The Ravenblack Grimoire

I will not let my Childer use my name as a weapon against one another, I will not tolerate any lie spoken by my own in my name, especially when it is threatening the very foundations of my legacy. Therefore I will have no mercy and will not hesitate to spill my own blood to clean the place.

"Your link with Vella has been severed."

~Lucius
First Official Slayer
First Official Duelist
Former Capadocian leader
Founder of the Ferrymen
Founder of the Temple of Lies
Co-Founder of the Amici Noctis
Co-Founder of the Shadow Court
Enforcer of Enlightenment
Husband of Damari
Childer in crime of Hesu

Ladies and gentlemen, in order to pay a tribute to the genius devil who has decided to take a vow of silence for some new mischievous sound-proof adventures of unspeakable evil deeds, and to mark the closing of his infamous column, Lucius' Corner, we're asking the readers, exceptionally, to observe a minute of silence here:

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Dear Lucius,

--Richthofen

Dear Richthofen,

One bloodthirsty creature might wonder, indeed. The enemy: for what?
Since we live for war and blood, the enemy is quite crucial. It is even the most irreplaceable element in war.
In case of Holy Water shortage stock, vampires can advantageously kill each other with Garlic Spray, Scrolls of Turning, machetes or nuclear bombs. Because weapons, thank Satan,…

The Priests of Lies: they are crazy, possessed by the devil, they eat children and they totally lack objectivity.

~Lucius
High Priest of Lies and Little Truths

I’m so egocentric that I wouldn’t allow anyone to stand in my aura.

~Lucius
The Chaosophist

Hair can be a problem for the stylish vampire. It’s not always easy to be stuck forever with the same haircut you had the day you “died”. To wake up every night with the same unchanged hair and nails is part of the doom – or the blessing – of being frozen in time. A blessing that spares you from the incompetence of this talkative hair parasite whose fingernails shine with a manicured vulgarity, and fiddles with your head with his ringed paws, while talking nonsense behind your back, the hairdresser.
Nonetheless, a new haircut, even for a night, can make up for a refreshing luxury and break the monotony of an endless life.

Papers are popping out in this city, like wild weeds in July. Churn out your propaganda, tabloids are a necessary evil, the weekly papers, weak-lick toilet papers, with a title on eight columns, in bold and greasy characters, something mouldy and sticky, and hook the beast to the lowest bottom of your cortex or your shorts.

For example, you can always write on ten columns:

CAPADOCIOUS REMARRIED TO ARCHANGEL?

All of the good taste and the elegance are in this question mark that you can also alter with another form of banal journalism swindle, the negative innuendo.

Example:

THERE IS NOTHING BETWEEN CAPADOCIOUS AND ARCHANGEL.

The woman that I love isn’t the one I thought. Or she isn’t anymore. Something has changed in her behaviour. For example, she enjoys doing crosswords. I don’t. I find it extremely vulgar when words cross this way. Well, she likes it. It seems to me that she’s showing a certain lack of elegance of heart in being happy without me.

Unfortunately, I had confirmation of her selfishness, not later than yesterday. We went to bed late. She is fast asleep. Around four in the afternoon, I feel gripped by a dull anguish. Sweat at the temples. Dry throat. I open the bedroom door and find myself in a sea of sand, in a burning country. Near a dead cactus, I see a man wearing a crown, in a military parade suit, sinking into the quicksands. And from this man, only the crowned head and the striped arms are still emerging from this dry mouth.

I’m so egocentric that when I leave a room, I think the place fades to black, like the fridge light.

~Lucius
The Chaosophist

Dear Lucius,

It is a rare thing that I decide to address you. This however is one of those times.

I am speaking of the clans that have after years, "disappeared" from the city. First Archangel said he dissolved the clan Archangel. To put it bluntly I don't believe a word of it. I know Archangel well enough to know that he would spend months having the city believe that only to come out from hiding and try to kick ass when he does.
The only thing is that Archangel has lost what ever he had to gather vampires to him and have them blindly follow.

God, Host or not, is a dish served cold.

~Lucius
The Chaosophist

I’m so egocentric that when people don’t talk about me, I believe I’m not here.

~Lucius
The Chaosophist

From immemorial times that I have quartered my cerebral sphincters to painfully give birth to some laborious and hateful texts about people I don’t even really hate, it was meant to happen. I had strictly nothing to say.

I was stricken with a sudden case of hypotension and inquisitive lack of appetite, dried up, hollow, empty, bloodless, blacked out, lobotomized, suberous, unthinking, unplugged, sub-half-witted, cataleptic, hypo-wrathful and unhateful, inexistent, petrified, depressive, barbitural, anorexic, neurasthenic, sub-lethargic, half-mooned, and para-vegetable. Don’t look for the useless mentions to stripe, there is none.

Dear Lucius,

Signed: Amaranthe

Dear Amaranthe,

Nothing special, really.

I’m making everyone hop about like rabbits. And I don’t take no for an answer. Anyone dressed up in a giant Easter Bunny costume, finds me bursting into his house wielding a chainsaw. I’m making everybody eat every Easter egg they find. Until the last one of them. I’m hiding Easter eggs in the nastiest places: plumbing, toilets, cracks in the wood floor, walls, etc. On the other hand, I am NOT hiding Easter eggs in places that they don't want to be hidden. I’m piercing holes in everyone's chocolate rabbits, and blame the Easter Hunter. I'm delivering gaily wrapped baskets of decapitated heads painted in garishly painted colours. I’m holding hostage of the eggs.

Dear Lucius,

Signed: Officer Gypsum

Dear Officer Gypsum,

Nice weather for the time of the year, isn’t it? Say hello to the nice officer, darling. Let’s show some manners. I'm Lucius Barrow, and this here is me partner, Damari Parker. No, put the cannon away, Damari love, we don' t want anybody to get a headache now.

Dear Lucius.

Signed: ~E~ the April Fooled

Dear ~E~ the April Fooled,

That is because they never intended to hand out the cookies; they just intended to crush morale with a dumb smile on their face.
I can feel your disappointment so I suggest you tie the pranksters to the bumper of your truck and drag them behind it doing 130mph, stop only to pour alcohol into the bleeding fresh wounds. Then you can tie them all together to a big cactus in the middle of the desert and leave only one hand free. Then you paint all the claws on that free paw with snake poison. Then you empty a full container of ants atop of the cactus, and sit around and wait for the tricksters to start scratching. THAT will be an April Fool's Day.

Dear Lucius,

Could you tell me what happened to the once so feared Church of Blood with a few words?
Signed: Cerridwen

Dear Cerridwen,

In a few words...

The End. Meltdown. Period. Apocalypse. Finish. Massacre. Termination. Punch line. Final. Heat-death of the Earth. Kaput. Armageddon. Finita la commedia. Death. All dead. All gone. Game over. That's it. Adieu. Goodbye. Sweet dreams. See you. Hasta luego. Poof. Black hole. Vanish. Burp. RIP. Complete. Adieu. Ciao. A human as viewed from a satellite in orbit. Earth from a galaxy far far away. What happens to the cat when it's in the hat. The total IQ of the average Ravenblack Grimoire reader. What Pavlov's dog had in mind. The Big Bang before itself. The one and only perfect truth. The beginning of a circle. A modern art piece without its manual. Where the umbrellas go when they die. What a mirror sees when it looks at another mirror. A silent scream in an empty room. What you can observe through the wrong end of a microscope. The definitive vanishing point. A lake on Mars. A target for a myopic sniper. What we know about women. The complete rules of how to deal with sunburns when you're a vampire. What happened when half the Dark Alliance went blue. What happens when you've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, you're wearing sunglasses and you're not a Blues Brother. What happens when you have no cigarettes, no coffee, you're waking up and you're me. The answer to your prayers. Your bank account. A deal with Capadocious. A threat from Archangel. A proposal from Ophelia. A leadership lesson from Unicorn. What powers epona's brain. Vapourware. The average vampire's electrocardiogram. The ultimate error message.

Dear Lucius,

Everything we bloody do in this city seems to just be something that was done before, with nothing changing for the better. Can you tell us why we vampires were actually put on this rock, so we can get on doing it?
Signed: AQelDroma

Dear AQelDroma,

Great, a philosophical question... Since the dawn of time, it's been asked: what is the purpose of vampiric existence? At first this was easy. The answer was blood. You see, back in the Stone Age, the answer to everything was either blood or rock. What do you want? "Blood" Where do you live? "Rock" Look, that naked human is running away with your stuff, what will you do? "Rock make it blood!" As you can see, in these days discussion wasn't too stimulating, and vampires found themselves stuck with philosophical sayings like "blood is blood" and "blood is not rock." Luckily bloody rock & roll hadn't been invented yet.

Dear Lucius,

Signed: Sartori

“RavenBlack City (AP) Panic Goes On as things continue to evaporate. This morning when the citizens of RavenBlack woke up they were greeted with the latest episode of 'The Great Evaporating' to hit the city. The adorned bronze gates of the Shadow Court were missing. As usual no one knows where the gates went, or why they were stolen. This piece of art is yet one more item to disappear from the city over the last few weeks. Humans and vampires alike are perplexed. Not only have items of great worth vanished, but also items of note but of lesser value, such as Capadocious’ rare oriental hot water bottle covered in sky blue silk, Unicorn’s apparel horn, Hesu’s Nikon, shadowshade’s Etain wolf and 53 % of the stoplights of the North Side. Terror grows as...”

Dear Lucius,

In a duel between a blue-cloaked vamp and a pink-cloaked vamp, who would win?
Signed: sangfroid

Vampire kind.

I hope this helps,

~Lucius
Solves all your problems instantly - or your money back!

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Dear Lucius,

Can you tell us what will happen to evilive in the near future?
Signed: On-da-g

Dear On-da-g,

It has been centuries since I have read entrails! Sadly, it fell out of fashion with the end of Roman Empire. Anyway, let’s see:

- He will soon experience a long and continuous period of quietness.

Dear Lucius,

Thank you in advance!
Signed: -RoD-

Dear -RoD-

Ah, I see that my muse (Damari!) has alighted on another love spammer (Damaria!). The spiraling lights (Damarina!)... The vertiginous impression of falling (Damina!)... The abrupt rush of visions and sound (D’mina!)...

Dear Lucius,

Tell me the truth.
Signed: InuYasha

Dear InuYasha,

That’s the question, isn’t it? All right, but remember that you asked for it...

Verbal was Kaiser Soze. Darth Vader was Luke's father. In "Murder on the Orient Express" all the passengers did it. Capt. Kirk was not really dead, he was just in the Nexus; but then Kirk died for real later. The North won. The Nazi lost. Harrison Ford saved the day, again. All of the "Reservoir Dogs" were shot. Robert Redford hit a game-winning home run at the end of "The Natural.” James Bond got the girl. The girl got James Bond. Lestat wasn’t really dead, just buried. Jim Phelps betrayed the Impossible Mission team. Leia was Luke's sister. Richard Gere ended up with the prostitute in "Pretty Woman.” Henry V won, but hardly. Spock died, and then came back to life on a planet where Kirk's son was killed, but he wasn’t downgraded for stealing the USS Enterprise because he wasn't there, he was dead. ET phoned and went home. In "Blade Runner" Rachel was a replicant - some people think Deckard might be one too. Mr. Holland's former students played his opus in the end - the red boy became governor. Robert DeNiro was shot and killed by Al Pacino – we don’t have a *clear* visual proof though. Harry married Sally. Mr. Ripley was an impostor. Tom Hanks could catch Leonardo Di Caprio. In "Speed" there was a video camera on the bus and a hole under the garbage can. In “Psycho” Anthony Perkins was the psycho - his mother’s corpse was held on a rocking chair. Nicolas Cage died in the end of "Leaving Las Vegas.” HAL 9000 became homicidal, but it wasn’t its fault. (The letters following HAL were IBM). Romeo and Juliet killed each other. Jack was Tyler Durden. Rosebud was the sledge.

Dear Lucius,

PPS: And to get the scary mother-in-law to stop attacking me?
~the hubby

Dear Wifey and Hubby,

My poor lovesick couple. I can’t advise you virulently enough against the dangers of love. It is a virus which worms its way into our hearts and souls, disturbs the delicate chemical balance of our mind. Love moves mountains (Damari!), love is everything, love conquers all (Damari!), love is enduring, love is all you need – all you need is love (Damari!), love renders even the most cynical of us to grinning retards.

Dear Lucius,
How can I get Lady bondage to go out with me for Valentine’s?
Signed: Mia

Ask her.

Dear Lucius,
But bondage turned me down.
Signed: Mia

Ask her again.

Dear Lucius,
But bondage turned me down again.
Signed: Mia

Keep asking her.

Dear Lucius,
I was arrested for harassment!
Signed: Mia

Pheew! Finally.

I hope this helps,

Lucius
Solves all your problems instantly - or your money back!

Dear Lucius,

Signed: Vella

Dear Vella, and more extensively… dear Kindred,

It’s a grave question and I don’t do long and serious answers. But today is a special day and I’ll make an exception.

What would you say if I told you that vampires have an enemy that will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, bring them to their knees? What would you think if I suggested to you that no vampire, no matter how powerful or old, could foresee this adversary’s destructive superiority?

Dear Lucius,

Vampires rule. Humans suck.
Signed: anonymous.

Dear anonymous,

The forests will be less crammed as fewer city dwellers escape the summer’s heat. The birch, poplar, and aspen will burst into gold; the maple trees will explode in ruby. Little foraging animals will be easier to observe as the twilight ends each day a few minutes earlier.
The red, pink and orange hues of the rising sun on the high delicate clouds of daybreak will make the chilly morning worth waiting for.

And sadly, you won't see a minute of it.

I hope this helps.

Lucius
Solves all your problems instantly - or your money back!

Dear Lucius,