2022-06-13
INVOLVED PARTIES
INCIDENT REPORT
Devour Thy Oppressor
The coterie has arisen this evening knowing that it is the night of the séance where they may be able to obtain the skull of Vienna’s most pious composer, Joseph Haydn. It is acting as a focus for the séance, which is being held in the Votivkirche, an ostentatious cathedral built as a public apology for the failed assassination attempt on Emperor Franz Joseph with “donations” for its construction being collected by his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand. Margerete’s ghoul servitor, Gruber, has procured the five tickets necessary for the party to attend this most exclusive of events.
Sister Judith completes her nightly prayers to find Marcus Chatelain waiting for her in the main hall of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. He muses as to which side the patron saint of stonemasons might have been on when Clan Tremere were butchering his fellow Nosferatu to create gargoyles. He has come to tell Sister Judith that her zeal for putting down the Tremere dogs was appreciated by himself, and Baron Kazimir. An unknown player to the coterie, Baron Kazimir has invited Judith to meet with him in two nights time to discuss taking the fight to the Pyramid instead of playing the typical Camarilla cat’s paw games.
As they are speaking Judith can get a better look at the Gallic Latin on his sword, which she reads aloud to him as “Sacred is the blood of my enemy, for it feeds my hunger. Devour only the oppressor.” He is impressed that she caught the inscription of his personal credo and tells her that he decided when he was embraced as a gladiator in the Colosseum at Nimes, that he would only feed upon those who sought to oppress him. A philosophy he carried with him into the many decades of brutal fighting in the Carpathian Mountains during the Omen War.
Before heading to the rendezvous with the others, Fabienne dons the well-practiced costume of a harlot, and her driver knows exactly where she intends to go. They pull up in front of a brothel where the Madame tells Fabienne that she is pleased to see her and has a client waiting in the usual room. Fabienne enters to find a man lounging on the bed in anticipation, after confirming what he is there for, she punctures the man’s ear with a sharpened fingernail and gets her nightly fix of precious blood.
Doctor Engel has woken up hungry and heads to the patient ward that she oversees. There she finds a man with a very sickly-looking leg, the foot almost gone, it is black and pocked with syphilitic sores. With the patient sedated, she brings over her surgeon’s tools and removes the offending appendage expertly at the knee. She returns to her office to consume her prize, the sickly stench of the flesh concerns her not, and she even stashes a bit for a midnight snack later.
MUSIC FROM THE WIENER STAATSOPER