The day was new, but mother held to the old ways — sleep at day, awake at night. She was slumbering in her room. Ryan and I tip-toed around the small house watching. She’d not feed in three days — her last foray into the real world ended disastrously and neither of us wanted to have to hurt her. She stayed home, but enticing a willing young man to enter the home of a notorious vampire was difficult. Persuasion was not an option. Force even less so. The flavor was wrong and mother hated it.
She rarely fed from strangers, but the Cult of the Light had killed mothers herd. Our family was gone and lost and we had to rebuild what was once a grand empire. All because the multitude now knew vampires were real. If they didn’t hunt us, they feared us and the world insisted upon fear — even as we took over the government and every corporation. We ran it, but the humans still clung to their hierarchy like little lost sheep. We’d won, but they didn’t believe it.
Growling sounds echoed from mothers bedchamber and when I glanced inside the lights in the house dimmed and the illumination from the lights outside when dim and purple at the same time.
And then mother was gone. The scent of ozone lingered in the air and Ryan was at my side in a moments notice. “What the fuck?” he said.
“She’s not a drifter!” I said louder than I thought I had.
How were we going to find her? She’d been asleep. Dreaming. Anchors don’t drift in dreams, something else happened.
The alarms in our ears went off. Ryan glanced at his codex and sighed. “Seems we are getting a lot of manifestations. We have to go.”
“She’s starving.” I reaffirmed to Ryan, “We have to find her.”
“How?”
“Nexus.” I said.
Ryan shook his head. “All access is denied. Can’t you just drift to her? She’s your sire. She is a partial bond.”
“I’ll try.”
And try I did. I focused on my mother’s pull — her signature in my mind. The drift was easy, but only when Ryan anchored me home. Two anchors would defeat the purpose. I grabbed Ryan’s shoulder with my hand when I felt the distinct feeling of the drift shifting my cells. He clutched at my elbow and we flitted through the space and time in a gut wrenching movement.
It didn’t happen like this normally.
We landed in a strange new world — a soft purple light with the sun shining down. I howled in phantom pain before I realized I wasn’t burning. The sun didn’t burn here. If there was even a sun to be had.
Ryan laughed. “Comms don’t work, but the network is similar. We can track her.”
Ryan lead the way and followed still awed by the sun shining on my skin. “I don’t get it.”
“Sun doesn’t shine at the same frequencies here?”
Ant shook his head. “That’s not it.”
We walked through the metal city and followed the path that the computer told us to go — a vampire lose in the city, terrorizing the locals. That would be one for the newspapers.
I caught my mother’s scent and raced towards her and as we cleared the corner I watched as a young man wreathed in fire plunged a wooden stake into the heart of my mother. “No!” I shouted and drew my sword from the sheathe at my side and rushed towards the man in fury.
My vision haloed with red with the blood rage but a familiar hand on my shoulder and a calming touch cooled my fire as I saw a boy tumble from behind a metal bin clutching his neck. She’d bitten a child — a boy. Unwilling, afraid, his fear permeated my nose and I fell to my knees at her side. “Jesus, fucking Christ, why did you have to do that?” I felt hopeless, the rage shifted to sorrow for the loss.
Anthony Giovanni is a Stealthy Vampire Warrior who Slays Monsters and Drifts from Purple Shift #45
Effort: 1
Armor: 0
Recovery:
□ □ □ □
Damage:
□ □
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Speed: (1)
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Intellect:
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
XP:
■
Abilities: drain creature, drift, determine shift
Weapons: unarmed 2 – eased, long sword 4, blaster 4 long range
Setup
Q: Are Ant and Ryan in Arcadis #0?
(1d20+0: [16]+0 = 16)
Yes
Q: Have they tracked his mother down?
(1d20+0: [14]+0 = 14)
Yes
Q: Are they too late to save her?
(1d20+0: [12]+0 = 12)
Yes, but [“Garbage”, “Hollow”, “Warning”]
Q: Ant is angry does he attack Nox?
(1d20+0: [8]+0 = 8)
No, but [“Boy”, “Enshrine”, “Foliage”]
Vampire 6 (18), health 24, 7 dmg, long, climb, stealth, perception 8, speed defense 7, mesmerize
Assume Nox has a wooden stake, hindered, Assume vampire is enraged (due to shift)
Initiative: V 18: N 9
V attacks N: 18 defense – miss (V: 24 → 22 fire)
N takes stim attacks V with stake : 18 defense (+3-1) – hit (V: 22 → 0)
GM Intrusion: A little boy tumbles out of his nearby hiding spot clutching his neck
Ryan calms ant
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Numenera, the Cypher System, No Thank You, Evil!, Invisible Sun, and their respective logos are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. All Monte Cook Games characters and character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC. Content derived from Monte Cook Games publications is © 2013-2022 Monte Cook Games, LLC.
The Mind of Nox 