Alastair “Al” Ardent – Daeva (Zelani), Firebrands

Zachary “Zach” Kovalenko – Ventrue (Rötgrafen), Dragons

Jeanette Voerman — Daeva, Unbound

Knox — Ghoul
Mercurio — Ghoul
Chunk — Chunk

Children of the Monkey Machine – Metal Fatigue

Goldfrapp – Pilots (On a Star)
Jonny Greenwood – Convergence

Neonates Al and Zach look for Childer in all the wrong places. Caught by the authorities, Prince
Sebastian LaCroix exiles them to Santa Monica to do his dirty work. There they wind up stealing
morphine for a ghoul and beating the snot out of an explosive-dealing chemist. The local tyrant then
puts them onto ghostbusting, in exchange for calling off a problematic vendetta…
Al uses his Carthian Pull to get in touch with a member of the Sanctified Sangiovanni family, a group with
expertise in ghosts. They tell him that a ghost is often tied to an anchor in the material world, which is
likely what the pendant that Therese wanted is. Destroying the anchor will dispose of the ghost, though
it will likely try to defend itself. After that, Al feeds, meeting a young woman at the Asylum who’s new in
town.

Meanwhile, Zach sends an email to his daughter [his Touchstone], and is disturbed that he doesn’t get
much feeling from the act, as if there’s some disconnect now.

The guys then trudge through the sewers, and make their way to the hotel…

The Ocean House Hotel looms over the landscape; Al and Zach think it must have been impressive in its
day, but now it just looks creepy as fuck. Al and Zach stomp around the construction site Therese’s men
left behind, trying to get in; she neglected to give them a key to the building. Zach tries to break the lock,
but finds it’s more solid than it looks. He manages to break it while Al searches elsewhere, but not before
several light bulbs spontaneously explode around him.

Meanwhile, Al digs through the site foreman’s portable office, and finds a key. Before he can leave, a
bulldozer bursts into action and rams the office. Al freaks out and dives out of the building, and Zach tries
to stop the bulldozer, but the machine stops as quickly as it started...

The boys break into the building and start investigating. If not for moonlight, the place is nearly pitch
black. As if to put a finer point on it, a chandelier above them collapses and almost crushes them. Al
decides the ghost doesn’t like them very much.

They notice a woman standing off in the distance. Therese warned them that ghost might’ve killed a young
woman, so Al suspects this is her. Approaching her carefully, the boys are unceremoniously dropped
through rotten floorboards, falling into the hotel’s basement.

After they dust themselves off, they’re startled by the woman, who runs past them, screaming.

ZACH
If this thing scares ghosts, I do not want to be near it…
AL
We should split up.
ZACH
No! I’ve only seen like one horror movie in my entire life and I know that’s a bad idea.
AL
No, no, no. We’re vampires. We are the horror movie.
They find their way to the laundry room, where there’s a very old newspaper describing a triple murder.
It tells of a human head left in a laundry room dryer…and sure enough one of the dryers comes to life,
with a faint, ugly tumbling sound. Not wanting to have anything to do with that, they move on.

After getting lost going in circles, they go to the boiler room, though not before a female voice warns that
“He’s coming…” Another, male voice starts cackling, and they see a man standing behind some of the
equipment. Discretion being the better part of valor, they flee, and get lost again trying to find stairs. Al
reasons that they must be getting close to the pendant if the ghost is starting to show himself in the
material world. He convinces Zach that they should try to confront it in the boiler room. The boys screw
up their courage and go back to the boiler room to take him on, but when they leap out at him, he’s gone.

Zach notices a breaker, and turns it on. The boilers start to rumble, and the room starts to get hotter. Al
wants to make a run for it, but Zach doesn’t think steam can hurt vampires. They argue over this for a
surprisingly long time, but run for it when Zack almost gets hit in the head by a red hot rivet. They hear
elevator doors off in the distance…

Up on the second floor, the ghost torments them with more jump scares. They find another newspaper,
this one describing the death of a child. The article mentions that the murders were followed by the killer’s
suicide; he’d killed his entire family. In another room, they find a key, along with a photo of the family,
including a little boy. They also find the woman’s diary. It describes the days leading up to her and her
son’s murder. The male ghost screams for them to leave, but the boys are even more resolved to get rid
of the prick.

Eventually (after a utensil storm in a kitchen and a near miss in an elevator shaft), they find their way up
to the third floor. Al and Zach are alarmed when they notice a ghostly purple flame starting to cover the
walls. Both of them manage to hold onto their Beasts, though they’re left shaken. The flames are closing
in, though, even starting to consume parts of the building. Al tries to plead with the female ghost for help.
Apparently he prevails upon her; a piece of building falls away, leading to a door matching the key they
found.

They enter large suite with a burned out floor. Zach decides to try to jump it. As he does, the room
transforms. They see the suite as it was in its prime…including daylight. Zach realises it’s an illusion, but
Al frenzies, and rips pieces of wall out to protect himself. Zach figures he can leave him to his own devices.
He finds the pendant on a nightstand. In his mind’s eye, he sees the murder taking place, and all the awful
emotions that went with it. The illusion falls away.

Al recovers, and they leave as fast as they can. The newspapers they found seem to have disappeared…

Al and Zach go back to Santa Monica to meet with Therese. Instead, they encounter Jeanette, who tries
to convince them to give her the pendant, claiming to want to pass on to Therese. She makes a not so
subtle use of Awe, which Al notices and manages to shrug off. They decline to give her the pendant, not
wanting to provoke the Regent. Jeanette pouts and makes a bit of a scene about her sister. Al
commiserates; he had shitty siblings, too. She bounces back quickly.

It turns out she has her own task for them, for which she’s happy to pay. There’s an Invictus Kindred trying
to make inroads in Santa Monica with a charity auction at the Gallery Noir, and she doesn’t like some First
Estate fat cat stepping in on her territory. Zach is hesitant, but Al (not being any fan of the Invictus at the
moment) is more than happy to oblige. She tells them that if they’ll wreck up the place, she’ll reward
them.

Al and Zach leave. After checking in on Mercurio—who’s healing nicely, thanks, but doesn’t appreciate
them barging into his apartment at all hours of the morning—they decide to call it a night. Zach has a late
night snack on a working girl. As he comes home, he’s nearly knocked over as one of their neighbors, who
storms out of her apartment with tears streaming down her face.

Al decides to look into the local Cacophony: he wants to know who’s on the way up, and who’s on the
way down in Santa Monica. On the way out is Betrum Tung, due to his feud with Therese. On the way up
is Jeanette. This surprises Al, considering her relationship with her sister, but it confirms his hunch that
trashing the charity auction is politically astute, given the circumstances. He also finds out that the
Masquerade is rather thin around Vandal’s blood bank; there are rumors that someone’s looking into
him. He also tries to acquire clothing at the pawnshop downstairs, but ends up with a gun from the sketchy
proprietor.

Meanwhile, Zach gets a response from his daughter, and is frustrated again by his feeling of disconnect.
It feels like a heart starting a beat and failing to finish.

The boys head over to the Asylum to pass the pendant on, but neither Therese nor Jeanette are there.
Instead, they decide to talk up the strange vampire-groupie Knox, who Al nearly gives a heart attack after
sneaking up on him. Knox tells him he’s still on guard for his stalker. They ask if he has anything to go on,
and he gives them the driver’s license of one Virgil Crumb. Knox tells them that the “nasty dude” iced the
guy, though he doesn’t know why.

Al and Zach head to the gallery. They encounter “Chunk”, a slow-witted security guard who’s no match
for Al’s Awe and fast talking. Al suspects Chunk is about to lose his job for letting them in, but is self-
admittedly not a very good person, and doesn’t really care.

Inside the Gallery, they find several paintings based on motifs from ancient Rome; specifically, the life of
Julius Caesar:

 Caesar crossing the Rubicon

 Caesar being proclaimed dictator
  Caesar stabbed by Brutus
 Caesar overshadowed by Augustus

Al and Zach find the symbolism ostentatious, and wreck up the joint. However, the paintings mystically
repair themselves each time they ruin them. Al uses his Auspex to meditate on the problem, and realizes
they need to be destroyed in the proper, chronological order.

As Zach rips the last painting, he notices blood leaking from the frames. As it pools on the floor, a figure
forms…

#tungtwisted
#pettyVandalism
#Jeanette