Nocturnal Cannons 2

Chapter 2: Asylum

So, I was there, on Planet Earth. In the year 2004, November, when Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines was released by Troika Games. Didn’t played that year, only about 10 years later. However, I was alive and conscient in 2004 of what now is called “Old Calendar”, and back then we still used to call “Christian Calendar”, Gregorian Calendar, or Common Calendar.

Best video game ever made, in my personal opinion. For certain the best in RPG genre. Followed by Vae Victis Khan, I think. Pre Baby Steps both. Not by coincidence.

When I as informed that this vampire renamed the ship he got from us “Asylum” in tribute to that game. I, naturally, asked my most trusted AI auxiliar to find me the original game.

Almost everything that was ever in the internet still is. Find ancient stuff like that is easy for well-connected AIs, and is the sort of thing many of them like to do.

I had to play the game again, goes without saying. As a professional obligation.

Because I will need to do with that fellow.

Supposedly he turned the ship in a quasi-religious temple. With statues of Jannete and Therese Voerman, the twin sisters, in every other corridor.

I am not sure if people actually pray to the Malkavian sisters as if they were supposed to be religious icons. Even if they do, I cannot blame this “vampire king” for it. Least not until I get convincing evidence that he is pushing his people in that direction.

Still, I cannot see how anyone could see something like that as anything but goofy.

That’s a problem I have with “vampires”. One I cannot avoid for much longer.

I must remember, and keep in mind, that this fellow was born as a human. Inside Mystery System. When Mystery System was still isolated from the rest of our galaxy. Our intelligence about him is limited by exceptional circumstances. However, logic forces its hand to place his birth as a human somewhen between years 1300 of Expansion and year 22.000 of Expansion, and closer to the first quarter of that period, more likely. Independent, separate, sources say he was turned into a vampire king by his Deshiar ‘benefactor’ less than a century after birth.

Is a well stablished fact that vampires have a compulsion to imitate vampires.

That sounds awful. Real life “vampires” have a compulsion to imitate fictional vampires from literature and other medias. Specially, they seem to use vampire stories from Solar System. Or “Sun System” as Mysterians call it. Pre-Baby Steps and Baby Steps Age characters seem to be particularly attractive as paradigm for real live vampires. They, themselves, allegedly don’t know why.

So, to this fellow, to his entire sub culture, that “Asylum” is a distant, ancient, reference. He never saw Jannete and Therese Voerman as pop-culture, or any other kind of entertaining. I saw them like that, and still see, because I am a Twentian. As an Alexandrine Human who was not an Asgardian, he probably had no idea about Pre-Baby Steps vampires, until he was turned into a vampire himself.

What is goofy to me may not be goofy to him. Or for his “nocturnal children”.

Just the idea of talk with people who call themselves “vampires” is ridiculous to me.

I must remember, those are not people playing their favourite characters for fun. They actually hunt people, drink their blood, and sometimes kill the prey in the process.

They, as matter of fact, have the closest thing that exists to “supernatural” powers, like the vampiric disciplines in Troika’s game. They are far more powerful than almost all fictional vampires I can remember, from any story.

For starts, only some things, all of them related to their stellar system, can hurt them. The list of those things is very small. They can fall inside a star or blackhole and find their way out, without suffer as much as a bruise. Only their own substance and techno-magic will hurt and possibly destroy them. That and the light of their own star, under specific circumstances, that cannot be replicated anywhere outside the limits of Mystery System.

And they do have “vampire disciplines”! Capable to easily put to shame any old vampire in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, the video game.

Underestimate those people just because their choice in clothes, names, and decoration is silly, is not how I would like to end my biological immortality.

Being honest, speaking as one of the oldest immortal humans in existence. I do not want my biological immortality to end at all!

I have chosen military life for myself. What comes with a higher than normal risk of ****, since we must run towards danger while every civilian is running away from it, sometimes. Despite that, believe or not, I have no **** wish. Love to be alive.

Therefore, I must not underestimate this individual or his vampiric court.

The Asylum is a fast and solid vessel. Military warship. Designed for battle in our inter-stellar war when we had over 150 thousand years of experience making vessels for that purpose.

It is not a young vessel, by any stretch of imagination. More than 60 thousand years old, most battle ships are demoted to freighters after 5 thousand. Was named Termópilas before we give it as a gift to our new “ally”. This deserter of vampire cause. However, the ship was reformed and improved many times over time, during its long existence as a battle ship.

The size cannot change much. It is small for a inter-stellar vessel, as frontline ram-vessels usually are.

Build for a crew around half billion people, ideally. Counting with three times that number, when considered children, elderly, and other support personnel not directly employed in military activity most the time.

Inter-stellar vessels build by Humanity are by logical contingency, and almost by definition, multi-generational vessels. For any given trip those who reach destination are usually the descendants of those who started the travel. Often many generations down the line.

That is consequence of long distances, slow vessels, and the hard legal limitation of 300 years for human longevity. Those born in a military ship like that are destined to grow up and probably expend their entirely lives in a very spartan environment. Oriented to satisfy the needs of mission, in a war for survival of our specie that started long before they were born, and will last after they die.

It is not a life with much comfort, or latitude for hedonism. Nevertheless, the Asylum (if it kept the characteristic of Termópilas) can hold 7 billion people, with comfort. In the reasonable limits of “comfort” that can be expected from a ram-vessel.

That kind of flexibility is considered necessary. Military purposes or not. For all inter-stellar ships.

Discipline is kept far more strictly in a ship like that, than what would be normal for any Seeding Vessel. Those usually start every travel between stellar systems with at least thousands of times less people on bord than the number that their ship can comfortably support. And “comfortably” has a stronger meaning in that context. Still, even Seeding Vessels must restrict reproductive freedom a lot.

People who live inside systems would not tolerate those restrictions. Since Baby steps having hundreds of children every decade is the norm for humans. Sacrifice of reproductive freedom feels like a huge imposition, but it is one demanded by the objective limitations involved in inter-stellar travel. Not to mention the Big War.

I cannot get much from intelligence, about the state of Asylum since it was given to the vampires.

Vampire kings value their privacy!

While we need them.

Our need is too urgent. We cannot afford to interrogate this people too insistently. As we would, if we had the option.

Those are exceptional circumstances, however. Even inside the exceptional circumstances that govern the relation between Humanity and vampire deserters.

I really need to know this fellow more closely than our services of intelligence. Cannot afford the risk of respect his privacy. Even if that is what my orders explicitly demand from me. Because we are about to put in his hands our most important strategic weapon.

For start, I need to know why he has chosen a mad club owner with personality disorder as his saint of devotion. Instead of some sane character.

NEXT:

Chapter 3: Evening

I really need to know why he has chosen the sisters as his saints of devotion. Could be worse, I suppose, could be Prince LaCroix . Still, reassuring it is not.

Fortunately, I have a few years to prepare myself. Before I meet that “king”. Unfortunately, the material I was able to raise in my researches in order to prepare myself is piss poor.

Meanwhile, I need to make that protocolar visit. For protocolar sake. Present myself to the authority in charge of this station. I was surprised to find out this person is not an Asgardian, considering the importance of the work being done here. On the other hand, that is an administrative position, and, when we think about things coldly, an AI would likely do a better job than either Asgardians or regular humans.

Admiral General Sergey Gupta. A man born in this place, 9° Generation to ascent to general post, but the first to achieve the position of commander in the station. 260 years old, he got this command 10 year ago and will likely die in office. The coronation of an impeccable life.