles as well as in human ones.
[3] Yi considered being a little more tasteful about the whole affair. However, the purpose of his death was to send a message to his sire of what was to come, and furthermore, to set him off-balance in the hopes that he might make more errors. Furthermore, he had been on all too many occasions a smug little chauvinist, and she considered it repayment for her having to tolerate his presence at Court.
[4] The reason why Yi had recalled and saved the articles was because the young woman reminded her very much of herself, at that age. Clever, ambitious, and in a place and time that was not entirely prepared to deal with that. She had resolved to support programs in that area, but hadn't realized that there would be other interest.
[5] Father Joshua had been embraced well into his elderly years, and by accounts had lived an unremarkable and pettily selfish life as a human priest before being dragged into vampiric society in his twilight years.
[6] In her opinion, some of the very worst of Lancea Sanctum theology. Yi would reluctantly admit that some corners of the theology were not bad, but the kind that demanded conformity—particularly to a certain patriarchal Western ideal—was the sort of thing that really got her hackles up and made her regret integrating into vampire society at all.
[7] To vampires of sufficient age, sufficiently distanced from their humanity, even other vampires could be considered tools or objects to own and replace at will.
Hopefully, he’s backed into a corner; you’ve been knocking over his sandcastles right and left. His contacts in the local diocese you conspired to have moved to far-off mission trips very suddenly; you’ve been chipping away at his more worldly connections, blackening his name and the names of his retainers—and also, well, you did gut, behead, and burn his incredibly pedigreed childe,3 sourced from the nastiest of old money stock with all the pretending at piousness that comes along with the blessing of privilege.
It’s a big city. Why here? Why this neighborhood, with its modest single Catholic parish? You’ve been scanning through for sudden changes, surprising deaths—
…wait. This Ruíz fellow—that name rings a bell. You saw it… where?
You sort back through all the papers, pulling out the one about the young man’s sudden and grisly death, wherein his family bemoaned that they couldn’t believe that he’d been mixed up in trouble, that he’d been a good boy, they were sure, and that they’d be careful of their daughter—
…the daughter, a teenager—
And there: her face in a small-circulation local paper, holding a prize for academics, with a note that it’s quite an achievement for a girl, plus a bemused reporter’s note about her declaration of her ambitions.4 You compare dates to a few other happenings shortly thereafter, and the name keeps popping up…
Goddammit. It fits his modus operandi exactly, the way you know he does this, the way you’ve heard him brag about it: “One must break them down before you rebuild them as tools in Longinus’s service—arrows in the quiver, as it were,” and then his stupid shitty dry corpse-like laugh.5 “Strip away their sins: their pride, their own ambitions, their sinful, individualistic dreams, such that they can be redeemed, and then you have a proper base from which to start.”6
Of course, you killed his childe that he worked hard on, and now he’s crafting a replacement.7 No, you’re not going to be able to be patient at all. This girl—Paula—you’re too late to save her brother, but you might be right on time to save her.
[1] At that time, he was not the Bishop of the Lancea Sanctum, but still one of the ranking elders among them; respected and considered a political up-and-comer among them.
[2] Aragona was one of the elders of the Invictus, considered the legacy of the feudal lords of vampire society. Yi found it to be true that the corrupt establishment of religion and the corrupt upper class were arm in arm in vampire circles as well as in human ones.
[3] Yi considered being a little more tasteful about the whole affair. However, the purpose of his death was to send a message to his sire of what was to come, and furthermore, to set him off-balance in the hopes that he might make more errors. Furthermore, he had been on all too many occasions a smug little chauvinist, and she considered it repayment for her having to tolerate his presence at Court.
[4] The reason why Yi had recalled and saved the articles was because the young woman reminded her very much of herself, at that age. Clever, ambitious, and in a place and time that was not entirely prepared to deal with that. She had resolved to support programs in that area, but hadn't realized that there would be other interest.
[5] Father Joshua had been embraced well into his elderly years, and by accounts had lived an unremarkable and pettily selfish life as a human priest before being dragged into vampiric society in his twilight years.
[6] In her opinion, some of the very worst of Lancea Sanctum theology. Yi would reluctantly admit that some corners of the theology were not bad, but the kind that demanded conformity—particularly to a certain patriarchal Western ideal—was the sort of thing that really got her hackles up and made her regret integrating into vampire society at all.
[7] To vampires of sufficient age, sufficiently distanced from their humanity, even other vampires could be considered tools or objects to own and replace at will.