TEXT: Anger is momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you. 
  — Horace, Epistles
  by Will Hindmarch
  An adventure for Vampire the Requiem using the Storytelling Adventure System
  White Wolf 
  Publishing, Inc.
  1554 Litton Drive
  Stone Mountain, 
  GA 30083
  MENTAL 
  OOOO
  PHYSICAL OOOOO
  SOCIAL 
  OOOOO
  STORYTELLING ADVENTURE  SYSTEM
  SCENES
  12
  XP LEVEL
  35-74
  
  © 2007 CCP, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. White Wolf, Vampire and World of Darkness are registered trademarks of CCP, Inc. All rights reserved. Vampire the 
  Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean the Created, Storytelling System and Blood Red & Ash Gray are trademarks of CCP, Inc. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP, Inc. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark 
  or copyright concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are ﬁction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised. 
  Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com
  Anger is momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you. 
  — Horace, Epistles
  White Wolf 
  Publishing, Inc. 
  1554 Litton Drive 
  Stone Mountain, 
  GA 30083
  An adventure for Vampire the Requiem using the Storytelling Adventure System
  by Will Hindmarch
  MENTAL 
  OOOOO
  PHYSICAL OOOOO
  SOCIAL 
  OOOOO
  STORYTELLING ADVENTURE  SYSTEM
  SCENES
  12
  XP LEVEL
  35-74
  
  1
  Someone’s Requiem is over.
  A vampire is dead — forever dead — and it’s the fault of a Beast from 
  your coterie. Last night ended with the blinding red rush of frenzy and 
  the Beast carrying hunger and teeth off into the night in search of trouble. 
  This night begins in a dank concrete stairwell, underground, in the bloody 
  and ashy remains of a fellow Kindred. Now this twisted murder mystery 
  begins. You know who did the killing — it was one of you. 
  But who is the victim? 
  Introduction
  “Blood Red and Ash Gray” is a complete, playable crime story for 
  your Vampire: The Requiem chronicle. It’s partly an investigative 
  procedural episode and partly a tale of tangled motives among a cast of 
  criminal monsters. Only you, the Storyteller, should read this guide to 
  the story initially. What follows is a frank how-to guide — containing 
  characters, scenes, clues — which you and your troupe will assemble 
  into a dramatic story unique to your own imaginations and choices, 
  using the game rules found in the World of Darkness Rulebook and 
  Vampire: The Requiem.
  Think of this product as a story kit, as if you’d bought a piece of 
  modern furniture and brought it home in a big flat box. Inside, you’ll 
  find all the parts you need to build this story at home, through play. 
  The tools you need to put this story together are in the World of 
  Darkness Rulebook. When you get your troupe together, you’ll use 
  all these parts to build something together. It might not look quite the 
  picture on the box, but that’s fine. Your troupe doesn’t get together to 
  look at a story, it gets together to build them.
  So this is a nuts-and-bolts thing. The parts in this kit are designed 
  to make the actual job of being a Storyteller easier, to make the craft 
  of Storytelling fast and fun for you. The heavy artful majesty you’ve 
  read about — the transcendent game experiences that shock and sat-
  isfy as well as any novel — those come simply from doing a great job. 
  Everything in here is intended to take up the slack so you can focus 
  on doing that great job.
  The basic parts that make up this story are simple: Storyteller char-
  acters and scenes. Each of them can be used in different ways to keep 
  the story building towards its climactic end. 
  PAGES TO PRINT
  For your convenience, here are the page ranges that you’ll ﬁnd 
  especially valuable to print. We’re assuming that you’ll read most 
  of this on your computer screen, and only want to print out the 
  vital in-play reference material, like character sheets, charts and 
  scenes. Here they are:
  Relationship Diagram 
  17
  Val 
  19
  Sash 
  21
  Calla 
  23
  Cicero 
  25
  Joe Coat 
  27
  The Eye 
  29
  Sol 
  31
  Scene Flow Diagram 
  32
  Act One Scenes 
  35-41
  Act Two Scenes 
  45-53
  Act Three Scenes 
  55-58
  Scene Cards 
  60-62
  “192.  Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice.
     (a) Voluntary--upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion.
     (b) Involuntary--in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to felony; or in the commission of a lawful act  
  which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, or without due caution and circumspection.”
  — From the California penal code
  “Thou shalt not kill.”
  — The Sixth Commandment
  
  2
  Characters
  This story pits the troupe’s characters against an ensemble of undead 
  low-lives, each with their own motives and goals. Managing these 
  characters is the key to making this story work. The scenes that make 
  up this story unfold according to the motives and wills of the players’ 
  characters and these. No matter what happens, it’s the characters who 
  determine why things happens.
  Scenes
  All that said, a story is ultimately about what characters do, not just 
  why they’re willing to do them. Every scene in this story is motivated 
  by a decision made by a character. The motivating character might be 
  one of the players’ vampires or one of yours. 
  Some scenes happen because the characters go out and make them 
  happen. Others happen because one of your Storyteller characters hap-
  pens to be in the same place — or because she seeks out the troupe’s 
  coterie in pursuit of revenge. 
  Don’t be afraid to rearrange the scenes in your story, activating one 
  twice and skipping another completely, if it jives with the constantly 
  changing motives of the characters interacting with the players’ cote-
  rie. In this story, what happens is essential, but so are the reasons why 
  these things happen. In every scene, strive to get across one or more 
  of the Storyteller characters’ motivations to the players.
  Overview
  This is a story about consequences, about finding answers and paying 
  for them. The story begins with one or more of the characters waking 
  up at the scene of a grisly crime where, in the throes of frenzy, they 
  brought Final Death to one of the Damned. The story ends when those 
  wronged by the characters are finally satisfied, whether that means the 
  characters pay the price (fair or not) for committing this crime or they 
  utterly destroy every soul that might seek out revenge.
  There’s no arch-criminal behind the scenes here, pulling the char-
  acters’ strings. No convoluted conspiracy was organized to dupe them 
  into performing a frenzied hit on another of their kind. No one wanted 
  this to happen.
  This is a story about how the secrets and conspiracies of the Danse 
  Macabre get interrupted and broken down by the chaos of the street 
  and the brutality of the Beast. This is a story where the fate of the city 
  is not at stake, but the fate of the characters’ allegiances and reputa-
  tions might be, and the fate of a broken heart surely is.
  Treatment
  A member of the coterie fell into frenzy last night. Because of fear, 
  anger or hunger, the vampire’s Beast pulled him screaming into the 
  night. After that, for the frenzied vampire, there’s nothing to recall 
  except a bloody blur.
  That frenzied vampire wakes up, with his humane mind back in his 
  skull, at the bottom of a windowless concrete stairwell, on the lowest 
  level of an underground parking garage. His clothes are caked with a 
  cracked paste of grainy soot and blood. Across from him, heaped on the 
  floor, is a desiccated corpse — dried up like an exhumed body — dressed 
  in clothes too young to match the body’s dead hide. From underneath 
  the brown, split lips peek a pair of yellow fangs.
  This is a dead vampire. The frenzied vampire — whom we’ll call the 
  Killer for the rest of this story — killed him during his blackout, when 
  the Beast was at the wheel. The Killer may deny it, may not want to 
  believe it, may not accept that it’s true, but it is.
  The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs is what woke the Killer. 
  It’s the rest of his coterie, who’ve finally found him. So it begins.
  The action opens here, with the gore of the crime scene underfoot, 
  and the clock ticking. The characters are standing in the middle of a 
  Masquerade breach, up to their ankles in evidence. They must make 
  the age-old choice at the heart of so many great criminal tales: What 
  to do with the body?
  After that, the story expands to include a half-dozen other vampires. Do 
  the characters investigate the truth about what happened to the corpse? 
  WHAT’S A TREATMENT?
  treatment: n. In Hollywood parlance, a treatment is a short prose 
  description of a movie’s story, written before production begins. A 
  treatment describes all the major dramatic “beats” of the story and 
  sometimes includes directorial or developmental information, too 
  (i.e., it doesn’t necessarily restrict itself to relating the story). 
  In Storytelling terms, the treatment is the Storyteller’s core 
  overview of the story, from authorial notes on subtext all the way to 
  frank narrative tips. Nothing is implied in a Storytelling treatment; 
  this is where the author breaks it all down in brief for the Storyteller 
  at home.
  
  3
  THE KILLER AND HIS VICTIM
  In this guide to the story, we refer to the character (or characters) 
  responsible for the Final Death of Hooper, the victim at the heart 
  of this tale, simply as “the Killer.” 
  Sometimes, you’ll see Hooper referred to simply as “the Victim.” 
  This is just a reminder that every character in this story is potentially 
  a placeholder for whatever preexisting character from your ongoing 
  chronicle you would like to drop into the role.
  Telling the Story
  “Blood Red and Ash Gray” is a dynamic story with a lot of presumed 
  freedom for the players and their characters. If you’re not an experi-
  enced Storyteller comfortable with improvising in response to unex-
  pected player choices and character actions, this can be intimidating. 
  Even guru Storytellers have stories that get away from them.
  In the case of this story, the scenes and the Storyteller character that 
  follow are your tools for keeping the story within the play-space you 
  want. That play-space might cover physical territory within the World 
  of Darkness (e.g., just the domains of Cicero and Sol), a time period 
  (e.g., you want the story to unfold in fewer than four or five nights), or 
  a dramatic frame (e.g., you want to give the story a particular theme). 
  These are all fair game. As the Storyteller, it’s not in your best interest 
  (or the best interest of fun) to force any of these factors into play, but 
  it is your right to strive for these. (See “Just Say It,” p. 5.)
  The scenes in this guide are probably not the only scenes, or kinds of 
  scenes, that’ll play out in your version of “Blood Red and Ash Gray.” If 
  the characters try to get away from the Eye rather than be interviewed 
  by him (in the scene, “Interviewed,” p. 51), you might play a scene 
  dramatizing a foot chase (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 
  65). If the characters try to follow Sash back to her haven, you might 
  play out a suspense scene using the “Shadowing” mechanism on p. 76 
  of the World of Darkness Rulebook. The story goes where it goes.
  But the scenes in here represent the heart of this story, the scenes 
  that define it as a play experience, and the scenes you should fall back 
  on when the players have escaped the Eye or found Sash’s haven.
  Think ahead, before it’s time to play this story, about how you might 
  connect such unexpected scenes back to those in this guide. If the 
  (It’s not a “who done it?” but a “who’d we do it to?”) Or do they simply 
  hide their trail as best they can and try to forget it ever happened?
  Whatever the players’ characters do, the Victim’s allies notice the dead 
  vampire is missing and seek out help to find him. A freelance Hound 
  — they call him the Eye — is dispatched to find answers, and this puts 
  him on the trail of the characters. Meanwhile, the victim’s lover — named 
  Sash — seeks out only as much truth as she needs to get revenge.
  The middle of the story finds the cast of characters on each other’s 
  trails, circling and plotting, meeting by chance, meeting by design, 
  and lying all the while. The Eye investigates the Victim’s murder. The 
  characters may investigate the Victim. Sash puts out word that she 
  wants revenge. And all the while the Killer is haunted by his Beast’s 
  memories in the form of gruesome flashbacks.
  Once all the pieces are in motion, the story unfolds how it unfolds. 
  The characters and your Storyteller characters are in the mix, now, 
  colliding and ricocheting in the dark city, until someone finally 
  gets what he or she wants. If the players want the story to turn out 
  in their favor, they have to manipulate your characters, getting all 
  the pieces into the right spots on the board so they can make their 
  climactic move.
  Broadly speaking, though, the story — raising the question of whether 
  or not the characters get away with murder — ends one of two ways: 
  They do or they don’t. Both of the endings of this story assume the pos-
  sibility that they do not (the odds are against them), but include details 
  for the event that the players  pull the characters’ asses out of the fire.
  How it ends depends on the choices the players make, and how those 
  choices provoke or placate the other vampires in the mix. Because 
  Vampire is a tragic horror game, a happy ending is impossible. The 
  question, however, is who gets stuck with the unhappy ending? Is it the 
  characters, who suffer official punishment at the hands of a powerful 
  Kindred or are brought down by the revenge of a heartbroken lover? 
  Or is it that heartbroken vampire, whose lover goes unavenged? Or is 
  it the Kindred landlord who finds himself forced to pardon and protect 
  criminal vampires — the characters! — who have politicked their way 
  to a happy ending?
  But if the troupe’s coterie wins its happy ending, it has done so through 
  blind, inhuman murder. The murderers have won. They are indebted 
  to the Beast. And they should expect little justice when some other 
  frenzied vampire happens to slay one of them in some dank concrete 
  corner of the city.
  
  4
  characters flee the Eye, they might end up running into Cicero’s Crew 
  (use the scene, “Face to Face”) or they might force their way right into 
  Sash’s secret haven (use the scene, “Confrontation”). 
  If nothing else, the scenes in this guide can inspire you when it 
  comes time to improvise. Strip out the action descriptions for Sash 
  or Joe Coat or anyone else, and use them in whatever scenes emerge 
  naturally over the course of your tale. Refer back to our scenes to get 
  yourself into character. 
  Starting with Act Two, most of our scenes emerge from the moti-
  vations of the Storyteller characters provided herein. So even if the 
  troupe’s characters start to wander away from the story, one of these 
  scenes can unfold whenever you decide Sash has found out about the 
  coterie and gotten her people together to hurt them (“Revenge”) or 
  when the Eye comes calling (“Interviewed”).
  Defining the Play-Space
  What is the play-space? It’s the settings, time period and thematic 
  tone under which your story unfolds. A play-space can be as big as a 
  city or planet, or as small as a single room. In a completely free-form, 
  improvisational storytelling session, the players might be able to send 
  their characters anywhere, from the court of the local Prince to the 
  Tokyo airport. In other stories, such as this one, the play-space is meant 
  to be a little tighter.
  Think of the play-space as the game level, the mission objectives 
  and the atmosphere. This story is designed to unfold in a few urban 
  neighborhoods, involve the simple objective of resolving the conse-
  quences of the Killer’s actions, and have an atmosphere of paranoia 
  and desperate suspense. But you can change all of that.
  If you’re comfortable handling all of the options that come with 
  total freedom, you could follow the characters to a new city as they 
  flee the wrath of Sol or Cicero. The purpose of defining the play-space 
  in a Storytelling game is simply to make the process of playing out the 
  story easier to manage. You sacrifice a degree of freedom for the sake of 
  protecting the fun. In our experience, it’s usually a good exchange.
  This is also how you help make a story be about something. This is 
  one way you define a story as a “high concept” drama: It’s a story about 
  four vampires who try to get away with murder. Do they succeed or 
  fail? That’s determined by the players’ choices. But if the characters 
  skip town right at the start of the story, then the whole premise of the 
  SCARY VS. FUNNY
  During one of our playtest sessions of this scenario, the 
  story took a noticeable turn from horror-suspense, passed 
  by intrigue, and arrived at a comedy of errors. Some horrific 
  (and even grotesque) scenes unfolded — mostly centering on 
  strong-arm “interview” tactics turned bloody through frenzy 
  — but the players’ choices led them from one unfortunate 
  situation to another. 
  Rather than coming across with the tense scheming and 
  backstabbing of, say, an episode of The Shield, our version 
  of the story this time came out a little closer to the flavor of 
  a Guy Ritchie crime tale, like Snatch. The players got their 
  good time out of the story by owning that atmosphere and 
  boldly proceeding along whatever course their characters 
  believed was smart, even though the vampire they tried to 
  extort — Sol — knew more about what was going on than 
  they did.
  On the one hand, this session was a failure, insofar as we 
  had intended to create a creepy atmosphere of suspense 
  and gruesome intrigue but ended up with something quite 
  different. In hindsight, though, the story could be seen to 
  be much more macabre than it felt in the moment. Some 
  situations seem funny in the moment because the players 
  intuitively get a comic shock when they realize their own 
  mistakes, and because it’s sometimes just funny to think 
  about the preposterousness of hiding a body in a refrigerator. 
  (“How did we get ourselves into a situation where, when 
  we get home, we’re hoping there’s still a body in our 
  refrigerator?”)
  Vampire is robust enough that it can survive the occassional 
  digression into gallows humor and still come out with a 
  horrific feel. If comic relief is fair game in a horror story, 
  working as a pressure valve to let you and the players 
  prepare for the next stretch of harrowing drama, then a 
  whole story that turns out more grotesque than macabre can 
  serve the same purpose in the bigger picture of the whole 
  chronicle. Don’t try to strong-arm your version of this story 
  into something it’s not. You can coax, encourage, entice and 
  provoke, but you cannot force it. At that point, you might as 
  well just write a story, rather than playing one. 
  Ultimately, you end up with the story that unfolds. In one 
  telling of this story, we aimed for the macabre and ended up 
  hitting something merely morbid. So it goes. 
  
  5
  story has changed. Now it’s something like, “a story about a bunch of 
  vampires who go on the run after committing murder.” That could be 
  a great story, but it’s not this one.
  So how do you define the play-space for the players?
  Just Say It
  You’ll find no more reliable method for defining play-space than this 
  one: Just say it. Tell the players, “This is a story about the consequences 
  of [the Killer]’s frenzy, and finding out how your coterie fares in the 
  neighborhood over the nights that follow.” You might read them the 
  italicized blurb at the top of page 1.
  The point is, don’t be afraid to frame the story frankly. You’re not 
  putting on a show for the players, exactly. You’re putting on a show 
  for them and with them. Keeping the core premise secret from them 
  doesn’t do any of you any real good. 
  In a Storytelling game, the suspense comes from finding out how the 
  story unfolds and ends, and maybe what morals, allusions or allegories 
  emerge — it does not come from discovering what the premise is. You 
  can’t get anywhere without putting the key in the ignition.
  If the players start to wander too far from the play-space, say it point-
  blank: “If Edgar goes off to hide out in the suburbs, he’ll be off-stage 
  until he comes back.” You might still let him contact Allies or spend 
  Resources or whatever, but it’ll all happen “off-screen.” (You can always 
  make exceptions to reward compelling ideas the troupe comes up with, 
  or to follow the story in whatever direction it goes, if that’s where the 
  story that you and the troupe want to follow is headed.)
  That said, “Blood Red and Ash Gray” is a story that can survive some 
  substantial tangents. These scenes might happen weeks apart, as the 
  story moves back and forth from plot to subplot in your chronicle. See 
  the section called “Plotting,” p. 7.
  Theme
  Theme is a tool for defining the play-space, too. By keeping your 
  story’s theme in mind during play, you can infuse it into scenes and 
  characterizations to evoke a tangible tone that the whole troupe can 
  plug into. This can help the troupe stay together, portraying their 
  characters through the same dramatic filter.
  The story’s themes are premises and questions. The answers to these 
  questions, and the variations you play on the thematic premises, are 
  whatever emerges organically through play. The best thematic ques-
  tions for a Storytelling chapter don’t have a single answer. Rather, the 
  choices the players make for their characters offer provocative answers 
  worth thinking about on the drive home. 
  For example, consider this thematic question: Would you rather 
  exist under an ugly truth or a comfortable lie? Different characters 
  will answer in different ways. Each answer reveals something about 
  the character — maybe even something that surprises the player who 
  created her!
  Built-In Themes
  Naturally, you can use this story to explore other themes, but here 
  are two that have been built into this story for you:
  • Secrets cause strife. All the major agents in this story have some 
  secret motivating them to make choices that put them in conflict with 
  other characters. Maybe if these Kindred could be more honest with 
  each other, their relationships wouldn’t be so self-destructive, but that’s 
  not the way things are in the Danse Macabre. Secret threads get tangled 
  around your legs, tie you down and hang you until you are dead.
  • Guilt. Is it something human or something more base? Is it the 
  Man that feels guilt, or does the Beast know it, too? Does the Beast 
  torment the vampire with it, or is it the remains of the mortal psyche 
  that does that? Is guilt something we choose to feel or is it a force like 
  gravity, pressing down on our conscience? Is a crime without guilt a 
  greater sin than the crime that’s regretted? Is ignorance an antidote 
  for guilt? Would you rather know an ugly truth or go on under a com-
  fortable lie?
  Raising the Thematic Questions
  Evoking your story’s themes may be easier than you think. Just keeping 
  them in mind may cause you to plant symbolic and thematic elements 
  into your descriptions of characters and settings. Certainly it will implic-
  itly influence the choices you make for the Storyteller characters. 
  But a solid, reliable way to intentionally raise your story’s thematic 
  questions is through the dialogue of Storyteller characters. In this 
  story, you might have Calla outright ask the Killer, if she uses Auspex 
  to “read” the truth of Hooper’s death, “Would you rather hear an ugly 
  truth or stay with your comfortable lie?” 
  A character’s Retainer or Mentor might suggest that “Guilt isn’t 
  human; it’s animal. Damnation kills us, but not guilt.” 
  Before the scene, “Punishment,” you might roleplay a simple scene in 
  the tense quiet of the drive to the site of punishment. Along the way, 
  
  6
  Val or some other Kindred might look out the window at the mortals 
  walking by beggars on the street and ask, “Do you think the Beast can 
  guilt-trip us? Or is that something we do to ourselves?”
  It’s heavy-handed, and sometimes inelegant, but effective.
  Mood
  Mood is, for many Storytellers, both easier to evoke and more useful 
  for keeping the troupe within the same tonal range. Mood is worked 
  into every description you share with the troupe, to varying degrees, 
  whether you mean for it to happen or not. That is, whatever mood you 
  give your narration becomes the mood of the story.
  Using mood is more intuitive than intellectual. You know how to 
  sense the mood of a scene you read or watch, and you can recreate those 
  moods by imitating them. (It’s the highest form of flattery.) 
  Put a lot of forlorn people — beggars, drug seekers — in the background 
  of a melancholy scene. Describe the loud noise and flashing lights of the 
  nightclub in a scene where the characters are barely restraining them-
  selves, where panic is in the air. Punctuate a character’s dialogue with 
  flickering fluorescent lights or the roar of a passing fire truck.
  The thing about mood is that, while you can hone your ability to 
  create it, it’s difficult to teach. Experience is the best way to learn. 
  Look to the descriptions in each scene for fuel in your own narra-
  tion for creating mood. Read it aloud, directly, so you can focus on 
  other things.
  A Chapter in YourChronicle
  This story was written with the expectation that you would play it 
  as a part of your ongoing Vampire: The Requiem chronicle. If that’s 
  not how you’ll be putting this story to use, see “As A Stand-Alone 
  Tale,” below.
  The trouble with designing a story for your chronicle, of course, is 
  that we have no idea what’s happening in your chronicle. What are 
  the laws as dictated by the Prince of your city? What are the dominant 
  covenants? Who’s controlling them? What’s the penalty for ending the 
  Requiem of another Kindred? 
  You’ll have to make some alterations to this story to make it fit seam-
  lessly with other chapters in your chronicle. For advice on adapting 
  the characters and settings of this story to your chronicle’s city, see 
  “Background and Setup” on p. 9.
  To fit this story into the timeline or overarching plot of your 
  chronicle, you have only to wait until one of the troupe’s characters 
  falls to frenzy. 
  “Blood Red and Ash Gray” is written to create a meaningful, complex 
  consequence to the act of frenzying. Tie this story into your chronicle 
  by setting it immediately after a character in your troupe’s coterie 
  falls to the Beast in a frenzy of any kind — anger, hunger or fear. Be 
  sure to refamiliarize yourself with the nature and game mechanics of 
  frenzy. See Vampire: The Requiem, p. 178-181. As the Storyteller, 
  you decide how long a frenzy lasts and may take take the reigns of the 
  character’s Beast if he is not willing or able to portray the full horror 
  and peril of its power.
  For guidelines on setting up this story with the right kind of frenzy, 
  see “Act One: Crime of Passion,” p. 34.
  Player Control and Frenzy
  Is it fair play to steal control of a player’s character and make him respon-
  sible for the Final Death of another Kindred? The simple answer: Yes.
  The more meaningful answer is also more complicated. Some play-
  ers may be upset to have their character usurped and steered into 
  great danger, and rightfully so. Some players may resent having their 
  character’s delicately preserved Humanity assaulted without their 
  direct input — “But [my character] would never do that!” they cry. 
  These are fair complaints.
  You, as the Storyteller, have to gauge your own troupe’s willingness 
  to participate in a story hook like this one. You get to decide which 
  player’s character becomes the Killer, after all. Beyond that, you have 
  ample ways to dial up or down the seriousness of the actual crime 
  — the blood-clouded memories of frenzy are intentionally mined in 
  Act One to provoke the horror of the unknown. The Killer, and even 
  her player, don’t know the truth about what she has done. You get to 
  decide that. The truth of the Killer’s crime is yours to decide. Was it 
  self defense? Did the Victim beg for his life or dare the Killer to bring 
  it on? (Does that matter?)
  The doubt this generates not only in the character’s mind, but in 
  the player’s, is an essential part of this story’s suspense. Does the player 
  risk her character’s Humanity to find out what happened during that 
  frenzy and satisfy her own curiosity? Does the character dare look her 
  Beast in the eye during the scene, “Flashback?”
  All that said, the overriding truth is this: Vampire is a horror 
  game about personal responsibility, immorality and consequences, 
  
  7
  and macabre monsters who do terrible things for the sake of 
  their own survival. Frenzy and the Beast are key elements in this 
  game, and vital expressions of its theme. Beyond that, all drama 
  is based on conflict, and conflict isn’t happy or fair. Vampire is 
  a game about self-control, and being lost to the Beast is one of 
  the costs that Kindred (and the players who decide their fates) 
  pay for immortality. 
  Vampire can be nasty. The Requiem is a bitch. These are stories 
  about monsters.
  FLAW: AMNESIA
  The Amnesia Flaw appears on p. 218 of the World of Darkness 
  Rulebook. If it helps mitigate the hurt of having his character put 
  at risk as the Killer is in this story, give the character that Flaw. This 
  states, plainly, that the player is gets something (an experience 
  point or two) in exchange for having his character’s frenzy turn 
  into such a clusterfuck.
  The period covered by this instance of the Flaw is very brief 
  and may, through use of the “Flashback” scene, eventually be 
  completely revealed to the player and his character. So this may 
  be the only story where it’s relevant. This gives the player good 
  reason to draw out this story over multiple sessions, to maximize 
  the payout he gets in the end. If this coincides somehow with the 
  character’s motives (maybe he has the Avoidance derangement and 
  tries to ignore his problems until they go away, or maybe he has 
  the Sloth Vice and puts off the inevitable confrontation with the 
  truth in the hope that something will happen in the meantime to 
  exonerate him), then drawing out the story in this way might be no 
  big deal. To keep it from getting ridiculous, though, activate any 
  of the scenes that stem from a Storyteller character’s motivations 
  — “Interviewed,” “Brought In” or “Revenge,” for example — to 
  push the story into the third act and into its dramatic conclusion.
  Adapting the Story to Your Chronicle
  Most of the work involved in adapting this story to your ongoing 
  chronicle surrounds the specifics of your setting’s Kindred laws 
  and the Storyteller characters presented later. Before you can do 
  that, you’ll have to understand who these characters are — and 
  why. To blend the edges of these characters and their histories 
  into the clay of your chronicle, see “The Cast,” p. 14. For advice 
  on measuring the stakes of Kindred laws in your city, see “State 
  of the City,” p. 10.
  As a Stand-Alone Tale
  Playing “Blood Red and Ash Gray” as a stand-alone story is even 
  easier than integrating it into an ongoing chronicle. Without a previ-
  ous story to provide the frenzy that kicks off this tale, this story simply 
  begins in media res — in the middle of things — like lots of great 
  suspense do. The protagonist who wakes up with a hole in his memory, 
  next to a corpse, is a tested and true noir beginning.
  You can use this same trick as part of an ongoing chronicle, too. If 
  the chapters in your chronicle are episodic, rather than flowing steadily 
  one into the next, you could use this story as the self-contained thriller 
  it is. You’ll have to worry about the same issues of player control de-
  scribed earlier, but the rush of suddenly being plunged into the heart 
  of a bloody mystery might overcome that for some players. (Other 
  players may simply be frustrated that their character is setup in this 
  story without any choice on their behalf; avoid casting the character 
  of such a player as the Killer.)
  System: If you want a system for determining which character is 
  the Killer in this story, when you don’t have an earlier scene’s frenzy 
  to base this on, try this. Have every player roll Resolve + Composure, 
  modified by the character’s current Vitae (–1 if hungry, –2 if starving, 
  as per Vampire: The Requiem, p. 179). If two players tie for the few-
  est successes, have them each roll again until the tie is broken. The 
  character with the fewest successes is the Killer. 
  Plotting
  Don’t confuse plot with story. The story is what happens. The plot 
  is how you tell it.
  In “Blood Red and Ash Gray,” the story is simple, but the plotting 
  of the various scenes provided might get complicated. Some scenes 
  may happen more than once. Some scenes may happen at unexpected 
  times or at unexpected points in the plot. And time doesn’t just move 
  forward — some earlier parts of the story get told later through flash-
  backs, which are about as classic an example of plotting versus story 
  as you’re likely to find. The action shown through flashback isn’t 
  played out when the action took place (before the story), but when 
  the flashback takes place (during Act Two).
  In practice, plotting this story is easy. You’ll do it on the fly in reaction 
  to the player’s choices and the need for action, suspense and drama.
  What you really need to be aware of during play is the dramatic ten-
  
  8
  sion in every scene of the story. Regardless of what order the scenes 
  happen in, they must have a dramatic potency that syncs with their 
  place in the overall story. You may not know what the plot is until you 
  play out the story, but you know roughly what its dramatic structure 
  will be: Tension rises over the course of the story, with most scenes 
  dialing up the suspense and the stakes as the action rises towards the 
  climax of the story. You might play out a few moments of relief or 
  dramatic setbacks (e.g., the space bewteen scene 6 and scene 7 in the 
  example above), but the overall track is the same: upward to the peak 
  of practically unbearable tension.
  When the climactic scene is done, and the characters are either 
  triumphant or beaten, you get that final exhale — the denouement. 
  The falling action. 
  This is when the characters (and the players) look back and take stock 
  of what’s happened and how they’ve changed. In a storytelling game, 
  this is often absorbed into a part of the game: You award experience 
  points and discuss, and dramatists, how the story went.
  Scenes can happen during the denouement, too. Maybe the coterie 
  returns to its haven to licks their wounds. Maybe they seek out their 
  Sanctified confessor for spiritual aide. Maybe they report back to a 
  covenant Mentor, to whom they reveal what they think the moral of 
  the story is.
  Object Lesson
  Let’s look at one example of 
  how this story might play out, 
  relative to the rising action. 
  The story begins with “Crime 
  Scene” (1), which is shocking 
  and mysterious, but trumped 
  immediately by the tension of 
  the next scene, “The Evidence” 
  (2), in which the characters try 
  to dispose of the body without 
  being caught — so the stakes 
  are high.
  Act Two begins with “Investi-
  gated” (3) when the characters 
  catch wind that a Hound called 
  the Eye is looking into the dis-
  appearance of a Kindred on the night of the crime. The characters 
  begin their own investigation, playing through two instances of the 
  “Investigation” scene (4 and 5). Each step of their investigation more 
  Kindred out to find the Killer and punish him, and so each scene cranks 
  up the tension and the consequences. The characters put it all together 
  in the scene “Revelation” (6), when they learn about Hooper’s deal 
  with Sol and the permission he’s granted Sash to punish the Killer. 
  Act Two ends when the players spin their wheels for too long trying 
  to think their way out of the situation and you push things forward. 
  The Eye finds them at the Rack, instigating the scene “Interviewed” 
  (7). The Eye concludes that the characters are the culprits, and they 
  know that he’s leaving to turn them into someone.
  Act Three begins with a “Confrontation” (8); the characters try to stop 
  the Eye from reporting, but are too late. Knowing this, though, they are 
  ready for Sash when she comes for “Revenge” (9) and, after getting her 
  pinned down, turn her mind with Dominate. They assumed Sash was there 
  to kill them — but through Dominate discover they were wrong.
  The final scene (10) is a quiet, ominous meditation: Sash, in her grief, 
  still only intended to hurt them less than the Killer hurt her. Her mercy 
  reveals a Humanity that the Killer couldn’t hold onto in the throes of 
  his Beast. But will her broken heart break through her altered memories 
  and bring her back some other night, without that Humanity?
  
  9
  Plot or Subplot
  The scenes in this story can happen over the course of a few nights 
  or a few months. Pull them apart and play out other scenes from 
  other stories in between these scenes if you like. Let this story hum 
  in the background while other stories unfold in the foreground for 
  a few chapters.
  If you have an ongoing chronicle, you might run “Blood Red and 
  Ash Gray” as a long story arc, over the course of several chapters. Act 
  One could be a whole session of play, after which the scenes of Act 
  Two unfold here and there, as diversions during other stories, over 
  several weeks of play. The characters’ investigation unfolds slowly, 
  or they give it up altogether, thinking that they’ve gotten away with 
  murder... until the Eye shows up asking all the questions they don’t 
  want to answer. The characters try to hold out,  hoping to stall the Eye 
  until he gives up, but once the action drives the characters to the end 
  of the second act — the point-of-no-return scenes called the Hinge 
  — and the dramatic tension is at the right height, this story comes back 
  to the fore. Act Three unfolds in one night of tense and passionate 
  scenes, and the final chapter of this story is closed.
  Alternately, you could cut this story down to one or two chapters of 
  short, panicky chaos. If you want to abbreviate the action, Act Two 
  can be easily compressed to one or two scenes prior to the Hinge. Play 
  out just one instance of “Flashback” and maybe “Interviewed,” to give 
  the players enough information that they can proceed to “Confronta-
  tion” or “Brought In” with an appreciation for what’s at stake and a 
  sense of the Storyteller characters’ motives.
  Don’t force the timing of this story by railroading the players to 
  speed up during this scene or slow down during that one. Remember 
  that the order of scenes — the plot — is your tool to use. You are not 
  obligated to play any scene. Use those you want, when you want, and 
  discard the rest (or save them for later).
  Scene Flow
  Even when accounting for player freedom and your control of the plot, 
  the scenes in this story have a natural, logical flow to them. This flow 
  can be overcome by choices you and the troupe make, but the story’s 
  intuitive course is likely to stay more or less intact. The characters can’t 
  be punished until they’re caught, for example. For convenience, the 
  Scene Flow Diagram is on p. 32, near the scenes themselves.
  Background and Setup
  The intrigue at the heart of this story emerges from the internecine 
  motives, loyalties and lusts of the cast of Storyteller characters. Yet 
  these are not the main characters in your story — the players’ characters 
  are. But, since we don’t know anything about your characters, we can 
  assume anything about their loyalties or motives. Likewise, without 
  knowing anyting about the city where you’ll set this story, we can’t tell 
  you exactly how this story’s cast of antagonists fit in there.
  So, the Storyteller characters and their relationships are designed 
  to be largely self-contained. These are isolated Kindred caught up in 
  their own affairs... until the players’ characters get in the middle of it 
  all and change everything.
  Throughout this section, compare what you find written here with 
  what you know about your troupe’s characters. They are the protago-
  nists of your story — everything happens because of them and the 
  tale must ultimately be about them. The Storyteller characters and 
  relationships described here are dramatic tools for you and political 
  tools for the troupe’s vampires. Some of these characters will end up 
  being enemies of the players’ coterie. Other might end up being allies 
  or co-conspirators. It all hinges on the choices the players make.
  Background
  If the Killer hadn’t frenzied and encountered the Victim, everything 
  would have gone on pretty much the same in this neighborhood. 
  The background you’ll find on the local domain, its inhabitants and 
  its politics was the status quo until that night. Use it to inform your 
  descriptions and the decisions you make on behalf of the Storyteller 
  characters.
  Setup
  Unless you have a spare corner in your city where ten vampires can 
  play together at the Danse Macabre, you’ll probably have to replace 
  some of the key Kindred in this story with those already in your chron-
  icle’s supporting cast. Each character’s description contains advice on 
  what’s really important about each character, so you can find another 
  vampire that matches up well enough with the role. Otherwise, you 
  might just squeeze this whole supporting cast into a few blocks of the 
  city and treat it as a village within the Prince’s lands — isolated, self-
  involved and unimportant, until the Killer runs screaming in there 
  in the night.
  
  10
  The State of the City
  The laws, customs and politics of your chronicle’s city interact 
  with this story in some important ways. On the surface, they’ll seem 
  to determine the stakes that all the characters are playing for. But in 
  practice, you have veto power over any precedent you’ve set before, 
  as long as you can offer an explanation for any change that at least 
  satisfies the troupe’s criteria for suspension of disbelief.
  Here are some key issues you’ll want to consider before running this 
  story, and suggestions for how you might explain exceptions to the 
  norm for the sake of this story:
  • The penalty for slaying another vampire is... 
  If might makes right in your city, then the consequence for destroy-
  ing any vampire depends on the might of his cohorts and the weight 
  of their revenge. The insular domain where this story is set suits that 
  situation just fine.
  If the Prince has set a standard penalty for causing the Final Death 
  of another Kindred, and it’s more potent than you want to subject the 
  characters to in this story, explain that the Kindred Regent over this 
  domain (called simply X in this document) prefers that crimes within 
  his domain not be made public at the Prince’s court, and so authorizes 
  his vassals (Cicero and Sol) to resolve such matters as they see fit.
  • The covenant in charge is...
  The two major covenants at work in this story are the Invictus and 
  the Carthians, but even that’s a trifling detail. What really matters is 
  that Sol and Cicero are members of different covenants (and so are 
  not privvy to the same gossip and secrets). That one or the other of 
  them has knowledge of an Invictus Blood Oath (see p. 57) could be 
  evidence of past allegiance or intrigues.
  Calla wants to join the Circle of the Crone, but doesn’t have access 
  to their ranks to be able to pursue that goal. In Cicero’s domain, that 
  might simply be a result of him keeping Val’s coterie so insulated from 
  the rest of Kindred society (so that Cicero can groom Val with whatever 
  lies he likes). But if the Circle of the Crone is omnipresent in your city, 
  you’ll have to accentuate the isolation of Cicero’s turf. If the Circle of 
  the Crone is absent in your city, Calla might want to join the Ordo 
  Dracul, or even start her own Acolyte cult from scratch. (Maybe she 
  wants to join a visionary bloodline?) Because it’s her aspirations we’re 
  concerned about, rather than the status quo, use any group you like.
  • Sharing Disciplines with Kindred of other clans is...
  Is there a standing law or custom in your city regarding the Prince’s 
  policy on sharing vampiric powers with others? If not, then the plot of 
  Calla and Hooper is simply worth keeping secret because of the edge 
  Cicero is losing and the money they’re making behind his back. The 
  consequence if they’re caught is Cicero’s (considerable) wrath, but not 
  something as terrible as a Blood Hunt.
  If sharing Disciplines is illegal, or simply verboten, then the con-
  sequences for Calla (and possibly Sol) may be substantial if their 
  deal is revealed. Fortunately, the Eye’s service to Sol (and his value 
  to the city at large) explains why Sol would take such a risk to learn 
  Auspex, and then pass it on to the Eye. Once the Eye couples his 
  investigative knack with the mystic sight, he becomes a valuable 
  asset for Sol to share with the rest of the court, in exchange for new 
  respect and status.
  Issues and Motive
  Each of these issues affects the intensity of the Storyteller charac-
  ters’ motivations, and the ability of the coterie to influence them (and 
  vice versa). In play, it’s enough for you to simply keep the stakes for 
  each character in mind, and grant bonuses or penalties to dice pools 
  as you see fit to describe the leverage that any particular threat or 
  argument has for the particular target.
  In case you’d rather have more strict guidelines showing you the way, 
  use these modifiers as examples:
  Circumstance 
  Modifier
  Penalty for murder is death 
  ±5
  Penalty for murder is torpor 
  ±4
  Penalty for murder is subjective, ...
   
  ... determined by survivor 
  ±2-3
   
  ... determined by lord or patron 
  ±1-3
  Character’s covenant is in charge 
  ±3
  Character’s covenant is an underdog 
  ±3
  Changing covenants is scandalous 
  ±4
  Changing covenants is seen as weak 
  ±2
  Sharing Disciplines is illegal 
  ±4
  Sharing Disciplines is taboo 
  ±3
  Getting foreign Disciplines is an admirable coup 
  ±2
  
  11
   The Domain
  The  domain where this story is set is an simplistic archetypal example 
  of the Kindred neo-feudal hierarchy in action. For simplicity, this story 
  is only concerned with two tiers of power within the domain: the vassals 
  (Cicero and Sol) and their tenants. This is as far as the ripples of Hooper’s 
  Requiem traveled, and is still be plenty for the players’ coterie to juggle.
  Above these two tiers is a vampire overlord who, for the purposes of 
  this story, is left anonymous. Herein, he is called simply the Landlord. 
  The Landlord is presumed to be a Regent, who has been given his 
  domain by the Prince, and subdivided it over his vassals, Cicero and 
  Sol. The Landlord can be any vampire of sufficient Status that you 
  like from your chronicle’s current cast. The Landlord might well have 
  more vassals than just the two described here; Cicero and Sol might 
  just be two neighboring vassals in their own corner of the Landlord’s 
  domain. They are each responsible for the control and management 
  of their own turfs within the domain.
  This domain is wherever you say it is. It is as large or as small as you 
  declare. The physical makeup of the domain can be easily modified 
  to fit into any major city (we’re intentionally vague on whether the 
  streets are dotted with pines or palms). To use the scenes as written, 
  the domain needs to believably contain the following locations:
  • Two high-quality havens, one each for Sol and Cicero.
  • A bungalow or crappy townhouse to serve as the haven for Cicero’s 
  crew (Haven Size •••, Haven Location ••)
  • A burnt-out or abandoned factory, school or municipal building 
  (something with fire doors) where Sash and Hooper make their secret 
  retreat (Haven Size •, Haven Security ••••).
  • A high-class townhouse or condo where Cicero can receive visi-
  tors, tutor Val, and intimidate criminal vampires.
  • A storefront with a downstairs office where Sol meets with visi-
  tors, whether they’re his tenants or Kindred he’s conspiring with (e.g., 
  Hooper).
  • Bars or nightclubs, whether they’re local dives or grungy destina-
  tion venues, where Cicero’s crew are regulars and characters can gather 
  information.
  • A parking garage with underground levels.
  Actual distances aren’t particularly relevant in this story; the social 
  and informational gaps between characters are more important. 
  The State of the Domain
  The relationships between the vampires of this domain are a mix of 
  formal and personal, public and private. Discovering the relationships 
  between these vampires, and then exploiting them, is the best leverage 
  the characters can get in the domain, presuming politics and intrigues 
  are the order of the night. Even if they intend to somehow fight their 
  way out of their problems in this domain, the characters would be smart 
  to learn who’ll come to whose aid before they start biting.
  What Players Know, What Characters Know
  Particularly in tales of mystery and politicking, the question of 
  who has what information haunts so many gameplay choices. In this 
  story, the players certainly know things their characters do not. But, 
  strangely, the imaginary monsters they control should know things 
  that the players do not, as well.
  The players have presumably read Vampire: The Requiem, and so may 
  well know more about vampire physiology and the nature of frenzy than 
  the characters do. The Damned have no manual to check telling them 
  how long a frenzy might last or how to fight past it for a few seconds at a 
  time. The characters cannot look at the total number of successes they’ve 
  accrued and gauge how well they’ve searched the crime scene.
  The trickier prospect, though, runs in the other direction. The play-
  ers’ characters reside in the World of Darkness full time. They are a 
  part of the Kindred culture that we only imagine now and again. They 
  know things the players do not and, presumably, hear more rumors 
  and gossip than you can possibly trickle out during play without either 
  boring the troupe or blatantly highlighting what should be subtle hints 
  (“Oh, by the way, you’ve heard that Cicero’s got more than a strategic 
  interest in his apprentice.”). The characters are entitled to know things 
  the players do not — the question is when should the players become 
  aware of what their characters know?
  The answer is, as soon as it is dramatically relevant. Withhold-
  ing information for the sake of creating an aura of mystery is folly. 
  The lack of clarity that comes from playing in a shared, imaginary 
  world and trying to keep a half-dozen Storyteller characters straight 
  is enough puzzlement.  Don’t antagonize the players and add drag 
  to the story by giving them too little information to make decisions 
  with. The dramatic questions we’re interested should be moral and 
  tactical, not trivial.
  
  12
  Knowing when to reveal in-character knowledge to a player is 
  one of the skills in the Storyteller’s kit. It’s part of dramatic timing. 
  You’ll find no hard-and-fast rule explaining just when this fact or 
  that detail or the other hunch should be shared, but here are two 
  simple guidelines:
  Reveal in-character knowledge when...
  1. Something happens in play that would reasonably jog the charac-
  ter’s memory. (“Seeing him adjust his coat like that makes you think 
  of the stories you’ve heard about Joe Coat and his meat cleaver...”)
  2. The player is about to make a decision for her character that 
  would make either or both of them look incapable or foolish, when 
  the character’s traits suggest she should be above such mistakes. (“I’ve 
  got three dots in Politics, shouldn’t I have known I’d be shunned for 
  doing that?”)
  In-Character Knowledge and Skills
  For the purposes of this story, assume that the character with the 
  most dots in Politics knows a number of the facts listed under “What’s 
  Public” equal to her dots in Politics. Likewise, the character with the 
  most dots in City Status knows one fact per dot. Unless the players of 
  these characters specifically reject the idea, assume their characters 
  share this information with the rest of the coterie. (Otherwise, the 
  players can choose to reveal this information s exposition when they 
  see fit.)
  Other Skills may intersect with the public knowledge that follows. If 
  a character has the number of dots indicated, or more, in the relevant 
  Skill, she knows that fact about the domain. (Secret facts are uncovered 
  only through play.)
  What’s Public
  • Cicero and Sol were each granted their turf by the Landlord within 
  a few weeks of each other. Technically, Cicero is the senior vassal, 
  though that doesn’t mean much in practice.
  •Cicero and Sol serve as the Landlord’s scapegoats in their turf; what-
  ever happens there is their fault rather than his. In exchange, they have 
  a chance to make something of themselves in the Danse Macabre.
  • Sol’s domain is home to a cunning freelance Hound called the Eye. 
  He’s an inspector on good terms with many Kindred among covenant 
  leaderships, and respected for his investigative talent and reliability.
  • Cicero’s got a vampire medium as a tenant. She’s called the Seer. 
  She’s part of a coterie nesting in his turf. [Occult ••, Politics •]
  • Cicero made a vampire named Val his tenant so he would have 
  some Kindred under his employ, to give him an edge over Sol. Val 
  came as a package deal with two other Kindred. [Socialize ••]
  • The Eye has served Regents and members of the primogen in the 
  past, but makes his haven somewhere in Sol’s backwater blocks to keep 
  himself on the edge of the Danse Macabre and as neutral as possible. 
  [Investigate ••, Politics ••]
  • Cicero has a childe, but she left the nest years ago. Her name is 
  Sash, and she’s a part of Val’s coterie (called Cicero’s Crew, casually). 
  [Politics •••, Streetwise ••••]
  • A wandering vampire nests somewhere in Sol’s turf, like gutter 
  trash. He’s a big, bearded, wild-eyed military-vet-looking creature in 
  a big green Army jacket. They call him Joe Coat. Smart Kindred steer 
  clear of him. [Streetwise •••]
  
  13
  What’s Secret
  Public knowledge and common rumor aren’t going to give the 
  characters the edge they need to get away with murder. In this kind of 
  political play, what they need is leverage, and that comes from having 
  information others don’t want them to have. This story is about dig-
  ging up secrets — the characters dig up the secrets of the Victim and 
  his allies, while the Eye digs up theirs.
  The secrets in play with the Storyteller characters presented are 
  designed to change the relationships between characters if they are 
  revealed. Certainly, you could add more secrets to the mix as you adapt 
  these characters to your city, but avoid stirring in red herrings or petty 
  shames that don’t help the characters change the political arrangements 
  in the domain(e.g., Calla thinks Cicero is a pederast; it would be embar-
  rassing, but it wouldn’t change Cicero’s plans for Calla). The players 
  have enough to manage without sorting out wheat from chaff.
  Note: This is the only place where some of this information appears. This 
  is your omniscient view of the relationships in the domain. After this, in 
  the individual character write-ups, you get a look at some of the character’s 
  individual opinions and perceptions of these secrets — many of them clouded 
  by emotion or pain. Filter all of that through what you find here.
  Not everything here is known by everyone involved in these secrets. 
  Just how much is known by whom is ultimately for you to decide — it’s 
  another tool you use to dial challenges up or down. Val might resist the 
  suggestion that Cicero is willing to sacrifice Sash, or he might say, “Don’t 
  you think I know that? I just... can’t do anything about it, can I?”
  GETTING AND USING SECRETS
  The purpose of all this information is to give the players and 
  their characters the instruments they need to move the Storyteller 
  characters around like pawns on a board — pawns with their 
  own motives, mistakes and schemes. Manipulating the Storyteller 
  characters makes up some of the most important action in Acts Two 
  and Three, but these secrets can be revealed at any time.
  You’re under no obligation to dole these out in accordance 
  with strict rules. Share one to reward relevant roleplaying when 
  one characters gets Calla talking. Reveal one in response to an 
  exceptional success in the scene, “Investigating.” Let one slip out, 
  subtly, during a “Face to Face” scene. Use these to keep things 
  moving — new information is another step forward.
  For a simple mechanism to use when the characters manipulate 
  Storyteller characters, see Act Two.
  • Cicero Embraced Sash because he thought her passion and take-
  no-shit attitude would serve him well. He expected her to become his 
  protegé, but her laziness let him down. Cicero scraped her off and left 
  her to stagnate in his domain, in case she could be useful later — and 
  she was. Sash attracted Val, which is how he met Cicero.
  • Val was once in love with Sash, and he played nice with Cicero 
  the way one does with a potential father-in-law. But Sash never picked 
  up on Val’s feelings, so when he eventually fell into Cicero’s orbit, Val 
  took it as a consolation prize.
  • Sash and Hooper (the Victim) were lovers. She started it. They 
  planned on leaving Cicero’s domain when they found somewhere else 
  to go. In the meantime, they keep a private little haven of their own, 
  away from Val and Calla.
  • Hooper and Calla plotted to sell Calla’s knowledge of Auspex to 
  Sol, in exchange for new tenancy in his turf. Hooper planned this as 
  a surprise for Sash. (Calla knows they’re together.) Sash had no idea 
  what Hooper was planning.
  • Val knows that Sash and Hooper were close, but not that they 
  were lovers. Val would support them, if only to be the kind of guy he 
  wishes he was, in hopes that it’d win Sash’s affections.
  • Cicero will trade Sash or her happiness without a second thought. 
  She’s served her purpose and Cicero doesn’t need any more liabilities. 
  With Hooper and Sash gone, Cicero could absorb Calla and Val and 
  grant tenancy to some other coterie (even the characters’).
  • The Eye has no loyalty to Sol. He’s just a rube landlord who poses 
  minimal risk and charges minimal rent.
  • Joe Coat would accept a haven in Cicero’s turf without telling 
  anyone — he doesn’t care who his landlord is. Sol is only valuable as 
  long as he’s easy to handle.
  • Sol wants Auspex out of greed and a desire to sweeten the Eye’s 
  incentives to stay. But Sol’s in business with Calla and Hooper because 
  it could be embarrassing for Cicero. Sol will give up the truth if it’ll 
  hurt Cicero. He doesn’t care what happens to Calla, Hooper or the 
  rest of their coterie.
  • Sol will accept Kindred from Cicero’s Crew into his turf and ten-
  ants if it will hurt Cicero, but not if it’ll hurt Sol. Sol wants to seem 
  tough, and that includes being tough on criminal vampires.
  • Sol was once Cicero’s protegé. He left because Cicero disgusts him, and 
  landed his own turf soon after. No one knows this but Sol and Cicero.
  
  14
  PRODUCT LINKS
  “Blood Red and Ash Gray” was written using the World of 
  Darkness Rulebook and Vampire: The Requiem. You can play 
  the story using just those two books, or you can expand on it 
  using any of the books that expand on the covenants of which 
  the Storyteller characters are members, 
  especially Carthians and The Invictus.
  The Oath of Blood Knives, described in 
  the scene, “Punishment,” is a variation on a 
  Blood Oath of the same name, drawn from 
  the covenant book, The Invictus.
  The simple feudal schema on p. 12 
  was drawn based on the guidelines in 
  Damnation City. The core political dynamic 
  in this story’s stock domain is based on the 
  basic neo-feudal structure covered in that 
  book in much greater detail than we have 
  room for in this adventure.
  The Cast
  The following pages give you a complete rundown on the  Storyteller 
  characters in “Blood Red and Ash Gray.” Some of these are major 
  characters, or “leads,” which you can think of as guest stars. In addi-
  tion to them you’ll find simplified descriptions for Cicero’s and Sol’s 
  ghouls and other thugs. No matter how important these Storyteller 
  characters are to the background of the story, or how much space they 
  take up in this guide, remember: 
  The players’ characters are the main characters in the story.
  The Roles of the Storyteller Characters
  The lead Storyteller characters we’ve created for this story may 
  not be the ones to actually appear “on stage” in your story. To make 
  the story feel like a natural part of your chronicle, recast the roles of 
  our examples with established Storyteller characters from your own 
  chronicle. This may move some of the relationships around a bit, or 
  push the cast out over a larger area of the city, but it’s worth it to make 
  the story feel like a part of your ongoing tales. 
  The decisions the players are called on to make become much more 
  compelling — and challenging — when the fates of characters they 
  already know and have experience with are hanging in the balance.
  These broad sketches of the lead Storyteller characters tell you what 
  purpose these characters serve in the dramatic situation surrounding 
  the protagonists. Use them to identify which of your established Sto-
  ryteller characters would be a good fit for each role:
  • Hooper (the Victim) is a vampire who wasn’t that important 
  while he was still walking but, in Final Death, reveals weaknesses and 
  emotions in the Kindred who knew him. His name, Hooper, is meant 
  to seem mundane, unintimidating, even weak — he’s specifically not 
  named something tough. It’s probably best if the players never encoun-
  ter this vampire before one of their character’s ends his Requiem.
  • Sash is the survivor, the grieving widow (or something like it). By 
  design, she’s a pedestrian, self-indulgent vampire with little plans for 
  the future beyond whatever band’s playing at the bar this weekend. 
  She shouldn’t be infamous or respected. Use her lack of Status to tempt 
  the players to leave her alone until it is too late. 
  She, alone, should seem like a vampire the coterie could take down, 
  but who can also be used other vampires who choose to turn her 
  grief into a weapon. She wants revenge, but may not get away with it 
  without help (or a go-ahead) from more powerful vampires (like Sol 
  or Cicero). She must be the vampire most hurt, emotionally, by the 
  death of the Victim.
  • Val is a vampire made vulnerable by his loyalty and his Human-
  ity. He’s soft, able to be manipulated, but he’s in the palm of a more 
  powerful vampire’s hand, so the consequences of using him must be 
  serious (at least from the perspective of the coterie). Val can be well-
  known among the Damned or a relative nobody, but he shouldn’t 
  be respected. To outsiders, he’s just Cicero’s pet hunk. He must be a 
  character the coterie can get to — but using him should be easier than 
  it is safe or smart.
  • Calla is a withdrawn, apolitical spiritualist, the asset who wishes 
  she could just spend her nights without all the courtly bullshit. What’s 
  important is that her reputation (in this case, as “the Seer”) radiates 
  further than her image, and much further than her current power. She 
  should be unhappy where she is, but reliant on an outside motivator 
  (i.e., the characters) to activate her.
  • Cicero is a self-serving, petty creature with a reputation for em-
  tional decision-making and political failure. He’s gross, blatant and 
  conniving, with an unrealistic sense of his own place in the Danse 
  Macabre — he doesn’t realize how unimportant and disrespected he 
  is, despite whatever technical Status he might have. 
  
  15
  What’s important is that Cicero is powerful enough to be threaten-
  ing, but not necessarily fearsome. Somehow beating Cicero can get the 
  coterie ahead, but only hurting him merely sets them up for a nastier 
  revenge later on. Cicero should have enough Status that he can justify 
  an act of revenge by Sash or order the punishment of the Killer (who 
  is assumed to be a vampire of less Status) within his turf.
  • The Eye is a respected and feared Hound, known more as an investiga-
  tor than as a lawman. Think of him as a vampire private detective, hiring 
  himself out to whatever wealthy and influential Kindred can pay. He’s 
  removed from the political process enough that his loyalty is uncertain.
  He should be feared. His presence should raise the stakes in any 
  scene — he has the ear of important vampires, after all — and the 
  idea that he’s on the coterie’s trail is a driving antagonism of this tale. 
  But can he be manipulated? Can he be bought? You want the players 
  to wonder, but not be sure.
  • Joe Coat is the X-factor. His purpose is to provide fearsome, in-
  human muscle to whoever pays for him. He may also be a potential 
  candidate for the identity of the Victim early on in the coterie’s inves-
  tigation. He can be of any clan, any covenant, any bloodline.
  What matters here is that Joe Coat is mysterious, a potential danger 
  lurking in the darkness through rumor, until he appears and becomes 
  a genuine threat. He’s the element of brute force, with a minimum of 
  secrecy. Joe Coat is easy to get information out of, but it’s dangerous 
  even to talk to him — he repeats what you say to someone else in 
  exchange for money. For a little more money, he kills.
  • Sol is the sleaze-bag bookie, slum lord and gutter-level criminal 
  boss. But he’s just the boss of a few drug dealers and extortionists. He’s 
  not an important vampire, and he knows it. That let’s him get away 
  with his occasional failures. Sol’s not important, but he’s not disliked 
  the way Cicero is; you might not be hurting people by getting rid of 
  him, but you’re not doing anyone any favors either.
  Sol’s primary virtue to the players is that he is less despicable than 
  Cicero. His primary risk is that he has good reason to be angry about 
  Hooper’s death. This collision of motives and attitudes is what makes 
  Cicero and Sol difficult to choose between. So Sol doesn’t have to 
  be likable or admirable, he just has to be a less gross, more dangerous 
  choice than Cicero.
  • The Landlord is the higher-up Kindred casting a shadow down 
  on all of this. He needs to be the dreaded consequence of taking the 
  story outside of this little pond.
  Supporting Characters
  The traits of these ghouls are designed primarily to show how 
  Sol and Cicero are different, and how they bring different risks to 
  the final Act of the story. (Do these thugs even have to be ghouls? 
  Make them human victims of addiction, corruption or Disciplines, 
  if you like.) 
  Bump these traits up or down as necessary to threaten your troupe’s 
  characters, if you like, but the better method is to adjust the number 
  of ghouls Cicero or Sol can bring to bear in the final scenes. Num-
  bers are the ultimate trump card in a fight — more enemies means 
  more hurting. When numbers are the big edge the ghouls give to Sol 
  and Cicero, the troupe has another possible plan to pursue: whittle 
  down the number of ghouls before the time comes for the “Revenge” 
  scene. 
  How many ghouls are there? That depends on how much you want 
  to threaten the characters, but about one per character is a good place 
  to start. Keep this in mind when modifying the ghouls:
  Cicero’s ghouls are more numerous and, in a straight fight, more 
  dangerous, but they’re quick to bail out of a fight that goes badly.
  Sol’s ghouls, though fewer, are tougher and have practiced hurting 
  vampires. They don’t fight, they subdue, capture, torture and execute.
  Cicero Ghouls
  Quote: They don’t say anything. They nod. They stare. They chew 
  their peeling lips.
  Storytelling Hints: Cicero’s ghouls are whipped, whimpering dogs of 
  men. Without him, their futures are just years of psychotherapy; in his 
  shadow, at least they don’t know any better.
  Many of Cicero’s servants have had their tongues cut out — an Old 
  World Invictus custom for protecting the Masquerade — with the promise 
  that, if eventually Damned, they would be provided with new tongues. If 
  such a power exists in the ranks of the First Estate, Cicero certainly doesn’t 
  have access to it. But when he’s selecting potential living candidates for 
  his service, he certainly isn’t seeking out people who are smart or person-
  ally motivated. He wants empty vessels he can fill with his own will and 
  impulses. These are broken, twisted, empty men. Cicero gives some of them 
  the age-halting grace of his Vitae because it protects his investment. He 
  doesn’t teach them anything of the vampiric Disciplines beyond the basic 
  rush of Celerity that his blood activates in their accursed flesh.
  
  16
  Description: Cicero’s thugs wear whatever mismatched black suits 
  they could pull together from second-hand shops and muscling the 
  local dry cleaners. They move with this weird, bony gait that makes 
  them look a little like puppets in a Tim Burton movie. They don’t say 
  anything; many of them don’t even have teeth. Instead of screaming 
  or cussing they let out these whining vowels, like beaten dogs.
  Traits
  Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 2, Resolve 1, Strength 2, Dexterity 3, 
  Stamina 2, Presence 1, Manipulation 1, Composure 2
  Skills: Crafts (Repair) 2, Politics 1, Athletics 2, Brawl 2, Drive 2, 
  Stealth 3, Weaponry (Knives) 2
  Willpower: 3
  Morality: 3 (on average)
  Health: 7
  Initiative: +5
  Defense: 2
  Speed: 10
  Vitae: 3
  Disciplines: Celerity 1
  Attack 
  Damage Size 
  Special 
  Dice Pool
  Knives 
  2 (L) 
  1 
  — 
  7
  Sol Ghouls
  Quote: “Get his legs.”
  Storytelling Hints: Sol’s ghouls are boorish thugs willing to take 
  mediocre pay in exchange for getting to live the criminal life and not 
  being responsible for rent and all that shit. They like feeling more 
  powerful than ordinary people.
  Sol’s ghouls that get the Blood are given it only to keep them in 
  line, like a retinue of junkie bodyguards. Sol protects the truth about 
  vampires (though, it must be said, not the actual existence of them) 
  with constant lies — most of his thugs are, to their minds, on drugs, 
  not drinking blood. His muscle stays in his employ because the money 
  is good, the work is easy and the hours are light. These are petty, awful 
  people with not one credible witness in the bunch.
  Sol doesn’t bother indoctrinating his hired hands in the ways of the 
  Kindred. They know that vampires are real, and Sol’s given them some 
  pointers on how to hurt them, but they’re not even sure that Sol is a 
  vampire. These aren’t the types that can manage a lot of suspicion in 
  the face of a one-inch stack of $20 bills or a bag of rock.
  Description: They’re a bunch of thick-necks in work boots, wife-
  beaters and sweat jackets, all underneath worn-down leather jackets. 
  They might be out of work construction guys. They smell like pomade, 
  liquor and cigarettes — and lighter fluid.
  Traits
  Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 2, Resolve 2, Strength 2, Dexterity 2, 
  Stamina 3, Presence 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 2
  Skills: Athletics 1, Brawl (Grapple) 2, Drive 1, Larceny 2, Stealth 2, 
  Weaponry 2, Intimidation 1, Streetwise 1
  Merits: Strong Back
  Willpower: 4
  Morality: 3 (on average)
  Health: 8
  Initiative: +4
  Defense: 2
  Speed: 9
  Vitae: 2
  Disciplines: Vigor 1
  Attack 
  Damage Size 
  Special 
  Dice Pool
  Brawl 
  (B) 
  0 
  — 
  4
  Torches 
  1(A) 
  2 
  Fire damage 
  5
  Lead Storyteller Characters
  The next few pages detail the major Storyteller characters you’ve 
  read so much about already. Each lead Storyteller character is described 
  in two pages:
  • A page of background information, storytelling guidelines, quotes, 
  and advice for understanding and adapting the game traits given to 
  the character.
  • A combination character sheet and bulleted list of things the 
  character knows, wants and will do to get them; a handy reference 
  during play.
  This can’t be said enough, so read it again: Make these characters 
  your own. You know what motivates your particular players and 
  their characters better than we do. Refine Val so he draws them 
  in like an easy target. Play Sash so the players feel bad treating 
  her like a villain. Make Cicero the kind of vampire they hate; 
  make Sol mad and mean enough to be feared. Turn the Eye into 
  something wicked.
  
  17
  
  18
  Val: Mechanics
  Val’s derangement, Avoidance, represents his reluctance to deal 
  with the internal problems of his coterie. Rather than straighten out 
  the ugly disagreements, he avoids them.
  Val learned the Political Theory Specialty, a dot in Majesty, and a 
  few other traits from Cicero. He’s inherited (or been given) some of 
  his Merits from Cicero, too — like a sugar daddy and his pet.
  Notice that Val’s good at socializing but is only getting up to speed 
  compared to the rest of the domain when it comes to persuasion, in-
  timidation and subterfuge — he’s a compromiser, not a leader.
  In Play
  Val is one your most flexible tools for telling this story. His motivations 
  are intentionally divided to afford you a viable, believable tie-breaking voice 
  in the story. Val can be influenced, persuaded and even intimidated by the 
  players’ coterie or by Sash, Cicero, Sol or the Eye to act in ways that help 
  you crank up the drama or call certain dramatic questions to the fore. 
  In general, the tactic that should most help characters to change 
  Val’s position or focus is to provide him with new information — to 
  redraw the social and political landscape as he knows it. That is, the 
  more information the characters discover, the better able they are to 
  influence Val. (If you want to put that in game terms, you might grant a 
  +1 bonus to Persuade or Intimidate actions for every 3 successes accrued 
  during the scene, “Investigation.”) Of course, the information that’s put 
  before Val doesn’t have to be true — it just has to be convincing.
  You can shift Val’s loyalties through his own internal conflicts, too. 
  Use his internal conflict — loyalty to his peers or his Mentor?, a com-
  fortable and feckless pedestrian existence or a dangerous and disturbing 
  existence with great power? — to help frame the moral or ethical themes 
  you want to evoke. If, for example, you want to accentuate the issue of 
  moral culpability versus cold political advantage, Val says something like, 
  “Show her that she’s hurt you — make her feel like she’s got her revenge 
  — then we can keep our shit together. Except, how can I fucking trust 
  you? You are the ones who fucking killed Hooper!”
  Val’s purpose is to be vulnerable, but also valuable to Cicero and Sash. 
  If you dial up Val’s traits to make him compatible with your troupe, be 
  careful not to make him too smart or capable with Social Skills. He 
  should be in over his head here.
  Val 
  Quotes: “Don’t talk like that. It’ll be fine. We’ll just deal 
  with it later.” 
  • “You: quiet. We’ll get the facts, then we’ll decide what 
  needs to be done about you.”
  Storytelling Hints: Val is the voice of reason in Cicero’s 
  Crew, their official leader and the official source of most of 
  the coterie’s advantages, like money and the communal haven. Val is 
  the yoke on Sash and the soft spot on Cicero. Appealing to Val’s sense 
  of order and civil conduct can help the characters as long as there’s 
  still some doubt about their involvement in Hooper’s destruction and 
  the cover-up. Once Val is sure that the players’ coterie is involved, 
  though, he joins his coterie-mates in getting revenge on the characters 
  — not because he thinks it’s right or smart, necessarily, but because 
  Sash and Calla want it bad enough and Val wants to keep them happy 
  with him.
  Cicero is Val’s sugar daddy and mentor. Val finds Cicero’s lustful staring 
  and flirty touching a small price to pay if it means he’ll be given a good seat 
  at the long Invictus table. Play Val as the safe caregiver of the coterie. He 
  keeps it together and mediates between his pack and the elder who thinks 
  they’re a bad influence. Before he talks, he weighs his words.
  Val’s dots in Haven are shared by the rest of his coterie, but Val and 
  his mentor, Cicero, acquired all those dots. The rest of the coterie 
  resides there on Val’s say-so, because he likes them. Cicero sees the 
  coterie as Val’s tenants and staff. The coterie feels Cicero’s assessment 
  of them as juvenile slackers through Val’s words. But Val just wants 
  to keep himself surrounded by loyal allies as he climbs toward power 
  on Cicero’s heels. Val believes having a circle of old compatriots will 
  help protect him from betrayal later on. He also doesn’t want to be 
  alone in his Requiem with Cicero.
  Description: He’s handsome — the kind of bland, shoulder-length-
  haired, clean-shaven handsome that suggests a musician whose work is 
  safe and even forgettable. He could be a catalog model for department 
  store khakis. In his worn brown shoes, V-neck sweater and garden 
  variety leather jacket he blends right in with the whitebread condo-
  minium masses. This resemblance to the herd can make him smell 
  vulnerable to other bloodsuckers. He talks with the careful hesitance 
  and practiced measure of a compromising politican. This is a guy who 
  wants things to stay in order.
  
  19
  Val
  What he knows:
  • Sash and Hooper were close [but not that they were lovers.]
  • No matter what she says, Sash won’t be able to get over Hooper 
  until she gets some kind of closure — meaning vengeance.
  • Calla counted on Hooper to help her engage people in social 
  situations. Without him, Calla goes back into her shell, so it’s up to 
  Val to keep Sash from making a mistake that hurts the coterie.
  • A mistake that hurts the coterie hurts Val the most, because 
  he’s the one who really has to answer to Cicero.
  • Sol and Cicero aren’t outright enemies, but only because each 
  of them would rather get ahead of the other one without provoking 
  real trouble. They each have their own private schemes to protect 
  their domains.
  • Cicero won’t protect Sash unless Val can make it worth his while.
  • Cicero won’t protect Calla so much as take her in and use her 
  as his own personal diviner.
  What he wants:
  • Stay under Cicero’s wing.
  • Keep the coterie together.
  • Do it without losing too much juice with Cicero.
  • Find a way to fill the hole left behind by Hooper.
  • Punish whoever hurt Hooper, just because that’s the way things 
  are done.
  What he does:
  • Keeps Sash from doing something the coterie will regret...
  • ...until it becomes clear that patching holes with Cicero will 
  be easier than keeping Sash on a leash.
  • Help Sash get her revenge, quietly, if he can do it without Sol 
  or Cicero getting pissed. Otherwise, turn the Killer over to them.
  
  20
  Sash
  Quotes: “Aw, you’re a miserable fuck, you know that? You 
  have a good night, I’ll see your sorry face tomorrow.”
  • “You say that and you say that, but you’d better fucking 
  hear me when I say: If something’s happened to Hoop, there’s 
  going to be blood. There’s going to be fucking blood.” 
  • “Shut up. Get on your knees.”
  Storytelling Hints: It’s pronounced sort of like “mosh,” short for Sasha. 
  By design, Sash is an underachieving go-nowhere vampire who would’ve 
  been sedate and content to go on boozing, fucking, dancing and brawling 
  for decades. She’s tough like a bar-room shit-kicker, but she’s not a trained 
  warrior or anything. She’s always been afraid of being vulnerable, and now 
  she’s learned her lesson again — she’s hurting, and she’s embarrassed to 
  be hurting so bad.
  The whole point of Sash’s threatening presence is not her expertise 
  but her investment — she’s willing to spend whatever Willpower and 
  Vitae and favors it takes to get what she wants. And what she wants 
  is to make someone else hurt like the does.
  That’s what makes her scary. Determination. Wrath. And a broken 
  heart.
  Description: She might clean up nice, but it’s not something she’d 
  be interested in doing. Her long dark hair is unwashed, and she casually 
  throws it around and ties it back like it’s something she’ll get around to 
  putting away, like laundry on the floor. She’s not wearing makeup, her 
  lips are cracked and she’s not afraid of the few small scars on her hands 
  and face. She’s lived in her body and she knows she’s never going to 
  be a dress-wearing prom date, so what does she care about that stuff? 
  Every night it’s the same jeans and the same ratty jacket and one of a 
  handful of metal-band or beer-logo t-shirts.
  She puts her hands near her face a lot — it’s leftover body language 
  from her living days as a chain smoker. She tugs on her hair, she 
  plays with the ring in her lip, she curses and laughs out loud and tells 
  people to fuck off, all without thinking about it. She was the arty, 
  defiant teenager who read Marx and played bass in a crap metal band 
  — smart, but couldn’t care enough. Since she died, she’s swapped out 
  greasy spoons and drinking in empty lots for blood and barrooms, but 
  not much else has changed. 
  Sash: Mechanics
  Sash is an Invictus peasant, bound to the land given to her by her 
  sire, Cicero, until he or the covenant frees her. She’s a villein—a 
  loudmouthed blue-collar laborer, by the standards of the Estate. Her 
  Merits reflect the circles she travels in; that one dot of Mentor is left 
  over from the nights when Cicero thought she had potential.
  Sash’s Suspicion is why she jumps to conclusions when Hooper 
  doesn’t come home. Her Succubus hedonism means she can’t get peace 
  of mind (of Willpower back) unless she gets revenge or takes out her 
  anger on someone or something.
  That haven is the secret nest she shared with Hooper.
  In Play
  If Sash is going to have the gravitas necessary to make your players’ 
  characters nervous, she’s going to need some weight she can throw 
  around. More than any other character in this story, Sash has been 
  given to you with fewer dots than she probably should have. Fill in 
  more as needed to make her combat dice pools (e.g. Strength + Brawl 
  + Vigor) about equal to your troupe’s second-best combatant character, 
  but keep the ratio of her traits about where they are now. Sash isn’t 
  persuasive, she’s intimidating. She isn’t exactly fun to casually hang 
  out with, she’s fun to watch mess with people, and even then only if 
  you’re already on her side.
  • Sash favors Brawl, then Weaponry. She doesn’t have much use 
  for the headaches that come with firearms.
  • She has shallow relationships — lots of Contacts, no Allies. (Hooper 
  was unique in her Requiem; the only person she really opened up to.)
  • She’s more of a hedonist, less of a Succubus (hence Cicero’s disap-
  pointment with her). She’s much more Vigor than Majesty.
  
  21
  Sash
  What she knows:
  • Hooper is missing. She was expecting him back at their private 
  haven the night of the Frenzy.
  • Hooper was in business with Sol to sell Calla’s secrets of Auspex 
  with him and the Eye.
  • Hooper’s not important enough to wage a war over for Cicero or 
  Sol. Calla and Val are both more important to them then Sash is.
  • Val would back an unsanctioned beat-down if it meant keeping 
  the coterie together.
  • Cicero’s thug will do what Val tells him to do.
  • Sol would look the other way while Sash gets revenge on the 
  Killer if it means keeping his deal for Calla’s teaching.
  What she wants:
  • Revenge. Sash isn’t stupid — she knows that a frenzied killing 
  may not be enough to excuse her execution of another vampire 
  — but she is hot-blooded, vengeful and rash. She wants to take out 
  her grief on the Killer, but could very well work herself into a frenzy 
  while doing it. Her aim is to make the guilty vampire feel pain, like 
  she feels pain. So it’s about Pride; if the target of her wrath is willing 
  to accept the social hit of taking a beat-down from another vampire, 
  Sash can be placated.
  What she does:
  • Sash’s deranged Suspicion leads her to think, initially, that 
  Hooper’s troubles must be a part of some design by someone out to 
  hurt him, her, or the both of them. She suspects Joe Coat might be 
  jealous of Sol helping out the Eye, or even just pissed that Hooper’s 
  been crossing the local turf. She begins by trying to look into Joe 
  without attracting the attention of Sol or the Eye (and doesn’t find 
  out much). Thus, she can give the troupe’s characters enough room 
  to meet her without her flying right off the handle. Use that op-
  portunity to have her soliloquize about how thirsty for revenge she 
  is to the characters before she knows who the Killer is.
  
  22
  Calla
  Quotes: “Don’t look at me.”
  • “Why are you lying?”
  • (squinting) “No. Never mind, forget it. ‘s not worth 
  mentioning.” [Auspex]
  Storytelling Hints: If you stay quiet, people will think 
  you know more than you do. People might mistake you for 
  knowing what’s going on, for being a deep thinker, for being bored by 
  the obviousness of it all.
  The truth is that Calla’s smart and perceptive. She just doesn’t feel 
  that way. She thought the Requiem would be exciting, exhilerating 
  and mind-opening, but more than anything it’s scary as hell. Calla sees 
  much more than she used to — she sort of an Auspex prodigy — but 
  she’s not quite sure how to make sense of what she sees all the time.
  Calla engages with the world through intellectually. The social cur-
  rent of Val, Sash and Hooper pulled her along, and she’s never really 
  learned how to swim in those waters. Calla doesn’t trust people, but 
  she wants to.
  When portraying Calla, venture questions, then back away from 
  whatever conversation might grow from them. (“Do you think that 
  could happen?” she asks, then retreats, saying, “No, I was just thinking 
  out loud.”) Wait to be asked questions, to be invited into conversations. 
  Escape social situations and major confrontations if you can — but 
  have Sash’s back, because she’s hurting and you want to be better than 
  you think you are.
  Remember, though: Calla’s not a whimpering cartoon child looking 
  for an action hero to rescue her. If she could reasonably believe she 
  could survive among the Damned on her own, she’d give it a shot.
  Description: That big coat she’s got on makes her look tiny. Her 
  close-cut curls and jagged eyebrows make her look serious, scrutinizing. 
  She’s real still. She moves her eyes more than she moves her head. 
  She’s always watching who’s talking. She moves her head like she’s 
  measuring everything she hears.
  She walks like it’s cold outside, all the time. When she thinks 
  something’s funny, she doesn’t show her teeth. She’s comfortable in 
  her skin, settles right into the room with a casual simplicity, but seems 
  like she’d rather be somewhere else.
  Calla: Mechanics
  Calla was reasonably well read before the Embrace. Since then, she’s 
  developed quite a bit of knowledge about the history and folklore sur-
  rounding mediums, diviners and prophetesses. Her Mental Specialties 
  are the result of her interest in her vampiric perception (she calls it 
  “the sight”), but most of those Mental dots are left over from her liv-
  ing days. The Writing Specialty (under Expression) is something she’s 
  been working on as part of her and Hooper’s deal with Sol.
  Her Covenant Status is a formality. She’s a subject of Cicero’s, she 
  helps Val’s coterie pay the rent, so she’s technically a Society vampire. 
  Her Clan Status is raw reputation — her innate knack for Auspex 
  has earned her nickname, “the Seer,” and it comes with a bit of vague 
  prestige, but no authority. She’s not plugged into Mekhet society, if 
  such a thing even exists in this city.
  Those two dots in Resources are new; that’s what Sol is paying her 
  and Hooper in exchange for her teaching.
  In Play
  Obviously, Calla’s defining trait is her affinity with Auspex. The scale 
  of this story isn’t meant to be one of an epic struggle over a unique 
  prodigy who will change the face of the city forever, though. Calla’s an 
  asset, but she’s not the bomb. The fact is, she’s valuable in the kind of 
  personal schemes that go on at the level of her coterie, but if she were 
  really the city’s great master of Auspex, she might not be allowed to 
  languish in such a low-class bunch.
  Calla needs to be impressive enough to warrant a reputation in 
  your city, but don’t confuse that with fame. She needs to be better 
  than the average, but that doesn’t mean she has to have more dots in 
  Auspex than the vampires in your troupe’s coterie. You can make up 
  the difference with dots in Wits and Empathy, to bump up the right 
  dice pools. Calla’s a seer, but she’s not a mystic astral traveler and she 
  doesn’t need to be telepathic. (That can add an interesting element 
  to the equation for the coterie to deal with, but it can also render the 
  story’s obstacles into one short scene of telepathic scrutiny.)
  The point is that Calla needs to be threatening — evidence taken to her 
  can do the characters in. If they’re in her presence, can she smell their lies? 
  Remember, above all: The players and their characters don’t know what 
  Calla’s capable of — let them make assumptions and scare themselves..
  
  23
  Calla
  What she knows:
  • She and Hooper were selling her knowledge of Auspex (she 
  calls it “the sight”) to Sol, even though Cicero (and Val) wouldn’t 
  have approved.
  • Sash didn’t know this.
  • Hooper and Sash were lovers.
  • Hooper was out meeting with Sol the night he disappeared. [She 
  doesn’t know if Hooper ever got to Sol’s or not, though.]
  • Sol would eventually teach the Eye how to use the sight, and 
  recoup whatever he paid Hooper and her.
  • Anyone investigating Hooper’s disappearance might eventually 
  come to her to get her help as the Seer.
  What she wants:
  • To avoid trouble. She intends to see as much time go by as 
  possible by laying low and not giving too many vampires reasons to 
  hurt her. (She knows she’s screwed up by dealing with Sol behind 
  Cicero’s back.)
  • To get out from under Cicero, even if that means leaving Val 
  (who she doesn’t feel that close to) and Sash (who she likes for be-
  ing all the things that she isn’t).
  • To be seen as more of a wise-woman and prophetess, rather than 
  a tool of the Invictus or the Carthians. She wants to find a way to 
  become unaligned or join the Circle of the Crone without raising 
  the ire of the other covenants.
  What she does:
  • Plays tight. Keeps her mouth shut, except for little hints that 
  she’s not happy and is afraid.
  • Helps anyone who comes to her respectfully, treats her like 
  an equal, doesn’t get “weird” about her ability with the sight, or is 
  capable of really hurting her (like Cicero, who doesn’t qualify under 
  any of the other criteria).
  
  24
  Cicero
  Quotes: “What benefit does lying get any of us at this point?” 
  • “The sun is coming up eventually, we all know it, so 
  let’s sort this like adults, take our beatings, and be on to the 
  next night.”
  • “Breaking our laws is the same as betraying me when 
  you’re on my ground, little thing.” 
  • “When the animal gets out, we punish the zookeeper, don’t we?”
  Storytelling Hints: Cicero is a selfish, manipulative creature with 
  limited Status in the Invictus and a petty desire to move up in the 
  Danse Macabre. He’s not afraid to use people, abuse people, abandon 
  people, lie, cheat, intimidate or seduce to get what he wants. He’s good 
  at all those things — but he feels cheap, slimy and somewhat obvious 
  to his peers. He’s good at manipulating individuals in the moment, 
  but he’s a weak politico.
  When playing Cicero, remember that Val is a prize, exaggerated in 
  Cicero’s mind from a handsome face into an Adonis. Cicero fancies 
  himself as Emperor Hadrian and Val as his Antonious. Calla is a thing 
  — a magic artifact — that he’s left in Val’s safe keeping. If that goes 
  sideways, take Calla away, bring Val in close, and spend Sash to buy 
  whatever safety or appearance of responsibility you can. 
  If that means sending Sash to get staked or destroyed in pursuit of her 
  own revenge, that’s what it means. If it means giving Sash up to Sol, 
  who can promise her the revenge she wants, that’s what it means. If it 
  means helping Sash get her revenge in exchange for saving face (and 
  keeping Val and Calla, the precious toys), that’s what it means.
  Description: He’s short, with dark curly hair and a practiced posture 
  of exaggerated casualness. He crosses his legs, stretches out his arms, 
  lounges around, not in the way that people do, but the way that they 
  do when advertising pills on television. Practiced behavior made into 
  habit, designed to make you feel comfortable but so fake that it feels 
  like he’s fucking with you.
  He looks away when he talks then, just when his sentence ends, 
  makes eye contact. He touches his face when he talks. He tries to 
  touch your hands when you talk. 
  He smells like olives and gin. 
  Cicero: Mechanics
  Cicero, despite his low Humanity, has no derangements. He’s been 
  lucky in his Requiem. But he’s not a humane or moral creature. The 
  lack of derangements is meant to remind you that none of Cicero’s 
  cold and self-indulgent behavior is a result of the Beast. Cicero was 
  like this in life; he’s always been like this. Changing his ways, if that 
  were possible, wouldn’t sort him out. Gaining Humanity wouldn’t 
  make his personality go away.
  Look at his traits. Cicero’s a pretty capable vampire. His dots imply 
  a creature of considerable age or active experience. Exactly how old 
  Cicero is (at Blood Potency 4 he must be at least 200 years old) depends 
  on what purpose he needs to fulfill in the rest of your chronicle. His 
  age isn’t relevant in this story, only his capability. 
  What all those dots can’t tell you, though, is that Cicero’s prime ability 
  is his knack for saving his own skin above all others. But many of the 
  circumstances he’s escaped over the years have been quagmires of his 
  own creation. Three dots in Intelligence and four dots in Academics tell 
  us that Cicero is smart and informed, but they don’t preclude the larger 
  fact that he makes bad decisions based on his own fear and self-loathing. 
  Those bad decisions got him where he is, despite all his Skills.
  In Play
  Cicero is surmountable. He is skilled, but he is still a fool in the face 
  of his own spastic judgment. The ultimate vulnerability he should 
  display to the characters is his desire to benefit from the crime done 
  to the Victim. Cicero reaches for too much — it’s not enough that he 
  use this as an opportunity to unravel Val’s coterie, he also wants to 
  lord his authority over the criminal(s), turn Calla into a prize others 
  will covet, and get rid of Sash without provoking any blowback. He 
  can only make all that happen if the characters are utterly passive.
  The characters should want to hurt Cicero after they meet him. They 
  should loathe and pity him. To counterbalance that, he should offer 
  them things (like Val’s old turf, a milder punishment, a tip-off about 
  Sash’s ambush) that make tolerating him something worth considering. 
  The choice between Cicero and Sol shouldn’t be a no-brainer.
  Cicero isn’t gay or straight. He’s so desperate for physical attention 
  and adoration that gender is not a factor. He can hardly be bothered 
  to notice someone else’s gender. He doesn’t look that deeply.
  
  25
  Cicero
  What he knows:
  • Val’s loyalty to his coterie outweighs his other loyalties. He 
  stays with Cicero out of fear and opportunism.
  • Sash is trouble, and one of Val’s weaknesses. Cicero and Val 
  are better off without her.
  • Sash and Hooper are closer than Val thinks.
  • Sol keeps a close eye on Val’s coterie and may have plans for 
  them.
  • Joe Coat is not just a vagrant monster — he owes Sol a rent of 
  service that has, in the past, included brutal violence.
  • The Eye has gone directly to Calla, the Seer, for help with 
  investigations in the past, even though he’s supposed to go through 
  Cicero for such business.
  What he wants:
  • For Val to favor Cicero over the coterie.
  • To separate Val from the coterie and keep him to himself.
  • For Calla to be brought further inside the Invictus, so her mystic 
  perception can give the covenant an edge — or so they can sell 
  her services.
  • To find a coterie to replace Sash and Hooper once Calla and 
  Val are put to new use.
  • To maintain more subordinate vampires than Sol has.
  • To gain Status in the First Estate and be respected by his 
  peers.
  What he does:
  • Lie, go behind people’s backs, abandon, bribe, cajole, intimidate, 
  seduce, extort and bargain to make any of the above happen.
  • Sell out Sash and the liability of her wrath.
  • Forgive the death of Hooper to make any of the above happen.
  • If forced to choose between Val and Calla, he actually picks 
  Calla. He can find another Val. (But he won’t let Val get into a 
  position to get revenge on him.
  
  26
  Joe Coat
  Quotes: “The fuck you want?”
  • “Shut up talking to me.”
  • “I know how I look. I know how you look, too.”
  Storytelling Hints: Joe Coat is a simmering crazy 
  street vampire with the wary alertness of an experienced 
  homeless man (which he is) and the grim fortitude of a fron-
  tiersman (which maybe he was). Joe spends his nights on 
  the street like a man in the wild — its all about protecting 
  himself and surviving another night. 
  If he had a house and a nicer demeanor, he might be thought of as 
  senile. But he’s a wild-eyed, filthy vagrant who mutters to himself and 
  lashes out with spit and curses at anything he even thinks of as disgust 
  or danger. A few nights on the street and any local learns to give Joe 
  some space, but he’s not so monstrous that locals have him carted off; 
  he’s a fixture of the street, as ubiquitous, vaguely ominous and indeci-
  pherable as the coded cant of gang graffiti.
  To be clear, Joe is some kind of crazy, but he’s not a lunatic. He can 
  take care of himself, but he’s lost his ability to connect with others 
  as humans do. Other people, living or undead, are like stray dogs to 
  him — he can develop a rapport, but not trust. And if the dog acts 
  up, Joe puts it in its place for the sake of his own safety.
  When playing Joe, imagine that everything is out of focus, like he’s 
  not wearing his glasses. Everyone might seem like they think or feel 
  a certain way, but how can he be sure? Is that what “normal people” 
  body language means? He doesn’t know anymore.
  Description: He smells like sweat and rain and mold, like an un-
  washed towel. His long ratty hair is tangled into knots and held into 
  little bundles with rubber bands. The cuffs of his Army jacket are 
  stiff with dry, caked stains. Blood? His teeth are little yellow beads, 
  separated by gaps so big he could slot coins through them.
  He speaks in calm, low breaths, just above a whisper, the way you might 
  threaten somebody in public. He shakes his head when he yells, his spit 
  landing cold in your face and dangling in strings from his mouth.
  With a casual move he pulls a rustling plastic grocery bag out of his 
  coat. A wooden handle sticks out of it. He pulls the bag away like he’s 
  unsheathing a sword. But it’s not a sword. It’s a meat cleaver.
  Joe Coat: Mechanics
  Joe is meant to be tough, a combatant worth being afraid of, but not 
  a climactic monster by himself. He’s a dangerous creature on the street, 
  not the boss at the end of this level. He’s a resource. By the end of this 
  story, Joe Coat should be working as muscle on somebody’s behalf — if 
  the players don’t persuade or pay him to stay out of things (or even 
  work for them), then Sash does, possibly through Sol.
  You have to make Joe into just the right danger for your troupe. Use 
  the dots on his sheet as minimums. Add dots and equipment to dial up 
  his combat dice pools until they’re equal to the toughest combatant in 
  the troupe’s coterie... or even higher. To keep those dots in line with 
  Joe’s character and methods, give him better equipment (maybe a fire 
  axe?) rather than Weaponry dots. Give him as many dots in Brawl as 
  you like. Pump up his Vigor or Resilience, and don’t underestimate 
  the value of Iron Stamina. The aggravated damage from his dots in 
  Protean make him a menace.
  In Play
  So Joe’s not a combatant on his own. He doesn’t have enough at stake 
  until another character makes it worth his while. Once he’s teamed up 
  with Sash or working with someone else, though, he becomes a lethal 
  component of revenge.
  Keep in mind, too, that Joe’s not willing to die the Final Death for 
  Sash or anyone else in this story’s cast. He’ll back out of any fight when 
  it gets to the point that it’ll cost him eternity or a century of torpor. If 
  he’s in a position to suffer blowback from that decision — like if the 
  characters want to get revenge on him for leaving them dangling — he 
  becomes a stealthy, dangerous foe. He offers no apology and no regret. 
  Joe creeps up on a character, ideally when they’re alone, knocks him 
  on his ass and tells him, “I don’t die for you or nobody. You want me 
  to help you again, you come to me knowing that.” Then he leaves.
  Use Joe as a volatile tool, like a propane tank that might explode. 
  His mad eyes and feral attitude should keep people nervous. What 
  happens if someone else makes Joe a better offer, the characters 
  should wonder.
  
  27
  Joe Coat
  What he knows:
  • Sol is gradually turning the Eye into his own private Hound. 
  The higher-ups might not like that.
  • People don’t know much about Joe and think of him as a lost 
  cause. (Including, to some extent, Sol.)
  • Cicero’s coterie isn’t loyal. They’re a bunch of juvenile, selfish 
  punks with the emotional refinement of teenagers.
  • Hooper and Calla have been coming into Sol’s turf once or twice 
  a week. More than once, they’ve even gone to Sol’s office.
  • His mind isn’t quite right. Real relationships — personal, politi-
  cal, strategic — are a thing of the past for Joe.
  What he wants:
  • To be feared.
  • To keep people guessing, but without seeming silly or eccentric.
  • To develop a bit of a rapport with local vampires, so he can 
  stay informed, just for the sake of his protection.
  • To be left alone the rest of the time.
  What he does:
  • Cooperate with any vampire that can make it worth his while 
  with Vitae, money or a safe, private, haven of his own.
  • Avoid betraying Sol (or, at least, getting caught doing it) and 
  losing his freedom to wander the neighborhood.
  • Lie, steal, threaten or kill for Sol if it’ll pay off a few months 
  rents of service.
  
  28
  The Eye
  Quotes: “Brother, you’re right about that. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your 
  name, though.”
  • “I can understand why you’d lie, but from here on, you’re done 
  with that.” [Veridical Tongue]
  • “Your ears on? What are you hearing lately?” [Streetwise]
  • “You don’t have to call me anything. But I’ve only got what I’m 
  given, so ‘the Eye’ is fine.”
  Storytelling Hints: The Eye is calm and cool. He’s smart like a profes-
  sor, streetwise like a hardening detective, serene like the Buddha. The 
  Beast is brutal and blunt and tempermental, but not the Eye.
  Level with people. Speak frankly. If you have to withhold informa-
  tion or keep a secret, you’re up front about it. “Sorry,” says the Eye, 
  “I can’t talk about that,” or “You know, I’ve got to keep that kind of 
  thing under wraps or nobody’ll trust me anymore.”
  Listen carefully. Don’t interrupt. Keep your eyes open. Everyone is 
  lying, all the time. They don’t always know it, they don’t always know 
  why, but they’re doing it all the same. You can use that. The things 
  people choose to lie about reveal what they think is important, and 
  what they’re ashamed of. The intersection of shame and investment 
  is the most vulnerable part, living or undead. Land a sentence right 
  there, and you can drive somebody to talk — or at least act without 
  thinking, which gives you more power. 
  Description: You wouldn’t guess he had any time on the street by 
  looking him. You certainly wouldn’t guess he was a vampire. He’s clean-
  cut, with neat hair, a sharp brown jacket and V-neck sweater. He’s got a 
  casual comfortability, though. He’s not afraid to talk to anyone, and he 
  doesn’t carry himself like the whitebread commoner he looks like.
  The Eye: Mechanics
  When you look at his traits, it’s easy to see that the Eye isn’t the best 
  investigator a vampire could be if he had access to every trait in every 
  book. But the Kindred don’t get to shop for powers out of books, and 
  their allies don’t get to compare their traits to the ideal, abstract maxi-
  mum that would be possible. No vampire lord can say, “Why should I 
  hire you when this other guy has five dots in Investigation?”
  In game terms, the Eye might be lucky, as far as imaginary dice rolls 
  in his background go. His reputation might be the result of getting a 
  bunch of successes on dice pools that aren’t shockingly huge.
  The Eye’s method isn’t to put clues together using Investigation, 
  but to ask the right questions of the right people, observe everyone 
  carefully, and be patient. The Eye is relentless. His dots in Contacts, 
  his Wits and his Manipulation are his big guns. His Disciplines and 
  the Veridical Tongue Devotion are his secret weapons.
  We’ve withheld the fourth dot of Obfuscate to maintain the Eye’s 
  style as an old-school detective, asking questions and turning over 
  rocks on the street to see what crawls out. The supernatural mystique 
  that might come from being able to pass as anyone a suspect expects 
  is powerful, but it’s not the Eye’s style. He’ll pretend to chat with 
  someone like a friendly stranger, but if he’s recognized he won’t deny 
  who he is. He doesn’t need to — whether you answer his questions or 
  not, he gets information from the way you act.
  In Play 
  The subtlety that surrounds the Eye is essential. To keep the char-
  acters’ situation morally complicated and political rather than strictly 
  moral — gray, rather than black and white — remember that the Eye 
  is an antagonist, not a villain. He’s a threat, capable of exposing things 
  the characters want to keep secret, but he’s not a judgmental prick. He 
  knows that everybody’s an asshole and everybody’s got someone they’re 
  sweet to, so he doesn’t judge bloodsucking monsters by the mistakes 
  they (or their Beasts) make. But he does report them.
  For the Eye, this is work. That’s it. It keeps him valuable, which 
  keeps him safe, and it keeps him informed and out of the shitstorms 
  that come with political attachments and ambition. To maintain his 
  security and stability, he has to make sure that the monsters he inves-
  tigates feel caught by his employers and not him.
  THE EYE’S COVENANT
  The Eye’s covenant is left deliberately vague. He may be 
  unaligned, he may be secretly afﬁliated with multiple covenants, or 
  he may be ideologically and socially involved with any covenant of 
  your choosing. Put him in an antagonistic covenant to play up the 
  threat he represents, or put him in the same covenant as a player 
  character to give them a bit of an edge when dealing with him. 
  You don’t even have to reveal his covenant until you decide the 
  characters need an edge or a steeper challenge. Adapt.
  
  29
  The Eye
  What he knows:
  • Everything Sol knows.
  • Cicero is a pathetic sham of a vassal lord, and everyone knows 
  it. His value lies in his obviousness. Cicero is a known quantity; 
  replacing him simply creates an opportunity for some new lord to 
  disrupt things.
  • The identity of one characters’ sire.
  • The Covenant Status of one or more characters.
  • The Resources of the wealthiest character.
  • The highest Mental, Physical and Social Skill in the troupe’s 
  coterie.
  What he wants:
  • Independence.
  • The security that comes with knowledge.
  • To learn Auspex.
  • To make future Contacts and Allies.
  What he does:
  • Keeps secrets until someone pays sufficiently for them in ser-
  vices, other secrets or comaraderie.
  • Plan everything ahead. The Eye avoids situations he hasn’t 
  thought out in advance.
  • Stay cordial. The Eye is polite as long as the Beast lets him stay 
  that way. “Cool it,” he says, tightening his hold. “Are we done?”
  • Pace himself. 
  
  30
  Sol
  Quotes: “Things get away from someone like you, 
  I can understand. But when those things get in my 
  yard I expect a little fucking responsibility. You step up 
  or you get dragged in. Don’t like it, too fucking bad. Life 
  was hard, this is worse.”
  • “I didn’t ask how you felt. I told you to say what you 
  know.” [Intimidate]
  • “Are you listening? Good. You go and you find out who 
  did this and you bring me his name.” [Dominate ••]
  Storytelling Hints: You’ve got better things to do than be miserable. 
  You had enough of that early in your Requiem. Getting ahead, to the 
  top, is just too fucking hard, and it’s not worth the headaches and the 
  backstabbing anyway. The higher you climb, the more asshole vampires 
  and treacherous Kindred can see you up there. Better to keep a little 
  pond for yourself and be the big fish in it.
  Without those big goals, what’s left? What the hell is the Requiem 
  for if not extending the time you have to climb to the top? Simple: To 
  enjoy this simple, earthly existence in all the ways that come along. 
  To have a good fucking time in the dark.
  But Sol doesn’t really believe all that. Not completely. A charming or 
  persuasive creature with a plan could persuade Sol to reach up, provided the 
  risks were minimized and it wouldn’t come with a bunch of joyless duties.
  Play with people. Talk nice, then turn your voice serious to throw 
  people off guard. Be blunt, even crass. But cautious, not stupid. He may 
  have to throw some chairs or break some shit to get there, but Sol’s able 
  to look past wrath to get to Greed. But double-crosses are for scum and 
  pussies. Fair deals are how you tell men apart from animals.
  You know Gramma from Rounders? Like that, but better dressed and 
  not so angry all the time.
  Description: He’s slimmer than you expect a back-room baron to 
  be, but he’s got the oily top and noncommittal facial hair you’d expect. 
  He’s got rings, a gold bracelet and gold chains, too, but not so many 
  that it’s absurd. His gray suit and red tie give a sort of serious air, but 
  he looks like he’s been wearing it for a straight week.
  He looks you right in the eye. When you stop talking, he looks away, 
  taps his lip. Once he’s found the words, he looks back you and lays it 
  all out for you with his hands and voice. He knocks on wood.
  Sol: Mechanics
  The thing about Sol is that he’s capable — more capable than anyone 
  would expect based on his small-time aspirations and modest outfit. 
  If Sol were motivated, he could be a real player in the Danse Maca-
  bre, and a real threat to Kindred who oppose him. Don’t confuse his 
  healthy Resolve and Willpower for drive — Sol is resolved to stay safely 
  installed where he is, with a degree of power that lets him feel like he 
  has some juice but could survive the fall if he made a mistake.
  Sol’s traits are among the most specifically measured of all this story’s 
  characters’. As it stands, he’s a formidable Social force with a potent 
  array of Merits. Dial him up or down to make him suit the power level 
  of your chronicle, but be careful that you don’t declaw him.
  In Play
  Sol is Cicero’s opposite — modest, measured, restrained and more 
  competent than he appears.
  Depending on how things unfold, Sol can be the characters’ antagonist 
  or a valuable potential ally. He reacts, he protects his investments and 
  he takes advantage of the situations that the night provides him — and 
  all in moderation. He doesn’t bet more than he can afford to lose.
  The exception to this is Cicero. Sol hates him. Sol’s willing to take 
  some bruises if it means hurting or humiliating Cicero.
  Sol’s willing to let things slide — politically, ethically, morally, tacti-
  cally — to gain other benefits later on. He’s willing to let the Victim’s 
  death slide if what he gets in return is worth it. He willing to temper 
  Sash’s vengeance, he’s willing to call the Victim’s disappearance a 
  disappearance, he’s willing to call off the Eye — in that order, from 
  cheapest to most expensive — if the characters can make it worth 
  his while. They’ll have to put themselves in his pocket if they want 
  to use his resources to protect themselves. It’s a choice they have to 
  make. They might even be able to turn a relationship with Sol into a 
  real benefit, a real advantage — but at the time they’re faced with the 
  decision it should be a rough one: Take punishment for the Victim’s 
  death, or go into debt with Sol.
  If Sol isn’t their main antagonist, if they get into bed with him, then 
  you have to crank up Cicero’s motivations to keep the story’s sense of 
  peril. This is why you’ve got two potential villains to work with.
  
  31
  Sol
  What he knows:
  • Hooper and Calla are in business with Sol, behind the backs 
  of Cicero, Val and Sash.
  • Hooper met with Sol the night of Hooper’s disappearance. 
  They talked about arranging another lesson for Sol, and argued over 
  money. Hooper left Sol’s office with the promise of a new deal for 
  more money, then headed back to his haven.
  • Sol had Joe Coat follow Hooper that night.
  • Joe noted that Hooper wasn’t heading back towards the com-
  munal haven he shared with Val, Calla and Sash. [He was heading 
  for his secret haven with Sash, but Sol doesn’t know that.]
  • Cicero is basically done with Sash and wants Val for himself.
  • Sol was once Cicero’s golden boy protegé, and Cicero tries to 
  keep that a secret.
  What he wants:
  • Keep the truth of his relationship with Cicero secret for as long 
  as possible, so he can slowly twist it like a knife.
  • Get all of Cicero’s tenants, so that old freak will be left alone 
  with his creepy servants.
  • A private land of his own where he can feel like a more impor-
  tant Kindred than he knows he is.
  • To look and feel like a capable landlord — he doesn’t want Kin-
  dred walking all over him or taking advantage of his generosity.
  What he does:
  • Use the Victim’s murder for political gain, regardless of “justice.”
  • Pretend to care about vampires he doesn’t care about, for his 
  own benefit. E.g., support Sash in her revenge just to get her and 
  her coterie to leave Cicero.
  • Investigate the Victim’s disappearance to the extent he can, 
  and deliver that information up or down the food chain.
  
  32
  [M ••• P —  S —]
  [M •• P •• S ••]
  [M ••• P —  S •••]
  [M ••• P •  S •••]
  [M •• P —  S ••]
  [M •• P • S ••••]
  [M •• P •  S •••]
  [M ••• P —  S •••]
  [M •• P ••• S •••]
  [M •• P •  S ••••]
  [M • P •••  S •••]
  [M • P ••••  S •••]
  
  33
  BACK-STORY TIMELINE
  The actual time of night when each of these things happens 
  depends on the setup of this story in your own chronicle. Likewise, 
  the time between these events is for you to determine, to ﬁt the 
  pace of your chronicle and the distances between locations in your 
  World of Darkness. Rough guidelines are given for each event.
  • A Month Ago: Hooper convinces Calla that, if the coterie is to 
  survive without Val, they’ll need new allies with clout. They devise 
  their plan to sell her knowledge of Auspex to Sol as the ﬁrst step 
  of a plan to become his tenants.
  • 3-4 Weeks Ago: Hooper goes to Sol’s ofﬁce and proposes his 
  plan. Joe Coat sees Hooper go into Sol’s ofﬁce.
  • 2-3 Weeks Ago: Hooper escorts Calla, on foot or by cab, to 
  Sol’s ofﬁce for the ﬁrst lesson. Calla and Hooper make one trip 
  per week, until Hooper’s Final Death. Joe Coat witnesses about 
  half of these trips.
  • 1-2 Weeks Ago: Sol tells the Eye about his arrangement with 
  Hooper. At the next (and ﬁnal) lesson, Sol and the Eye are both 
  in attendance.
  • Last Night*: Hooper goes, alone, to Sol’s ofﬁce to renegotiate 
  his deal with Sol. If two Kindred are going to learn from Calla, 
  she and Hooper need to be paid more money. “Otherwise,” says 
  Hooper, “the lessons stop.” If the lessons stop, replies Sol, “Cicero 
  will ﬁnd out what you’ve been up to and you’ll have both of us 
  as enemies.”
  • Last Night*: Hooper leaves his meeting with Sol, none too 
  happy about how things have turned out. Sol summons Joe Coat 
  and tells him to follow Hooper.
  • Last Night*: The Killer frenzies and runs off into the night under 
  the inﬂuence of the Beast.
  • Last Night*: The Killer and Hooper encounter each other on 
  the street — Hooper has wandered off the beaten path to try and 
  shake his tail, and the frenzying Killer happens upon him. They 
  hiss and struggle, but between the Predator’s Taint and the Killer’s 
  Beast, the encounter devolves into a brawl. The ﬁght careens into a 
  nearby parking garage and down the stairs, where the Killer  drains 
  the last of Hooper’s Vitae and leaves him ﬁnally dead.
  • Last Night*: Joe Coat loses Hooper’s trail, but gets close enough 
  to hear the ﬁght between him and the Killer. Joe Coat is sure that 
  Hooper’s been kidnapped or killed by another vampire, but doesn’t 
  know who. (To Joe’s ears, it sure sounds like vampires in frenzy.)
  • Tonight: The Killer’s coterie ﬁnds him and Hooper’s body, by 
  following evidence of the ﬁght. Begin Act One, “Crime Scene.”
  (*Note: ”Last night” could very well be “tonight,” if this story emerges 
  from the actions of another story, already in progress. How long it takes 
  the rest of the coterie to ﬁnd the Killer depends on whether you play 
  out their pursuit of him or if you being the story in media res.)
  Getting on With It
  The previous page shows all the scenes in this guide, broken down 
  by Act and laid out according to their likely flow. In general, these 
  scenes are in the order they’re most likely to happen, based on the 
  logical ways that information and motivations will develop over the 
  course of the story (and the needs of rising tension, as mentioned on 
  p. 8). You want to get familiar with all the scenes in this story before 
  you play, though, so you can use them in whatever order strikes the 
  right harmony between reacting to the players’ choices and pulling the 
  tension of your tale higher and higher toward the climax.
  But to begin the story, you need to be comfortable with all the details 
  of the fateful night that sets this story off. We don’t know what your 
  characters were doing when one of them went screaming off into the 
  night, but you will. At the same time that was happening, this story’s 
  supporting characters and antagonists were also moving through the 
  nighttime landscape of your city, unaware that their Requiems were 
  about to meet the characters’ and create either discordant noise or a 
  haunting harmony.
  If you have the time before you begin this story, you can use the de-
  tails in the Back-Story Timeline to establish a bit about the Storyteller 
  characters in your city, so that this whole cast doesn’t emerge oddly 
  from nowhere the night after the fatal encounter. Reveal some infor-
  mation about the domain in advance, if you can, to create the sense 
  that this story is emerging from ongoing actions in the background of 
  a living city. The more naturally you can reveal this story’s complex 
  exposition, the better.
  Here are some details you can sprinkle into earlier stories to set up 
  “Blood Red and Ash Gray:”
  • The Domain (whatever it’s called in your city) is home to several 
  lower-class vampires, but also to the measured Hound called the Eye.
  • Auspex is coveted among some vampires of the city who want to learn 
  it. Rumor has it that some seeress in the Domain has a knack for it.
  • This crazy, Grizzly Adams-looking hobo who wanders the streets 
  in the Domain, wearing an Army jacket and big knapsack, is actually 
  a Savage. Nobody’s sure who he’s working for or if the local lords are 
  just letting wild vampires roam the streets down there now.
  • The place is a decent feeding ground, even if you don’t have of-
  ficial permission to be poaching down there.
  
  34
  Act One: The Crime
  The story begins with a crime scene. The crime scene holds a mystery. 
  The identity of the Killer is clear. The question is, who is the victim? 
  Frenzy
  This whole story follows on the heels of a profound, mind-clouding 
  frenzy. This tale dramatizes potential consequences of submission to 
  the madness of the Beast. Without that inciting incident, this story 
  doesn’t take place.
  Whichever character it is that succumbs to the inciting frenzy be-
  comes the Killer.
  To properly set up this story the Killer’s frenzy must send him charg-
  ing, scrambling, dashing or careening into the night. This isn’t typical 
  behavior for all kinds of frenzy, but thanks to the chaotic and unpre-
  dictable nature of the Beast, any of the three types can believably send 
  a vampire spriting into the dark and succumbing to murderous rage. It 
  is, on some level, the quintessential risk that comes with the Beast.
  So what kind of frenzy does all this follow, and how does that change 
  the circumstances of your story?
  Anger
  Of all the types of frenzy, he act of rushing off into the night is most 
  difficult to explain for anger frenzy. Typically, the violence and rage 
  associated with this madness leads a vampire to lash out in the im-
  mediate area. That said, a sudden sprint into the night can easily be 
  characterized as an act of the fiercely chaotic insanity of frenzy. 
  Through your antagonists and flashbacks, ask the players: How does 
  the Killer’s act of violence affect his culpability or Humanity if it is an 
  act of anger? Is it a greater sin to kill out of rage than fear?
  Consider these options for launching this story after an anger frenzy:
  • The frenzying vampire runs off into the dark in pursuit of the man or 
  monster that provoked the fury of his Beast. The vampire might catch 
  this prey, or he might not, but his rage goes on, eventually bringing 
  him to the fateful confrontation with the Victim.
  • The player of the frenzying vampire spends a point of Willpower 
  to escape the immediate consequences of frenzy — such as tearing a 
  friend to tatters — and flees the scene to avoid hurting someone he 
  loves. Minutes later, the frenzy of the Beast takes hold again and the 
  character pursues the scent of a nearby Kindred into the fatal encoun-
  ter with the Victim. (Is this an unfair punishment of the player who 
  spent Willpower to avoid trouble in the first place? No. The player 
  successfully avoids hurting the character he wanted to spare, and gains 
  an opportunity to gain additional experience points, which is only 
  possible by engaging in stories anyway. Besides, Vampire is a game 
  of horror and drama — horror comes from the loss of control, drama 
  must be invoked if there’s to be any game to play.)
  • Simply wait to launch this story until a character succumbs to 
  Wassail or the Red Fear.
  Wassail
  When the Beast goes hungry, it seeks out blood, whether kine or 
  Kindred. A hunger frenzy can propel a vampire out into the public 
  streets, drooling and snarling like a madman, in search of Vitae. For 
  the Victim, this means the pounding, sprinting footfalls echoing ever 
  closer in the dark signal the end of his nights on Earth.
  Is it survival of the fittest when a vampire destroys another in pursuit 
  of food? The Beast is a feral creature. It obeys its nature as a bestial 
  predator at the expense of all civilized concerns. But does this make 
  the clash between Kindred a Darwinian exercise? The Beast is an 
  unnatural monster; this is not the natural struggle for survival. Does 
  an inability to control one’s hungering Beast temper the crimes one 
  Kindred inflicts on another? 
  Rötschreck
  Like Wassail, the Red Fear is a profound bestial instinct for 
  survival. It carries a vampire on Blood-fueled feet as far from fire 
  and Final Death as possible, without any rational measure of just 
  how far is far enough. In the case of the Killer, this might send the 
  vampire in search of a safe place to hide from fire or the sun — like 
  the bottom of a concrete stairwell. Does the Victim pursue the 
  Kindred trespasser to his hiding place, or does the terrified vampire 
  smash into him on the street and doom one of them to Final Death 
  by happenstance?
  Is a Kindred responsible for his actions when gripped by the madness 
  of fear? Is intent necessary for a kill to be murder? Unlike Wassail, which 
  may result from negligence (the Beast must be fed, and every vampire 
  knows it), Rötschreck is the result of an outside force. Does this pardon 
  the Killer? Does it relieve his practical culpability? His moral guilt?
  
  35
  Scene:  
  Crime Scene
  MENTAL ••• 
  PHYSICAL — 
  SOCIAL —
  Overview: This scene begins the story with a dramatic and surpris-
  ing scenario — the Killer awakens next to a corpse, in a crime scene, 
  without any memory of how he came to be there. This is the scene 
  that sets up the tone for the rest of the story: grisly and mysterious. 
  Depending on the characters’ choices, this scene either leads to the 
  coterie dealing with the evidence at the crime scene, or simply trying 
  to escape into the night.
  Description: To ensure that the whole coterie is around not 
  just for this scene, but for the vital kick-off of the whole story, 
  begin the action with the coterie arriving on the scene, and the 
  Killer still subdued by a Blood-binged sleep. The coterie, which 
  has been searching for their frenzied cohort, finds him here, trig-
  gering the story. 
  This is the scene when they arrive. Read it to the rest of the coterie 
  when they arrive or the Killer when he awakes:
  Something bad happened here.
  The square spiral of concrete steps bottoms out in a cold pit of spent 
  cigarette butts, beer bottles and flattened paper cups. [The Killer is/You 
  are] at the bottom of the stairs, laying on a concrete slab. It smells like 
  mold and ash and piss down here. On the other side of this dead-end 
  stairwell a corpse sits up, with his back to the wall. His skin is dry 
  and taut, stretched over his face, split and rotten at the cheeks, at the 
  brows, at the chin. His eyes are empty slits. The front of his green 
  army coat is soaked, almost black, with blood and ash that have run 
  out from his torn throat.
  Between the mummy-like corpse and [the Killer/You], the concrete 
  floor is sticky with blood. A toppled public ashtray has spread crunchy 
  sand into the gunk. Where the ashes fall out of the corpse’s clothes, it 
  all makes a gritty, nasty paste. Even from here you can see, snagging 
  the split limp lip of the corpse, a pair of yellow fangs. That body was 
  a vampire.
  Dried lines of thick, ashy paste run down from [the Killer’s/Your] mouth. 
  Gooey lines of dried blood stretch from lip to lip. [His/Her/Your] hands are 
  crusted with blood and flaky ash. The killer is clear. But who’s the corpse? 
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Establish the dilemma. Get the charac-
  ters (and the players) wondering: Who is the Victim? What happened 
  at the crime scene? What’ll it cost the coterie to get answers and what’ll 
  happen if (when) word gets out?
  Character Goals: Find out who the Victim is and what happened here.
  Actions: The key action here is a simple investigation of the scene, 
  identifying evidence and developing what detectives call a “theory of 
  the crime.” How this action plays out depends on how well the vam-
  pires in the troupe’s coterie really understand about the nature of the 
  Requiem and the Kindred body. 
  Before beginning the key action of the scene, establish (for your own 
  understanding) what information the characters (not the players) can 
  infer from the environment and the corpse, with or without the use of 
  Skills, as described below.
  Facts About Damnation
  How much do the characters know about vampires and what hap-
  pens to them when they are finally slain? Can they tell the difference 
  between a torpid vampire that looks like a corpse and a finally dead 
  vampire that is never coming back? Do they know because they’ve 
  heard tell, or because they’ve seen this kind of thing before?
  If you want to mechanically establish the kind of knowledge 
  the characters have at their disposal from potential experience in 
  their background, a single  reflexive Intelligence + Occult action 
  is enough. If successful, the character can tell that the damage to 
  the Victim goes beyond torpor. With an exceptional success, the 
  character gains a +1 on rolls to collect evidence in this scene and 
  “The Evidence.”
  The better thing to do, though, is to simply gauge the amount of 
  experience the characters have with the Requiem and describe the 
  scene accordingly. Only make the players roll to obtain information 
  that grants a bonus to their investigation, not information that is es-
  sential to moving the story forward. 
  Here are two facts about Kindred bodies and the Requiem which are 
  likely to come up at the crime scene:
  • The longer a vampire has been undead, the faster her body decom-
  poses upon Final Death and the more ruined it is. In general, neonates 
  
  36
  leave rotten or dried out corpses, ancillae leave broken and mummified 
  or skeletal remains, elders leave nothing but ashes or debris.
  • Diablerie does more than just “kill” a vampire. A diablerized 
  corpse leaves remains that are unnatural — a skull but otherwise 
  ashes, or a heat-blackened patch of asphalt, or a papery sheath 
  of hands around burnt bone — and unpredictable. Though no 
  two diablerized corpses are necessarily the same, a diablerized 
  corpse and one that is simply Finally Dead are difficult to con-
  fuse. [Thus, in this story, it should be clear that the Victim was 
  not diablerized.]
  Be careful not to withhold too much information! It’s one thing 
  for the players not to have all the answers, and quite another for 
  them to misunderstand the question at hand. In the first playtest 
  of this story, with inexperienced neonates as the protagonists, the 
  players wasted a lot of time and Vitae attempting to awaken the 
  Victim, just in case he was in torpor. This lead the story down an 
  interesting path, as they struggled to keep the body hidden and 
  treat it like a hostage they could ransom back rather than an in-
  criminating corpse, but it carried us away from the story’s dramatic 
  questions about the meaning of murder among the Damned.   
  Key Action: Searching For Clues
  A certain amount of information is obvious to any character who 
  takes the time (about 10 minutes) to examine the scene, without the 
  player rolling any dice. These are the details necessary to establish the 
  scenario:
  • The Victim is a caucasian male vampire.
  • The Victim’s corpse is dried, curled and gray like burnt paper, 
  around torn flesh from the jaw to the collarbone — his throat was 
  torn or bitten out. [This suggests the Victim’s age: a neonate.]
  • The corpse’s chest is split like a spoiled pumpkin, the flesh having 
  shrunken, and the insides have fallen like ash between rotten ribs. 
  This is not torpor. This is Final Death.
  • The Victim is dressed in a green army jacket, worn-out jeans and 
  black work boots. He had brown hair.
  Dice Pool: Wits + Investigation + equipment
  Action: Extended (6 successes). One roll represents 10 minutes of 
  activity. (See the World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 59-60.) This is, 
  more or less, a typical crime scene action. Multiple characters can 
  attempt this action at once, but unless they are using teamwork they 
  each uncover the same clues based on the successes they achieve. 
  Unlike a typical crime scene, however, the characters cannot preserve 
  the scene for long, and so cannot conduct the kind of investigation the 
  police might. They don’t have time to bring more experienced help, 
  and can’t call Contacts or Allies unless they’re willing to spread word 
  of their presence in the domain and their participation in the crime. 
  Besides, they know who the Killer is and presumably don’t want to 
  lead authorities to him.
  Obstacles/Penalties: The scene is a mess of dried blood, caked ashes 
  and regular public stairwell filth (–3 to –5). Once the body is moved, the 
  crime scene becomes difficult to reconstruct (–3). Additional contact 
  with the crime scene containments the evidence (–1 per character 
  who touches the body).
  “Someone’s coming!” — non-investigative characters may have to 
  deter (through Social or Physical action) an approaching non-com-
  batant character to keep them away from the crime scene. This is a 
  contested action against a dice pool of 4 or an instant action against 
  a Resistance trait of 2, depending on what approach the characters 
  take (whether it’s Intimidation to scare someone off, Brawl to grapple 
  them into submission or unconsciousness, or a Discipline to manipulate 
  them). Until this interloper is successfully dealt with (thus, for at least 
  one roll), this action to investigate the crime scene suffers a –3 penalty 
  from the pressure of possibly being caught.
  Aids/Bonuses: A knife, pen-knife or scalpel and the willingness to 
  use it helps a character interact with the body without damaging it too 
  much (+2). Once the body is moved, the locket becomes two-successes 
  easier to find (from 6 to 4).  
  Roll Results
  Dramatic Failure: The character mishandles the body or missteps in 
  the crime scene, making things harder to sort out (–2 to all following 
  Investigation rolls in the scene).
  Failure: “It’s all sticky blood and smeared ash, how is anyone sup-
  posed to make sense out of this shit?”
  Success: Each success on a roll in this extended action turns up one 
  of the following pieces of evidence, in order:
  1. Both the Killer’s and the Victim’s clothes are ruined with blood 
  and ash — they must have been tangled, grappled together, when the 
  Victim was finally slain.
  
  37
  2. Based on small blood spatters and a kicked-over ashtray, the 
  fight started upstairs, at street level, and sprawled down the concrete 
  stairwell to the bottom.
  3. The Victim’s face, though shrunken and slashed beyond recogni-
  tion, still sprouts rough brown hairs — he had a beard. His teeth are 
  yellow, like a coffee-drinker’s, but otherwise unremarkable.
  4. The Victim’s skin is black in long, serpentine shapes from his 
  elbows, up his arms and across his back. They’re tattoos, barely vis-
  ible in the dried and rotten flesh, of the stylized and so-called “tribal” 
  variety that’s popular these nights.
  5. Inside the corpse’s left boot is a brass-colored key, like a house 
  key, on a simple metal ring.
  6. There’s something inside the corpse. It’s a silver pendant, round 
  and carved with a Celtic knot, on a cheap and busted gold chain, stuck 
  to the inside of the body and tangled up in rough straws of dry gristle. 
  It must’ve come free in the fight and fallen into the body during Final 
  Death. [Sash gave this to Hooper, and recognizes it reflexively if she 
  sees or handles it.]
  Exceptional Success: The character puts on a terrific show, taking 
  in and making sense of the crime scene in a few short minutes, like an 
  expert television detective.
  Guilt and Humanity
  Under normal circumstances, the Killer might be expected to roll for 
  degeneration in a scene like this. The question in this case, however, is 
  just what sin the Killer has committed and, therefore, how many dice 
  he should roll. This is the heart of the story — where on the Hierarchy 
  of Sin does this crime fall? Does the character seek out the truth even 
  though it may mean eroding his Humanity, or does he hide from the 
  truth as long as he can, if just to keep hold of another shred of his soul 
  for one more night?
  These are complex questions — or they should be if you’re going to 
  explore them with several hours of gameplay. If the players or their char-
  acters arrive at easy answers to these sorts of questions (such as whether 
  or not the circumstances of the crime make it plainly “premeditated” or 
  “passionate”), use this story’s other scenes to complicate the question and 
  see if the answers change before the degeneration roll is finally made.
  Whatever happens, do not allow these dramatic questions to be 
  answered with any real closure until Act Three. See “The Big Ques-
  tions,” in that Act, for more information. 
  AUSPEX: THE SPIRIT’S TOUCH
  The Spirit’s Touch (Auspex •••) is a profound tool for investigation, 
  but it can also seem like the bane of an investigative story. Doesn’t 
  Auspex spoil the mystery? Simply put: No. It doesn’t. Auspex doesn’t 
  reveal anything you don’t want it to. It is not a precisely calibrated 
  bit of forensic technology; it’s a supernatural power, unpredictable 
  and frightening even when as it’s powerful. 
  In the case of this story, the sudden rush of unnatural ferocity 
  that comes with frenzy contaminates the psychic “data” of all the 
  objects present for the ﬁght between the Killer and the Victim. 
  Every meaningful object in this scene — the Victim’s clothes, the 
  key, the pendant — is psychically tainted with the screaming, 
  desperate fear of his death. This is your dramatic excuse to give up 
  only those clues that you think are appropriate for your troupe’s 
  telling of this story. 
  If you want to cut straight to the politics and deceit that come later 
  in the story, the power works as usual, revealing the Victim’s identity 
  (and possibly Sash’s). The question for the characters is then, “What 
  do we about this crime?” rather than, “What crime did we commit, 
  exactly?” Note that, if the characters choose not to investigate the 
  crime — maybe because they think the smart thing to do is to distance 
  themselves — then this cut past the investigation happens anyway.
  If you want to protect the mystery of this scene and send 
  the characters out to investigate the Victim’s identity, reward a 
  successful use of the Spirit’s Touch with unique clues, rather than 
  full-on spoilers. The key yields a glimpse of the secret nest Sash and 
  Hooper kept together (potentially a vital clue!), while the pendant 
  gives the Auspex user the hyperreal sensation of kissing Sash, of 
  brushing hair out of her face and feeling her skin come alive with 
  the spreading warmth of spent Vitae. (You can also draw imagery 
  for Auspex visions from the “Flashback” scene.) 
  Using The Spirit’s Touch to glimpse the Killer’s memories of the 
  frenzied ﬁght with the Victim is difﬁcult (–3 penalty) because the 
  Beast doesn’t think or remember quite like the Man does. To add an 
  element of horror to the experience, exposure to those memories 
  may also provoke frenzy in the seer as his own Beast is stirred by 
  the echoing snarls of other snarling monsters. To avoid this frenzy 
  requires an extended Resolve + Composure roll, as usual, with a 
  target number of 3 successes. (See p. 178-181 of Vampire: The 
  Requiem for the rules on frenzy.)
  An interesting dramatic question is tucked into this power. If the 
  vampire using Auspex at the crime scene is someone other than 
  the Killer, she has a choice to make: Does she tell the Killer what 
  she knows? If she does tell him, is it with compassion, fear, anger 
  or something else?
  Tell the Auspex user straight up: Telling the Killer may be enough to 
  force him to make the degeneration roll for his actions. (Your call.)
  
  38
  Consequences: The choices made in this scene (and the next 
  scene, “The Evidence”) determine how easy or hard it is for the 
  Eye’s investigation to lead him to the coterie. Likewise, the coterie’s 
  actions here affect how easy it is for them to identify just what the 
  Killer has done, and to whom.
  At the end of this scene, the coterie should have some or all of 
  the following evidence to work with. Some of these articles serve as 
  tools during the subsequent investigation, granting the listed equip-
  ment bonus:
  The Victim...
  ...was a male, caucasian vampire.
  ...was in the neighborhood when the Killer frenzied.
  ...was a neonate.
  ...wore a green army jacket (+2), old jeans, black boots.
  ...had brown hair.
  ...had a beard.
  ...had spiny, serpentine black tattoos on his upper arms and back 
  (if the characters manage a decent sketch of the tattoo with a Wits 
  + Crafts roll, each success grants a +1 bonus, up to the maximum of 
  +3 — unnaturally, a photograph fails to capture it)
  ...had a small brass door key (that is otherwise nondescript)
  ...wore a silver pendant (+4).
  Notes
  
  39
  Scene:  
  The Evidence
  MENTAL •• 
  PHYSICAL •• 
  SOCIAL ••
  Overview: This scene dramatizes the efforts of the characters to 
  deal with the evidence at the crime scene,  follows immediately after 
  “Crime Scene,” and ends Act One of the story.
  This is a scene with substantial consequences later on, and a lot 
  of activity gets covered quickly during this part of the story. The 
  consequences of these actions are more interesting, and more vital 
  to the tale, than the actions themselves. With the Skills, Merits and 
  Disciplines available to the typical Vampire character, covering up a 
  crime scene (at least to the extent that it blends into the background 
  suffering of the World of Darkness) is not the climactic act of this story 
  — if only because no one involved with the Victim is going to go to 
  the mortal authorities.
  If the characters simply flee the crime scene, all you have to do is 
  identify what modifiers will apply to later investigative dice pools based 
  on whatever evidence the characters leave behind or take with them, 
  then move on to Act Two.
  Description: This scene can unfold in countless ways, depending on 
  the player’s methods and where you’ve chosen to set the story. What’s 
  at the top of the parking garage staircase where the Killer is found? 
  Your city is — we don’t know if it’s Chicago, London or Newcastle. 
  Just what perils lurk in the night at the top of those stairs depends on 
  the level of difficulty you select for this scene’s key action. You have 
  to bring this scene to life with the various details provided for you. 
  But ultimately this scene is not meant to be a moment-by-moment 
  exploration of the character’s actions. Think of it more as a montage 
  or dramatic sequence summarizing their actions.
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Create a sense of pressing paranoia and 
  rising tension — have the characters covered the Killer’s tracks? Are 
  they going to get away with murder? 
  You can make this scene as difficult or as simple as you feel is neces-
  sary to entertain the troupe and make them feel relieved when they 
  are finally away from the crime scene. If “Crime Scene” played out as 
  an especially heavy, atmospheric scene, you may need to do nothing 
  more here than get a sense of the coterie’s tactics for dealing with the 
  scene and their success in accomplishing those tactics — possibly as 
  simple as a single dice pool and short montage describing their success 
  or failure.
  A lot of information is contained in just a few (or even one!) rolls 
  of the dice in this scene. Your job is to turn that information into a 
  vivid scene. Don’t get hung up on the little things now. If a failed roll 
  means some piece of evidence was left behind for the Eye to find, don’t 
  let the players take another action to fix it — that roll failed, and the 
  result is part of the story now.
  Resist the temptation to draw out this scene; remember that you 
  have two more acts worth of tension to build. Besides that, the more 
  involved the players get at this stage, the more cheated they may feel 
  when the Eye catches wind of the crime anyway. Remember, they don’t 
  know (yet) that no matter what happens here, complications from the 
  Killer’s crime are inevitable. (The Victim will be missed and the Eye 
  will come to investigate.)
  Just determine how well the coterie covers itself (or how badly it 
  screws itself) in this scene and then move on. 
  Character Goals: Clean up the crime scene, hide the evidence, 
  protect the Masquerade.
  Key Action: Dispose of the Evidence
  This is a dynamic scene with lots of built-in options for you to use. 
  Depending on your tastes, timetable and the needs of your chronicle, you 
  can easily alter the dice pools, action types, length and difficulty of this 
  action. Here we’ve provided guidelines to make it easy for you to select 
  dice pools and run the scene with extended or contested actions.
  Dice Pool: Varies. Let the players chose the approach their char-
  acters take to getting rid of the body and assign dice pools to match. 
  Here are some examples:
  • Hack up the body: Strength + Weaponry or Strength + Medicine, 
  to know how to chop or where to do it.
  • Scrub down the stairwell: Wits + Strength, to do it well and not 
  miss a spot.
  • Bury the body: Intelligence + Streetwise to pick a spot that won’t 
  be found, or Strength + Stamina to bury it deep
  
  40
  • Have the body taken care of: Presence or Manipulation + Street-
  wise to know how to best get rid of it and convey the seriousness 
  of doing it right to the help; this assumes the character has success-
  fully persuaded his Allies to help in the first place. (If the coterie 
  wants the body burned, they may not want to risk frenzy by doing 
  it themselves.)    
  Extended Action: 5-15 successes. Each roll represents about 30 min-
  utes of work, not counting things like acquiring tools, driving to dump 
  spots or waiting for Allies to show up. As with a crime scene, the play-
  ers shouldn’t know when they’ve achieved all the successes possible. 
  Rather, you select a target number (we recommend 5-8 successes) that 
  lets them deem (accurately) that the obvious evidence, like the body, 
  is taken care of. Then, define an upper limit (about 10-15 successes), 
  at which point the characters become confident. If they stop before 
  the maximum number of successes is reached, so be it. 
  The more successes you choose to require, the longer the scene 
  takes. Fewer necessary successes describe a crime scene that’s easy 
  enough to clean up and an environment that’s easy to hide a body in. 
  More necessary successes describe a sticky, messy crime scene and an 
  environment that makes it hard to move a body in secret.
  The overarching guideline you want to follow here, though, is that 
  no dice pool can be used twice. So, if the coterie wants to hack up the 
  body, and you decide that’s a Strength + Medicine roll, they have to 
  live with their successes. If that doesn’t do the whole job, they’ll have 
  to gain more successes by trying something more, like scattering the 
  parts or burning them. 
  This version of the action adds the characters’ successes to the tar-
  get number of successes the Eye has to achieve during his extended 
  investigation if he’s to find any of this evidence. (Once the characters 
  have reached their target number of successes, they cannot add more.) 
  At your discretion, however, it’s quite possible that the characters 
  make some of the evidence impossible to find, at least with the Eye’s 
  resources. He’s not going to be able to do DNA testing on the Victim’s 
  ashes, for example.
  Contested Action: For a simpler, faster version of this scene, simply 
  have the players select a single method for hiding or destroying the 
  evidence, determine the dice pool, and roll that once. The action 
  chosen should require somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours 
  to carry out in full, and focus on the crime scene more than where 
  the body ends up. 
  The Eye is going to assume the Victim’s not going to surface once 
  he can find the crime scene with the assistance of Joe Coat. It’s un-
  likely that the Eye’s going to find the body unless it is left at the crime 
  scene or he has good reason to believe it is somewhere specific and 
  accessible, like if he can follow a blood trail to a nearby dumpster.
  The characters roll their dice pool, including any modifiers you 
  choose to grant for aids, obstacles, and teamwork, during this scene. 
  The Eye contests their result in the scene, “Investigated,” when you’re 
  tracking his progress on their trail.
  Roll Results
  Dramatic Failure: This result is only possible if you choose to reduce 
  the key action to a single dice pool, or if the characters simply do noth-
  ing and leave the crime scene as they found it. A dramatic failure  grants 
  the Eye a +5 bonus on his first roll in the scene “Investigated.”
  Failure: Failure at either the extended or contested action means 
  some obvious, substantial evidence was left behind, which the Eye can 
  use against the coterie during his own investigation. See this scene’s 
  Consequences.
  Success: Success at the extended action means the Victim’s body and 
  other substantial evidence of the crime has been removed or destroyed 
  and cannot be used against the coterie by the Eye.
  Exceptional Success: An exceptional success doesn’t just deny evi-
  dence to the Eye, it actively contaminates the scene to such an extent 
  that the Eye develops an erroneous theory of the crime. This changes 
  the way he approaches the coterie in the scene, “Interviewed,” but 
  does not derail his investigation (or the story).
  Obstacles/Penalties: The number of potential obstacles and hin-
  drances between the coterie and their success is  up to you. None, any, 
  or all of these factors might come into play in your story:
  • Passersby (–1 to –3)
  • Surveillance (–2 to –4)
  • Good visibility in the area (–2)
  • Gruesome complications, stains, debris (–2 to –4)
  • Bad access to a dump site (–1 to –5)
  • Talkative Accessories: If the characters enlist the help of Contacts 
  or Allies, it’s possible that word spreads of their actions. If you think 
  these Storyteller characters are at risk of leaking what they know 
  (maybe down at their local bar), have the vampire whose Merit is in 
  question roll Presence + Intimidation or Manipulation + Persuasion 
  
  41
  to convince his Contacts or Merits to stay quiet. Add relevant Allies 
  dots but no Contacts dots to the dice pool. Each success imposes a –1 
  penalty on any attempt by the Eye to get information out of those same 
  Contacts or Allies during the scene “Investigated.”
  Aids/Bonuses: The higher the target number you select for the 
  extended action, the more rolls will be necessary and the more tools, 
  aids and resources the players will be able to involve in their plan.
  • Particular tools can help make the body easier to move — an axe 
  makes the body more portable (+3), while a garbage bag or two makes 
  it more discreet (+2). Each kind of tool can be used only once, for one 
  roll in the extended action. Either it is used well or it isn’t.
  • Bribes are just another kind of tool for moving people. In this 
  scene, dots in Resources can simply be added to a single roll to deal 
  with human obstacles like passersby or a “problem witness,” at your 
  discretion. Resource dots can also be used to help secure silence from 
  Allies and Contacts, at your discretion. For the purposes of this scene, 
  however, be strict with Resources dots; one expenditure per character 
  is good. You want the players to carefully consider how they’ll use 
  their Resources dots. Does the Ventrue use hers to bribe a cop or rent 
  a truck to move the body in? Does the Gangrel use his to buy an axe 
  or a bunch of lighter fluid?
  • Contacts can help the characters spread disinformation, but are 
  not usually the kind of close associates you’d want to tell that you’re 
  moving a body.
  • Allies can be very helpful in this kind of situation, depending on 
  the coterie’s plan. Allies in the police department might be able to 
  dismiss the significance of a bloody stairwell if there’s no body to find, 
  while  Allies in the Sanitation Department might know where things 
  can be dumped without being found. Allies you deem appropriate can 
  be called on for one additional roll in the extended action. This is a 
  Manipulation + Persuasion + Allies roll, modified by the nature of the 
  favor being asked. (See the sidebar.)
  Consequences: The approach the players (and thus their charac-
  ters) take in this scene determines the circumstances under which the 
  Storyteller characters first appear in Act Two — but so does the way 
  you choose to frame this scene. 
  Every choice the players make now impacts the attitude of the Eye 
  later, and the situation the coterie finds itself in with the Storyteller 
  characters in Act Two. But you decide what choices are put before the 
  players and their characters in this scene. If you don’t put it on the 
  table that there’s some possibility of the characters being seen dragging 
  a body, that can’t happen.
  Don’t let this scene get bogged down! This isn’t meant to be a story 
  of vampires on the run from mortal homicide detectives. Don’t let 
  things get so far gone; simply don’t make the stakes of any roll that 
  high. Don’t make the consequence of any roll something like, “an old 
  lady sees Hooper’s severed head roll down the street and calls 911.” 
  Keep a firm hand on the tiller here. 
  Aside from simply choosing not to try, the characters cannot ac-
  tually fail the extended action to dispose the body. The worst-case 
  scenario is that they make the Eye’s job easier. Everything they do 
  here impacts the Eye’s investigation in the scene, “Investigated.” 
  The Eye finds any evidence the characters leave behind before po-
  lice do, and he uses Sol’s resources to protect the Masquerade if the 
  characters fail to do so.
  Whatever the Eye can learn later about what the characters do in 
  this scene now may be used against them by anyone the Eye shares his 
  information with. If the characters failed to protect the Masquerade, 
  they may have to answer for that, too.
  Not every detail can be accounted for by tracking successes or 
  comparing die rolls. Make a note of particular details, like the loca-
  tion of key pieces of evidence, for use in the Eye’s investigation and 
  throughout the story. The scene, “Investigated,” has a table you can 
  use to track the evidence.
  MODIFIERS FOR CALLING ON ALLIES
  Situation 
  Modiﬁer
  Reveal a dump or pickup schedule 
  —
  Lend tools 
  –1 to –3
  Scout a dump site 
  –1 to –3
  Grant access to a furnace or dump site 
  –1 to –3
  Lie for the coterie 
  –2 to –4
  Turn off a security system 
  –3
  Falsify paperwork 
  –2 to –5
  “Take care” of the body 
  –5
  
  42
  Act Two: The Investigation
  Here’s where things get complicated.
  Once the characters have cleaned up their mess at the crime scene, 
  to whatever extent they’ve chosen to do so, they get a level of freedom 
  that can be difficult for a Storyteller to handle. That freedom is just 
  as difficult for a story kit like this one to interact with, so you have to 
  prepare yourself for the fact that whatever Blood Red and Ash Gray 
  may look like in your head as you’re reading these pages may end up 
  bearing little resemblance to the story you tell with the rest of the 
  troupe come game time. Don’t shy away from that — use and abuse 
  the tools you’re given in this kit to make your story come alive.
  You’ll know the second act of the story has begun when the play-
  ers exhale and reflect on what happened at the crime scene, or when 
  their characters attempt to re-enter their typical nightly activities. The 
  scenes in this act are highly flexible, taking place when the choices of 
  the players suggest to you that they should, or when something needs 
  to happen in the name of rising tension. 
  Most, but not all, of the following scenes are triggered by contact 
  between the players’ characters and Storyteller characters, but that 
  contact can happen at the behest of the players or yourself.
  Investigation & Suspense
  Many of the scenes in this act center on investigation and, 
  therefore, suspense. But investigative suspense is typically about 
  getting answers, and that’s not necessarily the case here. In some 
  of these scenes, it’s entirely likely that the suspense will come not 
  from the characters trying to get information, but from them try-
  ing to hide it.
  Resist the temptation to make the stakes of every scene involve the 
  complete truth coming out. Raise the level of tension one scene at a 
  time, twisting the dial hotter and hotter. A terrific amount of tension 
  comes from a scene that ends with the characters (and their players) 
  suspecting that an antagonist knows the truth, but with neither party 
  being ready to tip their hand... yet. Remember that you can raise the 
  tension even higher for a more nail-biting climax later.
  And yet, you can’t sacrifice the players’ ability to choose the actions 
  of their characters. Influencing them as a narrator, and as a fellow game 
  player at the table, is one thing, but forbidding them is too much. You 
  STORYTELLER’S OPTION:  
  WHEN DOES THIS HAPPEN?
  Act Two follows Act One, obviously, but how far behind? The 
  second act can begin the same night that Act One ﬁnishes, if 
  you choose to run an instance of the scene, “Flashback,” right 
  away. If the characters immediately seek out some information 
  about the Victim, they may trigger an instance of “Investigating” 
  almost immediately.
  Ideally, however, a momentary pause falls between the acts, when 
  the coterie catches its breath or lays low. Then they hear word that 
  some Kindred called the Eye is investigating the disappearance 
  of a vampire in the Domain, and the calm is broken. The sudden 
  tension creates a real “oh, shit” moment. But that may not be the 
  way it works out — follow the players into the story they create 
  by making choices for their characters.
   If you’re playing Blood Red and Ash Gray as part of an ongoing 
  chronicle, you might slip a scene from another story, or even a 
  whole other story, between Act One and Act Two. Give the players 
  enough time to think they got away with an anonymous murder. 
  You might even play out your ﬁrst instance of the scene, “Face to 
  Face,” letting the coterie meet Sash before they really understand 
  who she is. Maybe this conversation is how they ﬁnd out — or 
  fearfully suspect — who the Victim is. That’s a gut-wrenching 
  moment, for sure, when Sash says something like, “He went missing 
  almost a week ago, and already it seems like everybody’s given up 
  looking for him. Sol’s got the Eye looking for suspects now, instead 
  of my... friend.”
  If you’re playing this story as a stand-alone experience, 
  that same scene can still work, but the implications change 
  for the players. While their characters might believe they’ve 
  encountered Sash by chance, the players will almost certainly 
  suspect the scene plays some important part in the story. The 
  characters may think they’re just subtly collecting information 
  on another local vampire, while the players are scrutinizing 
  every detail of the scene for some hint of its dramatic purpose. 
  Let them be suspicious.
  The dissonance created when an audience (the players) has 
  information about a situation that the characters in that situation 
  do not have is a form of dramatic tension called tragic irony. 
  It’s not a technique that often works in a roleplaying game 
  — because the informed audience directly inﬂuences the actions 
  of the characters and not all players are good at separating their 
  knowledge from their character’s — but it is a great tool for 
  suspense when it does. 
  
  43
  have to strike a balance. Thus, if they make the decision early in this 
  Act to confront an antagonist outright and bring the story to a head, 
  go with it. Proceed immediately to the scenes in the Hinge (see below) 
  and draw on whatever resources you can from Act Three to provide 
  one or more climactic scenes for the tale.
  See Act Three for advice on finding a dramatic ending beyond the 
  rush of a violent climax.
  Antagonism & Motivation
  The freedom the characters enjoy in this act makes the specifics of 
  these scenes difficult to predict. Does the coterie come face to face 
  with Sash and Val in a sweaty, pulsing goth club or along the sullen, 
  smokey bar in some biker dive? Does the Eye find the coterie at the 
  gallery owned by their sire or on the street in some gloomy Rack? 
  Those sorts of details have to emerge naturally from the city where 
  your chronicle is set. Since it’s their motivations tangled with the 
  coterie’s, rather than the layout of some haunted house, that defines 
  what happens and when in this story, you can trust that things will 
  unfold when the players’ characters and yours intersect. 
  What we’ve done, to help inspire you and arm you with vivid de-
  tails, is base our scenes on the kinds of locations where the built-in 
  Storyteller characters are likely to be found. That’s how you influence 
  the atmosphere and setting of the story, is by placing your Storyteller 
  characters in dramatically appropriate places. 
  Think of television detective shows, and how the cops go and inter-
  view people in places that tell us, in the audience, about them. When 
  the players say, “We go see Calla,” (or Sol, or whomever), you say, 
  “You find her hidden behind a curled paperback textbook and tucked 
  into a corner booth at that sticky bar with the peeling red paint.”
  The motivations and knowledge of the antagonists are just as im-
  portant as the collection of scenes in this story. The pages for each 
  Storyteller character, when put with the following scenes, can make 
  fire. Remember that none of the Storyteller characters wait to act until 
  they know what you know — they go from where they stand, knowing 
  what they know and wanting what they want. 
  This might mean Sol wants the Killer to teach him Auspex, not 
  knowing that he’s essentially asking the Killer to confess. This might 
  mean Sash tries to get revenge on the coterie based on faulty informa-
  tion, even though she ends up attacking the right vampire. Whatever 
  happens, it should mean dramatic conflicts.
  How to Use the Scenes
  The freedom afforded to the players in Act Two may make it dif-
  ficult for you to use pre-defined scenes in the ways you plan on using 
  them. It’s inevitable. Rather than try to steer the players into taking 
  actions that fit neatly with one of the seven scenes we’ve provided 
  for Act Two, adapt these scenes in response to the players’ choices, 
  using whatever you can from within them to help color the coterie’s 
  interactions with the Storyteller characters. 
  You’ve got to keep the fire going, so break apart the table and chairs 
  for firewood if you have to.
  If we try to anticipate every possible outcome, each scene swells 
  with “if, then” statements that ultimately wasting space and time, 
  because most of all the possibilities we might explore, as few as 
  none of them might be relevant in the actual play of your story 
  come game-time. So, the scenes in this act strive to give you the 
  vital tools and bearings you need to make this part of your story 
  dramatic, tense and compelling. 
  The first meeting between the troupe’s coterie and Cicero’s Crew 
  may end up bearing little resemblance to the kind of scene we pres-
  ent in “Face to Face,” but such is the nature of play.
  These scenes are meant to represent a few core conflicts that 
  emerge organically from the basic scenario — the coterie knows 
  they’ve killed someone and they probably don’t want people to find 
  out. If nothing else, they are apt fuel for this kind of story. If your 
  version of Blood Red and Ash Gray ends up looking nothing like 
  what you imagine while reading these pages, you still have these 
  scenes available in your toolbox should a suitable spot for them 
  reveal itself later.
  But these aren’t just reactions to what the characters do, anyway. 
  While the players’ characters are stalking the night, hunting hobos 
  and stealing jewels (or whatever it is they do), the Storyteller char-
  acters are moving this story forward, because it’s important to them. 
  Eventually, they’ll push this story right into the player’s characters. 
  If they don’t, you can. Maybe the Killer and Sash end up next to 
  each other in a local bar by chance (that is, because you set up 
  the scene, “Face to Face,” to keep the themes of this story in play) 
  — now these scenes are unfolding, even if the troupe doesn’t head 
  there instinctively.
  
  44
  The scenes in Act Two are pretty focused. Only one or two actions 
  are described in each. These are exemplars of the kind of action the 
  scene was meant for, but they describe something worth emulating 
  — they don’t restrict the action to a script. Sash is expected to use a 
  Skill like Persuasion or Socialize in “Face to Face,” but she can take 
  whatever approach is right in your circumstances. 
  Though the following scenes are written with particular dramatic 
  goals and moods in mind, here are the bare-bones underpinnings sup-
  porting each scene, so you can revise them easily on the fly:
  • Investigated: This is a scene just for you, the Storyteller. It covers 
  the Eye’s investigation of the crime scene and the coterie. The central 
  action here in an extended Investigation action, which the coterie may 
  become aware of as word spreads that someone’s asking around about 
  them. Keep this scene running to give you an idea when the Eye and the 
  coterie should meet each other even if the characters stay passive.
  • Investigating: The premise of this scene assumes that the characters 
  will try to find some information on the Victim and his Requiem, and so 
  describes some of what the characters find in their investigation. If they 
  don’t investigate, the secret haven revealed in this scene might be discov-
  ered if the coterie shadows (WoD, p. 76) Sash (or someone else?) there.
  • Flashback: The players don’t trigger this scene, under most circum-
  stances, but if psychology or psychic mysticism is how they go about 
  investigating the Killer’s fateful night, the visions in this scene are what 
  things like Auspex, Dominate and Majesty might uncover.
  • Interviewed/Face to Face: These scenes are meant to dramatize 
  a situation in which the characters try to avoid tipping their hands 
  to Kindred who may or may not suspect what the Killer did. Alter-
  nately, you could use these scenes to support any encounter between 
  the coterie and the Storyteller characters that’s less volatile than a 
  violent confrontation.
  • Revelation: This scene stands in for whenever it is that the Killer 
  realizes what he (and his Beast) has done and confronts his Humanity. 
  As written, the assumption is that this dramatic moment happens in 
  the presence of other characters, late in the story, but this scene can 
  be absorbed into another one if the moment emerges organically out 
  of, say, a flashback or a conversation with Sash.
  • Confrontation: This is simply a sketch of what a suddenly sparked 
  fight with Sash or her cohorts might be like. Should this kind of fight 
  break out sooner in the story, you know where to look for details.
  Repeating Scenes 
  Most of the scenes in Act Two are repeatable, as indicated by 
  the looping arrow on the Scene Flow Diagram. These are scenes 
  that can be played through multiple times, representing several different 
  encounters or experiences. The coterie might be interviewed by the Eye 
  more than once, or encounter Sash several times at a local bar popular for 
  hunting, for example. These scenes might happen nights or even weeks 
  apart, though the motivations of the Storyteller characters should keep 
  them moving enough to prevent the story from cooling for too long.
  Use variations on these scenes to raise the dramatic tension throughout 
  the Act, or to explore thematic questions by seeing how similar encounters 
  play out differently as the tension rises and new information is revealed.
  The Hinge
  The final two scenes of this Act represent what’s called the Hinge, 
  which is the turning point for the story. Once a Hinge scene is trig-
  gered, there’s no turning back and no repeating the scenes. The story 
  now moves inexorably to its climax.
  CHEATING?
  Is it cheating for you, as the Storyteller, to grant your own 
  characters automatic successes behind the scenes? Is it cheating 
  for you to decide the Eye makes some phenomenal deductive leap 
  that prompts him to seek out the coterie and question them? Is it 
  cheating for you to decide during play that Joe Coat knows more 
  than he let on at ﬁrst — that maybe he actually saw a glimpse of 
  the Killer and the Victim wrestle into the parking garage stairwell 
  — and eventually comes clean because, say, Sol made him an offer 
  he couldn’t refuse? 
  No, it’s not. 
  Your ﬁrst responsibility is to the players, not their characters. 
  These kinds of story tweaks don’t screw the players out of an 
  important gameplay decision for the players or undermine what 
  should be a fair victory for their characters — they explain dramatic 
  events that may be necessary to keep the story moving at the right 
  pace for play. You have the narrative authority to decide that the 
  city’s Prince is a master of Majesty, that Cicero is actually blood-
  bound to Val but doesn’t know it, that Calla falls in love with a 
  player’s Daeva prostitute, or that Joe Coat knows the truth. Use that 
  to tell a great story. It’s better for something dramatic to happen 
  than for your story to fade away.      
  
  45
  Storyteller Scene:  
  Investigated
  MENTAL ••• 
  PHYSICAL — 
  SOCIAL •••
  Overview: This unusual scene doesn’t get played by the players. In-
  stead, you use this scene to track the Eye’s investigation of the troupe’s 
  coterie. Eventually, the characters may catch wind of his investigation 
  through their Contacts or Allies or some other channel, but by default 
  this scene is just for you.
  Alternately, if it better suits the kind of chronicle you’ve got, you 
  could use this material to generate short cutaway scenes, as described 
  in the World of Darkness Rulebook (p. 195). The risk there is that 
  the Eye may appear to the players as the central antagonist, but more 
  complex moral and strategic conflicts, suitable to Vampire’s Danse 
  Macabre, emerge when the players and their characters must choose 
  their enemies and risk temporary alliances. If you give them a straight-
  up villain to oppose in this story, you’re missing out.  
  Description: Bringing this scene to life for the players relies not on 
  narration but on dialogue. If the characters are to learn what’s going 
  on with the Eye’s investigation, they’ll have to hear second-hand, from 
  someone the Eye’s been in contact with. This might be someone the 
  characters know through their Merits or even one of the other major 
  Storyteller characters in this story — if Sash doesn’t realize she’s talking 
  to the Eye’s prime suspect, she might drop some hint that she’s heard 
  about “Sol’s private dick is out following leads, and sooner or later he’s 
  going to find the Beast that... killed Hooper.”
  This information might come to the characters by chance (as above), 
  as a tip from a Contact, or as a political play by a major Storyteller 
  character. When the characters get these tips is up to you. These might 
  surface during the scene, “Investigating,” as the coterie accrues suc-
  cesses, or they might come up in conversation during “Face to Face.” 
  When the coterie interacts with Contacts or Allies, they might hear 
  word of the Eye.
  Here’s some sample dialogue you can use to hint at the Eye’s inves-
  tigation and the peril it means for the coterie if they weren’t careful 
  back in Act One:
  • “Be careful who you talk to, huh? There’s some bloodsucker on the 
  street asking questions about a missing neonate in [the Domain]. He 
  acts like a Hound, you know? But I don’t know who’s leash he’s on.”
  • “You seen this PI guy around town? Always asking questions? He 
  asked me, two nights ago, about Kindred in your neighborhood. Did I 
  know them? Where do they hunt? Do they ever go to [the Domain]? 
  That sort of thing.”
  • “Somebody’s been asking questions. Just this guy. Not a cop, maybe 
  a PI, but... I think he was Kindred. I mean, just a gut thing. He was, you 
  know, nice enough, but nosy.” 
  • “Listen, I heard this guy asking around about you, your coterie, 
  last night. He was talking to the kine in bars up and down the block, 
  I guess, asking for you guys. He described you. I told him I didn’t 
  know shit, and he moved on, but... I have to tell you, I don’t think 
  he believed me.”
  • “Yes. Yes, he asked me. I didn’t want to tell him anything. I mean, 
  I tried not to. I told him he was wrong and that I didn’t know what he 
  was talking about, but he kept asking, you know, but always, like, calm. 
  Polite, even. And... I didn’t mean to, but the words just came out. I 
  think. I’m not even sure what I said. But he said he’d talk to you, just 
  to straighten things out. I’m sorry.”
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Determine what the Eye finds out about 
  the Killer and his encounter with the Victim, so you can gauge what 
  the Eye (and anyone he tells) will do about it. If possible, also establish 
  the Eye’s investigation as a kind of shadowy deadline lurking over the 
  coterie’s shoulder. Will they be found out? How long do they have?
  Character Goals: Whatever goals the characters may develop for 
  this scene are more aptly handled in their scene, “Investigating.” 
  Generally speaking, they want to stay at least one step ahead of the 
  Eye and his investigation.
  Investigating the Victim’s Disappearance
  The Eye is called in once Joe Coat tells Sol that Hooper got 
  jumped by what sounded like a frenzied vampire. Sol puts Joe and 
  the Eye in a room together to get the Eye started, then sends him 
  out into the Domain to find Hooper or the vampire that attacked 
  him. Sol plans to punish Hooper’s attacker, but also to spin the 
  situation to his own benefit, if he can — a guilty party has good 
  reason to deal. Sol doesn’t tell all of this to the Eye, but the Eye 
  knows it anyway.
  
  46
  So, almost immediately after the coterie is done there, the Eye goes to 
  the parking garage, where Joe Coat sent him, and starts poking around. 
  Eventually, inevitably, he finds the stairwell and, with patience and a 
  practiced sense, finds something to go on.
  Just what the Eye finds depends on the coterie’s success in Act 
  One. Even if they masterfully covered up the crime scene, the Eye has 
  something to go on — cover-ups leave their own kind of evidence, 
  and there’s no such thing as a perfect crime. No remaining evidence 
  may point to the coterie, but the Eye quickly becomes sure that the 
  Victim is not going to turn up. If he’s going to find a culprit for Sol to 
  work with, he’s going to have to start poking around those Kindred 
  who might of been close to Hooper or close to the parking garage. 
  Eventually the Eye will get around to the characters. That’s inevitable. 
  But if they were meticulous and smart in Act One, they may not be 
  suspects at all by the time the scene, “Interviewed,” comes around.
  Dice Pool: Wits + Investigation, for the crime scene and other 
  areas of physical evidence, or Manipulation + Subterfuge, for subtly 
  drawing information out of background characters without seeming 
  too conspicuous.
  Action: Extended. 12+ successes necessary. Each roll represents one 
  night of investigation or information gathering. The Eye might not 
  make a roll every night, as he pursues leads other than the characters. 
  Assume the Eye makes one roll immediately after “The Evidence,” and 
  then continues making these rolls once you begin Act Two.
  If you used an extended action to play out “The Evidence,” the 
  coterie’s successes on that action add to the target number of successes 
  the Eye needs to accrue for this action.
  If you used a contested action to play out “The Evidence,” the Eye 
  makes a Wits + Investigation roll opposing the coterie’s roll. If the 
  coterie wins the contested action, their successes serve as a penalty to 
  the Eye’s rolls in this scene. If the Eye wins, his dice pool is not affected 
  by the contested action.
  This action describes only the Eye’s success at tying the players’ 
  characters to the crime, not the overall course of his investigation. 
  If the Eye fails to achieve many successes on this action, he is either 
  pursuing leads that point to other suspects or, more likely, finding one 
  dead end after another. Because the truth will eventually lead him to 
  the coterie, the only way for the Eye to not focus his investigation 
  on them eventually is for him to give up the case. We offer you no 
  mechanism for this. The Eye’s decision to give up the investigation is 
  a choice you must make for him, based on the Eye’s motivation and 
  the incentives put before him.
  Each roll brings the Eye closer to the characters. Each success makes 
  him more suspicious of them. Once the Eye has made six rolls (that is, 
  roughly five nights after you start Act Two), he seeks out the coterie for 
  questioning. His level of suspicion depends on the number of successes 
  he’s achieved after those six rolls, as described in “Interviewed.” 
  Roll Results
  Dramatic Failure: A dramatic failure on any roll substracts one 
  success from the Eye’s ongoing total, putting him even further away 
  from the truth.
  Failure: The Eye fails to find any evidence or leads tying the char-
  acters to the Victim’s disappearance, at least tonight.
  Success: The Eye finds some evidence — footprints near the crime 
  scene, testimony from Joe Coat about a familiar voice, whispers from an un-
  strustworthy Contact, etc. — that keeps the coterie on his suspect list.
  Exceptional Success: A breakthrough, more likely based on intuition 
  than fact. Without the strict formalities of the legal system to restrain 
  him, though, a hunch or two may be all he needs.  
  Hindrances: The Eye’s investigation of the characters is greatly 
  impacted by the actions they’ve made thus far, for better or worse:
  • The coterie wins the contested action against the Eye (penalty 
  equal to coterie’s successes, –5 maximum)
  • The coterie are regular visitors to the Domain (–1)
  • The coterie doesn’t investigate the Victim’s identity themselves (–2)
  • The coterie resides in the Domain (and thus are a common sight) (–3)
  • The coterie’s Contacts or Allies have been instructed not to talk 
  about the night of “The Evidence” (–1 to –5) 
  Help: What’s bad for the characters is good for the Eye:
  • The coterie suffers a dramatic failure in “The Evidence” or leaves 
  the crime scene as-is (+5 to first roll only)
  • The coterie are strangers in the Domain (and thus stand out)  (+2)
  • The Eye has Allies or Contacts in common with those used in 
  “The Evidence” (+2 for Contacts, add Allies dots as a bonus)
  • The Eye gets physical evidence: army jacket (+2), tattoo rendering 
  (+1 to +3), Sash’s pendant (+5)
  Consequences: See “Interviewed”
  
  47
  Scene:  
  Flashback
  MENTAL •• 
  PHYSICAL — 
  SOCIAL ••
  Overview: The Killer’s sleep is haunted by his encounter with the 
  Victim. His Beast won’t let him forget it. Bloody images, animal snarls 
  and desperate screams pick at his Humanity. He wakes at dusk, fright-
  ened and exhausted, even if he thinks of himself as being hardened 
  against such feelings. This scene occurs whenever you need a dose of 
  horror or a way to provoke the story’s thematic questions. Highlight 
  the moral questions of the Killer’s act with this scene. Don’t let the 
  characters downplay the moral ramifications of the Killer’s actions. 
  Don’t let them forget that his Beast is torturing him.
  Description: This scene represents a series of potential flashbacks, 
  taking the Killer through his own memories from the moment of the 
  Victim’s death back to the moment of the attack. Share these flashbacks 
  with the Killer’s player, adding the next element to the beginning of 
  the vision with each subsequent flashback.
  • His hands are pulling on your clothes, trying to lift you off of his chest. 
  Your hand is on his face, pushing his head back and down, against the concrete 
  wall. His eyes flutter under your fingers. You can’t hear him snarling anymore 
  — not once his throat splits and gives like an apple rind, gushing blood through 
  your teeth, out over your lips, and down your chin. You move down to catch 
  the falling flow and skin peels away, down his neck, following your fangs.
  • You hit the slab at the bottom of the stairs with the army jacket in your 
  grip and slide him across the floor with it. The shrieks echoing off concrete 
  sound like a zoo. His head strikes the wall with a heavy clop. His face is 
  scratched and pocked with black holes from your fangs.
  • You feel yourself sway and your weight give way. You’re spinning away 
  him, toppling over the metal railing. The spiral of the stairs wobbles below 
  you. You scramble, get a fistful of green jacket as he’s lurching for the door, 
  and you both fall, clattering off railings and stairs.
  • Banging on metal. Human screams. Your shoulder, your head, your fists 
  clatter on a metal door. You get one foot through the crack when your weight 
  hits the door, then your arms, then you’re inside, biting at flailing hands and 
  a screaming, fanged face.
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Frighten or creep out the players, inject 
  a dose of Vampire’s personal horror into play, and dramatize the moral 
  bruising the Killer is suffering where his human psyche meets his Beast. 
  Present the Killer (and the player) with a choice between a painful truth or 
  a comfortable ignorance. Use this scene to reinvigorate the players’ inter-
  est in the story and add weight to the characters’ unease. If the characters 
  don’t take actions sufficient to trigger the scene “Investigating,” use this 
  scene to supply them with clues or dramatic incentive to keep going.
  Character Goals: Avoid an emotional breakdown, frenzy or derange-
  ment and learn the truth about what happened in the stairwell.
  Weathering the Flashback 
  Dice Pool: Resolve + Composure (This dice pool cannot be modi-
  fied by Willpower)
  Action: Reflexive. This roll measures the character’s success at 
  weathering the psychological effects of the flashbacks. Repeat this 
  action every time the character experiences a flashback.
  Roll Results
  Dramatic Failure: The Killer wakes exhausted and fights against the 
  Beast’s impulses to sleep for the rest of the night — his dice pools for any ac-
  tion cannot exceed his dots in Humanity, unless modified by Willpower.
  Failure: The Killer wakes feeling emotionally drained and panicked. 
  He loses one Willpower point.
  Success: The Killer wakes one step closer to understanding what 
  exactly happened in that bloody stairwell, and one step closer to facing 
  the toll on his Humanity. If he wishes, the Killer can spend a Willpower 
  point to shake off the memory of the flashback and move no further 
  through the flashback memories this time. It’s a choice between facing 
  the truth and hiding in ignorance.
  Obstacles/Penalties: Genuine remorse (if the Killer’s Humanity is 4 
  or higher he suffers a penalty equal to half his Humanity dots)
  Aids/Bonuses: Mesmerism instruction to sleep (bonus equal to user’s 
  dots in Dominate), counseling (Manipulation + Empathy as teamwork, 
  +5 maximum), meditation within 8 hours of sleep (+2)
  Consequences: The consequences of this scene are largely in the 
  hands of the Killer’s player to realize through roleplaying. If the flash-
  back sequence is completed and the Killer finally faces his degenera-
  tion roll,  genuine remorse may impact him in later scenes. For the 
  consequences of the degeneration roll, see “Revelations.”
  
  48
  Scene:  
  Investigating
  MENTAL ••• 
  PHYSICAL • 
  SOCIAL •••
  Overview: In this scene, the coterie probes the Domain for informa-
  tion about the identity of the Victim, as well as his allies, coterie-mates 
  and loyalties. What does everyone else know that they don’t?
  This scene takes place when the characters go probing into the 
  Domain’s vampire culture, asking veiled questions at clubs and bars, 
  eavesdropping on conversations, or anything else they do dig up infor-
  mation without coming face to face with one of the major Storyteller 
  characters. (For that, see “Face to Face.”) 
  This scene is a counterpoint to the Storyteller scene, “Investigated.” 
  The players use this scene to gain more information and strengthen 
  their ability to make smart choices in the Domain.
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Gradually reveal new information about 
  the Domain and its local power dynamics, giving the characters an idea 
  of what they’ve gotten themselves into.
  Character Goals: Gain enough information to identify the victim  
  or gauge the fallout for his destruction without arousing suspicion.
  Gather Information
  Dice Pool: Manipulation + Persuasion or Socialize, to use Contacts. 
  Wits + Socialize or Streetwise – 5, to eavesdrop and “absorb” local gossip. 
  Presence + Intimidation vs. Resolve + Compsure (4 dice), to strong-arm 
  locals. (Intimidation has its own consequences for failure and success.)
  Action: Instant or contested. Each roll represents one night of in-
  formation gathering. 
  The Eye’s action in the Storyteller scene, “Investigated,” is extended 
  because he is on a trail towards a particular destination: the truth. It’s 
  a simple abstraction for simplicity.
  The coterie’s action is an instant action that be performed several 
  times, by playing this scene over again, but the successes do not accu-
  mulate over time. The characters simply collect whatever information 
  they can and put it to use as they see fit.
  Obstacles/Penalties: Talkative locals make casual questioning take 
  forever (–1 to –3), the characters are known for being dangerous (–2 
  to –5), foreign-language neighborhood (–4) 
  Aids/Bonuses: Character is a local in the Domain (+1 to +2), Barfly 
  (+1 or +2), Bribes (+1 to +3, based on Resources; no one trusts a wad of 
  cash worth more than •••, though), threats (+3 to this roll, and +3 to 
  one roll for the Eye in “Investigated,” because bullied people gripe)
  Roll Results
  Dramatic Failure: The character is given dangerously false infor-
  mation by someone who may even believe it to be true. For example, 
  a ghoul claims Joe Coat has been destroyed or Cicero’s ghouls are 
  planning to turn on him. Devise your own misinformation based on 
  the Storyteller character write-ups. If the character used Intimida-
  tion, either Cicero or Sol (your choice) is informed that someone is 
  muscling around in his territory — the intimidating characters suffer 
  a –2 penalty when dealing with that lord during “Brought In.” The 
  Eye gains a +3 bonus to his next Investigation roll.
  Failure: The streets give up the same old whispers and gossip, but 
  no new information. If the character used Intimidation, the Eye gains 
  a +1 bonus on his next Investigation roll.
  Success: The character overhears or coaxes out a murmur about the state 
  of Kindred affairs in the Domain. Select a piece of information from one of 
  the Storyteller character reference pages and share it with the character’s 
  player. The information you give can be as earth-shaking or revealing 
  as you like — make your selection based on the pacing you’re trying to 
  achieve and the amount of motivation you feel the players need.
  Exceptional Success: The character finds a drunken or malcontent 
  ghoul who says more than he’ll wish he had. Select two pieces of in-
  formation to share with the player. 
  Details: Use these short lead-ins to add a bit of color to whatever 
  pieces of information you give out: 
  • “Look, man, I’ll deny telling you this, you understand?” His fingers shake 
  while he takes a drag off his cigarette, but it’s chemical, not fear. His fingers 
  are yellow. “But I have it on good, ah... Look, let’s just say I know...”
  • He’s peeling the silver sheet off his gum and scratching his nose when he 
  says, “I’m sure it’s old news on the block, but the way I hear it...”
  • “I’ll assume you don’t know, I guess,” she says, doing that look around 
  that just says she’s proud of what she’s got to share, “We’re not supposed to 
  know, but everybody basically does, that...”
  
  49
  • He puts his hand up in the air between you, cranes his head around the 
  corner... and waits. Finally, he exhales and looks back at you. “I can’t be 
  telling you this shit, man. Nobody should even know that we’ve been talking 
  about this. You shouldn’t be asking. But...”
  • ... Then she downs the rest of the vodka and turns the empty tumbler. “But, 
  whatever. I don’t know. It’s the same shit you hear about everybody, right?”
  In the Secret Haven
  One major source of information, good for a tactile investigation 
  scene, is the secret haven Sash shared with Hooper. It’s little more 
  than a storage room in the basement of a condemned office building, 
  hidden away behind a fire door and a pile of metal desks, but it contains 
  potentially vital information that could provide valuable leverage when 
  dealing with Sash, Calla, Val, Sol or Cicero.
  The trick is in finding the place. The haven is rated at four dots of 
  Haven Security, reflecting how unlikely it is to find in the basement 
  of a decrepit building, but that won’t stop the most diligent searchers. 
  Perhaps the most likely way to find the place is to tail Sash back there. 
  Ultimately, just how (if!) the characters get there is up to you — use 
  this nest as a reward for clever players or as a boost in the story. Here 
  you’ll find a few things to do in the secret haven.
  The brass-colored key in the Victim’s boot opens the door to this 
  room. Calla has the lockbox key.
  Obstacles/Penalties: The room is low-ceilinged and cramped (–2), 
  ratty loose carpet curls off the floor (–2), it’s dark (–2), stacks of wet 
  newspapers are all over the place (–1 to –3), well-hidden (–4)
  Aids/Bonuses: The whole building is serenely quiet (+2)
  Details:  The cinderblock corridor ends in a pile of metal desks and de-
  formed folding chairs. A gap underneath one of the desks leads back behind 
  the pile... to a metal door. Waterlogged newspapers are stacked two, three 
  and four-feet high around the desks. Inside, the place feels like it should hold 
  a water-heater — it’s not suited for much else. A naked bulb hangs on a 
  cord from the ceiling. Three stained mattresses are stacked in the middle of 
  the room. A wood-colored mini-fridge sits between them and the wall. The 
  concrete floor wears a curled, moldy rag of carpet like a bad toupee. 
  Shadowing Someone to the Haven
  Dice Pool: Wits + Stealth + modifiers vs. Wits + Composure 
  +modifiers
  Action: Contested. (WoD, p. 76)
  Lockpicking (Haven Door)
  Dice Pool: Dexterity + Larceny + equipment
  Action: Extended, TN 5 successes. (WoD, p. 75)
  Fire Door: Durability 3, Size 5, Structure 6, Damage 3
  Lockpicking (Lockbox)
  Inside the mini-fridge is a steel lockbox about the size of a loaf of 
  bread. It’s brand new. Inside it is a ledger and a notebook, laid on a pile 
  of green dollars. There’s about $5,000 here, worth a ••• purchase.
  Dice Pool: Dexterity + Larceny + equipment – 2 (lock is small, stiff) 
  Action: Extended, TN 6 successes. (WoD, p. 75)
  Lockbox: Durability 2, Size 2, Structure 4, Damage 2B
  Analyze the Ledger
  The ledger is Hooper’s record of appointments and cash transactions with 
  Sol. It’s not coded, but it is intentionally unclear, so what would ordinarily 
  be obvious to make sense of requires a little work. This is physical evidence 
  of Hooper’s dealings with Sol (+2), good for social leverage.
  Dice Pool: Intelligence + Academics – 2 (The ledger is vague)
  Action: Extended, TN 3 successes. Each roll represents about 30 
  minutes of work. Success reveals that the ledger is tracking scheduled 
  meetings and payments, as though someone is paying for one- and 
  two-hour sessions of time with... someone.
  Analyze the Notebook
  The notebook is a common, blank composition book with handwritten 
  notes and thoughts in a clean, bold style (Calla’s). Parts of it seem like a 
  diary, recording experiences with “visions” and “images,” but other parts 
  are more analytical and speculative. This is physical evidence of Calla’s 
  dealings with Sol (+2) and could be passed off as a resource for learning 
  Auspex if unexamined (+2), good for social leverage.
  Dice Pool: Intelligence + Occult (Disciplines) + Auspex – 2 (The 
  notebook uses new-age terminology and unfamiliar jargon that’s difficult 
  to understand without having a strong sense of the workings of Auspex)
  Action: Extended, TN 6 successes. Each roll represents about 30 
  minutes of work. The notebook contains Calla’s notes on Auspex, 
  which she prepared between lessons and left with Hooper for safety’s 
  sake. These notes aren’t enough to teach Auspex, but they are enough 
  to demonstrate how scary it can be to see the world through it.
  
  50
  Scene:  
  Face to Face
  MENTAL •• 
  PHYSICAL — 
  SOCIAL •••
  Overview: When the characters meet one of the major Storyteller 
  characters, other than Cicero or Sol, use this scene as your guide. This 
  scene can be triggered by a direct, intentional meeting (“Let’s go down 
  to Ashland Avenue and see if we can’t get whole sentences out of Joe 
  Coat.”) or by Storyteller-driven happenstance (“Sash! I wouldn’t have 
  expected to see you off of a barstool tonight.”) 
  (Sol and Cicero are more likely to act through immediaries like Val 
  and the Eye until they appear in person in the scene, “Brought In.” 
  This is a suggestion, meant to preserve their mystique and add weight 
  to their eventual entrances, not a strict statement of what Sol or Cicero 
  might choose to do as characters.)
  Description: Where this scene happens depends on who you pit 
  the characters against. See the Storyteller character sheets for ideas 
  on where they might be found. This scene is written with the assump-
  tion that the whole of Cicero’s Crew — Val, Sash and Calla — will 
  be present for this scene, if not actively participating.
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Provoke guilt or fear in the characters, 
  and suspense in the players, by portraying an emotional encounter with 
  the Victim’s coterie and associates before they know about the coterie’s 
  involvement in the Victim’s disappearance. Make the Domain’s vam-
  pires appear both human and monstrous.
  This scene is built around a tense encounter rife with emotional decep-
  tion. Hopefully, the characters are human enough that murder and the 
  pain it causes others still affects them in some way. Obviously, that may 
  not be the case. If the characters are so monstrous that another’s suffering 
  doesn’t affect them emotionally, that’s still a viable hook for your scene 
  — can you make the players realize just how monstrous their characters 
  are by shining a lot at their cold inhumanity in this scene?
  Or does Sash’s grief — the grief of a bloodsucking monster herself 
  — not count when measuring one’s humanity? (Obviously it does count 
  in game terms, for determining the particulars of a degeneration roll.)
  Character Goals: Get through the encounter without exposing the 
  coterie to more trouble.
  Guise of Innocence, Air of Guilt 
  This action dramatizes the effectiveness of the characters’ efforts to 
  hide their complicity, whether they feel remorse or not. It’s your job to 
  characterize the scene in reaction to the approaches the players have 
  their characters take. Ask them, “How does your character feel when 
  he’s saying this?” or “Does he mean it?” and gauge bonuses or penalties 
  based on their answers. 
  This same action works for any of the Storyteller characters. Multiple 
  instances of this action might be played out at once, using cutaways 
  (WoD, p. 195), by pairing off characters and Storyteller characters.
  Dice Pool: Manipulation + Subterfuge vs opponent’s Wits + Em-
  pathy (once she becomes suspicious, the opponent may substiture 
  Subterfuge). A character can also attempt to gauge the opponent’s 
  suspicion with an instant Wits + Empathy – subject’s Composure, but 
  this requires the character to ask questions or look at the subject with a 
  noticeable intent (“Why are you looking at me like that?”) that might 
  give him away — every time a character measures the opponent’s sus-
  picion he accrues a cumulative –1 penalty to the contested action.
  Action: Contested and extended for the cover-up, Instant for the 
  assessment. Each roll represents about 10 minutes of conversation. The 
  target number of successes for each participant is their opponent’s Will-
  power. If the character wins the contest, the opponent doesn’t become 
  dangerously suspicious... in this scene. If the opponent wins, she becomes 
  suspicious enough to start acting against the coterie in later scene.
  Obstacles/Penalties: Sash cries (–3 to –5), Calla is creepy (–2 to –4), 
  Val is overly friendly (–2 to –3), the conversation may be overheard (–3), 
  genuine guilt (–1 to –5, one-half of the character’s Humanity), character’s 
  Humanity is 3 or 4 (–2), character’s Humanity is 1 or 2 (–4)
  Aids/Bonuses: The antagonist is distrated by a TV or recurring 
  conversational thread or some activity in the background (+1 to +3), 
  character has a fabricated alibi (+1 to +3, as determined by a Manipula-
  tion + Subterfuge roll at a –2 penalty, with each success worth +1 die, 
  +3 max), genuine sympathy (+1 to +5, one-half of Humanity)
  Consequences: This scene establishes the characters’ images in the 
  minds of the Storyteller characters. The less suspicion fostered, the more 
  forgiving Sash is in Act Three — unless the characters demonstrate no 
  remorse in “Revelation,” “Confrontation,” or “Punishment.”
  
  51
  Scene:  
  Interviewed
  MENTAL •• 
  PHYSICAL • 
  SOCIAL •••
  Overview: In this scene, the Eye comes to the characters, looking 
  for information. He might be here just to be thorough, he might be 
  turning over rocks to see what crawls out, or he could outright suspect 
  that the characters had something to do with the Victim’s disappear-
  ance. When the Eye comes calling, play this scene.
  Description: “Evening,” says the Eye. “Listen, we’ve got to talk about 
  some troubles in [the Domain] lately. I’m here on behalf of the powers that 
  be, and this is just one step in a long staircase I’m climbing, so I promise I 
  won’t waste your time. Where can we talk?”
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Create unbearable suspense through a 
  tense clash of wits and subterfuge. Let the Eye use Veridical Tongue 
  at least once before he tries to get a character to say something truly 
  damning — you want the characters to realize that he’s got that 
  power in his arsenal before he hits them with it where it hurts. This 
  way, they’ll be faced with a challenging obstacle to overcome: How 
  to get out of the interview/conversation without making the Eye 
  more suspicious?
  Remember, also, that the Eye doesn’t have to get a character to be 
  honest about the Killer or the Victim for him to be a threat to the 
  coterie. He can use Wits + Empathy to feel out a subject that’s sensi-
  tive enough for him to probe for the truth. Surely the characters are 
  hiding something.
  The coterie might simply spring into bloody action in the hopes 
  of taking the Eye out of the equation altogether. They’re entitled to 
  try that tactic — jump to “Confrontation.” Destroying the Eye is not 
  so difficult, particularly when he’s outnumbered. The risk is in the 
  consequence: They’ve gotten themselves into another awful mess, 
  and whoever it is that’s close to the Eye (e.g., Sol) is going to want 
  answers... and revenge. The cycle of violence continues.
  Character Goals: Diminish the Eye’s suspicion or simply get through 
  the meeting without making things worse.
  Interrogation Dance
  This action has a lot in common with the action in “Face to Face,” but 
  it’s stakes and consequences are different. The key action of “Face to Face” 
  is also a key action in this scene, though the Eye is a much more formidable 
  opponent. The action detailed here, though, describes the Eye’s secret 
  weapon in the interrogation: Veridical Tongue (V:TR, p. 153)
  Cost: 1 Vitae
  Dice Pool: Presence + Subterfuge + Majesty – subject’s Composure 
  (This is the Eye’s dice pool to invoke Veridical Tongue)
  Action: Instant. For the purposes of absorbing this action into the 
  interrogation action, this roll must substitute for one of the Eye’s roll’s 
  in the extended action of that conversation. If the Eye successfully 
  invokes the Devotion, the extended action is suspended and the scene 
  becomes about raw roleplaying and strategy on the players’ part. 
  If a character offers up any truthful answers that would incriminate 
  them, the interrogation is over and the Eye politely leaves to set things in 
  motion against the characters. If the character remains silent, he gives the 
  Eye a +2 bonus for every question that goes unaswered, and the character’s 
  target number of successes in the interrogation increases by 1.
  Obstacles/Penalties: Surprised by the Eye (–1 to –3), the Eye has 
  physical evidence like the coat or the pendant (+1 to +5 for the Eye), 
  the interview is held near the crime scene (–2), the interview setting is 
  formal or isolated like an interrogation room (+2 to +3 for the Eye)  
  Aids/Bonuses: Interview is on the character’s turf (+1 to +3), char-
  acter was expecting the interview (+2), character has physical evidence 
  in support of a fake alibi (+2), character is not alone (+1)
  Roll Results
  Dramatic Failure/Failure: “Listen, I can appreciate why you might 
  be hesitant to tell me the truth, but that’s not an option you have in this 
  conversation,” he says. He’s got this look, like he’s expecting something... 
  and you can feel his words land in your chest like bad news. He’s... is he 
  trying to push his will on you?”
  Success/Exceptional Success: “That’s enough. We’re done with the 
  lying now.” He says it and your throat moves, contracts, choking on a con-
  fession that you lock down. It’s like you’re trying not to cry. “What do you 
  know about [the Victim]?” he asks, and you can’t get any words out but the 
  truth, but you can hold your tongue. You feel like a child being punished.
  Consequences: The Eye sets things in motion against the characters 
  or chooses to file them away as “suspects, but not bastards.”
  
  52
  Scene:  
  Revelation
  MENTAL ••• 
  PHYSICAL — 
  SOCIAL •••
  Overview: This short scene dramatizes the moment when the characters 
  either come to understand exactly what happened in the stairwell, or the 
  moment when one of the major Storyteller characters  learns the truth, 
  too. This revelation might happen in this scene, in the moment, so the 
  characters can see the raw transition in the Killer or Storyteller characters 
  (that’s the ideal way for this scene to play out), or it can happen when 
  a Storyteller character comes to the coterie, knowing the truth, and de-
  mands, “What do you have to say? What should I fucking do to you?”
  Depending on how things go when a Storyteller character is present for 
  this scene, things may very accelerate to “Confrontation” in short order.
  This scene leads either to “Confrontation” or to Act Three.
  Description: The Beast unlocks its jaw, releasing its hold on your memory. 
  Images come. They arrive like spliced seconds of overexposed film, punctuated by 
  white flash frames of animal fury — the blinding pulse of the Beast’s frenzy.
  You remember the washed-out blue cast by flourescent lights near the 
  garage. [The Victim]’s shadow stretched out ahead of him, flickering with 
  the crappy light. Your shadow stretching away from you, closing on him, 
  your vision shaky and rushed. He spins around when your footfalls get too 
  close. His eyes flash. It’s the fear of the living, a memory of the mortal fear 
  of death, exploded onto to his corpse’s face by the sight of you, feet off the 
  ground, hands out, head cocked and mouth reaching for his throat.
  You collide, you scramble and roll across the sidewalk, you knock over 
  a trash can, you see his white eyes vanish behind a closing metal door, you 
  feel your fingernails bend when you scratch at it, you feel his weight slide 
  as you pull on the door, as you get your foot into the crack and pry yourself 
  inside, onto him, fingers slitting flesh.
  Then it’s falling, aching, a wild animal roar echoing off concrete, your throat 
  soar, your hands sticky, your knees burning, your throat full of hot blood.
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Reveal the Victim’s identity to the charac-
  ters or the Killer’s identity to the antagonists, and expose the truth about 
  that ill night. More than that, determine how that night morally affects 
  the Killer and his coterie. This should be a humane scene of dramatic 
  pathos, not the tense dance of “Face to Face” or the rough encounter of 
  “Confrontation.” The heart of this scene is roleplaying and the exploration 
  of the story’s thematic questions. 
  It’s fine if a discussion of the issues wanders into a conversation 
  between the players rather than their characters — no, it’s ideal. 
  Vampire’s personal horror is most compelling when it inspires players 
  to consider dramatic questions. If a discussion of dramatic questions 
  helps any player clarify the position her character would have in the 
  situation, or inspires her portrayal of her character, it’s worth it.
  Character Goals: Face truth and survive the consequences.
  Truth and Degeneration
  Dice Pool: Varies based on Humanity and the troupe’s assessment 
  of the sin. This is a degeneration roll (WoD, p. 91), followed by a 
  derangement roll (WoD, p. 92)
  Action: Reflexive, though the build-up to the roll and the determi-
  nation of the dice pool may take much longer. Consider the follow-
  ing questions and gauge the Humanity ratings of the character’s sins 
  based on your troupe’s answers. Aim for a consensus if you can. If the 
  answers, and a character’s attitude, make it clear that degeneration is a 
  foregone conclusion, that character suffers a –3 penalty when dealing 
  with grieving Storyteller characters in later scenes.
  • Is a Kindred morally culpable for the actions of his Beast? When 
  frenzy drives a vampire into the night in search of blood or hurt, is that 
  impassioned or is that the Beast’s twisted premeditation? Is it callous? 
  Does destroying a vampire count as murder?
  • Are the other characters complicit in the crime for helping to cover 
  it up? What are the moral ramifications of that?  Is it a sin for them?
  • How do the Vices of the Killer and his coterie affect the way their 
  human minds accept their role in murder or their acceptance of athe 
  inhuman supernatural monster within them?
  Obstacles/Penalties: The Killer refuses to accept responsibility or 
  justifies his actions (–1 for Killer, –3 for antagonist)
  Aids/Bonuses: The Killer displays genuine remorse and guilt (+2 for 
  antagonist), the Killer’s guilt jibes with his Virtue (+1 for Killer)
  Consequences: Once the characters’ feelings about that night settle 
  and calcify in their dead hearts, their human remorse or cold, dead 
  acceptance becomes apparent to the Storyteller characters, who react 
  with anger tempered by compassion, or unapologetic vengeance.
  
  53
  Scene:  
  Confrontation
  MENTAL •• 
  PHYSICAL ••• 
  SOCIAL •••
  Overview: It can’t be put off any longer. Let’s get to the bottom of 
  this. No flirtations with the truth, no subtle questions, no pussyfoot-
  ing around.
  This scene happens when the characters confront a major Storyteller 
  character like Sash, Val, or the Eye, with the intention of stopping their 
  investigation, ending all the threats, finally coming clean... or when 
  things just escalate out of control and passion trumps reason. 
  Alternately, this scene happens when one of the major Storyteller 
  characters pushes things to the same point, perhaps as a result of 
  “Revelation,” or maybe because your story just needs an action beat 
  to keep things hot.
  What sets this scene apart is its potential for violence. This isn’t 
  intended as a climactic, story-ending fight, but the bloody, angry 
  skirmish that makes it impossible for the coterie and the major Sto-
  ryteller characters to avoid their conflict any longer. After this, the 
  crimes of the Killer must be dealt with... somehow. This scene leads 
  to Act Three.
  Description: Her body relaxes, she looks down and away, then leans 
  her head back like she’d let out an accepting exhalation if she still breathed. 
  With her head back like that you can see her fangs slowly slide. She looks 
  back down at you, her eyes rimmed with the sore red lines that come with 
  tears, but no tears come. Then she slams, hissing, into you.
  or
  “Fuck you. Fuck you! Bastard!” She comes at you, pushing the table out 
  of the way, flinging glasses and chairs aside. “You’re gonna fucking die! 
  You hear me? You’re over! You threw him away and you’re gonna fucking 
  feel it!” Val grabs at her arms, holding on to her as best he can, but she’s 
  flailing, reaching, spraying flecks of blood as she screams. “We’re supposed 
  to get time! That’s all we fucking have! Motherfucker!”
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Create an emotionally raw conflict 
  that frightens and compels. Avoid spending all your dramatic tension 
  here. Avoid a fight that ends the story. The Storyteller characters pull 
  back here to grieve, or seethe, or plan a smarter, harsher retribution 
  (see “Revenge”).
  Character Goals: Choose between violent defense, escape and sur-
  render, and the consequences that come with each.
  Fury and Wrath
  Actions: Attack rolls are likely, but so is the possibility of frenzy. 
  At this point in the story, Cicero’s Crew isn’t yet willing to pursue 
  outright revenge, so if Sash is in danger of succumbing to an anger 
  frenzy — which seems likely if she has just come face to face with her 
  lover’s killer — her coterie-mates do their best to drag her away from 
  the scene.
  Obstacles/Penalties: The characters are outnumbered or surprised, 
  bad lighting (–1 to –3), hateful onlookers spit and throw bottles and 
  cheer on the antagonists (+1 to +4 to antagonists), characters feel 
  genuine remorse (–1)
  Aids/Bonuses: Antagonists are outnumbered, the characters ex-
  pected the fight (+1), peaceful onlookers try to break up the fight (–2 
  or –3 to all attacks by both sides of the fight)
  Details: Some examples of the brutal, desperate violene here:
  • [Brawl] She gets your jaw in her hands and pries, pulling your mouth 
  down, stretching your cheeks and cracking your lips. Her eyes, wide open 
  inches from yours, want to see you hurt. They say, “You see this? You’re 
  going to feel this!” She’s trying to rip your mandible out.
  • [Firearms] Loud snapping flashes of light reveal an overexposed slideshow 
  of snapping human jaws, flashing yellow teeth and reflecting eyes. At this 
  range, the smoke curls around him when he reaches you. Did those rounds 
  even hit anything?
  • [Weaponry] She rips the hanging lamp down, smashing it once against 
  you, but it gives, leaving shards of glass in your clothes but not making it 
  through to your clothes. She’s left with a broken metal frame and jagged edge 
  of glass, and she swings it like a scythe, cutting across cloth and flesh.
  Consequences: Hurting or destroying vampires in this scene doesn’t 
  come without repercussions. Sol seeks retribution for Calla or the Eye. 
  Cicero avenges Val in grief, or Sash and Calla in Val’s honor. A fight 
  that merely leaves Kindred in search of blood to heal their wounds hurts 
  everyone’s position to bargain in Act Three, but isn’t condemning.
  
  54
  Act Three: The Consequences
  This is where you push past the core Vampire dynamic of examining 
  sin and Humanity and look at the political consequences — maybe 
  immoral, maybe harsh — of their actions. 
  In Act Three, the characters confront Storyteller characters who do 
  not care about the coterie’ Humanity or remorse. The coterie faces the 
  possibility of being punished for their actions by monsters no different 
  than they are, save for the benefit of political power and Status. They 
  also face the possibility of benefitting from their sins by making savvy 
  deals with those powerful monsters.
  The Big Questions
  But is it an additional sin to benefit from one’s sins? Can ritual atone-
  ment restore the soul some degree of its humanity? Or does the only 
  thin degree of salvation come from the selfless humility that comes 
  from surrendering one’s self to the vengeance of the wronged, in the 
  hopes that forgiveness will come, too?
  Those questions that the coterie explored in “Revelation” should 
  resurface in Act Three. When the coterie is faced with political 
  and physical consequences to their actions and their Humanity, do 
  their answers to those questions change? Do they betray the part of 
  their humanity that held their grief for the sake of earthly benefits? 
  Do they regain a sliver of their souls by choosing their Humanity 
  over their social station?
  These questions won’t come up if the players’ characters are sim-
  ply let off the hook after Act Two. Whatever they’ve done to date, 
  someone must come for them looking for closure... or a chance to 
  use the character’s actions as leverage to manipulate the coterie.
  Archetypal Scenes
  This act of the story is made up three simple scenes which represent 
  core conflicts for you to pursue here, at the end. These specific scenes 
  might not occur as written — the actions of the coterie in Act Two 
  are impossible for us to predict and, thus, to react to — but they help 
  you conceptualize ways to dramatize this story’s big questions.
  It’s likely that the neither the players nor their characters will take 
  action to make these scenes happen. (If they do, take advantage of it.) 
  You’ll have to pull some strings. 
  Here’s the rundown on the core framework of this act’s scenes:
  Brought In: This is the scene in which you put the climactic choice 
  before the players: Accept punishment or risk wrath. 
  Only you can gauge just what it will take for you to get your troupe 
  to meet with Sol or Cicero if they expect to be threatened or harmed. 
  They might need to be enticed in with amnesty, lured in by material 
  rewards, or escorted (or dragged) in by however many ghouls it takes to 
  make the point. This is an area where you may have to be a bit heavy 
  handed. It’s crass, but if you have to, speak to the players directly about 
  the importance of confronting this final choice. Their Requiems aren’t 
  at stake in this scene, and you can tell them that, but they’ll be given 
  a chocie that might have fatal repercussions.
  Sometimes players must be given choices their characters can never 
  have, for the sake of the story. The characters might not have good 
  reason to meet with Sol or Cicero, but the players do: They should 
  want to see how things turn out. Otherwise, you may have to waste 
  time strong-arming the characters, and that’s seldom good for fun.
  Punishment: If the characters accept punishment, no matter how 
  genuine their remorse or how empty the gesture, the Killer (and per-
  haps others) is required to swear to a mystical contract, called a Blood 
  Oath, to which he will bound for however long it pleases the vampire 
  he deals with, Sol or Cicero. 
  The dramatic choice here is whether the coterie lets him suffer alone 
  or shows him their support, though it will damage their reputations. 
  The way the characters conduct themselves in this scene determines 
  whether any surviving cohorts of the Victim (Sash, Val, Calla) are 
  satisfied, or if they still come for revenge.
  Revenge: If the characters do not accept punishment, or do not 
  honor it, and the Victim’s cohorts are still in play, the coterie faces a 
  less forgiving consequence: revenge.
  After the Climax
  If the scenes of the second act rise to a climactic level of dramatic ten-
  sion, it can seem difficult to find the energy to power these final scenes. 
  That’s okay. If the characters come to these scenes exhausted, that’s 
  thematically appropriate. If the players come to these scenes exhausted, 
  consider playing out Act Three as a kind of sequel chapter in which these 
  consequences surface after the coterie feels things have settled down.
  Use dramatic tools like music, or imagery that “rhymes” with the charac-
  ter’s histories to infuse these scenes with a pathos greater than violence.
  
  55
  Scene:  
  Brought In
  MENTAL •• 
  PHYSICAL • 
  SOCIAL ••••
  Overview: Despite it’s name, this scene covers the awkward and 
  tense meeting between the coterie and Sol or Cicero, depending on 
  who they ultimately answer to — or who they conspire with — whether 
  the coterie is brought in or comes in on its own. 
  The characters might reach this scene by agreeing to a meeting to discuss 
  reparations for the Victim’s destruction, by coming to either Sol or Cicero 
  in search of a deal to protect the coterie from the other local vassal, or by 
  being dragged in at the hands of Cicero’s Crew or thuggish ghouls. 
  The point of this scene is for the characters to make a choice between 
  “Punishment” and “Revenge.” The choice is presented to them by ei-
  ther Cicero or Sol, both of which have the juice to bring in the Notary 
  (p. 57) or push the characters’ crimes further up the food chain to more 
  dangerous vampires who have less to gain by squeezing the coterie. 
  (This overshadowing threat is the role of Lord X in this story.)
  Just what kind of deal the characters can make varies depending on 
  what they’ve done and who knows what. We can’t explore every pos-
  sible option here, so you have to play Sol and Cicero the way that’ll best 
  make the story conclude dramatically. Fortunately, you can find a certain 
  foothold in the fact that Sol and Cicero both want things, and those 
  things determine what sort of deals they’re willing to work out.
  Description: This scene is expected to unfold on either Cicero’s or 
  Sol’s turf. But you have alternatives. If the only way to get the coterie 
  into this scene without brow-beating them is to have them meet with 
  the right vampire in a neutral location, do it. Here are two quick 
  sketches of Sol’s and Cicero’s settings:
  • [Sol] In the back of the storefront, downstairs where you might expect 
  a basement apartment, Sol sits behind a big bland desk in a wood-paneled 
  room with deep, tired carpet the color of blood. The place is spare. The only 
  thing to look at is Sol and his suit and his hair and his folded hands that say, 
  “Let’s get to work.”
  • [Cicero] In the heart of his gray brownstone, Cicero lurks in a room 
  with no windows. Where they should be are large scenic paintings, like you 
  might find in a European palace, but faded and reassembled from cut seg-
  ments. Deep brown hardwoods and gilded fixtures feel like the last century, 
  and pair nicely with Cicero’s black-and-white, angular suit.
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Present a dilemma of political tactics 
  and morality. The characters can bargain with Sol or Cicero to protect 
  themselves from more trouble, but are they willing to let one of these 
  minor lords benefit from the Victim’s death? If the Killer is truly sorry, 
  how much is he willing to trade or compromise in penance?
  The heart of this scene is the choice between the two archetypal 
  options that end this story: punishment or revenge. Here’s how each 
  lord sees the situation, and what he wants:
  Cicero
  Keep Val loyal and complacent by appeasing the grief of his coterie-
  mates, Sash and Calla. Appease them with a public show of binding 
  the Killer to an Oath of Blood Knives and then beating him before an 
  audience of Kindred. That beating can be real and brutal, or it can be 
  just enough to convince Sash and Calla. If strongly manipulated, Cicero 
  is even willing to let the coterie confront Sash and Calla, provided 
  promises to destroy them (thus Cicero becomes the only remaining 
  influence on Val.) Cicero doesn’t want to look weak in the domain, 
  but he can blame Sash and Calla’s destruction on their own zeal.
  Sol
  Secure a teacher of Auspex. Avenge harm done to the Eye. Get at least 
  a symbolic penance for the Killer’s crime by getting a Blood Oath from 
  him. (Secretly, lure Sash and Calla to his side by giving them ghouls to 
  beat down the Killer in “Revenge” after the Blood Oath is sworn.)
  Character Goals: Make a deal to bring all this trouble to an end, 
  and maybe get off easy for stepping up.
  Negotiating
  Action: If you need to resolve some specific details of their deals, 
  like payments of service, see “Cutting a Deal” (WoD, p. 84).
  Obstacles/Penalties: Lord’s Status, physical evidence, city law texts 
  or expertise (+1 to +3), Connections, nothing to offer (–5)
  Aids/Bonuses: Character’s Status, favors owed (+1 to +3), blackmail 
  (+1 to +5), solemn pledge (an exceptional success on a Manipulation 
  + Persuasion roll grants a +1 bonus on Cutting a Deal)
  Consequences: Characters may be able to negotiate for time to 
  think things over, and they may use that time to visit the other lord 
  and look for a counter-offer.
  
  56
  Scene:  
  Punishment
  MENTAL • 
  PHYSICAL ••• 
  SOCIAL •••
  Overview: This scene is an archetype for one of two major possible 
  endings to the story. In this scene, the coterie accepts punishment for 
  the Killer’s actions, either as part of a deal they’ve made with Cicero 
  or Sol, or because they are unable to escape it. This punishment by a 
  gesture for the sake of a lord saving face or the appeasement of a grieving 
  survivor, or it may be a genuine act of penance and chastisement. 
  What sets this scene apart from “Revenge” is its formality and official 
  air. Punishment is doled out through the status of a lordly vampire and 
  denotes the customary and legal end of the matter. This scene is about 
  culpability, “Revenge” is about wrath.
  Description: The punished character is leashed to a ring in the 
  floor of a barren chamber — a cellar, empty warehouse or abandoned 
  building — and the audience is gathered in a circle around him. This 
  audience should be made up of any Storyteller characters you like, 
  whether they’re part of this kit or drawn from your ongoing chronicle. 
  Presumably the rest of the coterie is in attendance, too.
  The place is cold, like the cracked concrete floor is giving of a chill wind. 
  It smells like mold and rain and sweat. Loose vents and ductwork rattle 
  somewhere in the walls from a wind pushing in from outside. [Cicero/Sol]’s 
  ghouls stand around [the punished character] like guards protecting a museum 
  piece or a safe. One of them cradles a [weapon], crusted with blood, in his 
  arms. He has the flushed red hue of a body gorged on Blood.
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: One key challenge here is put before the 
  character being punished: Can he truly, physically endure the punish-
  ment for his crime? What if they let Sash do the punishing?
  A second choice is put before the rest of the coterie: personal respon-
  sibility or loyalty? Will the coterie stand by while one of their own is 
  beaten and humiliated before the Kindred of the Domain? Will they 
  accept the shame on their coterie that comes with that, or will they 
  take action to protect some of their dignity and reputation?
  Character Goals: Endure torture or defend one of their own.
  Enduring the Punishment
  This action dramatizes not the Blood Oath which the Killer (or a 
  selfless cohort) must swear (Sse “The Blood Oath,” p. 57), but the 
  beating he must take before an audience to demonstrate his intent to 
  honor the Oath.
  Dice Pool: Resolve + Stamina – damage suffered each turn (for the 
  subject) vs. Strength + Weaponry + weapon (for the punisher ghoul). The 
  punished character cannot apply Defense if he wants to appear sincere.
  Action: Extended and contested. The punished character must have 
  no fewer than five successes less than the punisher’s accured successes 
  or he cries out in pain and potentially breaks down (if he fails a subse-
  quent Resolve + Composure roll), whether that means tears, cursing, 
  choosing to apply his Defense, or frenzy is up to you and the player to 
  work out. The punisher stops when you decide the scene has reached 
  its climax, but shouldn’t go beyond the point where his attacks are 
  causing aggravated damage.
  The punished character is most likely restrained at the wrists, and 
  possibly the neck, by leather straps (Durability 1, Structure 3).
  Obstacles/Penalties: Vengeful punisher (+1 to +3), hostile audience 
  (–1 to –3), victim suffers alone (–3 to –5), weapon type (+1 to +4)
  Aids/Bonuses: Genuine remorse (+2), Virtue: Justice (+1), Virtue: 
  Fortitude (+1), coterie commiserates with tears or an emotional dia-
  logue before the punishment (+3 to +5)
  Camaradie
  Does the rest of the coterie let their cohort suffer alone? Did they 
  help him cover up the crime? Have they lied for him? Aren’t they 
  complicit on some level, too?
  The particular actions the coterie might undertake in support of 
  their comrade are open to their imaginations. Here, though, are some 
  possible approaches and their consequences — plus the consequence 
  of doing nothing.
  Speak Out: Presence + Empathy. The characters, regardless of how 
  emotional or mortal it makes them seem to the other Damned, help the 
  punished character endure his suffering by talking him through it. Maybe 
  a character crouches down next to him, hold his face in her hands, and 
  speaks with a degree of humanity that reveals a new side to that character 
  — this act is about the coterie as much as the Killer. Successes on this 
  action add bonus dice to the punished, like Teamwork.
  
  57
  THE OATH OF BLOOD KNIVES
  Dice Pool: Presence + Intimidation + Dominate — subject’s 
  Resolve
  Cost: 1 Vitae, supplied by the subject swearing the Oath
  Action: Instant
  The Blood Oaths of the Invictus are mystically binding vows 
  between one vampire and another. Mechanically, they operate 
  similarly to Devotions. A Blood Oath requires two parties: the one 
  taking the vow (the subject) and the one to whom the vow is sworn 
  (the beneﬁciary). A third participant may also be involved, in the 
  event that neither of the essential participants actually know the 
  mystic secrets of the Oath being sworn. This third party is called a 
  Notary, and her only job in the invocation of the Oath is application 
  of the supernatural secrets involved. That is, in this case, it’s the 
  Notary’s dice pool that’s used to activate the Oath between the 
  subject and the beneﬁciary.
  The Oath of Blood Knives requires the subject to promise not to 
  take the action speciﬁed in the text of the Oath. The action to be 
  forbidden is chosen by the beneﬁciary. In this case, the Killer (or the 
  character taking the rap for him) is the subject and either Cicero or 
  Sol is likely to be the beneﬁciary. The Oath forbids the subject to 
  hurt Sash (and any other parties named in the text of the Oath).
  If the subject violates the Oath, his body punishes itself by 
  splitting open along the arms, legs, chest and face as if it were being 
  slashed by knives. The Vitae in his body comes out as jagged, glassy 
  blades the color of blood. He suffers one point of lethal damage 
  equal to the successes on the activation roll, regardless of armor 
  or Defense, and loses an equal amount of Vitae. Do not reveal the 
  successes scored on the activation roll unless the Oath is violated.
  — The Oath of Blood Knives appears in the covenant book, The 
  Invictus (WW25121)
  THE NOTARY
  The Notary is an archetypal non-combatant character who comes 
  into play only if you use the Oath of Blood Knives in the story, and 
  only if you need her to activate the power. The assumption is that 
  she is an Invictus Mekhet, an acquaintance of either Cicero or Sol, 
  who normally resides elsewhere in the city and has little reason to 
  visit the Domain until invited to fulﬁll her covenant duty as Notary.  
  (Sol, remember, used to be a member of the Invictus, and may still 
  have connections with them.) They call her, simply, the Notary.
  Naturally, you can combine the role of the Notary with that of 
  some other Storyteller character already in place in your chronicle.
  Description: Part sorceress and part aristocrat, the Notary’s 
  couture red pull-over cloak and elaborate, fortune-teller-looking 
  necklaces would make her seem like a New Age poseur if not for 
  the elegant black business suit revealed when she throws the cloak 
  over one shoulder. It’s her weathered, serious face that makes all 
  the rest of it seem measured and true. Her face suggests a Russian 
  grandmother, but her poise suggests a rich matron.
  She nods and talks through the process with a practiced 
  recitation. The Oath itself comes out of a stiff leather sheath under 
  her arm. “The text will drink in your Blood,” she says. “You will sign 
  your own name, in your own hand, with your own Vitae, and the 
  Oath shall keep and remember it until our host, the beneﬁciary, 
  chooses to release you. 
  Ability
  Invoke the Oath of Blood Knives — (10 dice) The Notary’s job 
  in the Invictus is to preside over Oaths with discretion and poise. 
  She enables the First Estate to keep Kindred in line, Invictus or not,  
  without having to expose the secret of the Oath to outsiders. At 
  your discretion, she can spend a Willpower point on the activation 
  roll, bringing the total to a formidable 13 dice.
  Step Up: The character steps up to accept the same punishment, 
  attempting the “Enduring the Punishment” action just like her 
  comrade. This may seem foolhardy and emotional to others, but it 
  is a profound gesture to the rest of the coterie — and may demon-
  strate that they share a bond that makes them look formidable to 
  other vampires.
  An End to This: The character calls an end to the punishment, 
  potentially screwing their deal with Cicero or Sol and drawing 
  the wrath of Sash in “Revenge.” The ghouls don’t fight to keep 
  the punishment going. Rather, their master says, “You’re forfeit-
  ing my forgiveness with this. You know you’ll take punishment, 
  now or later.”
  Consequences: If the characters come to the aid of their comrade, it 
  may be an act of absolution worthy of consideration in the Aftermath 
  of this story. If they abandon him, it may strain the characters’ trust. 
  Give the punished character the equivalent of a new Flaw: Betrayed. 
  He gains experience whenever he fails to participate in teamwork or 
  refuses the aid of his coterie-mates. Don’t let this linger, though — this 
  is a new story thread to be resolved. How do the characters rebuild their 
  trust for one another? 
  Whatever actions they take, they’ve made a profound show of their 
  character in front of other Kindred. Word spreads. Opinions change. 
  Their actions may enable characters to purchase Status they otherwise 
  couldn’t, or it may create temporary +3 ot –3 Social modifiers with 
  Kindred who respect or deride their actions.
  
  58
  Scene:  
  Revenge
  MENTAL • 
  PHYSICAL •••• 
  SOCIAL •••
  Overview: This scene is an archetye for one of two major possible 
  endings to the story. In this scene, the coterie falls into an attack of 
  vengeance — most likely begun by Sash, but not necessarily. This is 
  the messy ending, where the circle of violence comes back around, 
  where hate and hurt and broken hearts leave the wrong souls dead 
  and the wrong bodies ruined on the street.
  What sets this scene apart from “Punishment” is its raw violence and 
  nastiness. Revenge comes with teeth and guns, regardless of politics 
  and station. This scene is about closure, while “Punishment” is about 
  compromise. 
  It’s simple: If things have been left unresolved for any of Cicero’s 
  Crew, or even for Sol, a final strike is prepared against the coterie. This 
  is a brutal, violent ambush by prepared enemies who want nothing but 
  to hurt the characters.
  You have to determine if there’s a lingering need for venegance on 
  someone’s behalf, or if the story call’s for action to the extent that you 
  have to impose vengeance on a Storyteller character. Here’s a rundown 
  on their motives:
  Motives
  Obviously, Sash wants the characters to hurt like she does. To ap-
  pease her and keep Val loyal, Cicero sends ghouls with her. To buy 
  her loyalty, and access to Calla, Sol sends ghouls with her. Unless 
  Cicero or Sol has been humiliated or blackmailed by the coterie, she 
  doesn’t have the go-ahead to destroy any of them, and without that 
  go-ahead she’s not willing to make the same mistakes the characters 
  did and kill them. 
  The rest of the crew comes out in support of Sash.
  Joe Coat may side with Sash out of a simple sense of power — no 
  one should be destroying vampires in the Domain without being hurt 
  themselves. He might also be sent by Sol to make sure things don’t get 
  out of hand. He’s the toughest of the Storyteller characters.
  Tactics
  The avengers use whatever method is available to them — the 
  Eye, ghouls, Joe Coat — to identify a place where the characters can 
  reasonably be expected to show up. If the Eye has completed his inves-
  tigation, he should know someplace to find the coterie. The avengers 
  then prepare their ambush, either by hiding (if the site is remote or 
  empty) or by posing among the ambient folk (if the site is public, like 
  a club where “Face to Face” unfolded). They strive to get the drop on 
  the coterie.
  If a character has taken the Oath of Blood Knives, the attackers focus 
  on him. They hold off other characters with words or force. “Let this 
  one show me he’s sorry or take his chances with me like a grown-up, 
  or we can all get bloody tonight.” The idea here, of course, is to pres-
  ent the punished character with the decision of hurting Sash or not 
  and risking the damage from the Oath. If the Oath included multiple 
  prohibited targets, the punished character may not be able to fight 
  back at all without risking serious harm.
  Storyteller Goals and Tips: Conjure a desperate and bloody scene of 
  passionate and fearsome violence. Give voice and action to a broken 
  heart, in Sash, or to the shame and regret that come with failing one’s 
  cohorts, in the case of Val and Calla.
  This is a climactic, emotional fight. What’s at stake may be hearts, 
  torpor or Requiems. Storyteller characters should cry out and threaten 
  on behalf of the hearts they’re fighting for. This fight should be cathar-
  tic for the Storyteller characters and for the players.
  How far will the characters go in this fight? Will they kill again? Will 
  they throw away whatever humanity they may have salvaged before 
  in this violent match, or will they accept a degree of physical defeat 
  for some slight spiritual victory?
  Character Goals: Survive an ambush and decide how far to push 
  the fight against their foes.
  Obstacles/Penalties: Characters are outnumbered or surprised, bad 
  lighting (–1 to –3), thumping bass or roaring traffic (–1 to –5), hateful 
  onlookers (+1 to +3), crowbars and axes (+1 to +3)
  Assemble a group of attackers that matches the threat you want to 
  pose, using the Storyteller characters presented earlier in this kit.
  Aids/Bonuses: Antagonists are outnumbered or surprised, characters 
  are well armed
  
  59
  Aftermath
  The consequences of this story may ripple through the rest of the 
  chronicle. Do the character’s actions in this story determine their 
  reputations throughout the city? What allegianes have they made or 
  broken, and with what kinds of monsters?
  Ultimately, you have to measure the potential ramifications of this 
  story by comparing the personal investment your players seemed to 
  have in it against the nature of their success or failure in the tale. If 
  the players were seriously invested in the story, but the consequences 
  for their characters’ mistakes would kill the joy of the chronicle for 
  a while, that’s a good reason to go easy on them. If the characters 
  threaded the needle and achieved powerful new allies and reputations 
  while protecting their Humanity and Requiems, but the players were 
  never really engaged by the tale, don’t drag out the repercussions for 
  dramaturgical reasons. It’s not worth boring the players.
  Rewards
  Characters may be rewarded with access to new Merits, like Resources 
  (if Sol is paying them for the secrets of Auspex) or Status (if they’ve 
  made a good show of their political muster) or Contacts (if their in-
  vestigations exposed them to well connected Storyteller characters) or 
  anything else that will help this story plug into the next, or help your 
  players connect their characters to the game world.
  And, of course, there are the valuable favors owed and secrets learned 
  that cannot be measured with game traits, but which the players can 
  use to shape their coterie’s future.
  Morality
  The moral consequences of this story can be complicated. If the characters 
  continued to kill and sin their way through the tale, then this has become a 
  story of their descent into callous inhumanity after the Beast pulled just one 
  of them to the brink. Can they really blame the Beast, then, for the monsters 
  they are? Or would they be just as inhumane if they were still alive?
  In a colder, more earthly way, the characters may have materially 
  benefitted from the crime of the Killer’s Beast. Turning a senseless 
  death into something profitable is immoral in its own way. Do they 
  become part of a profitable arrangement with Sol, or destroy Cicero’s 
  Crew on his behalf? If so, present the players with this idea: The Beast 
  killed Hooper, but the characters killed him again and again.
  Do the characters who succeed on their degeneration rolls have to 
  roll again if they attempt to profit from that same sin? You’re within 
  your rights to ask the question and make the call. 
  Alternately, the characters may have rediscovered a part of their hu-
  man selves that they had thought dead. If the players made choices to 
  protect their Humanity and limit the suffering caused by the monster 
  in the Killer’s corpse, this has become a story of humanity reborn out of 
  suffering and sin. The Requiem is a strange, illogical experience, in which 
  losing one’s self to the wicked Beast within can reveal the delicate fiber 
  of the Man underneath. There is hope beneath all that blood.
  Regaining Morality
  The big questions asked in this story should be your guide for deter-
  mining whether characters have earned the privilege of restoring a dot 
  of Humanity. Intent has a lot to do with it. If the characters spared Sash 
  greater hurt, but only so they could get off easy, that’s not enough.
  It’s possible that a character who degenerated during this story will 
  qualify for a restored dot of Humanity at the end of it, by your reckon-
  ing. That’s fine, but be careful that you don’t undermine the whole 
  character arc traveled in this tale. An act is not erased because a trace 
  of Humanity is regained. The memory of it cannot be shaken. If the 
  character finds a part of her former, human self in her actions after 
  death, then she has rediscovered the part of her that is emotionally and 
  psychologically affected by mortal feelings. She may not be absolved 
  — she may just taste her guilt all the more clearly.
  Experience
  Experience rewards for this story are based more on the active 
  engagement of the characters in the story, and less on some measure 
  of success or failure. The characters risk their Humanity, reputations 
  and Requiems herein, but failing at those risks shouldn’t penalize the 
  players. The characters can still learn something. The players can tell 
  a great story about defeat and suffering.
  In addition to the experience rewards suggested in the rulebook:
  1 experience point if the characters discover histories, motives or 
  relationships of the characters in the Domain and use them to their 
  advantage through roleplaying, rather than dice pools alone.
  1 experience point if the characters find Sash and Hooper’s secret 
  haven or puzzle out what Hooper’s and Sol’s business was.
  1 experience point if the characters come the punished character’s aid.
  
  MENTAL ••• 
  PHYSICAL —
  SOCIAL 
  —
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Bloody ﬁlth (–3 to –5)
  “Someone’s coming!” (–3)
  Each person that comes into physical 
  contact with the body contributes a 
  cumulative –1 modiﬁer to the investigation 
  Knife or scalpel and 
  the willingness to use it (+2)
  Move the body (–2 TN to ﬁnd pendant)
  Evidence: Army Jacket
  Small brass key
  Black serpentine tattoos (+3)
  Pendant (+5)
  Establish the dilemma: Who is the victim? What happened? What’ll it cost?
  STs
  Collect clues from the crime scene.
  MENTAL 
  •• 
  PHYSICAL ••
  SOCIAL 
  ••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  The Evidence
  Problem witness (–2, TN 3 successes)
  Surveillance (–2 to –4)
  Highly visible (–2)
  Gruesome Complications: The body 
  comes apart, characters get stained with 
  blood, a trail of gore is left behind, etc. 
  (–2 to –4)
  Talkative accessories
  Teamwork (WoD p. 134)
  Garbage bag (+2), Axe (+3)
  Contacts (–2 to –5)
  Allies
  Bribe (+1 to +3)
  Create an aura of pressing paranoia and increasing suspense.
  STs
  Clean up the crime scene, control the evidence, protect the Masquerade.
  MENTAL •••
  PHYSICAL •
  SOCIAL •••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Investigating
  Talktative subjects eat up time (–1 to –3)
  Foreign language neighborhood (–4)
  Characters have a fearsome reputation 
   (–1 to –4)
  Intimidation (+3 to the Eye in “Investigated”)
  No useful Contacts (–3)
  Characters are local (add Status)
  Barﬂy Merit (+1 or +2)
  Contacts
  Character has a Specialty
  in common with subject (+1)
  Steadily reveal new information and clues from a variety of colorful sources.
  STs
  Gain enough information to get ahead without getting caught. 
  MENTAL •••
  PHYSICAL —
  SOCIAL •••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Investigated
  Characters beat the Eye  
  in the contested action (–5)
  Characters use intermediaries 
  in “Investigating” (–2)
  Characters are often seen in the Domain 
  (–1 to –3)
  Accessories are successfully quieted
  Characters hide evidence from the Eye
  Characters abandon the crime scene (+5)
  Characters are sloppy (+1 to +3)
  Characters are not often seen  
  in the Domain (+2 to +3)
  The Eye has Contacts in common 
  with the coterie (+1 to +3)
  Characters use Intimidation 
  in “Investigating” (+3)
  Establish the Eye as a lurking antagonist.  
  Determine when or if the coterie is caught.
  STs
  Avoid being found out by the Eye.
  Crime Scene
  (all modifiers affect  the Eye’s rolls)
  
  MENTAL 
  ••
  PHYSICAL —
  SOCIAL 
  ••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Flashback
  Frenzy (3 successes)
  Shame (–1 to –5)
  Auspex (+1)
  Dominate •• instruction to 
  confront the ﬂashback (+2 to +5)
  Counseling: Manipulation + Empathy  
  (Teamwork, max +5, WoD p. 134)
  Meditation (WoD p. 51, +1)
  Creep out the players and present a choice between truth and comfort.
  STs
  Gain vital information into the truth of the Killer’s night of frenzy.
  MENTAL 
  ••
  PHYSICAL •
  SOCIAL •••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Face to Face
  Sash cries (–2 to –5)
  Calla is ominous (–2 to –3)
  Val is too friendly (–2)
  Character asks too many questions (–2)
  Distraction in the area (+2)
  Physical evidene supporting an alibi, 
  likely false (+3)
  Character feels genuine sympathy 
  or remorse (+1 to +5)
  Provoke guilt and/or fear from a moving encounter with the Victim’s coterie.
  STs
  Get through the encounter without breaking.
  MENTAL 
  ••
  PHYSICAL •
  SOCIAL •••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Interviewed
  Characters are surprised 
  to see the Eye (–1 to –4)
  The Eye has physical evidence (+1 to +5)
  Isolated setting, interrogation room 
   (–1 to –3)
  Interview takes place near 
  the crime scene (–1 to –3)
  Characters have the  
  “home court advantage” (+1 to +3)
  Characters are expecting the Eye (+2)
  Physical evidene supporting an alibi, 
  likely false (+2)
  Teamwork (WoD p. 134, max +3)
  Create unbearable suspense through a tense confrontation of wits.
  STs
  Get through a meeting with the Eye without giving themselves away.
  MENTAL ••• 
  PHYSICAL —
  SOCIAL •••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Revelation
  Frenzy (3 successes)
  Killer feels no remorse (–2)
  Fail the degeneration roll (–3)
  Willpower (+3)
  Killer feels genuine remorse (+1 to +3)
  Succeed on the degeneration roll (+3)
  Reveal the Victim’s identity and the truth about that night with wonder and humanity.
  STs
  Finally choose between damning truth and protective ignorance.
  
  MENTAL 
  ••
  PHYSICAL •••
  SOCIAL •••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Confrontation
  Characters are outnumbered
  Characters are surprised
  Hostile environment: bad light (–1 to –3), 
  loud (–1 to –5), hateful bystanders (+1 
  to +5)
  Killer feels genuine remorse (–1 to –3)
  Antagonists are outnumbered
  Characters are prepared
  Friendly bystanders (+1 to +5)
  Create an emotionally raw aatmosphere that scares and compels.
  STs
  Choose between defense and surrender.
  MENTAL 
  ••
  PHYSICAL •
  SOCIAL ••••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Brought In
  Status
  Physical evidence (+1 to +5)
  Kindred law texts or expertise (+1 to +3)
  Nothing to trade (–5)
  Status
  Favors owed that can be transferred to 
  the other party (+1 to +3)
  Blackmail (+1 to +5)
  Solemn pledge (+1)
  Present a dilemma of political and moral tactics.
  STs
  Make a deal to bring all this trouble to an end.
  MENTAL 
  •
  PHYSICAL •••
  SOCIAL •••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Punishment
  Vengeful punisher (+1 to +3)
  Hostile audience (–1 to –3)
  Punished suffers alone (–3 to –5)
  Commiseration (+1 to +3)
  Genuine remorse (+2 to +5)
  Coterie takes action to  
  support the punished character
  Raise the question of personal responsibility versus loyalty.
  STs
  Take their licks or defend their own.
  MENTAL 
  •
  PHYSICAL ••••
  SOCIAL •••
  SCENE:
  PCs
  H I N D R A N C E S
  H E L P
  Revenge
  Outnumbered
  Surprise
  Hostile environment: bad light (–1 to –3), 
  loud (–1 to –5), hateful bystanders (+1 
  to +5)
  Outnumbered
  Prepared
  Create a desperate and bloody scene of nasty violence.
  STs
  Endure an ambush and decide how far to push the ﬁght.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Storyteller [multi]/World of Darkness (WoD) [multi]/CofD/Vampire - The Requiem/SAS/Vampire the Requiem - SAS - Blood Red - Ash Gray.pdf