Rumor Non-Control: Tucson By Night, September 16, 1995

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IC Quote:

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					----Harold Southend, Clan Malkavian
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Okay, if ever there was a time when contradictory rumors would come flying
out of Tucson, now is that time. 

Tucson is now a Camarilla town.  Whether it joined the Camarilla, allied
with it, aligned with it, or whether the Camarilla joined _it_ is not
entirely clear.  A group of Camarilla elders came to the city, and left
without getting a single signature on their agreement...or they got
everyone's signature on their agreement...or they signed an agreement
written by a local...or they compromised with the local on their
agreement...or the agreement written by the local was almost exactly the
same as their agreement...and the local spent the previous week annoying
them horribly...and the only people in the city who hadn't signed the
agreement before the elders were the actual Camarilla representatives, who
didn't even know that the agreement existed.... 

Confused?

Well, join the club.  You may be interested to know that the local
mentioned here was Harold Southend of Clan Malkavian.  On the other hand,
you may not give a darn.  How should we know? 

=============== DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER ==============

You've heard me whine before at the beginning of my Rumor Control posts 
that because I play a very twisted and "remote" Malkavian, that I usually 
miss 90% of what goes on.  This is not true of this game.

At this game I missed 100% of what went on.  Therefore anything after 
this disclaimer should be read as complete and utter nonsense and pretty 
much just general speculation as to what happened, as well as some OOC 
knowledge that I gleaned after the game.

The reason for the change was that someone shut down...well...I'll get to 
that bit in a minute.

============== DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISANDDATCLAIMER =========



PART A: The Camarilla's Plan

Okay, as you heard in the month-and-a-half-ago Rumor Control posting, the
Camarilla sent down Cassius, a Ventrue, to take over Isabeau's job and let
the elders of Tucson know that the Camarilla was going to send some _real_
elders down to sign them up.  Panic ensued.  Plans were made.  Deals were
cut.  The weird turned pro. 

PART B: Project North By Northwest, also known as "My God...they _can't_
tell a hawk from a handsaw." 

This was part one of the Malkavian plan to deal with the Camarilla.  The
intention was to transform this group of elders from a bunch of
supersuave, supercool, funky elders in control of everything bargaining
with Tucson from a position of strength to a bunch of complete paranoid
nervous twitching wrecks utterly incapable of bargaining with anyone. 

The method was to provide minor annoyances to the elder's lives (at
first), the proceed to relentless annoyances...then proceed to major
annoyances, then proceed to the relentless major annoyances, and finally
hit them with a Catch-22 situation in which they are forced to leave the
city.  Perhaps fortunately, they stayed such a short period of time that 
we weren't able to escalate much.

Rather than explain what we did to each elder, I'm going to upload a file,
nxnw.txt, to the ftp site and let you peruse it at your leisure. 

It also became clear that one of the "Camarilla Dupes" (Isabeau, Steven or
Maxwell) would crack and tell the elders that the "Malkies are up to
something."  So they beat them to the punch by mailing the elders each a
cheery little letter saying that they would be the target of a massive
conspiracy to make their lives hell, and giving both the name of the
person behind it, _and his phone number_, in case they wanted to talk with
him. 

Here's how it broke down:

Brujah elder.  Left long, threatening messages on machine, but wasn't dumb 
enough to try to get out of it.  Elders 1, Malkavians 0.
Gangrel elder.  Didn't arrive in town until night of meeting, and left 
immediately afterwards.  ("Obviously scared to death!") Elders 1, 
Malkavians 1.
Malkavian elder.  Got into it.  Assisted in pranking self, Tucson Malkavians 
and others.  A win for both sides.  Elders 2, Malkavians 2.
Nosferatu elder.  Hid his ugly face and didn't dare poke it out of the 
sewers.  Elders 2, Malkavians 3.
Toreador elder.  Hit mortal conspirators with Awe, which derailed the 
Malkavian plan, but was too good at it, and so developed an equally annoying 
following of homeless people who would just follow her around and stare 
at her.  Elders 2, Malkavians 4.
Tremere elder.  Our greatest success.  Cracked immediately and fled to the 
Chantry.  Elders 2, Malkavians 5.
Ventrue elder.  Managed to function very well despite pranks.  Elders 3, 
Malkavians 5.

So by the time the meeting rolled around, the elders were ready for a
major bargaining session, and had lots of "cookies" ready to hand out to
people in exchange for their support, knowing that the Malkavians, no
matter how annoying they may be, simply cannot outbid them.  And the
Camarilla Dupes put their plans into action too, as it became obvious that
_something_ was going on... 

PART C: Project Dagger Before Me
or
"Hamlet pretended to be crazy in order to get an advantage. Macbeth 
_really was crazy_."

At a small meeting previous to the elders meeting, the Camarilla Dupes
(gosh, I need to come up with a less insulting name than that, they're
really quite competent and very scary, and would be the most powerful
coterie in Tucson if we determined power in any ordinary, sane, rational
way in this city...) met with Dmitri and Harold, and let it slip that the
elders were coming down to sign a written agreement.  Harold looks
absolutely ecstatic at this information, but of course, nobody pays any
attention. 

Harold grabs Dmitri after the meeting (in an area that isn't particularly
sensitive) and babbles at him for a while.  The upshot is that Dmitri
should, through some subterfuge, get a copy of the written agreement to
Harold before the meeting.  Dmitri, who A) is one of the "problem people" 
identified by the Camarilla as needing convincing, and B) was throwing a
party to which the elders were invited the next night, figures it won't be
so hard, and agrees, thinking that he might know what Harold is thinking
of doing, and then realizing that the fact that he might know is far more
frightening than the risk he is undertaking to find out... 

So the next night, with very little problem, he gets the Ventrue elder to
show him the agreement...he very slowly reads the agreement, in full view
of the _incredibly clear_ security video cameras being manned by his
Gangrel buddy Jack Dawson...says "Well, I'll need to think it over," 
gives it back to the Ventrue elder, and gets the tape to Harold (who is
busy organizing a paintball drive-by shooting of the Toreador elder). 

Harold then changes four words in the document, all in the preambulatory
clauses, and where it says "Presented by William Mason Grosvenor on behalf
of the Inner Council of the Camarilla", he writes "Presented by Harold
Robert Southend Junior on behalf of the City of Tucson", takes it to
Kinko's, duplicates it onto paper and fonts identical to the actual
agreement, takes it back to Dmitri, and says "Sell this." 

And Dmitri does.

He gets a lot of people to sign the paper, one from each clan in Tucson
(except for the Tremere, who he couldn't find, and the Camarilla Dupes,
who he thought about, but then giggled at what he thought the look on
their faces would be, and ignored...). 

The stage is set for...

PART D: The Big Game


The first thing that happened in the Big Game was that the Ventrue elder
stood up and made a speech about the advantages of joining the Camarilla. 

The second thing that happened was that Harold stood up and agreed with 
him, volubly, at great length, and with so little coherence that only a 
few were able to pick up on exactly what he was talking about.  As the 
news spread, the Camarilla dupes were slightly shocked and the elders 
were _completely_ thrown off: Harold was the one that had organized the 
conspiracy to prank them 24 hours a day and, according to the letter they 
got from him, make their lives "living hell."

The third thing that happened was that Dmitri handed up the agreement with
all the signatures at the bottom.  "We're ready for you to sign...you know
we could have just _faxed_ this to you..."  Harold adds that the main
advantage to this agreement is that it has signatures on it.  The
Camarilla Dupes went ballistic.  "What the hell kind of agreement are you
talking about, Dmitri?"  While the argument rages, the Camarilla elders
look over Harold/Dmitri's agreement and get more and more confused...it is
nearly exactly theirs, word for word, and they haven't presented theirs
formally yet.  The Ventrue attempts to present his, and Harold insists
that he won't accuse the Ventrue of plagiarism.  "Also, there's signatures
on this one." 

At that point, all idea of a normal meeting was essentially thrown out 
the window.  Total bedlam reigned.  Major politicking.  Major maneuvering 
on both sides and between both sides.

It didn't help that Isabeau, (one of the CDs), had arranged for the 
Malkavians to be hit with a curse that night (two traits down, and *urk* 
the Malkavian Madness Network turns off...), and so right in the midst of 
all of this craziness, the Malkies are all slowly going sane and 
completely falling apart.  (This is why I missed so much of the game.)

Finally, the elders all sign the document.  The Camarilla proposal is
summarily dropped.  And just as the Toreador affixes her name to it, the
lights go out and she gets offed by someone or something.  One of the
really nasty werewolves from the Lupine meeting two weeks ago comes in
shortly afterwards, bellowing about violations of the agreement.  Steven &
Rosa (the Tremere Regent, and an Apprentice), get whomped on by someone or
something.  Total craziness reigns, but the Ventrue elder keeps his cool
and announces calmly that the agreement is binding, that a Justicar will
be down soon to look into the Toreador's death, and that they'd be leaving
the next day.

PART E: The Aftermath

One of the basic tenets of the agreement was that a person or persons
would represent Camarilla authority in Tucson.  Dmitri, with balls that
now clank together when he walks around, piped up, with perfect timing,
"Well, I haven't really talked to anyone in the city about this, but I
thought a council of three permanent members assisted by temporary members
selected by the council for particular issues would work pretty well." 
And everyone said "Okay, sounds good."  With a single casual sentence,
Dmitri formed the Kindred government of Tucson, something a half-dozen
people couldn't do in two years of work.  The man has cojones the size 
of grapefruits.

The three permanent members of the council are Dmitri, Harold and 
Steven.  (the way Dmitri described it was a lot like the Security 
Council: those members are always there, and other members are added and 
subtracted at the behest of those three.  F'rinstance, if we were talking 
about Lupines, we'd add a bunch of Gangrel to the council, etc.)  This 
started people off on a bunch of Frothing Conspiracy Theories (tm), which 
I'll post as soon as I download the highlights off my computer at home.

Take me back to the Dead Pages Index.