(Skeleton Keys) Confluence

[West]

Immortality is the ultimate seduction.

Slowly, but surely, every Kindred learns the truth: there will always be another night. How that manifests to each is unknown -- but to many, it is the antithesis of the Ordo Dracul. Stagnation. Another minute. Another night. Another year. Another decade. The Human Condition is driven by urgency, the long shadow cast by Death.

Some seductions end before they ever begin.

For some, there will never be another minute. Another night. Another year. Another decade. The frozen clock has been shattered, and only the pieces remain. Broken, the hands begin counting time anew. Another minute Since. Another night Since. Another year Since.

It's only fitting that the man counting time is the only one to realize how much time has truly been lost.

The memorial is as unassuming as it's latest discoverer. Landscape lighting casts a golden glow in the gloaming; in the distance, the dark void of the fateful runway stretches. A cool breeze blows across it. The Winds of Change. Years ago, Dragons had stood where he had stood.

Had they found nothing?

Or had they simply thought that there would be another night.

Int + Inv -3 should DR choose to poke around.

[West]

Eventually, David finds what those before him have found. The only thing out of the ordinary, nearly obscured by the ordinary. Trash, to be specific. Framed by abandoned cigarette butts and adorned with hard, dried wads of gum, the stone has an engraving on the back.

Cyphers. Suttle, & Sterling.

Before, it was dismissed for what it obviously was -- the hubris of the sculptor, or designers of the memorial.

[West]

Like most searches, a plethora of last names arranged in the same sequence of letters appears. Further in the results, David finds a hip hop group and a hotel.

Within his personal, vast store of facts, there is little illumination.

Roll Intelligence+Composure

[West]

There's just a brief flash of a image. It's an old man, with long hair and a beard, windblown. He might be kneeling like a mourner, except for one small thing;


He's got the tip of his finger stuck in the stone midway through an unfinished name.

There's a hint of something else. The flicker of something warm, the dim rumble of sound; an echo bleeding through the stone David touches. It's an echo that taints everything here, and possibly, to the Mekhet, a warning to take care with what else he Touches.