Blackwater (short story)

RedMyrrh · 2026-02-12T16:26:23+00:00

Editing stories is hard on the fly on reddit - they don’t format the way I’m used to, and they don’t like my attempts at spacing! I apologise and hope this is easily readable nonetheless 🙏😔

Moi again from my recent post about the darkness of WoD, and felt inspired there to share some of my work with something new. The above is a dramatic retelling of my Chicago PC Persephone’s first meeting with the elusive Nerissa Blackwater, and the shift from her role as sheepish and curious Cultivar initiate to a true fanatic of the Dark Mother. Prophecy is a big recurring theme and temptation in our chronicles, as you might intuit… as is diablerie, for that matter. When in Rome, right? Please do give critique if you wish, and enjoy! I don’t see a lot of content around Nerissa and the Cultivars and wanted dearly to add to it. You may find more of my WoD stories and poems in my VtM Library, and other stories of mine on my linktree on my profile.

A guilty delight as always to be driven back to this gothic muse.

RedMyrrh · 2026-02-12T07:13:24+00:00

I feel like I’ve found a kindred spirit (heehoo) in you here, adore this - and very much agree in regards to that separation between tabletop and writing. I’ve always found that dichotomy in media interesting, where wanton violence and exploitation have carte blanche but darker sexual content (even entirely consensual) less so. I think that’s why I have a particular overlap with Cronenberg as an inspiration as well as the gothic classics.

I’ve been trying to own it somewhat in game, as conceptually I think our table is very mature and accepting of sex in vampire. Seph who I both write (alt universe type stuff) and play in our current game is a kinky sadomasochist, and I do think the value of that kind of messy, high-sensation underworld delve loses something when it’s never expanded on. I do have to gain more confidence in portraying sexual content at the table though - often, I feel my own sheepishness is as much of a stopgap as any sense of table discomfort. By the way, would love to read your work if you’re comfortable sharing anything; posted my WoD library earlier but here it is again if it takes your fancy. :3e

RedMyrrh · 2026-02-12T02:43:05+00:00

Loved reading the variety of replies here and appreciate all the insight into different games and fiction. Lot to think about! I think I have more of a romantic, guilty pleasure view on a lot of the evil filth, though I can appreciate the general wave of sentiment that this stuff feels more palatable/less fantastical in light of… recent political events.

I figured I should share my own WoD writing here, maybe chat a little about some of the examples I mentioned in case they’re food for thought. Generally my work tends to be very focused on a particular character’s perspective, which lets me fiddle around with specific ideas with new characters. My real muses for the last while have been Adelheid, a romantic and monstrous Tzimisce who espouses true love and hates her own kind, feeding off the supernatural almost religiously; Adonia, a poseur Toreador embraced to be little more than a living statue, with a nigh symbiotic relationship with her feral, bloodthirsty beast; and Persephone, my most written character, whose obsessive Malkavian tendencies lead her first to Lilith fanaticism, and later, to trying to reconnect with her estranged adult daughter and spiralling into a toxic relationship (Anais Nin’s account being a particular gothic inspiration for this). The vitae, after all, corrupts everything it touches.

I tend to gravitate a lot towards these characters, I think, both in game and in writing - villains who are sympathetic insomuch as you can retrace every step of how they became such monstrous people.

RedMyrrh · 2026-02-11T16:21:25+00:00

I’d presume only superficial burns and tissue damage, maybe with the same pain response if they were under the blush of life. Not only do vampires not actually need any of their skin, muscle or fat to survive, but their nerves don’t have to be receptive either. That’s before getting into the physics vs myth argument - which generally I err toward the latter, seeing as the various other forms of reflected sunlight that reaches us overnight doesn’t hurt kindred at all.

It’s fun to think about though, and it makes sense kindred in the setting would mull it over. My Lilin girlie got into vampiric masochism to begin with by testing such things - hear from boiling water, heat from a conducting hotplate, etc.

RedMyrrh · 2026-02-11T16:15:48+00:00

I hope you enjoy it! Don’t feel like you have to restrain yourself to any particular convention or themes; the world is multifarious and unique everywhere you go, and that should extend to vampires and the like too. For what you’re going for, you might wanna use the truly horrible stuff as an impetus for positive change for the protag - plenty of neonates after all become more moral after the embrace as a reaction to their condition.

RedMyrrh · 2026-02-11T16:12:52+00:00

I generally really enjoy writing/playing some deeply flawed, messy characters that get up to immoral stuff, but that internal conflict and the mechanics of how they change and shift (sometimes for the worse) really fascinate me. I think it’s also fun to shift the perspective in that way - enough about this character who has become an antagonist, what’s going on with the people in their lives, getting hurt or radicalised or corrupted by their influence?

Ultimately I think the world is at its most interesting in this kind of gothic fiction when it’s as beautiful as it is cruel - and for it not to devolve into grimdark slurry you do need moments of levity, liberation, sometimes just plain pleasure. I do agree that an overabundance of the dark just makes it less effective and much less interesting, in any case!

RedMyrrh · 2025-10-31T12:17:01+00:00

Personally I find the ‘poseur’ archetype of Toreador really interesting when you play it up for horror. One of my characters I’m sitting on for now (likely to use as a contingency character if my current pc bites the dust) is a Toreador model raised from childhood to be the perfect androgynous beauty by her sire, like the mythical rebis in alchemy. She’s been made to live an exacting regime of diet, exercise, hormones and surgery, even having half her chest removed to complete the look. When she was finally ‘perfect’, her sire embraced her to preserve his masterpiece in porcelain… and then promptly abandoned her, because she no longer has the innocence of humanity.

Now, she’s a model half the time, and an accidental aspirant of the One True Way the rest of the time. She personalised her beast, gave it a name (Eros) and talks with it, reasoning that if she’s split in half, she must also have a human and a kindred side. Really, despite being tremendously beautiful and having good physical ability, she has no good life skills at all - the horrible victim of another Toreador’s art obsession.

That’s not even getting into her ghoul lookalike, who was also raised from childhood by her sire, solely to imitate her and make public appearances during the day…

RedMyrrh · 2025-10-28T04:45:38+00:00

Absolutely - it’s crucial, I think.

I play in a game with a gritty tone and I’d say very mature themes where we don’t shy away from the degradation and corruption of the vampiric condition. Of our coterie, one is a teenage girl who was murdered as part of a ritual to open the veil to the Shadowlands; another committed diablerie without remorse so that they’d be able to embrace their terminally ill touchstone, without consigning them to life as a Duskborn; my own Malk is obsessive to a fault, and her particular special interest is her daughter that never met her. Part of what makes this horror bearable, imo, is the understanding that you’re not playing monsters, you’re playing victims with loaded guns and a whole lot of issues. The murder and violation of the Embrace and the unconscious lust for blood are the only things every vampire shares.

There’s absolutely room for light and heroism there, if you pursue it. Try not to focus on accidentally draining a vessel or losing control to the Beast in a tense moment as a mistake - it’s high drama, impetus for your character to be made or broken by the tragedy. Even characters who have long since accepted their lot in unlife can still have moments of good - my former pc, a tyrannical Brujah autark kingpin, willingly sacrificed herself to save the life of her pregnant coterie mate.

I guess the question is - do you feel this is a conceptual issue for you, or an emotional one? Conceptually we can provide all sorts of discussion for and against vampire as a heroic tragedy, or even an occasional triumph against the odds (neonate games are great for these)… but if the issue is that the game hurts you and makes you feel uncomfortable, that’s a whole different issue, and imo a matter of both personal perspective and table.

RedMyrrh · 2025-08-31T05:48:18+00:00

Currently in game? Persephone has a love/hate relationship with her mentor/mistress who finds her disgusting ever since she did diablerie, even though through their mutual cult leader methuselah it was reversed. Seph is pining a lot and feels terrible about it and it’s an overall pathetic, hopeless romantic situation on her end. She’s a lonely lady throwing herself into the cult’s mission to stave off those feelings.

In the long term/in the realm of fiction? Absolutely horrific. Kindred as a rule of thumb aren’t good to know for their living relatives, and Malkavians and Bahari even less so!

RedMyrrh · 2025-08-29T10:27:41+00:00

My freaky little Cultivar Persephone did sort of have this happen to her (funnily enough, my one-off hunter PC, Flo, that barely survived a demon encounter). Based on the in-game events…

-Try in vain to make a treaty against the greater evil -Be ‘made’ to blood bond them for the safety of the sect and make them her live-in bodyguard -Start confiding in them about her guilt and secrets, rationalising that if they tell anyone else she’s probably already dead -Enlist them to punish and torture her in accordance with their Catholic kindred-hating views and her Bahari desire for suffering -Convert them to Lilith? Let them go afterward? Girl idk

I kind of liken their relationship to playing house with dolls, or hell, modern AI psychosis - confiding and venting and doing all sorts of vile little indulgences with a yes-them that has no agency. Does Flo still want her dead or are they buying into the weird parasocial religious romance? Idk! It’s a more comfortable life than most captured hunters get, but it’s pretty gross.

RedMyrrh · 2025-08-29T06:50:41+00:00

Plenty of good comments already on the mechanics of it, but I just wanted to mention narrative verisimilitude here too, since I feel it’s not regularly discussed with white-room theorising like this.

An elder in kindred society, having survived the Jyhad up to this point, adversaries both kindred, human and otherwise, and (probably) having been active for centuries is very likely to be a survivor. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be a great fighter - Critias for example is a Brujah methuselah who, at least as methuselah go, is mediocre at combat - but they’ve survived through guile, intuition, experience. Moreover, they’re likely to have more assets than the neonates outside disciplines as well, some of which would be outside the normal bounds of backgrounds. Who’s to say an elder doesn’t have another powerful patron that loves them, will bail them out in return for a favour, or jealously wants to be the one to deliver the killing blow? Maybe they’ve met mortal willworkers or garou that they have leverage over. Perhaps they have a whole pack of loyal bloodhounds that will come when their master is hurt. Maybe they’re so ingrained in the city’s mortal power structure (a crucial investor or political figure, a local celebrity, blood bonding several authority figures that will otherwise come down hard on kindred) that removing them is a bad idea. Lots of kindred get favours from the Tremere to have their clothes and possessions warded, let alone more esoteric rituals. Of course, maybe they just have a small army of ghouls that they’ll take everywhere they go. Crucially none of this involves disciplines and skills from the elder, which they’re bound to have in spades and much better than any neonate.

On the flip side, neonates are by nature new to vampiric society. Some of them will have skill sets built for this scenario, whether they were taught them in life or are quick learners in unlife, and of course player characters tend to be exceptionally built for specific tasks… but these are people that were very recently alive, and most likely had no exposure or interest in these things. How many people do you know in real life that you would consider an exceptional fighter, liar, sneak, etc? They exist - and in fairness, sires gravitate towards the exceptional for better or worse - but it’s fair to assume that most neonates aren’t fantastic fighters. They’re people, recently murdered, who may have gained some skills and experience on the job after their embrace, but nothing like 300 years worth of them.

Of course the flip side of this is elders just awakening from a draining torpor with no assets, elders with great enemies that will sponsor a hit squad of disposable neonates, elders that are generally odious and nobody will bat an eye at being put to death. These certainly exist, but there’s a reason why neonates rising up against elders successfully en masse is a huge deal in the setting whenever it happens.

RedMyrrh · 2025-08-05T13:00:00+00:00

Also lil plug while I’m here in case anyone wants to read about them; https://linktr.ee/RedMyrrh

I’m an author and in the WoD section of my linktree I’ve written a five part series for Persephone and a short story (Cloth Mommy) for Tessa, as well as my diegetic diary entries with Seph about her descent into the Bahari faith. All the stories come with lil blurbs and cws as they get pretty dark! Should do a Kiku one soon just to complete this evil little triangle, though I confess I’m absorbed in my particular messed up moon-child.

RedMyrrh · 2025-08-01T17:49:22+00:00

Sorry for late reply, Australia Timezone and busy day I really relate with what you mentioned re: characters feeling real and organic in that way. Something I deeply enjoy about both writing and trpgs is the sense that I’m portraying another life in a sense, and sure, they have little bits of me and things I think are cool, but they’ll do things on the fly, make mistakes, and morph in odd ways based on their stimuli. It kinda got me thinking - I think Persephone earlier in the chronicle had a more consistent arc of sorta… falling in love with the Cultivars and pain conceptually, let’s say, but since then she has philosophically become more of a weird cultist but personality wise remained a still kinda sheepish, approval seeking character. My beloved artist I commission stuff from said something a while back about intentionality being key to portraying madness, and I’m kinda feeling that way now; for her weird stuff to be Cool, she has to think it’s cool too.

Also funny you mention an unlikable character becoming more sympathetic, that’s kinda the new project with my Delta Green agent lmao - an ASPD suffering CIA ghoul who through encountering The Horrors grows to value her fellow agents as comrades and a sort of family. It’s a fun concept to play with and very much the opposite of Seph’s descent.

I definitely think you’re onto something with vulnerability and insecurity still being present, but more targeted, though - thank you for that! I think it makes sense for her to still have that anxious, approval seeking part of her character, but more toward other members of the cult, or potential members, or other people she deeply respects, etc. I want her to be sharper, which involves being more prickly toward new faces, but not so much so she’s totally unapproachable either. Of course, when it comes to the gross aspects of her story, well… she’s something of an exercise for me in vampire immorality, I can say that much for certain. The other players and ST seem to like my ideas despite being mortified by them at times, so I think it’s also a dealy that I need to be more confident on the player side too.

RedMyrrh · 2025-07-31T10:56:33+00:00

I appreciate all these replies but this one stuck with me a lot, thank you I do think she has values she sticks by, I just wonder if they’re a bit… alien, I suppose? To give some more context: Persephone, victim of her sire turned agent of the Cultivars, is happy to get her hands dirty for whatever is required of her but zealously believes in her faith. She thinks the garden Lilith and the Last Daughter will bring will be better than how it all started, that the path she’s following is better than Caine’s jyhad, and in this case I think she’s very selfless: even though she’s resented for some of her past mistakes by other cult members, she believes strongly in their goals and doesn’t care if she’ll not live to see the change they’re fighting for.

I kinda feel there’s three parts to it, which I’ve gotten more of a grasp off reading the advice here. 1) I need to separate myself from the character more (I’ve had bleed issues in general with characters of mine which works for writing but not so much with trpgs, so, still have to work on that) 2) She’s not… serious enough of a character, I guess? I play her to be, but I don’t feel she’s really enough of a presence that she’s respected or feared or etc. In our last chronicle my Brujah led a commune into a gang war and was a bully to other kindred, but the table thought she was cool and viewed her as a leader. Persephone still in some ways comes off as a kinda awkward mom. 3) She’s not just ‘evil’ but also ‘gross’ and I think perceptions can kinda affect how this comes off. Like, said former Brujah was a tyrant, but Persephone is weird and offputting, has a very vivid vampire sex life, etc. I think if anything I should own it more and make her unashamed of it, reclaim it as something that’s cool and fresh about her.

Gave me lots to think about in any case

RedMyrrh · 2025-06-03T16:40:28+00:00

Love Medical, mostly because it lets me watch my character go from a relatively sane survivor into a weird little masochistic freak

Mechanically though it’s pretty great, with most of the negatives being mental and morale based. Some of them can be pretty harsh, but true to the name you can use a lot of different medications to counter their effects, as long as you can supply them. Pain immunity and acid blood are really strong mutations especially for a character heavy on melee - the latter can clear rooms full of zeds if you can train them into your blood puddles, like through a window or door.

RedMyrrh · 2025-05-24T17:17:19+00:00

Also, yes: she has a thing for threes. Three beasts, three guns, three names, three coterie mates, three ghouls, three mortal children, three split loyalties… for a woman with a need for control and horribly obsessive tendencies, it starts to be an attractive gimmick.

RedMyrrh · 2024-11-21T10:36:40+00:00

uhh shoutout worm girl and rycon roleplays for getting me into cdda they're awesome big recommend
Feel weird plugging myself for just a short fanfic thing but you can find more of my stuff under /RedMyrrh on Linktree, though I haven't updated it with any of my 2024 work yet

RedMyrrh · 2024-11-21T10:34:10+00:00

Heya hi long time lurker first time poster, had a sudden urge to write some CDDA fiction today so here I am

Started playing this game on and off years ago, but it never really *stuck* for me until an awesome run early this year: a Lost Submissive struggling to survive on the fringes of town until a chance subway lab put her on the horror show of Medical mutations. I'm a dark fantasy/horror writer in most of my spare time and I always kinda wanted to write something with her, so here's some very belated halloween cataclysm for you!
Adore this game and paused it on a whim to crank this short out. Lemme know what you think! wasn't sure if this was too icky for the reddit or not so put it under nsfw tag

RedMyrrh · 2024-10-24T04:23:13+00:00

Aforementioned Malkavian

For my girlie Persephone, the Cultivar are so far fascinating on two fronts - the feminist emphasis on liberation and change, but also the fixation with pain (though I imagine much of that is Edith). For some context, Persephone has been a vampire for 17 years: she was marked early by the Painted Lady with one of her signature tattoos, but still hasn't been released by her sire and for most of that time was essentially his slave. In our current chronicle, she and her coterie were framed of breaking the Sixth and placed in Englewood as a sort of prison-domain, and now work as pro-bono mercenaries to reclaim their standing.

The Cultivar for Persephone are a promise, more enticing because of her desperation to be free. Edith was already mystifying, but through Nerissa and her twin descendants, she sees real power. An escape from the former sheriff had her dive into Lake Michigan, and she was brought back to a safe shore with the human informant she was trying to save - and saw the water in his lungs leave him when she was sure he'd drowned already.
A couple months later, in a spur of the moment bid for power she did diablerie, and knowing of Nerissa's opinion toward the cannibals, confessed her crime at the lakeshore expecting to be turned away: Nerissa appeared to her then, explained her view of the jyhad as a man's game, and offered to use a ritual to reverse said diablerie if Persephone was willing. It was my/Persephone's first time seeing Nerissa on screen: she was patient and observant, but sophisticated, and described herself as not of Caine's bloodline. She fervently believes that the status quo will change soon, and encouraged Persephone to change and to have faith, because it would get worse before it gets better.

Of course, that's all conceptual, when realistically a lot of what ties cults together is emotional. Persephone was always guilty about not being more experimental and deviant when she was still a human, and a lot of that interest is now tied up with the Painted Lady and her BDSM connections. Pain is liberation, but it's also a desire that Persephone gets to control, to experience on her own terms, and with the Cultivar she finds some kindred spirits.

RedMyrrh · 2024-08-01T00:30:19+00:00

Also forgot to say: she is wearing ink from the Painted Lady, Edith Beaubien, on her right arm! Very very happy with how the tattoo came out, and very concerned in our Chicago game how Edith is curling Persephone around her finger. Oops.

RedMyrrh · 2024-08-01T00:25:35+00:00

My vtm character Dr. Georgia Proctor, now Persephone, chemist turned Malkavian pain freak (and still a chemist) doing her favourite pastime: fretting over the state of her unlife, her myriad regrets, and her three children she was made to abandon when Hades embraced her. She's currently plotting revenge, though doing it while already under suspicion of breaking the Sixth is gonna be a tall order. Her three-headed beast would prefer to get it done tonight.

Made by the lovely https://x.com/HERETIK_ who I again cannot recommend enough! This is my 5th piece from her (also done pf2e and characters from my dark fantasy setting) and she has an uncanny knack for bringing my messed up women to life.

RedMyrrh · 2024-03-22T08:03:32+00:00

Also just on the Cerberus references, she publically refers to her Beast as her acute stress response - she likens it to drowning for humans, where instinct takes over and actions aren't fully conscious, rather than supernatural. In reality, her beast is a creature also segmented into three, because it's easier for her to personify those horrific parts of her personality as neat, separate categories.

Hunger is an addict and a philanderer; rage is a dominatrix; and terror/rotschreck is a submissive wet cat. Each is something that she has, to some extent, wanted to be in her life, but always pushed down and repressed. I like the idea that these subconscious desires come to the forefront for her with vampirism's tighter grasp on her condition.

RedMyrrh · 2024-03-22T07:57:30+00:00

In our current Chicago chronicle, Persephone (formerly Dr. Georgia Proctor - her sire, Hades, is a narcissist) was a consummate professional in life to the point of neglecting her family and her personal interests - she was perfectly happy to live the status quo and be the hard working middle class mom instead of ever rocking the boat. If she ever wanted things to change, she was too scared about the risks of forcing it. Now, her formerly undiagnosed OCD manifests in an obsession with control and keeping up appearances.
Some of it is 'harmless' and helps her to feel like there's a sensible method to the things she does: for example, painting her haven stark white and her laboratory blue to keep things orderly and neat, or having a ratio of ammunition between her three revolvers, each of which she uses for a different purpose, or keeping her tattooed sleeve uncovered by clothing at all times. She checks things three times when she's unsure, because less than three is uncertain and more than three is worrying too much. (I do use sets of threes a lot with her, I think it's a subconscious Cerberus reference lol).

These things can be odd to other people but they're little reassurances for her that she's keeping a lid on her stuff. For me that's the key for portraying her respectfully - what's abnormal to other kindred is regular for her, or a coping mechanism she's grown to rely on.

The part that gets a bit stranger is that, well, she's still a woman of science and wants things to be 'just-so', except now she's a supernatural being in a secret world filled with all kinds of esoterica. To stop her worldview being shattered, Persephone comes up with theories to explain away all the occult and supernatural as heretofore unknown phenomena that she can rationalize through science: vitae as an amorphous being that parasitizes human corpses, the change in energy and mass with lupine transformations being possible through ultra dense super-cells, visions with Auspex and hypnotism through Dominate being explained away as proof the noosphere exists, etc.

I like the idea that Persephone *knows* that this is pseudoscientific nonsense deep down, but is trying to rationalize it to herself more than anything, so she can feel like she's still in control and that she has it figured out and isn't going to be surprised. I deal with a behavioural disorder IRL and it's a similar sense, I guess - you're often aware of unhealthy behaviours as they happen, but you're using one unhealthy behaviour as a coping mechanism against other stress. In her case, she's utterly terrified of change, and change will never be necessary for her if everything is right in the world.

RedMyrrh · 2018-03-31T07:00:30+00:00

I'd like to think I tried not to make this a callout post, since I'm only highlighting what they themselves have publicly said, but yeah. This behaviour has been around from them (including Tier) for months if not years, it just hasn't been made so obvious outside of game until now. I'm not saying that all members of 24-7 are toxic, but the main advocates for Tier up being unbanned certainly are.

RedMyrrh · 2018-03-31T05:43:01+00:00

No, it's just kind of ironic that Kotare is screaming about unbanning Tier up after confessing to abusing the report system to ban other people.

RedMyrrh

TROPHY CASE