"Vampire: The Masquerade — Sins of the Sires"—In this elegy of blood, Athens is burning!

Ok, that makes more sense.

The cases of diablerie:
Spoilers 7-allegiance

Kapriel is implied to have gotten Markos

But there’s something about him. Something different, and yet familiar.

Kapriel’s looking straight at you. “What is it?” he says. “Do I remind you of someone?”

Got turns around and puts himself between you and Kapriel. There’s something like terror in his eye. He shakes his head. “Don’t look at him,” he tells you. “Don’t listen to him.”

But you can’t. You can’t not look at him, not listen to him.

Because it’s not Kapriel. Or not just Kapriel.

Markos is in there, too.

“What have you done?”

“He’s gone, ${name},” Gor tells you. “Markos is gone, don’t be confused. Kapriel’s just trying to get to you.”

You get Kapriel

You kneel next to Gor and put a hand on his shoulder. “Please,” you tell him. “Let me. It’s the only way.”

  It takes effort for Gor to lean away from his sire. He nods at you. "I understand," he says. "Do it."

  You lean closer to Kapriel's inert body then. Put your lips on his neck and, for a brief instant as your teeth break skin, he smells exactly like Markos. 

  	You drink. The Blood is so thick and viscous you have to use all your strength to keep it flowing into you. It takes a long time and, by the time Kapriel's veins run dry, the muscles in your neck and jaw are sore. 

  The body before you is drained, and yet you keep going. 

  Then it happens. That something, the hidden unnameable thing leaves Kapriel and enters you. 

  	Something inside you breaks. Something else settles into place. 

Gor gets Kapriel

He kneels next to Kapriel and turns him around so he faces the sky. Then Gor places his hand on Kapriel’s forehead, covering his eyes, as if he wants to avoid Kapriel’s blank gaze. He turns his sire’s head to the side, exposing the neck.

Then, he bends down, and, crouched as he is, he looks as if he’s praying.

When the skin breaks, you can smell it, @{banuhaqim the intoxicating aroma of vitae|the old Blood}. Gor drinks hungrily, with effort, with his entire body. After a while, Gor lifts Kapriel’s upper body, cradles it like a child’s and places it on his lap to ease his drinking.

It takes long. So long. You will never forget the gurgling sounds, the lapping up, the groaning. It’s still in your ears, even after it’s done. And that last bit, that final transgression, you’ll never forget that either. What was it? Something transferred. A spark, a soul, a thing that is. Do you even believe in such things?

Kapriel’s body decays before your eyes.

And something’s happening to Gor, too. Some kind of internal struggle that shows its traces plainly on his face.

His features become drawn, tense, malleable.

His face looks…hard to describe the difference. It’s subtle, like an imperceptible rearranging of the bones of his skull that makes his face sharper. More like a predator’s.

In another example of non-PC diablerie, you can ask the Prince to execute another vamp using diablerie, in which case you may see black tendrils over the Prince’s aura after it’s done.

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Ah yeah I probably missed it, I’m only at chapter 7 rn poking through the code trying to figure out why some of the stat checks appear to be really challenging
Edit: weird things i’ve found so far

  1. the highest stat check to beat Kapriel that ive found so far is 60. but most of them require stats in combination with specific disciplines
  2. I think the ward stat check when escaping with Isidoros is bugged, it appears to require celerity and athletics instead of composure

We’re working on some stat difficulty balancing right now. If you have specific bugs you think you’ve identified, please email them in.

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Spoilers for all of chapter 7, and this is as of 3/28/2022, it sound like they’ll be doing stat rebalances at some point but ways to beat Kapriel

Vs Kapriel after Train with Gor:
#Attack with the only weapon I have. My teeth. → fight greater than 40 or pet, potence greater than 0
#Grab Gor and flee. → stealth greater than 40 or celerity greater than 1, athletics greater than 60
#Attack as fast as possible. → celerity greater than 3, hunger less than 4
#Attack as fast as possible. → celerity greater than 0 or athletics > 40, fight > 40

Vs Kapriel while talking to Gor
#Help Gor. → potence greater than 0, fight greater than 40 or pet

Vs Kapriel w/ human
#Find refuge and use the ward Markos taught me. (need ward from Markos) → composure greater than 40
For the following, if both stats are greater than 60, you get away scott free, if both stats are greater than 40, you get away but the human is injured, if either stat is greater than 40, the human gets away but you get blood bound
#There’s no way I can fight him here. But I can make a scene. → persuasion and etiquette
#Flee. → celerity greater than one and athletics

If you’re with Isidoros, the [#Find refuge and use the ward Markos taught me.] is currently a celerity greater than zero or athletics greater than 40 check NOT composure

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That’s one of the reasons why it’s dangerous to do that. What if he wants to punish you? Or he decides to use you to punish Markos? What if the Sheriff’s just a bit irritated with you or Markos so he decides to “clean up the loose end you left” just to send a message? Getting your tattoos done like that is an action that has the potential for some very real consequences, and on top of the risks to you it’s also setting your friend up to be collateral damage in vampire politics. There are some vampires who would do that without hesitation, of course, but I think it’s a significant enough thing that you should get to choose whether or not you do it.

And that’s really the issue here, to me. It’s the fact that choosing tattoos as your hobby gives you the de facto personality traits “sort of careless with the Masquerade” and “sort of careless with the lives of their friends”, and it does that before you know anything about the characters or the game. I think that’s a very weird design decision, especially when it’s the only option that does something like that. With every other hobby you cut that tie from your past, but with tattoos you not only maintain it but you keep participating in a hobby that has inherent Masquerade risks and you never get a choice about that.

And I agree that body painting isn’t the same at all, but it’s a form of body decoration where the results last longer than a night. In Night Road there’s a bit where Dove sits there smelling a cup of coffee, because she can’t drink it anymore. I look at it as that kind of thing. It’s not the same, because nothing can be the same, but it’s something.

A good option here would have been to let the player choose what they do. Do they keep going to the same artist and accept the risks involved? Do they look for an artist who’s already inside the circle? Do they try their hand at doing their own tattoos, knowing that mistakes will be gone by the next night? Do they settle for body painting so they get more than a night to admire the work? Do they give it up entirely because they’re not willing to settle? All of these things could be valid choices and they’d all say a lot about the character who made them.

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You’re 100% correct, with the one caveat being, the Prince/Sheriff has to find out first. It’s not like a magic billboard lights up saying “Masquerade breach in zone 14!” Like, you’d have to have drawn someone’s ire, and then they’d have to go through the process of having you tailed, but yes, it’s a risk.

But that’s what being a vampire is; hell, that’s what being a human is. Balancing risks and rewards.

As for “significant enough thing that you should get to choose whether or not you do it,” you choose to have the hobby of getting tattoos. How was that not a choice?

ok, but getting tattoos is a very different type of hobby, and one that speaks to a very different type of person.

If you’re looking for parity here between the hobbies, I can understand why you’d be disappointed. But this isn’t about balancing the different possible PCs against one another, but about telling a certain type of story. And being addicted to tattoos–when they vanish every morning–is a beautiful metaphor for existence as a vampire.

And that, I think, is the crux of our disagreement here. You’re right that choosing that option establishes you as a certain type of person, but as a reader, I’m desperate to see where that character goes. I don’t want to see that choice compromised or attenuated because—as a player—I’m trying to stay in good with the Camarilla.

(And, Dove’s relationship with coffee is a very different relationship than someone who’s into body modification.)

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An iphoneX in the omnibus app :smiley: thank you!

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I don’t know who the Sheriff is in this game, but they sound pretty incompetent compared to the ones in other VtM games. Is that intentional?

(According to startup, it’s Neoptolemos?)

Yes, in this game the Sheriff is referred to as the Scythian (an affectation of Peisistratos’s), and when the game begins it’s Neoptolemos.

Does the MC know Neoptolemos at the start? They don’t show up in the demo at all.

I’m not even sure how long the MC has been in Athens, but it’s certainly since before their Embrace, whenever that was. And the Sheriff is definitely someone I want to meet immediately and have continued contact with if I’m planning to stay aligned with the Camarilla.

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No, the PC has never spoken to Neoptolemos before Chapter 4. For various reasons, Markos would have found it in his best interest to keep the PC as far away as possible from Peisistratos or any of his close associates.

Oh, ok, so that’s where the conflict is: We need to get rid of Markos, but we don’t know that yet, because Markos obviously isn’t going to tell us that. So… I guess the problem is not that vampire society works weirdly, but that I as the player know a lot more about it than the MC does…

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That’s probably accurate.

Although … I actually really like Markos

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I mean, maybe I would as an Anarch… not as Camarilla.

My impression is that:

  1. you’re a relative neonate, only Embraced about 10 years ago, who doesn’t know their sire. All you know is you gotta do what your adoptive sire Markos tells you to do and try to not get in too much trouble. The MC has never been invited to court and doesn’t have deep knowledge of the Camarilla, just enough to get by in Athens, basically.
  2. the Camarilla, as an organization, doesn’t seem to be as vigorous here in Athens as it is in Ottawa or, presumably, other parts of the New World. Peisistratos is incredibly old, has been ruling Athens basically forever, especially as far as the MC is concerned, and he seems to grudgingly tolerate the Anarchs, as do the other Cammies. A lot more tolerance / blasé attitudes towards clans and Camarilla politics in general. It’s mostly each vampire for themselves here, and Markos is excellent at gaining favors and secrets to use at the right moment.
  3. the SI doesn’t seem to have made its way over here to Athens, or at least not yet. Certainly no bunker mentality like Night Road and Parliament: no comms blackouts, no earnest policing of Masquerade violations or other sins. If there were, the Seneschal, who’s implied to be the Prince’s lover, would be the worst offender by far. This is a deeply corrupt and unfair court, mostly just to appease the mad Prince. The Masquerade is seriously in tatters here, with the Seneschal leaving exsaguinated corpses everywhere, mortals learning the truth and getting police detectives involved, gifts being used out in the open, a blood doll cult actively recruiting mortals, hell the MC can even go around patiently explaining to mortals that they need to drink blood to live and asking if they can please have some, so it seems to be more of a theoretical naughty-naughty thing than a real matter of unlife-or-final death like it is in the New World.

So, yes, my impression is that the rules you’ve learned from other games about Camarilla politics don’t really matter much here. There’s just the secretive and powerful court, with players far above your head, and your dysfunctional little family operating in the wings (Markos is powerful, and old, but I get the impression that he’s still kept at arm’s length, valuable because he’ll get the dirty work done). The rules are mostly just the whims of your elders, with only a theoretical imagining of what it might be like if the Masquerade really goes down.

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Hm, okay. And the MC can’t really fix all these holes in the system because they don’t know that. Though apparently we can become Sheriff later on.

I guess I truly did catch on to some of the conflicts that were hinted at, but I didn’t realize they were conflicts in the game. Because the MC wouldn’t realize that.

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Neoptolemos actually says at one point that a Masquerade violation is pretty much whatever he wants it to be, because he’s the one with the power.

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I mean, there’s a reason you can potentially join with Gor and his associates, or back someone to depose Peisistratos: because you see the current situation as a bloody mess and unsalvageable in one way or another. So I get the sense that the MC can see this court is a shitshow (and whether it’s a shitshow to be exploited, renovated, or destroyed is up to the player). But as far as how it “should” be or how other cities are run by Princes that aren’t ancient, bonkers Classicists? Probably no idea.

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