On the way back to the Princes town house we noticed we were being followed by an oriental man in a cap. We stopped and approached him. He said his name was Eon and said he had been looking for us. He did not mean us any harm but wanted to know one thing. He said he could help us with the first step of Golconda but it would be difficult and we would need to get into the car with him as we needed to go somewhere where we had committed violence recently. We directed him to the scrapyard.

He said he needed to separate us from our beasts and we would need to defeat them. He performed a ritual on Alice and a light formed on her forehead, then another darker looking Alice appeared. They argued and had a contest of wills which Alice easily won, then accepted the beast back within herself. He then performed the ritual on myself and I felt a wrenching feeling, then a dark form of myself appeared beside me. It insulted me for a while then attacked. It was powerful but I defeated it and it begged for me to let it back in.

Eon then dropped us off in Islington and we went to the Princes house to meet back with Parr. She said there would be a contest for the role of prince the following evening. Banbridge and Madam Rosna, primogens of the Tremere and the Malkavians, wanted the role, and Banbridge asked for our support. The prince asked if I wanted to be her Arcon, an assassin of the Camarilla.

Zed showed up to speak to me. He reported that some of the Nosferatu had gone missing in the underground in the last few days and Warlock had more information. We took an uber taxi to a tube station under renovation. I unlocked the gate and we entered the underground. Warlock said we had lost 6 or 7 Nosferatu while they were scouting the Limehouse area.

I gave a speech to the Nosferatu. They listened but were quiet. Ricus was arguing against me. He was clearly an agitator who supported De Worde. He even had De Wordes initials tattooed on his neck. When directly confronted he and five others openly declared they wanted De Worde to return so I banished them. Alice followed them and used her blood magic to intimidate them. They claimed De Worde had returned and had forced them to do what they did. They said they had seen him recently near Limehouse.

The following evening we attended the contest to decide the new prince. Bambridge and Rosna were the two challengers. I had to fight a Malkavian called Moab as Bambridge's champion in the contest of arms. He used some blood magic to poison his claws and refused to surrender, so I had to put him into torpor. Alice competed against Rosna directly and quickly bested her. Bambridge was declared the new prince and gave us his old town house as a new haven.

We settled into our new haven and relocated Roxanne's sarcophagus so Alice could use it as an alter for her rituals, then started investigating what was going on around Limehouse. We asked about and found a Toreador who had noticed an increase in activity of mortal crack heads round the tube station and I saw a freshly sprayed Nosferatu symbol on a lamp post near the tube station.

We entered the tube station where we spotted another Nosferatu sign on the side of one of the tunnels. Looking down that tunnel we saw source of light in the distance. The light was from a small fire in a maintenance tunnel round which were three mortals, all clearly taking drugs. When we asked about trouble they talked about mannequins in the apartment store above. One had a length of human skin draped over his forearm with growths that indicated it had been shed by a Nosferatu. He said he found it near the ladder which went up to the department store. They said someone called Lenny used to go there but he had not been seen for a while.

We climbed the ladder to a hatch which opened into a damp storeroom. It was dark and there were silhouettes of stationary features. I sensed nothing so moved to the door where there was a light switch. The light flickered on, revealing a pile of mannequins and evidence of flooding in the past. On the ceiling was written "First law, De Worde is your god". Alice said she suddenly had a premonition of myself standing next to a mortal looking De Worde, with a beautiful woman.

Outside the storeroom was an ornate elevator and a staircase. There was a security camera and as we looked round the lights came on. I waved at the camera then we climbed the staircase. The floor above was decorated for Christmas but looked abandoned. There were more mannequins. The nearest had a sign hanging round its head with an arrow through it. The sign said "Leave now".

An arrow suddenly sped from the darkness but I easily avoided it. When I looked back the mannequin had vanished. We heard De Worde over the PA system saying to kill those on the first floor, and about a dozen of the mannequins started moving towards us. I quickly killed the nearest one which proved to be of flesh and blood. Alice used her blood magic to cover another mannequin with caustic blood causing it to scream then collapse and more arrows were fired at us from a balcony above.

I leapt up to the balcony and killed one of the mannequins who were firing at us then threw the body down onto the mannequins surrounding Alice. I then killed the other mannequin on the balcony. Written on the balcony wall was "Second law, embrace your new flesh". I jumped back down behind the mannequins closing on Alice, killing two more. Alice tore another to pieces with her magic and the remaining mannequins turned and fled.

I then took hold of Alice and jumped back up to the balcony. There was another floor above us where the light looked more diffuse. We were on a floor which appeared to the a men's department and home furnishings of the department store. There were more mannequins which attacked then fled after we quickly killed two of them. I then jumped up to the floor above with Alice where we found a restaurant, sports department and sportswear. There were more laws painted on the walls.

"Defend your territory"
"Kill all interlopers"
"Zilla is your mother, I am your father"

De Worde said 'Welcome" over the PA system then walked from one of the offices. He had changed and now looked like a normal mortal. Alice thought De Worde was suffering from the first stages of 'The withering', a disease that was considered a sign of the coming of Gehenna. De Worde wanted us to meet someone and gestured back to towards the office from which a young woman emerged. Alice recognised her as Zilla, the second wife of Caine though surprisingly she did not recognise any unusual power in her.

Zilla offered to cure me of the Nosferatu curse then when I turned her down turned to Alice. She started making Alice promises about Golconda and told De Worde he was not needed any more. This made De Worde mad and he turned on Zilla and killed her with a swift blow. He then turned back to us and pronounced she was simply a descendant of Zilla and we had one chance to serve him or die. Having no intention to serve we attacked, and I found De Worde had a great resistance to damage until Alice burned through the protection using her blood magic. She then drove him to frenzy using her blood magic, making him more dangerous but without any care for his own safety so ultimately easier to defeat. He fought on for a while but finally we defeated him. I then decapitated them both so I could leave the heads to burn in the daylight later.

With the defeat of De Worde, there was no further barriers to my gaining full control of the Nosferatu. With the gratitude of Bambridge I had the influence required to improve the standing of the Nosferatu in London's kindred society. With Bambridge as the Prince, Alice was named the new Tremere primogen. Having complete access to Roxanne gave Alice an unprecedented source of power to study which allowed her to quickly quell any descent from the other Tremere. The journey down the road towards Golconda would prove to be a lot longer and harder to achieve than our rise in kindred society.