A thought to entertain a small idea of success for last night: The team was successful in retrieving a significant amount of blood in order to do that Tremere ritual for sniffing out our enemies. Who turn out to be freelancing ghouls. A scary thought in itself. As far as domain relevant problems are concerned that’s about all that happened last night. Mostly.

The prince was pleased enough with last night’s results. However, she is much aware of the type of danger this poses as well as the degree. Most people within the domain only know half the truth. And even those who grasp the rough scheme behind it all seem to delude themselves that this will be an easy problem to solve. Which it won’t be. Those people have decades of experience to back them. They know what they’re up against while all we have is educated guesses on what they can and can not do or how many of them there actually are.

Once more Henri was present. Turns out he likes to do the whole security business. Him and Alex came up with a couple of ideas to improve security within the domain. I told them to send me what they had in mind in written form. Either that gets them off that track or the ideas are actually good enough to be worth the effort for a Brujah and a Gangrel to sit down on their ass and do some typing, something they obviously loathe to do.

Then we had Karsten. Of course we did. The guy is utterly unable to keep his mouth shut. God, he loves hearing himself talk! Couldn’t shut him up about lauding Jason. Congrats on finally coming to your senses and understanding that he’s on top of you, pal. On the other hand, his plan did work, so one has to cut him at least a little slack. Princely order too.

The questioning itself was boring, to say the least. There’s hardly anything we found out that we didn’t know or could deduce before. Except for those guys being willing to put a bullet into a friend’s head, just to be on the safe side. The others were kind on the man. I myself considered having them break his bones. I’ll make a couple of reappearances at the castle and see if my blood can’t convince him to be on our team. If not I can still kill him, I guess. Otherwise he’d be too much of a liability. No reason to keep him around once this is over. There was some good old bloodshed during that interrogation as well. I think Harkon bit Jean and perhaps Thomas. Mertens was somewhere nearby. And Phelan and Karsten too. Way too dark for me to tell one from the other though, which meant I had to stay back.

Doc Euler must be pretty proud of himself as well. Now all he has to accomplish is find those guys, whether through that blasted ritual or just by mere luck doesn’t matter much. If they are found, both him and Karsten will have earned an honorary medal of sorts. Kind of annoying. But still good. Makes them feel important. And they must feel that, supposedly.

There were two new faces in town. Bael – or is it Bale? – was one of them. Told me he’s a Caitiff. Spoke of no status worth mentioning. So I had to rub it in a little. Truth be told, at some point I even enjoyed that. At first he appeared arrogant, but normal. Later on he dropped half his clothing and sprawled all over the sofa. Whatever. At some stage he found it fitting to sort of pick a fight with me. I barely did as much as stand up – and out of a sudden half the domain has him surrounded. Next thing I know Jean is all over him, telling him to mind his words as well as appologize for calling me handicapped. Interesting to see how people work sometimes… Either they were VERY keen on kicking that guy, or people feel very protective over me for no reason I can put my finger on. I find myself amazed at the fact. Wow. Anyway. Later that night some Michael Scherer appears and says that he knows Bael. They cause so much irritation that I told them to leave the domain that same night. Jason and Raphael would have very much liked to stake the both of them. But the political implications… Basically they did barely more than be incoherent and have a big mouth. They did stick to the traditions and backed down once they were threatened. So what’s there to stake them for? Had we done that word would travel fast that nobody is all that safe within Marburg these nights. Raphael said that they found out too much about the inner workings of this domain as is. Inner workings? Our troubles? Seriously. Which domain doesn’t have some sort of trouble. And what they found out that night didn’t exceed “don’t piss off the Toreador with the eye-patch” by much.

I’m pretty sure Raphael is pissed at me anyway for not having those two staked. I don’t think I’ve seen him so angry before. He was this close to snapping, I think. And then there’s his worries about etiquette. Sadly, he’s right too. Thomas isn’t ideal to uphold that thing. Friar Jean is to lenient to do it. So I guess it’ll fall to me to lead by good example. That I utterly despise. Don’t think I have much of a choice left though. Time to leave Peter Pan behind.

Jean is… still strained, I guess. And I’m pretty sure he worries about Thomas as much as I do. I told him about the situation with Alena and Raphael. Didn’t tell Thomas who the second person was though. Only would have caused unwanted animosities. Either way. Things pretty much went as I predicted they would. Thomas isn’t taking to all of this too well. He probably feels misunderstood. Neglected, to some extent.

One of the prime accusations is that he puts his private matters before his duties as senator. So when I come back from the prince and find him in a private conversation with Wartenburg and Jason that doesn’t do much to take that blade out of other peoples’ hands. When I leave I find him surrounded by the same crowd…

God knows I like Jason a lot. And I’d be the last to send that guy away from my doorstep, my couch, my whatever when it can be avoided. But as much as I like hanging with him I know that I can’t do that all night long during a domain gathering. Lord knows I would want to. But I can’t. As for Wartenburg? Those three are close. I wonder whether I missed a beat and accidentally will be dropped from the loop for my general distrust in her. In my mind she’ll still crew those two over. All I can do right now is sit by and watch what’s happening. But I can’t tell them off. I shouldn’t. I won’t.

So for a while I’ll be on my own, keeping my thoughts to myself as best I can as not to bother Jason and Thomas with even more of a burden they shouldn’t be carrying in the first place. If all I can do to protect them right now is that, then this is what I’m going to do. I have a feeling I know the price this will cost me, not liking it one single bit.

These following nights will be tough on all of us.

“Du willst also wirklich die Wahrheit hören? Von einem Toreador?”
Nathaniels Gegenüber verlagerte unwohl sein Gewicht auf dem wenig bequemen Stuhl. “Ja, das will ich.”
“Okay.” Der Toreador atmete tief durch. “Die Wahrheit ist: Jeder macht Fehler. Und jeder regt sich über sowas auf. Wenn man mir lange genug zuhört, werde ich irgendwann über jeden sagen, dass er oder sie scheiße ist, weil er dies oder jenes falsch gemacht hat.”
Der andere nickte, wohl ein wenig getroffen.
“Das geht aber auch wieder vorbei.”
“Kann ich dir also vertrauen?”
“Im Moment ja. Ich habe keinen Grund gegen dich zu arbeiten. Irgendwann werde ich dich verraten, klar… Das einzig interessante daran ist: Wird das sein bevor du oder ich stirbst – oder nicht?”
Der andere lächelte angedeutet. “Dann hätte ich dir wohl schon früher trauen sollen…”
Auch der Toreador grinste jetzt. “Mir nicht zu trauen war das klügste was du getan hast, seitdem du hier zur Tür reinkamst.”
Beide lachten kurz. “Du zitierst neuzeitliche Fantasyschriftsteller?”
“Wenn er doch Recht hat…”