Confronting Bianca--Borca
General Summary
You met with Silvia de Carlo to let her know the basics of what you had learned and your plans, minus the part where the mind-control effects were reproducible without magic. Silvia was extremely interested in whether Bianca had confessed to Alessandro's murder, and seemed skeptical of the idea that you could ever get her to confess (sidebar--this was because she knew damn well that Bianca would never confess to the murder itself because Bianca hadn't done it). You both noticed that she seemed very eager to get a confession about the murder and worried over what this meant for a bit before deciding that it wouldn't impact your plans. Rose asked if you should approach Vigo Drakov or some other vampyres to try and get more leverage, and I am unbelievably impressed by the restraint Vanya showed in his "not only no, but hell no" response.
You went back to Vincente and told him everything, to his horror. You asked him to write the letter to Ivana Boritsi, figuring that he would know the most damning way to phrase it. Vincente got a 31 on his Diplomacy roll, so he sure did know the most damning way to phrase it. You also wrote a letter to The Cupbearers asking them to take in Maria Scarlatti and saying that their debt to you would be paid in full if they did. You then went to meet with Bianca at the Golden Swan, bringing one copy of the letter to Ivana.
Bianca took you to a private room in the Golden Swan and said that she wished you hadn't killed the vampyres but understood why you did, clearly building up to some big recruitment pitch. Rose was having none of it and asked why she'd drugged Julien. Bianca said she'd told Rinaldo to drug everyone in the house but didn't realize there was a child in there; she did seem genuinely surprised that she'd been responsible for giving a child psychoactive drugs, but she also didn't seem like she was going to lose any sleep over it. She also confirmed that she'd killed Rinaldo afterwards, but that as the servant of a commoner, he should be grateful that he got to die in pursuit of a higher cause.
Bianca started to ask whether Vanya was going to tell Drakov about the vampyres (that was the one thing that would have gotten you killed), but Rose wasn't in the mood to play nice. Vanya showed Bianca the letter, and she freaked the hell out, taking her gloves off her poison hands and raving about how you'd just killed her sister. Vanya offered to send Maria to Richemulot if Bianca made a full confession. Bianca, knowing she was trapped, agreed and said that that she couldn't understand why you were fighting her on this when her only goal was vampyre genocide, which you should all have been able to agree on. Vanya agreed that vampyre genocide was a noble and beautiful thing, but not the way she was doing it. He asked if she'd killed Alessandro, and Bianca said no; he'd died right when he was about to give her a massive amount of intelligence, so whoever had killed him had done his family a favor. She also admitted that she'd been the one to send Maria to Darkon in the first place because Ivana would have either had her killed or (more likely) set Bianca and Maria against each other so that Bianca did it herself, because love was a weakness she couldn't abide in her courtiers. Bianca tried to poison Rose on the way out, but touched her armor rather than bare skin, and Vanya showed admirable restraint again by just snarling at her.
You went back to Vincente's and explained the situation, including that Silvia had been the one to kill Alessandro; Vincente understood that she'd done it to stop him from spilling Ivan Dilisnya's secrets because that would have gotten the entire family killed, but he wished she'd consulted him. He told you that he'd taught Julien everything he could about using fire to guide the Sight and that he was stunned by how much Julien could see, then mentioned that he'd seen scratches on Julien's arms. You thanked him for being a good human being, he thanked you for helping him find justice for Alessandro, and you went to investigate the situation with the scratches.
You found Julien burying something in the garden. When you saw him, he was extremely guilty and clearly trying to hide what he'd been doing, and he couldn't even bring himself to look at Rose. You dug up what he'd been burying and found the corpses of birds, each tortured to death in a different way. Vanya asked how long this had been going on, and Julien said he'd started doing it after having the vision of Vigo Drakov torturing a prisoner, and that the scratches were because he could summon the birds and force them to hold still but sometimes they broke his control enough to fight back. He said that he'd started doing it because Drakov wouldn't have been afraid of The Blade Brothers, and they wouldn't have been able to hurt him. Vanya said "he would have hurt me," and Julien burst into tears and kept saying "I wouldn't hurt you" but he was looking at Rose more often than Vanya when he said it.
We can't end on too triumphant a note, can we?
Related Reports
Previous session: Escaping Bianca's estate--Borca
Next session: Leaving Borca--Borca
Report Date
01 Jan 2022
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