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 8: Rain of Blood

The coterie, bound for Atlanta, stranded in the wilderness outside the Perimeter and with time short before the coming dawn, encounters monsters both familiar and strange.

 

Chapter 7: Two-Headed

To further Eric’s plan to raise up a hidden cadre of Sanctified paladins from the vampire parishes outside the Perimeter, the Prohibition coterie heads out to Red Cattle, Georgia in search of a Kindred priest called Father Reardon.

 

Chapter 6: Drive By

Coming soon.

 

Chapter 5: The Priest, The Prince, and the Dragon

Elysium. Eric brings Archie and Walsh before a local meeting of the Court of Atlanta to formally introduce them to Kindred society. At the same time, he brings Regent Daniel of the Carthians, who was involved in an attempt to intimidate Eric and burn down Archie’s haven, whom Eric has enchanted through his powers as a Succubus. Under Eric’s mystic influence, Daniel will be compelled to testify on Eric’s behalf, revealing the Carthian plot to terrorize Eric’s domain and, presumably, run Eric off his land.

At the same time, Eric brings a proposal to his old Sanctified mentor, Father Stenholm, who will inform Eric of his agreement to participate in a city-wide scheme to keep the Carthians in check by delivering a coded sermon to the vampires in attendance at this Elysium.

Meanwhile, Dr. Walsh seeks out Mr. Never, to whom he is supposed to deliver the marker given to him by Victor. If Never accepts it, Walsh will become an initiate in the Ordo Dracul — the Order of the Dragon.

Eric’s interrogation of Daniel, however, reveals that Lukhas and his fellow Carthians are planning some major initiative at the handful of small courts being help throughout the city that night. But Daniel isn’t important enough to have been told just what Lukhas’s announcement will be, so Eric and his coterie have to wait and see.
In Play

 

Chapter 4: The Donor

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

 

Chapter 3: Three Nights Around Prohibition

“The dead, they get around.”
— Eric, Regent of Old Boulevard

The club called Prohibition is now at the center of three vampires’ Requiems. Eric, lord of the local vampire turf, owns Prohibition and resides secretly inside — it’s the castle and capitol of his Kindred fief. Archie, the waifish former drug-dealer put into Eric’s foster care by Brother Cassius on behalf of the vampire church called the Lancea Sanctum, now works as the club’s special bouncer — it’s Archie’s job to deal with the club’s vampire customers. Dr. Jarod Walsh, a recently deceased surgeon, is now a resident of Eric’s domain, and earns his keep by using his mystic sight to keep watch over the club — and otherwise upholding Eric’s will in the domain.

These three vampires all spend their nights around Prohibition, but their three nights are not so similar. Three similar threads do run through their Requiems, though. From Thursday through Friday to Saturday, those threads are revealed.

ERIC: What did I do to deserve this kind of trouble?
ROMEO: Has it been your experience that you ever have to do anything? Don’t this shit just go around? Aren’t we always stepping on somebody?

At the Table:
For the PlayersIn play, here’s how this works: This story spans three nights, with each night seen through the eyes of a different character. On your character’s night, he’ll appear in every scene. When it’s not your character’s night, you’ll have to be patient because you’ll be allowed to take actions only when you’re in a scene with that night’s “starring” character. You won’t be allowed to do any but the most basic things “behind the scenes” on those nights. (To get all three nights into a single night’s game session, we’re going to have to haul ass, so don’t worry about being bored.)

Note that, as this story unfolds, each of you will be exposed to information that your character doesn’t have. Don’t abuse that privilege.

 

Chapter 2: Somebody Has to Die

The mortal lives of new neonates must make way for the Requiems that come in their wake. If Dr. Walsh and Archie are going to begin new existences in the same city where they used to live, they have to make sure no one’s looking for their old, daytime selves. In the case of Archie, this might be as simple as making sure his wife doesn’t go looking for her drug-dealing husband. For Walsh, things get more complicated. He has living patients, co-workers and friends who might go poking their noses into vampire society if they follow the trail of the missing surgeon. It’s not enough for Walsh to disappear — he has to die.

 

Chapter 1: Two More Dead on Old Boulevard

“There’s a whole host of fiends and monsters in this city — of which I am one — that’ll do anything to get what it wants.”
— Eric

Eric has a history with the vampires of Atlanta. To the church of the Lancea Sanctum, he’s a parishoner growing more respectable with each passing favor he does for the priesthood, a respectable whelp with more appreciation for the church than his peers. To the Kindred court and the Invictus, he’s a small-time player who can appreciate the purpose (and the cost) of maintaining stability among the society of the Damned. Eric is respected, even trusted to a point, by the powers that maintain the law among Atlanta’s bloodsuckers. The Prince gave him his domain in Old Boulevard, the church gave him the freedom to dwell among the living without persecution. He has contacts throughout Kindred society and this gets him into trouble.

For more than a year, newly Embraced vampires have been turning up in the Big Peach — wandering the cracked alleys downtown, locked naked in chain-link pens, abandoned in the bloody beds of their Midtown condos, ditched on the busted tiles of low-rise projects. It’s been happening long enough that the Kindred of Atlanta are almost taking it for granted, a problem unsolved to the point that it’s become accepted through apathy. The Invictus blame unchecked Carthians, Embracing carelessly like their young kine counterparts screw, much to the detriment of their souls. The Carthians blame the Invictus, whose feckless investigations are rumored to have snaked back on themselves, revealing old white vampires with stables of slave Kindred to milk for blood.

But the Sanctified — the pious followers of the Church of the Spear — preach that the sin of the Embrace is carried out despite covenant. It’s a sin of indiscretion, of ignorant passion — a sin of youth. Everybody else here has some other motive but you. That makes you the only one I can trust.” — Archie The Sanctified believe the Curse is being passed onto to kine by Kindred of every covenant, and that it is the duty of every pious vampire to prevent further violations of the holy law, to stop mortals from being Damned to vampirism. This is what the priests of the Lancea Sanctum sermonize at Midnight Mass. Meanwhile, ministers of the vampire church strive to shepherd the Damned orphans they find on the street. Orphans like Archie.

Archie was found selling drugs on an unlit street corner near the heart of Atlanta. He was spotted by a Sanctified Muslim preacher who goes by the name Brother Cassius, who tells it like the Testament says: that Kindred shall not lay down with kine. Archie was doing business with the sheep, but not as a shepherd. As Cassius suspected, Archie had not heard the Word of Longinus. (This was just a short introduction session we played after character creation to get everybody up to speed. We got a great sense of the characters now, though, and a lot of goals surfaced that previous stories can build on.) Cassius brought Archie off the street, into a house of the Spear. Until a parishoner could be found to show Archie the nightly ways of the Damned, Cassius sat that skinny white dealer on his ass and preached at him, Testament in hand, in his stiff tea-colored suit. If Archie is to see eternity, he’ll have to renounce the shreds of his mortal life — his drug money, his contacts, his wife — and accept his fate as a blessed beast.

Thinking he should be weened off the world of mortals, but cut clean free of his own mortal associates, Cassius brought Archie to Prohibition, Eric’s club, where Kindred and kine interact in an environment secretly designed by wolves to lure sheep. Giving Eric the new title of Deacon, the Sanctified church tasked him with guiding Archie into his Requiem — and into the Danse Macabre.

But Archie wasn’t the only new vampire in Prohibition that night. Hunting on the streets by himself, lured by the scent of mortal blood and the nerve-wracking stink of other Kindred nearby, undead surgeon Dr. Jarod Walsh stepped into the sweating throngs of kine and almost succumbed to his Beast. But Eric has experience with young vampires. Looking down on the mortal crowd in his club, he can spot bloodsuckers in his crowd by the way they move. The way they smell. With a call to his club manager, Nicole, Eric has a lovely black-haired blood-whore, Rachel, walk Dr. Walsh off the main floor of the club into Prohibition’s VIP room, marked by a stylized capital I on the door.

For the first time, Dr. Walsh feeds from a willing victim, pressing her up against the metal wall of a posh feeding room — a locked metal cell, one of a handful Eric keeps hidden in Prohibition. Archie and Eric watch his blurred body push against his prey, watch him nick her neck with a razor blade, on the small CCTV monitor in Eric’s office. While Walsh feeds, Eric lays it on the table for Archie: damnation, eternity, blood.

Things will be different now. Archie and Walsh will learn what it is to dwell forever in the dark, slipping through the cracks of the mortal city like blood in a concrete floor, to survive each night for the reward of one more chance to die… again.

ARCHIE: So keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary.

JAROD: It’s all gonna be out of the ordinary.

 

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.