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falnerestate2014-09-06 05:00 pm
geistnet) wrote in falnerestate2014-09-06 05:00 pm
Entry tags:
- #action,
- #date: 14 june 2066,
- #major event,
- #open,
- #prose,
- 173,
- alistair mordechai,
- angela brennan,
- aria skye,
- aurora santos,
- cisco montelibano-profaci,
- ela marasigan,
- gray magallanes valverde,
- hikaru shinta,
- joshua larue,
- kaien yamazaki,
- kaz raio-zobel de ayala,
- lyall,
- mason turner,
- rethe kyriff,
- rilea heartnet-duskrider,
- riley falner,
- rin faolain,
- segan brooke,
- sophie morgenstern,
- taning marasigan,
- tohru fukuzawa,
- vincenzo profaci
[Open, Major Event] Drag My Feet Along the Floor
Class Log #001, 14 June 2066 (Monday)
All the information you need concerning the school, it's programs and available courses, class schedules, list of faculty, and uniforms can be accessed from the navigation to your right. |
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Time Period: 16:20 - 17:20, Free Period
RILEY FALNER || Teaching: The Vigil, ASC (OTA)
Once everyone is seated, the man stands, scans the whole of the class as if to check if anyone is missing, before he pauses the feed. ]
The term "vigil", taken from the Latin vigilia, is a practice of deliberate wakefulness. An officer's stakeout, a birdwatcher's day spent in a particular section of the woods, gatherings dedicated to an entire evening spent in silence and prayer for a cause, a person, an event.
[ He gestures to the screen behind him at that. ]
Most of you would not know the content of this video. I find that regrettable, because under the most ideal of circumstances -- you should. [ A beat, then: ] The impression that history is relegated to books and the past is incorrect. History informs the present: culture, beliefs, interactions, even the language we speak, the association we make as individuals.
As members of ASC, and I am very sure you have heard this at least once today, you have all taken on the responsibility of pursuing a career as Keepers of the Vigil within the next six months.
A career as a hunter is not a pursuit that one assigns the self to lightly, so the assumption that you will step out of my classroom in six months time is not that you are competent in the subject matter that I will be teaching you, because to be 'competent' means that you will not pass this class. To be 'competent' means that you have meet the minimum requirement, and as a Hunter, the minimum will not do.
On your consoles, you have been provided copies of the series of videos called collectively by scholars as "The Luminous Apocrpha". These feeds were aired between the first of October and the thirtieth of November in the year 2012, with this [ pointing back to the screen now ] final video airing on the twenty-first of December soon-after followed by the period history books will refer to as "The Breaking of the Veil".
For the next thirty minutes, I would like each of you to go through one of the videos and write down any questions, thoughts or insights you might glean from them. At the end of the thirty minutes, I will open the floor for discussion.
--
OOC NOTES: Roll either Intelligence + Occult or Intelligence + Politics, specialty: Vigil to see if your character understood the data provided to them in the videos. Depending on the number of your successes, I'll ping you with what they would have gotten.
Int 2 + Politics 1 (no specialties): 4, 8, 2 = 1 success.
And of course there's the fact that he's finally in the same room as the fabled Daywalker himself. ]
no subject
All the same, he plans to wait before he finally approaches you. It was deliberate, his choice to distance himself from your case, both because his people have already moved in his stead to provide all that you need, and because he understands his own inclinations to empathize with one of his own.
But that is a conversation for another time and another place.
He moves off to the side, hands folded behind his back so that he might stand by the window that faces Balamb Academy's Quad. Down below, students from the other two programs have decided to congregate to study or to simply be children.
What you won't know though, is that while he is doing that, he is also listening to the specific video that you have chosen: it is an early recording of the vampire burnings in the United States. You will see how safe houses were outed on a mass scale, and how members of the Kindred were forced out into the sun.
Terrible, isn't it? The kind of suffering faced at the beginning of it all. It must have been so disillusioning for supernaturals to realize, quite bluntly, that the food chain is a myth. ]
no subject
(OOC: I have no idea how an attempt at action tags is gonna look through email, but here goes.)
[ Mason is, quite frankly, absolutely terrified -- here he is, former prince of a domain that tried to impose the 'old ways' of the Kindred, being shown how much of a sham it is for the Invictus to think themselves the apex predators of the concrete jungle.
Of course he heard about this stuff during his education as a mortal (what little he could get, growing up in the streets of Detroit), but seeing it after his vampiric upbringing threatens to shake him to the core.
He puts up a fight against his shock, though, and strives to keep a straight face on while the video continues. ]
this works! :)
You are young, Mr. Turner, but you have grit. Riley appreciates that. One needs grit in order to be able to step up as a Keeper of the Vigil.
He'll observe you like this for a while longer; listen to the changes in your breathing, the pauses in-between. And then once the thirty minutes is up, perhaps you will share your thoughts with the rest of the class. ]
Re: this works! :)
[ He's clearly zeroing in on the bits about American history: Black Christmas, the border lockdown and so on. While he's keeping a straight face, anyone observing him at length can clearly see his fist start to clench while he reads through what the Darkest Vigil did to the good ole U.S. of A. It's becoming glaringly obvious that he's only now starting to see the bigger picture beyond the (formerly) Invictus-run Detroit.
Once he has his next opportunity to select videos, he specifically starts attempting to trace the history of the Invictus and its interactions with the Vigil -- particularly the reign of Detroit's prince before him. Looks like somebody's starting to do some homework. ]
no subject
You're an intriguing one, Mason Turner: young and brash, and yet you show clear signs of one who is incredibly driven. He cannot help but wonder now about your story. Perhaps you will tell him once the both of you have an opportunity to speak outside of this classroom. ]
Sub-thread for Class Discussion.
Better wrap up, your teacher is already moving to the front of the room and taking the chair at his desk around so that he can sit down. ]
I have no specific format. If you have a question, feel free to ask. If you have thoughts, I encourage you to share. We'll keep the discussion free-flowing.
[ He'll say all that as he fetches a cigar and goes through his little ritual of cutting the end and lighting up. Any smokers in the class are free to join him. ]
Re: Sub-thread for Class Discussion.
One of the first hands to shoot up is, of course, from one Mason Turner. ]
Great Daywalker...err, I mean, Inquisitor Falner. I've got a question.
[ He pauses as if he's mustering the courage to say what comes next. ]
All these drastic changes to Kindred society like Ordo Daywalker and Shin Yamatai. How do the other covenants manage to...well, still be there?
[ Is that a hint of defiance, or just honest curiosity? Perhaps the neonate former "prince with a small p" isn't taking too kindly to his Invictus 'education' being put up against all that he's learning about the mass final deaths and the fact that the Invictus isn't all that. ]
Perma-prose as agreed upon in chat! Hi Brian :>
"The world is a rather large place, Mr. Turner." A beat. "The Vigil is spreading, but statistics are not generally in our favor. Fifty years and then some is a painfully short span of time to allow change and practice to take root."
It is not easy, reshaping the mindset of an entire world. It is an uphill battle at best, a full-out war at worst.
"When you put into consideration that most vampires live as functional immortals, you can and should expect resistance when the status quo is challenged."
Re: Perma-prose as agreed upon in chat! Hi Brian :>
And then it hits him as the Daywalker approaches: Here he is, a neonate without an idea of what he's doing or a care in the world, faced with a being that for all intents and purposes is a vision of vampiric perfection .
The Beast in him wants to be horrified or challenged, but somehow the fact that such a being exists is comforting.
Still, it is a class and like any student he wants to keep the discussion moving forward.
"Is...hmm. Is that the reason why the covenants didn't go down as easily as some of the conspiracies did?"
He is of course referring to such fiascos as the Lucifuge and, much closer to home, Task Force Valkyrie.
no subject
Lifting that cigar to his lips to hide a smile. Go on, Mr. Turner. He'd like to know what's going on in that brain of yours.
no subject
"It would, wouldn't it."
It's hard to tell whether or not he actually detects that he's being tested.
"Except the slate wasn't wiped clean. Everyone's still running around doing their own thing, but..."
Eyes widen with a flash of insight.
"Wait. If all the covenants hate each other so much why haven't any of 'em wiped each other out yet? How come history hasn't seen a second Camarilla?"
no subject
He's turning briefly to the rest of the class now; the rest in ASC are not Vampires and this area of history would not be in their purview: "The Camarilla was at it's height in the Roman Empire and collapsed at the onset of Christianity. Names like Zeus, Aphrodite, Athena -- these resonate throughout the centuries and exist in texts we still read today because once upon a time myth was reality and gods walked among the common people."
He takes a breath, just enough of a break to have the information he's imparted sink in. Yes, Vampires stylized themselves as gods in a world that used beliefs and religion to provide meaning for what human beings could not explain. "Now the ideology behind the Camarilla was unity for the sake of the Kindred community, but like any other system, it ran its course and naturally hit entropy."
A pause now, as he turns his eyes back to you, Mason Turner: "Do you think there is a need for a second Camarilla, Mr. Turner?"
no subject
Either the question has caught him off-guard or he's starting to realize that there's more to this than a simple classroom discussion.
"The way things are these days, I'd say a second Camarilla isn't needed. Anymore, that is."
Of course after his experience back home he'd like nothing more than for a mega-faction to strongarm all the splintered Kindred into submission. However, Mason's just starting to learn that that's not exactly how the Vigil does things.
no subject
"For the benefit of your peers, why don't you share how you came to that assessment."
Riley does send a kind smile your way, a genuine one.
no subject
Fortunately he's seen enough of modern Kindred society to know better than becoming yet another neonate sucking up to the Daywalker -- an easy enough trap to fall into when discussing the relationship between vampires and the Vigil.
"Well, I saw firsthand how Kindred who step out of line are...dealt with."
The Ventrue in him compels him to pause just for dramatic effect. Truly, he is his sire's childe.
"From negotiation to extraction to debriefing, what happened to the court in Seattle was no massacre or firefight. It was an operation, simple and efficient."
He tries his damndest to mask the fact that he only came to these conclusions minutes ago, in this very classroom.
"The Masquera...no, the Vigil's more than just a cause now, isn't it? It's grown into a system. One that deals with things that aren't doing what they're supposed to."
Almost slipped there.