Let's Play VtM: Wild Nights - Chapter 10

Fantastic post. I hope you realize that I was joking about the diablerie as a light-hearted jest in root's direction.

The goals you've outlined are exactly the direction we need to go in and I agree with everything you just said.

I have no intention of betraying Dubrik; if anything, we need to do whatever we can to stay on that dude's good side. We avoided trouble with him as Tony, and it's 10X more important to avoid trouble with him now. If anything, when Joan becomes a full-fledged Sabbat member, Dubrik will be essential in making sure that any Tzimisce within the Sabbat don't try and fuck with us. We need to be as tight with D as possible, because the Tzimisce will never accept a Tremere. However, a ruthlessly pragmatic man like the Bishop will, he doesn't give a shit that we're Tremere.

Oh, and going Anarch is a death wish, of course. We're already in with Dubrik, not following up on what we've promised to do is suicidal. The Anarchs are a fucking mess anyways, disorganized and with their heads up their ass. We've got to keep our nose clean, work our way up, and slowly uncover the inner workings of Eames' operation.[/quote

Well I was going to suggest that we triple cross Dubrik by diablerising ourselves...


Anyway, I don't see how double-crossing Dubrik could work under any circumstances. The London Tremere, and this is meta-gaming knowledge, are in a position of power but diminishing trust. All it takes is for someone int he Camarilla to declare open season on Earnes' Chantry for Greenwich to be wiped clean of the mage's stain if they think we're practicing dark thaumaturgy or infernalist rituals.

Second meta-gaming piece of knowledge: Dubrik will not tolerate failure of any kind. We know what he did to Wilkinson. I very much doubt he'd even be so kind to a Tremere as to give us all our (dismembered) limbs inside the same lead coffin. He'd probably much rather sell us to the new Archbishop of London as a plaything for a favour.

It's early days, so I don't care if we have one night on which we find out the layout of the Chantry, but I don't see how it will drive the plot forward. Such a choice is an aside. If we want to drive the story, rather than be forced to react to it, we should make choices (like investigating the Docklands leaseholds) which will push things in a direction that will be favourable to Joan.

 

Presented that way, H looks a lot more tempting. Sometimes I forget where this unfortunate bunch spawned from...

 

That certainly does make H more agreeable than previous arguments for secret passages and hidey-holes. Though again this seems to be metagaming knowledge of a sort. We don't know that our Tremere believes the power of the stones or even that the Hawksmoor myth is true.

What we do know (in character) is that we've had a quest hook dangled for us by Argyll.If H wins on the basis of root's suggestion though, I'd find it much less derp.

 

That's one of the reasons why I found H intriguing, though the merits of C are obvious as well. We do need to learn more Thaumaturgy over time to be useful to our new Sabbat masters though, but hopefully there will be chances for that later as well if we act the loyal lapdog.

 

The way I see thaumaturgy at the moment: better to be taught than to try to learn it. Earnes might reward us if we gain her favours. If we ever want to learn dark thaumaturgy however, we're on our own. So we should look into that later most certainly.

 

Indeed, it's a lot safer for us if we are taught Thaumaturgy from our superiors rather than picking up skills we "shouldn't" have on our own, Dark Thaumaturgy sounds seriously fucked up though, but potent.

 

Maybe.

As far as I can tell, we must either take credit for the job or not. If we take credit, there's a good chance that Eames will be angry with Argyll and, consequently, Argyll will be angry with us. If we don't take credit, we're no closer to Eames than before.

 

He'd be as ruthless with us as we would with him. Fuck the neonates, we are kindred.

 

Ah, now that is an excellent argument in favour of H. Much better than HERP DERP LETS EXPLORE. I would be a lot more content with H now that you've put forth such a great line of reasoning.

Still like C the best tho, as I think Eames is well aware of all that good shit you mentioned and would be willing to teach us should we prove a valuable protege. Argyll might get pissed off we ended up doing his assignment for him, but fuck him; we're not here to make friends, we're here to climb the ladder, gain the Regentia's trust, then fuck her over as badly as possible on our road to freedom. The more Tremere that die because of our efforts, the better.

Tony at least had some vestiges of morality*, but Joan will probably be much more ruthless than he was.

* As nasty as Tony could be, he was loyal to those close to him at least, which is why he told Erika about Eames' plans to replace her at the expense of his standing with the Barons. Giving Erika that heads-up may have saved her life.

EDIT: I just read Rod's post. I suppose it makes sense not to make enemies of Argyll, even if he's low on the totem pole. Could bite us in the ass.

 

Yeah, the problem I have with C is that Argyll might not take kindly to it (unless Eames doesn't care at all, in which case it would have been a waste of time) and I don't see it wise to make enemies of our peers. Yeah, he's ultimately irrelevant, but if he's actively looking for something to discredit us, then he might well find it. And it's been made clear that secrecy is not something we have much of.

For those mentioning Dark Thaumaturgy, know that even the Sabbat frowns upon it. And by "frowns upon it" I mean the Inquisition will have you offed if they find out (and it will become increasingly obvious that you're following it at some point). When it comes to it, we'd be better off trying to find whatever texts the Tremere antitribu left behind and work from those.

 

THe point of being spy is make no wave and blend in.

 

I'm glad you highlighted that for me. Though it's still metagaming knowledge.

Our character doesn't necessarily know about Earnes and Hob, just that Dubrik wants dirt on Earnes for some reason.

We of course know about Hob, the Hawksmoor churches from Griddle's seer's prophecy, Earnes betrayal of Anthony Sommers, etc etc.... but Joan doesn't. She's been locked in the Chantry , trapped in a room.

I guess I don't like abusing metagaming knowledge too much and hope grotsnik punishes us for doing so.

Even when we made our plan to lure Angelos into the Caecilian trap, it never went beyond what our character was capable of doing or knowing. He knew about Angelos' existence, he knew about the Caecilian and he had contacts in the government to get the required explosives.

IF Joan discovers some shit about how the Chantry is a place of power, where's the fun in finding out what we already know through Sommers' chapter?

 

To be fair, Joan at least knows that there's something lurking underneath and she suspects that it's something terrifying.

And look at Joan's A Kindred Enslaved passages. As a Tremere, she has already thought about the structure of the Chantry and "Archicteture is the secret, the divine will made manifest through the hermetical combination of numbers and geometry in the material world." So checking out the layout of the place isn't coming out of nowhere.

That being said, I disagree with the last part of root's post:

It should indeed concern us greatly, but the work going on in the Docklands is hardly menial. Eames has something important planned there, and something she wants secret; as Argyll said, why else would she get one of her apprentices to investigate leaseholds there when she could just get some Kine contractor? The answer is that it's so she can cover her tracks. A guy like Tony will track down a Kine contractor in five minutes with his connections, there's no way Eames is going to be so careless.

And the Daemon's whereabouts are certainly important too. We've already promised Dubrik we would investigate it, and if we neglect it, he may decide our usefulness has come to an end. The man's already proven that he's willing to cut dead weight without a second thought. It's still early, so investigating the layout of the Chantry is fine for now, but we sure as hell can't afford to dilly-dally for long.

 

What an elegant figure of a Ventrue: coldly stylish and

 

While making Dubrik a Ventrue antitribu would give some explanation to both his rivalry and interest with Tony, it would still be cooler to have made him a Lasombra I think. Not sure why, since I've never played V:tM, but from the fluff they are probably my favorite clan.

Metagaming is bad, m'kay, but also hard to avoid. Some level of it should be acceptable I think. The stuff in Docklands is damn interesting as well and grotsnik was a sneaky git by combining these information gathering tasks with promises of immediate power in the form of new magic tricks.

 

But he is Lasombra. It's been mentioned a few times before.

This ain't no continuity error. For once.

 

Then who's the bald Ventrue mentioned in this part:

?

 

The good Bishop's Ventrue antitribu agent posing as the man himself in the eyes of our Tremere, perhaps?

 

Oh right, sneaky fuck that Bishop, as fits a true Lasombra. I thought it was mostly Camarilla Lasombra, few as they are, who tried to keep up appearance as Ventrue (unless they are super powerful like Montano), but maybe I got that part wrong too. Makes sense that Joan would be deceived though, why trust a fresh agent with your true appearance after all?

 

Oh...I see. Confusing.

 

You guys are so naive.

 

Looks like SCO knows the..... SCOre.





It's eight in the fucking morning I hope you can all forgive me for what I just did.

 

Hey did anyone see this? White Wolf will release a new VtM corebook, with updated setting and everything:

http://vampirethemasquerade.com/

 

I hate to be that dude but wtf is this? Some kind of tv show with weekly episodes and season breaks?

...moar...