2: 25 September 2005

                  It has been a week. In this time, a number of things have happened (LOOK AT BLUEBOOKS). Everyone spent a great deal of time in the library, and both Alicia and Frederick found a strange diary that seems to date from the Oregon Trail. Furthermore, Alicia contacted Bredon. He told her to find the Kogaion. Sandra told Dimitri the same thing: it is obviously very important to the Invictus.  

                  When we start off, everyone troops down to Elysium. None of the most important people are there, but the Carthians are. They’re discussing the complex they’re building and the tunnels they want to make. Frederick apologizes to Grissom. Alicia speaks to the Circle of the Crone harpy. According to him, the Invictus really wants to find the Kogaion, it’s Bredon’s idea, and he thinks that the reason the Carthians want tunnels is to connect to the Shanghai tunnels and look for the Kogaion.

                  They return to the penthouse and realize that Marie-Josèphe’s desk has a letter on it. It’s a drawing that give enigmatic directions (go east, end of tunnel), the drawing being of a bit of rococo facing like appears throughout Bridge Tower. Dimitri takes a picture of it and passes around his phone later. It’s not in Marie-Josèphe’s handwriting. The woman herself is in the library. She has just closed the vault and seems nutty. Frederick uses Auspex and she’s got her aura a-swirl. Alicia notices her necklace.  She looks up the Shanghai tunnels online. In this world there are no tours, but there’s info about them historically.

                  They call their sires, who say there are lots of entrances to the tunnels. Bredon suggests that they use only the Mekhet, Ordo Dracul entrances, since they don’t all connect. But he had never heard of tunnels going east from Bridge Tower. Frederick convinces the security guard in the building next door to give him blueprints, but the only place that looks like there might be an entrance is blocked off.

                  Before sleeping, Dimitri slips his card under everyone’s doors.

                  When they wake everyone understands that they’re meant to go to Dimitri’s gallery. They do so, and Dimitri uses Awe on them. They all decide that Lucius should go down the Bridge Tower elevator as a test – cuz that’s where the rococoness is – and if all goes well they’ll go to the tunnels that way. All does go well, and they head down two by two into a long pale well-finished tunnel. Alicia elite-snubs Dimitri by the way she takes his arm. He doesn’t get it, but Frederick does.

                  They follow the tunnel and don’t take the only turn they see, a left. At the end of the tunnel there’s a locked door and a bellpull. Dimitri shines a flashlight through the locked door’s window, and a parrot walks into the flashlight beam on the other side of the window. As Lucius rings the bell, the door opens. Nobody’s there but the parrot, which is actually a homunculus – it has human feet. It squawks Enter, come in, hit the lights, they’re ten feet forward.

                  There is someone else in the room standing behind the door. Only with heightened senses and an exceptional success can you see them clearly – it’s a really gross Nosferatu. Everyone rolls to see if they frenzy from fear or from meeting another vamp. Lucius does, and with Celerity gets damn far down the tunnel. The Kogaion wraps his head up in a curtain like a cowl, and the parrot turns on the light. There’s nothing in English in the room, only Greek. He says that Marie-Josèphe sent them to be apprenticed to him, but he doesn’t think he’s going to.

                  After bitching a lot, and Lucius‘ return, the Kogaion agrees to apprentice them if they can tell him something he doesn’t know about the Shanghai tunnels. He gives them a map of the tunnels too. Lucius sees a note on the Kogaion’s desk which has to do with the VII. He adds this to the other things he’s learned about the VII over time and is pretty freaked.

                  Everyone takes the tunnels to the Fork & Spoon and from there back to Bridge Tower for the night.