Grackle’s Laws.
Grackle raised me in the Undercity for ten years. During that time, I lived by Grackle’s laws — he doesn’t call them that, I do. In my head. Some of them I got by doing something stupid, others I was given for free.
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I’d woken up in the Undercity, trying to work out if I was dead — and if I wasn’t why not. I eventually worked that out, I was dead. Just not the way most people think of it. I still am.
That was when I got the first of the laws.
Don’t argue with me.
That’s the polite, much shortened version. Delivering it involved a lot of cursing, examples, picking me up and swinging me like a rag doll. Generally making the point that it wasn’t, and isn’t, optional. He likes me to understand things clearly. Mostly.
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Then, I got the second one -- soon afterwards to be fair.
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Do not use the word vampire. Ever.
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Again, this is the polite, shortened version. I stripped out the threats. Very graphic threats.
Did I mention I was only fourteen at the time? No? I was.
Fourteen years old.
Recently embraced.
Kindred.
Nosferatu if that helps.
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Survival is all that matters.
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At the time, that made perfect sense to me. I’d been living on the streets for about a year, and my home life prior to that — I don’t want to think about it. Not now.
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Don’t complain.
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That one felt like being at home again. Or on the street. Not much different, but the streets were kinder to me.
So, fourteen-year-old me, having just been changed, was given four rules to live by.
He called them rules.
I call them Grackle’s Laws.
Just not out loud.
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The next two, I earned. I earned them by doing something I shouldn’t have. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly told not to do it.
Grackle had ordered me to feed from rats. Only. In my early days he rarely tired of making me feel stupid for how clumsily I fed. Which did motivate me to eat more cleanly. Humiliation as a learning tool was his forte.
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Some things never change.
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He’d given me permission to hunt — for rats — in a section of the Undercity that he felt was safe for me. He didn’t say I was only to hunt rats; he had said that I was only to feed from rats.
That distinction is important.
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Anyway, I was hunting through this part of the Undercity and I heard something different. A voice. I had heard voices before; I used to be as human as you were. But this wasn’t one that I’d heard here.
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I got curious.
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So, I stalked the voice, until I saw the owner of the voice.
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To make it clearer how messed up this was, I need to explain a few things. Living on the street I’d learned just how long I could go without food. So, I thought it would be a good idea to see how long I could go without feeding. The first day was hard, the second even harder. The third was nearly impossible, but I managed it and felt so proud.
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I heard the voice on the fourth day.
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As soon as I saw him, I smelled him as well. Do you remember the smell of your first Kine? I do. He smelled good…amazing in fact. Appetising.
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Which was why I had my fangs in him before I noticed he wasn’t alone.
Oops.
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Which was when Hirple showed up and killed his companion. Which was when a pissed off Grackle showed up.
He ripped me off my prey.
Threw me against a wall.
Snapped my prey’s neck.
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That was the first time my beast came out to play. After reading the riot act to me and Hirple, Grackle almost force fed me until I couldn’t take any more. Then he got creative.
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Then he gave me two more rules. The last two.
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Always feed the hunger promptly -- and feed it well.
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At the time I received these words of wisdom, I was being treated like a child, an idiot, and a ragdoll. I was smart enough not to point this out at the time, as I was a child (as well as a Childe) and I had no choice as to whether I was a ragdoll or not. But I wasn’t an idiot. Not then, and I’m certainly not now.
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Which brings us nicely to the last of Grackle’s Laws.
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Kindred feed on the best of prey. Humans. Call them Kine.
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I won’t pretend it didn’t cross my mind to point out that I had just done that and that this was no way to encourage it. But I was smart enough not to say it. Out loud.
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These six laws shaped the first ten years of my life as Kindred, I learned them before I’d fully learned the Traditions. They still shape my thinking more. Which is odd, as none of them carry the death penalty explicitly.
Short, brutal rules. Grackle doesn’t like waste.
It’s a Nosferatu thing.
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