Welcome to Providence by Night, the continuing recounting of our tabletop Vampire: the Masquerade chronicle. Providence by Night is a low-powered, “street-level” game featuring a group of very new vampires adjusting to unlife in Providence and the vampiric condition. You can read the whole story so far on our main Providence by Night page.
This week’s update sees a return to normal session play. Tony looks into tales of spontaneous “human” combustion and meets with the Nosferatu Primogen. Spencer – a DJ in his own right – recruits more talent for the opening of the coterie’s club. Beth tries to navigate between rival Harpies to secure Camarilla recognition of her area of influence from her mortal life. And Nathan comes up with bad news from both sides of the law.
Session 9 – Shot in the Night – January 28, 2015
Tony’s phone rang with a 414 area code. He answered and a feminine voice spoke. “Who is this?” Tony replied with a curt joke. The voice was not amused. She stated that Tony had called a dead man’s phone and again demanded answers. Tony revealed that had been Spencer using Tony’s phone, and received a disconnect for his trouble. Tony, knowing that the original call had been to a mentor of Spencer’s, later offered the phone numbers to his mentor, Nosferatu Primogen Kurt Densch, and the pair discussed strategies for Tony’s upcoming meeting with Justicar Warwick. Densch also offered advice to Tony about his Kindred-issued beeper – as Tony had guessed, the city’s Camarilla leadership used them to track Kindreds’ locations. Tony buried his beeper in the snow several blocks from his haven, Masked himself, and hit up a liquor store. He then headed to Providence Station near Waterplace Park, where he passed bottles around the homeless population, fishing for information about the alleged spontaneous human combustion that happened last spring. Eventually he found two helpful men, Rage and Boone. According to them, “these guys in the park just started on fire for no good reason in the morning right around the time the cops usually kick us out”. After forwarding the information to Beth, Tony calls up his friend Matt Cooks and ends his night playing video games.
Spencer used his status as a well-known artist to find some headlining acts to perform at the new club. Reaching through his network, he contacted a rising star on the west coast who was more than happy to do a few months of easy gigs while he finished his new album. Ecstatic, Spencer informed Beth of his victory. Spencer then proceeded to call Kevin to berate him for the events at his Haven two nights before. Kevin, not interested in wasting his time being yelled at, hung up on Spencer. Spencer responded by calling back and leaving an irate voice message, achieving, if nothing else, some catharsis.
Beth called Caoihme to update her on the coterie’s progress and to inquire about the Toreador incursion into Brown. Like Allison had before, Caoihme reminded Beth that she and the coterie had Domain near the river. Caoihme also noted that Beth already owed her for even broaching the subject with the Prince, and pointendly inquired whether Beth had anything the Harpy needed in exchange for further efforts. Having nothing concrete to offer, Beth politely ended the call. She then turned directly to the source of the prior evening’s disturbance and gave Allison a call, hoping to ensure that the Toreador was not angered by her ejection. Allison answered, and in the background Beth overheard the telling sounds of light jazz and bath water trickling. Beth asked Allison straight up what she meant by Marie-Claire giving her permission to hunt around the Brown campus. Allison pleaded Beth’s forgiveness for feeding in her home, but stated that with Beth’s sire Rupert out of the picture, it would be a shame for such a prime hunting ground to grow fallow. Allison later mentioned that Beth should try to attend one of Patrick’s salons sometime. “He always throws the best parties, and girls like us have to stick together….”
Nathan called up Captain Mahonne to see if there were any leads on the missing pizza boys, but was met with Sergeant Brown’s explanation of Mahonne being in the can. He asked the sergeant to look for missing persons reports filed after January 25th and Brown said that he’d get to it when he could. Nathan then headed to a local sports bar called the Dugout. The screens in the bar were showing a Boston Bruins hockey game and Nathan’s overweight contact Bruno Russo was at that moment obnoxiously hitting on his waitress while taking bets. Nathan calmed his inner white knight to ask Russo who ran the racket near Washington Park (in the vicinity of the coterie’s new Domain, including the club). Picking up on Nathan’s line of questioning, Russo revealed that Nathan was “headed to the big leagues” and that “Goodlooking Matty is going to want 20% of the club’s take”. Nathan was surprised by the portion that the mob wants and leaves, casually grabbing and eating a street thug on his way home.
End Session 9