[network] @Mnemosyne; video; night 227; history will judge us [open]

[bookofnope]

[Beckett starts the feed sitting huddled in a corner against a wall that's been burned a featureless black. He's not wearing his tinted glasses, and both his look and voice are flatly composed, distant.]

I am going to start recording everything. Simply leave this thing on at all times. We are losing too much information to patchy and inaccurate records in a way that is simply inexcusable considering the means we have access to. I strongly recommend that you all do the same. [He pauses, then nods half to himself.] If nothing else then for those who will come after us. Eventually.

[So optimistic, Beckett.]

Do let me know if you would like to receive regular transmissions of my records. And if you have, and are willing to use the means to put some of them on SD cards that may be preserved in the event of lost access to our iteration of the network. There is... a certain comfort in the thought of posterity, in my experience. Such as it is.

[Such as it is. He wrinkles his nose at the thought, and puts the tablet aside, though the recording keeps running. After a bit of time, he picks it up again and adds a text message, along with an attached file: TheBookOfNod.txt]

The file I am attaching is the complete text of the Book of Nod: the mytho-historic principle document of the Cainites, namely, the vampires of my world, transcribed from memory. I doubt this is of particular interest to anyone, but my physical copy was recently destroyed, and as far as I am aware, that was the last copy in existence. My purpose here is thus its preservation as a text. I am the last record of my Kindred. Let something remain.



[OOC: I didn't want to directly link one but if anyone's interested for whatever reason it's actually really easy to google up an online copy of Vampire the Masquerade's Book of Nod. I'm sorry it's so painfully 90s.]

Comments

video;

[bookofnope]

Probably. Though you would have to point out what these things are. I've all but lived this book for centuries; I'm blind to how it looks to a fresh eye.

Text

[whiteknightnecromancer]

I think I understand the blood magic. These are beings much like reavers who consume blood to increase their power, yes?

But what is the symbolism behind crying blood?

Maybe I'm missing something but is the term Brujah explained?

[That seemed like a place to start.]

[bookofnope]

No to increase our powers - well, also that, but mostly because blood is what keeps us in our state of quasi-life. Without it we are dormant, effectively corpses with potential.

[And it is a kind of madness that he now functions without it.]

Brujah is one of the clans - the major bloodlines into which vampires are divided. Caine's bloody tears have seen many interpretations: the first sign of God's wrath, the shedding of a more vital essence than tears... but it may well just be a literal description of what happened.

[whiteknightnecromancer]

That is a new one. You are the person who inhabited that body before? Not some other being that absorbed the original person's memories and is carrying on in his place?

Ah, there were a few lines that made it sound potentially like a title.

That sounds like it's potentially very messy. What are Caine's laundry bills like?

[bookofnope]

Absolutely not. [He scowls at the suggestion.] I don't know where you got that idea. There are certain theories regarding vampires and demonic - symbiosis may be a better term than possession, but nothing to suggest that the Emrbace replaces one with any other kind of entity... and yes, this existence is sometimes messy. Bloody tears are a common feature. And I fear that too much has been made of the book's metaphorical content, and too little of it as a plain historical account.

[whiteknightnecromancer]

Personal experience. I said some of it was difficult to interpret from an outside viewpoint, yes?

Oh, werewolves. Those are rare where I'm from.

Andrastianism is best taken as metaphor as we don't have anyone alive who knows with certainty what she was like in life. Your religion seems like it might. Assuming the time periods mentioned aren't also metaphorical.