User blog:SensibleCenobite/A Ventrue Christmas story.

This is just a story. Please take and re modify for any campaign, vacation, or bed time story.

WARNING: STORY IS MODERATELY HISTORICAL AND SERIOUS

To my toughest Caitiff of Victorian England, Jimmy and the Mudlarks,

I remember a time back during the Victorian era in London England when the oppression of industrialized labor was being perfected. I was a workaholic Ventrue bent on owning everything “humanly” possible. That’s a venture capitalist to you humans reading this. I had inherited my master’s match stick factory after a massive work place disaster. It was a moderately run down building with three dirty tubes towering into the sky, belching "black progress". Whenever the foul stench of sulfur and coal was present in the air he would smile at me fondly and say, “it smells like money, yes.” Despite it’s outward appearance it was rather productive and profitable.

Compared to most other factory owners at the time we tried to have a “heart.” Our work days were only nine hours instead of twelve. We gave our drones an hours worth of break time divided any way they wanted, as long as they didn’t walk off a job. To try and “prevent” phossy jaw we gave our drones make shift masks made from the finest rubbers and fibers. We were so proud of our inventors and even more proud of their invention. All had come from Cambridge or Oxford and were the brightest minds of their time. Master even demanded they remake the mask three times without looking at it before they finally gave up and said “take it or leave it.“ He smiled and took the prototype knowing they had put all their efforts into it.

Unfortunately the masks were a complete failure and soon our drones developed sunken faces and sunken hearts. My master, a rare breed of Ventrue, cried blood the day we found out our masks had zero effect in preventing the “miasma.” As stated above, I inherited the factory shortly after these events and I was presented with a problem. Do I continue on in the face of failure, remake it better, or quit and move on?

It was a long three weeks I put into thinking about these ideas. To continue destroying the most important thing in my community, it’s heart, would be a sin against humanity, what little I had left. My brightest minds failed the first time and I doubt we could do much better the second time. Any machine takes hundreds if not thousands of iterations to be, “perfect.” We couldn’t afford another loss in our herd, so option two was definitely out. Option three was my last, but what to product to the masses that would improve their quality of life?

I decided to go for a long walk along the river Thames in the July heat. As soon as I left the gates of my gentleman’s estate, the sick stench of body odor, feces, garbage, factory offal, butchery by product, and Elysium knows what assaulted my acute senses. The streets were no better than the few sewers that were developed by that point. Everywhere one could look and see a garbage heap by the main door to dwellings, maids throwing waste from buckets into the street, and rampant poverty strangling the city.

It was the Summer in England which had a thriving coal mining industry at the time. Unfortunately, coal mining was a seasonal job mostly done by men during the Winter. To help cope with economic hardship, multiple pawn shops had been erected where lower and middle class people could sell off unneeded items to purchase food to put on the table. I would see various women going to sell off family heirlooms and hot irons, men sell off their favorite farm animals, and children sometimes sell their toys.

I felt very saddened by this, but the general attitude at the time was that it was gods punishment for their lack of effort. I wish I had a keener grasp of empiricism and had looked at the supply and demand charts in the market to see that there was a lot of seasonal labor all around. There was no such thing as government intervention back then. It was all laissez faire, or do as you please. Competition drove down wages to the bare minimum and it was hard to justify “helping” people if it bankrupted your whole factory.

What to do? I walked past the lower middle class houses and approached a run down brick apartment. The two “street rats” by the door were members of a local pick pocket family who I paid “respect” to be left alone. I nodded at them and moved along briskly to get on with my walk down to the Thames. I had done this walk so many times before I can’t even recall an exact amount. Decades for sure. In those decades I saw the worst atrocities to planet that would make a modern hippie flip out into a keyboard induced rage like a Brujah with a scuffed sneaker. The river Thames always seemed to have fat bloated bodies lazily plodding along, toilets depositing presents from directly overhead, and leftovers from the butcher shop being dumped off the pier into the fastest part of the river. Yet despite all of this, I would still see children lowering buckets into the steam to get drinking water. A capitalists dream land.

On this one particular walk I met a band of youths who refered to themselves as “Jimmy and the Mudlarks.” Before I made my proper introduction to this band of rascals, I watched them to see what they were doing. They were composed mostly of dirty kids, making their living by going into the polluted river Thames bare foot. Very carefully they would poke around with their toes up to their thighs in polluted mud and try to find bits of metal, nails, bones, and glass that they could sell to get grog. Grog is what you get when you take all the partially filled cups, flasks, and pitchers and throw the left overs into a barrel.

After a while of this I walked over and asked the oldest of the pack “what they were all about?” The young adult of about seventeen responded most politely, “I’m Jimmy sir, and we are the local mudlarks.” I had heard that term before being used derogatorily by my inner circle, but didn’t know what it meant. I saw what it meant now. I scanned their faces as they started to casually group around Jimmy. Not one of them seemed unhappy or hostile in the least.

Being an ancient vampire, I could just let any knife break on my skin, so I wasn’t worried in the least. But their faces, they seemed so content. Like nothing mattered. I asked Jimmy “why are you all so content when you have, single handedly, the worst job I’ve ever seen.” Jimmy looks at his crew and then points to a run down warehouse across the Thames. “You see that workhouse over there sir. We all escaped from there and found our way to this side of the river. We’re free now, even though we don’t have much. We all work if able, chipping in what we can to get by. Sometimes one of us scaly wags does a big job and keeps most of the cut for themselves, but no one goes hungry.”

Jimmy lowers his hand and looks at me with a grin. He start to explain some more, “skinners, kidnappers, workhouses, and disease are always a concern. BUT, we all agree that freedom to live as humans instead of slaves is much better. Should we ask for help from the philanthropist types? Why, when the only thing to look forward to is being looked down on, moralized to, and told you are unholy.” Jimmy and the rest of the crew start to agree in unison and throw up the mudlark’s hand sign.

I was very impressed with them and their attitude. They had the something I needed on my factory floor. I reach into my coat and pulled out my wallet from the left breast pocket. I pull out all the cash and no one even seemed to flinch. I ask Jimmy and the mudlarks “If I give you this stack of bills, would you tell me the secret to what you have?” Jimmy extends his fist clenched and says “Here it’s in the palm of my hands. Hold out your hand.” I did as I was commanded and Jimmy opened his hand up like he was holding an invisible something and places it in my hands. “Have a good day Mr Sensible.” The gang scatters away screaming and laughing.

Before they round the corner of the apartment I yell at them, “How did you know my name?” Jimmy pops his head around the corner and says, “You thought you were observing us, but we have been observing you. It’s time to move on. The mudlarks wish you well. Please smile.” Jimmy moves his head behind the building and I quickly run over to see where they go. I get into the alley way and it goes for hundreds of feet. There is no one in sight, no doors have slammed shut, no laundry is waving on it’s close line from little vagabonds running through it.

I have an interesting walk back to my estate that day. I re tool the factory for cheese and sell it to my scion, “Mr Scrooge”, I believe it was. I liquidated all my assets and purchased a ticket aboard a nice clipper ship. Next stop, America! I heard from a reliable source that women from New York City were all the rage!

“Q: Master Yowzers, what should I do? A: Get the hell out of there!”

Sensible Cenobite