Chapter 12 Conspiracy
Nuala doesn't remember the last part of the taxi trip, she doesn't remember leaving the taxi, doesn't remember how she made it from the taxi to her home, doesn't remember what she did until now.
She is not aware what befell her companions, she doesn't know if they followed her out of the taxi and into her home, and if so she is not aware if they are here with her or not.
She is at the computer.
And for the first time… ever, the computer is behaving, in fact is behaving better than ever, as if it had been upgraded without her being aware of it.
Then one disembodied voice whispers:
"Network…"
And she understands.
She goes within, to that place within herself, where lies the essence not exactly of who but of what she is, or rather, has become, her nature as those whose being turned into a creature of the night came coupled with her point of view being turned as well, that place within that links her to all those who share in her affliction. She accesses the Malkavian Madness Network.
With them sharing in what she was doing, assessing what she was attempting and making suggestions here and there, and the computer assuming as much an active, advisory role as a passive one enacting her commands, she managed to achieve a surprisingly swift break through.
After what had felt like days banging her head against an unyielding wall, trying failed attempt after failed attempt to break into a place that had seemed remote, obscure, and unimportant but had proven itself to be remarkably well defended for its apparent non importance, she finally cracks into the place she had sought in just a… she is not aware exactly how much time has elapsed, only that she is taken aback by how little it feels like.
Then she starts exploring all the ramifications of that place, first stepping back to its parental place then exploring thoroughly all its filial steps and links and ramifications.
What she uncovers threatens to unhinge her even further, to a point where she will loose whatever little grasp she retained on herself and the world around her:
She uncovers a conspiracy going back to the dawn of times, uncoiling through three major stages of her kind's history.
At first, during the Dark Ages, from as far back as the 1650s, when New York was yet New Amsterdam, the conspiracy was centered on the obscure descendants of an extinct lineage; it was instigated by the Harbingers of Skulls, the last remnants of the Cappadocian clan in the modern nights; the Lazerenes still claiming their history of treachery, for which it still sought to exact a hellish vengeance; the last survivor of the Cappadocians, an extinct clan, who were driven by their desire to understand the limits between life and death. A core member of the conspiracy, rumored to be Unre himself, had been an usurper-in-shadow to the successive rulers of her city since her kind and a ruler for it had first established in it, acting as a foil, perverting, undermining, corrupting, it's every ruling.
Then, in the time of The Masquerade, the conspiracy grew more baroque: there was a lineage of creatures of the night, the Nosferatu, which due to their congenital disfigurement remained in the shadows, specializing in information gathering. Despite that most of them remained loyal to the law abiding sect, the Camarilla. But a tiny group of them had turned turncoats, antitribu: while pretending to remain loyal to the Camarilla they had shifted into the tribu that pandered to the chaotic sect, the Sabbat, and had been spying on the Camarilla for the Sabbat so that the Sabbat could better counter whatever the Camarilla undertook.
These turncoats were still and always acting in the furtherance of the interests of the prime instigator of this conspiracy.
Then more recently, in the time of the Requiem, there was evidence that three covenants: The Carthian Movement, concerned with government; The Invictus, or First Estate, concerned with greed and power; and The Lancea Sanctum, concerned with predation upon kine; were preparing to annihilate and engulf the covenant she belonged to, The Circle of the Crone, more concerned with pagan beliefs.
Simply because above mentioned instigator deemed the beliefs espoused by her covenant an antidote to its Machiavellian and nefarious ploys.
