Looking for dark secrets.

[strider1276]

Hey all, coming to the hive mind for some ideas.

I'm going to be running a "one shot" (it'll be 4-6 sessions, but that'll be it) in the next month or so, with pre-gen characters. I have a large number of players, so I'm thinking that I'm going to split them into two coteries forced to work together to overcome a situation.

That said, part of the character packet I'll give each player is going to be a dark secret of some sort. While I have ideas on what some of them could be, I thought that the folks here might come up with some really good ones I hadn't considered.

The characters are going to run the breadth of the clans and covenants, and will even include one Holy Engineer (depending on how much I'd have to convert to 2e; in any event, that character will also have that new bloodline I can't think of the name of right now). Here's the kicker: each character's dark secret will also be known by another player character. I want there to be opportunity for bribery, blackmail, and so on.

So with all that said, anyone have any ideas for some good secrets a vampire would want to keep hidden -- or would be blackmailed, etc, over?

[Dwight]

Embraced by the Prince but doesn't know it.

[Stupid Loserman]

Left the membership of one of the sorcerous covenants in a distant domain and still knows their proprietary sorcery.
Is hundreds of years older than claimed, having woken from a long, enervating torpor.
Murdered the Prince's childe prior to the Prince finding them and giving the posthumous Embrace.
Anchor for a ghost who is not hostile to the player character, but who pursues a vendetta against someone else in the Night Society.
Was visited by an angel and charged with a holy mission – but the player character is not religious and does not wish to undertake it.
Drinking from the player character inflicts aggravated damage on the PC but yields 5 Vitae for each point of damage and does not inflict the Vinculum.
The character's Beast is self-aware, conscious, and communicates and negotiates with the character, as per The Other from the Requiem Chronicler's Guide.
Can walk in sunlight and eat food.

[Neos01]

He/she is a revenant uplifted
Faking membership to another clan
Membership in a cult lead by a strix
Performed an invictus oath with a non invictus as a regent
Has been bribed to report a crime as a witness, but it s fake

[saibot]

The character...

• ...killed (accidentally or not) the Touchstone of a major local player. Or maybe even of another player character.
• ...belongs to a mysterious and condemned Bloodline. The character themselves may not even be aware. Alternatively, the character is Twice-cursed (Spilled Blood, p. 102).
• ...is a Solace addict (p. 73) and actually has a reliable supplier.
• ...was once nearly killed by hunters, but was spared by selling out other vampires. Many of those have in fact been destroyed.
• ...has developed a heretical Theban Miracle or Coil of the Dragon.

[Stupid Loserman]

Responsible for a famous unsolved murder that shocked the domain years ago.
Friends with a mortal who killed or otherwise heavily inconvenienced a local vampire or ghoul.
In deep debt to the mob.
Mysterious tattoo on the upper arm says "VII" and cannot be removed.
Is secretly a pair of identical twins.

[Stupid Loserman]

Member of a distrusted bloodline that can only feed on Vitae from vampiric Touchstones (does not need to be the vampire's own Touchstones).

[Baaldam]

Member of a distrusted bloodline that can only feed on Vitae from vampiric Touchstones (does not need to be the vampire's own Touchstones).

That one seems like "PC custom built for coterie strife" more than a dark secret, to be fair.


Ok, let me try to think of a few ones:

- You have blackouts from time to time - when you awaken from them you usually find yourself with your hands covered in blood in some unknown room covered in strange bloody magic scrawlings. It's always the same room and you can't find it after you leave. Until you black out again, that is.
- You have recently concluded you cannot embrace for some reason. All your past (secret) attempts so far have resulted in some sort of bestial sort of hungry corpse kind of undead. You are still tracking down at least one of your...rogue childer.
- Every winter solstice you deliver a "tithe" of two bronze coins in a certain mausoleum in the old city's cemetery, the one with owls in the wrought iron gates around a hedge maze, as instructed to by your sire before its disappearance. You know you're not the only one to do so, but are not really certain of who they are. You also know that you're warned when the time is coming. By whom, you don't know.
- Your current persona is a facade hiding something much older and alien. In fact you strongly suspect you're also your sire, strange as it may sound. Unfortunately you don't remember how to return to what you were. Or why you changed identities in the first place.
- You can commit diablerie on ghouls, no idea whatsoever why. It's not the same as doing so to other kindred, but still good.
- You are haunted by the dead victims of botched feedings, your or others. You have more than once made deals with those that discovered you, just so the damn shades would stop their pestering.

[The young man in the cafe]

Your existence so far has been a time loop. Somehow you were embraced by your future past self and then flung backwards in time but the date where you have to embrace your mortal self for them/you to be sent into the past is coming up and you have no idea what will happen in your unlife afterwards

[strider1276]

These have all been very good, and have inspired some other ideas. Thanks, folks!

[Craig Oxbrow]

You were Embraced after being drained and left for dead by another vampire - one who won't be happy to see you up and about.

You need to drink brain fluid as well as blood.

You're using an assumed identity because of something you did as a mortal which some or all of the local Kindred will want to kill you for if they find out - perhaps you killed vampires before, or you're infamous for some mortal action, like the theory that Donovan in City Of The Damned: New Orleans is John Wilkes Booth.

[Yossarian]

Hey all, coming to the hive mind for some ideas.

The characters are going to run the breadth of the clans and covenants, and will even include one Holy Engineer (depending on how much I'd have to convert to 2e; in any event, that character will also have that new bloodline I can't think of the name of right now).

There's a Holy Engineers-associated bloodline for 2E in Spilled Blood, the Jharana. Includes a Radio Sickness update.

As for dark secrets, it might be too specific to set up, but "doesn't know they're a Hollow Mekhet" is always fun.