Dame Amaranth stalked through the crowd of human cattle, her fangs sharp against her tongue as she looked for a victim. She could smell the blood within them, the rich, red warmth just barely contained within these fragile shells of flesh. Did they know, these brief mortals, what walked alongside them? Could they imagine the eternity of darkness, the unholy appetites that their fingers brushed against? No, they could not see her for what she truly was, could not understand the eternal darkness that was her unlife. They could only see...
They saw a tall girl with obviously-dyed black hair and a light tan, wearing dark clothes and walking through a crowd of fanboys who really should be showering more, that was what they saw. They didn't understand that Darla (the name they saw on her name-tag, since SpecCon didn't let you put "nicknames" on there) wasn't like them. She didn't just play stupid games about fighting dragons and getting magical items, she was engaged in telling a real story with real themes. The mundanes just didn't get real role-playing, not even the mundanes who trekked all the way out to Milwaukee for SpecCon.
To be honest, she really didn't even want to be out looking for victims--too many noobs, or people who didn't understand the rules, or who didn't take the game seriously--but Greg had gone to a lot of trouble, printing up all the little buttons that said, 'I'm a Victim!' and distributing them around the con to anyone who wanted to role-play being taken by a vampire. And he was in charge of the Milwaukee Brotherhood of the Night, so that meant that he could offer bonus experience points to players who came back with 'I'm a Victim!' buttons, collected from their prey. And putting dots in Dominate had started to get really expensive. So Darla--Dame Amaranth--needed to feed.
She scanned the crowd, looking for someone with a button, when she saw the girl. About a foot shorter than Darla, with glasses, long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, milk-white skin of the kind Dame Amaranth would kill for (it wasn't Darla's fault that the only job she could find was as a bike messenger), and...ugh. Tie-dye T-shirt. She was probably going to reek of patchouli oil or something. Still, she didn't want Clan Ventrue's most powerful member to get left behind the curve...she moved through the crowd until she was close to the girl, made eye contact with her, and just for a moment, bared her fangs. (Plaster, but very well-made. Not like Gina, who just bought plastic novelty fangs that made her look like a total dork...) Then, slowly, she moved back through the crowd.
The girl followed. Thank gods. She'd had to deal with so many people who didn't understand that she was using Summon on them; they'd either run away, because "that's what you'd do if you saw a vampire", or they'd walk up to her and start talking right there in the crowd--she'd had one guy just walk up to her and ask, "How did you make those fangs?" She'd confiscated his button on the spot and left. Life was too short to role-play with idiots. But this girl was following along as Darla led her out of the crowd, around a corner or two, and into a secluded spot, well away from the press of people. (The advantages of being a Milwaukee native...when SpecCon rolled around, you always knew one or two spots in the convention center that nobody ever went.)
Darla's eyes flicked down to the girl's name tag for a moment--it was in-character for her to pull the girl's name from her mind--and focused her gaze upon the girl's eyes. "Look deep into my eyes, Jane," she said. "You are getting sleepy..."
Jane laughed.
Darla practically snarled in frustration. What did it take to find competent live-action role-playing partners these days? Wasn't this a role-playing convention? Weren't there supposed to be people here who actually understood what the term meant? Jane might not play the same games she did, but even someone who didn't know Dominate from Presence had to know that when a vampire looked into your eyes and gave you commands, they were hypnotizing you!
Jane must have sensed her irritation, because her facial expression immediately sobered up a bit. "I'm really sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to laugh. It's just that out there..." she gave a general wave out in the direction of the convention center, but Darla could tell she meant 'real life'. "I'm a professional hypnotherapist. And...sorry, but nobody who's an actual hypnotist ever says, 'Look into my eyes, you are getting sleepy.'"
"Oh, really?" Darla knew she sounded snappish and rude, but she didn't like having her role-playing skills called into question by some stupid hippy-chick who'd probably never even played in a LARP. "Well, I'm not an 'actual hypnotist'. I'm a vampire, remember? With dark powers that can enslave the mind."
Jane nodded condescendingly. "Of course you are," she said. "But there are little ways you can make your powers more convincing to your victim. Real hypnotists don't tell people, 'Look into my eyes.' I might suggest that you can focus your attention on my eyes, that you'll find that my eyes provide something nice and relaxing for you to look at while we talk, but I'd never tell you to look into my eyes. When you're watching my eyes, like you're doing right now, that's just because you want to. It's not a command, or a power. It's just easy for you to keep watching my eyes, that's all. You don't want to look away. You could, of course, if you wanted to. But you don't."
Darla listened intently, her irritation melting away. After all, how often was it that you got the chance to learn tips on hypnosis from a real hypnotist? Maybe she could learn how to hypnotize people in real life. That'd put Greg in his place!
"And of course, we never tell people, 'You are getting sleepy'," Jane said in a calm, soothing voice. "That's guaranteed to put people on their guard, make them wary and defensive...and the best way to hypnotize someone is to relax them into it. You don't tell them, 'Look into my eyes, you are getting sleepy', you just keep staring into their eyes, like I'm staring into yours right now, and you use words that make them think about relaxation, words that bypass their conscious mind, but words that their subconscious recognizes as cues to go into a deep, heavy, relaxing trance. Words like 'relax'. Words like 'heavy'. Words like 'deep'. Words like 'trance'. Words like 'sleep'."
Darla nodded, trying to absorb every word of Jane's impromptu lesson. This was so fascinating. She couldn't wait to try it out for herself.
"And so, even though every time someone hears, 'Look into my eyes, you are getting sleepy', they know they're being hypnotized, I'd never say, 'Look into my eyes, you are getting sleepy.' I'd say, 'Darla, your eyelids are starting to feel
heavy
.' Because that word, '
heavy
', it makes you feel
sleepy
without actually hearing the word '
sleepy
', and it brings you
down
into a
