WoD To Do With Ordo Dracul, Part 2

All right, well, we've gone through Themes, Moods and Plot Hooks in the first installment so it's time to look at the next stage. And yes, the image to the left is from a Vampire: the Masquerade game. Ain't my fault nobody's published a Requiem videogame. Of course, if you're a Vampire: the Masquerade fan then you could probably use a lot of these details for any Tremere games you've chosen to run. Those pesky Tremere were the super-secretive, occult types of Masquerade, after all. Anywho, on to the meat of the article.

Daily Activities:

1. Putting the Ordo Dracul library books into some sort of order (massive task).

2. Cleaning the test laboratory for your mentor.

3. Purchasing a variety of odds and ends for your mentor from a list that requires you to range far and wide - from bat feces from the local zoo to salt petre to hair from a Nosferatu's head. You won't even know if it's for a real experiment or just make work until you're done.

4. Attending various human group meetings, from ghost hunters to alleged psychics to other paranormal groups to keep an eye on them, find likely human candidates to assist the Ordo Dracul and to learn more about the local area.

5. Attend various night classes to try and catch up on studies you slept through as a human. Hey, it's cheaper than a boon where it's possible.

6. Learn to do something entirely different, or change your demeanor, or raise / lower your Humanity suddenly, to try and jolt your Coil learning progress. Perhaps you work hard on becoming a Goth and getting in with the crowd and then switch to being a techno-junkie, despite being an older neonate or young ancillae and therefore having to deal with snide attitudes and your own difficulties with adapting.

7. Live out your unlife in and around the area of a wyrm's nest that you've been instructed to defend. Find food near it, find human distractions near it, study it, and, of course, find a suitable haven near it.

8. Attend auctions, used book stores, and garage sales in the search for anything interesting that you can present to the Chapter House.

9. Trawl pubs, taverns, and other public venues around places of interests to subtly pick up information from the locals about the place by pretending to be an author.

10. Performing night security work at museums or other such institutions to get a quick buck and maintain Ordo Dracul access to the sites.

Goals / Motivations:

1. Seduce a professor or other eminent specialist in your particular field into being your ghoul. Voila! Instant teacher of the mundane arts that you can also put to work for yourself.

2. Catch the eye of an important mentor in the right group of Sworn by first learning about their likes / dislikes and interests, then ensuring that you accomplish a series of tasks related to their interests off your own back. This might involve learning how to play the violin ... or clearing out a haunting with nothing but your coterie at your back.

3. Use your coterie as some sort of experiment, perhaps by encouraging a coterie-mate to stay close to their human family (interesting social / psychological experiment) or by encouraging the Nosferatu to play around with ghosts to see what exactly can make a haunt so haunted.

4. Groom a friend or two in rival covenants to help provide yourself some better protection and with an eye to being an obvious candidate for the Sworn of Mysteries. After all, if you've already managed to juggle several 'friends' in multiple covenants without betraying the Ordo Dracul, you'd be perfect for them.

5. Obtain enough boons on someone (or ghoul someone) who has mastered a fighting style so that you can force them to teach you how to master that same fighting style.

6. Retain a high Humanity within the Ordo Dracul, get yourself the Confessor position, and start to provide ethical guidance to the Ordo Dracul (likely under the auspices of practical considerations).

7. Cause a Sworn of Mysteries nemesis to be torpored and then awoken by a well-meaning kindred of another covenant, thus ensuring the Sworn's death as they are now one step blood bound and thus must die.

8. Spy on the other kindred, not for political information, but to learn as much as can be learned about suspected bloodlines and the limits and extents of the powers of certain disciplines.

9. Gain ground on your Great Work so that you can make a magnificent presentation at the next big caucus. (Players and Storytellers so often forget their Great Work but a lot of cool plot can come out of this.)

10. Ensure the Ordo Dracul's layer of secrecy is maintained by removing known informants, Dominating information out of people, disseminating false information, and using every tool at your disposal to undermine the research efforts made by other covenants.

Man, writing this up just makes me want to run (or play) in an Ordo Dracul specific campaign. There's so much you can do with this covenant, though it does get a bit limited with other covenants involved as some of the cool stuff is top secret with secret sauce on it.

Next up are Locations, NPCs, and Playlists.