Kinda ambitious to use it to influence the election, but it seems doable...
Go big or go home.
By the way, I am with you on the careful planning HOWEVER... this plan is only good so long as people don't know about our ghoul squad. The minute they figure out we've got a ghoul squad, we are dead in the water and we'll have to nip it in the bud.
However, what SCO said is also important so I say that we need to deliver a killer as well. We need to identify a Hunter (don't ask me how). Our ghoul squad must approach this guy and tel him "We're sort of Hunters ourselves and we're out for the blood of this powerful vampire. You in?" During the raid, the Hunter gets a bullet in the back of his head and his corpse ends up before the Barons. We don't want the kindred to start an open-ended search for a killer. They must be convinced that they already know who did it. The Venetian envoy should be told not to make waves with some stupid investigation and to push Vogler as the best candidate fast.
How do we find a Hunter? Easy, by drawing attention to ourselves - Donnie would be proud! Mandrake has been looking for us for a while - we show up at one of these soirees that Humphrey has been begging us to go to, and then I'm sure our mystery man will no doubt follow. Meanwhile, at this point Humphrey will no doubt have info on the man (i.e. what he looks like, where he lives) that one of our guys will be able to follow him and obtain something suitable for use. If it turns out he's just some shithead columnist, get Cripps to savagely murder the guy, Sabbat-style. That'll no doubt draw the sort of attention we seek.
If we do get Hunters on our ass, I believe that some housing renovations would be in order. They'll get carved up by our traps before they even reach us, and we can pick off a suitable trinket from their dead bodies.
Honestly, I think that that part might be unnecessary. As long as people are really scared and we're able to lead them into thinking the way we want them to think through distraction and misdirection, making this thing a perfect frame job might not even be needed if we're in good with the Camarilla envoy. As long as the big man from Venice believes us, we're in the clear. Fuck, imagine if we're made head of the investigation on top of that - glorious. Also, as I've mentioned before, Kindred will be vying for a new piece of real estate, so we might take advantage of their selfishness in order to mislead them.
Now we move on to
Phase 2: Picking out our target and getting info on their living quarters. We can do this either (1) ourselves, by ingratiating ourselves with one of our colleagues, as mentioned before, (2) with Eddie faking a defection. Despite being a hitman, he is also a sociable cat, so if he tells our target that he no longer wishes to be attached to a sinking ship like Anthony Sommers and he wants employment elsewhere, it will get our target to lower their guard. Lastly, another possibility is (3) Mr Cripps. Yes, he is a Nosferatu... BUT if we tell him the details of our plan and offer him the possibility of advancement - say, a position such as Scourge that he would excel at - he might be more than willing to keep quiet. Then, once we've ensured his compliance, we get him to sneak through our targets home to get a sense of the layout.
Phase 3 is debriefing our ghoul squad. For this, we'll meet up at Highgate Cemetary outside the secret tunnel from our home in Witanhurst. We tell them who the target is, fabricate some sort of terrible crime they've done, make it really melodramatic to stoke morale. Then, we give them info on the layout of the place, what sort of resistance to expect, where our target is likely to be sleeping, etc. from Phase 2. Now, the attack will be sure to make a ton of noise and draw police attention, so it's imperative we call Humphrey and tell him to make sure that the police believe that this operation is some sort of anti-terrorism raid or something.
Then after that, all that's left is to carry out the deed itself...
We could even have a certain well connected harpy start investigating said group of hunters beforehand. That way we'll have some other incidences to add to the list of crimes committed by the untermensch vampire hunters. Plus, that would allow us to say that we've been investigating them on our own and it'll hold water when they ask Costello if it's true - might even add to our credentials and get us put in charge of the investigation.
Nice. I like this.
I'd also suggest that it may be unwise to tell Vogler about any of this. He doesn't need to know for the plan to work and he may try to doublecross us later with the info.
It's probably better to keep everything here as close as possible. The more Kindred who know about this, the more likely it is to spill into disaster. That's why I initially suggested Anthony determining the layout of our target's home himself; he isn't going to rat
himself out. Vogler would not try to doublecross us because he stands to succeed even more than we do from this plan. He'd look every bit as complicit in it as Anthony.
We may not have to kill the baron. We could just stash him somewhere safe (not where Cripps or even our boy Eddie have acesss to him - if we had fortified the house I might suggest at the bottom of the blood well, but that may be too easy for Cripps to find) and then diablerize him once everything's died down. This wouldn't arouse suspicion immediately as hunters have been known to stake and kidnap other vamps. The difficult part would be overcoming the tell-tale streaks in our aura once we actually eat the old fart. Unless of course there's some other easy way to track down a living vamp that I'm forgeting about, it might just work... Or it might screw completely us like I said earlier.
Let's sort all those details out later. This mission is going to be hard enough as it is without trying to stake our target. Besides, we would be attacking in the daylight; no way our ghouls would be able to transport our target under the heat of the sun.
Besides, if this all works out, we will have offered Vogler the whole fucking city. We can ask for whatever the fuck we want in return - I would demand no less than a staked Bishop Dubrik to be delivered at our feet, along with a bib, napkin and fine silverware.
Ventrue, I shall nevertheless take credit for it. Much like how everyone thinks the original idea for the Angelos hit was mine when it was actually SCO's and I was actually skeptical of it at first.
