No one expects the Second Inquisition!

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

B. It makes no sense. Neo-Pentecostal denominations are way more influential with those circles...

With respect, I think it makes sense in so far as the fictional Candomblé and Umbanda cast spells, which are cool. Not even fictional Neo-Pentecostals cast spells. So I think the writers were going for a "cool thing + cool thing" with that section of the book. But the writer was probably not Brazilian and did not really appreciate the problems with the section they wrote.

There can be some potential for drama in a member of a minority joining with a majority in some capacity, be it by joining a police force or a military or gaining some wealth and moving in those circles. But in something like an RPG I think the tensions in such a situation should be made very clear.

[SetiteFriend]

The book is actually pretty clear that the SI is going to turn on its non-Christian (and probably Christian) practitioners too so it's not an unfounded fear. Those working with the SI *WILL* be betrayed eventually. They've already turned on their Thin Blooded allies and ghouls multiple times with all promises of looking for a cure just a way to manipulate them. The SI knows other supernaturals exist and are just focusing on vampires first.

Which is why it's dumb that they'd work together in the first place, of all people they'd now they'd be discarded and persecuted as soon as possible.

In a less fantasy and more RL bit, the book is already receiving criticism in Brazil for the fact that it is too critical of the BOES too and "leftist propaganda."

The name of the real group is BOPE, and I'd never say it's too critical, if anything it had room for more criticism.

[Spencer from The Hills]

Not even fictional Neo-Pentecostals cast spells.

Miracles like physical faith healing are supposedly a big deal among Pentecostals.

[CTPhipps]

Which is why it's dumb that they'd work together in the first place, of all people they'd now they'd be discarded and persecuted as soon as possible.

Which is why most don't.

The name of the real group is BOPE, and I'd never say it's too critical, if anything it had room for more criticism.

Yes, it's a fictional group because using the RL version would be highly offensive.

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

Miracles like physical faith healing are supposedly a big deal among Pentecostals.

I was mostly making a joke. That said, I do suspect the writers included Candomblé and Umbanda because they seem "cool," which feels a bit appropriative and objectifying. But then including real world religions in a game and giving its practitioners actual magical powers is problematic.

I know only a little about Brazil and less about Candomblé and Umbanda. Can someone who is familiar make a suggestion on how best to handle the Brazilian part of the S.I.?

[Matt the Bruins fan]

The basic premise of the Second Inquisition as referenced by reviewers doesn't make me angry the way the Sabbat book did—in fact it sounds like a considerable improvement on and clarification of what's appeared in earlier V5 books. But between the $45 price tag for a slender 166 page book and the "YOU'RE NOT A DIRTY PIRATE, ARE YOU [INSERT BUYER'S NAME HERE]?" stamp across every page, it doesn't sound worth buying to me.

Sorry Renegade, that's strike two.

[AnubisXy]

The Second Inquisition is very much supposed to be "bad guys." A black hat wearing, particularly murderous and oppressive organization that doesn't hesitate to kill or torture when appropriate, a group that makes money by pushing crack on playgrounds and doesn't care about civilian casualties. The Second Inquisition is intended to be a villainous group, not just from the perspective of vampires in Vampire: the Masquerade, but from the perspective of humans in general, even humans who hunt down and kill vampires (such as those in Hunter: the Reckoning).

The Second Inquisition has become as bad as, if not worse, than the monsters they hunt. Ultimately the Second Inquisition is an extremely blunt metaphor for police, intelligence agencies and other similar organizations who began engaging in morally and ethically appalling actions in the War on Terror ("We need to fight terrorism so we'll do that by engaging in terrorism, torture, etc, and if a dozen civilians die in the process of drone striking one terrorist it's a small price to pay, and speaking of pay, we can partially fund our projects by working with opium growers and selling weapons under the table.")

So considering that the Second Inquisition are intended to fill a Villain role in the World of Darkness it becomes problematic to associate real life religious groups with such a group, especially when the real real life religious groups you're associating with that oppressive villain group have been (and still are) victims of oppression. So having those sorts of groups working with the Second Inquisition is going to come off as somewhat tasteless, even to people who have little to know knowledge of such real life religious groups. I don't think objectionable to the point of not buying the book or anything, but it's a bit problematic and it's worth noting at any rate.

[MarkK]

Hokay, I've had some time to actually read the book past my recoiling from the structuring of it and ultimately my issues boil down to these:

1) Seriously, this book is terribly structured, especially as a pdf. I've already noted the short, expensive, no bookmarks, giant watermark, terrible layout stuff, but beyond that there are things like a full art page being nothing more than a repeat of the cover art. When the layout is already wasting page space where page space is at a premium, when this book is already short, straight up wasting an entire page in the book proper just to repeat the cover art is itself infuriating. There's also not a lot of rhyme or reason in how things are organized as far as an overall sense of direction, making the content at times feel like blobs of information being dumped on you, in-between finding minor asides that make you go "wait, what?"

Beyond that, some of the art is just.. ugly. I don't mean depicts ugly things, I mean it just looks bad. Some images look like they've been smeared or badly rendered besides. Like there's a decapitated head thing that seems to fray into pixels at various points, for instance.

There's just this feeling that who all ever put this book together as a book did not really put in a lot of effort. And again, for the price...

2) This book isn't sure what it wants to be. Is all that stuff about trying not to portray the SI as an invincible city destroying door kicking monolith in there and all that trying to scheme more? Sure. But at the same time there are sections instead still treating it like an invincible city destroying door kicking monolith. The SI of those sections feels entirely incompatible with books like Chicago by Night, or even the LA by Night live play series, where it seems like the response to the setback they suffered in LA would be to shrug and then, for instance, explode Victor Temple's club with him in it, because blowing up that sort of thing without a care for mortal collateral damage is a regular SI tactic. Basically this book contradicts its own message a bunch of times and that is deeply frustrating.

There was a discussion for a while that stuff like the Vienna chantry drone kerblooey was going to be treated as a massive non duplicable expenditure of resources, that the SI after London and Vienna was going to assume they had mostly won, that there was going to be a dialing back in the material from that kind of deal. Annd.. nope.

Here is a section on FIRSTLIGHT taking about their weapons grade premium bang bang.

Hellfire-armed Reaper drones, submarinelaunched
cruise missiles, SOCOM strike forces, and
other weapons rain death on blankbodies wherever
they gather in secret. Vienna and one or two similar
operations aside, IAO hasn’t pulled up the even
heavier weapons in their arsenal. Yet.

Note the smug "Yet". FIRSTLIGHT also has their own private 100 man strong Navy Seal team, on top of whatever all other groups. The idea that the SI has suffered substantial personnel losses of any sort to give them pause doesn't feel like it bears out. This is also a book that gives stats for military attack copters, autocannons, thermite explosives, predator drones...

"That's not that bad Mark," you might say. "They're limited by deployment circumstances maybe? It's not like the book otherwise says something like that their vampire surveillance methods cannot be defeated by anyone, as far as the SI's invincibility."

Let me reply by way of the book noting verbatim that all the countermeasures being taken by the Camarilla and Anarchs to make it harder for the SI to find them are straight up doomed to failure because this project of the SI "always wins":

Vampires fight the battle against Heartbeat every second of their unlife. Every hurried phone call or uncovered
ATM camera photo creates a potential data point for Heartbeat to exploit. Most Camarilla domains
have taken to withdrawing from technology almost completely and reverting to Cold War methods of covert
communication with messengers leaving notes in dead drops and encoded in lost Napoleonic cyphers. Anarchs
and other vampires use more direct countermeasures. Destroying street cameras, using burner phones,
disguising their features, and targeting local law enforcement for revenge attacks. But in the end Heartbeat
always wins, building an identifying pattern out of countermeasures and acts of defiance alike. In a perverse
self-fulfilling prophecy, only toppling or dominating the IAO itself would put an end to the world’s foremost
digital vampire hunter.

Protip to this book for not wanting to portray the SI as invincible: Do not describe one of its projects as "always winning". Especially if you don't want to come off as contradictory to the section that will later claim they can in fact be blocked. Beyond that, doing an faux-ominous "... for now" note, on the cities noted as more resiliently vampire held in another section does not help either. Nor noting that FIRSTLIGHT can casually throw a billion dollars at a problem in a different portion.

It also doesn't help the idea that we've had material for cities in OPP books that treat the setting as entirely open and viable for plots that do not focus on the SI, for a book to talk about how increasingly all cities are becoming frontline contest zones between the SI and vampires.

Yes, there are certainly sections that talk about the SI like they are not this powerful. But then there are these sections. They do not fit together well as a comprehensible whole, is what I am noting.

I just.. the editing for this book. It feels like different people wrote different sections with different ideas and different goals that do not come together.

Oh and "but this stuff is rare" is not the helpful limiter this book thinks it is for the section on super and magic tech (weapons, relics, diseases, a basically no resistance roll possible motion sensing thing that fires off tangle wires that shuts down most helpful celerity things unless you waste a whole turn detangling yourself, sunlight grenades, what all otherwise have you) whose stats more or less make them auto hosejobs for any ST that decides to use them. The stuff is that powerful.

3) This is a minor, personal exasperation, but I had hoped that we had left behind making garrotes special decapitation weapons with the WoD: Combat book. I'm not impressed with that they revisited this idea, or that they gave the British SI guys special decapitation advantages on top of that. If you like easier decapitation, you are probably fine with this. I don't, so I'm not.

4) Again with a section that suggests targeting players via their Touchstones. There are multiple adventures in multiple books now and suggestions in places otherwise going "mess with the players via their Touchstones", and now this one. As though this game has no creative story idea what to do with Touchstones other than recommend threatening them to get at characters. I don't like Touchstones for various reasons, mostly because of what they represent on a level of philosophy and faith for how meaningfully you can believe in something if it doesn't have external representation, and otherwise because of not especially grooving on Requiem stuff in VtM. But the rest of my dislike comes from feeling that a lot of VtM 5th's way of reinforcing its playstyle and themes is not to encourage players to abide by them, but to punish them into abiding by them (because obviously, if you don't have Touchstones, then you can't deal with stains really. If you do have them though, the game seems at this point almost gleefully to say they should be endlessly used to strain the player). It's hard not to look at Touchstones as basically just an ST screw over lever when the game repeatedly recommends pulling said lever again and again for cheap, lazy pathos (cheap and lazy because it keeps. recommending. to do this.) and sense of threat as opposed this thing that fleshes out the vampire's sense and definition of humanity. I wouldn't be griping about this otherwise, but this keeps coming up. At some point this is going to influence prospective STs into just feeling this is how this game aspect should work when they keep reading these things.

5) Almost everything about Russia in this book has aged like milk. From the idea of their forces being hyper competent badasses, to the idea that Russian agents uncover and expose American corruption (there's this bit about Russia finding that FIRSTLIGHT is using its resources in hugely corrupt and brutal ways and potentially leaking that to the Vatican and what have you). That last concept, the idea that "Russian agents expose American corruption" is not just an alt right talking point in the real world by Putin apologists parroted for years now, it's an idea being repeated right now by Russian disinformation while their armies commit waves of atrocities. It's gross to read here.

6) I've been beaten to the in-depth problems with Brazil, so, yeah, just see above and all. This sort of thing was supposed to get better. Sigh.

So as not to be a complete wall of negativity, the one thing I did like: (and ironically thus actually agree with CTPhipps on something, if for different reasons)

I really appreciate the fact that the SI is portrayed as overall an awful thing by awful people. That FIRSTLIGHT is turning its tools on political dissidents. That there is this utter callousness for mortal casualties. That horrible experiments are going on, on innocent people, that fanatical zeal and political corruption come together in a horrible alchemy with grotesque results and etc. etc. and I'll tell you why.

This is the Second Inquisition. Inquisition 1.0? Just to opine on it as a Jewish person? Was a horribly bad thing even in the real world (where the best modern apologists can do is try and say "technically it was no worse than other things going on at the time and only did some atrocities, not all atrocities"). I like that not being forgotten. "This is the Inquisition, but good this time!" is uhm.. kind of a blah thing as an idea.

Further on an in the world of darkness level, Inquisition 1.0 was horrifyingly bad, not just for vampires, but, you know, human beings, and the book acknowledges this. I appreciate a thematic call back to the previous notion in VtM that some upheld the Masquerade because they knew suffering would spread well beyond vampires if it frayed as far as the paranoia, zealotry and corruption it would likely foster in those responding to its fall, like it did the first time.

There's something thematically deft and intelligent going on when a book asks "Why would a Second Inquisition be any better than the First one, which was a horror show? It probably wouldn't, and here's why."

Not deft and intelligent enough for me to consider this book anything but a waste of my money overall, but I'm still going to acknowledge a decently done thing when it happens.

[monteparnas]

I'll be interested in getting your opinion on Brazil since it plays a big role. I've already seen some complaints about its portrayal of them.

I won't be able to get my hands on it as soon as I want, for reasons cited previously, but I'll comment on what is posted here.

SetiteFriend got most of the gist of it to begin with.

Brazil is mostly a Catholic country, although one with a sizable and growing presence of other Christian denominations, especially Neo-Pentecostal ones. Both have their slightly different versions of right-wing extremists that want to blast non-Christians out of existence. In the middle of this, the religions of African origin are extremely persecuted.

And I mean it. Their sacred places, called Terreiros, are frequently targets of arson and other criminal attacks, and practitioners are target of all kinds of abuse and segregation despite the law.

Those aren't out-of-the-way places of worship for isolated communities, either. They exist across the cities as any other church would be, most practitioners of those religions live in urban areas and no few of them hide their religion to keep their jobs and avoid persecution. They are not your typical picture of "Cunning Folk", what's that even supposed to mean? They're members of larger Christian communities that kept their syncretic beliefs alive, and that's it, most black communities in Brazil are Christian with a few exceptions in some places, especially in the state of Bahia.

So, it would make sense for the Vatican hunters to have a strong foothold in Brazil, and to the government and military hunters, especially the BOES (what that even stands for? Batalhão de Operações Especiais Secretas?) to be on good terms with them. It doesn't make sense for all the Catholics or even all members of the Church to be on board with this madness. The Evangelicals, especially Neo-Pentecostal, definitely are more likely to be on the shoes of the religious zealot wielding Faith and rituals against the vampires for the SI.

Candomblé and other African-Brazilian religions are very unlikely to get involved. Why would they? Vampires do not have the same meaning in their religion they have for Christians, this is the first big blunder here. There's no inherent spiritual evil for them, on the other hand the very people that form the SI are definitely a constant and very real threat that causes far more harm to them than vampires do. It would be to take the side of the bigger of two evils, not the lesser. Sure, some lone individuals can do this as they grow up believing the system isn't so bad, you know how it is in the US, it isn't inherently different here.

My wife is from Umbanda, one of those religions, I'll later talk to her about this to get a better grasp on her point of view on it. But as I see it, that missed the target by a lot.

In a less fantasy and more RL bit, the book is already receiving criticism in Brazil for the fact that it is too critical of the BOES too and "leftist propaganda."

Of course it is, how do you thing persecution reached this level? Bunch of racist jerks, those!

Would it be fair to say that Brazil has particularly heinous and, more to the point, indiscreet vampires, with the Sabbat presence and legacy?

It wouldn't, because the whole original depiction of the Sabbat making our cities into hellholes is an old sore point filled with prejudice and ignorance. My country isn't at all how WW described it, even with our social problems.

With respect, I think it makes sense in so far as the fictional Candomblé and Umbanda cast spells, which are cool. Not even fictional Neo-Pentecostals cast spells.

The whole idea that followers of some religions cast spells through means other than True Faith is a problem. It looks cool in the surface, but the underlying notion is still that such beliefs are exotic and set those people apart from normal humanity. When you actually follow or have friends and family that follow such beliefs and you see this exoticization, it really isn't cool and don't feel nice.

I know only a little about Brazil and less about Candomblé and Umbanda. Can someone who is familiar make a suggestion on how best to handle the Brazilian part of the S.I.?

Involving Candomblé and Umbanda was completely unnecessary, unless the book went in such details as to picture the fight in every state and area, so we needed to know how every social grouping deals with it.

Mostly it shouldn't be very different from how it is in the US to begin with. Less focus on groups like Intelligence and the Federal Police and more on local law enforcement and the military as people that would be on-board and ready for the SI. Our conservatives are Catholics or Neo-Pentecostal instead of other Protestant denominations in general, but that's it. For them African-Brazilian religions are witchcraft and probably as much targets as the vampires if they can get away with it. Anyone in the Brazilian SI would be likely to apply to those religions the same view they apply to vampires. If they're worth saving, they're worth saving, if they're worth using, they're worth using, if they're just for the fire, they're just for the fire.

Ultimately the Second Inquisition is an extremely blunt metaphor for police, intelligence agencies and other similar organizations who began engaging in morally and ethically appalling actions in the War on Terror ("We need to fight terrorism so we'll do that by engaging in terrorism, torture, etc, and if a dozen civilians die in the process of drone striking one terrorist it's a small price to pay, and speaking of pay, we can partially fund our projects by working with opium growers and selling weapons under the table.")

I mostly agree with everything you wrote, but I want to add some points.

The SI isn't just a reference to the War on Terror, but also a lot to the War on Drugs. In fact, it works far better as the later despite its beginning referencing clearly the former.

But the metaphor has a problem, one thing that I know most Americans don't like to recognize, even among the left: terrorists aren't Vampires. While terror isn't a valid tactic, they're people, usually in desperate situations. It is too easy to declare a war on every terrorist because of a major attack, but that was doomed to fail from the beginning simply due to ignoring the most basic facts about who those people are as people and what's the difference between terror and war.

At no point the War on Terror was truly justified.

[CTPhipps]

So considering that the Second Inquisition are intended to fill a Villain role in the World of Darkness it becomes problematic to associate real life religious groups with such a group, especially when the real real life religious groups you're associating with that oppressive villain group have been (and still are) victims of oppression. So having those sorts of groups working with the Second Inquisition is going to come off as somewhat tasteless, even to people who have little to know knowledge of such real life religious groups. I don't think objectionable to the point of not buying the book or anything, but it's a bit problematic and it's worth noting at any rate.

I feel like the Second Inquisition is not so utterly black as an organization that it automatically invokes what you're doing, especially when dealing with the evils of vampiredom. The book makes numerous notes about people who are uncomfortable with the tactics of the SI or motivated by genuine good motivations as well as a desire to help people. It's just the organization is morally bankrupt. Portraying practitioners of traditional religion being reluctant allies and not even most of them, but a handful of them, against supernatural evil falls into what I point out is kind of the Gordian Knot of representation.

The book wants to represent people fighting the good fight against evil in Brazil. However, if they don't include any mention of it, they will have no representation at all. If they are included, they are reluctant allies against a group that hates them. I suppose the question is whether you think it was a bridge too far to think ANY would join with the SI against the Sabbat/Camarilla in Brazil even knowing (as the book shows) they are enemies tomorrow and yesterday but allies only today.

Just a thought.

Mind you, I was a convert to Catholicism before leaving the church over certain RL scandals so I have my own feelings regarding the treatment of the Vatican being openly allied to these people.

The Second Inquisition WILL become as bad as the First Inquisition and will become worse when it targets other supernaturals.

But its not reached its full nadir of evil yet.

[CTPhipps]

But the metaphor has a problem, one thing that I know most Americans don't like to recognize, even among the left: terrorists aren't Vampires. While terror isn't a valid tactic, they're people, usually in desperate situations. It is too easy to declare a war on every terrorist because of a major attack, but that was doomed to fail from the beginning simply due to ignoring the most basic facts about who those people are as people and what's the difference between terror and war.

Speaking as an American here, you're actually going to get less of an opposition than you think. The issue with the War on Terror is actually the exact same issue as the War on Drugs for many of us. Specifically, it is a nonsensical slogan versus an actual military operation.

David Robert Jones AKA David Bowie pointed out that eternal wars on "concepts" were actually a tool of the America media, government, and military industrial complex. David said the first war was the war on communism that wasn't actually a conflict with the Soviet Union very often but ideologies that were completely unrelated to communism but fed the machine followed by the War on Drugs that he foresaw becoming the same thing. He later said the same thing would be the War on Terror where the war was not on Al-Qaeda or even ISIS which was created by merging Iraq with Al-Qaeda.

It was a war that fed into the idea of creating ideological battles that could never be won and thus never would end. Eternal war was the point as that was profitable and motivating to the public.
The same thing seems to be the theme they are going for with the Second Inquisition. A War on Vampires seems like its totally justfiable but the fact is that vampires are completely divided and hate each other more than anyone else on the planet. They're also victims of a curse and/or disease as often or not that they've rarely asked for. Yes, they can and do prey on humans and the Sabbat are the enemy of all mankidn but the SI isn't working on trying to cure or quarantine vampires, they've started a war and it's an ineffective bizarre war waged in the shadows.

As we see with Mithras, the real masterminds are making serious bank off this and using it to their advantage while the people who suffer most are the lower ranks of vampiredom and humanity as a whole who are thronw to the machine.

It's a surprisingly good bit of satire.

Vampires may be all bad guys but here's the thing: THEY DIDN'T CHOOSE TO BE (at least among Neonates). The SI does.

[CTPhipps]

So as not to be a complete wall of negativity, the one thing I did like: (and ironically thus actually agree with CTPhipps on something, if for different reasons)

Amusingly, I don't disagree with anything you've said.

* Garotte decapitations are silly.
* Russia being a bunch of unstoppable vampire killing badasses is ridiculous and certainly not what we've seen.
* Targeting Touchstones is the laziest possible thing you can do with them.
* The SI are bad bad people.

[monteparnas]

The book wants to represent people fighting the good fight against evil in Brazil. However, if they don't include any mention of it, they will have no representation at all. If they are included, they are reluctant allies against a group that hates them. I suppose the question is whether you think it was a bridge too far to think ANY would join with the SI against the Sabbat/Camarilla in Brazil even knowing (as the book shows) they are enemies tomorrow and yesterday but allies only today.

The book could have gone the route of saying they're among the least likely allies of the SI among the most numerous minority groups in Brazil precisely because they're seen by most as outright worse than the Vampires. And then have a sample character or two that are the exception, for whatever personal context they have.

Otherwise the book could (with that extra pages it should have) briefly picture other hunters as the SI see them, and so such minorities could be represented through those other hunters instead of through the SI. That would be interesting all over the place, not just in Brazil.

For your question with Catholicism, while I'm not a Christian myself I agree. I think that in a country where Catholicism is mostly seen as the older and more traditional Christian denomination dominant in conservative parts of Europe, plus Inquisition history, depicting the Catholics as almost-universally extreme traditionalists kind of makes sense.

But it isn't that. Where Catholicism is dominant it kind of just... is. Most people are Catholics, but not particularly prone to be conservative or not, no more than normal at least. The view that most Americans seem to have on Catholics is the same view most Brazilians have on Protestants, as they're usually the more prone to be traditionalist, ultra-conservative zealots around here.

[AnubisXy]

But it isn't that. Where Catholicism is dominant it kind of just... is. Most people are Catholics, but not particularly prone to be conservative or not, no more than normal at least. The view that most Americans seem to have on Catholics is the same view most Brazilians have on Protestants, as they're usually the more prone to be traditionalist, ultra-conservative zealots around here.

It's kind of funny too because, at least in the United States, the Catholic Church is marginally more progressive than many Evangelical, Protestant and more typical Christian churches. For example, the Catholic Church doesn't believe that the Bible is the literal truth, it teaches evolution, the Catholic Church supports vaccinations, and overall, the organization (while it has a host of problems) is far less "anti-science" and fanatical than most of the churches of other denominations that you see in the United States. But you're right that many people in the US think of the Catholic church as more of an ultra-conservative, zealot organization, more so than US religious groups, and that frequently slips into the media that originates here.

[CTPhipps]

Oddly, the Catholic Church seems to be the nicest element of the SI. It wants to wipe out all vampires everywhere but actively works on redeeming ghouls and keeping collateral damage down.