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

[CTPhipps]

Beckoning Whispers and Reopening a Cold Case

Cast: Ian Ramussen

Synopsis: A now-deceased Anarch has hired a private investigator to track down Tyler. He is, unfortunately, good enough to endanger the Masquerade.

Analysis: I have mixed feelings on this adventure hook. Not because it's not awesome, it is. It's because that it's not terribly Anarch related and doesn't quite establish this chapter as an opening bit of fiction. I would have maybe preferred something related to Gengis, Anita, Maldavis, or the Movement in general. Tyler is related to the Anarchs (obviously) but as a Beckoned Elder, she plays only a minor role here. However, that's a small complaint and I'm going to give kudos to the adventure for a good Masquerade story.

Really, the adventure is built around the character of Ian Ramussen, who seems like he deserves his own full character write-up. A private detective who specializes in missing persons, he has his own radio show and apparently its popular with some genuinely sadistic Kindred who listen to it in order to find out if the people they've murdered are going to show up on it. I feel like that's a kind of very specific sort of fetish and more appropriate to someone like son or Alexa Santos.

Either way, Ian is good enough that he actually manages to track down Tyler or at least a good lead on her and that's potential gold for Anarchs. Mind you, apparently Tyler sightings are a dime a dozen among Kindred since she shows up in The Anarch where she stakes a local Sheriff. 25 Years of Vampire: The Masquerade took the piss out of that premise, though, as Tyler isn't a kind of legendary Robin Hood figure but has been living as a member of Chicago's Primogen for a century.

To steal their joke, it went sort of like this:

Neonate: I saw Tyler! Would you believe it!? She showed up and saved me from the Sheriff.

Bob: [commenting] Oh that's cool. Where were you, Indianapolis? Gary?

Either way, Ian is smart enough to have cracked the Masquerade and the PCs can either kill him or Embrace him or try to use him as he's too smart not to do it again. I might also give him the Iron Will merit since that's something I feel is probably more common than most merits but very useful for specific stories.

If you want to do some more historical work for this adventure, you might substitute Detective Gregory Stephens or William Shepherd (now retired from the FBI) for this. They already know about Kindred but they bring their own set of problems. Kevin Jackson may also want to crack down on aware mortals since he is selling himself as the zero tolerance for Masquerade breach candidate.

[CTPhipps]

Chapter Two: The Anarchs Account

The next chapter of the books begins with this one and I probably won't be quite as fast with it. Basically, it's a bunch of chapters related to the Anarchs and this was easily the part of the story that I was most excited about.

This chapter opens with one of the best pieces of art for V5 in my mind with Anita Wainwright giving a impassioned speech to an army of Anarchs in a park, presumably during a Rant of some kind. I think Anita is probably the character, aside from Kevin Jackson and maybe Damien, who benefited the most from the transition to V5. Previously, she was just a minor supoporting character and the "softer" face of the Anarchs. I got a lot out of her but I feel like making her the Anarch leader in Chicago really showed a lot more layers to her character. We also have the fact I really get her darker side and the anger that was always underneath her sweet Humanity 9 exterior.

This art piece captures that intensity perfectly.



Oddly, I would say the three paragraphs at the start of this chapter do perhaps more to talk about the State of the Anarchs in the World of Darkness than 75% of The Anarch sourcebook. I don't mean that as a diss to said book but mostly it's a matter of giving a very neat and simple synopsis for saying "What is the state of the Anarchs, how do they interact with the Camarilla, and how are they treated?"

If the Camarilla are the CEOs gazing down on the city, the Anarchs may be likened to the homeless — hated by the big man for just wanting to survive. Just like city councils spend thousands on trying to rid themselves of the homeless population, the Camarilla would prefer if the Anarchs stopped existing. In truth, many Anarchs just want to spend their unlife free from the shackles of those who, for no reason, have determined that they are superior.

When large groups of Anarchs congregate, it makes the Camarilla nervous about another uprising. They are, at most, tolerated by the Ivory Tower, especially if they all follow the Traditions. Since they are not part of the Camarilla in these nights, Anarchs don’t fall under the protection of their laws. Killing Anarchs is an acceptable thing, especially thin-bloods, as long as the murder doesn’t cause too much of a stir. To avoid annoying the big man, free Kindred form their own circles and hunting grounds.

Chicago is a big city, so most Anarchs manage to hunt without stepping on the toes of the elite sect. However, some go looking for trouble. Anarchs can’t let the Camarilla think their silence is compliance with their laws and rulings.

So much said in so few words. The Anarchs are people the Camarilla wants to destroy but are going to ignore for the most part. It's very much like the mafia and competing gangs now. It also sets up a nice scenario where the Sheriff and Hounds may harass you for no reason or kill your friends but do you dare escalate the fight?

[CTPhipps]

Help for Hire - Warehouse Rebuilding, Seeking Employment

Cast: Amelia Locke

Synopsis: Ventrue reporter Amelia Locke seeks the player characters' advice and resources to build a new Elysium but has no idea what to make it.

Analysis: The final adventure hook of the Camarilla is a rather interesting one in that it leaves it up to the players to "make their own fun." I don't mind those and they can be incredibly exciting. Basically, Amelia has some property that they can convert to anything they want and the players just need to let their imagination run wild. A club is my favorite but the game actually poo-pahs this. It also suggests making a library, which seems terribly unfun.

Other ideas that I could see pursued:

* Blood Brothel
* Blood Bank
* Strip Club
* Underground Casino
* Bank (built for laundering money)
* Internet cafe

Not much to say about this one but it's an unconventional hook that I think works well.

[CTPhipps]

Dearest Club Member and Exclusive Invitation

Cast: Annabelle, Karyn Stanislava (Toreador), The Black Roses

Synopsis: There's a decadent and evil(e) gang of Toreador (than normal) that regularly host incredibly exclusive balls where the most heinous debaucheries go on. The PCs are hired to go in and see what's what.

Analysis: I am a huge fan of Ashwood Abbey over in Hunter: The Vigil. I've adapted them to multiple World of Darkness games by me. I had them as a group that had branches in most major cities in America and a club that virtually all Pentex executives belong to. For those unfamiliar with the organization, it's basically just a club of rich people that engage in horrible depravities because regular sex, drugs, and alcohol no longer fulfill them. They technically qualify as a "Hunter" group because this ocassionally results in them capturing a vampire or other supernatural for their games. Unlike the Hunt Club, they don't have any real sense of sport and this is just the ultra-rich's torture porn. It's an idea that has shown up in media like Hostel and The Following.

I think I may have been influenced in my interpretation of Ashwood Abbey by Chris Claremont's take on the Hellfire Club as there's just something so very appropriate about the rich and powerful celebrating their godlike power over the poor in increasingly sociopathic ways. I won't lie that I got a wee bit political since my campaign is set in Jacksonville, Florida and when the PCs were prisoners of the club, its murder party was set in a certain Presidential resort.

Obviously, in the World of Darkness, you don't need to have it be a human based organization [though I think Project: Twilight's Star Chamber is a good one] but can get most of it done with the Toreador. I've always had it be in my description of the Roses that there's "always a darker party." Most of their parties are public and pretty staid affairs but when they're alone? Well, the Toreador is a creature that constantly seeks newer and darker forms of artistic expression as well as pleasure. The Beast is the one part of a vampire who feels so the idea there's a horrible sex-murder party every year in Chicago only surprises me by the fact that it's kept a secret.

Anyway, the Black Roses remind me of Ashwood Abbey and while we don't get anything more than a cursory write-up for the group, its evocative enough that I feel like they tick most of the boxes of what I like. It could very well be the kind of enemy that I would use for a whole Chronicle. After all, once the player characters visit their party, they can potentially bring the wrath of a bunch of Toreador Elders down on themselves. I've often said that is the WORST Elder group because few clans are as vindictive and spiteful on such an emotional level for the most petty of reasons.


The premise of the adventure is fairly straight forward as they get into the party Eyes Wide Shut style and find that it is full of horrifying depravities. The suggestion of the book is that they have kidnapped a bunch of Thin Bloods and are enjoying draining them dry. This makes sense to me as I think diablerie of Thin Bloods has all the pleasure of amaranth (sp?) with none of the legal drawbacks.

After all, Thin Bloods aren't "real" Kindred according to the Camarilla. It doesn't have to be Thin Bloods being diablerized but you could also have "vanilla" party favors of children, regular mortals who will be drained dry, or other things as they allow you to go nuts. This strikes me as the kind of party where you should either refer to things in the abstract, "You see things you never imagined would be carried out in the most disgusting and depraved acts that a man or vampire could do. The Sabbat would be proud" or clear with your player characters ahead of time what sort of topics will be handled for the sake of an enjoyable game by all.

The consequences for disrupting the party by freeing the meals or burning the place down, literally, could result in a Blood Hunt on the player characters. After all, these are people with bank and cachet in the Camarilla even if Annabelle protects them [and she might just be upset she wasn't invited this year].

Some interesting ways to expand on this that occurred to me?

* Son may be a guest of honor at tonight's festivities or at least a Master of Ceremonies. Alex Santos may also be participating.
* The Second Inquisition actually helps in this as they were tracking the club nationally and offer to help the PCs eliminate the other survivors if they help them. These Inquisitors being aware these are the worst of vampirekind.
* The PCs are smart enough to get video footage of the Black Roses atrocities and while Kevin Jackson is no shrinking violet, it's enough to sicken even his stomach and something he'd consider a serious Masquerade violation. At the very least, they should have informed him what was going on [which he then would have refused].
* The Duskborn and Anarchs have had enough and flat out intend to revolt against them. This is just the excuse the Prince needs to wipe them all out.
* The Black Roses are actually a bunch of Toreador Antitribu who have defected from the Sabbat and made a name for themselves with the main clan via their avante garde art. Ironically, in something only the Toreador would care about, they're just recycling very common Sabbat "performance art" pieces.
* The Black Roses are actually a cover for a blood cult. Either "real" Bahari pain worshipers or the Nephilim, who are considered jaded sociopaths in a clan of jaded sociopaths.

And no review of this would be complete without the video of Ghost's DANCE MACABRE.

[CTPhipps]

I’ll have more later. But for the moment

Thanks for your continued participation!

Long Live the Prince is, for my money, good at least. The party has this accidental chance to meet the Prince and the Seneschal, and this means they have a chance to make a good impression. Most vampires crawl all over each other like so many roaches for that kind of chance. But what do you think the odds are that a PC is going to go all “Constitutional Peasant,” given the opportunity?

My biggest issue here is that there's not really an adventure here so much as an Encounter. If, for instance, the PCs aren't going to be stupid enough to disrespect the Prince here then nothing really much is going to happen. It's like David S. Pumpkins. "Any questions?" "Yes. Several." Still, I suppose it is a meeting that could have far reaching consequences like Sovereign charging them a boon for it even if they waste their time.

You could also have whatever KJ or Sovereign follow up with the meeting be their "real" goal. Like if the PCs express Anarch sympathies, they get used as diplomats or if they're all about the SI, they get appointed to be the counter-Hunter analysts. KJ feeling out Kindred for posts in his administration.

In Good Evening Nightwalkers, Nightwalking I would have the SI move in and snap-up Varnas. Candidly I’m not certain how the party could know it was the SI which grabbed him. But in any case, it would make for an interesting event in terms of him as a lose thread – the SI grabbed him as a potential source of information. The party may attempt to cover for this by lying to the Prince’s court and saying Varnas is dead, or cop to the fact he got away while not mentioning he was grabbed by armed and armored hunters. Let the players worry about how this will play out in the long term.

It would make a very good climax to the story, IMHO. I definitely think Varnas seems like a good guy to subvert expectations of "good deeds equal good outcomes", though. He's a guy who has devoted his life to the paranormal and exposing it. Becoming a vampire means he can now do that. If the PCs try and waste their time protecting him because he's an innocent, he's probably going to end up ruining that. Making him as a guy who would work for the government and Second Inquisition is also an interesting twist, especially if he shows up months later giving coded messages to hunters or worse from an unknown location.

Joking aside, this scenario is basically an inverted version of Assault on Precinct 13. In the film by John Carpenter, cops kill some members of a street gang. The street gang is then out for revenge on civilians and cops alive, and attacks the titular precinct station. The cops (and criminals caught inside during the siege) might not be good, but they are the protagonists and the story is centered on their narrative.

When you say inverted Assault on Precinct-13 I tend to think of The Raid and Judge Dredd. I do think Second Inquisition Hunters are one of the rare occasions that vampires can utterly go nuts with their Disciplines, though. Most games won't have Nosferatu sneaking up behind people to slit their throats, shooting up the place with Celerity, or other craziness. In my Straight Outta Fangton books, I occasionally throw in Blade-esque action sequences and this could be a chance for that.

Or maybe I'm just a fan of the assault on the Society of Leopold in Bloodlines. That was the only big action section of the game I think worked very well.

Maybe Varnas is hanging with these hunters.

I actually appreciate the fact the Night's Cross exists in this book. It's a bare bones description of what they are and who they are but you could easily build a Chronicle around dealing with them as they're a decent-sized enemy that destroying could be the focus of the PC's efforts. It also is the kind of group that you can use to show has popped up in the wake of the Second Inquisition and can threaten an entire city (or get slaughtered by a sufficiently determined group of PCs).

If you use the Society of Leopold or Arcanum, they're going to be threats that continue. However, this can be a group the PCs permanently destroy or could expand far more.

Plus, the stats for its members are included.

In any case, the difficulty of the fight – and that it would be a Masquerade breach – is why the coterie should handle it with guile. Unless, in their complacent arrogance, they want to turn it into a massive fight. The players are free to make such a decision, but should not be free from the consequences of their actions.

However it plays out, it could turn into a massive rallying cry for hunters.

Despite it being a terrible idea, my player characters at my homegame have a bit of kidnapping Hunters or leaving one alive after battles in order to try to Blood Bond, Presence, Dominate, or simply bribe them. They've done a pretty good job of this sort of thing and using them to feed misinformation to the Inquisitors or send them after their enemies. You know, that profoundly stupid idea that the Camarilla thought was smart.

Still, I've gotten some good results from it.

LA BY NIGHT did something similar with Nelli G and Gregory the SAD agent.

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

I’ll have more later. But for the moment;

Sovereign never struck me as Jewish, either as a simple character trait or as a Jewish stereotype. I always thought of him, in religious terms, as just an evil WASP type.

Long Live the Prince is, for my money, good at least. The party has this accidental chance to meet the Prince and the Seneschal, and this means they have a chance to make a good impression. Most vampires crawl all over each other like so many roaches for that kind of chance. But what do you think the odds are that a PC is going to go all “Constitutional Peasant,” given the opportunity?

In Good Evening Nightwalkers, Nightwalking I would have the SI move in and snap-up Varnas. Candidly I’m not certain how the party could know it was the SI which grabbed him. But in any case, it would make for an interesting event in terms of him as a lose thread – the SI grabbed him as a potential source of information. The party may attempt to cover for this by lying to the Prince’s court and saying Varnas is dead, or cop to the fact he got away while not mentioning he was grabbed by armed and armored hunters. Let the players worry about how this will play out in the long term.

And I think this would be better music for the combat scene in A Chance Encounter with Hunters, starting at about the 2 minute mark.

Joking aside, this scenario is basically an inverted version of Assault on Precinct 13. In the film by John Carpenter, cops kill some members of a street gang. The street gang is then out for revenge on civilians and cops alive, and attacks the titular precinct station. The cops (and criminals caught inside during the siege) might not be good, but they are the protagonists and the story is centered on their narrative.

A Chance Encounter with Hunters is the same scenario, more or less, but it centers the narrative on the street gang – i.e. the vampires who are provoked by the hunters, who are holding up in the church. The vampire powers will give the PCs some solid advantages to the attack, but it should not be a cake walk. Also, in as much as possible, it should not be a street fight, but a difficult fight in close quarters inside the building. Specifically, inside a building where combat veterans have spent considerable time preparing for a possible attack. The vampires need to get in an kill everyone. The hunters just need to wait for dawn, and the appearance of first responders, and so on.

Maybe Varnas is hanging with these hunters.

In any case, the difficulty of the fight – and that it would be a Masquerade breach – is why the coterie should handle it with guile. Unless, in their complacent arrogance, they want to turn it into a massive fight. The players are free to make such a decision, but should not be free from the consequences of their actions.

However it plays out, it could turn into a massive rallying cry for hunters.

[Taggie]

Great idea, Taggie and I think a perfectly valid one to make trouble for the Second Inquisition. I think that kind of subtlety is much better for the Camarilla to engage in than trying to directly take down all the vampire hunters. Even if the SI is able to get some of them free, the media attention would be an enormous headache for them and their efforts. They, unlike vampires, don't have Dominate after all.

Disciplines and training make for terrifying 'runners' (which considering the apparent idea of neonates as cyberpunks/shadowrunners makes perfect sense), use that, why have a war when Obfuscate, the hand loading powder store, and a timed charge make a far more elegant solution.

[CTPhipps]

CTPhipps my old Runners mind is seeing so many accidents a bunch of terrorists could have with their arsenal, negligent handling of explosives, and a helping hand to combine the two, megachurch fall down go boom. Let the police, ATF and FBI handle the domestic terrorists who had such a vast illegal stash of weapons after such a public disaster. In, out, clean as clean. Plus if they are known as political extremists in the first place, supressing the idea that they where after anything outside of a new civil war should not be hard.

Great idea, Taggie and I think a perfectly valid one to make trouble for the Second Inquisition. I think that kind of subtlety is much better for the Camarilla to engage in than trying to directly take down all the vampire hunters. Even if the SI is able to get some of them free, the media attention would be an enormous headache for them and their efforts. They, unlike vampires, don't have Dominate after all.

[CTPhipps]

"Is this one of yours?" and Clear as Day

Cast: Bronwyn, Hugo and Violet Meyer [Thinbloods]

Synopsis: A pair of psychotic and evil Thin Bloods begin a rampage across Chicago's Blood Bank system.

Analysis: This one is a pretty blatant homage to Natural Born Killers and they even name check the movie in the description, which I have to give them credit for. At least it has the concept of a husband and wife team of psychopaths that are engaged in incredibly public crime that has become subject to media scrutiny. In this case, the pair of Thin Bloods are openly robbing Blood Mobiles and stealing the contents. This has actually happened a couple of times in real life and gets the same reaction of, "Maybe it was thirst crazed vampires!" joking reaction. I imagine it would not be treated as funny if the robbers murdered the people involved.

This is another fairly straightforward adventure and of the kind I prefer to call "Sabbat Hijinks" adventures. Part of why I think the Sabbat needs to come back is not just because I think plenty of Black Hand fans should have the option to play their favorite characters but because they are a source of very easy adventure fodder. There's a Sabbat serial killer on the loose, a Sabbat pack is raising hell in your area, and an evil cult has begun recruiting the homeless into their Doomsday cult that actually ends up Embracing them as shovelheads. Things that aren't big on moral ambiguity but is just the bad vampires [the PCs] versus the worst vampires [the Sabbat].

The Meyers family aren't Sabbat but they might as well be. I like the fact that they're Duskborn/Thin Bloods because it shows that not all of them are going to be "humans with fangs" that is the traditional depiction of them. Even if their Beast and Hunger are far weaker than most, they still have a Beast and Hunger. The transition to a new life among the undead was also particularly traumatic for them as they apparently fed on their family. For the sake of maximum horror and explaining why they're completely nuts, I would suggest that their family included their own children.

There's no room to negotiate here and the Meyers are the worst sort of people now even if they weren't before. I actually don't think the adventure would be helped much by making them more ambiguous as sometimes you just want to make a point that people go irrevocably wrong. You could maybe have their sire show up and reveal that they was trying to save their lives after feeding on them or something similarly sympathetic. The Meyers would just want to kill him or her but it might add another layer to the story.

More interesting to me is the use of the Circulatory System that I feel like can either be treated as a valuable resource or the most horrifying thing in Kindred society. They provide blood in a delivery system that allows vampires to not necessarily expose themselves or others to danger. Bagged blood is not as lucrative to them as human vessels but it is something every Kindred would want within easy reach, IMHO. All vampires would want to take the edge off if they could even it's a microwavable TV dinner compared to sex/heroin. However, depending on how you treat them, they could very well also be outright human traffickers and modern day slavers.

Which is a great potential enemy in any campaign.

[Taggie]

CTPhipps my old Runners mind is seeing so many accidents a bunch of terrorists could have with their arsenal, negligent handling of explosives, and a helping hand to combine the two, megachurch fall down go boom. Let the police, ATF and FBI handle the domestic terrorists who had such a vast illegal stash of weapons after such a public disaster. In, out, clean as clean. Plus if they are known as political extremists in the first place, supressing the idea that they where after anything outside of a new civil war should not be hard.

[CTPhipps]

Chance Encounters with Hunters and Beware the Huntsmen

Cast: Cedrick Calhoun [as Khalid],. Wauneka, The Night's Cross

Synopsis: A chance encounter with a group of hunters followed by the assassination of a Kindred scholar results in the uncovering of an entire army of killers.

Analysis: This is a very different sort of adventure from the typical ones we've discussed so far. So far the vast majority of the adventures have been heavily socially focused adventures where one Kindred is trying to one up another in the petty games of Elysium. This is a very different one where the "optimal" ending results in the player characters joining the Prince's minions to have a massive street battle that may have dozens of casualties.

Which necessitates to use this song:

The Night's Cross is a example of how dangerous the Second Inquisition has become with a bunch of ex-military veterans [explicitly identified as being "Far Right"], military grade weapons, and a megachurch base that is presumably providing them material support as well as a way to launder money for their crusade. My inclination is that Kevin Jackson fully believes this group has to be killed the last man because you don't let vampire hunters live as an undead. It's just this an entire paramilitary army that has emerged in recent years rather than a few deranged lunatics with stakes.

I think that it might be interesting to have the player characters try to come up with less violent and less apocalyptic ways of dealing with this branch of the SAD. After all, a bunch of religious terrorists should be relatively easy to do, right? Well, not really as even if they are willing to risk another Waco, the player characters are facing an organization with government ties of its own. Another, potentially Humanity-losing way that might be better than turning Chicago into a battleground would be to send waves of Dominated Chicago cops against them. Starting a firefight that gets police killed would be a way to discredit the organization and get members killed or locked away for life.

I do note that this adventure exposes one of the weaknesses of the Second Inquisition to the Camarilla. This group is prepping for a big epic fight [and you can end up giving it to them] but subtlety is the name of the game here. As I talked about with Under the Blood Red Moon, the Garou are always going to win if the vampires choose to fight them mano-a-mano but Kindred shouldn't ever allow themselves to be in that sort of situation to begin with unless their name is Karsh, Talley, or the Wolf Pack.

I think if I were to run this adventure, I would encourage my PCs to try to think of solutions that don't involve things turning into a Call of Duty level. That's a perfectly valid way of running it and if you want an adventure to cut loose with Obfuscate sneak attacks, Potence strikes, and Lure of Flames rituals then this certainly is the one time the Camarilla will be entirely at your back. However, it also strikes me that such a thing will also be an enormous Gondorian torch that will send up a sign that says, "The vampires are here! Avenge your fellow hunters!" Apparently the leader of the Night's Cross is also a former CIA agent.

One thing I also like about this adventure hook is that Cedrick Calhoun mentions that the first victim of the Night's Cross is studying Mictlantechutli from Diablerie: Mexico. I have a soft spot for Mitcl that dates back to my early years running Chicago by Night. I very much hope that they decide to canonize that he survived the adventure and is still running around the World of Darkness. While he was a Gangrel in the original module, you could retcon him into one of the Drowned. I also note that Cedrick Calhoun is still impersonating Khalid in his letters and I admit that there's a lot of potential comedy for that scenario.

When I run Cedrick impersonating Khalid, I play up that Cedrick isn't actually a GOOD actor and often overplays the "mysterious wise old foreigner" act too much. The irony being that most Elder Kindred pretty much dismissed him as that anyway. I also had Critias and Annabelle completely aware that "Khalid" is a fraud but just shrugged their shoulders and let Cedrick take his position because that's how the game is played. Both of them, at least at my table, assume Cedrick diablerized him. Obviously, this is a problem as the other Nosferatu knew Khalid much-much better than Cedrick and quite a few considered him a good friend worthy of advenging. Not that they could do much to Nerissa Blackwater if they did try to challenge her over Khalid's death [which is my present theory as to what happened to him vs. the Beckoning].

[CTPhipps]

The Unfortunate Embrace, More Complicated than it seems, and Shut it Down

Cast: Alex Santos, Enzo Tovani, Seraphine de Winter, Talley, Kevin Jackson, Gabriella

Synopsis: A ghoul of Marcus Vitel is Embraced by an old enemy of his in order to get a small measure of revenge. The ghoul, terrified of her master's revenge, proceeds to keep her true allegiance secret while Kevin Jackson decides her final fate. The second adventure is about how a Nosferatu hacker is working to try to shut down a paranormal website.

Analysis: I've always been a fan of Marcus Vitel and it's a nice statement here that he not only succeeded in his retaking of Washington D.C. as described in Beckett's Jyhad Diary but that he has managed to hold onto it well into V5. This was confirmed in The Camarilla I believe but it's nice to have it repeated.

He's the Emperor of Washington D.C. and technically an Anarch as I understand it, having decided to just recruit the East Coast's hardened warriors and use them to retake the nation's capital for himself. With 2000 years under his belt, Lucius Sejanus is capable of motivating a bunch of rabble to obey his laws and both the Sabbat as well as Camarilla have screwed him in the past. Oh and despite being a Methuselah twice over, Marcus has managed to avoid the Beckoning.

This isn't about Marcus, however, but his agent who has been turned into a vampire by a travelling enemy of Marcus. I'm inclined to think Enzo Tovani should be a Lasombra defector to the city (or someone who plans to defect to the city) because they have a reason to hate Marcus more than most. He was, after all, a Sabbat traitor before it was cool. They also probably don't know about Marcus' role in their clan's defection. Still, ANY former citizen of Washington D.C. has a good reason to loathe the tyrant Prince.

Unfortunately, I do have a small complaint about this adventure. Seraphine de Winter doesn't have much of a role in this story. I feel like she's a more interesting character if she DOES speak up with a "do you know who I am, Ancilla?" You could make a good comedy of errors out of this with the newly Embraced Seraphine being high and mighty rather than acting subservient. Kevin might also want to foster the Neonate on the PCs so that he doesn't take the blame for his emissary taking the blame and Marcus losing a good daytime servant. I also feel like Alex Santos doesn't get much of a reason to be involved.

I really like Alex the Scourge. She's a character with a lot of mysteries and uncertain motivations.

Shut it down is a fairly simple story where they're trying to put down a paranomal website. Just making it disappear doesn't actually harm the data as it's probably backed up and a new website can be put up soon after. The Camarilla doesn't understand this, though, or why they need to find the Administrator. So, Gabrielle needs to find the guy or find some way to discredit the piece.

Were I to do this adventure, I'd do it as a sequel to Nightwalking. Vitas Varnas after getting educated by Tatyana Marakova and PROMISING that he'd do better, has immediately gone into hiding and started a newer/better website. It would be a nice way of "rewarding" the PCs for doing the same thing by having Vitas prove himself to be a liar who wants to expose the paranormal more than anything else.

The players will be in hot water if he's found up to his old tricks and the best solution is to kill him. Another interesting twist might be that he's protected by the Second Inquisition and is a Roach Motel trap for Kindred Ancilla. They come to shut down the website and the Hunters descend while Vitas gets to live another night.
I've probably thought way too much about this.

[CTPhipps]

Believe me, as someone of Jewish descent I've nothing against more Jewish characters appearing in games, media, whatever. What I don't want is the weaselly financier character to be assumed as Jewish, because that brings with it a lot of negative connotations. And sure, Ramrod could well be Jewish.

Understandably so.

Now I'm imagining Ramrod thrashing some Elders (Balthazar and Ballard perhaps) with antiquated views.

[The Gentleman Gamer]

I suspect the reason was due to a previous ST during my formative years of Chicago by Night (circa 1993-1999) where there was an adventure I played in which got into his character a bit. Alan Sovereign showed his better side by helping them assassinate a Nazi vampire buying his way into the Camarilla. The character was undoubtedly picked because he was an underused one (at least at our table) and having our PCs as an unexpected ally there benefited our opinion of him. So, Fanon leaked into my head as canon. You corrected me on this before and I'm embarrassed to have forgotten it.

Thanks for that.

Speaking with the wisdom of hindsight, making Sovereign Jewish would be a bit stereotypical (versus, say, making someone like Anita Wainwright or Ramrod Jewish) but my ST was about 14 at the time. On the other hand, it adds an interesting angle to explore with Sovereign's other relationships and perhaps a reason why he identifies more with an outlier like Kevin Jackson. I'm going to assume he's just flat out not, though, by your word.

Corrected in the above post.

Believe me, as someone of Jewish descent I've nothing against more Jewish characters appearing in games, media, whatever. What I don't want is the weaselly financier character to be assumed as Jewish, because that brings with it a lot of negative connotations. And sure, Ramrod could well be Jewish.

[CTPhipps]

As mentioned to you when you assumed it in Chicago by Night, it isn't stated anywhere that Sovereign is Jewish. I'm not sure where you've picked up the idea that he is.

I suspect the reason was due to an adventure I played in which got into his character. It was during my formative years of gaming (circa 1993-1999). Alan Sovereign showed his better side by helping them assassinate a Nazi vampire buying his way into the Camarilla. The character was undoubtedly picked because he was an underused one (at least at our table) and having him as an unexpected ally benefited our opinion of him. So, Fanon leaked into my head as canon. You corrected me on this before and I'm embarrassed to have forgotten it.

Thanks for that.

Speaking with the wisdom of hindsight, making Sovereign Jewish would be a bit stereotypical (versus, say, making someone like Anita Wainwright or Ramrod Jewish) but my ST was about 14 at the time. On the other hand, it adds an interesting angle to explore with Sovereign's other relationships and perhaps a reason why he identifies more with an outlier like Kevin Jackson. I'm going to assume he's just flat out not, though, by your word.

Corrected in the above post.