Scene Summary: No Choir

No Choir
Chronicle	DC Chronicle
Game Date	?
Real Date	July 2, 2018
Characters	Bjorn Garinson Casper Iversson Hanna Lindholm Ian Kross Rosalina de Leon
Locations	Washington National Cathedral
Previous Scene	Dead Men Talking (Bjorn) Without a Paddle (Casper)br> Memories: Rising Tension (Hanna) What Would You Do (Ian) Catch Me If You Can (Rosalina)
Next Scene	The Ransacking of the Russian Rose (Bjorn) Desperation (Casper)< Tin Soldiers (Ian, Rosalina)
Content Warnings	Ableism, Domestic Abuse, Mental Illness, Violence
Original Scene	No Choir

No Choir is a scene from the DC Chronicle featuring Bjorn Garinson, Casper Iversson, Hanna Lindholm, Ian Kross, and Rosalina de Leon. It depicts Bjorn, Casper, and Ian having a violent politics-and-hallucination-fueled fight atop the Washington National Cathedral.

Scene Summary

Casper stands atop the Washington National Cathedral, staring down at the ground far below. He flashes back to his youth, when he told his mother that he wanted to marry Nora Lindholm and she opposed the marriage before giving in and giving him her antique wedding ring. He hallucinates Pieter Van Reise's ghost haunting him, encouraging him to commit suicide by leaping off the tower, and weeps.

Below, Ian speeds angrily through the city, arriving to park around the side of the cathedral. He searches two towers before finding the one Casper is in, calling out to him as he arrives, but quickly realizes that Casper is mentally compromised, stumbling through his words and swaying near the edge of the building. Ian tries to talk Casper down, but Casper becomes increasingly unhinged as he claims that Pieter's ghost won't let him out of his destiny. Ian tries to reason with him, reminding him of who and where he is, and tries to convince him to step back for Maeve Glaistig's sake, even though he hates invoking her. Casper panics at the mention of Maeve, babbling about some danger that she shouldn't encounter that is following him. His phone chirps and he sees that it is Rosalina, who he says told him not to move, and then begins speaking to Pieter's hallucination, begging him not to punish him for what was done to him and promising that he will keep Maeve safe. Desperate, Ian uses Presence to command Casper's attention, making one last plea for him to step away from the edge. Casper tells him that he is being haunted by a dybbuk.

A furiously angry Bjorn arrives at the cathedral, sweeping past Ian with Celerity to begin beating Casper with Potence, taking out his temper on him for having caused him to have to play politics all night. He badly injures Casper, who briefly mistakes him for his sire, Ivar Ragnarsson, and begins fighting back, screaming that he will not be forced to return. Confused at his failure to recognize Bjorn but worried that Casper will be killed, Ian pulls him away from Bjorn, trying to remind them both that they are in danger of breaching the Masquerade. Bjorn hits both Ian and Casper, raging that he was forced to deal with Chas Voyager on Casper's behalf, but is intrigued when Ian doesn't fall under the force of his blow. Ian demands to know who Bjorn is, but Bjorn throws Casper into a pillar, causing him to lose consciousness, and then punches Ian again instead of answering. Angry and frustrated, Ian hits him back, and the two begin trading blows.

Bjorn begins to use escalating levels of Celerity and Potence to injure Ian, who weathers many of the blows with Fortitude but eventually begins to take serious damage. Bjorn uses a combination discipline to rain devastating strikes down on Ian, dislocating several joints and breaking most of his ribs, while Ian manages to knock Bjorn down and roll down the cathedral stairs with him, their struggles causing significant structural damage to the building. When they hit the bottom, Ian puts out one of Bjorn's eyes with his thumb, enraging Bjorn so that he smashes him against the walls and floor several times until he is rendered almost incapable of moving.

Bjorn abandons Ian's body and sits down on the stairs to heal, laughing and amused to have met someone who could take so much punishment from him, although he warns Ian that he will kill him if he gets up again. Ian stays down, attempting to heal his wounds, until Bjorn leaves, telling him in passing to send any complaints from his clan through Edward Walker. Ian tries to heal himself enough to get up and begins crawling toward the stairs, still intent on rescuing Casper.

Rosalina has been speeding through the city and now arrives at the cathedral, where she uses Obfuscate to hide herself as she sneaks into the building to look for Casper. She discovers the destroyed tower where the fight took place and rushes to Ian, shocked and horrified at the extent of his wounds, and demands to know where Casper is. Ian is surprised to see her but too exhausted to do anything but point up the stairs toward where he left Casper. Rosalina runs upstairs and finds Casper unconscious, and drops to her knees to hold him in her lap and try to convince him to wake up. Casper regains consciousness but cannot move or speak.

Ian manages to reach the top of the tower and to heal his throat enough to tell Rosalina that they need to leave; she asks him to carry Casper since she cannot, which Ian does very slowly, barely able to lift him due to his own injuries. Rosalina tells Casper that they will take him to safety and then uses Obfuscate at Ian's request to hide all three of them so that they can make their escape.

Script Summary

The script summary for this scene pares it down to only dialogue and action directions, allowing for a quicker and easier read through what was actually said and done by the characters. Click on the "Expand" tag to the right to view the entire script summary for this scene.

No Choir Script Summary

Ginevra arrives at The Pit. She enters and goes to the bar, where she leans over it to open a refrigerator and take out a can of ginger ale. Pieter is in the kitchen operating the fryer.

GINEVRA: Whoever's back there, could you send up something crispy and fried?

Translations

Trivia

• The cathedral bell tower where this scene takes place is also the one that Chas Voyager and Maeve Glaistig visited during the events of A Wing and a Prayer.
  
  
• Casper's hallucinations are due to Cassandra having used the Dementation discipline on him during the events of Without a Paddle, which takes place immediately before this scene.
  
  
• The unnamed woman Casper tells his mother he wants to marry is Nora Lindholm.
  
  
• Hanna refers to Nora as a "shiksa," a Yiddish word meaning a woman or girl who is not Jewish.
  
  
• Hanna's objections to Casper's choice of bride are due to her fearing him being identified as Jewish; he was a child during World War II and he and his mother escaped detection by moving to Sweden and pretending to be native Swedish.
  
  
• The unnamed ghost Casper keeps hallucinating is Pieter van Reise, who he recently discovered may have been killed and whose face an imposter may be using.
  
  
• Ian is driving from the events of What Would You Do, during which he promised to bring Casper home safely in order to prevent Maeve, whom Casper had called for help, from going herself.
  
  
• Casper's statement that he is not "the baker" refers to the scene St. Lucy's Day, during which Pieter told him a story about several young couples on a church tower that included a widowed baker leaping off it to his death. (Perhaps intentionally, since Casper was a baker when he was alive.) The coin falling to the ground that he hallucinates later is from the same scene.
  
  
• Casper's fear that Maeve will "forget" refers to his suspicions that Octavius Sage is alive and controlling her mind and memories.
  
  
• The Isaac Casper remembers as being dead is Isaac Moskowitz, a childhood friend who was killed in the Holocaust.
  
  
• Casper's mention of Pieter "reading as empty" refers to his failure to supernaturally assess his powers in Tessellation.
  
  
• Casper calls Pieter a dybbuk, a dead person's spirit from Jewish folklore that has possessed and is haunting a living person, usually because one or both of them has committed especially heinous sins.
  
  
• Bjorn thinks of the Catholic saints in the church as "Ventrue-carried", a reference to the fact that he is old enough to remember Christianity being spread in Scandinavia due to the incursions of Ventrue warlords from the south.
  
  
• Casper's refusal to "go back" may refer to either his sire having sent him to fight in a war against the Sabbat, or his sire having sent him to become the paramour of his Toreador contact Anne d'Arpajon, both of which traumatized him.
  
  
• The combination discipline Bjorn uses to injure Ian is Burning Wrath.
  
  
• Ian's especially strong reaction to his damaged leg is due to him having sustained a war wound in that leg while alive that caused him significant hardship.
  
  
• Both Bjorn and Casper lose an eye during this scene; they are both followers of the ancient Norse religion, which features Odin, god of war, who is famously one-eyed.