The newly appointed Prince of Brasov or Kronstadt has to build the foundations for his powerbase in the city. His Coterie helps him, either out of friendship or out of lust for their own power.
Can Prince Alexander Samplonius distinguish friend from foe?
Date in World of Darkness: Friday 10th of October 2003
Played at: Anouk
Well, the Elysium at least seems to be in good secure order. Our dear friend Lucius has taken a close look at the system that had appeared from thin air, and found out that it was produced in Georgia by a company called BIM. The order for the system had been issued from somewhere in France. It seems to work in a way that when the alarm is set off, an automatic phone call is made to some place we do not know of yet. To be sure of what will happen if the alarm goes, we better find out exactly what creatures come to our rescue...
The night was right for a visit to the club we have recently taken some interest in. As we would soon find out, the political interests are pretty much tied up with everything around here, so our business would soon stir some souls. To acquire ourselves some decent social cover, we enlisted the company of a few young mortals to escort to Felix Moga’s club: the Opium. First there is Ilja, a long blonde being chaperoned by yours truly, a history student with more historico-political information on the region that ten years of tabloid. Secondly, there was Simone, the shortish, dark-haired companion of Lucius. Thirdly, Natalya, who happens to be the secretary cum wife (I do not exactly know in what order) of Thibalt, a short and well-kempt with a conspicuous but pleasant appearance, not to mention her stark green eyes. The poor thing was to be pushed around all night by Thibalt, who seems to have his way with women in this manner. Last but not least: Stefan, the short, square and muscular taxi driver assigned to Maud. Guys like Stefan, as thick-headed as they come, are in short supply. While this worthless Felix Moga had failed to put our names on the guest list, Stefan knew the usher at the club and managed to get us in while we faced the prospect of waiting in line, for crying out loud. Stefan may not be the smartest, but he surely knows his way around town a lot better than we do.
The club, with its ominous name “Opium”, was in itself a pseudo-luxury laid-back lounge club. It is a place where your coat is handed over to a host, but where the ceiling is in a pretty bad state of repair. It clearly shows that it is a former theatre, you can almost hear the classical plays performed. Once a glorious place of the arts, now unmistakeably dilapidated into a place for pot smokers and those people that never left the sixties of the previous (!) century. The club appears lusciously decorated with a sort of wood finish, yet on a certain budget. In a sense, a place where you can feel lavish without being it: the ideal place for the wannabe rich with a tight wallet.
After a short interlude in which we enjoyed ourselves in the club, Felix Moga came to see us. He explained that he experienced problems with a certain group about once a week. Moga had received some information from a certain local junky named Kay, who had met someone with ‘golden’ eyes, a hooked nose, black clothes, sandals without soles and skinny as Oliver Twist on a diet. We should certainly pay this Kay a visit soon and find out what this mysterious figure knows about this case.
We warned Moga that one day we would ask from him a favour in return for the services we were about to grant him. We had chosen the right, or perhaps rather the wrong, night to pay Moga a visit. A party of three uninvited guests had just entered the club. Three punks, the leader of which was a short, scruffy fellow, then one woman who seemed to own not only the club, but the whole world. Last but certainly not least entered a rather sizeable bloke with an IQ that probably equals his age in years, who clearly had dropped in to do most of the dirty work if there was any involved. My experiences with trouble in clubs told me that there would definitely be trouble. There had once been an incident with lots of fire, and there had once been an incident with more fire, bullets and other nasty bits. There have been other occasions with police, blown-off limbs and breaches of the masquerade. So it is always a good plan to know the geographical situation, the way out if you need a hasty retreat or a way of impeding others to use them, before engaging into the blood, guts and fire department of the night. This time however, there was to be hardly any of that, to my utter surprise since I do not remember a single visit to a dancing club. We simply subdued the intruders into submission with mind tricks, after which we extracted the relevant information from them. My primogen nowadays seems intent on inflicting at least some bodily damage, so they managed to stick a pen in a leg to restrain a punk.
The leader punk was named Eric, and he told us that they had been sent by a feller named Sergei. He was an associate of the Moldovan family, a neo-fascist branch the so-called Lanceri. My companion Ilja later informed me that these Lanceri – the pride of Romania – had originated in Germany as the Legion of the Archangel Michael. Some gangs of the Moldovans were called Guarda de Fier – the Iron Guard of 1927. The Moldovans were said to taunt the Bulea, the eastern competitors of the Moldovans. The Bulea had been led by a certain Valeriu, who had been the architect of a truce of 10 years, but had just recently died. Perhaps this club we had taken some interest in, is the war front in a renewed war game between some very powerful political families.
Moga was soon to show to break his word against us. We left the punks at the Opium, after Moga had given his word that he would treat the intruders humanely. We left to arrange a meeting with this Sergei, and I wished to talk to Eric on the phone at Moga’s place to talk some sense into him. The beating of the prisoners was loud and clearly audible in the background. Moga proved to be as much scum as the punks he was roughing up now and obviously was taking his revenge a little sweeter then we had agreed upon. I verbally disciplined Moga on the phone on his behaviour, but his attitude was to deteriorate rapidly. Meanwhile I arranged with Eric that if he would not mention the incident at the Opium to Sergei, neither would we. If Eric would mention the night, we would slip Sergei a note that his compadres had accidentally dropped his address we were thinking about to visit.
We theorized on what to do with Sergei and we thought about going to the place mentioned by Eric. Suddenly the phone went, which turned out to be Sergei himself! He somehow had gotten hold of my number and he already knew everything that had happened, information that he can only possibly have gotten from Moga. We have to have a serious talk with Moga on this, because he is more in our way than helping us at the moment. Sergei knew that we had captured his punks, that they had given his address. Finally he uttered some loose threats that we were to stay out of his business if we didn’t want the army to come and get us. Thibalt however assured us that the army was still on our hands, as long as the political situation did not change dramatically. We were back to square one. We have no way of contacting Sergei and our plans had gone to smithereens.
However, there are some lights in the dark sky. Although Felix Moga has proven to be as reliable as a cat in a tub of cold water, we did succeed in clearing his club from misfits. Moga still owes us a boon, has nonetheless betrayed us to Sergei, so Sergei can have his Opium. I do feel strongly that we should exact a price for it. The murky waters around the political schemes in the area are still a far way from clearing, but in the end we’ll get to the bottom of this. There are many questions that need answering. Who built the security system in the Elysium? Who is the junky Kay and who is his skinny informant in black? Are the rumours linking Jurgen von Verden to the Moldovans/Legionnairs true? We still haven’t managed to establish a clear political foothold in Brasov with or against any of the factions in the region, how are we to take this on?
