---

Travis nodded to the other Gangrel, an acceptance of the friendly challenge that most other's probably didn't even catch. He was keen on the idea himself, and before the night was through they would come to an understanding of where there stood. It's the way. "Yessir" he says simply, turning his attention back to Abel for a moment as the Toreador prattles on about his brewed concoction.

He's listening intently as Abel explains a bit of the process, and the lore, behind the brewed beverage he is so proud of. He pulls the bottle back out of his hat and takes a quick swig, once again careful not to reveal too much of his mouth. He licks his lips then looks back to the Toreador. "you did good" He offers, corking the bottle and placing it back in his hat.

Travis took the chance to clap Dio on the back as they exit the circle, in much the same way as she did him earlier. "night" He says, then glances at Faith as she gets close enough to tip his hat down, if the bottle had fallen out he might not have been as friendly about her touching his hat, but she was playing nice, and he would too. "be that as it may... it weren't nothin personal" He says, in earnest.

He steps back a bit when Clara enters, there was something familiar about her. She reminded him of a shooter in the Buffalo Bills Wild West Show, the show he was aspiring to join before he took a turn and started robbing trains. She was real friendly with Faith, and that gave him reason to step aside and let the women talk amongst themselves.

Travis glances around the room; the Toreador and the scarface Brujah are talking about the brew, Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane are about to play catch up, so that left him and Geoffrey. "My dance card's empty, let's say we take this outside Wodeward?" He says with a mischievous look. "Gentleman's choice; pistols, knives, or bare knuckle"

Rudolph Longstaff aka Abel Beaumarchais
those boon times went bust
my feet of clay, they dried to dust
the red isn't the red we painted
its just rust

Toreador Ancilla | Blush of Health | Enchanting Voice | Deceptive Aura

---

He glanced sideways at Sergine and their sudden question. They had the seeming of a sentry, or maybe a hawk. Watching, watching. After having fallen silent, though, it struck him as a somewhat suspicious segue, but maybe they were just idly curious. He didn’t want to unduly offend them, so he answered.  “Well, as I mentioned earlier, it’s beer.”

For a moment, it looked as though he was going to leave it at that. But then he became something of a barker. “Specially-formulated, of course, to be tolerated by the Kindred digestive system, but following a lot of the conventional processes of brewing - with a splash of a special ingredient. WINK,” he said, the ingredient in question being obvious.

“Perhaps you’re familiar with the art of blood preparation? For anyone who isn’t,” he spoke to the group, “blood culinarians turn blood into a digestible food product, and blood brewers turn it into a different kind of drink. I’ve dabbled with the former - some unfortunate attempts at flan - but the latter is where my heart lies. I didn’t originate the practice, of course, but I have done considerable research on the work of other pioneers from different clans. I mean, we can all agree that drinking blood is fantastic. Blah, blah, blah. But.” He raised a finger with a modicum of excitement. “What if it could be better?”

He shrugged. “After decades of the same kinds of feeding experiences, sometimes our kind get bored. Ask a Ventrue, right? Night in, night out, for years and years, same old same old. Kindred sometimes want to experience something nourishing but also different. Something that challenges the palate. Something a little bougie. That reawakens our sense of novelty or strikes nostalgia. It’s incredible the number of simple things one misses after just a couple of decades.”

Abel continued, thankfully not needing to even take a breath. “I have found recipes and references authored throughout time for this kind of drink in piles of languages including Quechua. That one was from who I think was a Malkavian who made a drink blending blood with fermented cassava root. Apparently, it only works if the cassava is processed manually in the mouths of kine, their saliva being the fermenting agent. When finished, though, it ends up tasting like buttermilk. Ugh - I wish I could get my hands on him! Unfortunately, he met the Final Death in 1969 and I haven’t been able to find any more of his writings.

“The recipe I’m currently using is adapted with a Nordic flair,” he said, gesturing with his hand, “from the earliest written record I’ve found on the topic. I traced the authorship back to another Toreador in eastern Europe, living in some dreadful Tzimisce’s domain right around the time the Inquisition was starting to fire up. Pre-Convention of Thorns, of course. It was obviously already an old draft, packed inside a box full of other correspondence found - as the legend goes - in a secret cellar beneath a burned-out herbalist’s shop. It was called the ‘Barbarian’s Drink’. Which makes me think the Toreador in question was Greek, because - as I’m sure you all know - they didn’t really love beer. Wine-drinkers. Another clue: it was written in Greek,” he joked, chuckling.

---

And she does. Toreador or not, Maynard had taught her how to play second fiddle and she'd gotten pretty good at that. Being underestimated, ignored. Picking her moment, lining up the shot. Bang.

"Well, blazes, that who I think it is?" A faintly familiar voice behind Faith. The individual it belongs to is dressed in bootcut jeans, filigree Justins and a plain black shirt with long sleeves. Not too dissimilar from how she'd dressed a century ago and change, except the individual items are all designer now, expensive brand names stitched onto 'em, just missing a cowboy hat from Gucci. She's missing the matched brace of Bisley race guns she'd brought with from the Bill shows, but those are long gone and even if they weren't there's no way she'd be allowed to bring them into Elysium.

There is space for her, recently freed up, to drift into before the circle closes but she waits for acknowledgement, arms folded. Waits for the conversation to stop, and the spotlight to drift onto her. Even in life she'd been a showman, that was what had made her Sire convinced that she had to die. The blood had made her, perhaps, a bit worse. It made all of them worse.

Geoffrey Wodeward


To all things housed in her silence

Nature offers a violence

---

Geoffrey took another drink from the bottle in his hand and found somewhere to lean. One shoulder to the corner of a nearby column in the room. There was a little too much comprehension in the glance that passed over Abel and Faith's conversation on his way to Dio. He did understand French.

He let Abel talk to her; he just looked at her a moment. The way he might study a bit of the ancient statuary. A note of appreciation for the craftsmanship. From a time and place he wasn't familiar with.

"I'm glad to hear it." He remarked with a beat of lag, like he was turning the words over in his head to make sure they were in the correct order.

"That was certainly a night." He remarked Travis' way with the slip of a grin when the other Gangrel picked up one of those things from his own travels. "Find me later, I'll tell you all about it."

Which was to say: find him somewhere outside Elysium and the audience and he'd be glad to put it to proof. That was one of the things that happened with the way he existed: always an opportunity to get into ****.

Like now, maybe. He hadn't missed the knot of tension that had wound up when Faith had come in. His gaze, ever watchful it seemed, passed between her and Travis once more. In case it was going to escalate.

Yorick Tsipras
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there, I do not die

Euthanatos | Notoriety 2 | Medium

---

When asked if hunting was something he still did, Yorick fell silent for a moment. ‘Younger’ meant very different things to each of them. It was a matter of different time periods and societal expectations; a span of years instead of centuries. In terms of distance it was closer to him. Hotter. Like a spectre chasing at his heels.

The intensity of thought, memory, and emotion in the dreamstate rose sharply in that moment. Geoffrey's supernatural perception allowed him to perceive the subtle furrowing of the younger man's brow and twisting of his lips. It was a mask of grief, fury, and trauma tightly controlled by a strength of will beyond his years.

In that moment they rode past a thick wall of trees, but nestled amongst them was clearing. The clearing served as a stage of sorts, revealing a vignette of concepts. Somewhere sweltering and humid near a distant ocean. A dark, cramped space underground. Overwhelming entropy and decay. Blood and blasphemous arts. A vicious battle of blade and willwork that left a still-teenaged Yorick victorious but profoundly hurt. A hurt of the soul, something the Gangrel might recognize as a loss of humanity. And encapsulating it all, the sense that it was just one example of many.

“No. I don't.”

He swallowed down bile, resentment, and self-loathing, and listened.  He could only imagine the depths of change the world had seen during Geoffrey's lifetime.

“The gods do not abide hubris. So my kind exists within the margins of man; the awakened amidst the sleeping masses.”  It was an interpretation of consensus and paradox. It was also an explanation of how modern mages survived - by keeping to the shadows. By recontextualizing themselves to be anything other than what they actually were. Relatable, maybe.

“That's the curse, then,” he replied to Geoffrey's bit of Latin. He didn't make the connection between Cain the biblical figure and the word ‘Cainite’, but he did understand the intention. “A divine suspension of Tamas reaching through time for eternity.”

Yorick shook his head. “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God,” he quoted the father of tragedy, struck by the enormity of it. Despite the danger involved in associating with the other man, he still felt a great swell of sympathy.

Then they reached the city gate. “You're English.” How he'd arrived at that particular assertion was unclear. He said it as if it had just come to him like a bolt. “But you lived here. Romania's pretty far from England, especially in a time before airplanes.”