Hello Grandmother,

I knew that Richard III wasn’t in the trial to defend Kelly Burke; he was merely there to use the trial as an excuse to mock the Ministries. Nothing has more explicitly displayed this than his closing argument. In the wake of the Infiltration’s attack, he used his speaking time to place blame for the attack solely at the Ministries feet. In fact, he elaborated, claiming that an Infiltration would be impossible without the Ministries bureaucratic hiring practices that base involvement on merit and not on heredity. According to Richard, had the old Houses remained intact, the families would know when some mechanical creature tried to infiltrate their ranks. Of course, the vampire houses likely wouldn’t have been able to overthrow the Illuminati and take over the world in the first place, but I digress. The point in all this is, the vampire ministries have a lot more to worry about than just the infiltration. They’re going to have to prove themselves to their own ranks as well.

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Hello Grandmother,

Mystically speaking, Dallas has become a dry town overnight. No one wants to be associated with the Infiltration attacks on vampires. The reports I’m getting from the ground are evaporating as well, but as I understand it, the prosecution is gave it’s closing argument today. Essentially, they condemned Burke not for the crimes accused, but for defying ministry authority. Clearly, all pretense of the trial has been abandoned I suspect that Burke will be executed shortly.

In Los Angeles, Fang’s wolfpack has taken special pleasure in tormenting robots that they can find to pick on. I suspect a lot of robots living amongst humans as cars or other electronic equipment to be decimated in the LA region in the coming weeks.

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Hello Grandmother,

They call it the Infiltration. The robots that’ve begun posing as vampires. No one knows how many are out there, and no one knows how deeply they’ve implanted themselves inside the Seven Deadly Ministries. Every Ministry leader has been in secret meetings all weekend. Alliances are being questioned. Loyalties are going to have to be re-earned. Because the Infiltration has succeeded in scarring the most frightening monsters in the world.

Reports I’m getting from Dallas say that everything is being clamped down upon. The circus around the Kelly Burke trial that the vampire Ministries seemed so keen to exploit has been turned against them. I’m hearing that vampires in town are being attacked just for talking to robots. The supernatural forces who’ve descended on the city are being exported as quickly as they can be. I suspect that the vampires are looking for a quick end to the trial in the next couple of days. But the ramifications from this will last a long time.

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Hello Grandmother,

I was caught by surprise when someone came in to defend Kelly Burke. I was more surprised when I heard that person claimed to be the former kind of England, Richard III. However, I’m starting to get a bigger picture of the situation, and it’s starting to make some kind of sense. When the ministries took over, they didn’t take the established vampire houses with them, they formed the Ministries based on an new vampire pecking order. Which left a lot of once powerful vampires out in the cold. One such house became the cult of Lucifer. Richard III is apparently the head of an old English vampire community. As the Ministries controls get ever stronger, these vampire groups are starting to form alliances. While I doubt they would go as far as siding with robots, I don’t see them being beneficial to the Ministries as the situation worsens, and with the existence of this humanoid infiltration, it only will.

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Hello Grandmother,

I don’t want to face the reproductions of the existence of the robot infiltration. I’m going to let time deal with that. Instead I want to take a step back and look at the trial again, give you a little background I’ve been able to uncover on Faustina Magnus.

Faustina Magnus was turned roughly two hundred years ago, making her relatively young in the ranks of the vampire elite. She’s made a name for herself (well, literally by creating a new name, but also figuratively) by mastering the science of magic, to turn what is generally an art form into a discipline that can be quantified. Rising to the ranks of Chief Soultaker (a position that leads her to corrupt human souls), she’s one of the Ministries rising stars, if there is such a thing. She’s one of the few that the higher ups trust that may take their place should they pass. She’s also one of the few that may be prepared to confront the robot challengers on the horizon. Which makes her dangerous, but also a target for anyone looking to upset the balance. She’s a chess piece keeping a lot of players in check, and if she falls, a lot of chaos could ensue.

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Hello Grandmother,

I didn’t believe in them. I didn’t think that they could exist. But now we all have to get accustomed to the reality. There are robots that look like people. They have infiltrated the vampire community. And they are out for vengeance.

Yesterday, a regular walked into a vampire bookies in Dallas, someone the employees this week had seen a few times already. Except this time he didn’t make any bets. Instead, in full view of cameras, he transformed into a more robotic form, yelled “The Infiltration is among you!” and then exploded. Little evidence of his remains was left for vampire examiners to pick up. But the word has gone out. The robot threat is much larger than anyone feared. I don’t know how long it takes, but it seams like a battle now may be inevitable.

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Hello Grandmother,

Magic is duplicitous. It’s dangerous. And it’s very often deadly. You’re a vampire who names themselves after history and fictions most famous magicians, you’d better be able to play with fire.

Faustina Magnus is leading the prosecution in the trial for Kelly Burke’s continued existence, and while she hasn’t even begun to make her case, from leaked highlights of her opening statement, it seems like she’s preparing to make the case that Burke is as skillful a mystic genius as herself.

The likely points Faustina will be making are these:

- That, through cult contacts and Lucifer’s library, Burke had access to ancient magical texts that could cast the kinds of spells needed to kill Jakob Lawrence from afar.

- That motivation is unnecessary because the group’s intentions are chaotic and designed solely to hamper the ministries smooth operations.

- That any conflicting evidence was created by the vast and undefined cult to concoct an alternate suspect.

With this strategy, the Ministries are hoping to peg an unsolved crime on a nemesis that they’re tired of dealing with. And we’re all in the more danger because the real killer is still out there.

-1159

Hello Grandmother,

There isn’t exactly a media in the world of shadows, except I guess myself, but that doesn’t stop a high profile (for the secret-based community, that is) trial from generating its own circus. There’s prophets, who use it as an excuse to preach to any who will listen, there are bookies looking to make a quick buck (there are quite a few vampires and robots in the compulsive gambling community), and there are lots and lots of gawkers. The urge to watch a disaster doesn’t dissipate when your undead, and robots are looking to learn just how fair a vampire trial really is these days. It seems like everyone has a reason to be there (myself excluded for death-threat purposes).

So the question becomes, does this many onlookers start to make its own catastrophe? While the Ministry has started to force cult of Lucifer members indoors, there are still the emptying blood banks that their attacks caused. And having this many strange things in one town rarely ever leads to good results. I’ve already heard a few tales of vampire’s messing with robot generators, for no other reason than they’re in a pissy mood (are vampires ever not in a pissy mood? I mean really). The trial is already making waves in Los Angeles. Is Dallas going to become a new conflict hotspot? How long can this trial last before things get even worse?

-1159

Hello Grandmother,

I really don’t believe that the person representing Kelly Burke in her trial is who he says he is, but at this point, I’m having trouble disputing it. You see, he claims to be Richard the III, former king of England. Richard is one of England’s most reviled rulers, scorned through the ages by Shakespeare and other great writers as child killer and pretender to the English crown who was quickly dethroned. But the real Richard was a human being, caught in a web of dangerous times, and not necessarily the monster he’s been portrayed as. Not to mention the fact that his death in battle is well documented. I find it hard to believe that the vampire attorney is in fact an undead English Monarch.

Whoever he is, he’s voluntarily chosen to take on an unenviable task. To defend a killer to a court that’s already decided her guilt. And in vampire court, you must prove innocence before you know all the evidence against you. So Richard will be up first, defending against a litany of bizarre and macabre charges that have complex and unclear explanations. According to reports that have come out of the trial, his opening argument focused less on forming an alibi than on painting the Ministries in a bad light, detailing how they have persecuted a religious minority. Not necessarily the most winning strategy in Ministry dominated proceedings. But winning may not be his aim. He may simply have flown all this way to prove a point, to set up his own insurgency towards the Ministries. Because calling yourself Richard III is not something you do out of humility, and it’s not something that you do unless you’re looking to make a point.

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Hello Grandmother,

The Seven Deadly Ministries are working as hard as they can to make the trial of Kelly Burke an unpleasant experience for the member of her cult. To start with, the trial will be judged by Miguel Aldecente, a former soldier in Santa Anna’s army who has no love for the cult. According to legend, in the one hundred and fifty plus years he’s been a vampire, Aldecente has never let his soldier’s demeanor drop, and in the generation that he’s been a member of the Ministry of Pride, he’s been judicious in enforcing the bureaucracy’s etiquette and norms. Not someone who’s going to take it lightly on outsiders.

And that’s where the cult of Lucifer’s been living for a while now, outside the norm. While the Ministry has taken over their mansions and buildings that once belonged to Lucifer’s followers, the outcast vamps have found a position of power in the seedier part of Dallas and the surrounding areas. The trial has precipitated cult members being roughed up by ministry agents, getting even more aggressive as supernatural visitors flock to Dallas to bear witness to the hearing. The cult’s leadership has responded by hiring Boone, a famous vampire bounty hunter, to protect their headquarters should any ministry members come to make a ruckus.

All in all, it seems like it’s not a good time to be messing with the vampire Ministries. Its ground I tread carefully. It’s hard not to wind up on the chopping block.

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