Life Affects Play

It happens to all of us. The chronicle gets derailed by a bunch of real-world details. This player gets sick. That player’s got to go out of town. Things get in the way. Games falter. It sucks, but this is the way it goes.

To help us reach a quorum for each session, two new players are joining the group. Both of them are EVE: Second Genesis guys, but both of them are long-time roleplayers, too. Each of them is bringing a new character into the tangled social web of the city.

I love new players and new characters. I love the beginning of new character arcs and the chance to tap into an existing chronicle in a new way. In this case, to take advantage of some of the ongoing conflicts in the city and the willingness of these new players to experiment, they’re both making mortal characters that we know (though the characters might not) will become undead monsters before long. Part of this is to explore the interesting in-game situation of finding the right sire for these poor soon-to-be-damned fools. Part of this is to experiment with a new gameplay mechanic I’m planning on introducing into a future Vampire book.

We’ve managed to sit down and make characters for both new players, but we haven’t been able to play a session since that happened. Life intervened. You know how it is. So, instead of playing tonight, I’m writing this and preparing the new character entries for the next two men to join the Danse Macabre in Atlanta. Tune in later this week to meet the new characters.

 

Vagaries of Players

It happens to every chronicle, sooner or later. A player’s schedule changes, so he has to bow out of the game for a while. Around the beginning of the year, this always seems to happen around the office. So the annual reorganization of the player roster, and thus who and what the chronicle is about, begins again.

This means we haven’t had a chance to catch up with A Requiem for Atlanta yet this year, and so I’ve not had much to share with you. Figures, right?

As I finish up the last of the work on Damnation City here, though, I’ll reveal a bit more about that book as I apply some of its rules publicly. First up will be a few schema on the city’s twin vampire courts. (You’ll see what I mean.) In the meantime, once the dust settles, we’ll see who settles in to play in the chronicle for the long haul and determine the fate of Atlanta’s Kindred. So stay tuned.

 

Smells Like Blood

Bloodlines: The Legendary features a Daeva bloodline called the Gulikan who fetishize scents and use perfume potions as part of their seductive and destructive dance with mortal prey. With the movie, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer out now, this thread at Shadow n’ Essence has popped up linking the movie’s sinister protagonist with the Gulikan. And rightly so. I read Peter Suskind’s novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, back in 2002 and was simultaneously spooked and enchanted. Here we have a book with a grotesque, barely human protagonist anchoring a story of incredible literal sensuality. Remember that, despite what the MPAA might imply, “sensuality” doesn’t mean sex.

In Perfume, Suskind takes us to 18th-century France through the nose of an all-but-blind character with a hypersensitive palate. He makes excellent use of his medium to tell us a story through details that can’t be conveyed in film or music: the smell of caramel, the stickiness of an abbatoir, the smell of blood. How director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) fares in bringing a story about scent to the screen, I don’t know. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I admire him for trying.

Suskind’s novel, though, stuck with me. When I was seeking out real-world inspirations for legendary vampires for Bloodlines: The Legendary, Perfume came back to mind. It’s a great example of what we tried to do with that book: find a vampiric quality in familiar (and ideally scary) concepts that are not typically associated with vampires. That is, we wanted scary, high-concept ideas with roots in the audience but that weren’t based on exhausted vampire myths. This sense of innate familiarity, I hoped, would create something like the familiarity you feel when you read a myth with resonance in your own culture, but without losing the newness you want from a book of new bloodlines. Thus it’s easy to believe that these bloodlines represent (or had spawned) ideas that are a part of Kindred culture even if the bloodlines themselves have never been known first-hand in your chronicle’s city.

The idea, after all, was to explore ideas that were legendary among vampires, not vampires from real-world legendry. It’s easy to confuse the ideas and I wanted to provide the authors with a bit of method they could use to translate their ideas into the style of the book. When you consider the wide array of oddball concepts in that book, and the common sense of mysterious but sort of wry reverence they’re all given in the text, I think it worked. I mean, there isn’t a single idea in that book that can’t be seen as funny — which gives each idea a sense that it’s actually been through the wringer of the masses, the pop-culture filter — and yet each idea manages to be creepy, unsettling or outright horrific on some level when you’re actually with them on the page. The authors of that book did a great job.

Chris Kobar wrote the Gulikan in Bloodlines: The Legendary from a simple note I gave him to take a look at Perfume and invent Daeva who are driven by scent. We didn’t want to mimick Perfume‘s character, we wanted to evoke Suskind’s voice and see if we could do what he did in his novel. In short: unsettling sensuality. Kobar delivered. He traded Suskind’s France for Istanbul, which was a brilliant choice, and gave the Gulikan a passion, rather than a cartoonish obsession (which is one of the red flags that a bloodline hasn’t been explored enough yet). This is why I chose to use the Gulikan in my own chronicle. (But don’t tell anyone — my players don’t know that yet.)

In case you’re curious, Chris Kobar also wrote The Carnival for The Legendary. There’s another example of a bloodline that could go off the rails into comedy at any moment, but doesn’t. They were so captivating, we put them on the cover.

 

The Debut

Welcome. What the hell is this?

This site’s an experiment. For a couple of years, I’ve been keeping online journals like this one, just for the benefit of players in whatever chronicle I was running at the time. Now I’m opening the blinds and letting anyone who wants to peek inside.

So what you’re seeing is a revision, and in many cases a complete rewriting, of actual play sessions and background information from the past year or more. Thus, a lot of this stuff isn’t finished yet. That’s kind of the point. This stuff will never be finished. Instead, this site will continue to develop and expand as I’m able to rewrite old notes for a broader audience and as we continue to play out this chronicle.

What you’ll find here is just one example of how Vampire: The Requiem can be played. You’ll also find storytelling advice, house rules, gameplay variations, characters and story ideas to steal for your own game, all presented as they come up in play in our chronicle. Here and there, you’ll also find peeks at future books and new game mechanics as we try out new materials in play.

Comments are welcome, but please keep in mind that this isn’t some kind of “official White Wolf chronicle.” (Not yet, at any rate.) The Atlanta you find sketched out in here — with its renegade court and fractured Sanctified sects — may or may not be the Atlanta in your World of Darkness.

If it is, don’t be shy. Tell us how you’re using this stuff, no matter how slightly. Maybe you’re just using Mr. Never’s name for a character in your own chronicle (I didn’t make that name up, I swear), or maybe you’ve decided that Detective Lou Parker will turn up in your own city of the Damned. It’s all fair game.

One night, maybe we’ll get to incorporate part of your chronicles into ours. Maybe your nomad will land at Hartsfield-Jackson airport after midnight to warn the Prince that Belial’s Brood (see Belial’s Brood) in on the move. (But which of Atlanta’s two Princes will he warn?) Maybe your vampire’s ghoulish Retainer will come to Atlanta to sell secret covenant magics in exchange for the Embrace and some nice, fat turf. In time, the many stories unfolding in the many cities prowled by the Kindred may interact, weaving threads from dozens of chronicles into several possible worlds of darkness.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, let’s play.

 

25 Vampire Stories

So what are vampires doing all night? One of the first things I needed at the start of my chronicle was a nice fat list of story ideas. Where do you start looking for story ideas? Wherever you can.

In this case, I went with a brainstorming exercise to generate some ideas. The theme I decided to go with was, suitably, blood. Somehow, I had gotten the idea in my head that every chapter of the chronicle would have a one-word title that paired with the word blood to pick up some kind of double meaning. It was a nice, cheesy idea, in theory, but in practice I got bored of it pretty quick. (I’m not crazy for one-word titles, so I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.)

Anyway, the question remained: How many story titles (and therefore ideas) could I come up with based on expressions using the word blood?

First, I made a list of two-word phrases that include the word blood. Then, using that list as inspiration, I jotted down any conflicts, settings, characters or images they brought to mind. If each one was the title of an episode of an imaginary Vampire TV series, what might the synopsis say in that week’s TV Guide?

Each one of those synopses is a story seed. Some of these ended up terrible punny, and I’m sorry about that, but at least they got the job done; change the titles of these stories and they’re a little less absurd. Some of these I’ve used (or plan to use) to create game adventures for this Vampire chronicle. Others I’ve used for one-shot games at conventions or when we’ve got visitors at the office. (I ran one of these, for example, for Sue and Monte Cook when they were here to sign a gajilion copies of Ptolus.)

Looking for story ideas for your chronicle? Here’s twenty-five of them. Have fun.

Blood Loss

When a mortal close to one of the characters dies a sudden and unexpected death, the coterie is faced with one more grim way their immortality changes how they relate to the living — and to the people they loved in life. Do the characters risk the Masquerade to attend the funeral or investigate the death of this old friend?

Blood Flow

Someone inside the Invictus is quietly siphoning money out of a disguised, covenant-held company and funneling it into a private account. A Society Kindred wants to know where this money is going, who’s getting it and why. But when the coterie investigates, they stumble onto another question: How does their Invictus patron even know about this front company and the money in question? Will the coterie trust what it’s been told or will the characters risk betraying their advisor to get to the truth?

Blood Brothers

When a new vampire appears at court claiming to the first childe of one character’s sire, that character’s inherited status (or love) is called into question. If the character’s sire is the subject of ongoing mystery, what would this character be willing to do to get one step closer to the information his vampiric brother knows?

Blood Transfusion

An enemy vampire wants to defect from his faction or covenant and he comes to the coterie to help him come in from the cold. Can this enemy be trusted? Even if he can, is helping him the best way for the characters to take advantage of this situation? Are the characters really betraying this defector if they exploit him before he’s fully their ally? What are the morale boundaries of betrayal?

Blood Fever

Is a plague of Masquerade-threatening frenzy incidents sweeping through the city caused by a mystical illness that infects the undead? A vampire nomad is blamed from bringing the so-called Red Plague to the city, but he may be a scapegoat. Is the plague a legend concocted by a coterie of Acolytes using Cruac to drive their enemies mad?

Blood Pressure

During a grueling heatwave, the coterie is stranded inside an isolated factory building with a crew of vampire hunters when the sky goes pink with dawn. The characters must survive one long day, fighting against supernatural slumber, avoiding sunlight and dodging the stakes and axes of searching hunters.

Blood Feud

The solidarity of a vital domain within the city depends on the cooperation of two Ventrue families who have been working together for a century. But when a clandestine romance between ghouls belonging to each family’s masters results in the forbidden birth of a daughter, the cooperation between the two houses unravels. Which house does the child belong to? Does a marriage between these two ghouls entitle one house to a dowry? Can a disastrous feud be stopped by removing the child from the equation and, if so, what will the coterie do when the task is given to them?

Blood Moon

It’s an old tradition in the city: Three nights per year, the city’s Lupines are given freedom to cross the borders of all domains in the city to conduct their mystical survey of all spiritual sites in the county. This year, tradition goes to hell when the coterie is given the task of escorting one Lupine pack on its trip through vampire territories and the lot of them become embroiled in a werewolf tribal war.

Blood Lust

A sexy elder vampire in a body still young through undeath has just awakened from a few years’ torpor and set her sights on a member of the coterie. But why? Is the character getting the coterie caught up in the schemes of a seductress or does this aged vampire truly lust after him? Is it love? What does love — or lust — even mean for a centuries-old monster whose memories are tangled by the Curse?

Blood Oranges

The local cults of the Circle of the Crone pay a symbolic rent on their territorial ground to their Heirophant and to the Prince. The price is one blood orange from each Acolyte coterie. One cult, neighbors of the coterie, is absent this year’s rent, however, and the Heirophant reveals that all four Kindred in the cult have gone missing. When blood oranges from their garden turn up at the scenes of ritualistic murders throughout the city, mortal police are put on a collision course with the missing coterie’s herd and haven. The Heirophant promises the coterie that, if they can protect the Masquerade and pay the cult’s annual rent, they will inherit their neighbor’s territory.

Blood Donor

The beloved ghoul of an influential vampire superior is suddenly afflicted with a mortal illness. If he’s to survive, he’ll need a new liver. It’s up to the coterie to find a compatible donor and a doctor to perform the surgery before the ghoul dies.

Blood Drive

When the coterie is tasked with delivering a package from the Kindred court to a werewolf pack in the boondocks, they become stranded outside the city by a car wreck that may or may not be an accident. Are hostile spirits trying to keep the coterie from making a successful delivery? What can the characters do about it while they’re stranded on foot, hours from the coming dawn, with no cell phone reception?

Blood Bank

It’s a vampire heist. The target: A 1,000-year old Kindred artifact kept in the palatial home and haven of a powerful Ventrue. The security: A house full of loyal servants, well paid guards, ghoul dogs and protective childer. The score: Priceless, magically endowed blood stored within the artifact, containing the secrets of a forgotten bloodline or Discipline.

Blood Type

For two hundred years, a particular bloodline has been outlawed in the city due to the actions of its membership in the past. When a Kindred allied with the coterie is suspected of being a member of this forbidden bloodline, the Prince commands vampire mystics to analyze his blood and determine his lineage — a process that causes considerable pain and permanent damage to the subject. Is it right for this vampire to held accountable for the sins of his forefathers? Do the characters feel the same way when one of them falls under suspicion next?

Blood Cells

While hunting, the coterie stumbles on an illegal blood farm. A half-dozen unknown vampires are locked in underground cages, where they are apparently fed on animal and human Vitae so that their blood may in turn be fed on by some elder vampire (or vampires). Whose creation is this and where did these Kindred come from? When the court responds by covering up the find, will the coterie risk the ire of the Primogen by spreading word or will they participate in the cover-up to curry favor at court?

Blood Bath

On Monday, the nomad arrives warning of the news he heard in a nearby city: VII is coming. On Tuesday, the first ashes and etchings are found. By Thursday, every Kindred in the city wishes he’d been the fearmonger some said he was. By Sunday, the city is in the grip of a Blood Hunt against any vampire not in his or her assigned domain within the city. Come the following Monday, the city’s Kindred population hardly resembles what it was a week ago. For seven nights, the coterie must survive in a veritable war-zone.

Blood Count

You can see it on the streets: there are more vampires in the city than there were six months ago. Too many more. Is someone Embracing vampires in secret or are Kindred drifting in from other cities? The Prince demands a census, but when it’s revealed that the Sheriff doesn’t have the Hounds to manage it, the coterie is given instructions to scour a section of the city and record vital information on every vampire they can find.

Blood Trail

The coterie begins a strange odyssey through the occult underbelly of their city when a ghoul with sensitive information goes on the lam from his Primogen regnant with what appears to be a group of paranormal investigators. To protect the Masquerade — and possibly the runaway ghoul — the coterie must track down fugitive targets who can operate at any hour of the day or night, pass easily among public kine and cross any Kindred territory without risking the Predator’s Taint. Every night the ghoul’s trial gets colder, and every night his regnant grows more desperate. If the coterie can’t find him, they become the Primogen’s scapegoats.

Blood Witness

A young boy witnesses proof of vampires in action but disappears before he can be neutralized. When the characters stumble on him by chance, four years later, what are they willing to do to protect the Masquerade — or to be seen by their superiors protecting the Masquerade? This boy has been silent for years, so can he really be considered a threat anymore? Can anything morally justify what the characters may have to do to protect themselves and their society from exposure?

Blood Libel

Following a harrowing frenzy, one member of the coterie wakes up in the darkness of an abandoned basement to discover he has apparently lost a whole night to the Beast. When he returns to the coterie, he learns that a local coterie of unaligned vampires has accused him of diablerizing one of its members during his missing night. Did it happen? If not, why would these unaligned vampires lie? What will the coterie have to do to convince the Sheriff of the character’s innocence? And what does innocence even mean among the Damned?

Blood Letting

The problem is simple: The city’s vampire population is out of control. The solution is brutal: Cull the herd. Each covenant is given a gruesome order from the Prince: Deliver one Kindred from their ranks to be snuffed out by the court executioner. Any covenant that does not obey becomes targeted the following night, when the court executioner and the Prince’s Hounds are given license to destroy two Kindred from each disobedient covenant.

Blood Vessel

Held captive by a mentally ill Morbus and his sick ghouls, the coterie is promised freedom only if one of them accepts his blood and becomes one of his diseased lineage. Without the help of the coterie, the Morbus fears his bloodline will perish. To get what he wants, he threatens to infect the coterie’s retainers, herd and ghouls with his toxic bite. Will the coterie sacrifice the blood of one of its members for freedom or risk the Final Death of them all?

Blood Stains

The coterie becomes the prey when the ghost of a mortal slain by one of them comes looking for vengeance. By haunting and possessing any kine the coterie tries to feed on, the ghost attempts to starve the group into torpor so it can destroy their helpless corpses. To escape the wrath of this restless spirit, the coterie may be forced to make a deal with mortal mediums who claim to be wizards.

Blood Relation

While at court, the coterie learns that the son, daughter, sister or brother of one of its members has just been granted as chattel to another vampire in the city. That vampire makes it known that she intends to Embrace her new charge within a month’s time. The Prince agrees. The vampire-to-be must first be groomed, however. If he measures up, he will be Damned. If not, he will be put to death to protect the Masquerade. Does the coterie work to curse their member to an immortal Requiem, do they sabotage his chances and doom him to death or do they risk their own Requiems to help another vampire’s property escape the city?

Blood Test

A Lancea Sanctum priest believes a cult of local Acolytes are actually members of Belial’s Brood working to undermine the faith of the city’s Sanctified. Worried that other Kindred may be influenced by the Brood already, this priest asks the characters to put this cult to the test and determine if they are truly Acolytes or in league with hell. To do this, the coterie must expose itself to the cult’s influences without truly being turned.

 

Chapter 4: The Donor

This chapter is being withheld until the truth about what happened in this story can be shared with all players.

 

Prologue (Part IV): Blood Libel

The past is prologue, as they say. This was one of a handful of stories played out in this same setting with an almost entirely different cast of characters a few months ago. It’s included here as background to the current chronicle.

The investigation into the vampire “blood farm” down near the Old Corners neighborhood leads Lou and Luther onto the trail of the territory’s Regent, an Invictus Ventrue named Locke.

The purpose of these vampires: To feed elders.

Instead of being the bland Society socialite he appeared to be at court, it turns out that Locke had been keeping anywhere from nine to fifteen illegally Embraced Kindred in pens beneath a burnt-out factory buildings. The purpose of these vampires? To feed elders like himself.

Somehow, Locke had kept these undead vessels broken and sedate, apparently through repeated and brutal attacks on their minds using the powers of his Blood, but also by weakening their spirits by coercing them to Embrace other feeding vessels. Locke even brought visitors, like Cobb, by to show off his work.

( We didn’t have Mike this night, so the story focused on investigative stuff, suited to Luther’s Disciplines and Phil’s character concept. )

Was Locke working with the Carthians against the Invictus? Is he just a sick and errant monster with no fear of violating the Prince’s decrees? To find out, Lou and Luther set out in the name of the Prince and Primogen to find Locke and root him out from his hiding place within the city.

To do it, they pursue two unusual leads: night after night of mystic, psychological therapy with one of Locke’s captured and tormented victims, and a meeting with the Carthian spokesman, Haden.

 

Prologue (Part III): Blood Count

The past is prologue, as they say. This was one of a handful of stories played out in this same setting with an almost entirely different cast of characters a few months ago. It’s included here as background to the current chronicle.

After following the trail of bodies to the Old Corners clubs near downtown Atlanta, Lou, Eric and Luther discovered their fledgling killer is also a diablerist — a discovery that’s driven Lou to flee into the night, alone and on foot. Tonight the agents of the court find there’s more than one new vampire in the crumbling warehouses south of the city — a discovery that leads them to a more sinister secret kept in the heart of the court.

 

Prologue (Part II): Blood Trail

The past is prologue, as they say. This was one of a handful of stories played out in this same setting with an almost entirely different cast of characters a few months ago. It’s included here as background to the current chronicle.

While the Primogen vet Louis, Eric and Luther for new roles as agents of the Prince, the Atlanta police investigate a series of brutal murders in the city’s downtown. The Primogen report the Prince’s theory that the suspect is a rogue neonate — possibly one of the many illegitimate Kindred coming out of the city in recent nights — and assign the three prospective envoys to locate the young vampire, find out what he knows, teach him about the Requiem and neutralize the police investigation. Meanwhile, Mr. Never — the elder who recruited Louis and Eric into the Prince’s service — demands his first payment of Vitae from Louis.

 

Prologue (Part I): Blood Hunt

The past is prologue, as they say. This was one of a handful of stories played out in this same setting with an almost entirely different cast of characters a few months ago. It’s included here as background to the current chronicle.

For the first time in thirty years, the Prince of Atlanta has called a Blood Hunt. You’re caught in the middle. Is this demonstration of strength from the normally soft-handed leader a sign that he’s taking the threat of vocal subversives seriously, or is something else going on behind the scenes? Opponents of the Prince are after you; they want what you’ve got. Allies of the Prince offer to help you, if you’ll seek out the truth for them. This is the last night of your old Requiem. Tonight, you take sides or they take you.

By chance, three largely neutral Kindred happen upon the last of the vampires targeted by the Prince’s Blood Hunt. After a short chase and a car accident, these three Kindred find themselves with the torpid corpse of a wanted monster in the trunk of their car. If they give the body to the powers that be — the Prince and his agents — they’ll have new allies in high places but make enemies of the fugitive’s brutal compatriots. If they give the body to the civil revolution that’s gathering strength among the city’s youngest Damned, they risk becoming fugitives themselves. So, the trio devises a cunning plan: In a staged act of subterfuge, they appear to turn on one another. One of them, a former detective named Louis Parker, takes the body to the Prince’s people, while the others, club-owner Eric and conspiracy-theorist Calvin, attempt to appease the fugitive’s allies among the insurgents.

But their public lie is taken more seriously than expected by John Cobb, a charismatic thug and known friend of the Carthian leader, Lukhas. Cobb and his cronies kidnap Calvin and use him as collateral to get to Parker through Eric: if Eric can’t get Parker — the last man to see the fugitive vampire before his destruction — to meet with Cobb’s people, Calvin will burn. But Eric and Cobb’s meeting becomes a clash of Beasts. Threats turn to rage as Cobb calls his people and orders Calvin’s destruction. Rage explodes into violence. The Masquerade is broken, a local coffeeshop is trashed in site of mortal witnesses and one mortal girl is killed in the clash to feed Cobb’s wounds, but Eric manages to get escape with Cobb’s phone.

A push of the redial button confirms it in the panicked voice of an overwhelmed lackey: Calvin’s dead.

Still smoldering with the fire of the Blood, Eric strides back into the coffeeshop and puts Cobb down with a bullet to the brain. Shutting his torpid enemy into the trunk of his car, Eric drives out into the night. Is he looking for justice or revenge?