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**Father Enoch** · 03-05-2023, 01:11 PM

Maybe some Vampires have other Mages for friends?

The big issue is that most Mages shouldn't even know Vampires exist. A long time ago on this forums I asked for ways Vampires could mess with Mages for a planned Mage Chronicle that only somewhat happened. The most common response was that Vampire would use proxies of proxies, and layers of layers of obfuscation (not just the discipline) to even interact with them. The Masquerade isn't just for Mortals, Vampires are expected to hide themselves from everyone and everything.

Werewolves have Spirit allies, and the ability to cross the Gauntlet. Sin Eaters have already died once, so even if a Mage kills a bunch, there's nothing their Gheists from binding with another person, so then the Mage will have to deal with another Krewe, but one holding a grudge. Changelings can enter dreams, and I might be over simplifying them, but Mummies seem a lot like Mages, only their immortal as well.

Mages of the Pentacle are already fighting a cold war with the Seers of the Throne and their masters, the Exarchs, as well as watching out for Banishers, Scelesti and Tremere Liches. This is all besides the whole viper's nest of internal Mage politics. Even IF none of the local Mages have Vampire or Werewolf allies, the Pentacle is NOT going to be happy with someone kicking a hornet's nest while they're trying to shut down the local Seer Pylon.

And one final, obvious point; Mages are really only powerful when their prepared. Caught off guard, even a lowly Ghoul could do a pretty good Gallagher impression, with their foot as the mallet, and the unfortunate Mage's skull as the watermelon.

**KaiserAfini** · 03-05-2023, 01:14 PM

Vampires are social monsters, and they would leverage that to their advantage. The Moros is attacking from Twilight ? Pull some strings and make Task Force Valkyrie roll into town, they can see and gun down mages in Twilight.

The Mastigos has undying hatred for vampires and is sniping them down ? The vampire finds their family, Embraces them, blood bonds them and seeks them on the mage. How easy will it be to kill all vampires now ? Naturally, since the vampire was depraved enough to do this, they installed a bomb in all of them during the process. It can be remote detonated, activates on death and will trigger automatically if a token generated password is not daily transmitted. No matter what happens, they kill the mage at best or cause deep trauma at worse.

Vampires tend to be near mortal more often, can they easily snipe them if they are in the public eye ? The city will likely react to so many citizens being taken out by a serial killer and will start to investigate. Now you are endangering the Masquerade and the Veil. The vampire elders, Guardians and probably even the Arrows will have an issue with that.

Could it be done ? Maybe, but walking a very dangerous line between Rapture and success, all while being hunted down. Its would probably place them in a similar mind space as Kira from Death Note. Its hubristic, incredibly dangerous, ultimately bad for one's psyche and very likely to make innocents suffer in the crossfire.

**lbeaumanior** · 03-05-2023, 01:36 PM

Originally posted by KaiserAfini View Post

Vampires are social monsters, and they would leverage that to their advantage. The Moros is attacking from Twilight ? Pull some strings and make Task Force Valkyrie roll into town, they can see and gun down mages in Twilight.

The Mastigos has undying hatred for vampires and is sniping them down ? The vampire finds their family, Embraces them, blood bonds them and seeks them on the mage. How easy will it be to kill all vampires now ? Naturally, since the vampire was depraved enough to do this, they installed a bomb in all of them during the process. It can be remote detonated, activates on death and will trigger automatically if a token generated password is not daily transmitted. No matter what happens, they kill the mage at best or cause deep trauma at worse.

Vampires tend to be near mortal more often, can they easily snipe them if they are in the public eye ? The city will likely react to so many citizens being taken out by a serial killer and will start to investigate. Now you are endangering the Masquerade and the Veil. The vampire elders, Guardians and probably even the Arrows will have an issue with that.

Could it be done ? Maybe, but walking a very dangerous line between Rapture and success, all while being hunted down. Its would probably place them in a similar mind space as Kira from Death Note. Its hubristic, incredibly dangerous, ultimately bad for one's psyche and very likely to make innocents suffer in the crossfire.

But, what I am saying is mechanically, at least Vampires, are in no position to survive a series of hits from a lone mage, that even thinking about retaliation is hard for them.

My example is that a single Cabal, will not leave any Vampire alive in a day. Literally, I can build a starting cabal (heck, two characters actually) as per the Core rule book that can wipe out every Vampire in a city in a single week, when and how exactly is the Vampire going to find their family, Embraces them, blood bonds them and seeks them on the mage? The attack vector (Space) is not something the Vampire can trace to anybody, the effect is that "Damn, someone dusted Alex during day sleep, no one entered, the video feed shows him going to sleep and next day the ghoul finding ashes"

Starting Mastigos with Space 3 max Gnosis plus a Gnosis 3 / Time 3 / Fate 2 Acanthus (to identify targets and pick the right time to hit) alone can kill every vampire without leaving evidence for others to retaliate.... Does every Vampire in the world have a mage friend to identify the effect?

And as a cabal, they can literally identify every vampire in a month (a week with help of a Moros), and hit all of them in a single day, or being slow, in 2 weeks, destroying 3 vampires per day (reasonably slow) that makes 42 vampires in 2 weeks.... Moving cities? Does not help against space. Tracing evidence? With Vampiric powers versus Space arcana, no way.

Again, my example is a set of core starting characters, but even larger and more experienced cabals could reasonably have this goal, and as stated in the original post, this is aligned to the goals of at least one order (Silver Ladder, human supremacy) and touches the interest of at least another (Free Council).

**Michael** · 03-05-2023, 02:13 PM

They just sorta don't.

Like, yeah, the Pentacle should probably be pretty violently anti-vampire... But that would require rewriting the two settings to be radically different, so it's easier to just handwave it.

**Father Enoch** · 03-05-2023, 02:13 PM

Originally posted by lbeaumanior View Post

But, what I am saying is mechanically, at least Vampires, are in no position to survive a series of hits from a lone mage, that even without thinking about retaliation is hard.

My example is that a single Cabal, will not leave any Vampire alive in a day. Literally, I can build a starting cabal (heck, two characters actually) as per the Core rule book that can wipe out every Vampire in a city in a single week, when and how exactly is the Vampire going to find their family, Embraces them, blood bonds them and seeks them on the mage? The attack vector (Space) is not something the Vampire can trace to anybody, the effect is that "Damn, someone dusted Alex during day sleep, no one entered, the video feed shows him going to sleep and next day the ghoul finding ashes"

Starting Mastigos with Space 3 max Gnosis plus a Gnosis 3 / Time 3 / Fate 2 Acanthus (to identify targets and pick the right time to hit) alone can kill every vampire without leaving evidence for others to retaliate.... Does every Vampire in the world have a mage friend to identify the effect?

And as a cabal, they can literally identify every vampire in a month (a week with help of a Moros), and hit all of them in a single day, or being slow, in 2 weeks, destroying 3 vampires per day (reasonably slow) that makes 42 vampires in 2 weeks.... Moving cities? Does not help against space. Tracing evidence? With Vampiric powers versus Space arcana, no way.

Again, my example is a set of core starting characters, but even larger and more experienced cabals could reasonably have this goal, and as stated in the original post, this is aligned to the goals of at least one order (Silver Ladder, human supremacy) and touches the interest of at least another (Free Council).

A Cabal focusing exclusively on Vampires is a Cabal NOT focusing on the Seers of the Throne, or Banishers. Banishers may not care about Vampires, but an enemy of the Pentacle is a friend of the Seers, if not someone they can get leverage over in exchange for "protection." And if they're just killing the Vampires and not taking care of their Ghouls and Cultists as well, then the Mages are leaving a bunch of metaphorical headless chickens running around. Ghouls and Cultists can cause a lot of collateral damage if their Vampire master suddenly turns to dust and they have nothing to lose.

I'm not saying it wouldn't happen, I'm working on something similar, such as a Free Council Cabal who have taken it upon themselves to police the local Shadow, because a Pack of Pure Werewolves killed off the local Forsaken, and now the town has Spirits running everywhere eating people. The problem is, while they're spreading themselves thin and tiring themselves out dealing with Spirits (which they don't understand nearly as much as they think), the local Seer Pylon is moving their own plans right along.

Mages are ALREADY at war, with A LOT of people. You start another one, with monsters that could already have potential allies, or at least relations with other Mages, those other Mages WON'T be happy with you and they WON'T ignore you.

**jsnider3** · 03-05-2023, 02:17 PM

Sure, killing all of the Vampires or Beasts in a city is doable, but I wouldn't let players do that off-screen even if they were strong enough that it wasn't a challenge. If they literally tried to kill all of the X in the world, that seems like an Archmage-level task that should have Archmage-level challenges.

As for NPCs, similar considerations apply. There are probably a few cities where they killed all of the vampires or whatever, but those creatures will return pretty quickly if they stop and there are always other things they could be doing. The fact that X exists in your story implies that no NPC-Archmage was gone out and killed them all.

**TempleBuilder** · 03-05-2023, 02:25 PM

Look, there is a vampiric bloodline that can detect the god machine’s parts, which is something mages struggle with. If you want a realistic conflict, then yeah, vampires will work it out. They already have 3/5 factions that can be reasonably argued to know about magic, and have ways to counter it. A Vampiric ward is still a ward, and so on. And I bet you the other factions will figure something out, or cut a deal.

Rules as written, yeah Fate is subtle and vampires have no way to detect it. But many vampires have been around for a while, and many will have a good instinct about what’s normal chance, and what’s not. I guarantee you any elder will know *something* is up, and has had plenty of time to come up with contingencies to ensure their own survival.

Secondly, deny it or not, every vampire is a predator, with the instincts of one. Not every mage is so guarded. They may be able to break blood bonds, but not everyone has the Arcana to do it on their own. And then whoever was dumb enough to try something like this has a lot of complicated problems to untangle, because mage vs mage either uses M.A.D. Or the duel arcane. And they have already swung with violence toward the other mage’s side.

Lastly, the are way less Mages than Vampires. It doesn’t matter how easily you can kill people, if you miss one, you can expect retaliation from the survivors, who need to make sure you don’t try and finish them off too. And a single Vampire can pretty easily kill a mage who is by themselves, and unaware they are in danger, just like anyone else.

As for this on most other gamelines, every supernatural has large scale entities with a vested interest in their survival of their “species”. Yes, even Changelings and Demons. Actually, Vampire might have one too. Nobody really knows vampiric origins, so there very well could be something looking out for the survival of vampires in general.

**TempleBuilder** · 03-05-2023, 02:39 PM

Also, anyone trying this is going to push the limits of Wisdom real hard. Vampires might not be good people, but they are still people. Saying it’s ok to kill others because (inset justification here) is like, the one the basic definitions of hubris. Mass genocide will rapidly destroy one’s Wisdom, even if they are monsters. And now everyone has to deal with a Malefactor rapt. Sounds kinda counter productive, if you ask me.

(second post because I already edited the first one for grammar, and I didn’t want it flagged.)

**KaiserAfini** · 03-05-2023, 02:49 PM

An example is that, if a vampire is wary of mages before, they can hire a mortal occultist. Sure, there are a lot of quacks, but amongst them there might be one who knows a Ceremony called Black Cat's Crossing. Does the mage know why their Peripheral Sight pinged after crossing the threshold, or why they feel death's scythe at their neck and their instincts are screaming for them to get out ? If not, then they will have a much harder time collecting sympathetic yantras.

Newly minted mages will need to juggle with spell control as they collect the sympathetic ties while leaving no clues, drawing no attention and leaving no loose ends for the vampires to follow. All that can lead to a very interesting chronicle, the challenges could evolve as both sides try to adapt and outplay the other.

**ArcaneArts** · 03-05-2023, 05:18 PM

Wow, it's been a while since we've had a thread like this. Can't say I was missing it, though.

Originally posted by lbeaumanior View Post

Many supernatural creatures are hostile to mages, their charges and mysteries; and such creatures (mostly) have low reproduction rates or complex requirements to propagate.

So I'm gonna start by challenging your premise: are they a threat their charges and mysteries? I'm going to get into your specific cases, but as a general rule, for every supernatural creature who can be pinned with malice or animalistic excessive harm, there are just as many who are just people trying to get by and handle their affairs. While that latter type is still Some Kind of Strife, the majority of humanity's experience with the supernatural isn't hyper traumatic or damaging (though definitely a defining moment, given it's place in Integrity), and a lot of encounters that are had are often just enough to throw them off for a day or two. Mysteries, too, tend to be resources that are in the interest of being taken care of.

On the grand scale of things, mages are actually the more likely to fuck things up in a particularly notable way, because so much of what they do that isn't idle whim is a deliberate experimentation of magic to try and get more out of their power or to find particular expressions of it that hadn't been available previously.

Destroying all Spirits is impossible as the world itself keeps creating them, Werewolves have spirit allies with vast powers, but something like eradicating every Vampire or Beast in a city / county / nation seems feasible.

Yep, that bias is nicely clear.

I use vampires as an example that is human related, has no real defense against a mage supernal attacks (except having high stats vs attacks), tends to be hostile to mankind even at high levels of Humanity (they eat blood, mainly human).

As we're about to get into, there's a lot wrong here, but let's take this as a line to clarify something of the central issue:

No,* that's not hostility. That's ranching.

Outside of contexts, a vampire feeding is not an act of malice or hostility, it's an act of sustenance. Because of that, and the overall contexts of what dire action can cost them, it's in the general interest of vampires to not only not kill the humans they feed on, but to even keep it pretty light as possible for each one. This is because before having a ready and willing feed base, one is best served by having it be stable and reliable, and too many people showing up to work lightheaded and woozy has conseqeunces for that stability, as it upsets the general health and wellbeing of both the individuals and the community that a vampire can take advantage of. In an ideal world, the vampire is the place that their herd sleeps in and the work they earn their bread at and the nighttime activities they relieve stress with, but the only way a vampire can really get that is through careful cultivation and shaping.

Now, is that horrible? Oh yeah, peak institutional corruption-but most vampries don't have an idea of what they're in for with the Embrace. Even the ones vampires take a lot of time to initiate them into the All Night Society have no real way of knowing what it means to be a vampire until they're there, and from there all of that horribleness is the cost of living, it's what you have to do to get by, and even, surprisingly often, making it as humane as possible. Of course, that's not easy to really build up, and there are too many situations where the choice of making sure you'll wake up the next night versus the healthiness and dignity of the food as a peer in this world gone wrong lands on the side of lunch, where it becomes easy to always have it land on the side of lunch-but it's not malice or hostility, it's getting by.

This is one of the great horrors of CHronicles-the people who do these things, these things that are horrible and repulsive, are still people, and it's not like most of them really want to play the game of life this way, but that's the cards their dealt with, and they make do with them.

And again, this assumes mages aren't doing the same shit, but we'll get to that later. For now, some mechanics.

What stops a concerted effort from Mages to use Space and destroy Vampires in a city? Vampires are terrifying in a social setting and have their fingers in lots of pies, but a single Gnosis 3, disciple of Space can find every vampire in the city in a couple of weeks, and kill more than one per day, from the other side of the world if needed... What stops a cabal from cooperative casting and getting rid of those things?

This is a very generous reading of what goes into the venture, and because you have a whole different section about what any given Elysium can do, it's gonna have to broken up.

Let's say a mage wants to kill a just a group of vampires in this way. They need to first get mutliple sympathetic yantras for all of the spells they're intending to cast, and that means getting resources from the vampire and their places of power-which, hey, look, that's pretty hard to do, particularly the older a vampire gets! They need a lot of those sympathetic yantras because unless they kidnap a vampire directly, the web of sympathetic connections between vampires isn't really accessible, and so additional spells are needed to take advantage of that-and keeping a live vampire for magic purposes is a difficult proposition for targets who may or may not have anything to do with this. Given that those chains of sympathy run veritcally and not horizontally, it's not particularly helpful for addressing actual acts of mass violence, nevermind how it gets weaker the further away it goes-but on the plus side, unless you're taking deliberate care. On top of that, they need to account for the way Withstand can get wonky with vampires thanks to that ready availability of Disciplines that passively adjust a vampire's Attributes, with two clans emphasizing the particular trait you're probably thinking of needing to overcome, and of course any particular potency they might have with age. On the plus side, unless our mage boy takes even more time and resources to avoid the consequences, these tactics run a better chance of killing their victims in terms of blood-bonded humans and ghouls, so so much for the "Think of the Sleepers!" argument. And you will need to do that for every member of the coterie our mage has an issue with, because again, the sympathy you're relying on is a vertical affair and not a horizontal one. ANd to make this work as well as you want, it's all ritual time, which is a lot of time and energy, and the entire time you're spraying your presence and intent like a unrestrained fire hose, and yes, vampires can and well do something about that.

Yeah, a Consilium or Caucus that is interested in this can definitely make a dent, but it's not as cut and dry as you'd like, and most importantly it's not actually all that important to them, because....

Let's say the cabal is Silver Ladder or Free Council that are really concerned with Sleepers well-being.

It's very funny to run into this issue from someone who, just a few weeks ago, was worrying about how the Pentacle don't act like the Seers. It indicates you're aware of what I'm about to say. So that said, let's say it:

Mages care about Sleepers in the same way politicians and moral pancikers care about "the children"-which is to say, they care in a very notional and distant way, but tend to be unconcerned with the actual realities of it all.

Mages are as much institutional corruption as vampires are and chew up Sleepers just as readily. This is one of the really big points Appendix One of the Second Edition Corebook: For all that the Pentacle wring their hands about "The Sleepers", they use their lives to their own ends and purposes all the time, and just as readily chew on them and manipulate them for resources and conveniences. Sanctum and Sigil says the quiet part about the Precept of Hubris out loud so hard it had to be somewhat restructured in Left Hand Path and the corebook, because the idea is that violations against Sleeprs are supposed to be things you take seriously, but in practice tends to be quietly ignored (the original Precept of Hubris in S&S openly says that most of the time, it only applies to mages, and that Sleepers being under it is a rarity. Supporting Cast from the Core makes it clear that while the letter is now more firmly on their side, it's actual execution isn't a whole lot better). A thearch or Free Councilour will make a living hell of a Sleeper's particular life in the name of liberating the Sleepers en masse and suffer no realization of the contradiction, because this is who you are when you have the power to restructure reality.

Mages are bastards. The Pentacle may be well intentioned bastards, but the game makes no secret of them still being bastards, makes no secret that a lot of the talk is just that-talk.

Retaliation is hard for Vampires... They dont really have lots of spiritual powers (Cruac / Theban Sorcery are not really there), they barely interact with Twilight if at all, and it is hard for them to even identify that the aggressor is a mage.If they identify a mage, yeah: Ghouls/ Retainers / Legal action during the day + Vampiric enforcers and attacks during the night, but seems like a mid or high level cabal of Thearchs or Libertines can wipe out a whole nation of vampires... There are cabals with less lofty goals in cannon and riskier potential enemies (TELM for example)

I'm going to encourage you to read Blood Sorcery: Sacraments and Blasphemies(Since it is intended to be the base of the systems for Curac and Theban Sorcery going forward) and Secrets of the Covenants and re-evaluate that stance. I would also encourage you to read all of the clan books from None More Dark, but I can see why arguments can be made on that.

Blood Sorcery on the whole is very powerful and can keep pace with Awakened magic quite well, and can even be wildly weird in ways that the Awakened can have trouble with. On top of that, the Lancea et Sanctum has a long martial and magical tradition of fighting witches, and that includes the Awakened-their tricks may not permanently resolve what it's like to fight a mage, but they chop off a lot of avenues for a mage to reliably gain power. Gods of the Supernal help you if they get allied with the Carthians, whose Carthian Law can impose heavy taxes on metaphysical resources, including Mana, and they likewise have plenty of experience turning the weapons of power and authority of people over them against them. The Invictus brings their Oaths, and with that readily weaponizes their front units with the power of the elders who sit at the top of the castle, which means so much of the Awakened's opponents from that neck of the woods are likely to be effectively as powerful as their most austere mages. The Ordo Dracul specilize in the same Mysteries mages investigate and can bring out any number of wild, weird, and hard to track solutions for, all the while empowering eldritch opponents with their Scales and denying the usual answers to them with their Coils. And bringing it back around to the Circle, their viciousness asides, their magic is arguably the most potent of the bunch, and they're the ones who most often truck with ghosts, spirits, gods, and other such, and as such as well versed in the art of fighting familiar with familiar. Three of five Clans and Covenants take their advantage and do use that permit exploration and exploitation of the invisible realms-they're not as closed off from spirits and ghosts as many would like to think.

And this is the group you're proposing the Awakened can just wipe out....cause, why, they eat people and bend systems to their advantage? Your average Pentacle mage has more in common with the comings and goings of your average Kindred than they do the Sleepers they wring their hands over. If anything, alliances are more productive and in both of their general interests, and allows for better keeping to standards among the both of them.

Sure, at the end of the day, you want to bring the full blown force of one against the other, you can make an argument the Awakened would walk away with the "win"-but they would lose a lot doing it, and at the end of the day it's just not worth the cost.

Again, Vampires and Beast are my go-to example because they hurt humans just being what they are and should be in the radar of the Ladder or the Council as a whole.

More so than the ongoing conflict of your particular issue with accepting "Mages Are Monsters", this line is irksome to me like you wouldn't believe.

Because the fuck do you mean should?

Chronicles is a game of horror about horrors, yes. Chronicles is a game about our world, but with monsters in it, yes. Chronicles is not a particular nice or kind world on the whole-bad things happen, they often happen unfairly, and they happen to people who don't deserve it.

But that horror is there to get us exercising our humanity. In this game, we do not play as the victim (Well, except for Hunter, which is arguably the most monstrous game of the lot and I love it), we play as the monster. We see things through their eyes, we get their reasons and feelings. We get to see how nature doesn't have to dictate personhood, but how very hard it can be to avoid that, how very understandable it can be to fail, to fall short of the people we could be, nevermind should be. In that same vein, that makes it all the more important to understand things as they are, and in particular to take note of where the try is made all the same. Arguably it's a losing game, but it's the game that these monsters try to play all the same, because at the end of the day, these monsters are also people too-trying to get by, struggling to make good of their own lives with the hands they get, and sometimes trying and even getting to make the world a little bit better in their own ways.

You don't like vampries or beasts, you think their nature just pushes things too far, fine, I get it, not all things for all people. But it strikes me as monstrous-more monstrous than anything the monsters in question do with just by getting by**-to suggest a whole faction would be well advised to commit a genocide that betrays the very empathy these games try to show, and to suggest it as though it is that exact empathy. Someone needed to point out that inhumanity in the name of humanity.

It is very mage-like, funnily enough. Not practical, mind, not wise, not human-but very mage-like.

And very few things are in the weight class of mages (namely, Demons and Mummies) and have also global organizations with stated goals for the Sleeper society as a whole.

Battles aren't fought from the top of the pyramid, most communities are not as singularly islands as they used to be in first edition, and few things bring together like a bunch of star-crowned storm-lords deciding genocide is the order of the day-and again, most of those can't be arsed. There are better things to do than uselessly burn trying to down their peers in the night.

EDIT: I feel like it should be pointed out that, in terms of being a problem for someone else, a mage in an Elysium or in a pack's territory tends to be a problem more on par with the Strix and the idigam for the vampires and werewolves than the other way around.

*Jimmy Kimmel, I do not hate breasts.
**I don't have a clean or useful place to mention my usual stance, but I do want to mention it: the more agency a monster has in their becoming monstrous, the more monstrous the individuals of the lot are. In this way, the most monstrous of monsters in Chronicles are mages, beasts, and hunters-and golly gosh, isn't the sheer humanity of all three of those a statement.

**Michael** · 03-05-2023, 07:29 PM

Originally posted by ArcaneArts View Post

Because the fuck do you mean should?

Presumably, it should be on their [the Ladder and Council] radar because it's the logical outcome of their beliefs.

**ArcaneArts** · 03-05-2023, 07:58 PM

Originally posted by Michael View Post

Presumably, it should be on their [the Ladder and Council] radar because it's the logical outcome of their beliefs.

I know what they meant. The question is a statement of moral affront.

Also, no.

**Satchel** · 03-06-2023, 02:21 AM

There's a thing that I've brought up elsewhere as it relates to Hunter and Beast that is also relevant here, which runs as follows:

Given its protagonists' general lack of special methods of immediately spotting monsters, Hunter: the Vigil most immediately avails itself to storylines about monsters careless and/or desperate enough to get caught, whether that's animalistic nightmares or genteel starving cannibals. Conspiratorial monsters are harder to find, and not-coincidentally the special methods available to hunters tend to be in the hands of conspiracies, which have their own compromises to deal with.

Given that it is easier for solitary monsters to screw up in the evidence-disposal department and that failure to keep a lid on your activities for long enough without connections to protect you is one way to lose the backing of a supernatural conspiracy (whether they murder you, mindwipe you, or just cut you loose and prepare evasive or defensive measures against the possibility that you'll rat on their local resources), monsters that aren't currently part of an established society more easily draw attention from hunters and other investigators, which makes them easy for Kin-seeking Beasts to find and susceptible to the offers of shelter the Begotten can offer.

Given the above and following on from "easier to draw attention from investigators," it's a fundamentally unsound argument to suppose you're going to be able to track down every vampire in even a city that has an appreciable presence of organized vampires, because evidence-disposal and cover operations are some of the most basic things the Kindred have people for to the specific end of not being found out.

This is to say nothing of how sympathetic magic like you'd be using Space for in this fashion requires a sympathetic connection you'd have to borrow if you don't have one on your own Pattern natively. And wouldn't you know it, the easiest sympathetic connections to grasp for if you're aiming to kill every vampire in a locale are blood bonds and blood ties.

Per the rules provided by the Contagion Chronicle, attaching the sympathetic connection provided by a blood bond or a blood tie to someone different transfers the powerful emotional backing of a blood bond or the tracking ability of a blood tie, which surely will have no consequences on this effort.

tl;dr Killing a vampire in this fashion is notionally easy but the problem scales more-than-linearly as you increase the number of targets you aim to destroy and/or evict.

**MorganG** · 03-06-2023, 03:32 AM

Just to add to the many good points already raised; I believe the Nemesis, the Exarch of Spirit, is keen on humanity being afraid of mysterious supernatural threats, presumably including vampires. And perhaps wouldn't take too kindly to a group of mages who got too good at killing them.

But I wanted to raise another question which might help to see the higher level problem here. Why doesn't every Life mage use their magic to save as many people as they can? Working as a paramedic for example, how many people would they see each day who would die if not for magical intervention? Surely someone with the power to do that is morally obliged to save as many people as they can?

To this I have two answers:

Firstly, people would notice this wonder EMT. Rumours, official statistics, sooner or later the Seers notice too and put a stop to things.

The second is that long enough exposure to the mysteries of Life alters a person's understanding of things like cancer or bleeding out perhaps to the point where moral truths which seem obvious to us no longer seem obvious to them. And who are we to disagree?

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What stops mages from killing [Insert hostile supernatural] here en-masse?

What stops mages from killing [Insert hostile supernatural] here en-masse?

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