z o o l said:
Actually, I didn't find them that long and boring during my last playthrough. Maybe because this time, I knew that they would actually end at one point. And I love the Nosferatu underground base, although it is a little empty unfortunately.
Knowing just how much further there is to go definitely helps. But I still have that horrible memory of playing it for the first time and having the revelation,
"Hang on...there's going to be an ant-monster around THIS corner as well, isn't there? And THAT corner. And THAT corner..."
Second things second - a bit more about our character.
Anthony Sommers, aka ‘The Patrician’
You never fought.
As a second lieutenant under the Western Desert Air Force, you worked tirelessly at Staff HQ, organising supplies, maintaining the administration of the various fighter squadrons. You were taught how to fire a gun; how to navigate in a Hawker Hurricane. But you never really learnt how to aim, and you never flew anything other than milk runs. The other officers, quietly, but surely, made their opinion known – you were a coward.
You ignored them. Your work was necessary, you told yourself – even vital – to the war effort. Not everyone could strut around acting the hero. You were content to continue doing your part behind the scenes; and besides, there was always Mary Sommers, the smiling, puck-cheeked girl who you married hastily before you joined up with just as much thoughtlessness as romance. And your burgeoning career, mostly thanks to Mary’s father, in Government…
And, although you agonised over it, although you denied it and even, in the middle of the night, stared into your bedroom mirror and called yourself a coward, a failure, not even a man – you were afraid of dying. And as the casualties of the war increased, you became more and more fearful that you would be called upon to start flying combat missions.
You met the girl in Bardia, as Allied forces poured into the town as part of Operation Compass; she was a nurse on the night shift, dealing with the ever-growing number of casualties. Evangeline Turner, she called herself, as you stepped into her ward to take stock of hospital supplies. A pale girl, with the tireless calm of someone far older, her black hair pinned primly back, who gazed at you with – you thought – something like repressed lust. She ran the hospital – overstepping the orders of the drunken, pitiful doctor and his sullen Libyan assistants – with a dazzling efficiency, in spite of the chaos in the town, and, indeed, appeared to get a real kick out of organising the wards.
You visited Evangeline again, in the dry hot nights of Bardia. Slipping your wedding ring from your finger – breathless, shameful, but unable to stay away. But as she dragged you into the relative privacy of the empty doctor’s office, she hissed at you,
“Anthony…you’re afraid of dying. But you don’t have to be. You don’t have to ever die – not if you don’t want to.”
She clasped your hand and told you to come to her when you were ready. That she had a gift for you – a way out, an escape route – but that it came at a price. You could live forever, so long as you were content never to see sunlight again. Confused, and disturbed, you made your excuses, and fled.
The next day, the 9th Armoured Division set out from El Alamein. And corpses flooded the town of Bardia. Men who had been torn to pieces by anti-tank shells; men missing limbs, and heads. Some of them old, some of them young. You sat on the steps below the hospital and watched the bodies come in. A stretcher passed by. A dying boy in uniform, his stomach exposed and gory, snatched hold of your arm.
“I-I’m going to be a fireman,” he whispered.
You gazed into his eyes; you watched as the light faded.
“I-I’m going to be a fireman,” he repeated.
That night, you found Evangeline, and told her you were ready. And so you slipped into a world of darkness.
There were plenty of night-time positions available; as the desert war began to turn against Rommel’s troops, staff were needed on-hand around the clock. When superior officers asked you to put in some day-time hours, you found it remarkably easy to persuade them otherwise. Slowly, you began to care less and less about the fate of the foolish Kine all around you.
After the war, Evangeline left for America; you returned to London, shunning your old friends, and ignoring Mary. When her father, outraged, came to your door late at night, demanding that you do the decent thing and divorce her, you managed to quickly convince him to instead hand over the contact details of several prominent politicians.
Other Kindred in the city were slow to notice you – and those who did recognise your existence often demanded tribute or undying loyalty. You soldiered on, gaining more and more respect amongst the Kine politicians in Whitehall, while your Kindred superiors betrayed one another and squabbled amongst themselves.
The higher you rose, the more unwelcome attention you received. A couple of murder attempts in the 70s, that were swiftly avenged by a young Toreador in your employ by the name of Edgar Fellowes, were followed by a grudging acceptance by several elders. Gradually, common Kindred began to speak of you as ‘the Patrician of Whitehall’. The Gehenna scares around the turn of the Millenium, meanwhile, did their part in establishing you as a genuinely stable power in the centre of the city.
Mary is no longer puck-cheeked, and she’s stopped smiling. Sat in a nursing home in the lush countryside outside the city, she pisses into a catheter and eats mush. You are aware that she’s still alive, but you don’t visit her. Kine are Kine, you tell yourself – though, perhaps, you just don’t want to be reminded of your former life, or the lingering stench of death.
hyeah: and follow up on dubriks number
