Ab Antiquo

Here's to you, vampire. You, reading this, lying in your crypt or sitting in your living room under the buzz of the AC, fluorescent lights on as you suck on coffee or the blood of the innocent. Yes. You, you curious little fly, rubbing your hands, reading through these passages eager to satisfy the hiss in your ear, asking, ‘What’s even going on?’

Here is finally, finally, a reply to your query.

That itch, about to be scratched.

Aren't we nice?

Allow me then, if you would, dear Reader, to take you on a journey.
Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a necropolis called RavenBlack.

It thrived, this city of the dead; it’d found its flourishment in the cycle of blood spilling, and power struggling, and blood spilling again, as all healthy ecosystems do. For all healthy ecosystems function the same: with a food chain. The deer keep the ecosystem healthy by preventing an overgrowth of vegetation. The predator—the wolf—keeps the deer from overpopulating and killing the very Earth upon which it depends.
Balance. The perfect example of the concept of Ouroboros: a willing deforestation so new vegetation can grow. A snake eating its tail. Again, and again, and again.

Alliances shifted, Clans were born and Clans died. Lineages rose and then fell, giving way to new lineages. Coin and blood were spent and spilled on the very sidewalks we traverse today, and life was good. Life was purposeful. The entire ecosystem had work: gather information, build coin, build blood, and then SPEND IT. USE IT.
DESTROY. So things could be born anew. We knew that without strife, there could be no victory. Without hardship, there is no triumph. Without failure, there is. No. LEARNING.
The enemy of growth is COMPLACENCY.
The enemy of progress is APATHY.

So where does that leave us?

You, with your hoarding. You, growing FAT with blood, gravid with it, like ticks. Like gnats. Like mosquitos. Both you and your bank accounts LARGE and USELESS, your weapons gathering dust like they’re relics and not TOOLS. THE EDGES OF YOUR BLADES RUSTED, WITH NOWHERE TO GO.

Wasted.

I bring you, instead, a new story. I bring you the scene, set in the dead city of RavenBlack, end of June 2024.

Aren’t you excited. I know I am.

We began The Cloakening as an acknowledgement of how things have changed. We said: they don’t want to be part of the wheel that is the natural function of this city. We said: we’ll help.

You misconstrued our genuine desire to help you rot in your inactivity for a show of force. Amusing, considering most of you weren’t even present for Capadocious’ Join or Die, but you decided to let it colour your interpretation anyhow. Which is neither here nor there, I suppose, in the end. You’ve misconstrued many things throughout all of this. So what is The Cloakening going to change when some people’s childer refuse to or simply cannot understand, and they cannot ask because they’re both too arrogant and too cowardly to do so?

Not much, at the end of the day. Not much, dear Reader.

Better to ignore reality and substitute with your own, isn’t it?

Be as it may, words—those pesky things—were exchanged in the papers. We said: if you want to fight, we will acquiesce, regardless of your reasoning, for to bleed is to grow. And we were rewarded, you see, with Julia, Damia, and ZeroTolerance and a few Ferrymen in tow signalling their readiness to bleed through their decision to hit us.
Which, honestly, props to them.

To make short of what is really but a footnote in RavenBlack’s extensive warring history: Julia & the Loose Collective, you’ve lost in every way that matters.

You failed at making this a decent fight.
You failed at having a philosophy or motive for said fight.
You failed at enduring that fight.
You failed at negotiating and in turn disrespected us and yourselves.
You failed at humility.
You failed at presenting a united front.
You failed to learn anything from any of this.
You failed your people.

You failed at trying to prove us wrong, our argument—nay, our VERY PURPOSE as a lineage: that this City needs to spill blood. Our dear city feeds on it. And it is in this aspect that your quiet defeat has been deafeningly loud, because look. LOOK.
LOOK AT YOUR KIN. More alive, more present than they have been in years, and isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t this seething rage, this LIFE beautiful?

Are you not here, reading this?

You’ve failed at all these things, yes. But what’s sadder is how your Sires and this community have failed you. How they have failed to prepare you for the wolves, and made you feel secure and endorsed in your laziness and your comfort. How they’ve made you into sheep, instead of the monsters that you ARE.

How they’ve defanged you, The Collective. And how in turn you’ve defanged your own. All while we cut the teeth of our young on your vast incompetence.

And you don’t even know why you do what you do. You don’t even realise how LOUD the message is every time you try to villainize an entire group for daring to do something without your endorsement or your permission. Well, this time you found the real villains. Lucky you.
If it’s not done by you, then nobody else can do it, is it? If you can’t have this city, nobody can?
Please.

To be absolutely clear: you have no power over us.
You have no power here.
Your blood and your coin serve no purpose and are inconsequential to us.
We are not afraid of you. And your fear has killed you.

The Collective’s surrender was accepted this 3rd of July, signed and agreed upon by both parties with the condition of the death of all leadership or suspected leadership as you have borne witness across these last few days.
With the concluded zeroings of drewbeary, Moon Girl, Abel, Tarchetti, Damia Morgan, and Julia, MADS (Mahorela-Amandine, de Draak, Schiaraffa) consider this conflict officially ended.

We pay due respects to those who have honourably fought to the end, and to those who’ve earned it on the other side.

The rest, as they say, is history.

-Oberon Schiaraffa
-Head of Haus Schiaraffa
-MADS

ETA: PART II - NUMBERS: https://abantiquo.aldergate.net/viewtop ... 838#p54838
PART III - CONCLUDING REMARKS: https://abantiquo.aldergate.net/viewtop ... =41&t=3285

It was truly a stunning display.

I won't say what of.

Abel, Moon Girl, doncey... We'd love to see you at Hellfire sometime for post war drinks, if that's still a thing people do after wars.

- Mandolin Mahorela-Amandine della Spada
- Head of Haus Amandine
- MADS