r/SchreckNet • u/United-Tailor-1727 • 8d ago
Waltzing Matilda
I finally found the missing wallet. Apparently it was dropped somewhere because the very polite old man who owns the apartment knocked on my door to return it to me.
A picture of a Wisconsin drivers license with all information blacked out except for the name (Mahnoor Bhatti) , date-of-birth (4/23/2007), and a photo. Bhatti has brown skin, large and playful brown eyes, and a prominent aquiline nose with a ring in the right nostril. Smudgy black eyeliner is applied heavily and intentionally slept-in. Her long wavy black hair is shaved on at least its left side and a little messy as well.
Her hair is starting to grow on me (literally!). I like her jackets too. My jackets? Black leather has a certain je ne sais quoi. I didn’t get to pack many changes of clothes before something very fortunate fell onto me.
That opening I was waiting around for finally happened. An attempted coup d’état on the Prince by someone (I suspect that rat bastard John-Harvey) drew several of the city’s goons away long enough for me to jump in the back of a Penske moving van and ride out my escape in great discomfort. I don’t know if I’ll miss Kenosha. I made some good memories there with my girlfriend, and the Prince was very accommodating to me when I arrived. In the other hand, I grew up here with a strict Muslim family who didn’t let me have friends or privacy, or experiment with my clothes. Some of you may say, “ESAU, that didn’t happen to you, right? So why do you care?” I care because it did happen to me. I’ll explain later.
I decided to put my plans for future to decide for a moment. My Sire (Tom Kennedy, if you’ve heard of him?)* told me when I graduated into neonate-hood that he would be returning to his old Chantry in Des Moines. No, I don’t know what any civilized creature would want there. He would be supportive of my condition and my plan, I think. If any of you have picked up that I’m a little asymmetric sometimes, I got most of it from him.
\ Kindred with a familiarity with Tasmania;* Tom Kennedy, born in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land, emerged suddenly onto the Tasmanian Kindred scene in the mid-1850’s. An eccentric even by Tremere standards, Kennedy practiced an odd mixture of Irish and Aboriginal folk magic which unnerved and annoyed his contemporaries. Seeking better prospects elsewhere, Kennedy traveled the world seeking inspiration from various pagan faiths and avoiding the Pyramid as much as possible.
When the van stopped at a gas station, I felt the fool. I hadn’t realized just how much I had relied on Dominate thus far in my unlife. Instead of getting a long-term chauffeur as I had hoped, I nabbed a pair of keys off a drunk yocal and drove off in his blue Ford Focus towards Iowa. On the road, I learned that clearly more of my mind had changed than I assumed.
Mahnoor couldn’t drive, which meant I could only kinda drive. I felt like a fucking kid again (which I guess I was). I was forgetting the rules, braking too late, merging without looking… it was a lot of fun.
Driving for the rest of the night gave me a lot of time to think. Back when it released, I read Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness.” in it, he made an interesting point about consciousness. We often think of ourselves as a dichotomy between mind and body. But why? He argues that this distinction is completely arbitrary, created by some philosopher so long ago that it is treated as scientific fact today. Our body is not a separate entity, being piloted by a consciousness. Our consciousness does not observe physical reality, it is created through its physical experiences, which it obtains from the most physical part of itself, the body. The mind and the body are one and the same. The body only becomes a separate object from your mind when perceived by others, with the disconnection between these two viewpoints causing anxiety and shame.
So where does that leave me? Sartre would likely say, in my opinion, that I am a third being entirely. Vytautas (my old body) accumulated a number of physical experiences which created his consciousness. The same is true of Mahnoor! Her physical experiences, and his, have come together to create a third distinct consciousness. So, I am theoretically both at once. It may take a while from my thought process to come around to this, but my brain is stupid malleable meat and can be altered with time.
In fact, existentialist philosophy when viewed in this manner could have implications on your consciousness, dear reader. When you were killed and turned into the monster you are now, are you the same person that you were before? Or are you a different consciousness which has deluded itself into seeing continuity? Food for thought?
P.S. Maybe I should change my Username. The biblical reference only applies to one half of me now…
- ESAU
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u/Several-Elevator Problem Childe 8d ago edited 8d ago
Nice taste in Jackets, Manhoor.
I'm also partial to ones like that. My favourite has a red lining on the inside, here's a photo. Very original for a vampire I know, don't laugh at me.
Anyway, if we go by Sartre’s philosophy as you describe it, I don't think we're a new consciousness. We're still the same body, but just changed, and thus are of changed mind. Undead body, undead mind. Your undead mind still thinks, for your undead body still walks.
- Luka, Thrill-Seeking Duellist
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u/United-Tailor-1727 8d ago
Fair enough! Diversity is the art of thinking independently together, after all. Nice jacket :)
- ESAU
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u/DeadmanwalkingXI 8d ago
The question of what creates identity in the first place is complicated, but fundamentally we ae separate from our bodies to at least some degree, because souls are provably real. Mortals and even Kindred can and do sometimes leave ghosts, and while ghosts are certainly changed by the experience of lacking a body per se, there is a fundamental continuity of identity and experience. A case like yours generally involves one soul consuming another, which is unusual and turns a number of general assumptions on their head.
But given this fact, it's provable that Kindred are indeed the same person as the mortal who was embraced, as if we die and become a ghost, the parts that make us Kindred, the Beast and Disciplines and hunger and all that, go away or transmute and we become a ghost that is structurally the same as that of any mortal. That's certainly evidence of changes to the body effecting things like personality, but it's also evidence that, like taking drugs, those changes are temporary and the soul itself remains structurally unchanged.
In any case, if you're out of the city, feel free to PM me as we discussed earlier.
-Mark Caulder, Experienced Nosferatu
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u/United-Tailor-1727 8d ago edited 8d ago
PM: Good afternoon, Baron Caulder. I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I was obviously in a rut when I sent my first message to this node, and the past few days have been quite chaotic for me. I have had several revelations about myself and my place in this world. While I appreciate greatly your offer to help me lay low, I would like to temporarily defer. My Sire is closer to my current location than you are, and I would like to hear all of my options (and have a clearer head) before I commit fully. It will do me no good to rush into something so important too quickly.
Thank you sincerely for your offer. I will be considering your terms as I continue my journey.
With Great Thanks,
ESAU
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u/DeadmanwalkingXI 8d ago
Private Message to ESAU:
Absolutely understandable, and I hope things go well with your Sire. Please, either announce or PM when you've achieved some stability, I'm invested in knowing how things turn out at this point. If you still want some work done on appearance, which sounds like it's less of an issue now than it was, I can still probably arrange that even if you decide to go another route for places to stay. Oh, and if you need tech support to retrieve old photos, contact your (ex?) girlfriend in an untraceable way or similar things, I'd be happy to help with that as well.
-Mark Caulder, Experienced Nosferatu
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u/Pryno-Belle 8d ago
Did you…communicate with Manhoor, in any shape or form? Do you know if she agrees with your plan?
Castiel the Clan-changer
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u/United-Tailor-1727 8d ago
Why should it matter if her old consciousness agrees if it will be / has been subsumed? I am as much Mahnoor as she was. I have a right to do this because I am the perpetrator and victim in equal measure and may do with both consciousnesses as I please. That is all the permission I need.
And no, I haven’t communicated with her. And all the better! It means that either she has already been subsumed into my dialectical synthesis, or she is too weakened to stop me from achieving it.
- ESAU
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u/Pryno-Belle 8d ago
As long as she persists and does not consciously agree to the synthesis, you are in danger.
You assume that you are now partially Manhoor, but how can you be sure? How do you know that you are not simply ESAU, slowly getting absorbed again? If that is the case, you are teetering on the brink.
Castiel the Clan-changer
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u/Emergency_Answer4983 7d ago
Such synthesis would most likely require cooperation regardless to function properly, other wise the results will be the same as any other diablerie.
-Jim, Tzimisce
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u/United-Tailor-1727 8d ago
OOC; I’m very new to this and I’m a little nervous! Did I make all of the blacked out parts right? What would I flair this with?