House Burattinaio: The Toybox

Club Nightshade was a hearbeat on loudspeakers that provided the denizens of the night total freedom and jubilation that they craved, total permission to feel absolute elation while they let themselves go and partied like mad. It fulfilled that intoxicating primal need for others, to move and experience the joys of eternity as one as they danced and ground on each other. That's what the nightclub was all about. They were all together here. One thriving, dancing, winding body of vampires here. There were no covens here. No separation. Just a whole dancing mass of vampires living it up.

Flashing lights lit up the nightclub as their feet stomped the ground to the beat of the music thundering overhead. Anybody who wasn't dancing was currently enjoying blood drinks served up to them and communicating with each other. Generally through telepathy as it was way too loud in here to communicate through speech. But that was alright. Most of them preferred it that way.

Renwick Flame sat down across from Clara Ramone at a table and slid a bottle of chilled blood over to her. She smiled and raised it to him and they began drinking.

(So tell me again...do you guys seriously call yourselves The Tomb Posse?) Clara asked.

Renwick set his drink down and laughed. (Yeah, yeah that's us. That's our little coven. I mean it's barely a coven really. It's just a group of vamps hanging out together. In our defense though all the cool names are taken.)

(Ha! Oh yeah that's so true. I guess Tombe Posse is one of the few you can still get away with using.) She teased.

(You're right about that.) He admitted and sipped his blood. (We might be on our way to moving up the ranks though.)

(Really? What did you do?)

(We retrieved a creepy demon doll for Priscilla Burattinaio.)

"NO WAY!" She stood up. "Y-you know an Elder?!"

(Kind of. We've only had a couple of meetings with her but she's really nice. If you're going to get in good with anyone, she's a safe bet. Just be polite. To her and her dolls. Especially the dolls. Don't disrespect those. Ever.)

(Wow. Okay. Noted.)

(Yeah, she's sensitive about her dolls. They're like a family to her.) He returned to his drink. (A little eccentric but she's nice. So what do you think? You in? Could be a once in an afterlife experience.)

She laughed. (Yeah, sure, I'm in. Who would pass up a chance to meet an Elder?)

They clinked their drinks and returned to them.


The party continued on into the night until the club owner walked out to the stage and grabbed a mic and the music died down. "Alright, alright, alright, ALRIIIIIIGHT! HOW'S EVERYBODY DOING TONIGHT?!"

The vampires roared and cheered.

"Now that's what I like to hear! I hope you're thisrty too! I hope you're all really fucking thirsty! Because here's where we make it rain!"

Everyone erupted into cheers. "RAIN! RAIN! RAIN! RAIN! RAIN!" The crowd chanted as the vampire nightclub owner signaled and a countdown appeared on the holo-screen.

"10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1! RAAAAAIIIIIIIIINNNNN!"

"Alright! Here comes the best part!"

"Time to drink."

The fire suppression system turned on but instead of spraying blood all over the nightclub floor it instead released a rain of crystal clear water down all over the nightclub. There was a moment of brief confusion before everyone started to scream in pain and agony as their skin began to boil and sizzle and melt off of them like they were being sprayed by acid!

"WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT IS THIS? WHAT IS IIIIIT? OH IT HUUUURTS!" Clara shrieked. Renwick grabbed and ran over to the table through the acidic rain pouring over them.

"H-holy...water...holy...holy.." He garbled out and dived under the table. He held Clara close to him as the water rained down over the table and covered the floor. Vampires all over the club were screaming in pain and desperately trying to find cover while others were collapsing on the floor. "Holy water." He growled. "Fucking Holy Water! GAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!"

"What do we do? What the fuck do we do?" She sobbed in anguish.

"I don't know...just...just wait for it to stop..." He told her while holding her underneath himself while the holy water sprayed all over the floor. They were stuck for the moment so this was all they could do.

That was when the door was blasted open and a team of twenty-one heavily armed and armored men and women stormed into the club and held up small glowing spherical devices. They pressed buttons on the spheres and tossed them into the club. Renwick closed his eyes and turned away as UV Lights and Plasma Fire filled the club floor.


Shortly afterward the crew exited the club as it burned behind them. The ringleader of the team took off his facemask and watched the club burn down and laughed. "How'd you like that you fucking leeches? I don't care how popular you cunts are. We're going to burn you all to the ground."

The Hunts Continued.

A group of young Lycans ran through the woods of Towering Pine Timberland. The old growth forest was a tunnel into another time, a place where it could be any century and no-one would ever know you'd ever left, not even you. The treetops flourish red, golds and greens as if they had been flourished from the pocket of a great magician.


"Ahhh yeah man! Feel the wind baby!" Grogan laughed as he raced through the forest jumping over logs, flipping over boulders, raced over rock formations, swung on branches and hit the ground and ran on all fours with his friends in hot pursuit.

"Good to see you back, Groga! How's Shepard been?" Arion asked his friend.

"Best vacation spot in the world, you guys! I've never felt so recharged!"

"Any hot bitches* there?" Colton asked him.

"Very fine ladies yes. Call them bitches and you'll get smacked clear out of the town." Grogan replied.

"Hell, we'll do it for them." Bathilda told him.

"DIBS!" Trisha called out.

Colton laughed while running up a rock formation with his pack. "Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. Old fashioned habits die hard you know."

*Literally a female dog!

"Well you better kill them if you want to visit that town and leave with your teeth intact." Grogan jumped up into a tree and sniffed the air. "Oh man I know that scent. This way!" He dropped down and ran off with his pack in pursuit. They ran through the trees in a zig-zag pattern until they finally stopped and found a giant Kodiak Bear wandering the forest doing its thing. He nodded and clenched and unclenched his fist. Claws grew out of his fingers, his teeth became razors and hair covered his body. It was the same for his friends.

"Nothing personal big guy, we just need to eat. Just like you." They closed their eyes, said a silent prayer for the bear's life, and then they all rushed it at once and drove their fists into it. The Lycans combined hits killed it on impact and the bear collapsed. Grogan knelt down and lifted it up over his shoulder. "Alright! We've got dinner! Lets find a deer or two and we'll be eating like kings!"

"YOU GOT IT!" They cheered.

It didn't take much searching to find some random deer. Once again they closed their eyes and said silent prayers for the souls of their prey and then quickly struck them down harmlessly and painlessly. They picked them up and left. They crossed the forest and returned to their cabin where they spent time preparing their dinner and cooking it together.

After finally finishing dinner they sat down and enjoyed it together as well.



Night Fell and they were in the middle of talking when they heard noise outside.

"What's that? More animals?" Trisha asked.

"No it sounds like...people. Smells like them too. A lot of them."

"Hunters?" Bathilda asked concerned.

"I don't know. There haven't been hunters for years."

"You want me to check it out?"

"I'll go out first. You guys be ready to back me up if this gets dicey." Grogan's hand turned into claws again and he approached the door and began cautiously opening it. Unfortunately doing so caused a tripwire bomb to go off resulting a cloud of silver nitrate into the air. The Silver Nitrate Bomb is the evolved rendition of the main defense against Lycans, silver. It contains silver nitrate gas, which is deadly to those infected with Lycanthropy. When it explodes, beyond the potent area of explosion which is already enough to kill and incapacitate most, the blast also disperses the nitrate gas into the air. All Lycans that are within close proximity of this gas are burnt in a similar manner as a Vampire would be under direct sunlight. The result of this was that not only was Grogan thrown back by the explosion but his body was consumed by the cloud of silver nitrate which was now filling the cabin and scattering through the air. Caught off guard by the sudden trap the Lycan Pack were consumed by the cloud and collapsed to the ground shrieking and coughing and hacking and burning form the silver surrounding their bodies.

The crew walked into the room and unloaded on them with silver nitrate bullets which injected a liquid solution into the lycans bodies on impact. Between the cloud and liquid silver they were killed before they even had a chance to mount a defense or understand what was happening.

This accomplished they searched the cabin for any further information they could find on anybody even tangentially related to the pack, trashing it the whole time.

Once they found what they were looking for, they turned on all of the gas and stepped out before throwing a grenade into the cabin and booking it. The resulting explosion destroyed the cabin and the bodies of the pack.

"Okay then you motherfuckers. You want to play? Lets play." With a few button presses she locked down the house and shut down shutters around the doors and windows. For extra precaution she sealed off the bunker with blast and shutter doors including the room she was in. A wall opened up and revealed a wide selection of guns and body armor. Beau Chambers quickly put on the tactical body armor chest protector vest, elbow, shoulder, crotch and belt set and then she readied an arsenal of guns and grenades for who or whatever had made it in here. Next she activated security and slots and holes opened up in the ceilings and walls of her house to reveal mounted guns and armed drones that began patrolling the house. If these assholes thought that Beau Chambers would go down without a fight they were sorely mistaken. If they were her head they would have to fucking earn it.

She resumed checking the cameras for any sign of the intruders. The kitchen was empty. The dining room was empty except for the paper. The den was empty. The bathrooms were empty. The living room was empty. The bedrooms were empty. The bathrooms were empty. Then she saw it on the stairs looking up at the camera. It looked somewhat like a duck with the flippers and the beak but it was covered in sewn together burlap from head to toe and standing up on its feet like a tall skinny human. It was skinny too. Way too skinny to be normal. She couldn't even see its eyes, if it even had them, there were only buttons there. Just four holed black buttons sewn where its eyes were supposed to be. On top of all of this the thing on the stairs just looked so wrong! It looked like something you'd see from an older movie where they'd put a cartoon into a scene with living actors so they could pretend to interact in the scene together. Except badly done. Like that old movie, Pete's Dragon, where the cartoon stuck out in a way that made you feel weird. Whatever this thing was it clearly didn't belong in the same world as her. Best to take care of it now. The drones noticed it and surrounded the Burlap Duck on all sides and opened fire on it from all directions with armor piercing bullets. The Burlap Duck suddenly leaped into action. It began waving its arms erratically while lifting its feet up and down and flailing its arms. It appeared to try to say something but it only came out in muffled "MMFFHOOWHMMMHF!" Noises before it began rapidly pinballing itself around the room crashing into her drones and breaking them apart. It smashed through one drone, kept right on going, crashed into the wall, smooshed itself on impact and then it flew towards them again and smashed through another one, crashed to the floor, smooshed itself and then ricocheted off the floor towards another drone and smashed through that one! It ricocheted itself around the foyer smashing into and breaking through her fleet of drones while Beau could only stare at in disbelief.

"What the fuck is this thing?"