[V5] [WIR] The Chicago Folios - Completed 9/19/2020

[CTPhipps]

Chapter Four: Heretical Threats and Observations

Basically, this is the Cults of the Blood Gods chapter. Written before the COTBG but definitely with an idea of what it would contain, this contains a bunch of adventure hooks and information about the various secrets and secret societies that made up the unpublished supplement. I should note this is my second favorite chapter and it has a lot of what you need to know about the Blood Cults in order to run them. I was especially fond of the Church of Caine section because, well, the Church of Caine is my favorite part of the Blood Gods cultists.

After we finish this section, it'll be off to NPCs and then Loresheets and finally rituals.

Some questions before we continue on:

* Anyone want more original content thrown in?

* Should we do a new thread for Let the Streets Run Red? This ran a bit longer than expected?

* Anything we should do further analysis on in the previous posts?

[CTPhipps]

Waking Nightmares and Haunted House

Cast: The Gaunt Man, Shejana

Synopsis: The PCs are given the role of Scooby Doo villains to drive out the local Kindred from an affluent neighborhood.

Analysis: This is the final of the adventures for Mortals and Independents. I'm pleased to see that we've managed to get through most of the adventures of book. I don't know how much longer it'll be until LET THE STREETS RUN RED is out but I feel like we're getting there. As a result, we really should continue this review so we can read along when it's released.

The big thing about this adventure is that it reintroduces Shejana from CHICAGO BY NIGHT 2ND EDITION. I love Shejana, even if she deals with a subject that most gamers would not like to deal with. She is a Romani Ravnos who is also a Holocaust survivor. Yeah. That's some weighty stuff right there. Here, she's just been hired to use her Chimestry in order to terrorise the Parkie Mob and some other vampires living in territory the Hecate want (and probably controlled before they were driven out by their civil war).

This is, ironically, not a very serious plot despite Shejana's terrible history. The player characters are just meant to make the supernaturals fear they're in The Shining and get the hell out of dodge. Given that the Ocean View Hotel is the most terrifying level for most V:TM:Bloodlines players, this isn't necessarily a bad idea. It just runs the risk of them getting unmasked by some meddling kids and their talking dog. Hell, it's even a real estate scam like a typical Scooby Doo episode.

We don't get much insight into the Hecata because they won't "officially" be released until Cults of the Blood Gods is in print and that's a way's off still. Still, it's nice to see them incorporated and we'll get even more of it in the next section.

[CTPhipps]

Severed Ties, Whizzkid, and Opportunity Knocks

Cast: Sovereign, Bobby Weatherbottom, the Milliner family

Synopsis: Sovereign has lost a lot of money thanks to the Hecate revolt and is not happy about it.

Analysis: If you don't have anything resembling a conscience, it would seem that it would be a really good idea to get in on the Giovanni. I tend to think of Alan Sovereign as the kind of guy who thinks Pyramid Schemes are a great idea as long as you get in on the ground floor of them. The purpose of finance is to cheat after all and if you have any real risk involved, you are not doing it right.

It's why I've always liked the character to an extent because he has a not inconsiderable resemblance to some of my father's friends (and probably my dad who I am not saying was a criminal but had an ethical fluidity regarding investment). I note this probably makes me one of the few people who actually LIKES Alan Sovereign as a character since "crooked white collar criminals" are not usually the most sympathetic of vampires. I suppose I always view him as the lesser evil compared to Ballard who I attribute all sorts of horrors.

Anyway, Alan has lost a bunch of money with the Giovanni and can't get it back so he wants the player characters to hijack it back via the "Computer Thingie" (just imagining him doing air quotes in it). If they're Anarchs, I'm inclined to think that this is a great time to rob Sovereign and give a bunch of money to help the Moveemnt while showing their bonafides. Honestly, I think this is an adventure that works best if it's failed. I rarely say that but my idea is the PCs should do everything right and get within INCHES of the money only to have it snatched away at the last second--leaving them in debt to Sovereign.

The player characters can then do the second part of the adventure where they break into a now-abandoned Giovanni Manor full of antiques ready for looting. I honestly feel this adventure feels a little down as if you're going to do that then I expect zombies, ghosts, and a feral ghoul who lives in the attic while loving Rocky Road (gratituous Goonies reference). I think this could be a good intro to the changes of the Hecata but need a Giovanni or Harbinger character to show up.

Maybe Lord Camden (I consider the Gentleman Guides to be canon).

[CTPhipps]

Oh Brother and an Errant Childe

Cast: Claudi Aymerich, Melissa Aymerich [mortal]

Synopsis: A former football player has become a serial killing Thin Bloods. Unfortunately, his sister has figured out he's a monster and made touch with the Society of Leopold.

Analysis: This is a fairly standard but solid enough for a single-night story. The opening fiction is really what sells it. Claudi is a former football player (as mentioned above) who gets in an accident and is crippled from the waist down. Unable to deal with his condition, he gets involved in a "stem cell" program that ends up turning him into a Thin Blood. Unfortunately, Claudi reacts to this the way that a douchebag frat-bro sociopath would and starts going after beautiful women he drains dry. Claudi disappears into the big city and begins killing women one after the other in the manner that vampires are accustomed to (if they're Toreador Sabbat).

The twist is that Melissa, Claudi's sister, has managed to track him down and has already witnessed him murdering someone. Her Reverend is, thankfully, a member of the Society of Leopold and convinced her that an alien parasite is possessing him. This would normally be a hard sell but I can actually believe it. If my late brother turned up and was suddenly a serial killer, I would actually be inclined to believe the alien/demon story over the infinitely more "realistic" answer that he faked his death and is now a murderer.

The vast majority of player characters are not going to have any sympathy for Claudi and will want to eliminate him as (and I quote Dragon Age: Inquisition) the worst of their kind. Claudi's crimes are especially egregious because he's a Thin Blood and doesn't need to kill to survive. Killing for pleasure is still something a Thin Blood must but they can survive on blood that other Kindred would find nauseating. I think I made the statement in V20, "Animal blood tastes like a rancid pool to most vampires of lower generation. To Thin Blood, it's more like a flat beer. Not great but I can imagine someone drinking daily flat beers a lot more easily than the rancid pools." Hell, even if he did feed off women, nothing prevents him from leaving them alive. Thin Bloods do not hunger frenzy.

You could potentially make Claudi a more sympathetic character-ish by lowering his generation but I think the fact he's a Thin Blood actually makes him more interesting. I also think there's some interesting avenues to explore in his origin story with the fake "stem cell" clinic. You could have a doctor who has been Embracing people as Thin Bloods because he doesn't see Thin Bloodedness as a curse. This gives the PCs a much bigger group to track down and potentially burn to the ground like Blaine's "mass embrace of rich people" in iZombie (great show for vampires--High Humanity Nagaraja!).

Melissa is another character that could be very interesting to deal with. She's a very sympathetic character but I recommend that if you run this adventure that it ends with them having to execute her. Leaving hunters alive is something that is always going to bite players in the ass and there's no way to convince her they're not monsters. That's just my take on the subject at least.

Notably, Claudi's stats reveal some things. He was embraced by Blue Serpent Operative 45#, which tells me that he was probably CREATED by the Second Inquisition as a study pool. That is another interesting angle to follow up on. Another possibility is he's a creation of Magadon Drugs. Weirdly, he also has Humanity 6, which I think is way too high.

[CTPhipps]

Unholy Autopsy, Factory Farmed Fangs, and Captured!

Cast: The Second Inquisition

Synopsis: The Second Inquisition is kidnapping vampires in order to experiment on them.

Analysis: This is a fairly straight forward set of adventures and ones that don't really need much explaining. The Second Inquisition is capturing vampires in Chicago and then subjecting them to horrific experiments in order to learn all of their weaknesses. The player characters can murder the first group of them quite easily (they're scientists not soldiers) but they will eventually end up captured by a second group that will put them to even greater tortures than the previous ones captured.

One thing I really like about these adventures is the fact that they take into account the PCs might not react like a bunch of Intelligence 2 Brujah and bash up the place with a spiked bat. The smart play is to be like real like spies and attempt to convert the Second Inquisition facilities into tools against their masters. One ending even has the PCs taking over a military facility and turning it into their own personal supervillain lair as well as possessing a cadre of mad scientists.

I admit part of what I like about these adventures is they can be very helpful to making the Second Inquisition utterly unsympathetic. Nothing quite says "Pulp Nazis" like a lair where a bunch of people perform horrific experiments on innocent people for questionable valure. Even if you think all Kindred deserve it, there's Thin Bloods, Ghouls, and the poor herds of Kine that might also be subject to experimentation. One of the doctors is actually sympathetic to the Kindred as well, finding their treatment barbaric.

A good way to further expand on the Second Inquisition being a bunch of scumbags and not the hero antagonists of a vampire chronicle would be to have the scientists less concerned with eradicating or curing them then gaining their abilities. Plenty of Senators, CEOs, and soldiers would absolutely love to gain their share of Kindred powers with none of the weaknesses. There's even a group of them in the PROJECT: TWILIGHT called the Star Chamber. Basically, a billionaire's club that shares vampire blood among themselves to live forever.

Good stuff.

[CTPhipps]

this books is so awesome for V5 storytellers, currently running a couple of these for my new group; hope to see Modiphius put out more of these kinds of books.

100% agreed!

[Joe]

this books is so awesome for V5 storytellers, currently running a couple of these for my new group; hope to see Modiphius put out more of these kinds of books.

[CTPhipps]

New Adventure

I had another idea for one of these. I hope people don't mind me incorporating them into the thread. I've actually run this adventure in my home games and it proved very popular.

Human Resources

Cast: Blake Tyler [crooked SAD officer], Wesley Sharpe [Low Level Pentex manager], Bronwyn, Adze

What happened

Blake Tyler was an SAD FBI agent as early as the Nineties and is nearing retirement date. An associate of the Minutemen headed by Martin Fisk, he foolishly passed up an opportunity to join said individual's fledgling PMC called Fisk Securities. An increasingly out of touch dinosaur with the more "touchy feely" FBI, Blake never progressed beyond being a Senior Agent and was informed he should just take his pension.

The Second Inquisition has changed matters as it has created a vast need for "experienced" personnel in dealing with Blank Bodies. Unfortunately, his politically incorrect sexist attitudes as well as strong sense of entitlement have already stymied what could have been a second chance for him. It did, however, expose him to reports that confirmed something that he long suspected: a lot of vampires were stupid rich.

Sent to investigate the Chicago Circulatory System and realizing many vampires had vast networks of human trafficking rings or food sources, he managed to come up with a plan that would allow him to make him and a bunch of other associates a lot of money. Contacting one of his former associates in Wesley Sharpe and with the implicit blessing of Martin Fisk, he has since decided to make use of private contractor detention facilities overseen by the Department of Homeland Security to "disappear" detainees into the hands of vampires who want no-questions-asked meals.

Wesley Sharpe is the psychopathic manager of the "Green Valley" facility in Chicago that is where large numbers of people are rounded up for deportation. While a Pentex employee, he is corrupt in a thoroughly mundane way and doesn't see any of the people under his care as human beings. Blake Tyler's plan is something that will make him more money but, honestly, he'd happily do it for free as he has a sadistic murderous personality that Pentex has cultivated.

Brownyn has made contact with Blake Tyler and is actually more interested in pumping him for information about the Second Inquisition than she is about his "genius" plan. She can certainly get her own meals but this is a source of cheap disposable bulk goods, like a liquor surplus, that she's actually sending across the country to open new Circulatory System franchises. It's undermining her humanity more than it's already been but that's a small price to pay for what she's gathered. It helps that Blake is a loud mouth and easily manipulated even without disciplines.

Ironically, despite going against every single element of the Second Inquisition's purpose, the person most likely to bring down Tyler's operation isn't his superior but another Kindred. Adze has stumbled upon this operation and while no saint, the Nosferatu's little remaining Humanity was affected by what is very much modern slavery. He is now looking for find some way to undermine this without exposing himself to backlash or hurting his own businesses.

What Could Happen

+ Blake Tyler is an unstable sociopath who is is already drunk on both the power of his actions as well as the literal drugs he's started to take with his newfound wealth. At age 57, he doesn't think he'll have nearly enough time to enjoy his "retirement fund" even if it continues to pay out. As such, he plans to blackmail Bronwyn into making him a vampire. Bronwyn, furious about this, decides to just have him killed with a group of patsies to take him out as well as deal with the fallout from the Second Inquisition. PCs who investigate Blake before hand will find that he's easily controlled and would be ghoulable if they wanted to take over his operation.

It would be a fast track to wassail, though.

+ Adze hires the PCs to destroy the human trafficking operation in a way that will humiliate the Second Inquisition, possibly have blow back on Bronwyn, and [most of all] not be traceable back to him. An easy way to do this would be to alert Blake's superiors and cause a minor uproar within the ranks of the Second Inquisition as they don't know how to deal with it. Unfortunately, this could just end up with Blake "disappeared" and Wesley Sharpe taking over without interruption.

+ The PCs accidentally make things worse by approaching Kevin Jackson. While he finds it distasteful, he actually rewards Bronwyn for her quick thinking and works to expand the network both to provide Kindred with more vessels as well as bend more Second Inquisition sources. The Second Inquisition soon finds a small civil war between those who want to work with the Kindred vs. those who find them abominations.

+ Amelia Locke is a good person for the PCs to contact if they want to seriously harm the Second Inquisition as a whole. While it threatens her life, the PCs life, and the Masquerade as a whole--if they expose the human trafficking ring as a whole then hundreds of potential people will be implicated. It will cause the Second Inquisition's SAD branch and many of its networks to fall under scrutiny and cause widespread disillusion within its ranks. It will also result in a Blood Hunt being declared on Bronwyn and her becoming a 2pt Enemy.

+ A potential wild card is if a group of Kinfolk get swept up into the Pentex/Second Inquisition operation and the werewolves believe that vampires are planning on eating their relatives. This may result in an end to the treaty that has held since Under a Blood Red Moon.

[CTPhipps]

Bad Medicine, Light Up The Night, Surgical Strike

Cast: The Second Inquisition, Magadon Pharmaceuticals

Synopsis: The Second Inquisition is using radioactive isotopes to track Cainites across the city via satellite. It's up to the PCs to figure out how they want to deal with such a kooky plan.

Analysis: The Second Inquisition is something that is one of the best additions to the World of Darkness while also one of the hardest to use. Basically, what do you do with them other than have them show up at your haven to trash the place? Well this section definitely gives you some ideas and these are my favorite of them. Basically, the Second Inquisition has a brilliant way to use SCIENCE to find out where all the Kindred in the world are. They're going to track them like animals and presumably either round them up or contain them. They are being aided in this by Magadon Pharmaceuticals, Big Pharma before we actually had a name for it in the Nineties.

Is it just me or is the problem of Pentex that reality keeps making the actual Satanists look tame in terms corporate culture?

I appreciate whenever Pentex gets mentioned in other settings than Werewolf: The Apocalypse. I resent when they got rid of the Special Projects Division as I think Pentex and the Technocracy should be hand-in-pocket trying to take over the world. I also feel like the Camarilla should have made an alliance with Pentex versus the Sabbat. There's a supplement called Pentex: Monkeywrenchers that I've always enjoyed and it details both Magadon, Endron, and the First Teams. It also has the Camarilla investigating Pentex as a source of Sabbat wealth. When I used it in my campaigns, I had the Camarilla, rather than fight Pentex, come to an accommodation because of course it would.

Which is basically the solution of this campaign. The US government is employing Magadon to help hunt vampires but the best opportunity for the players to utterly derail their plans is for the vampires to use their vast resources to make a deal with Magadon. The Camarilla may not be able to outbid the US government but they can make "problems" like opioid investigations, taxation, or so on all disappear while the Second Inquisition is going to be cash strapped soon due to all the money they've wasted on cleansing whole cities.

It's also possible the Camarilla while can't buy PENTEX, they could buy Magadon. It's also a very good investment for Kindred in the future. True Blood? Infectious porphyry? Sunscreen?

Another Humanity-costing way to derail the Inquisition's plan is to make it appear that the isotope causes cancer in those humans it infects. Yes, have the players actually give humans cancer in order to derail a Second Inquisition plan. They can try and fake the data with Magadon's help but that's a lot riskier than doing it the Adrian Veidt sort of way. The scenario also nicely has the player characters have the option of just murdering the scientists responsible for this (and orphaning their children) or bending them to their will.

[CTPhipps]

Chapter Three: Independent and Mortal Perspectives

Part of what I loved about V5 was the increased focus on mortals. I feel like Revised, for all of its wonderful elements, was the most removed from any acknowledgement that humans existed as something other than Blood Bags or disposable retainers.

One of the things I really appreciated about Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines was that humans didn't necessarily play a BIG role but they played *A* role: Heather Poe, Fat Larry, Venus, and Chunk all let you know that humans could be entertaining additions to your game. You'd think that would be obvious but I knew plenty of vampire games that had NO human NPCs.

So this is a welcome chapter and one that I look forward to dissecting. We're about halfway done now with THE CHICAGO FOLIOS and I think that I'll be able to wrap this up before the arrival of LET THE STREETS RUN RED.

It should be noted that Matthew Dawkins recently did an interview where he revealed some secrets and revelations about that supplement. We've got inisghts into all four Chronicles for the book now including such revelations as Sir Walter Nash (from Vampire: The Eternal Struggle) and that Maxwell is doing some sort of plot in Gary, Indiana. I'm eager to hear more about these.

Fascinating stuff around 10:30 or so.

[CTPhipps]

And we're done with the Anarch section!

[CTPhipps]

The Traditions: A Feminist Perspective, At the Rant, About the Data Stick

Cast: Jennifer MacKay, Naomi Stewart, an anonymous blackmailer

Synopsis: Jennifer MacKay has a rant where she goes on about black feminism and how it relates to vampiredom. Naomi Stewart attends. Jennifer MacKay freaks the hell out about a Ventrue Elder being at her meeting and decides to kill her. This entire business is recorded and someone tries to blackmail Naomi Stewart over it.

Analysis: This is an adventure I think could be done very well but also have the potential to go seriously off the wall. Thankfully, most of my gamers are very progressive sorts and aren't the sort of trogalydytes who would pass out at the notion of discussing intersectionality at an RPG. Indeed, I think there's a lot of interesting points to do about it with the discussion of minorities, class warfare, and vampirism. Indeed, that may well be cheating here because that's the subject of my vampire novel.

The problem I have with this is that Jennifer MacKay is a character designed to not really have any idea what she's talking about. She's a very smart young woman but wholly ignorant about Kindred politics and thinks that Gengis is a better leader for the Anarchs than Anita Wainwright. I'd understand if it was Maldavis but that's just being a horrible judge of character. The fact she immediately freaks the hell out about the only black woman Ventrue in, well probably the Greater Chicao Area, doesn't help matters.

Oddly, I think this adventure would be better if the roles were reversed with Naomi Stewart being the one to give a lecture to her students [possibly risking the Masquerade] or a group of visiting Kindred women, ghouls, and Thin Bloods. Then you could have Jennifer crash the party, fully intending to expose Naomi as a fraud and ending up having a very interesting conversation. Sort of like how Tessa Thompson and Logan Browning had a conversation in Dear White People between the capitalist conservative sellout vs. young idealist anarch.

"The only difference between us is time."

I'm also not sure that the blackmailer really has something worth blackmailing over. Naomi can easily just claim she's there to spy on the Anarchs while Jennifer having a Ventrue Elder show up isn't going to lose her cred unless said Elder takes over. I recommend Bobby Weatherbottom for the blackmailer just because I think he's got a dark side and it's nice to show it (beyond keeping his girlfriend attached to a milking machine).

[CTPhipps]

I posted this in a different thread concerning "Let the Streets Run Red", and on the advice of CT, I moved it here. It concerns the possible location of the staked Kindred from CbN and the Folios. Where are they kept? Here's the post:

In reviewing CbN, the closed down Joliet Corrections Center struck a chord, but I'm saving that for something else. I wanted something with a horrid history, that would allow for other supernatural encounters as well, and might explain why it's not "heavily guarded" since the reputation alone is enough to keep mortals and most Kindred away.I'm thinking an abandoned building of what was once the Manteno State Psychiatric Hospital, about 50 miles from Chicago; little more than an hour's drive. This place has an awful, and terrifying real world history. For the sake of the World of Darkness, in consideration of its past horrors, I imagine it might have required a morgue too-- and there our staked Kindred rest. This place is rife with spectres- that alone is enough for mortals to give the place a wide berth. I imagine, nearby there might be a few ghouls or Dominated mortals, who make the rounds, probably police of the town. Here, the torpid forms of Dickie, Victoria Longwood and maybe Lorraine Matthews lay. Can you think of any other Kindred mentioned as staked and disappeared in CbN and the Folios? Maybe, Let the Streets Run Red will give us insight into Lorraine's fate, otherwise, if Jackson did stake her--well, this is a suitably nightmarish location for her torpid form.

Excellent write-up, friend.

If I were to come up with some suitable ideas for Lorraine's fate, I would go with a multiple choice one:

1. Lorraine is dead: Lorraine's attempts to constantly preserve Lodin's "legacy" irritated the vast majority of his brood. As such, one day Lorraine simply disappeared and it was blamed on the Second Inquisition. In truth, Kevin Jackson had her disposed of at the hands of "Crook" Dawson. He didn't want it traced back to him promised Dawson a major boon. This murder being revealed would severely impact Kevin Jackson's Princedom as quite a few Elders liked Lorraine even if they (mostly) dismissed her as Lodin's drug-addled mistress. Crook is saving the information for a helpful bit of blackmail later on.

2. Lorraine is imprisoned: Lorraine was effectively Lodin's secretary as well as mistress, which gave her access to vast amounts of information that would be stored in computers today. Eventually, individuals realized this and made an effort to abscond with her. Possible individuals holding her as Kevin Jackson, Al Capone, Ballard, Cedrick Calhoun, Bronwyn, and the Second Inquisition. Her state of wellness, sanity, and more are dependent on her captor.

3. Lorraine is an Anarch: The Blood Bond to Lodin probably took a decade to die given the sheer number of times she fed from him as well as how much he reinforced it with both Presence as well as natural charm. However, eventually it did break and Lorraine felt cheap as well as disgusted by how much Lodin had used her. While Anita Wainwright was less than happy at the prospect of taking in the wayward Blue Blood, a part of her felt sympathy for the daughter of privilege wanting to fight for greater enlightenment. She's fully embraced the hippie lifestyle decades too late and has beem protected by both Anita as well as Erichtho (while pried free of dozens of important secrets). She has also started a self-help drug cult that keeps her in the medicated blood she needs.

4. Lorraine is in hiding: Pretty much the same as other angles, Lorraine has used her significant powers of Dominate as well as access to Lodin's account to go into hiding. She probably hasn't gone far but has changed her appearance and could be in Milwaukee, East Chicago, or even the suburbs. Lorraine has probably heard rumors of Lodin surviving through her few friends and might be looking for him now. It is likely she would not deal well with Lodin's current state nor would he respond well to her.

5. Lorraine is a wight: Perhaps the most tragic fate for her is the loss of Lodin in her influence, some bad drug trip-induced frenzies, and her ostracizing from Camarilla city resulted in her eventually losing all her Humanity. Lorraine now haunts the streets of Chicago as a monster capable of hiding herself and luring drug-addled people to allies to be horribly butchered. Kevin Jackson would very much like this embarrassment to his clan eradicated but so far Damien and Nathaniel have come up empty. Some suggest that Lorraine's insanity may not be the result of such mundane explanations above either but that she sought comfort in the arms of a lover who drove her mad: the Primogen Son.

[CTPhipps]

Revenge is Sweet, The Plan, The Attack

Cast: Marc Levesque, The Parkie Mob

Synopsis: The Anarchs decide to launch an attack on the Camarilla to let them know they still exist.

Analysis: What do the Anarchs do? The Anarchs are an awesome revolutionary group against the Camarilla but they're not actually at WAR with them most of the time. For the most part, Camarilla and Anarch exist in a Cold War at worst or at a forced detente at best. The Anarchs strike with meaningless violence against Elysium art and activities while the Camarilla seeks to divide and conquer. Eventually, it escalates to assassination and then eventually there's the outright revolution.

If the Anarchs really want to take over a city, they have to be incredibly subtle and play the Camarilla's game. Either that or just kill every Elder in the city. Either works. Part of why they succeeded in Los Angeles was because Elders like Louis Fortier easily switched to being Baron of Beverly Hills while others were driven out of town or killed. If you go hard without a plan, though, the Camarilla will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Revenge is Sweet is basically about Gerard wanting to blow up a Camarilla location in a way that shows the Anarchs are there. There's several targets but the best one is Ballard Industries, though it's open 24-7 so doing so without a bunch of mortal casualties is all but impossible. That may not necessarily bother the PCs. The "ideal" ending is that Kevin Jackson decides to negotiate with the Anarchs because of this but I can't really see that as something Kevin will do versus a Red Wedding-style massacre. Kevin Jackson has made his bones as the Anarch-crushing hardass. If he doesn't come down hard then look weak.

One thing I really liked was that Berlin's Prince, Willhelm Waldburg, actually was removed from his Praxis due to being so soft on the Anarchs. This resulted in the Prince immediately cracking down on them and then getting overthrown. Willhelm is probably NOT going to be getting much respect back for this (due to the fact it's not the environment for a pro-Anarch stance) but it certainly
makes his political opponents look like fools.

I think a good alternative version of this adventure would be the PCs trying to figure out whether they should stop it (innocents will be killed normally) or figuring out some way to strike at the Camarilla without immediately drawing down their wrath. I'd argue a divide and conquer strategy would be best for Anarchs by playing them off against one another. There's also the fact that this strategy is very Pre-War on Terror.

Marc Levesque probably isn't worried about the Camarilla cracking down but if he blows up an American business like Ballard Industries Headquarters, it's not going to be Kevin Jackson he has to worry about. It's going to be the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, ATF, and the Second Inquisition who are going to wonder why there was a terrorist attack on American soil and who is responsible. A subtler and probably just as effective one might be flooding the building with rats or breaking its sewer pipes.

The latter is inspired by the fact my basement was flooded with sewage and we had to dig up the entirety of the pipes. Now it turns out we also need to replace my bathroom's floor. Let the Streets Run Red can't come fast enough to give my mind a break.

[Ruthven]

I posted this in a different thread concerning "Let the Streets Run Red", and on the advice of CT, I moved it here. It concerns the possible location of the staked Kindred from CbN and the Folios. Where are they kept? Here's the post:

In reviewing CbN, the closed down Joliet Corrections Center struck a chord, but I'm saving that for something else. I wanted something with a horrid history, that would allow for other supernatural encounters as well, and might explain why it's not "heavily guarded" since the reputation alone is enough to keep mortals and most Kindred away.I'm thinking an abandoned building of what was once the Manteno State Psychiatric Hospital, about 50 miles from Chicago; little more than an hour's drive. This place has an awful, and terrifying real world history. For the sake of the World of Darkness, in consideration of its past horrors, I imagine it might have required a morgue too-- and there our staked Kindred rest. This place is rife with spectres- that alone is enough for mortals to give the place a wide berth. I imagine, nearby there might be a few ghouls or Dominated mortals, who make the rounds, probably police of the town. Here, the torpid forms of Dickie, Victoria Longwood and maybe Lorraine Matthews lay. Can you think of any other Kindred mentioned as staked and disappeared in CbN and the Folios? Maybe, Let the Streets Run Red will give us insight into Lorraine's fate, otherwise, if Jackson did stake her--well, this is a suitably nightmarish location for her torpid form.