VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

Her vision was a blurry field of yellow light as she opened her eyes. No thought, no memories, not even a faint recollection of what had happened just moments before. From what she could make out at that point, she was lying down on a bed in a- hotel? Motel?Her room? She could not quite make out any features of the place. She turned her head slowly to the right, her eyes finally settling on what appeared to be a man sitting on a couch. "Am I dreaming?" she thought. The man was just sitting there. He did not move, fidget or even seem to breathe. He just sat there, staring weakly at her, or so she assumed. She tried to get up, but to no avail. She did not feel like she had been tied to anything or was pinned down by something heavy. "Weird" she thought. It was almost like she was not in control of her body.

She was about to try again when a loud bang and the sound of splintering wood interrupted her- someone had broken the door in a very violent way, obviously. Three shadowy figures rushed in quickly, surrounding the man on the chair. The next thing she heard was a wet stabbing noise. She exerted herself, trying to shift and get a better view of the whole situation, when one of the shadowy men moved-very quickly- towards her, holding something large and pointed in his right hand. And as he brought it down on her chest, the whole world went dark again.

In downtown Los Angeles,the lights of an abandoned opera house flared into life. The place was poorly lit and smelt of age but was otherwise rather clean and dust-free, despite the fact that the place had not been used in over ten years-or rather, it had not been used by human beings for over ten years. The place was sparsely populated,as it was often wont to be. A man in a white vest sat at the back. He was flanked by a stocky, angry-looking woman in a leather coat to his left and a smaller, nervous-looking man in a plain yellow T-shirt and a bowl-style haircut to his right. On the far right of the room, a woman with very pale skin and bright red hair which cascaded down to her shoulders lazily scanned the room.She was wearing a black winter coat on top of whatever she was wearing, a strange choice of attire considering it was late August in Los Angeles. Close to the front of the seats a bunch of skinheads dressed in flannel shirts of varying colour sat next to each other. There were about six of them and they sat directly behind a similarly clad man in an Elvis Presley-style haircut.They were all excited about was what happening that night, it seemed. On the vantage point of the opera house, a bald, black-skinned man clad in red and wearing blue shades stared dispassionately at the stage. At the very back of the hall a finely dressed man in a tuxedo was whistling a tune he had heard a few days ago. If anyone had accidentally walked into the hall and saw these people, no doubt the person would think of them as a very odd lot to be seen in an opera house. If any human being who walked into the room knew about the true nature of the queer individuals seated in the hall, the person would run for his dear life.

The hall was soon whipped into a flourish as two men dragged two bodies on the ground into the stage. One of them, who seemed to be a man, wore nothing but a pair of chinos trousers.The other one, obviously a girl of average height and buxom shape, wore a black vest with a blue jeans jacket over it and a jeans trouser which was a darker shade of blue than the jacket. Both their faces were covered with black bags and they both had large wooden stakes run through their chests. Behind them, an average-sized man with tawny hair and bright-green eyes swaggered into the stage. He was wearing a long, fitted black trench coat with his black trousers and almost impossibly shiny black shoes. He had an air of importance around him, one that caused the entire audience to regard him as he entered the room.Behind him was a much taller, broad-shouldered man in a large dark-green trench coat and a similarly coloured, wide-brimmed hat. In his right hand was a gigantic, cleaver shaped sword-the sword had to be at least one-and-a-half metres long. The most striking aspect of him, however, was his face, which was that of a rotting cadaver. His skin was a deathly brown and was stretched tightly over his face, which meant all his teeth were visible, his eyes were nothing more than tiny orbs glowing an eerie red inside his eye sockets and his nose was all but gone. He took his place standing right beside the smaller man,his master, Sebastian LaCroix, kindred prince of LA. Tonight he was going to pass judgement on the people who would so flaunt the second tenet of the Traditions.And he was attended by all the kindred who, however little, acknowledged his rule.