Dare to Walk the Onyx Path...
Onyx Path Publishing was founded by industry veteran and long-term White Wolf Creative Director Richard Thomas. The company has partnered with CCP/White Wolf and collaborates with other experienced designers, developers, artists, and writers to bring new (and existing) games like Scion®, Vampire: the Requiem®, and Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition®. Games from Onyx Path Publishing and CCP/White Wolf are currently available at DriveThruRPG.com. This free RPG Day quickstart for Vampire: the Requiem® features: * Fully playable excerpts from the updated World of Darkness® and Vampire rules from Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle. * Character creation for vampires. * The first two dots of all the revised Clan Disciplines. * A free copy of the best-selling adventure "Into the Void”, by noted horror author Chuck Wendig. For more information, visit the Onyx Path website at: http://www.theonyxpath.com
Credits
Writers: Reap the Whirlwind: Rose Bailey, David Hill, Alec Humphrey, Stew Wilson Into the Void: Chuck Wendig Developers: Reap the Whirlwind: Rose Bailey and Audrey Whitman Into the Void: Eddy Webb and Chuck Wendig Editors: David Hill and Genevieve Podleski Creative Director: Richard Thomas Interior and Cover Design: Mike Chaney Artists: Avery Butterworth, Jean Sebastien Rossbach, Mark Nelson, Pat Loboyko, Greg Boychuk, Mark Poole, Pat Loboyko, Sam Araya
© 2013 CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. White Wolf, Vampire, and The World of Darkness are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. Storytelling System, Vampire the Requiem, Mage the Awakening, Werewolf the Forsaken, World of Darkness, and The Danse Macabre are trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP hf. CCP North America Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of CCP hf. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised. Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com
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Contents Vampire: The Requiem
4
Into The Void
32
Themes 4
What’s Inside
32
How to use this book
4
Treatment 32
Life After Dark
5 5
Rules of the Night
6
Introduction 4
Introduction 32
A Chapter in Your Chronicle
33
Background and Setup
33
The Cast
35
Prince Tiberias
35
Conditions 12
Harmon Kale (Sheriff)
36
Laws of the Dead
14
Amelie (The Prince’s Attaché)
37
Humanity Examples
16
Vampires of the City
38
Common Actions
17
Miscellaneous Enemies
40
Combat Summary Chart
19
Scene Flowchart
42
Ranged Weapons Chart
20
Scenes 43
Melee Weapons Chart
21
Character Creation
Size 21 Disciplines 23 Animalism
23
Auspex
24
Celerity
25
Majesty
27
Obfuscate
29
Protean
30
Good Night, Sweet Prince
45
Secrets on the Wind, Like Blood in the Water
47
Pandora’s Box
50
Encounter Scenarios
53
Aftermath
57 3
VAMPIRE: THE REQUIEM Old + New
Introduction
Vampire is a game of visceral drama and personal horror. Vampire is about sex and murder, about power and wild defiance. It’s about urban squalor and the romance of the city. It’s about what’s wrong with you -- yes, you -- and how that shapes the monster you’ll become. Vampire is also about thrilling action and nail-biting paranoia. It’s about dying young and being a great-looking corpse. It’s about acting out in all of the ways we imagine we would, if only we couldn’t see ourselves in the mirror. Vampire is a game about dead people and it should make you feel alive.
Established 1856. That’s what the firm’s sign says. The owner was established 1856, too, even though his sharp-cut suit was made tomorrow. He’s one of your guys. One of the sharks you swim with. The Kindred are the real predators of the modern age. They’re hip to our tricks but they’ve got a hundred years of history behind them. You’re one of them. So, congratulations: you are the child-stealer, the plague-bearer and the faceless corporate titan sucking the life out of your own hometown.
Themes
How did you get to be what you are? Were you a good girl, dragged kicking and screaming from heaven? Or a bad boy, brought back from the grave ’cause hell didn’t deserve you? Little of both, probably. Somebody cheated death to bring you back, and now you have to make up the debt. You can devote yourself to faith and good works. Play philanthropist. Play superhero. Or you can accept that you’re damned and get the party started. Piss on the cross. Get some head. Little of both, probably.
Vampire is built on contrast, taking place in a World of Darkness with blinding whites and pitch black. Characters try to stay in the cool, comfortable grays, but they can’t hide all the time. And, hey, they look good in black.
Requiem + Masquerade
What are you going to do to make it through tonight? What about tomorrow night? And after the deeds are done and your belly’s full, how are you going to live with yourself? What are you going to do with your damnation that makes it worth all the sins along the way? That’s the Requiem. Only half the question, though. Mortals are dinner but they’re also what you’ve got for dates. No matter how callous you become, you’ll need to move among them. How will you keep your connection to Humanity, even as a sham? That’s the Masquerade. The song and the dance don’t always play well. Devote yourself to redeeming human sinners and you may discover they’re the only creatures you understand. Spend your nights in a vault perfecting your monstrosity and you may find yourself trapped, unable to flee through the masses when the hunters bash down the gates.
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Piety + Blasphemy
How to use this book
Reap the Whirlwind is an introduction to Vampire: The Requiem which previews Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle. Blood and Smoke is a reimagined core rulebook for Requiem, containing a complete set of overhauled rules and a brand new setting. It replaces the original Requiem core book and is standalone. Reap the Whirlwind is divided into two parts. • Life After Dark (p. 5) contains all the rules you need to create your own vampire and play the included story. • Into the Void (p. 32) presents an adventure that kicks off with the unthinkable: murdering the Prince of your city. And then things get crazy. Together, these give you an exciting look into the world of Vampire, a world like our own, but sexier, glitzier, and much, much bloodier.
LIFE AFTER DARK Character Creation
Step One: Concept
Come up with a basic concept for your character. Pick an Aspiration -- something your character hopes to gain from the Prince’s death.
Step Two: Attributes
Prioritize categories. They receive 5/4/3 dots, distributed among the primary, secondary, and tertiary categories.
Step Three: Skills
Prioritize categories. They receive 11/7/4 dots, distributed among the primary, secondary, and tertiary categories.
Step Four: Add Kindred Traits
Choose clan, covenant, Masquerade, Requiem, and Disciplines. Set Blood Potency to 3. This enables your character to hold up to 12 Vitae and spend up to 3 of it per turn. Set Humanity to 5.
Step Five: Advantages
Willpower is equal to Resolve + Composure. Humanity is 7. Size is 5. Health is Size + Stamina + Resilience. Speed is Size + Strength + Dexterity. Defense is the lower of Dexterity and Wits, plus Athletics.
Clan
Choose the clan to which your vampire belongs. A clan is an extended family of vampires, with common powers and sometimes common personality traits. Sometimes, ty work together. But they’re family, so… that’s not always the case.
Daeva
Hungry, passionate, seductive. The ones you die for. Disciplines: Celerity, Majesty, Vigor
Primal, hardy, feral. The ones you can’t kill. Disciplines: Animalism, Protean, Resilience
Gangrel Mekhet
Quiet, cunning, knowing. The ones watching you sleep. Disciplines: Auspex, Celerity, Obfuscate
Nosferatu
Unsettling, mysterious, fearsome. The ones you fear. Disciplines: Nightmare, Obfuscate, Vigor
Ventrue
Unflappable, domineering, confident. The ones who win. Disciplines: Animalism, Dominate, Resilience
Covenant
Choose a covenant to which your character belongs. Covenants are groups of vampires who take a similar approach to life after death; a combination of political party and support group. The Carthian Movement applies mortal solutions to immortal problems with modern and experimental government. The Circle of the Crone venerate the Mother of Monsters and the old ways. The Invictus safeguard the Masquerade with old world tradition, cutting edge intelligence gathering, and ruthless violence. The Lancea Sanctum are the twisted conscience of the Kindred, and keep the secret history of vampires. The Ordo Dracul seek to turn vampiric Damnation into monstrous Transcendence.
Disciplines
Pick four dots of Disciplines. Three must be from Disciplines belonging to your character’s clan. This book covers only the first two dots of each Discipline. • Animalism: The ability to communicate and command animals.
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• Auspex: Sight beyond sight.
• Obfuscate: Powers of invisibility and distraction.
• Celerity: Inhuman speed.
• Protean: The power to change shape.
• Dominate: The ability to control the mind.
• Resilience: Immense toughness.
• Majesty: The power to sway emotions.
• Vigor: Impossible strength.
• Nightmare: The power to harness terror.
Rules of the Night The Basics
When your character tries to accomplish something or avoid danger, you roll dice to determine the outcome. The dice you’ll use are ten-sided, and you’ll roll a pool of them based on your character’s relevant traits. For example, to punch someone in the face, you might add your Strength Attribute of 3 to your Brawl Skill of 2 and pick up five dice. When you roll the dice, each one that comes up 8, 9, or 10 is a success. Usually, you only need one success to accomplish what you intended, but more are always better. (Especially if you’re trying to hurt someone -- successes add to damage in combat.) Any die that comes up a 10 counts as a success, but re-roll it, potentially adding another success. In fact, if it comes up 10 again, roll it a third time, and so on. Many rolls will have modifiers, ranging from -5 to +5, but usually within the range of -2 to +2. These reflect circumstances that make your character’s action easier or harder. You add or subtract the appropriate number of dice from your pool before rolling. If modifiers reduce your dice pool to zero, you roll a single die, called a chance die. A chance die counts as a single success if it comes up 10. Any other result is a failure, and a 1 is an automatic dramatic failure. There are a few different kinds of success and failure: Success: Your character’s action goes off as planned. (Or almost as planned.) Achieved by having one or more dice come up greater than or equal to 8. Failure: Your character’s action fails. Sometimes, that means nothing happens, other times it means complications are on the way. This occurs when none of your dice are successes. Exceptional Success: Your character’s action succeeds beyond her expectations. This is achieved when you roll five or more successes. Your character also gains the Inspired Condition. She can take this for herself or, if appropriate to the story, give it to another player’s character. Dramatic Failure: Your character’s action fails badly... and things are probably going to get worse. This is suffered under two circumstances. The first, and less common, is when you roll a 1 on a chance die. More often, you’ll choose to turn a regular failure into a dramatic failure. When you do that, you get a Willpower point, which can make a big difference down the road. (In the full game, rather than Willpower, you get points which help you improve your character.)
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Willpower
Willpower represents a character’s determination to carry through and see her desires fulfilled. Spending a point of Willpower adds three dice to most dice pools. Only one point of Willpower can be spent in this way on a single action.
Types of Actions
Most actions are instant. They take place in a relatively small space of time. In a fight, an instant action takes up your turn. An action can also be reflexive, something your character barely has to think or act to do. Reflexive actions can happen at any time, and don’t take your turn. Some actions are contested. These work just like instant actions, except you’re rolling dice for your character against another player or the Storyteller rolling dice for theirs. In a contested action, victory is achieved by rolling more successes than the opposing player. Contested actions only take the turn of the player who initiated the contest. Characters can use teamwork on a single action. One character is the primary actor, and her player assembles her dice pool as normal. For example, Dexterity + Medicine to administer first aid. However, anyone assisting rolls the same pool first. Their successes become bonus dice on the primary actor’s roll. Obviously, some kinds of action lend themselves better to teamwork than others.
The Passage of Time
We’ve talked about turns, periods of about three seconds each. The game’s tracked in turns when in combat or other time-critical situations. The second important measure of time is the scene. Scenes are an abstract measurement of time, lasting roughly long enough to take care of all of the action the characters want to take part in in a particular place.
Characters
Characters are made up of a set of traits. Some of them are numbers, others are descriptors that have an effect on other game mechanics.
• Attributes are raw potential.
• Stamina: Your character’s ability to suffer physical stress and power through obstacles.
• Skills are trained areas of expertise. • Advantages cover things like how fast a character moves or how much Willpower she can bring to bear. • Disciplines are the monstrous powers of the dead.
Attributes
Attributes are a character’s innate capabilities. They’re rated from one to five, and come in three categories: Physical, Mental, and Social. They determine the power a character can apply to a task, the finesse with which he can perform it, and his resistance to harm and interference by others.
Mental Attributes • Intelligence: Your character’s ability to recall information, form plans, or solve puzzles. • Wits: Your character’s ability to think on her feet and improvise. • Resolve: Your character’s raw determination.
Physical Attributes • Strength: How much your character can lift, and how hard he hits. • Dexterity: How fast your character can react physically, and how deft her movements are.
Social Attributes • Presence: Your character’s assertiveness and raw appeal. • Manipulation: Your character’s ability to appeal to the desires of others and get them to cooperate. • Composure: Your character’s poise, and ability to keep apparently calm under pressure.
Skills
While Attributes represent innate ability, Skills represent abilities trained and honed over years. They’re also rated one to five. Skill Dots • •• ••• •••• •••••
Proficiency Level Novice. Basic knowledge or techniques. Practitioner. Solid working knowledge or techniques. Professional. Broad, detailed knowledge or techniques. Expert. Exceptional Depth of knowledge or techniques. Master. Unsurpassed depth of knowledge or techniques. A leader in the field.
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Skills can also have Specialties, which contribute an extra die when relevant. For example, a character with the Drive Skill might focus on trucks, giving him +1 when behind the wheel of a big rig.
Mental Skills
Mental Skills are applications of a character’s insight, acumen and focus, such as examining a crime scene for clues, unraveling an enigma or diagnosing an illness. If your character tries to use a Mental Skill she doesn’t possess, take a -3 penalty. Academics: Academics is a broad-based Skill that represents a character’s degree of higher education and general knowledge in the Arts and Humanities—everything from English to history, economics to law. Computer: All characters can perform basic tasks with a computer, such as using office programs or social networking sites. Characters possessing this Skill have the necessary training or experience to operate a computer beyond the level of a normal user. With 1 dot, a character can program at a casual level or replace hardware components in a desktop computer. At 2 dots, the character is a moderately skilled programmer. At 3 or more, he’s qualified for work on major software applications. People with this Skill are often familiar with a variety of programming languages and operating systems. Crafts: Crafts represents a character’s training or experience in creating works of physical art or construction with his hands, from paintings to car engines to classical sculpture. Characters possessing this Skill typically have the knowledge, but not necessarily the tools or facilities to make use of their capabilities. A character might be an exceptional mechanic, for example, but still needs to sweet-talk her boss into opening up the garage after hours to work on her friend’s car. Investigation: Investigation is the art and science of solving mysteries, examining seemingly disparate evidence to find a connection, answering riddles and overcoming paradoxes. It not only allows your character to get into the head of a killer to grasp his motives or plans, it allows her to look beyond the mundane world to guess at answers to mysterious problems, or to have a “eureka” moment that offers insight into baffling circumstances. Medicine: The Medicine Skill reflects a character’s training and expertise in human physiology and how to treat injuries and illness. The trait represents knowledge of human anatomy and basic medical treatments. Characters with a low level in this Skill (1 to 2) often possess only rudimentary first-aid training, while characters with high levels (3+) are the equivalent of nurses, physicians or surgeons. Occult: The Occult Skill reflects a character’s knowledge and experience with the world’s various legends and lore about the supernatural. A character with this Skill not only knows the theories, myths and legends of the occult, but can generally discern “fact” from rumor. Politics: Characters possessing this Skill are not only familiar with the way the political process works, they’re experienced with bureaucracies and know exactly who to call in a given situation
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to get something done. Your character keeps track of who’s in power and how she got there, along with her potential rivals. Science: This Skill represents your character’s understanding of the physical and natural sciences: biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology, physics and so on. Science is useful not only for understanding how the world works, but it helps characters make the most of the resources at hand to achieve their goals.
Physical Skills
Physical Skills are applications of a character’s might, endurance and coordination, such as climbing a mountain, driving a car or shooting a gun. If your character tries to use a Physical Skill he does not possess, take a -1 penalty. Athletics: Athletics encompasses a broad category of physical training, from rock climbing to kayaking to professional sports. The Athletics Skill can be applied to any action that requires prolonged physical exertion or that demands considerable agility or hand-eye coordination. Examples include climbing a high wall, marching long distances and leaping between rooftops. In combat, the Skill is combined with Dexterity to determine the accuracy of thrown weapons, and is also factored into your character’s Defense. Brawl: Brawl defines your character’s prowess at unarmed combat, whether he’s a black belt in karate, a hard-bitten street tough or a college student who’s taken a few self-defense courses. Characters with this Skill know how to hit an opponent, where to hit for maximum effect and how to defend themselves from attack. In combat, Brawl is combined with Strength for unarmed attacks. Drive: The Drive Skill allows your character to operate a vehicle under difficult or dangerous conditions. Characters don’t need this Skill simply to drive a car. It’s safe to assume in a modern society that most individuals are familiar with automobiles and the rules of the road. Rather, this trait covers the training or experience necessary to operate at high speeds, to tackle hazardous road conditions and to push a vehicle to the limits of its performance. Drive is the difference between a typical suburban parent with a minivan and a police officer, car thief, or racecar driver. Firearms: Firearms allows your character to identify, operate and maintain most types of guns, from pistols and rifles, to military weapons such as submachine guns, assault rifles, and machine guns. This Skill can represent the kind of formal training provided to police and the military, or the basic, hands-on experience common to hunters, criminals and gun enthusiasts. Firearms also applies to using bows. Your character can use guns and bows equally. In combat, Firearms is combined with Dexterity to make ranged attacks. Larceny: Larceny is a broad Skill that covers everything from picking locks to concealing stolen goods and everything in between. Most characters obtain this Skill the hard way, by committing crimes and often paying the price for their mistakes. Some individuals such as government agents and members of the military receive formal training in bypassing security systems and stealing valuable assets.
Stealth: The Stealth Skill represents a character’s experience or training in avoiding notice, whether by moving silently, making use of cover or blending into a crowd. When attempting to sneak silently through an area or to use the local terrain as concealment, roll Dexterity + Stealth + equipment. When trying to remain unseen in a crowd, Wits + Stealth is appropriate. Survival: Survival represents your character’s experience or training in “living off the land.” He knows where to find food and shelter, and how to endure harsh environmental conditions. The more capable your character is, the fewer resources he needs in order to prevail. Weaponry: As the name implies, the Weaponry Skill represents your character’s experience or training in fighting with everything from beer bottles to pipes, knives to swords. While formal instruction in Weaponry is uncommon (restricted to military and law-enforcement training and a few martial arts), any character who has grown up on the street or spent a lot of time in seedy bars has had ample opportunity to learn this Skill. In combat, Weaponry is added to Strength to make armed attacks at close range.
Social Skills
Social Skills are applications of your character’s bearing, charm and poise, such as negotiating with a bank robber, wooing a crowd or telling a faultless lie. If your character tries to use a Social Skill he does not possess, take a -1 penalty. Animal Ken: Anticipating and understanding human emotions is one thing, but being able to interpret and recognize the behavior of animals is something else entirely. Your character intuitively grasps or has been trained to read animals to know how they react to situations. The Skill also involves innately understanding how the animal mind operates, and what may appease or enrage beasts. Empathy: This Skill represents your character’s intuition for reading people’s emotions. For some, it’s a matter of observing body language and nonverbal cues. Others employ an extraordinary sense that helps them divine a person’s true mood. As the name implies, Empathy also involves the capacity to understand other people’s views and perspectives, whether your character agrees with those positions or not. Expression: Expression reflects your character’s training or experience in the art of communication, both to entertain and inform. This Skill covers both the written and spoken word and other forms of entertainment, from journalism to poetry, creative writing to acting, music to dance. Characters can use it to compose written works or to put the right words together at the spur of the moment to deliver a rousing speech or a memorable toast. Intimidation: Intimidation is the art and technique of persuading others through the use of fear. Your character can intimidate someone with a show of brute force (Strength + Intimidation), through more subtle means such as verbal threats (Manipulation +
Intimidation), or simply through menacing body language (Presence + Intimidation). It can be used to get other people to cooperate (even against their better judgment), back down from a confrontation, or reveal information that they’d rather not share. Persuasion: Persuasion is the art of inspiring or changing minds through logic, charm or sheer, glib fast-talking. Persuasion is the Skill of convincing others by force of personality alone, making one’s point through carefully chosen words, body language and emotion. Socialize: Socialize reflects your character’s ability to interact with others in a variety of situations, from chatting people up at bars to comporting himself with dignity at state dinners. This Skill represents equal parts gregariousness, sensitivity, etiquette and custom. Knowing how to make friends is no less important than understanding how to treat guests in formal situations. Streetwise: Characters possessing this Skill know how life on the streets works and are adept at surviving by its harsh rules. Streetwise characters can gather information, make contacts, buy and sell on the black market, and otherwise make use of the street’s unique resources. The Skill is also important for navigating urban dangers, avoiding the law, and staying on the right side of the wrong people. Subterfuge: Subterfuge is the art of deception. Characters possessing this Skill know how to lie convincingly, and they recognize when they’re being lied to. Subterfuge is used when telling a convincing falsehood, hiding one’s emotions or reactions, or trying to pick up on the same in others. The Skill is most often used to trick other people, but characters also learn it to avoid being tricked themselves.
Advantages
Characters possess a few inherent Advantages used in play. Health: Determines the overall amount of physical harm a character can suffer, and how that harm affects their performance. Defense: A character’s ability to avoid being hurt in violent confrontations. Speed: Determines the number of yards or meters a character can move in a turn without sacrificing their instant action. Initiative Modifier: Affects when a character takes his turn in combat. Size: An adult human has a Size of 5.
Anchors
Vampires are no longer human, but they yet have ties to the world. These anchors, whether they provoke the vampire to humane actions or cruel ones, reinforce her sense of self, and give her the strength to carry on. Accordingly, each anchor provides ways to refill the vampire’s Willpower. (Mortals have Virtues and Vices -- moral strengths and weaknesses -- in place of these anchors.)
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Masquerade
The Masquerade is the face a vampire wears before his prey. It’s the immaculately groomed executive, the long-haired guru, or the cute hipster with the black-rimmed glasses. A vampire’s Masquerade allows her to operate in human society, without the herd recognizing her presence. Any time a vampire overcomes a small hurdle in defense of her Masquerade, she gains a point of Willpower. When committing atrocious or existentially risky acts in defense of her Masquerade, she regains all her spent Willpower points. Example Masquerades: • Artist
Any time a vampire withdraws from the false life of his Masquerade and into the world of the Damned, she gains a point of Willpower. When committing terrible, damning acts in defense of one’s personal identity, she regains all her spent Willpower points. Example Requiems: • Courtesan • Enforcer • Horror • Manipulator • Prophet • Martyr
• Priest
• Nomad
• Junkie • Investigator
Merits
• Scholar
Merits are special distinctions that give characters access to abilities or resources. Merits relevant to this book are included with the appropriate character descriptions.
• Socialite • Child
Requiem
The Requiem is a vampire’s “life” among the Damned. The enforcer with the calloused fists, the preacher of dark salvation, the martyr who longs to atone. A vampire’s Requiem is who she is in the dark... and to the people who dwell there.
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Disciplines
Disciplines are the disturbing powers of the Kindred, ranging from controlling hearts and minds to moving in the blink of an eye. Many are fueled by Vitae, the stolen blood that clots in Kindred veins. Discipline powers are included with the appropriate character descriptions.
Action Combat
Vampires affect civility. Among the prey, they may even affect innocuousness. But the truth is, they’re creatures of violence. They want and they take and they hurt. And that gets them into fights. Combat starts when two or more people who are, ninety percent of the time, rational individuals, fail to come to an agreement, and come to blows instead. Violence, for vampires, is generally a means to an end. The first step in starting combat, then, is to determine what everybody wants. You don’t have to be formal about it... just make sure you know why it is the characters are in this fight. After that, start tracking time in turns. At the start of the turn, each player rolls Initiative. Unlike a normal roll, Initiative is a single die, the result of which you add to your character’s Initiative Modifier. (A character’s weapon may also add or subtract from Initiative.) After that, players choose actions for their characters in Initiative order, highest to lowest. When a character’s turn comes up, they can perform one of the following actions.
Attack
A character can lash out blindly, or take careful aim. When your character attacks somebody, roll one of the following dice pools. Unarmed Combat: Strength + Brawl - victim’s Defense Melee Combat: Strength + Weaponry - victim’s Defense Ranged Combat: Dexterity + Firearms Thrown Weapons: Dexterity + Athletics - victim’s Defense Judge the attack roll the same as any other action. The damage inflicted by a successful attack is equal to the successes on the attack roll plus the weapon’s damage bonus. See “Injury,” below.
Dodge
A character can also sacrifice their action to dodge. In this case, double the character’s Defense rating, but don’t subtract it directly from attacker’s dice pool. Instead, roll the doubled Defense as a dice pool and subtract the successes from the attacker’s successes. Willpower may be spent to increase a dodge roll. Ranged attacks can’t be dodged.
Injury
Fists and feet deal bashing damage. Weapons, like brass knuckles and knives, crack skulls and pierce lungs. To mortals, they deal lethal damage. Vampires only suffer bashing damage from mundane weapons, since they’re less fazed by pain and
don’tdepend on their internal organs. Vampires still suffer lethal damage from massive bodily destruction, like being hit by a truck. A special type of damage, aggravated damage, is only suffered by vampires when they’re exposed to their great banes, fire and sunlight. Each vampire suffers aggravated wounds differently. Flesh may brittle and burn like paper. Tissue may bubble and stink. Blackened veins may streak across the victim’s body. Foamy pustules may taint the area around the injury. Aggravated wounds appear as manifestations of the natural world violently eliminating something that does not belong. If a mortal’s health track is filled with bashing damage, he falls unconscious. If it fills with lethal, he dies within minutes. If a vampire’s health track is filled with bashing damage, he remains conscious. If it fills with lethal, he falls into torpor. If it fills with aggravated damage, he suffers the Final Death, and his body rapidly decays to the point it would have if it had been left to rot when he was first Embraced. Marking Damage: When a character suffers damage, the player marks off that number of Health points, starting with the box under the leftmost dot of his Health trait and proceeding left to right. The symbol used depends upon the type of damage. Bashing damage is marked with a slash (/) in the first available empty box. So imagining that Thomas (who has seven Health dots) had just taken one point of bashing damage, his Health boxes would look like this:
Lethal damage is marked with an X, and it pushes any existing bashing damage right on the track (so that it always appears to the left of bashing damage). If Thomas next took a point of lethal damage, his track would be:
Aggravated damage is marked with a large asterisk (*) by adding a vertical bar to an X. It also pushes any existing lethal and bashing damage right on the track (so that it always appears to the left of lethal or bashing damage). If Thomas next suffered a point of aggravated damage, his track would be:
No More Health: Marking off a character’s last Health box usually means the character has become incapacitated. If that rightmost wound is bashing, he falls unconscious. If that rightmost wound is lethal or aggravated, the character quickly bleeds to death. Note that this would mean the character has no bashing damage at all, since it will always be the rightmost. These are the rules for humans… see below for vampires. Additional Damage: An unconscious or severely battered person can still be damaged by further attacks. Without further Health boxes to mark off, you represent this damage by upgrading existing wounds. Any new bashing wound upgrades an existing bashing wound to lethal (make the leftmost / into an X), while
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new lethal damage can upgrade older wounds to aggravated (make the leftmost X into an asterisk). Additional aggravated damage also converts a point of bashing or lethal damage to aggravated (make the leftmost / or X into an asterisk). Healing: Mortals recover from damage with rest and medical attention. Left to heal naturally, characters recover one point of bashing damage every 15 minutes, one point of lethal damage every two days, and one point of aggravated damage every week. Lost Health is recovered from right to left on the character sheet. For vampires, spending a single point of Vitae heals two bashing damage, or one lethal damage. A single aggravated wound requires five Vitae and a full day’s sleep. Aggravated damage is the only type of wound that leaves a scar on Kindred.
Conditions
Conditions are (usually temporary) states that affect what your character can do. For example, your character might defeat a complex security system with ease and be Inspired by her exceptional success. A Condition typically consists of a modifier in the +2 to -2 range to a certain type of action, or actions taken with a certain motivation. Larger modifiers are rare, but exist. Conditions are resolved and removed when the character’s done something significant to act on the Condition or addressed the original source. The sample Conditions here have example resolution Conditions, but you can also resolve them after other events if it just makes logical sense. When a character resolves a Condition, she gains a point of Willpower. For certain Conditions, if a Condition biases her towards a certain type of behavior... say, a Reckless Condition that encourages her to throw caution to the wind, she also gains a point of Willpower. You’re encouraged to make up Conditions to fit events in your game. They’re little reminders of how what’s gone before influences character abilities and behavior. (In Blood and Smoke and The God-Machine Chronicle, Conditions help your character gain experience, rather than replenishing her Willpower. These books also contain many more sample Conditions.)
Inspired
Your character is deeply inspired. When your character takes an action pertaining to that inspiration, you may resolve this Condition. An exceptional success on that roll requires only three successes instead of five. Common Causes: An exceptional success, a comrade delivering a stirring call to arms. Resolution: You spend inspiration to spur yourself to greater success, resolving the Condition as described above. Willpower: n/a
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Wanton
Your character wants, for the sake of wanting. He’s distracted with temptations of excess and indulgence. Any Composure or Resolve rolls to resist temptation suffer a -2 penalty. As well, the character that brought forth this Condition achieves exceptional success on three successes instead of five, when making any rolls to tempt your character. This could apply to Majesty rolls as well as mundane social rolls. After resolving Wanton, your character cannot be subject to this Condition again for a full month. Common Causes: A seductive predatory aura conflict, a failed Detachment roll Resolution: Indulge in something that constitutes a breaking point (see Humanity, p.15) Willpower: n/a
Charmed
You’ve been charmed by a vampire’s supernatural force of personality. You don’t want to believe that anything he says is a lie, and you can’t read his true intentions. The vampire adds his Awe successes to Manipulation rolls against you, and any rolls you make to detect his lies or uncover his true motives suffer a penalty equal to his Awe successes; any supernatural means you use to detect his lies become a Clash of Wills. You want to do things for the vampire, to make him happy. If he asks, you’ll do favors for him like he was one of your best friends — giving him a place to crash, lending him your car keys, or revealing secrets that you really shouldn’t. You don’t feel tricked or ripped off unless you resolve the Condition. It expires normally (without resolving) after one hour per dot of the vampire’s Blood Potency. Common Causes: The Majesty Discipline. Resolution: The vampire attempts to seriously harm you or someone close to you, you make a significant financial or physical sacrifice for him. Willpower: You divulge a secret to or perform a favor for the vampire.
Competitive
Your character must assert dominance and superiority. Either she gives it her all, or she falters. Any time she’s in direct competition with another character, she suffers -2 on any rolls where she doesn’t spend Willpower. This includes contested rolls. As well, any rolls to tempt or coerce her into competition achieve exceptional success on three successes instead of five. After resolving Competitive, your character cannot be subject to this Condition again for a full month. Common Causes: A challenging predatory aura conflict, or a failed Detachment roll. Resolution: Win or lose a competition where someone reaches a breaking point Willpower: n/a
Dominated
A vampire has given your character a specific command that she cannot go against. You don’t have a choice whether or not to follow the command — your will is no longer your own. If your task has a natural end, such as “Follow that man until he enters an apartment then call me with the address,” you resolve the condition once you complete it, otherwise it ends at sunrise. Once you resolve this condition, you can’t quite remember what happened while you were under the vampire’s spell. Common Causes: The Dominate Discipline Resolution: Take more bashing or lethal damage than your Stamina. Experience a breaking point when following the command, and succeed at the degeneration roll. Follow the vampire’s command. Willpower: N/A
Frightened
Something’s scared you to the point where you lose rational thought. Maybe you’ve just looked down at a hundred-story drop, or seen a tarantula the size of your fist crawling up your leg. Whatever the case, you need to leave right the hell now. Your only priority is getting the fuck away from the thing that’s frightened you — the hell with your stuff, your friends, and your allies. If someone tries to stop you escaping, you’ll attack them. You can’t approach the source of your fear or act against it — and if the only way out involves going near the source of your fear, you’ll collapse on the ground in terror. Supernatural creatures prone to loss of control, including vampires, must roll to avoid frenzy. This Condition lasts until the end of the scene; suppressing its effects for a turn costs a point of Willpower. Common Causes: The Nightmare Discipline Resolution: The character escapes from the source of his fear. Willpower: N/A
Mesmerized
Your character’s will is subordinate to that of a vampire. You’re not obviously hypnotized — you’re a bit quiet and reserved compared to normal, but nothing out of the ordinary. When the vampire who inflicted this condition gives you a command, you cannot resist. If it’s something that you wouldn’t normally do, you might look like you’ve been hypnotized or that you’re sleepwalking, but otherwise you look and act normally. Once you resolve this condition, gain 3 dice to resist further attempts to Mesmerize you in the same scene; you also can’t quite remember what happened while you were under the vampire’s spell. This Condition fades naturally after a scene. Common Causes: The Dominate Discipline. Resolution: Take any amount of bashing or lethal damage. Experience a breaking point as part of a vampire’s command. Willpower: N/A
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Laws of the Dead Tricks of the Damned
The Blush of Life: Normally, a vampire’s body maintains only a semblance of human function. She has no pulse, her body is room temperature, and her eyes always look a little dry. Solid food is disgusting to her, and results in immediate vomiting. However, by spending one Vitae, she can counterfeit life. She doesn’t really feel alive (that’s something most vampires experience only while feeding), but her heart pumps, her flesh warms, and she’s persuasive enough to pass the most personal inspections. Kindred Senses: As nocturnal predators, vampires can see in the dark better than humans. Storytellers are encouraged not to apply vision-based penalties against them. The vampire’s sense of smell is attuned to the scent of blood. She can smell the presence of blood from about ten yards per dot of Blood Potency without rolling. If she’s tasted a particular human’s blood, she can add her Blood Potency to any rolls to track him by scent. Kindred blood does not offer this advantage, since it’s mostly old, dead, and its smell is a blend of all the vampire’s recent victims. Predatory Aura: As rival predators, vampires know their own. By touch, by sight, by smell. This awareness is called the predatory aura. In a social situation or a confrontation, a vampire can manipulate her aura to try and provoke a fight-or-flight response from the other party. A vampire can make her aura take on the feel of a Monstrous Beast, who wants to rend and destroy; a Seductive Beast, who offers blasphemous intimacies, or a Challenging Beast, who seeks control. She lashes out, rolling Blood Potency and one of three Attributes: Strength (for the Monstrous Beast), Presence (for the Seductive Beast), or Intelligence (for the Challenging Beast). The defender has two choices: fight or flight. If he fights, he rolls Blood Potency plus the Attribute appropriate to the Beast he’s countering with. Whoever rolls more successes inflicts the Condition associated with their Beast on the loser. The winner also gets +2 to pursue actions associated with the theme of their chosen Beast for the rest of the scene. (Mortals can’t inflict a Condition.) Fighting costs a Willpower point for the defender if his Blood Potency is less than the aggressor’s. If he flees, he withdraws from the situation. In a social setting, this might mean making a convenient excuse. He takes the Condition associated with the aggressor’s Beast. The Monstrous Beast inflicts the Bestial Condition, the Seductive Beast inflicts Wanton, and the Challenging Beast inflicts Competitive. Physical Intensity: Vampire tales speak of creatures stronger and faster than anything humans could strive to. With Vitae, any Kindred can accomplish massive bursts of physical prowess.
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By spending a point of Vitae, he may add two dice to rolls involving his choice of Strength, Dexterity, or Stamina for the turn. This does not increase traits derived from these Attributes. However, it will increase relevant resistances. For example, a Strength increase will reduce an opponent’s rolls to grapple him. Healing: Vampire flesh wants to return to the moment of its death. Vampires can heal as described on p. 12.
Feeding
This is the moment it all turns on. The moment when a vampire’s teeth sink into the flesh of someone who fears her or trusts her or doesn’t even know she’s there. The moment she tastes his blood. The moment she start to feel alive again. Vampires call it the Kiss. Human blood is best warm, from the living. Kindred can pull a number of Vitae from a mortal equal to the mortal’s unmodified Health dots. Every point of Vitae she takes causes one point of lethal damage. Humans have different reactions to being fed from. The victim of a savage attack may suffer lingering fear, while a donor who gave himself willingly succumbs to a pleasant languor. These reactions are explored in more detail in Blood and Smoke.
Daysleep and Waking
Kindred sleep by day. As they dream long, slow dreams, they appear truly dead to any observer. At sunset, they come shuddering to life again. When something disturbs a slumbering vampire or puts her at risk, roll her Humanity. On a success, she wakes. Waking, either normally or because the character’s slumber is interrupted, costs one point of Vitae. If the vampire can’t pay this cost, she falls into torpor.
Torpor
When starved or grievously wounded, a vampire falls into torpor, unable to rise during at night -- or any other time. As a vampire’s heart becomes less human and her blood becomes more potent, the duration of torpor increases. Multiply her Blood Potency by the chart below. Torpor can also be caused by a stake through the heart. In that case, the torpor ends as soon as the stake is removed. In combat, an attempt to pierce a character’s heart is a Weaponry attack with a -3 penalty. The attack must cause five damage to pierce the heart.
Humanity 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
Base Duration One night Two nights One week Two weeks One month One year Five years Ten years Fifty years 100 years 250 years
1 0 Blood Potency Dots 1 2 3 4 5-6 7-8 9-10
Fire
Fire represents humanity’s defiance against the dark, and the things that dwell there. It is therefore inimical to the Kindred. To determine how much damage a fire does per turn, add the base damage for size to the damage modifier for heat. Size of Fire Torch Bonfire Inferno
Base Damage 1 2 3
Heat of Fire Candle (first-degree burns) Torch (second-degree burns) Bunsen burner (third-degree burns) Chemical fire/molten metal
Damage Modifier 0 +1 +2 +3
Sunlight
The sun gives life to the world. The Kindred, not truly alive, must shun it. Sunlight burns them... and as they begin to truly embrace their inner predators, as the concept of human sin and even Humanity itself means less to them, it burns all the more. The type and amount of damage inflicted by the sun is determined by the vampire’s Humanity. The frequency with which the damage occurs is determined by his Blood Potency. Humanity Dots 7-10 6 5 4 3 2
Damage Type 1 lethal 2 lethal 3 lethal 1 aggravated 2 aggravated 3 aggravated
4 aggravated 5 aggravated Damage Frequency Half-hour Ten minutes One minute One turn 2x / turn 3x / turn 5x / turn
Frenzy
The Beast is anger, fear, temptation. And most of all, it is hunger. When provoked strongly enough, the Beast can overwhelm a vampire’s Humanity. This raging storm of instincts has the vampire’s best interests at heart, but it doesn’t much plan and it certainly doesn’t care who gets hurt. When the vampire is exposed to strong provocations, such as fire, injury to a loved one, or the sight of that loved one’s bleeding wounds, he must fight to remain in control. Roll Resolve + Composure. On a success, the vampire’s human side stays in the driver’s seat. On a failure, he enters frenzy. When in a frenzy, a vampire acts on the feeling that provoked the frenzy. He does so free of moral restraint or long-term planning. He remains smart enough, though, that he can act effectively to fulfill his desires, and cautious enough to minimize risk to himself. Frenzy isn’t suicide. Frenzy lasts until the end of a scene, until another character calms the Beast with a Manipulation + Empathy roll, or until the Beast has satisfied its rage, fear, or hunger.
Humanity
Vampires are not human. They were, once, but now they’re something entirely different. However, to blend in with mortals, to walk among the flock, Kindred must maintain perspective and understanding of their former existences. Humanity reflects this perspective. Vampires that maintain high Humanity scores live side-by-side with mortals, and can relate to the living. Vampires with low Humanity scores grow distant and alien, and lose sight of who they once were, and more importantly, who they prey upon. When a vampire faces (or self-inflicts) trauma that calls her Humanity into question, she hits a breaking point, and must roll to resist Detachment. We’ve listed some sample breaking points. In general, a vampire must roll when she reaches a breaking point tied to her current Humanity or lower. If she fails the Detachment roll, she gains one of the three Conditions also associated with the predatory aura: Bestial, Wanton, or Competitive.
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Humanity Examples Humanity 10 (Five Dice) One night without human contact. Lying in defense of the Masquerade. Spending more than one Vitae in a night.
Humanity 9 (Five Dice) Watching humans eat a meal. Committing a superhuman feat of physical prowess. Feeding from the unwilling or unknowing. Urging another’s behavior with a Discipline. Spending an hour in the sun.
Humanity 8 (Four Dice) Creating a ghoul. Rejected by a human. Riding the wave of frenzy. Taking another’s consent with a Discipline. Spending most of a day in the sun.
Humanity 7 (Four Dice) One week without human contact. Surviving something that would hospitalize a human. Injuring someone over blood.
Humanity 6 (Three Dice) Falling into torpor. Feeding from a child. Reading your own obituary. Surviving something that would kill a human.
Description of how each Humanity level affects the vampire follows. Ascetic (Humanity 9-10): A rare vampire with this degree of Humanity goes out of her way to immerse herself in mortal affairs, and to feed sensibly. She’s poised and confident in her dealings, she’s an expert in the way humans behave, feel, and think. Gain +2 to any rolls to relate to humans. Humane (Humanity 7-8): Most vampires in this range of Humanity are either very good at maintaining their attachments, or they’re very new to the Danse. She has little difficulty blending in with humans. She remembers with perfectly clarity what mortal life was like. She remembers the way food tasted. She remembers the way sweat felt across her skin. She feels pain for those hurt by her actions and those of her kind. Balanced (Humanity 5-6): At this point, she’s been around the block. Most neonates and some ancilla fall into this range. She’s seen pain and anguish as result of her condition, and is beginning to accept it as part of existence. She still has no issue relating to mortals; she just recognizes that she’s never going to be one again. She’s selfish,
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Humanity 5 (Three Dice) Two weeks without human contact. Reaching Blood Potency 3. Death of a mortal parent, sibling, or cousin.
Humanity 4 (Two Dice) Impassioned violence. Spending a year or more in torpor. Surviving a century. Accidentally killing. Taking a leadership role in a covenant. Learning a dot of Crúac.
Humanity 3 (Two Dice) One month without human contact. Reaching Blood Potency 6. Death of a mortal spouse or child. Impassioned killing.
Humanity 2 (One Die) One year without human contact. Premeditated killing. Seeing a culture that didn’t exist when you were alive. Surviving 500 years. Creating a revenant.
Humanity 1 (Zero Dice) One decade without human contact. Heinous, spree, or mass murder.
and lies like second nature. Take -1 in any roll to relate to humans. Weathered (Humanity 4): A weathered Kindred has seen more death and devastation than most mortals will in a lifetime. Most ancilla fall into this range of Humanity. While not spree killers, most Kindred at this level have taken lives, and understand that they probably will again in order to guarantee continued survival. They see humans as fragile and temporary. Take -2 in any roll to relate to humans. Callous (Humanity 3): At this level, a callous Kindred maintains a cynical and jaded world perspective. He’ll step over anyone and anything in the name of survival, and humans are little more than tools. Most elders fall into this range. By this point, Humanity takes its toll, and the vampire appears deathly and pallid. This appearance isn’t unnatural, per se, but it makes humans uncomfortable. Take -3 in any roll to relate to humans. Monstrous (Humanity 2): A monstrous Kindred is barely recognizable as human, unless he’s specifically acting the part and using the blush of life. He’s short-tempered, selfish to a fault, and will kill to suit minor interests and petty desires. Not only does
he have difficulty dealing with people, he doesn’t want to. Most of the mortals in his life are servants and feeding stock, viewed as resources at best. Take -5 in any roll to relate to humans. Animalistic (Humanity 1): A Kindred this close to the Beast barely registers as sentient most of the time. She can speak and interact just like anyone else, but she chooses not to. Every action is a step toward the next meal; nothing but blood is worth her time. While she could fake humanity with a bit of blood, she can’t be bothered, and instead looks like a corpse, a statue, a morbid doll. She’s a menace, and crowds part when she walks through. Your character cannot relate to humankind. Any such rolls use only a chance die. Draugr (Humanity 0): A character that reaches zero Humanity dots becomes draugr, lost to her Beast. She becomes ravenous and animalistic, no longer able to interact with society—Kindred or mortal. Draugr are forever lost to their monstrous natures; only the vaguest rumors suggest they can be redeemed. In most cities, the authorities kill draugr immediately and without mercy.
Common Actions
Here are some sample ways you can apply your skills. Remember, you can invent your own at any time.
ARGUMENT (Intelligence + Expression - victim’s Resolve) You try to sway someone with a rational argument. (If arguing with a crowd, use the highest Resolve in the crowd. • Dramatic Failure: You convince them of quite the opposite. • Failure: They listen, but are ultimately unaffected. • Success: They accept the truth (or apparent truth) of your words. • Exceptional Success: They’re convinced, and become a recruit to your point of view. Though they might change their minds if they find themselves at risk.
CAROUSING (Presence + Socialize or Streetwise) You mix with a group, bringing high spirits with you and using them to loosen tongues. • Dramatic Failure: A faux pas reveals that you don’t belong... and maybe even hints at your supernatural nature. • Failure: You end up a wallflower, with a drink in your hand that you don’t even want. • Success: You make a single-serving friend, who might be willing to pass secrets or go with you somewhere private. • Exceptional Success: You make a friend you can contact again
FAST-TALK (Manipulation + Subterfuge - victim’s Composure) You may not be able to win the argument with facts, but you can try to get out of trouble with a little judicious spin. • Dramatic Failure: The other party has a good idea what the truth is. • Failure: The other party doesn’t believe you. • Success: The other party swallows your story. • Exceptional Success: The other party believes you so thoroughly that they’re even willing to offer a little aid... though they won’t put themselves at any kind of risk.
INTERROGATION (Manipulation + Empathy or Intimidation - victim’s Resolve) You try to dig secrets out of a reluctant informant. • Dramatic Failure: The informant is alienated or injured beyond the point to which he will reveal information. • Failure: The informant blabs a mix of truth and falsehood -- even he may not know the difference. • Success: You get the information you were looking for. • Exceptional Success: You get the information you were looking for, and the informant is willing to continue cooperating.
INTIMIDATION (Strength or Manipulation + Intimidation - victim’s Composure) You try to get someone to do what you want by making them afraid of you. • Dramatic Failure: They don’t take you seriously, even if you knocked them around a bit. They won’t be doing what you want. • Failure: They’re unimpressed with your threats. • Success: They’re coerced into helping you. • Exceptional Success: They develop a lasting fear of you, which could make them easier to coerce in the future.
INVESTIGATING A SCENE (Intelligence + Investigation) You look for clues to what’s happened in the recent past... or tidy up so that no one else can find them. • Dramatic Failure: You find clues, but you contaminate them, or you leave evidence of your presence.
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• Failure: You find evidence, but it’s damaged and hard to interpret. Or you miss a spot in your cleanup that you won’t find out about until later. • Success: You find a clue of exactly the sort you need, or manage to significantly confuse future investigators. • Exceptional Success: You find a clue, and know exactly how it fits in, or you leave the scene immaculate and impossible to decipher.
REPAIR (Intelligence + Crafts) You try to fix something that’s broken down. • Dramatic Failure: The broken object’s a lost cause. It’ll never work again. • Failure: You’re stymied by the problem, but could come back to it in another scene. • Success: You get the thing working... for now. • Exceptional Success: The object works better than before. It won’t break again anytime soon.
RESEARCH (Intelligence + Academics or Occult) Using your existing knowledge, you look for information on a current mystery. • Dramatic Failure: You learn something, but it doesn’t help. In fact, it sets you back. If using Occult, it might also give you nightmares. • Failure: You turn up a lot of promising leads, but they’re all dead ends.
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• Success: You find the basic facts you were looking for. • Exceptional Success: You find what you were looking for, and leads towards a much bigger score of information.
SHADOWING A MARK (Wits + Stealth or Drive) You follow someone, perhaps in the hopes of ambushing them, or of finding out their destination. • Dramatic Failure: You’re caught, either by the mark or some observer that’s become suspicious of you. • Failure: The mark senses he’s being followed, and manages to lose you. • Success: You follow the mark to his destination. • Exceptional Success: You find some means by which you can continue following the mark, such as an unlocked entrance into the building he arrived at.
SNEAKING (Dexterity + Stealth) You’re trying to avoid notice by someone... or multiple someones. Maybe you want to get into a place undetected. Maybe you’re trying to break out. • Dramatic Failure: You attract a lot of attention... enough that now it’s going to be hard to get out. • Failure: You’re noticed, but still have the chance to slip away. • Success: You avoid notice and get closer to your goal. • Exceptional Success: You avoid notice and get away before anyone has another chance to catch you.
Combat Summary Chart Stage One: Intent • The players and the Storyteller describe what their characters want out of the fight. • Decide whether characters can surrender and can become Beaten Down.
Stage Two: Initiative • Everyone rolls Initiative: the result of a die roll + Dexterity + Composure. If the character has a weapon readied, apply its Initiative Modifier.
Stage Three: Attack • Unarmed Combat: Strength + Brawl - victim’s Defense • Melee Combat: Strength + Weaponry - victim’s Defense • Ranged Combat: Dexterity + Firearms • Thrown Weapons: Dexterity + Athletics - victim’s Defense A character’s Defense is normally subtracted from any attack dice pools where it applies. If she chooses to Dodge, the defender rolls her Defense as a dice pool against each attack. Each success reduces the attacker’s successes by one. If the attacker is reduced to zero successes, the attack does nothing. If the attacker has successes remaining, add any weapon modifier to the number of successes to determine how many points of Health the target loses. All weapons deal lethal damage to humans, bashing to vampires.
Stage Four: The Storyteller describes the attack and wound in narrative terms. Possible Modifiers
• Aiming: +1 per turn to a +3 maximum (aiming takes a character’s action for a turn) • All-Out Attack: +2 with Brawl or Weaponry attack; lose Defense
• Armor Piercing: Ignores amount of target’s armor equal to item’s rating • Autofire Long Burst: 20 or so bullets, no target limit pending Storyteller approval. A +3 bonus is applied to each attack roll; –1 per roll for each target after the first • Autofire Medium Burst: 10 or so bullets at one to three targets, with a +2 bonus to each attack roll; –1 per roll for each target after the first • Autofire Short Burst: Three bullets at a single target with a +1 bonus to the roll • Concealment: Barely –1; partially –2; substantially –3; fully, see “Cover” • Cover: Subtract 2 from damage for light cover, 4 from damage for heavy cover • Dodge: Double Defense, roll as a dice pool with each success subtracting one from the attacker’s successes • Drawing a Weapon: Requires instant action • Firing from Concealment: Shooter’s own concealment quality (–1, –2 or –3) reduced by one as a penalty to fire back (so, no modifier, –1 or –2) • Offhand Attack: –2 penalty • Prone Target: –2 penalty to hit in ranged combat; +2 bonus to hit when attacker is within close-combat distance • Range: –2 at medium range, –4 at long range • Shooting into Close Combat: –2 per combatant avoided in a single shot (not applicable to autofire); –4 if grappling • Specified Target: Torso –1, leg or arm –2, head or heart –3 (requiring 5 successes), hand –4, eye –5 • Surprised or Immobilized Target: Defense doesn’t apply • Touching a Target: Dexterity + Brawl or Dexterity + Weaponry; armor may or may not apply, but Defense does apply • Willpower: Add three dice or +2 to a Resistance trait (Stamina, Resolve, or Composure) in one roll or instance
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Ranged Weapons Chart Type Revolver, lt Revolver, hvy Pistol, lt Pistol, hvy SMG, small* SMG, large* Rifle Assault Rifle* Shotgun** Crossbow***
Damage 1 2 1 2 1 2 4 3 3 2
Ranges 20/40/80 35/70/140 20/40/80 30/60/120 25/50/100 50/100/200 200/400/800 150/300/600 20/40/80 40/80/160
Clip 6 6 17+1 7+1 30+1 30+1 5+1 42+1 5+1 1
Initiative 0 −2 0 −2 −2 −3 −5 −3 −4 −5
Damage: Indicates the number of bonus successes added to a successful attack. Firearms deal lethal damage against ordinary people. The type of damage may vary against supernatural opponents. Ranges: The listed numbers a short/medium/long ranges in yards. Attacks at medium range suffer a −1 penalty. Attacks at long range suffer a −2 penalty. Clip: The number of rounds a gun can hold. A “+1” indicates that a bullet can be held in the chamber, ready to fire. Initiative: The penalty taken to Initiative when wielding the gun.
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Strength 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3 3 3
Size 1 1 1 1 1 2 3 3 2 3
Example SW M640 (.38 Special) SW M29 (.44 Magnum) Glock 17 (9mm) Colt M1911A1 (.45 ACP) Ingram Mac-10 (9mm) HK MP-5 (9mm) Remington M-700 (30.06) Stery-Aug (5.56mm) Remington M870 (12-gauge)
Strength: The minimum Strength needed to use a weapon effectively. A wielder with a lower Strength suffers a −1 penalty on attack rolls. Size: 1 = Can be fired one-handed; 2 = Must be fired two-handed and can be hidden in a coat; 3 = Can be fired two-handed but not hidden on one’s person * The weapon is capable of autofire, including short bursts, medium bursts, and long bursts. ** Attack rolls gain the 9-again quality *** Crossbows take three turns to reload between shots. A crossbow can be used to deliver a stake through the heart (–3 penalty to attack rolls; must deal at least 5 damage in one attack)
Melee Weapons Chart Type Sap Brass Knuckles Baton Crowbar Tire Iron Chain Shield (small) Shield (large) Knife Rapier Machete Hatchet Fire Ax Chainsaw Stake* Spear**
Damage 0 0 1 2 1 1 0 2 0 1 2 1 3 5 0 2
Initiative −1 0 −1 −2 −3 −3 −2 −4 −1 −2 −2 −2 −4 −6 −4 −2
Strength 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 1 1 2 1 3 4 1 2
Type: A weapon’s type is a general classification that can apply to anything your character picks up. A metal club might be an antique mace, a metal baseball bat, or a hammer, while a hatchet might be a meat cleaver or an antique hand-ax. Damage: Indicates the number of bonus successes added to a successful attack. Weapons always deal lethal damage. Initiative: The penalty taken to Initiative when wielding the weapon. If using more than one weapon, take the higher penalty and increase by 1. Strength: The minimum Strength needed to use a weapon effectively. A wielder with a lower Strength suffers a −1 penalty on attack rolls. Size: 1 = Can be hidden in a hand; 2 = Can be hidden in a coat; 3+ = Cannot be hidden.
Object/Creature 1 2 3 4 5
Size Human infant, pistol Sword Human child Wolf, spear Adult human, Door
Size 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 1 2 2 1 3 3 1 4
Special Uses Brawl to attack n/a +1 Defense • Grapple Concealed Concealed • •• Armor piercing 1 • •• 9-again, two-handed 9-again, two-handed n/a +1 Defense, two-handed
Concealed: A character who wields a shield but doesn’t use it to attack can add its Size to his Defense, and uses its Size as a concealment modifier against ranged attacks. Grapple: Add the chain’s weapon bonus to your dice pool when grappling. Two-handed: This weapon requires two hands. It can be used one-handed, but doing so increases the Strength requirement by 1. * A stake must target the heart (–3 penalty to attack rolls) and must deal at least 5 damage in one attack. ** The reach of a spear gives a +1 Defense bonus against opponents who are unarmed or wield weapons of Size 1.
Size
Object/Creature 6 7 10 15 20
Size Gorilla Grizzly bear 2-seat sports car SUV Dump truck
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Type
Rating
Reinforced clothing* Kevlar vest* Flak Jacket Full Riot Gear
1/0 1/3 2/4 3/5
Leather (hard) Chainmail Plate
2/0 3/1 4/2
Armor
Strength Defense MODERN 1 0 1 0 1 −1 2 −2 ARCHAIC 2 −1 3 −2 3 −2
Rating: Armor provides protection against normal attacks and Firearms attacks. The number before the slash is for general armor, while the number after the slash is for ballistic armor. Reduce the number of damage levels your character takes by the appropriate number. Strength: If your character’s Strength is lower than that required for her armor, reduce her Brawl and Weaponry dice pools by 1. Defense: The penalty imposed on your character’s Defense when wearing the armor.
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Speed
Coverage
0 0 0 −1
Torso, arms, legs Torso Torso, arms Torso, arms, legs
0 −2 −3
Torso, arms Torso, arms Torso, arms, legs
Speed: The penalty to your character’s Speed for the armor worn. Coverage: The areas of a character protected by the armor. Unless an attacker targets a specific unarmored location (“Specified Targets”, above), the armor’s protection applies. Wearing a helmet increases the armor’s coverage to include a character’s head. * This armor is concealed, either as normal clothing (e.g. biker leathers) or being worn under a jacket or baggy shirt. Attackers have no idea the target is wearing armor until after they land a successful hit.
Disciplines The Kindred wield strange powers — a vampire could sway men’s minds, vanish from plain sight, or manifest her victim’s worst nightmares. These powers come unbidden in the vampire’s blood, and call on not just his human mind but the Beast hidden just under the surface. The Beast walks unseen through the world of men and cows lesser animals. It slips the bonds of flesh and inspires awe and jealousy from other people.
Animalism
A vampire’s Beast is not just a facet of her predatory nature, but a predator in and of itself — and it is top of the food chain. A Kindred can slip the leash of her Beast just a little to overpower weaker animals, forcing her will on them. Most Animalism powers affect predators and scavenging animals. In a city, the Kindred can call on feral cats and dogs, pigeons and crows, foxes and more rats than anyone suspects. Rural vampires can summon bats, wolves, mountain lions, and even bears — any animal that feasts on the flesh of another.
Feral Whispers •
To those she would command, a vampire must first make herself understood. So it is with beasts as well as men. A vampire using Feral Whispers overpowers the animal’s instinctive reactions and forces it to understand. She can ask questions of a creature and it must respond as best it can, and with a further slight nudge, she can compel it to obey her. A canny vampire can use magpies and crows to spy on her victims from above, or command a gangster’s mastiffs to savage their owner. The vampire talks to the animal, either using human words or by making animal sounds of her own. She can command groups of animals, such as a flock of birds or a swarm of rats, as long as she is close enough that the animals can all hear her, and she can see all of them. Cost: None Dice Pool: Manipulation + Animal Ken + Animalism Action: Instant Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The victim misunderstands the vampire’s command, giving false information when the vampire asks, or obeying a twisted version of the vampire’s command.
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Failure: The animals fear the Beast, fleeing from a superior predator. Success: You can communicate with an animal, asking it what it has perceived. Most animals can remember what has happened over the last night. Animals relate what they have encountered through the lens of their own perceptions — dogs answer in terms of smell and hearing, while birds relate what they could see. The vampire can also give the victim a simple command, equivalent to what the animal could do on its own, such as “attack him,” “follow her then return here,” “chew through these cables.” The command doesn’t normally persist for more than a night, but the vampire can add simple contingencies such as forcing the beast to go to ground if noticed, or to return once the command is complete. Exceptional Success: The animal is exceptionally obedient to the vampire, improvising to follow the spirit of the kindred’s command.
Raise the Familiar ••
If a vampire needs an animal servant, death is no obstacle. This Discipline raises a creature from the dead as her servant, infusing it with her Vitae and making it more obedient to her will. The undead creature looks like it did when it died, but can still function — a coyote crushed by an SUV has a tire track running across it but no crushed bones, and a crow with a busted wing has bone jutting out of the wound but can still fly. It doesn’t act like a normal animal — it doesn’t hunt for food, nor is it spooked by loud noises. It sleeps throughout the day, but becomes active at night. Even a human observing such an animal can tell something’s wrong, but most don’t take the time to look. Cost: 1 Vitae Requirement: Feed 1 Vitae to the corpse (included in cost) Dice Pool: None Action: Instant The vampire feeds one point of Vitae to the animal’s corpse. The animal returns to a semblance of life for a number of nights equal to (Blood Potency x animal’s Stamina). Once she has raised a beast, a vampire can feed it more Vitae; each point ensures the animal’s continued unlife as though the vampire had just raised it. The raised creature gains a semblance of intelligence and a certain low cunning, enough to follow complex orders that most animals could not understand, and to interpret the spirit of commands rather than the letter. Treat the familiar as having one dot of Intelligence. Infused with Vitae, the familiar takes bashing damage from attacks like a vampire, and does not fall unconscious or bleed out. Unlike a vampire, the familiar continues to decompose. The Vitae burning within the animal’s dead veins forges a sympathetic link it and the vampire. The vampire can use Feral Whispers on her familiar at any time, over any distance, communicating silently or issuing commands at any range. Though she must still roll to see if her familiar interpreted her command, the animal does not resist.
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Auspex
Auspex turns the Beast’s predatory instincts loose on secrets, finding points of weakness and hidden gems that the vampire can exploit to his advantage. Auspex is an internal Discipline, revealing information to a Kindred through visions that range from the direct to the hallucinatory. Other vampires have no way to know when someone is using Auspex to discover their secrets, and for that reason many Mekhet feel the stares and whispered barbs of other vampires who worry what secrets the clan of shadows will uncover next. It’s easier for a vampire to use Auspex on another person if he’s spent some time in intimate contact with her. The contact doesn’t need to be sexual, any period of platonic physical contact is enough. Digging a bullet out of someone’s side — or carefully severing her arm — reveals her secrets to Auspex. Intimate contact gives a bonus to the vampire’s roll equal to his Auspex rating.
Beast’s Hackles •
The Beast focuses on danger and weakness. A vampire who borrows his Beast’s senses can use that focus to know if someone is about to attack her, or to pinpoint the weakest person in the room. The Beast is sensitive to things that other people cannot normally see; using this Discipline can pierce Obfuscate with a contested Blood Potency + Auspex vs. Blood Potency + Obfuscate roll. Cost: Varies; the first use in a scene is free, but subsequent uses in the same scene cost 1 Vitae each. Dice Pool: Wits + Empathy + Auspex Action: Instant Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The player asks a question as though he had rolled a success; the Storyteller should give false or misleading information. Failure: The vampire’s senses cloud; his Beast doesn’t see any immediate point of weakness. Success: The player can ask one question of the Storyteller. The Storyteller’s answer should include the imagery conjured by the Beast to convey the answer. This level of Auspex can only answer immediate questions about danger or weakness; the sample questions below cover much of the information the Beast can provide. Exceptional Success: The player can ask two questions. Sample Questions • Who here is the most likely to give me what I want? Blood throbbing through the victim’s jugular vein. The sound of jingling coins from the victim’s pocket. • Who/what here is most likely to lapse into violence? The victim’s hands stained with blood. The smell of gunpowder wafting from the victim. • Who here is most afraid? The smell of urine from the victim’s pants. A whimpering sound from the victim.
• Who/what here is most likely to hurt me? Blood drying on a car crusher. Waves of hot rage boiling off the victim. • Who here is closest to frenzy? The victim’s face twists into a frenzied rictus. The taste of hot bile when facing the victim. • Is a vampire here using Auspex •••••? A pall of grey smoke hanging in the air. A feeling like someone walked over the vampire’s grave.
Uncanny Perception ••
The vampire focuses on a single victim, peeling back the layers of lies and misdirection to the truth underneath. The Beast sniffs out the victim’s dark secrets, things that she doesn’t want anyone else to know. What the vampire does with that information is up to him. Cost: Varies; the first use in a scene is free, but subsequent uses against the same target that scene cost 1 Vitae each. Dice Pool: Intelligence + Empathy + Auspex Action: Instant Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The player asks a question as though he had rolled a success; the Storyteller should give false or misleading information. Failure: The Beast unveils no secrets. Does the victim really have nothing to hide? Success: The player can ask the Storyteller one question per success. The Storyteller’s answer should include the imagery conjured by the Beast to convey the answer. This level of Auspex focuses on questions the secrets and weaknesses of a single character. Exceptional Success: The images give the vampire further insight into the questions asked. Sample Questions • What is this person’s mood? A flash of emotion on the victim’s face. A smell that the vampire associates with the emotion — the smell of fresh blood signifying rage, the sound of grinding stone signifying isolation. • What is this person afraid of right now? Shock as lights suddenly shine on the victim. The sound of dogs barking. • What is this person’s Vice/Requiem? The whispering sound of conspiracy. The smell of drugs wafting off a junkie. • What is one of this person’s Derangements? A sudden feeling of incredible depression. Shifting walls and colors as if in a hallucination. • Is this person a diablerist? The smell of brimstone and clotted blood. Thick black blood dripping off the victim’s chin. • Is this person being controlled by someone else? Marionette strings leading from the victim’s limbs up to the ceiling. A whispered voice that tells the victim what to do as she acts.
• Is this person a supernatural creature — and if I have seen them before, what is she? The taste of torn flesh. The glowing halo of a mage’s nimbus. • Who here does this person want to hurt most? A bloody dagger drops from the victim’s hand, pointing to the answer. The taste of bile when looking at the target of the victim’s ire.
Celerity
Vampires can cross vast distances in the blink of an eye, catch a thrown punch before their attacker has even moved a muscle, or snatch a gun barrel away from a man’s temple before he can pull the trigger. Celerity makes a vampire so fast that it’s as if she never has to move at all. Cost: None (or 1 Vitae per effect) Dice Pool: None Action: Reflexive Duration: Turn or permanent Like other physical Disciplines, Celerity has two types of effects: passive and active. Passive effects are “always on.” Active effects require Vitae to be spent and actions to be used. Passive: Add the vampire’s dots in Celerity to her Defense, and to the Wits or Dexterity + Athletics roll when defending actively. Celerity also permits feats of evasion far beyond human reflexes, such as dodging gunshots. Any time a Firearms or Athletics attack denies the character her normal Defense, the attacker takes a penalty on the attack equal to her celerity rating. The vampire must still be aware of an incoming attack, and capable of evasion for the benefits of Celerity to apply. If she is restrained, slumbering, or otherwise unable to respond, Celerity offers no advantage. Active: By spending a point of Vitae for each effect, the vampire may reflexively do one or more of the following. • Immediately move to the head of the initiative queue. If this function is employed as an opening move, before combat begins, it is still necessary to roll initiative, despite being assured to act first. This boost in initiative lasts only a single turn, after which point characters return to acting in the rolled order. If multiple vampires attempt to jump ahead simultaneously, they roll Blood Potency + Celerity and act in order of their results. • Spend her own action to interrupt the action of another character. This may be an attack, making it possible to disarm or damage an opponent in the instant before they act. It may be a movement, which allows the vampire to dodge harm merely by shifting out of reach. The decision to interrupt is made after another character’s intended action is declared, but before it actually occurs (i.e. before they roll). Once the interrupt action is taken, the enemy must continue with their action as declared, even if it is no longer viable. Celerity cannot interrupt reflexive actions, or actions of which the vampire is unaware. Finally, a character may not interrupt more actions in a scene than she has dots in Celerity.
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• Multiply her speed by her Celerity rating plus one. For example, a character with two dots of Celerity and a Speed of 9 has an effective 27 Speed for the turn. Moving in this way is sudden, jarring, the vampire appears to move from point to point without crossing the space in-between. This can therefore be activated to briefly avoid detection or to launch sudden surprise attacks.
Dominate
The Beast demands obedience from lesser creatures. It slips into the Kindred’s voice, modulating his tone and his words to control anyone it can. It progresses from the simple barked commands of a guard dog or a drill sergeant to creating false memories of whatever the vampire desires — or letting her steal her victim’s body to walk in the sunlight once again.
Mesmerize •
All a vampire has to do is meet her victim’s eye to catch him in her thrall. Her control isn’t obvious; she just asks him to do something and her victim acquiesces. He could unlock a door, pass her a gun — or forget ever meeting her. Some cruel vampires mesmerize passers-by just to take the rap for their crimes. Cost: None
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Dice Pool: Intelligence + Expression + Dominate vs. Resolve + Blood Potency Action: Instant Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The victim sees through the vampire’s attempt to control his mind, emboldened, he gains the Steadfast Condition. Failure: The vampire’s victim proves stronger-willed than she’d thought. Success: The vampire holds her victim’s gaze for just a second, but it’s enough to inflict the Mesmerized Condition. Exceptional Success: Your control flows over the victim’s brain like water. They want to do whatever you say. You can issue a command in the same action as mesmerizing your target. Once she has inflicted the Mesmerized Condition, the vampire can command the victim as an instant action. Her commands can’t be longer than three or four words, and she has to be direct — her control doesn’t extend to issuing vague commands. “Follow me,” “Shoot your husband,” and “Repeat after me…” are all suitable commands, while “Forget,” “Submit,” and “Do my bidding” have too much room for interpretation. She can even mess with the victim’s memory, making one statement about the current scene that victim will remember as truth. While she can still only use simple and unambiguous commands, she can pack a lot of changes into four words: “You killed that man” and “I was not here” combine to frame the victim for murder.
Iron Edict ••
Once she’s got a hotline into her victim’s mind, the vampire can take some time to play with his thoughts and memories. While it takes more of her power to relay complex commands, she goes from jerking her victim’s strings to controlling him like a puppeteer, making his ever movement dance to her tune. Cost: 1 Vitae; none if victim is in Viniculum with the vampire Dice Pool: None Requirement: The vampire must have inflicted the Mesmerized Condition on the victim Action: Instant The vampire can issue a longer command to a Mesmerized victim. This edict can be up to three sentences long, and can include a successive series of actions. The command takes two turns per sentence. As with Mesmerize, the vampire’s control doesn’t extend to commands that rely on the victim’s interpretation. The victim takes the Dominated Condition and will follow the vampire’s commands as soon as she finishes speaking them. He continues to follow the order until he has completed his task, or the sun rises. A few Kindred use Iron Edict to issue a simple command, such as “Obey my direct instructions when I give them to you,” which effectively gives them control over the minion for longer than Mesmerize — though it doesn’t extend the duration of the Mesmerized Condition.
Majesty
Majesty amplifies a vampire’s force of personality, making people like him and want to make him happy even though normally they wouldn’t give a shit about him. They like him and want to be around him just because it makes them feel good. Using Majesty isn’t like leaning forward and slipping a command behind a human’s eyes, it’s arranging the world so that people will kill — or die — for his attention.
Awe •
Awe shines a spotlight on the vampire even in a crowded room. He’s the most important person around and people want to be around him. Awe creates an aura of power, a sense that the vampire’s important, like a billionaire playboy or a movie star. He could be wearing tattered clothes, with open wounds and his face caked in shit but people still think he’s more important than them, and they want to be around him. Cost: None Dice Pool: None Action: Instant Roll Results Dramatic Failure: Sure, the vampire’s the center of attention, but for all the wrong reasons. People think he’s a boor or a slob, grabbing the limelight rather than waiting for it to be shone upon him. For the rest of the scene, he has a −2 penalty to all Social rolls.
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Failure: The spotlight finds someone else, or the vampire’s audience isn’t swayed yet. Success: All eyes fall on the vampire, and nobody cares what he’s doing. For the rest of the scene, he suffers no penalties to Social rolls from his actions or appearance — even if he’s just beaten another man to death or waved a gun in a crowded nightclub. Given a chance, he can talk his way out of minor criminal offenses and almost any social faux pas. As the center of attention, he adds his Awe raiting to any Presence rolls when talking to people around her. Anyone paying attention to him subtracts his Awe rating from any Wits + Composure rolls to notice anything other than the vampire. With a word, he can summon anyone in the room to his side — not by any mystical compulsion, but by making her aware that he wants her to approach. Exceptional Success: It feels good to have people looking at him. The vampire regains a point of Willpower.
Confidant ••
A vampire doesn’t have to shout to be heard, and in a crowd that he’s already Awed, sometimes speaking quietly is the best way to get attention. With little more than a soft voice and a knowing look, the vampire brings someone new into the fold as a trusted confidant. Cost: None Requirement: The vampire must have used Awe on the victim. Dice Pool: Presence + Empathy + Majesty vs. Resolve + Blood Potency Action: Contested; resistance is reflexive Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The vampire slips up, letting some of what he wants the victim to feel leak back into himself. He’s affected by the Swooning Condition for the victim. Failure: The victim doesn’t feel that she’s worthy of joining the vampire’s inner circle just yet. Success: The vampire successfully charms his victim. She gains the Charmed Condition. Exceptional Success: It’s incredibly hard to resist the force of the vampire’s personality. The victim’s Charmed Condition lasts for nights, rather than hours.
Nightmare
The Beast doesn’t need fear. Fear is rational, understandable — a reaction to a presented stimulus. Any idiot can make people fear them. Nightmare indulges the Beast’s desire to cause abject terror. It starts slowly at first: just for a second, you see a human face in the path of a circular saw. Your keyboard feels unaccountably warm and fleshy, but when you look down it’s fine. Walking down the street the shadows fall at the wrong angles. You bump into someone, an old friend from your
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childhood, and all you can do is run and scream. You fall into the arms of your wife, shaking and sobbing, but she’s holding you too tight and she smells wrong. Your daughter comes up behind you and sinks her teeth into your thigh. You scream in pain and bolt out of the door. Looking back, you see your daughter’s face. Only then does the real terror begin.
Dread Presence •
Everyone around the vampire feels the world go slightly wrong as she exudes a deeply unsettling aura. Even if they barely notice her, they feel a wave of fear and uncertainty. The world seems colder, everything’s just that bit more distant. People feel like someone’s watching them even when they’re otherwise alone, and for just a second they see horrible truths manifest in the world around them. Cost: None Dice Pool: None Action: Instant The vampire exudes an aura of fear for the rest of the scene that gives her a number of benefits. She adds her Nightmare dots to all mundane Intimidate rolls. People around her subconsciously register her as the cause of their fear, and they shy away from her. Her victims can act against her but their hearts aren’t in it — they can’t spend Willpower to bolster their actions, though they can still use it defensively. A Kindred can lash out against this aura of fear with his Predatory Aura, if he succeeds, he isn’t affected by Dread Presence. As a reflexive action, the vampire can conjure brief illusions. One person’s food looks rotten and maggot-ridden, another raises her steak-knife but sees a murder victim’s head on his plate. A woman reaches for a doorknob but when she pulls her hand back it’s covered in blood. These illusions can only affect two senses each, and must be small — no larger than a small dog, and no louder than a shout. They only last for a turn or two at most, but they’re always unsettling. The vampire chooses who can see each illusion, and she can only project one at a time. Though equal parts frightening and disgusting, the illusions cannot themselves cause any harm or significant pain.
Face of the Beast ••
All it takes is a glance, and the vampire can magnify one of his victim’s fears to truly horrifying levels. If she knows what sort of things her victim fears, she can choose to magnify that fear specifically, otherwise, she inspires an unguided terror that flares up in the victim’s heart without her knowing precisely what he’s afraid of. Whatever the case, the victim flees immediately. Cost: 1 Vitae Dice Pool: Presence + Empathy + Nightmare vs. Composure + Blood Potency
Action: Contested; resistance is reflexive. Roll Results Dramatic Failure: Something goes wrong. Though the victim sees visions of his fear made manifest, and stares them down. He regains a point of Willpower. Failure: The victim’s fear troubles him, but he doesn’t flee Success: The victim gains the Frightened Condition. If the vampire activates Dread Presence, she can designate himself as the source of the victim’s fear. Exceptional Success: The vampire gains a vision of precisely what the victim is so afraid of. While this has no mechanical advantage, it gives her something else to exploit.
to draw attention, nobody particularly cares or remembers. If he’s violent towards someone — if he punches someone or starts feeding in a crowded subway station — his victim will notice but everyone else must score more successes on a Wits + Composure roll than the vampire did on his activation roll to notice the vampire. The vampire’s Predatory Aura seemingly disappears so that other vampires can’t sense it. Exceptional Success: The vampire doesn’t stand out to anyone watching, even if they’re looking at photographs or video featuring him.
Obfuscate
With just a touch, the vampire can extend the muted attentions of Face in the Crowd to an object or animal, rather than himself. His subject fades out — if he occludes a desk, people subconsciously register that it’s there and won’t bump in to it, but they can’t recognize what’s right in front of them unless the vampire forces them to interact with it. Even a forensic team would only remember seeing a desk if they examined photos of the scene after the fact. Cost: 1 Vitae Requirement: The vampire must touch the object he wants to occlude, in the case of an unwilling victim, the vampire must roll to touch his opponent (Dexterity + Brawl - opponent’s Defense). The person or object cannot have Size greater than the vampire’s own (but see Suggested Modifiers). Dice Pool: Wits + Larceny + Obfuscate Action: Reflexive Roll Results Dramatic Failure: Something draws people’s attention to whatever the vampire wanted to hide. It’s the first thing they notice when they come onto the scene, and they want to find out more about it. Failure: The object or creature doesn’t fade into the background just yet. Success: For the rest of the scene, people’s eyes slide off the object. The vampire can affect an inanimate object or animal with the same effects as Face in the Crowd — people subconsciously register that the subject is present, but they’re not actively aware of it. If an observer is forced to deal with something affected by Touch of Shadow — being thrown into an occulted table or door, or bitten by an occulted dog — that observer can then recognize the subject’s existence. Since people have a hard time noticing occluded objects, the vampire can hide behind an object affected by Touch of Shadow to remain unnoticed. In order to notice the occluded object, observers must roll Wits + Composure and score more successes than the vampire gained on his roll to activate Touch of Shadow. A living creature affected by Touch of Shadow can see anything else that the vampire has Obfuscated without a roll. Exceptional Success: The victim of this power doesn’t stand out to any observer, even if they’re looking at photographs or video featuring him when the power was active.
The Beast is a hidden killer. It lurks just below the surface, unnoticed by its prey until it’s too late. Just another man in the street, entirely faceless. Just another woman passing by. Why can’t you remember what they looked like? One of them turns, and you can’t quite see his face, but he’s walking towards you. Another second and he’s grabbed you. His teeth sink into your neck and all you can think is “why won’t anyone do anything? Why won’t they help me?” Obfuscate is the reason you’ll never be sure that you’re alone again.
Face in the Crowd •
The vampire can turn his Predatory Aura inwards, walking through crowds of people who pay him no heed. As long as he doesn’t do anything to obviously draw attention to himself, nobody notices him. He’s just one more person on the street, part of the night-life of the city. People don’t shy away from him because of what he’s wearing or what he looks like. He’s just part of the city, like the rats and the graffiti. Cost: None Dice Pool: Wits + Stealth + Obfuscate Action: Instant Roll Results Dramatic Failure: Something about the way the vampire walks or how he looks draws people to him. He sticks out like a sore thumb. Anyone who was present during the scene will remember seeing him there. Failure: The vampire’s no more a face in the crowd than usual. Success: For the rest of the scene, people’s eyes just slide off the vampire. People can tell that someone’s there, but they don’t remember who he is or what he looks like; he’s just “some guy,” average height and build, average hair, average clothes. Unless the vampire’s doing something to draw people’s attention — pulling a gun, or screaming at people — or he’s in a place where someone doesn’t expect anyone else to be, everyone around him ignores him. They don’t care what he’s carrying; he could walk down the street with an assault rifle strapped across his back or a body slung over his shoulder, and as long as he doesn’t use them
Touch of Shadow ••
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Suggested Modifiers -1 -2 -3
Increase the maximum affected Size by 1 Increase the maximum affected Size by 2 Increase the maximum affected Size by 3
Protean
Every vampire is one bad day away from giving in to the Beast. Some keep the creature leashed within, holding it back and only letting it out to prey on the weak. Others indulge their Beast, reveling in their descent from an undead thing yearning for its grave to a force of savage power. A Gangrel who attains the pinnacle of Protean becomes a formless creature, nothing more than smoke and hunger.
Unmarked Grave •
With a silent command, the earth itself yawns open to embrace the vampire. She merges with the ground, becoming immune to almost any harm. She can remain there indefinitely, waiting in a cocoon of stone until the time is right for her to emerge. She does not have to find stone or mud, she can just as easily slip into concrete — as long as she has servants willing to feed her while she rests. Cost: Varies; 0 for soil or earth, 2 for concrete, 4 for metal Dice Pool: None Action: Instant The vampire sinks bodily into the earth, for as long as she desires. Once interred, she’s mostly insensible to the outside world, though she can remain conscious if she so wishes, and has a sense of the ground above her — she’s well aware if someone tries to concrete over her hiding place. Her Kindred Senses continue to function, and she remains capable of sensing the Predatory Aura. Her safe haven means another vampire’s Predatory Aura can’t force her into a fight-or-flight reaction. Should someone spill blood or Vitae upon the ground, she can absorb it. The ground dilutes Vitae enough that it can’t result in a blood bond, but to a Vitae-addicted vampire just the taste might be enough to drive her out of the ground, thirsty for more. The only way to harm the vampire is to damage or destroy the ground she resides in; she takes one point of bashing damage for each point of Structure that her haven loses. When she takes her first point of lethal damage she emerges from the ground, unable to hold herself in.
Predatory Aspect ••
All the vampire has to do is give in just a little bit, and her Beast can slip into her flesh, warping her body into a monstrous form. While every Gangrel’s Beast is different, the ways it manifests usually takes inspiration from a predatory animal of some form. Some twist their bodies to run on all fours like a wolf, while others take on the rough scales and electrosense of a shark.
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Cost: 1 Vitae Dice Pool: None Action: Reflexive By spending a point of Vitae, the vampire can manifest a small host of bestial traits. When she first learns Predatory Aspect, she picks three adaptations from the list below. From then on, she can manifest any or all of these changes for the rest of the scene by spending a point of Vitae. If none of these adaptations make sense for the character, the player and Storyteller should work together to create new ones, using these as guidelines. • Aquatic: Growing webbed hands or slick scales, the vampire can swim at the same Speed he can run on land. • Claws: Sharp claws grow from the vampire’s fingers. They give a +1 weapon modifier on all Brawl attacks; as weapons, they deal lethal damage to mortals. • Enhanced Senses: Taking on a hawk’s eyes or a dog’s sense of smell allows the vampire to hear heartbeats and see or smell blood as though his Blood Potency were two dots higher. • Extra Sense: The Kindred grows extra sensory organs, giving her tremor sense, echolocation, or electroperception that allows her to ‘see’ without using her eyes, and that give her a 360-degree field of vision. • Patagia: By growing a flap of leathery skin between her arms and torso, the vampire can glide — as long as she falls at least ten yards, she can travel thirty yards horizontally, and she takes no damage from the fall. • Prehensile Tail: The vampire grows a long, prehensile tail. She can use it to grab things as though it were an extra arm, though it doesn’t have a hand and can’t be used for fine-motor tasks like unlocking a door or firing a gun. • Quadripedal: Longer arms and shorter legs allow a vampire to run on all fours like a cheetah or wolf. When running on all fours, add +4 to her Speed and double all jump distances. • Climb: The vampire grows hundreds of insect legs, claws on his feet, or tiny barbed hairs on his body that allow him to move freely across walls and ceilings without an Athletics roll. A character can change her adaptations by spending a day in her Unmarked Grave and spending one point of Vitae for each adaptation she wants to replace. When she changes adaptation, the player should work to maintain the theme of a specific predatory creature — though she may pick a different predator to copy when the vampire’s adaptations change.
Resilience
The Kindred are walking corpses, free of the frailties of a mortal form. Their bodies are capable of great endurance, but Resilience takes that endurance beyond “great” and into “impossible.” With
Resilience a vampire could continue to act even when his body has been reduced to little more than bone and tendon. Cost: None (or 1 Vitae per effect) Dice Pool: None Action: Reflexive Duration: Turn or permanent Like other physical Disciplines, Resilience has two types of effects: passive and active. Passive effects are “always on.” Active effects require Vitae to be spent and actions to be used. Passive: Add the vampire’s resilience dots to his Stamina. This can raise the character’s effective Stamina above the normal limits imposed by his blood potency. Additionally, whenever the character receives aggravated damage, downgrade a number of points of that damage to lethal before marking it on his health track. This applies to all damage from fire, as well as other acquired banes, but not sunlight. Resilience offers no reprieve from the sun’s blazing eye. Active: By spending a point of Vitae for each effect, the vampire may reflexively do one of the following. Effects last until the start of the vampire’s next turn. No effect of Resilience may be invoked more than once in a scene. • Subtract the character’s Resilience dots plus one from all sources of damage other than fire or sunlight. This is mechanically, but not aesthetically, similar to armor. The vampire’s flesh does not harden, nor do blades and bullets bounce harmlessly away. Rather, the vampire’s body operates despite grievous injury. Even damage completely by Resilience still leaves apparent wounds. Huge gashes, shattered bones, and gaping holes are all typical. Regardless of their apparent severity such wounds do not inhibit the vampire. These wounds remain until healed with Vitae (a single point will do), or until the vampire next slumbers. • Subtract the character’s Resilience dots from all damage suffered from fire (though not sunlight). As with the
previous features, visible signs of damage remain. Even if a vampire took no damage while dashing through an inferno, they still emerge a blackened corpse. Visible wounds remain as above.
Vigor
While all Kindred possess the power to bolster their might in short bursts, Vigor allows some vampires to kick like a freight train or rend steel with their bare hands. Cost: None (or 1 Vitae per effect) Dice Pool: None Action: Permanent (or Reflexive) Like other physical Disciplines, Resilience has two types of effects: passive and active. Passive effects are “always on.” Active effects require Vitae to be spent and actions to be used. Passive: Add the character’s dots in Vigor to her effective Strength rating. Active: By spending a point of Vitae for each effect, the vampire may reflexively do one of the following. No effect of Vigor may be invoked more than once in a scene. Effects last until the start of the vampire’s next turn. •Add his Vigor dots as a weapon bonus to all Athletics, Brawl, and Weaponry attacks made this turn. This can put enormous strain on weapons, especially if the tool is not one generally intended for heavy hitting. Improvised weapons are likely to break after a turn or two of this kind of use. •Lift and hurl objects normally too unwieldy to use as weapons, such as people and even cars. Any object the vampire can lift, can be used as an improvised melee or throwing weapon. Improvised weapons have a weapon bonus equal to their Size. Objects with Size greater than five deal lethal damage to mortals, while those with Size ten or more deal lethal even to the kindred.
Life After Dark
31
INTO THE VOID This isn’t the end of the war. This isn’t the fall of the Third Reich with Hitler painting the bunker walls with his fucked-up brains— nobody’s going to cheer in the streets. You’re not going to hear the Lollipop Guild doing its rendition of “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead.” What you did was kill the jailer. Sure, the warden was an asshole. But he kept all us monsters in check. You didn’t think about that, did you? Now he’s gone, the cages are all open, and it’s time for the monsters to run free once more. We’re all bad, bad people—do you really want to see what kind of party we throw?
Introduction
At the top of it all, sitting comfortably at the zenith of the city’s nocturnal hierarchy, is the Prince. The Prince—in this city and others—represents an unholy host of things to the vampires beneath him: The Prince is oppression, the Prince is brutality, the Prince is solipsistic self-interest, the Prince is hunger and callousness and fascism. (Or, as the youngest Kindred might say, “The Prince is a dick.”) It’s all true, of course. The Prince represents all of those things. He is a corrupt figure, not at all noble. He is mired in his own desires. The Prince is lord of those younger than him and bulwark against (or slave to) those elders above him. So everyone wants the Prince gone. The covenants don’t like that he pushes his agenda above theirs. The clans not represented by the Prince’s own lineage want to see themselves on the pedestal of power. The elders grow weary that this wicked upstart is a constant thorn in their side, the ancillae see themselves as the bloated and discarded middle class, and the neonates think… well, they just think, “Fuck that guy.” So it is that night after night, year after year, whispers circle the city—carried forth by hollow conspirators and chattering Harpies—of plans to kick the pyramid out from under the Prince and let him fall on his own sword (or stake, as it were). Everybody talks about getting rid of the Prince. Few, however, actually make it happen. Maybe in their dead hearts and kinked-up bowels lurks a glimmer of instinct that tells them the truth: the Prince is a bastard and monster, yes, but he is also the cork in a bottle. In the bell of that bottle lurks a grim swarm of horror, and anybody who deigns to pop that cork will find that the shadows within are now the shadows without. The Prince
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has been holding this city back from its own baser instincts for decades now. Hasn’t anyone noticed the relative stability, the continuing Masquerade, the unbroken Elysium? Do they think that all happens magically on its own? Nobody’s suggesting the Prince is a hero, but to suggest that he doesn’t play his role is tantamount to a child’s illusion. And now somebody’s gone and fucked that all up. In fact, the players’ own characters are the ones who screwed it all up. They are the conspirators who bring the Prince down, not realizing that what they’re doing isn’t setting the city free—but rather, setting the monsters free. This product is about what happens when the city suffers a major void of power, and about navigating the horrors that swiftly move to fill that void.
What’s Inside
This scenario is broken down into three sections: In this Introduction you’ll get the background of the story to come, the full write-ups of the Storyteller characters and some other general notes. The Scenes of the story are the heart of the action. Because of the way in which storytelling games can flow, these scenes are modular and provide you with a framework upon which you can improvise, rather than locking you into rigid patterns. The Scene Cards at the end of the scenario are a quickreference resource for you to use as the Storyteller. If you don’t have the option of printing up the entirety of Into the Void, you can just print up the scene cards instead and use those to get the overall gist of the story.
Treatment
The adventure begins with a bang: In the very first scene, the characters off the Prince. It seems like a moment of triumph, but the victory lap is short-lived. Morning comes, and by the following evening, the truth has been loosed upon the city: the Prince is dead—really, truly, finally dead. The jailer is gone. The result? Chaos. Vampires feed wantonly. Political maneuverings cast aside all pretense of subtlety—you can’t call it “backstabbing” if the stake goes in through the chest. The clans and covenants all set to a boil: They want power, and they want it now.
As the nights worsen, as the madness escalates, the Masquerade strains at its stitches to contain it all. The human response is already rising to the surface as the herd unknowingly seeks to countermand the deepening shadow. Somewhere it becomes clear: the Prince had a very tight grip on this city. The response to any deposition of leadership is usually a period of chaos, but this is fucking nuts. This Prince had something special going on—some factor of control that went well beyond the norm. And so, early on in the adventure the players learn the truth: the Prince had orchestrated power and wrested control from the other vampires in the city by holding their darkest secrets above their head. He went well above and beyond the call of duty in learning the vulnerabilities and discovering the closeted skeletons of the city’s vampires, from the lowliest neonate worm to the eldest sanguinary scion. And now that he’s gone, the puppet strings have been cut. But those secrets remain; the Prince had them concealed somewhere in the city. If the players hope to restore order to the city and claim leadership for themselves, they damn well better try to find the Prince’s “box of secrets” before someone else does. Or before the city cannibalizes itself and is left a bloodless corpse.
A Chapter in Your Chronicle
This game is certainly well-served by becoming an organic part of your pre-existing Vampire: The Requiem chronicle. To do so isn’t particularly difficult, but will take some maneuvering to ensure that this adventure is a natural part of the story’s flow. First, be advised that the characters in this game are meant to be of a fairly high-level. These are not neonate characters; they are potent ancillae or young elders, most likely. Second, the conspiracy to bring down the Prince isn’t something someone concocted overnight. Whether the characters birthed this conspiracy on their own or they are shepherded forth by a Patron character (the Patron is described later in this document on p. 35), it didn’t come from nothing. The resentment and the hunger for power have been simmering for a long while. It is worth taking time not only to think about how this will build up but also taking a number of game sessions to actually start the ball rolling. Yes, this adventure begins right in the thick of it, but the overall story doesn’t have to. If the players are on board, you can build up to the first scene (“The Perished Prince”) over the course of several game sessions. Third, it’s worth putting into play a relationship with the Prince—his demise will feel all the more organic and affecting if the players get to witness the man in action.
Background and Setup Some pieces of information should be made available to the vampires right off the bat, with no roll necessary.
A Hint of the Truth
Characters (and by proxy, their players) want to feel active, not passive—they should not be dragged along to the truth but rather shown only the door. It’s up to them whether or not they care to walk through it. In this case, you want to show them how the Prince has been keeping order in the city without explicitly stating it. The backstory is therefore a good place to set this up. Someone in the last ten years went against the Prince. He or she (hereby known as The Defiant) stood up against the Prince’s presumably draconian policies and, three nights later, was beheaded on a rooftop, body turned to ash, skull left as a charred artifact. Seems a not unusual course of events—defy the Prince, end up decapitated— but how those three nights unfolded is what was unusual. Various power players across the city received packages. These packages were all different, and all seemingly tailor-made for the recipients. Each package was reflective of The Defiant in some way. One package revealed a recorded conversation where the Defiant badmouthed and conspired against a powerful Crone Hierophant (who received the tape). A second package showed a map to (and of) the Defiant’s haven and was sent to various neonates across the city.
A third package revealed forensic evidence that the Defiant was the malefactor responsible for the Final Death of a young vampire who happened to be the child of a prominent elder. (And who got that evidence? You guessed it: the prominent elder.) A fourth package was sent to the Prince. The evidence within revealed various Masquerade breaches committed by the Defiant, his coterie and his childer. So, when the time came and the Defiant wound up headless and burned, nobody can really say for sure exactly who did the deed because out of nowhere a whole lot of vampires suddenly gained motive. The truth of the whole thing is that the Prince was the one who had all this information and was the one responsible for putting it into the hands of the city’s vampires—but he put it into his own hands publicly, thus attempting to draw attention away from himself. The city’s vampires don’t know this, of course. Some may have a suspicion, but that’s all they have to go on; the situation remains hidden behind clouds of rumor. The player characters probably know the core of the situation: the Defiant went against the Prince publicly, then was the target of some kind of smear campaign just before he got his ass handed to him. If you don’t have this story connected to your pre-existing chronicle, that’s okay, we have it covered: the Defiant’s name was Kunz and he was a firebrand Carthian who refused to be contained. The important thing to note is that he wasn’t some small fish in a big pond: he was a powerful ancilla with notable connections and ambitions. It shows that even those with power can have it snatched away at the last moment.
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The Set-Up
The story begins in the set-up. It’s where you’ll provide the narrative impulse to get the game moving. Backstory is important, but don’t focus on it. The springboard to action (and thus, player interest) starts here.
Dark Secrets
The Prince possesses a treasure trove of secrets. He has something on every vampire in the city: haven locations, access codes, duped SIM cards, recordings, documents, blurry photos, letters—the works. He has something different on every vampire. Before play, discuss separately with each player exactly what he might have on them. Have the player clearly identify up to three dark secrets that few others know about the character. (It’s ideal if these dark secrets remain hidden from the other players and their characters.) The player may have an idea, or may be willing to offer the Storyteller a little creative license in coming up with some dangerous or deranged backstory for her character that has yet remained unknown. If you require it, work a roll into the mix. Have the player roll her character’s Manipulation + Stealth dice pool. Failure indicates that the Prince had three pieces of evidence serving to illuminate three of the character’s darkest secrets. Success drops this number to one revealed dark secret, whereas an exceptional success means that the character was lucky enough to have scraped by without the Prince ever having any evidence; whatever lies in the Prince’s box of secrets is inconclusive and ultimately useless. Why does this matter? First, no vampire wants to learn that another vampire holds secrets over their head. Yes, the Prince gets offed after the first scene, but it won’t be long before the players learn about the box of secrets (if they didn’t already know of it). Clearly the Prince had a threat in place: you mess with him, you get your secrets released into the wild. Even if that’s not the case, that still means the characters’ darkest secrets remain “out there” for any other vampire to discover. Second, the final scene of this piece—provided the characters make it that far—reveals a pivotal problem. The players’ characters don’t know one another’s dark secrets— though, let’s be honest, they probably want to. That final scene, when the vampires discover the box, is a turning point. Do they agree to burn the box? Throw the secrets wide open? How can they negotiate one another’s vulnerabilities? It’s like a minefield. Now, if you’re not really into those games where treachery and duplicity come into play at your own gaming table, we understand. In that case, we recommend removing the characters from this equation. Reframe the story so the reason the characters are the ones to go after the Prince is because they have nothing to lose. He never got secrets on any of them and so they remain protected.
Motivations: What’s at Stake?
Killing another vampire is a big deal. And it’s generally a big “nono” in terms of keeping order and maintaining the Masquerade. Killing the Prince is therefore the extreme fringe of this— if
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murdering a common vampire is a scary proposition, offing the Prince is pretty batshit. Thus it’s important upfront to establish the motivations of the characters. They aren’t just doing this for kicks. This is serious business that demands serious motive. It’s okay if each character has a separate motive, but it’s just as okay if they share a single motive. (In the latter case, it’s recommended that the characters belong to one coterie as opposed to merely being co-conspirators). Here you’ll find a handful of potential motivations that drive the characters. This is not an exhaustive list and you’re encouraged to come up with your own. Moreover, they aren’t exclusive to one another and in many cases can be combined to form an even more powerful motive. • Reward. Some vampires have moved past material reward, but let’s be honest: most haven’t. Money is great. So is territory. And fast cars. And blood dolls. A vampire may be willing to off the Prince for a reward—mind you, it’s probably a very big reward, but that makes the sting all the sweeter. The important thing to note here is that “reward as motivation” means that the task at hand is externally-driven; killing the Prince is, for the character, nothing personal. Someone else is the one pointing the character like a gun (and here we’ll refer you to the “Patron” section on p. 35). • Status and Allies. What’s often more important than material reward is political and social reward. A vampire is only as good as her place in the hierarchy, and if offing the Prince improves that for her in a big way, the idea becomes a lot more seductive. Note that this could go either way: it’s possible that the character has been put to the task by another individual. “Destroy the Prince and the Bishopric awaits you,” or “Cast him into Final Death and I shall owe you the biggest favor you could imagine.” Alternatively, the character may believe that offing the Prince will yield status and allies in much the same way that a knight slaying a dragon might be viewed as a hero. Obliterating the Prince is surely the way toward a bump in status, is it not? • Secrets. In general, the city’s vampires don’t know that the Prince has a box of secrets—and those that do don’t necessarily know he has something on everyone. It remains possible, however, that one or all of the characters do know this. If one of them thought to stand against the Prince (perhaps on a political issue), then it’s likely that the Prince would have issued a warning that hinted at his cache of dark secrets. As a result, it’s very possible that the motivation to attack and destroy the Prince is to reclaim and liberate those secrets for themselves—either to bury their own dark secrets or to exploit the secrets of others. • Revenge. Any Prince makes enemies. You can’t make a city without breaking a few heads. As such, revenge represents a perfectly viable motive behind his execution. If a character doesn’t like how the Prince done her wrong, well, revenge is a dish best served with an axe to the neck.
• Religion. It’s naïve to think that only humans kill one another over religion—vampires, already driven by their most basic instincts, often view their religious beliefs with an almost reptilian sense of protectiveness. Consider that the Prince (as he’s shown here) is an atheist capitalist whose only gods were blood and money. His policies on the two ostensibly religious covenants within the city kept them largely politically neutered. It makes sense, then, that a religious vampire (or a character hired by just such a religious character) would want him out of the picture. Alternately, if you’re using a Prince character of your own design, that Prince might very well be a Crone or one of the Sanctified, earning his own brand of enmity from the other side (think “religious crusade”). • Puppet. Blood is addictive, and a lot of vampires are on the hook for it: many, in fact, end up in service to other vampires. One of the characters may very well be acting at the behest of a vampiric master: a mad elder, a crass Archbishop or a callous Hierophant. • Something Far More Sinister. Killing the Prince is a significant enough event that it may demand a truly sinister reason. In this, you have unlimited options. Is the Prince a sacrifice for some kind of blood demon? Is one of the characters a diablerist? Perhaps the murder of the Prince is driven by the mysterious sect known as VII, or one of the
characters is possessed and controlled by a foul Strix spirit. It could even be that one of the conspirator characters is nothing more than an entropy-loving sociopathic monster whose only desire is to see the city go down in flames of chaos.
The Patron
This story works well without a patron character—as noted, offing the Prince is a big damn deal and is very likely born of personal motivations. Of course, nobody said those personal motivations had to be from the players’ characters—it’s possible that a Storyteller character in the city is the one harboring said motivations, and this character can then become the group’s patron. Why would a Patron have the characters perform this onerous, odious task? Check the motivations listed above and choose one for the patron; is it personal? Infernal? Political or religious? The other question to ask is: why is the patron figure not performing the task himself? Is he afraid of getting caught? Is he trying to create an alibi for himself? The patron needn’t be a single character. This conspiracy may be born of an entire covenant. If the Dragons in a city decide that they want the Prince cast down, then they might all be in on it.
The Cast Below is a cast you can use for Into the Void. We’ve only statted out a handful of characters, but below that you will find a list of other vampires that can “fill in” the remainder of the city’s hierarchy if you don’t have one ready to go. These vampires do not receive any stats, but each get a paragraph or so of information to help you drop them into a scene or two. (Obviously, should they become more important, feel free to give them stats when appropriate.)
Prince Tiberias
Quotes: “Oh-ho-ho. Come in. Have a drink. It’s been too long. What’ll you have? Blood of an Englishman?” (Socialize) “You have no idea what Hell you’ve opened up. Not just for yourselves, but for the whole city. Would you burn down a forest just to get a single fox?” (Intimidation or Empathy) “Please. This has gone too far. You don’t want to do this. I can help you. I can offer you so many things. Will you listen? Will you wait?” (Persuasion) Description: Tiberias is a hearty, physically robust ruler—a plump gut beneath a broad chest, a tangled top of red hair (coupled with a sideburns that look like fire leaping off his rough-hewn face), and hands that could crush a monkey skull. He carries himself with a rakish, almost drunken charm. It is a ruse, at least in part. Tiberias pretends to rule as a sloppy, sometimes slovenly Prince—he enjoys his food and his wine, but
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most of all he seems to enjoy ruling by “letting things fall as they may.” In reality, he’s a sharp and vicious man—the fat-bellied spider at the center of a very complicated web. He is a man who, with his box of secrets, is running a very long con, and who governs more behind the scenes than up front. It’s earned him a great deal of enmity, though few Princes can say they escape each night without added scorn—but certainly many of the vampires in the city believe that Hell holds a special place for Tiberias. Storytelling Hints: Imagine that an old English king has a few flagons of wine gurgling around his gut and you come to understand exactly how Tiberias acts most of the time—that is, until he is somehow cornered or forced into acting like a Prince. At that point, the illusionary fog clears, the lips purse or scowl, and his eyes darken. Name: Tiberias Concept: Prince That Got Himself Dead Clan: Ventrue Mental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 5, Resolve 3 Physical Attributes: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 5 Social Attributes: Presence 5, Manipulation 3, Composure 4 Mental Skills: Academics 2, Computer 1, Investigation 3, Occult 3, Politics 5 Physical Skills: Athletics 3, Brawl 5, Drive 1, Firearms 1, Larceny 2, Stealth 3, Survival 3, Weaponry 5 Social Skills: Animal Ken 2, Empathy 4, Expression 3, Intimidation 5, Persuasion 5, Socialize 5, Streetwise 3, Subterfuge 4 Disciplines: Animalism 2, Dominate 2, Majesty 2, Resilience 2, Vigor 3 Willpower: 7 Morality: 4 Initiative: 8 Defense: 7 Speed: 13 Health: 10 Blood Potency: 12 Weapons/Attacks Type VigorJuiced Haymaker
Civil War Saber
36
Damage Range Dice Pool 3(L) n/a 12
2(L)
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n/a
12
Special Must spend Willpower point to utilize Haymaker maneuver
Harmon Kale (Sheriff)
Quotes: “City’s fucked. Plunged into chaos and darkness because of what you done. That’s unacceptable. You violated the peace, so now I violate you.” (Intimidation) “Only person I trust to step into the void on this one is me. I’m making a play for the city, an’ I’m the only one who knows how it’s really done.” (Politics) “I can give you the carrot, or I can give you the stick. The carrot is you help me lock this city down and I give you some territory, maybe a better title. The stick is… well, we don’t talk about the stick.” (Persuasion) Description: Kale’s built like a fire-plug: round chest, meaty fists, bulldog face. He isn’t particularly charismatic, nor is he all that attractive—it’s why the role of sheriff has been ideal for him. It grants him a measure of power and authority over the city’s vampires without making him the face of the city. He can operate in shadow, be equal parts “tough goon” and “long arm of the law,” and play good cop/bad cop all by himself. He’s long been the Prince’s right hand man when it comes to keeping order in the city; Kale’s been the one who has done most of the collection for the Prince’s mighty box of secrets. Kale is equal parts “Sheriff” and “Head of the Secret Police.” Thing is, Kale’s always wanted more. He has long felt that in reality, he’s been the one keeping the cap on things—the Prince has just been a figurehead. A very important figurehead, no doubt, but he’s been the guy with his hands on the reins, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that, despite being the Prince’s go-to guy and being the one who has collected most of the Prince’s prized collection, Kale has no idea where the
Prince actually keeps this mythic collection of secrets. He knows that if he can get to it, it’ll put him in a position of unparalleled power—more specifically, it’ll allow him to claim the mantle of Prince. A curious thing: Kale doesn’t really want power for the sake of power. He finds it distasteful. But he thrives on authority and is obsessed with keeping order, which is what fuels his drive. Storytelling Hints: Kale is gruff and straightforward, but that doesn’t mean more isn’t going on beneath the surface. He’s always playing an angle, and is far craftier than he seems. He’s got the demeanor (and face) of a bulldog, true. But he’s got the mind and heart of a fox. Name: Harmon Kale Concept: Beleaguered Sheriff Clan: Mekhet Mental Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 4, Resolve 4 Physical Attributes: Strength 5, Dexterity 3, Stamina 5 Social Attributes: Presence 4, Manipulation 3, Composure 4 Mental Skills: Computer 2, Crafts 2, Investigation 5, Medicine 1, Occult 3, Politics 3 Physical Skills: Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Drive 3, Firearms 3, Larceny 3, Stealth 5, Survival 2, Weaponry 4 Social Skills: Empathy 3, Intimidation 5, Persuasion 3, Socialize 3, Streetwise 5, Subterfuge 5 Disciplines: Auspex 2, Celerity 5, Obfuscate 2 Willpower: 8 Humanity: 5 Initiative: 9 Defense: 6 Speed: 13 Health: 10 Blood Potency: 5 Weapons/Attacks Type
Damage Range
Remington M870 12 Gauge
4(L)
20/40/80
Dice Pool 6
Special
Amelie (The Prince’s Attaché)
Quotes: “Hey, to hell with you. I’m free, and death is short, and now it’s every blood junkie for herself.” (Politics) “I hold the keys to the kingdom. You didn’t know that, do you?” (Subterfuge)
“Tiberias, he loved me. He trusted me. He made me his. And so he gave me the greatest secret in the city, and now I’m going to use it to keep my head attached to my shoulders. The bidding starts in one hour.” (Persuasion) Description: Amelie is a waifish pixie-girl with closecropped dark hair, wearing a black pinstripe suit just a bit too large for her. (This was what Tiberias demanded she wear, and if the characters catch her unawares, she might have dressed in a white wife-beater and a pair of baggy cargo pants.) Amelie has long been Tiberias’s attaché—she has served as advisor, liaison, and lover for a pair of decades. It was not her choice; her sire (long dead) made the first of many grievous errors and as a result was forced to give his childe to the Prince as restitution. The Prince bound her to him and came to love her. She, too, came to love him but only because of the bond—now that Tiberias is gone, she feels free, unburdened by her fetters. As a character, Amelie remains in an interesting place should you care to use her beyond this adventure. She could really go either way now that she’s free. She will certainly seek to “find herself,” but does this mean she drags herself out of Tiberias’s long, dark shadow, or does it mean she only becomes more of a monster in turn? Storytelling Hints: Amelie is finding her feet, so to speak— she is equal parts brash and cowardly. It’s as if she wants to spit in the eye of the Danse Macabre so bad, her bravura keeps pushing past her fear and rising to the surface.
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Name: Amelie Villarosa
of God. He yearns for a violent crusade to cleanse the city of its naysayers, but the Prince has been holding him back.
Concept: Broken Doll Clan: Daeva Mental Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 3 Physical Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2 Social Attributes: Presence 3, Manipulation 4, Composure 3 Mental Skills: Academics 2, Computer 2, Crafts 2, Investigation 4, Occult 2, Politics 1 Physical Skills: Athletics 4, Brawl 1, Drive 2, Larceny 4, Stealth 4, Weaponry 2 Social Skills: Empathy 2, Expression 4, Intimidation 1, Persuasion 3, Socialize 2, Subterfuge 3 Disciplines: Auspex 2, Celerity 2, Dominate 2, Majesty 2 Willpower: 6 Morality: 6
Harpy: Blackmoore (The Comedian)
Ventrue Dark Secret: Despite all his callousness and Harpy judgment, Blackmoore still has a mortal family that he keeps in touch with and protects. Blackmoore is equal parts “Tim Gunn from Project Runway” and “court jester.” Though he’s not gay, he acts the stereotype: sassy, snide, cruel, always fast with a jibe or a verbal riposte. If he had a Social Fighting Style, its opening move would be, “Oh, Snap.” The thing is, despite all the jokes and hilarious cruelty, he’s very good at a) knowing all the most forbidden gossip while keeping to himself until it’s advantageous to release it and b) knowing how to really make it hurt. He can sting the most stalwart of monsters. Of course, he never turned his wicked tongue against the Prince… because he’s one of the Kindred in town who knows full well about the box of secrets.
Initiative: 8 Defense: 7
Hierophant: Daciana (The Monster)
Speed: 15 Health: 7 Blood Potency: 3 Weapons/Attacks Type
Damage Range
Straight Razor
0(L)
na
Dice Pool 5
Special na
Vampires of the City
Below you’ll find a handful of vampires (in most cases, those potent Kindred who sit closer to the top of the pyramid than the bottom) for use in this adventure. With each you will find the vampire’s clan and any dark secrets the vampire possesses (important in terms of the Prince’s “box of secrets”).
Cardinal: Thabit (The Hand of God)
Daeva Dark Secret: Was once a violent diablerist, uses forgotten Theban Sorcery to hide it as he claims it was the “hand of God” that made him do those things. Thabit is a self-righteous brute. His version of the Sanctum is walled-off and restrictive: a castle in which those who belong are protected and those who do not are held outside the gate. His version of the Danse Macabre is an exalted condition, but only if you accept God and the story of Longinus. He cares not to preach. He has little interest in convincing you of the glory
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Nosferatu Dark Secret: The evidence the Prince possesses is about where Daciana sleeps. She’s very paranoid and does not want that information “out there.” Daciana is a night terror—an ancient, decrepit elder who has carved out a pretty good swath of territory across the city’s park system. Despite being a possibly insane and monstrous elder, Daciana remains as an active part of the Circle of the Crone. She serves as Hierophant, yes, leading the local cultists in the various rites and services. But she also serves as an emblem of the Crone herself—Daciana even claims to be the childe of the Crone. As such, her role as leader of the local Crones is not just as a taskmaster or actor; she is also a creature who earns her worship directly. With the Prince gone, she knows that the lock has been knocked off the cage, and she has little interest in restraint or prudence. The covenant—with her at its head—must be ascendant at any cost.
Judex: Atticus (The Rational)
Ventrue Dark Secret: Was once a prominent Carthian in a different city under a different name (Aaron). Atticus has long been neutered. Yes, he’s the standing Judex in a city full of Invictus, and yes, the Prince was himself Invictus. But the Prince chose to mediate disputes himself (or have Sheriff Kale do it), thus leaving Atticus relatively toothless in the face of conflict. Atticus wasn’t without tasks, of course; nobody wants a bored Judex wandering around. But the conflicts he was called upon to mediate were thin and shallow, divisions that could have been bridged by a neonate with a year of the Requiem
under his belt. Now, the shackles are off. The Prince is gone. Atticus—judgmental, rational, icy—is ready to work.
Kogaion: Saladin (The Obsessive)
Mekhet Dark Secret: He has been accused of giving away the Order’s secrets to outsiders. The Prince, however, intervened and ensured that the letters from the seven other Kogaions never made it to their recipients. Like many Kogaions, Saladin is an obsessive hermit driven to the brink of madness by his consuming need to study the occult forces behind the city, its construction, and its politics. He believes he will be able to predict the next Prince by examining the occult forces surrounding the city at this time, which causes him to leave his penthouse tower and descend into the fray for the five days that comprise this adventure.
Master of Elysium: Owen (The Ludicrous)
Daeva Dark Secret: Owen has a ghoul lover, Miranda. He is technically her master and her keeper, and that role plays out in public quite nicely. But it’s not the entire truth. In reality, Owen has given himself to her completely: she owns him body and soul. Miranda is running the show—and that means she is essentially the Master of Elysium, not him. Owen’s Elysium is full of vampiric “bread and circuses.” He is the king of pomp and circumstance, establishing lunatic carnivals and orgies and balls to keep the city’s Kindred amused (and to keep them from ripping out each other’s throats). Owen himself is, as his name suggests, ludicrous. If the vampires of the city released a “Blackwell’s Worst Dressed” list of the year, he’d be top of the list every time. Yes, it’s high fashion, but in the lowest way possible. Owen didn’t like the Prince—ruse or no, he found Tiberias slovenly, careless and a real lout. But he also recognized that the Prince was the one who put him in the role and who kept him there by dint of containing his secrets; in this sense, Owen is one of the few within the city who actively misses the Prince’s control over the city, because now his role is threatened.
Prefect: Quinn (The Madam)
Ventrue Dark Secret: Quinn is blood-bound to Daciana, and is a secret Crone worshipper, a fact that would not sit well with her Carthian servitors. They call Quinn “the Madam” not only for her lucrative prostitution racket, but because she is willing to sell the body of her covenant; for any goal, at any price. Carthians are asked, influenced, or ordered to perform tasks for the rest of the
city—bodyguard, dancer, debate moderator, blood wrangler. And Quinn is behind every one, pimping out her own people to meet her private ends. But just as Quinn whores out her own people, the Prince reserves the right to call on Quinn to perform secret tasks for him. She’s been drenched in resentment in so long she may well throw a party.
Clan Speaker Daeva: : Mercedes The Blasphemer
Dark Secret: Mercedes has exquisite taste; so particular that she’s had to breed it into a large private herd she keeps sequestered outside the city. The bloodbaths she holds in her private mansion would put the Bathories to shame. When she’s not presiding over her personal slave farm, Mercedes is an advocate for neonate representation in requiem politics, and a powerfully empathetic, nominally unaligned voice. (She is actually a member of good standing within the Ordo Dracul, but does not campaign under their name.) She cultivates a humane and gentle public personae, and has acquired a subtle army of idealistic young vampires who see in her a symbol of reform and freedom.
Clan Speaker Gangrel: Robicheaux (The Domesticated)
Dark Secret: Robicheaux claims to be about a hundred years old—and that is a tremendous lie. This Gangrel is actually well over a thousand years old. But the years have not been kind to his mind and he finds it easier to play younger. If anyone found out that his blood was of significant potency, they might come after him. The city’s Gangrel don’t much like Robicheaux. They call him “domesticated,” because he’s like a wolf who has become a dog—a lap dog, at that. Robicheaux is a weak-kneed, bentspined “noble savage”—a wild man dragged out of the Bayou (or so the story goes) and turned civilized. He’s now a hungry politico who will give his vote to whoever is standing downwind. A small conspiracy of Gangrel now wants to drag him away and “reintroduce” him to his wild side by whatever means possible.
Clan Speaker Nosferatu: Grolsch (The Brown Recluse)
Dark Secret: Grolsch is, yes, a powerful Nosferatu elder. He is also “Karl,” the not-so-powerful leader of a rag-tag Unaligned neonate coterie known as the “Red Scare.” Grolsch is political, while Karl wants to tear down the political structure. Ultimately, he does so to undermine any attempts by the “lower class” to bring down those atop the pyramid. How does he keep up the ruse? Grolsch never shows his face: he always wears a
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mask that is reportedly bolted to his misshapen skull. Karl’s face, however, is always on display and hard to forget: noseless, with a mouth full of fangs and bloodshot eyes. Grolsch is the king of the subterranean spaces, and can be found in every shadow and around every dark corner in the city (hence his epithet, the Brown Recluse). But despite being the leader of the Nosferatu warren beneath the city, he’s alarmingly political as far as the Freaks go—he’s forever active in campaigning and politicking for his own weird pet causes.
Clan Speaker Mekhet: Siobhan (The Go-Getter)
Dark Secret: Siobhan has long been the keeper of the city’s mortal political dynasties—the Allertons, the Whitworths, the Macbrides. Common vampire wisdom exhorts the bloodsuckers to stay away from directly manipulating important mortals, but Siobhan has ignored that advice for centuries. She doesn’t just control these families—she has integrated herself into them, nesting there as the leader of various shadowy blood cults. No, the Illuminati don’t control local politics, Siobhan does. And she wants that kept secret. Siobhan is not the typical cold, stodgy Mekhet. She dresses brightly, she smiles, her voice has a lyrical lilt. She could sell milk to a cow: her words are that compelling even without the judicious use of her Disciplines. It’s not a ruse, exactly—she really is that way. But it betrays what is for her a completely eroded sense of Humanity. She is debased in ways one cannot even imagine—behind those bright eyes are the memories of countless human sacrifices, endless tortures and blood-soaked orgies.
Miscellaneous Enemies
Throughout this adventure, we will refer to a number of enemies that may plague the characters through the various scenes and encounters.
Cop
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 2, Resolve 3, Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Presence 3, Manipulation 1, Composure 3 Skills: Investigation 2, Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Firearms 3, Weaponry 3, Stealth 1, Intimidation 1 Attacks: • Pistol: 6 (Dexterity 3, Firearms 3); Damage +2L; Initiative -3 • Baton: 5 (Strength 2, Weaponry 3); Damage +1B; ; Initiative -1 Defense: 3 (2 In Armor) Armor: 1/3 (Kevlar Vest) Merits: • Cover Combat: Cops reduce the penalty to their rolls for firing from behind cover by one point.
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• Report In: A cop can access and use their radio easily while performing other actions, they can both report in and take a combat action at no penalty to their roll. Tactics: Modern police officers carry tasers and pepper spray, which they will usually default to using unless they expect lethal danger. Both of these are wholly ineffective against Kindred. However, police are trained to call for back up the second they expect any form of physical danger, and report their position frequently. Thus while a single officer may go down quickly, they tend to bring about serious repercussions.
Gangbanger
Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 2, Resolve 3, Strength 4, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3, Presence 3, Manipulation 3, Composure 2 Skills: Athletics 1, Brawl 3, Firearms 1, Weaponry 2, Intimidation 3 Attacks: • Knuckle Duster: 7 (Strength 4, Brawl 3); Damage +0B; Initiative -0 • Knife: 6 (Strength 4, Weaponry 2); Damage +0L; Initiative -1 • Pistol*: 3 (Dexterity 2, Firearms 1); Damage +2L; Initiative -3 *Not all gangbangers carry guns, but those who do love to threaten with them. Defense: 5 Armor: 1/0 (Leather Jacket) Merits: • Brawling Dodge: Gangbangers use Brawl instead of Athletics when calculating defense. • Damage Tolerance: The hard knock life numbs one’s senses, gangbangers don’t take wound penalties from bashing damage. Tactics: A long gangbanger isn’t much of a threat, indeed at the first sign of real trouble they’ll generally hightail it away. However, in groups they become extremely tenacious, likely to follow combatants well beyond the point of safety. This can be both a huge threat or great advantage, depending on how the vampire is handling the situation.
Daeva Thug
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 2, Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4, Presence 3, Manipulation 3, Composure 2 Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl 4, Weaponry 2, Stealth 3, Intimidation 2 Attacks: • Fists: 9 (Strength 3, Brawl 4, Vigor 2); Damage +0L; Initiative -0
Defense: 6 Armor: 0/0 Blood Potency: 2 Vitae: 7 Disciplines*: Majesty 1, Celerity 1, Vigor 2 Tactics: Daeva favor a strong first impression and a stronger opening shot, when combat starts a Daeva thug is likely to jump the queue with celerity and put in a heavy, vigor powered attack. Indeed they’ll tend to favor activation of their physical disciplines; interrupts, long dashes, and heavy hits, over the use of vampire’s inherent advantages. Fortunately, however, being kindred they know a fight between two of their kind is liable to invoke the prince’s wrath so they’ll try to resolve most altercations with their predatory aura before turning to fists.
Special Forces/SWAT
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 3, Strength 3, Dexterity 4, Stamina 3, Presence 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 3 Skills: Athletics 3, Brawl 3, Firearms 4, Weaponry 4, Stealth 2 Attacks:
for unexpected action. Unlike normal cops soldiers are prone to use more lethal force, especially once their life has proven to be at risk. Military training teaches them to be thorough as well, they’ll shoot a downed vampire in the head just to confirm the kill, and willingly shatter bones and dislocate joints while grappling. Worst of all they tend to be adaptive and organized, they aren’t likely to take off on their own, and if bullets aren’t working the team will think of something else.
Vampire Hunter
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 2, Resolve 4, Strength 3, Dexterity 2, Stamina 4, Presence 2, Manipulation 4, Composure 3 Skills: Occult 3, Athletics 2, Brawl 1, Firearms 2, Weaponry 4, Stealth 3 Attacks: • Stake: 6 (Strength 3, Weaponry 4); Damage +0L; Initiative -2 • Pistol: 4 (Dexterity 2, Firearms 2); Damage +1L; Initiative -2
• Knife: 7 (Strength 3, Weaponry 4); Damage +0L; Initiative -0
• Improvised Flamethrower: 3 (Dexterity 2, Firearms 2, Penalty -1); Damage +1L; Initiative -6 Defense: 4 Armor: 3/5 (Riot Gear) Merits:
• Assault Rifle: 8 (Dexterity 4, Firearms 4); Damage +3L; Initiative -3 Defense: 6 (4 in armor) Armor: 3/5 (Riot Gear) Merits:
• Staking Specialty: Hunters train in the tactical application of the wooden stake, if they score at least three successes on an attack they may forgo their normal damage to stab the vampire through the heart, paralyzing them.
• Krav Maga: Add two additional dice when Brawling.
• Hardened: The hunter’s resolve and composure are considered two dots higher when used to resist or contest vampiric Disciplines. Tactics: Vampire hunters greatest advantage is also their greatest weakness, paranoia. They know vampires exist and thus they see them around every corner. Hunters are good a picking up on the telltale signs of discipline usage, they avoid eye contact, stay close to crowds and don’t blunder around at night. In combat this is especially evident, hunters rarely fight fair. They attack during the day, use fire, and will attempt to draw attention to monsters when ambushed hoping that the fear of discovery with dissuade a vampiric attacker. Most importantly, however, a good hunter is a cautious one, they know what they are up against and won’t be as easily goaded into traps as most other foes.
• Unarmed: 6 (Strength 3, Brawl 3); Damage +0B; ; Initiative -0
• Marksmanship: Soldiers are well trained marksmen, they double the bonus dice added by taking an aim action. • Cover Combat: Cops reduce the penalty to their rolls for firing from behind cover by one point. • Small Unit Tactics: SWAT units operate best in small groups, supporting each other and getting one another’s back. All characters with small unit tactics add a +1 bonus to all physical rolls while in close proximity to one another, and increase their defense by 1. Tactics: Spec ops and anti-riot units are bad news, even for the indred. They are well trained, well composed and prepared
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Scene Flowchart Good Night, Sweet Prince Secrets on the Wind, Like Blood in the Water
Pandora’s Box
Dead Man’s Party
Fire It Up! Fire It Up!
Hanging Posse
Pick a Side, Any Side
SWAT Got You Surrounded, Son Dragged Into The Dark Masquerade, Shattered An Army of Inquisitors The Terrorism Tango
The Five-Day Forecast First Night (Party Down)
Second Night (Party Down)
Third Night (Agitation)
Fourth Night (Boilover) Fifth Night (Apocalypse)
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Scenes Scene Flowchart
The narrative of Into the Void unfolds in a way that allows the characters (and their players) a hefty measure of freedom. The adventure itself features only three truly critical scenes: a beginning scene (kill the prince), a middle scene (discover location of the box of secrets), and an ending scene (reclaiming the box of secrets). The other scenes listed in this SAS are ultimately optional “encounter” scenes.
The Five-Day Forecast
Into the Void is meant to unfold over the course of five nights—the characters may complete the story before those five in-game nights are up, but unless the Storyteller decides otherwise, the adventure won’t go beyond those five nights. Over these five nights, the tensions in the city according to the following scheme: First Night: “Party Down.” The news is out: the Prince is dead. The atmosphere is festive, celebratory, a real party. Of course, the way monsters party isn’t exactly sane: Masquerade breaches pop up around the city as the vampires wantonly fill up on blood. For the most part, the vampires keep the peace with one another on this night, but they’re damn sure not
keeping the peace with the human herd. If anyone has claimed themselves to be the Prince on this night, the narrative doesn’t stick: nobody believes it, and frankly, nobody really cares. Second Night: “Hangover.” The chickens come home to roost. Increased vampire activity looks on the surface to be crime-related, and so the city puts out police in force. Nobody is restraining the monsters, and so their response isn’t to retreat to the shadows but rather, to push back. Meanwhile, the city’s dominant nocturnal predators begin to jostle for position, each claiming some kind of ownership over the city, justifying why he or she should end up in the city’s seat of power. The problem is, no one vampire has the cachet or the muscle to really back this up, so the void will remain unfilled. Resentment and madness breed in the margins. It’s becoming clear: offing the Prince broke the picture into a thousand puzzle pieces, then shook up the box. Now, nothing is certain. No outcome is guaranteed. Third Night: “Agitation.” The dominant players and factions in the city’s vampire society are now in competition to show who has the biggest, sharpest teeth: it’s everybody against everybody. Normally, the Danse Macabre is a slow-burning chess match, but tonight? Tonight it’s a brutal hockey match-up with lots of blood on the ice. Violence ensues. Chaos reigns. The mortal authorities push back even harder, believing this to be some kind of “underworld gang violence,” which puts a lot
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Plotting
They say real estate is about location, location, location. Telling a good story is about escalation, escalation, escalation. This tale starts off innocuous enough, but swiftly swells with an intensification of threat from all sides: physical, moral, spiritual, social. The characters will have respite, but it shouldn’t be long-lived. If a scene seems to exist without tension, feel free to mine other scenes for new ideas and ways to ratchet up the conflict. Remember that in life, we hope to avoid conflict, but in fiction, we hope to achieve it.
of innocent humans in the cross-fire. Real gangs take notice, and they start acting up—some just because they can smell a power grab, some at the behest of unseen masters. Fourth Night: “Boilover.” Up until this point, the city’s elders have remained largely silent on the city’s future. Many are slow to act in general, preferring instead a slow, calculating approach. That is no longer possible. The city’s power hierarchy is in shambles, and so they must act. Unfortunately, they do not
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act as a single entity. Each elder is his own tangle of motives and peccadilloes, and as a result each elder chooses to back a different horse (be it individual or faction). This fails to resolve anything—and in fact only ratchets up the conflict—because now the stage is complicated by a host of definitely powerful and possibly insane elders. Violent clashes spill over into the street. The Masquerade is in tatters. Vampiric authorities begin to weigh in: Inquisitors sent from Rome, negotiators arriving on behalf of the First Estate, elders from neighboring cities (who fear spill-over damage), and so forth. The news goes out that tomorrow night, the mortal authorities are putting the city under martial law. With martial law comes a curfew… and a military presence. Fifth Night: “Apocalypse.” Apocalypse infers the end of the world, but it also translates into revelation, and both of those things are apropos, here. Martial law is in place. The military comes rolling in to set up a presence and to quash rioters. The elders use their considerable power to complicate the lives and unlives of both mortal and immortal competitors. Nobody is Prince. The shit has hit the fan, and now the fan has exploded and the drapes are on fire. And so comes a shining light early in the night: Amelie, the Prince’s attaché, emerges from hiding. She reveals the existence of the Prince’s box of secrets, and makes it clear that she knows where it is. She will offer the box in its entirety to the highest bidder—but the bid must include safe passage out of the city. Amelie doesn’t want to be here anymore.
GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE Overview
The characters-as-conspirators have trapped the Prince—and now it’s time to drag the bastard into Final Death. This is the first domino’s toppling that leads to the city’s plunging into chaos.
that you’re really starting this way; surely it’s a trick? Have Tiberias act suspiciously, as if this might be a reverse trap. You may want to hint that this is the climax and the rest of the story will be a flashback building up to this point. When they finally take the Prince’s head as a trophy, they’ll be forced to wonder: what now? What can top this?
Description
Character Goals
It’s early in the morning. The sun will be up in the next hour. Already the sky has that purple tinge bleeding along the horizon’s edge. Tiberias kneels before you, grinning, eyes flashing. On the surface he seems defiant, but as you press him, the façade trembles and the cracks begin to show. He sees the writing on the wall. Nothing to be done, now—or is there? He begins to beg—like any creature at the end of its life, he struggles to make sense of it and bargain his way out. Whatever you want, he’ll offer it. As if that matters. You have two ways into this scene. The first is that you and the player group sit down before this scene really begins and ask the question, “How do you kill the Prince?” The question comes with no wrong answers, really—they’re ultimately describing the machinations that will lead to this scene. Do they trap him in the basement of a club? Do they somehow attack his haven, heist-style? Can they use some drunken Irish girl as bait? (His favorite.) From that point, you play out the scene in its entirety. The Prince isn’t going down without a fight, and if given half an opportunity, he’ll run. Ultimately, the characters have the advantage, as they outnumber him—but if you play this scene out accordingly, expect them to suffer at his hands. He will not go quietly. The other way into this scene is to begin at its end. This might be best if you don’t have a lot of time to run this adventure. Jump right in with the characters having surrounded him and with Tiberias on his knees—he moves from cocky to cajoling, from blustery and brash to begging in short order. You can have the players describe how the scene built to this point, but it’s purely for narrative expression. In this mode, there’s no need to roll dice.
Storytelling Goals
You’re coming into this scene with the energy of a climactic narrative moment. This scene should feel like it’s the end—this is a huge deal. In video game terms, Prince Tiberias is the end boss. This should feel like an insane way to open a story: offing the Prince? Really? It can’t be this easy. The players should be made to feel uncertain
Establish motivations and destroy the Prince.
Actions
Below are some of the actions that may impel the scene toward its conclusion. Note that these are all focused on the Prince. If Tiberias feels he has an advantage, he’ll try to engage in combat in an effort to hinder the characters. If he feels overwhelmed, he’ll run for it. And, when he’s finally left with no other option, he’ll try to talk his way out.
Combat Attacks
Dice Pool: Any appropriate attack roll Action: Instant Hindrances: The Prince’s Animalism may invoke a fear frenzy; the Prince’s Dominate may attempt to manipulate one of the characters. Help: It’s perhaps been a long night and the Prince is low(er) on Vitae; he’s alone; if the characters so declared it, consider the possibility that the Prince has consumed drunken or drugged blood and thus suffers a -3 penalty to his own attacks
The Chase
Dice Pool: Stamina + Athletics vs. Stamina + Athletics Action: Instant and Contested Hindrances: Tiberias can boost his speed with his limited dots in Vigor. Further, he’ll do more than run—he’ll knock down obstacles to separate him and his pursuers (-3), he’ll jump across rooftops or over dangerous territory (-3), and he’ll do whatever it takes to put himself ahead. Help: The Prince might be suffering wound penalties already (-1 to -3) and could be lower on blood; a character might have Vigor or, even better, Celerity to boost Speed; the Prince may run into some obstacles all on his own (-3).
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Roll Results Dramatic Failure: Character fumbles, takes a point of lethal damage (goes through a window, scrapes across a piece of metal, tumbles down steps, etc) Failure: Character fails to make any ground. Success: Character gains ground on enemy. Exceptional Success: Character inadvertently creates difficulty for pursuers (knocks over trashcans, puts traffic or a train between groups) and causes them a -5 penalty on their next roll.
Navigating the Prince’s Pleas
This isn’t an action in the strictest sense—but it is likely where the scene will end up presuming the characters didn’t manage to preemptively destroy Tiberias. Tiberias will attempt to talk his way out of the situation. He’ll use Dominate if need be. (Characters may bolster themselves against his Dominate before this scene by spending a Willpower to gain +2 to resistance.) He’ll also beg and make offers—and as the Prince, he can make some very promising offers. The trick here is that he cannot make equitable offers across the board. He can’t promise that each character will become his second in command. He can’t give each character the sweetest hunting grounds in the city. There’s only so much reward to go around, and this is what complicates his plea—do the characters squabble over the choices? Do they see that this is ultimately just a way to get them to turn against one another?
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Consequences
It’s worth asking right up front: what if Tiberias succeeds? What if he escapes, or what if he manages to talk his way into a stay of execution? Those things are perfectly acceptable, if a bit tricky—it certainly complicates the rest of this adventure as written. Which leaves you with two options: One, fuck it. The story is what the story is, and the players have made the choice for the characters. The Prince survives and a whole other story will grow out of this scene. Let it happen organically. Two, game on. Sure, the characters didn’t manage to finish the job, but later that night someone else damn sure does. Imagine it: they let him go or he escapes, and what happens the next morning? The news comes out that the Prince is dead. A mystery ensues: who finished the job? Did Amelie or Harmon find the Prince in a weakened state, and decide to take advantage? If the characters were driven to this point by a Patron figure, did their Patron have a “back up plan” handled by other conspirators? Or is it possible that the Prince, smelling the blood in the water, decided to flee the city before dawn and create a false narrative about his own murder? In any of these instances, the course of Into the Void remains largely as written (though it may now feature a minor “murder mystery” component).
SECRETS ON THE WIND, LIKE BLOOD IN THE WATER Overview
This isn’t so much a single scene as it is a collection of actions that lead the group to discover the existence of the Prince’s box of secrets.
Description
Note that the pieces of this scene can be interspersed with any of the “Encounter Scenarios” found later in this document (as always, feel free to come up with your own to match any pre-existing chronicle elements in play).
Character Goals
The rumors are true: the Prince has more than just his drunken charm and casual intimidation to keep the city’s blood-hungry monsters in line. He was the keeper of a cache of secrets, secrets that, if unearthed, would kick over the hive. No vampire wants his dirty, gore-caked laundry hung out for all to see. That’s how the Prince kept order. This scene involves the characters uncovering the truth about the existence of the box of secrets. It is not, strictly speaking, a necessary scene—if enough time passes, eventually Amelie will come out of hiding and offer the box to the highest bidder.
This is tricky, because the characters don’t necessarily know that they have this as a goal—it’s hard to have as a goal a thing you don’t know exists in the first place. The goal, then, is really to find an edge. The characters just don’t have it. The city is sliding swiftly into violence, and if they want to get any kind of foothold, they need something, anything, to give them that edge. So the goal here is the characters reaching out and looking for a hook, a handhold, some kind of advantage. That advantage just so happens to be the Prince’s box of secrets.
Storytelling Goals
Actions
The value in this scene is that it puts additional stress on the characters—but it also offers them a solution that as yet few others in the city possess. After the end of the last scene (“Good Night, Sweet Prince”), the characters may be inclined to believe that the city will simply fall into a new order—it’s even possible that one of the characters will name himself Prince. (Though how this sits with the other characters remains to be seen.) The problem is, order and stability just won’t stick. As the nights go on, all manner of vampire will name themselves Prince—just because a vampire calls himself that doesn’t mean the title holds water. One has to have the authority to lay claim to the highest position in the land, and as it stands no one vampire holds the edge over all others. In the absence of that kind of authority, the city will plunge into chaos. However, the discovery of the existence of the box of secrets is a big deal. It’s how the Prince gained an edge, and it’s similarly how any vampire will do the same. With this, you create a great McGuffin that everybody wants (but doesn’t yet know about) and a ticking clock. The characters must surely realize that if they don’t get to the box soon enough, somebody is going to get it—and then one devil will replace another.
Investigating the Prince
Dice Pool: Wits + Investigation Action: Instant (but takes at least an hour) Hindrances: Assuming that the characters are investigating the Prince’s haven (or at least a satellite office), they must contend with the fact that the Prince didn’t exactly leave everything out in a nice, neat pile (-2); further, assume that they only have about an hour before they must escape the area and hide from the coming sun. Which means that, given that this is an extended roll, they only have so much time and opportunity to do so. (It’s safe to assume that the next night this haven or office will no longer be available to them—Sheriff Kale may lock it down, or may even burn it to the ground). Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The character does something that makes discovery of this information impossible by the other characters— he accidentally sets a fire, spills ink on critical documents, does something that alerts mortal (or immortal) authorities, etc. Failure: The character fails to turn up any information regarding the box of secrets (though reduced successes on the extended roll may have earned the character other, lesser rewards).
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Success: The character discovers a wall safe behind a removable wainscoting panel. In the safe is Tiberias’s journal, an overstuffed ledger of coded transactions and missives. It’s not coded in a “secret cipher” sort of way, but rather all written in shorthand. It should require no roll to decode, as it in and of itself does not contain much actual information. It instead contains references to people and events but no critical details—however, it does consistently refer to a “secret weapon” the Prince possesses, and this weapon is consistently tied to both Amelie and Sheriff Kale. Kale seems to be the one who “maintains” the weapon, while Amelie is the one responsible for its location. Exceptional Success: In addition to finding information regarding the box of secrets, the character also finds cell phone numbers for both Kale and Amelie.
Confronting Harmon Kale
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Persuasion or Presence + Intimidation versus Kale’s Resolve + Composure Action: Instant and contested Hindrances: Kale is generally distrustful and on edge since the Prince’s demise (-2), but if Kale learns that the characters are the ones who did in the Prince, then the penalty increases (-5) Help: Characters mention the box of secrets (+1); Kale is an ally (+3); Characters offer Kale something he wants, such as information, a patsy, or a cherished object (+3) Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The character inspires only violence in Kale. Maybe Kale knows what the characters did, maybe he doesn’t, but now his suspicious side has been triggered into full-blown paranoia: He and any lackeys he has with him will move against the characters—if not now, then when he has an advantage. Failure: The characters fail to impress Kale. He wants nothing to do with them; he has enough on his plate. Success: The characters get Kale to open up. He’s ready to make a deal in order to keep this city under lock and key. Of course, the deal Kale wants is the one that puts him in charge of the whole city, as Prince. If the characters can convince him that this is their aim, too (and hey, who knows, maybe it is), then he’ll help them procure the box of secrets and purge their own dark secrets from the box. He tells them the truth: he procured the secrets, but Amelie was the one who “administrated” them. He tried time and again to discover the location but was never successful. Exceptional Success: An exceptional success gives Kale pause—he will now consider making a deal that allows him to serve not as Prince but as Primogen or Seneschal provided he helps pick the next Prince from the group of characters. Further, Kale will give up some of the secrets contained in the box— after all, he is the one that obtained them. They only have so much value, however, because they are at present without any kind of evidence. That said, the characters could conceivably bluff and use the secrets against some of their targets to sway them (for instance, getting a vampire to back off his attacks or to redirect his vitriol elsewhere).
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Finding Amelie
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Investigation Action: Instant (takes at least one night, may also incur one of the Encounter Scenarios described on p. 53) Hindrances: Characters don’t know or haven’t have much contact with Amelie (-1), characters are hostile (-3), Amelie discovers that they are on her trail (-5; feel free to give her a chance to discover this with a Wits + Investigation roll) Help: Characters know Amelie fairly well (+2), characters offer bribes (+3). Characters can of course use Disciplines, too, which create different rolls but also make easier the ability to manipulate others into telling the characters where Amelie is hiding. Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The characters arouse suspicions—now other vampires are wondering what’s so important about the Prince’s ex-lover and seneschal. Other bloodsuckers begin following her trail. Failure: Characters meet one dead end after another. Success: The characters track down Amelie—she has been in hiding, moving night after night. One night she’s hiding in a tenement. The next she’s hunkered down in some artist’s studio apartment. The third she’s at some CEO’s penthouse—an old ally of the Prince. She’ll hop from place to place—homeless shelter to abandoned asylum to house in the suburbs—relying on the kindness of humans with whom she’s cultivated relationships over the years. She does not contact any Kindred during this time; she hides only among her human herd. Exceptional Success: An exceptional success grants the characters the ability to also note if they’ve been followed; it remains possible that other vampires remain in their periphery—Kale, for instance, is likely to cling to the shadows to see where they go.
Dealing with Amelie
Unless Disciplines come into play, no rolls are necessary to deal with her at the outset. If the characters don’t really know much about the box of secrets, she certainly won’t offer anything to the characters unless they’re particularly kind to her. If they do mention the box of secrets, however, she’ll react with surprise and—despite being scared out of her wits—will discuss the box with the characters. She will first make an offer—she wants a way out of town and $100,000. If the characters can get that to her by the start of the following night, she will take them to the box of secrets. However, if the characters push or attempt to intimidate her, she’ll offer to give them the box for free—but from this point forward, she will take every opportunity to betray the characters. She will, if given half –a chance, perform one or several of the following actions:
• Flee. • Attack. • Call for help. • Offer the box to someone else if they agree to “take care of” the characters. • Manage to put the box up for bidding. • Destroy the box and its secrets. No matter what happens, she won’t tell the characters that the box of secrets: a) is contained in a heavy gun safe with a keypad combination, and b) actually has a smaller duplicate out in the open that is both fake and a trap (explodes with white phosphorus, burning any who are attempting to get into it) It’s important to note that Amelie responds well to the characters if she discovers that they are the ones who killed the Prince—yes, she was his lover, but that was a role she was forced into and is frankly pleased that her old master has gone the way of the dodo.
Gaming the Auction Crowd
If the nights go on and nobody tracks down Amelie or the box of secrets, she will choose to hold an auction in order to put the box of secrets into the hands of a vampire earn herself a passage out of the city. The way the auction works is this: Amelie appears out of hiding to deliver the message of the auction by waltzing into Elysium and telling the gathered vampires that the auction begins there, at midnight. If she is hurt, the auction is off and Amelie or her minions will destroy the box of secrets. Otherwise, it’ll work like a silent auction: bids go in a box at midnight. Bids can contain any kind of offer imaginable over the course of one hour. At the end of that hour, Amelie examines the bids and chooses one; if your game has more room for it at the table, the auction may continue as Amelie announces the bid and allows for one more round of counter offers (i.e. upping the ante). The vampire who wins the auction will go with Amelie to the location of the box of secrets (see the next scene, Pandora’s Box).
Consequences
The primary consequence of this scene (or rather, sequence) is that reveals to the characters the existence of the box of secrets—and they may even get put on its trail. However, negative consequences are inbound. First, other vampires may be sniffing around and end up following the same trail. Second, both Kale and Amelie represent uncertain allies— any help they offer could go south if they sense an opportunity to do better elsewhere. They aren’t dedicated to helping the characters. Third, this sequence can and should be interspersed with the Encounter Scenarios (which start on p. 53)—without those, this entire adventure ends up a little bit toothless.
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PANDORA’S BOX Overview
The characters arrive at the location of the box of secrets— the basement of an abandoned hospital in the worst part of town. They’ve possibly gone through hell to get here (having had to cross a city in chaos and endure various Encounter Scenarios), and what they find here isn’t much different: complication after complication blocks their path.
Description
The hospital is falling down around your ears. The place is littered broken tile, shattered wall, pipe and conduit and bundles of wire dangling from pockmarks of ruined mortar. A lone wheelchair sits in the corner, covered in dust. Graffiti stains every inch of exposed wall. It smells of death and decay. This was where the Prince was keeping his secrets?
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The hospital is two floors and a basement sublevel—if the characters know roughly where the box of secrets is located, they’ll head to the basement. Otherwise, they may need to search the upper two floors. Once they head down into the basement… The steps are concrete. Your footsteps echo. Cockroaches run up the walls while rats flee from your feet. The basement appears to be mostly a repository of junk: hospital beds piled in a tangled pyramid, ratty curtains and boxes of equipment that have been defunct for two decades. No light shines down here: everything in the beam of the flashlight (or in your Auspexenhanced gaze) casts a shadow that looks like a wretched monster forever reaching. If they are lead to or discover the false box of secrets, they’ll discover it in the morgue hidden behind the only body drawer that still has a door:
You pull out the warped metal body drawer, the human-sized tray rattling and screeching as it rolls a bit before sticking halfway out. At the far back of the empty drawer you see it: a little green blinking light. You want to get in there? You want to get to the box of secrets and unlock the keypad? Then you’re going to have to crawl into that dark drawer on your back or on your belly—only one of you can get in there to open the box. Of course, that box is a trap. The real box of secrets is disguised to look like a rusted medical cabinet (about humanheight) at the far end of the basement, surrounded by nothing but piles of debris and boxes. You open the medical cabinet and find another door beyond it—this one belonging to a Fort Knox-brand fire-protected gun safe. It’s clean. Smells like gun oil. Got a big wheel to turn and a keypad with nine numbers on it. If the characters crack it open… Inside you find what you’ve been looking for all along: the box of secrets. Except it’s not just one box. It’s a dozen file boxes all containing documents, tapes, photographs, maps—an unholy host of evidence and secrets regarding the city’s nocturnal population. Not only is this a major potential Masquerade breach, but it also guarantees the wielder of such information a great deal of sway over the unruly hierarchy.
Storytelling Goals
This is an “it’s too good to be true” scenario. In some sense, it is true, and it is pretty damn fantastic for the characters… which is why it’s your job as Storyteller to escalate, escalate, escalate. It’s impossible to predict exactly how the characters got here or what they’ll do once here, but your job is to make this difficult and throw the final conflict into high gear. Options include: • Utilize the trap in the morgue. • Have the characters get attacked before they manage to get a hold of the box of secrets: a mortal gang attacks, a neonate mob tracks them here, or one of any major vampire characters (Hierophant, Cardinal, Sheriff) decides it’s high time to clean up the mess and secure the box for themselves. • Amelie may betray them. If she believes that she herself will be betrayed or she recognizes that the characters have been intimidating her this whole time, she will lead them to the trap, she will attempt to run, and she may even attempt to lock the characters in the basement while she sets other vampires on the trail. • Fire bad. Imagine finding the box of secrets just as a fire breaks out? First, nobody wants the box of secrets to burn up. Second, vampires + fire = frenzy. Who set the fire? Amelie, perhaps. A throng of neonates. Or maybe it’s one final trap set on the Fort Knox safe—cracking into the safe may set it off.
And at the end of it all? When the smoke clears and the bodies are on the floor? Confirm the moral dilemma at hand: the box of secrets contains information on all the characters. Do they really want their dark secrets exposed to one another? Further, only one character can be Prince. Are they really willing to let one of their own take the helm while the others step back? Can a deal be arranged where one becomes Prince and the others Primogen? Could they all agree to back a different vampire for Prince, or is it possible that their goal is to either destroy the box or be the ones to put it up on the auction block and share whatever (likely significant) profits come rolling in?
Character Goals
One assumes that the characters’ goal is to get the box of secrets at any cost—the question is, why do they want it? To gain power? To destroy it? Sell it? How will they use it? Must they betray one another to gain advantage from it?
Actions Lockpicking and Safecracking
The hospital basement features a number of barriers. First, the door to the basement is locked with a heavy chain and has reinforced hinges and fixtures. Lockpicking here isn’t terribly difficult, but the time it takes could expose the characters to danger. Second, the trapped proxy safe in the morgue drawer is pretty tough. Lockpicking is a little more difficult... a burst of Vigor-induced strength might be more effective. Note, however, that this safe is trapped. Tampering with it or opening it causes a white phosphorus explosion. This explosive is incendiary: its blast area is restricted to the confines of the morgue drawer, but that also means it deals 4 damage to each character… fire damage. A character could attempt to notice the trap before triggering it—a Wits + Investigation roll is necessary. Note, however, that the character is in the dark and so a -3 penalty is in play (but a powerful flashlight or Auspex may help to diminish this penalty to zero). Finally, the Fort Knox reinforced gun safe is, as its brand name suggests, very difficult to damage: the characters may want tools here, a lot of Vigor or even explosives.
Combat
Our opinion is that this scene should not occur without some manner of combat. The box of secrets is a powder keg of possibility, and a whole herd of vampires would love nothing more to exploit or destroy it (the characters chief amongst
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them). Hence, this hospital basement needs to be a chokepoint of agitation and violence. The question is, who is doing the attacking? Do the characters happen upon someone already trying to bust open the safe? Or are they ambushed themselves? Through the course of the first two scenes and the intermingled Encounter Scenarios, the characters will likely have earned some enemies. Still, if you don’t find that such an option is available to you, consider using one of the following five options: • Sheriff Kale converges on the hospital basement at the same time as the characters. He’s brought with him a host of lackeys—just enough to outnumber the characters by one or two. Fortunately, these lackeys aren’t highcaliber vampires. What begins is a good old-fashioned standoff: can the characters convince Kale to back off or share the prize? Or is the only result a blood-soaked ballet of violence? • Pick a big, powerful vampire—Daciana or the Cardinal will do—and have the characters come upon this vampire already working to open the box of secrets. This powerful vampire will likely be alone as they have little interest in letting their dark secret (whatever it may be) fall into the hands of a neonate attendant. • Human beings aren’t always the toughest predators— after all, they break so easily—but consider having the hospital basement be home to a shitload of them. Imagine that a gang is down there having some kind of initiation or party—they broke in, have no idea what’s down there, and they’re raging until the morning light. Maybe they have a dog fight going in the one corner and a bonfire in the other. Ten thugs together could make trouble for even the most potent vampire (the danger of humans is often the same as a herd of cattle stampeding). Of course, if the characters can make short, brutal work of just a handful of the thugs, the rest will back off and flee—but until that time, it’s game on for a host of ultra-violence. • Some Vampire: The Requiem games just don’t end happily. Vampires backstab. They manipulate. They hold secrets—which, in a way, is exactly what this whole thing is about. Secrets. Some people will go to extreme lengths to protect their secrets, and so we come to perhaps the darkest twist on the idea—that the characters must battle one another for access to the box of secrets. This can start easily—one plans to use the box to her own ends, another wants to be Prince but
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the others don’t agree. From there, blood boils, frenzy ensues, and it’s a claws-out fangs-ready fracas. Worth mentioning are some of the combat considerations that could come into play: Cover: Characters will be able to conceal themselves or take cover behind a whole host of objects—hospital beds, tables, piles of file boxes, and so forth. Assume that “partial concealment” (-2) is easily accessible, but that characters willing to take a turn or two to move can find full cover fairly easily. Debris: The hospital is debris-strewn. And it’s dark. Assuming that the fight is a dynamic one and the characters aren’t merely standing together like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, that means debris is going to come into play in terms of complicating combat. Every turn presents a new complication (replacing the previous turn’s, not adding to it). Roll a single d10 and compare the results on this table to determine the effect: Die Roll 1-2 3-4 5-6
7-8
9-10
Effect Characters each lose Defense this turn (debris as disadvantage) Characters each double Defense this turn (debris as advantage) Failures become dramatic failures this turn (character swings, misses, missteps and trips over an old desk) Each character must succeed on a Stamina + Dexterity roll to first make an attack (avoiding debris, keeping balance) Character finds a “found object” weapon nearby (board with a nail in it, hunk of rebar, conduit). Remember that using such a weapon confers a -1 penalty for being an improvised weapon
Consequences
Getting hold of the trove of dark secrets once possessed by the Prince is a powerful game-changer: one or all of the characters now has a leash connected to most, if not all, of the city’s vampires. As such, this adventure can nicely serve as the opening for a much larger, high-powered chronicle. Of course, it can also serve as a tragic end to a chronicle. Characters reaching for the brass ring of the box of secrets may be destroyed in the conflict. They may be destroyed by the box itself as their secrets are leaked. They may be destroyed as they kill one another for power. Or they may be wiped out as the vampires rise up against them to bury the box and its contents for good.
ENCOUNTER SCENARIOS Below are a series of encounters you can drop into the game at nearly any point. These are story-based scenarios of conflict meant to illustrate a city sliding into chaos and further meant to serve as dangerous roadblocks preventing easy access to the box of secrets. You will find ten possible scenarios—the first five are a little milder, and fairly well “in-theme” with what you normally get out of Vampire: The Requiem. The latter five, however, are more “gonzo”—they contain scenarios that are, succinctly put, way more fucked up. It would not be unusual to use at least five of these (one for each night of Into the Void). The more “gonzo” selections, should you choose to use them, are perhaps better reserved for the latter two nights.
Dead Man’s Party
The characters receive an invite to a party. It’s a celebration for the revolution, a party honoring a “free city” where the so-called tyranny of the Prince is gone. Ding dong, the dickhead is dead. The party takes place in Elysium—a nightclub, a bar, maybe a museum. Thing is, nobody can tell who’s throwing the party. Everybody’s invitation says a different name, a name that will help ensure that the recipient will attend. The result is a well-populated party full of nocturnal monsters. It’s a powerful social occasion filled not with physical violence but rather the personal and emotional violence so common to the Danse Macabre. It’s a good time to get the characters some face-time with the other vampires to test the waters, see who knows what. But the mystery remains: who sent the invitations? Whoever sent them has a plan: now that many of the city’s vampires are in one place, it’s time to burn every last one of them. The doors are barred, and someone starts throwing Molotov cocktails. Given that fire and vampires don’t mix, the event swiftly descends into a chaos of potentially-frenzying monsters. Granted, most of the vampires will probably survive—it’s something of a clumsy plan, which is intentional. So, who’s behind that plan? It’s up to you. It could be a band of neonates who thought, “Hey, if we can scrape clean the upper echelons of vampire society, then we might actually have a shot at this Requiem thing.” It could be a compact or conspiracy of vampire hunters who seize on the opportunity of a politically destabilized Danse Macabre and think they have the perfect solution. It might even be a single ancilla or elder (even the Keeper of Elysium himself) who figures it’s high time to eliminate some competitors from the blood pool.
Fire It Up! Fire It Up!
On the streets, it’s madness. The human herd can smell the ash and char on the wind and acts up accordingly, clogging the streets with looters and rioters. At first it’s just gang members, but after that? Anybody and everybody joins in the fray. The characters may come upon a scene of such chaos. They may find a truck that’s been overturned, and the driver has been dragged out and is being beaten and threatened by rioters. A mob has grown up—most have makeshift weapons (signposts, kitchen knives, hunks of brick), but a few have real weapons (machetes, shotguns, a Tec-9). Something is probably on fire. The characters have to make it through the insanity. They find that backtracking just won’t do: the mob has enclosed them unwittingly. Do the characters decide to help the innocent? Maybe not—after all, vampires aren’t superheroes. But maybe they smell the opportunity to save a man and, as a result, own him body and soul. Or maybe they just don’t give a rat’s ass and decide to push through. Pushing through seems easy, but isn’t. The mob turns on them. They can smell something is different: it’s like a herd of wildebeest realizing that a crocodile walks among them. They can sense the predatory nature of the characters. And so the characters become the target. How do they deal with it? How can they move forward? Acting out with Kindred powers is a breach of the Masquerade—but the city’s in flames, so who really cares?
Hanging Posse
The characters come across—or are invited to—a scene of retribution. A sympathizer to the Prince has been captured a band of vampires (neonates lead by an elder, perhaps, or a pack of Cronies stirred up by Daciana). They’ve got him strung up and hanged. It won’t kill him, of course, but with hands behind his back and legs bound, it’s hard to make any kind of a physical effort and break free. They’re planning a long night of torture— maybe they’re doing it just for shits and giggles, or maybe they think they can get something out of the victim. Maybe they want to know about the box of secrets. Or perhaps they think they can find their way to accessing the Prince’s assets. Do the characters participate? Do they intervene? Perhaps they simply walk away. But is there something to be gained or lost in this encounter? What if the vampire that gets strung up is
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Amelie or Harmon Kale? What if the one character who’s about to get tortured and torched is the one character who can lead the characters to the box of secrets?
Pick a Side, Any Side
With the Prince destroyed, the city ends up like a box of puzzle pieces thrown up into the air—any picture of order is gone, and so too is any semblance of a protected hierarchy. Now, it’s every vampire for himself, which means a whole lot of blood-hungry monsters jockeying for position. It’s this “jockeying for position” that draws the characters in. Vampires need to test loyalty, and they need to earn supporters for any presumptive bid for Praxis. Every vampire is going to attempt to secure support in a different way. A monster like Daciana will attempt to show her power and create worship. Someone like the Cardinal will use shame, guilt, and the threat of Godchosen violence. One vampire will use honey, another will use vinegar. The characters will get dragged into this—if you’d like, more than once. They may first be invited to a “meeting,” which is really a social ambush by either one powerful vampire or by a whole covenant’s worth of vampires standing together (for now). Or they might be abducted or even attacked. The end result is that they’re stuck in a room—a board room, the back room at a strip-club or the belly of a yacht floating out in the harbor—where someone is trying to sway or even force their hand to offer support. The only way out of that room might be to lie—or kill.
SWAT Got You Surrounded, Son
Maybe it’s just bad luck—wrong place, wrong time. Or maybe someone set them up. Either way, the result is the same: the characters are the target of an incoming SWAT team. This scenario is best when indoors or in a cramped vehicle. Consider that, as the characters follow the trail of the box of secrets, they’re going to end up in places that are claustrophobic and walled-off, with fewer exits then they’d prefer. This is an excellent place to set up a SWAT siege. And that’s exactly what it is: SWAT thinks they have some high-profile agitators—even domestic terrorists—on their hands. They’re not fucking around. They’ll bring the smoke bombs, the “door knockers,” the riot shotguns that can blow off limbs. They might even have an armored vehicle. Now, to be clear, the characters are likely strong enough to put a deep hurt on the SWAT officers. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a bad situation: a normal human could easily crush a scorpion underfoot, but that doesn’t mean
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a well-placed stinger won’t deliver an unholy dose of venom. This isn’t meant to be a serious threat, but it is meant to act as a roadblock. The SWAT siege can delay characters, which is all the more troubling if their situation is time sensitive. Plus, dispatching a whole team of SWAT doesn’t magically end the problem. It could mean that they’re bringing hell down on their heads. The police will send a stronger response next time. Or the FBI will get involved. Or, if this happens later in the adventure, the military will come calling. Do the characters really want that kind of attention?
An Army of Inquisitors
They arrive on the third night: an army of Lancea Sanctum Inquisitors, put together from surrounding cities (those within, say, 200 miles). They are here not on behalf of the Cardinal, not on behalf of the Prince’s lineage, but as the standard bearer of the Lancea Sanctum itself. The idea is this: yes, generally the Danse Macabre is an expressly local affair. What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. Same with Denver, Philadelphia, London, and Johannesburg. Each city serves as its own fiefdom. In reality, those cities are lined up like dominoes. If one city falls to chaos, the others may, too—and the Masquerade is not a local affair. If the truth of the Kindred’s existence is revealed, in this hyperconnected age it is revealed globally—and almost instantly. And that’s not just bad for the vampires in that city. It’s bad for vampires everywhere. The Sanctified Inquisitors on the city’s doorstep arrive under the auspices of “restoring order in this dark time”—which is perhaps true as a side benefit, but they have other goals. The Inquisitors are here for a twofold purpose: one, to enforce the standards of the Lancea Sanctum and to convert vampires who are found weakened and confused in the chaos; and two, to evaluate the Cardinal as a proper replacement for Prince. If they find him wanting (and they will if his secret is exposed), they will choose a different horse to back. The characters will have to negotiate the Inquisitor presence. Inquisitors may oppose them at every turn just by remaining present and obstructive. Further, the Inquisitors will doggedly seek out the box of secrets should they catch even a whiff of its existence.
Dragged Into The Dark
Interested in turning this adventure into something retributive and, perhaps, even redemptive? Want equal parts “The Labyrinth at Minos” and the torture-porn of “Saw?” Below the city sits a massive Nosferatu warren: a tangle of passages that borrow from sewer lines, defunct subway tunnels, aquifers, wells and sandhog passageways. Connecting them all are the many caves and passages hand-carved by the Freaks themselves over the course of the last 100 years. The warren is, frankly, way bigger than the Nosferatu population deserves:
the city maybe has a dozen prominent Freaks, and the warren labyrinth itself covers at least 50 square miles in multiple directions (up and down included). In their search, the characters may fall prey to a trap put forth by the Nosferatu Priscus, Grolsch. How the trap is sprung is up to you—it’s possible that he knows what they’re seeking and sends them on a wild goose chase into the sewers, or maybe he sets p some rigged portion of a building’s subbasement to send the characters tumbling into an old cistern. The only way out is down, through the channels and tunnels. What follows is a bizarre morality play lasting an entire night, where the characters must stumble through the maze and brave traps and physical dangers put forth by Grolsch and the other Nosferatu. The question is, why? Grolsch is an intensely political Kindred. Why resort to such brutal Freak tactics? It’s possible that he’s doing this under another false identity — maybe he speaks to the characters only through a rusty old intercom system the Freaks installed. His goal may be to punish the characters. If he discovers they destroyed the Prince, he may be tormenting them to invoke some semblance of order or accountability. It’s also possible he’s trying to suss out why they did what they did, and what it is they’re looking for.
Masquerade, Shattered
The city has eyes, you know: Closed circuit TV cameras. Traffic light cameras. Helicopters filming. All of it is amped up as the chaos ramps: the vampires come out to drink and laugh and fuck and kill, and the city sees. Everything is connected. Savvy users—humans—can tap into traffic feeds, listen to cop radios and baby monitors and even use their own equipment to capture the goings-on of the city. With only the push of a button and a few clicks on the keyboard, a person could upload feeds and videos and audio clips not just to a friend but to the entire world—torrents and Reddit and email and blogs and Twitter and… well, the list goes on and on. That means vampires have to be extra careful, because one slip-up and a Masquerade breach ends up on Facebook. The problem is, the vampires of this city are doing everything but being careful. Kindred are woefully anachronistic, and while some may be vaguely tech-savvy, most have never heard of “social media.” So, over the course of the five nights, it’s more than likely that a Masquerade breach will be caught on camera and thrown up on the Internet. Except that what’s captured isn’t just a breach—we’re not talking about a muddy, uncertain video of “something weird going on.” It’s a full-bore shattering: a foot through the Masquerade’s mirror. A high-definition (video and audio) camera captures it crisply: a pack of vampires hunting in the middle of a street or a nightclub or shopping mall. They can do things that nobody else can do: leap great heights, turn to wolves, grow claws. It’s all there, on a three-minute video.
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Sure, the vampires should’ve caught it before it ever went to air. But they’re too preoccupied—remember, the city is going apeshit right now. Nobody’s paying the right kinds of attention. Sure, maybe the characters could debunk it, but the authorities have tried. By the time it makes it on the news, they already have a video expert and an audio guru and they can’t find any manipulation or any signs of special effects. For bonus points: what if it’s the characters who are the ones caught on tape? Or what if it’s their enemies? Can they exploit this? Can they undo it? What happens when the city plays sudden host to vampire hunters, drawn to the evidence, ready to recruit, ready to hunt and kill, ready to turn the tables on the nocturnal predators?
The Terrorism Tango
You know what this story needs? More terrorism. When the city plunges into chaos, the humans feel it. Hell, they don’t just feel it, they witness it on their sidewalks and street corners. They may not know what is going on (after all, the news can’t keep a single narrative this time), but they can see what’s right in front of their eyes, and what’s there is violence and anarchy. Most humans know this to be a good time to hunker down and stay safe. Others, though, are malefactors who seek to
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exploit the pandemonium for their own needs—so you get looters and rioters and gang members murdering one another. Some malefactors are not content with small acts, however, so we come back to the subject of terrorism. With the police occupied (and the military not yet on the scene), it’s a good time for a domestic terror group to put in motion a hasty plan to create big damage city-wide. What does this mean? An assassination is big, but not big enough. Think bombs. Bombs city-wide? Bombs on city buses and trains? Anything that would snarl transportation is going to be bad for the city and bad for its vampire population, too. Further, that means the military comes rolling in early, it means the news media fall all over themselves to capture it, and it means that the city is on high alert. All bad news for the Kindred. And if you want to tweak it just that much more, assume that the bombs set off one or both of the following: First, they cause a small earthquake. It’s just enough to crack the street and bring down a few old buildings, but it’s just enough to deepen the city’s isolation and insanity. (If you’re so inclined, jack the earthquake up to a full-bore mega-disaster, and next thing you know you have an event similar to Batman’s No Man’s Land where disaster strikes and the super-villains take over the city in territorial pockets.) Second, the event exposes—and awakens—a millennia-old vampire, a vampire unlike anything any of the Kindred in town have ever seen before. With such a “true” elder suddenly on scene, the power dynamic is sure to shift.
AFTERMATH As noted earlier, this adventure can either set up a major chronicle or be the end of one: it represents a significant sea change in the city’s nocturnal hierarchy. No matter how it shakes out, things are going to look a lot different. Here are some options: • If the characters get hold of the box of secrets, they can be kings or king-makers. Do they all survive? Do they set up one of their own as Prince with the rest filling in as Primogen? Consider the possibility that they set up a political structure that doesn’t involve a Prince at all. A Carthian approach might set up presiding Parliament or even a vote-by-vote democracy. (Earning votes can create an intensely more political story. Democracy sounds cuddly—but take a look at the bloodthirsty politics of the United States, then frame it as the political model of actual bloodthirsty monsters, and you have a recipe for brutally fantastic political storytelling.) • Beyond the characters, the most obvious choice for Prince is Sheriff Harmon Kale. Kale as Prince, however, creates a more tyrannical vibe than Tiberias ever put forth. Tiberias was ultimately a fairly lax leader; Kale is authoritarian. He demands obeisance and obeys the Traditions and the Masquerade above all else. This means, ultimately, he’s not long for this world— someone will seek to usurp him and take from him the box of secrets. Besides, the chaos that erupts from Tiberias’s death cannot so easily be contained: once the snakes are out of the bag, it’s hard to get them back
inside. However, it’s worth considering that Kale could become a good Prince with proper advisors—are the characters those advisors? • If the characters do not manage to procure the box of secrets, then someone else will. And that “someone” will become the Prince. For instance, the Cardinal seeks the role of Prince above all else, and will create something of a “vampiric theocracy” which will foment a cold war between the Sanctum and the Circle. Daciana doesn’t really want the Prince role, but will find someone in her covenant deserving of the role. (By “deserving,” we of course mean “able to serve as Daciana’s blood puppet”— consider Quinn as a curious option). Some characters are more capable than others. Siobhan or Atticus would make good, somewhat moderate Princes. Robicheaux would be a strip of taffy pulled this way and that. Owen probably wants the role but ultimately wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure. • What happens if the characters destroy the box and with it, all of those secrets? The city will continue on in chaos for a couple more nights until enough vampires get put out of their misery to balance the scales toward one side or another. Eventually someone will find their way to the Prince’s seat and saner minds will win out—but it takes a number of fiery, uncertain nights to get to that point. In the grand scheme of vampiric politics, this is just a drop in the bucket. But it’s a major flashpoint just the same: over the course of 5-10 nights, the landscape of the Danse Macabre changes.
Into the Void
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SCENE:
MENTAL
Good Night, Sweet Prince
PHYSICAL SOCIAL
HINDRANCES
HELP
P r i n c e c a n f i g h t — h e h a s V i go r a n d Resilience, will knock down obstacles if he flees (-3)
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If Prince has been poisoned (-3)
STs
Set up a false climax scene—start off with a bang, but it only escalates from here
PCs
For the Prince? Off with his head.
SCENE:
• •••• •
Secrets on the Wind, Like Blood in the Water
MENTAL PHYSICAL SOCIAL
••• • •••
HINDRANCES
HELP
Everybody’s distrustful (-2), everything’s a mess (-5)
Characters can shine a light on things in the form of allies (+3), a flashlight (+1 to +3), a bribe or blackmail (+1 to +5 depending on potency)
STs
Time is running out and the city is in chaos: Make the characters feel the burn, make them dance for their dinner.
PCs
Track down the trail of the box of secrets.
Reap The Whirlwind
SCENE:
MENTAL
Pandora’s Box
HINDRANCES Darkness (-3)
PHYSICAL SOCIAL
••• •••• •
HELP Light source (+1 to +3)
STs
Follow threads to their conclusion and organically include awesome threats and escalation (see scene description for handful of ideas)
PCs
Find the box, crack it open, access the box of secrets… and deal with the consequence
MENTAL
SCENE: HINDRANCES
PHYSICAL SOCIAL
HELP
STs PCs
SAS Cards
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mental
(-3 unskilled)
Academics __________OOOOO Computer__________OOOOO Crafts ______________OOOOO Investigation_______OOOOO Medicine ___________OOOOO Occult ______________OOOOO Politics _____________OOOOO Science ____________ OOOOO
physical
(-1 unskilled) Athletics ___________OOOOO Brawl _______________OOOOO Drive _______________OOOOO Firearms ___________OOOOO Larceny ____________OOOOO Stealth______________OOOOO Survival ____________OOOOO Weaponry _________ OOOOO
social
(-1 unskilled)
Animal Ken _______OOOOO Empathy ___________OOOOO Expression _________OOOOO Intimidation ______OOOOO Persuasion _________OOOOO Socialize ___________OOOOO Streetwise __________OOOOO Subterfuge ________ OOOOO
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vitae blood potency
OOOOOOOOOO
